A darker night of despotism...

One year to the day after President Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent election victory, would opposition supporters fill the streets of Iran’s cities to voice once again their outrage, as they had done on June 15, 2009, when some three million people demonstrated in Tehran alone?
A heavy security presence ensured that those brazen enough to demonstrate would be taken care of accordingly. Iran’s security forces almost outnumbered a few thousand opposition supporters in Tehran on Saturday to avert a rally on the first anniversary of the disputed presidential election, wrote The Financial Times.
Potential protesters had also been threatened with retribution by the regime should they participate in banned demonstrations.
Any illegal move to disrupt public order and trouble people will not be tolerated and will be dealt with, the governor general of Tehran, Morteza Tamadon, told IRNA.
Any revival of street protests is unlikely. But if the sedition movement creates a security crisis, we will confront them with full force, had added Reza Farzaneh, a senior IRGC commander.
In addition, the regime’s campaign of intimidation included the following text message the Intelligence Ministry sent out randomly: Dear citizen, you have been deceived by the foreign media and are cooperating with them. If repeated, you will be dealt with according to the Islamic punishment law, an opposition website reported.
The leaders of Iran‘s opposition, Mir Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi had cancelled plans to hold a demonstration in order to protect the lives and property of people.
Yet, some were determined to demonstrate come what may.
In addition, the night before, many Iranians once again shouted Allah o Akbar (God is Great) on the city’s rooftops, an act of defiance against the regime.
Protesters gathered at Revolution Square, at Tehran University, and near Azadi Avenue.
At Tehran University, they chanted slogans, and shouted liar, liar (in reference to President Ahmadinejad) as theywere beset by plain-clothed police officers.
In Enghelab square, close to Tehran University, Basijis [militiamen] are beating people with batons. They have closed the street and we have moved to Daneshgah street, one witness told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.They beat everybody close to Tehran University. Anybody who stops gets beaten up, another said.
Basijis were seen patrolling downtown on motorcycles clutching truncheons, some shouting Death to Mousavi.
Skirmishes ensued with protesters chanting Death to the Dictator.
The police tried to arrest an old woman under Hafez Bridge for shouting anti-government slogans, yet scores of protesters rushed to the scene, thereby preventing them from doing so…
Security forces also used paint guns and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.
Yet, many simply refused to be cowed by them.
There were so many plainclothes officers, that we didn't know who was with us or who against us. But people were not afraid at all, which must be worrying for the government, one protester told the WP.
We came to the streets to show we will not cave in and we want real change. We want to prove that pressure on people will be counterproductive, and the huge number of anti-riot police and Basiji (militiamen) today with surgical masks in the streets shows who is afraid of whom, another told the LAT.
Some, anywhere from a handful to two hundred, were arrested.
Demonstrations also took place in other cities such as Mashhad, Shiraz and Isfahan.
In essence, the turnout was modest due to the mood prevailing in the capital and across the country, one of repression and suffocation, according to an Iranian journalist, since the regime cracked down ruthlessly on those demonstrating against President Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent reelection victory last year.
Since the, some 5,000 people have been arrested.
More than eighty received stiff jail sentences of up to fifteen years.
Seven have been executed, and sixteen are currently on death row.
The regime’s brutal campaign to prevent opposition activists from staging mass protests in the streets has been very effective.
My friends who took part in previous rallies are in jail or are banned from pursuing their studies. I cannot endanger my future by taking part in any anti-government rally, a young student from Shiraz told The Telegraph.
The people are more aware than before, but they stay quiet on fear of death. They have killed so many of the young and the well intentioned. Even the shah did not kill like this. They rule the people at the tip of a spear, but the people don’t want them anymore, an old woman told the NYT.
The presence of the armed forces is palpable. People want to demonstrate but they won't. They're afraid of being arrested and tortured or raped, a resident of Tehran told The Independent.
The police are even now scouring the streets looking for young men and women whose appearance is deemed insufficiently Islamic.
A few weeks ago, the police started a new morality campaign, which in practice translates into harassment of young boys and girls about their attire or their haircut and such. Everyday on my way home, I see at least one car being pulled over, one Iranian journalist told The Telegraph.
The authorities have begun filming women they deem insufficiently covered to use as evidence in court. The police have begun issuing fines that some people say exceed $1,000 for beauty treatments deemed inappropriate, like heavily tanned skin. Provocatively dressed women are stationed on street corners, and men who stop to flirt are arrested.
“The opinion of the people with respect to their government was bad, and now they are making it worse,” said a 25-year-old hairdresser, wrote the NYT.
The repressive campaign has led Mousavi to accuse the regime of having what he called an inclination toward dictatorship.
Once again, hard-liners and repressive forces are being organized to attack defenseless and innocent people, Mousavi wrote on his website last Thursday.
In such a difficult context, what can the Green Movement do?
Is it still a viable enterprise?
Mousavi and Karroubi know that in such a climate of repression, the movement cannot exist politically, for it has no room to maneuver.
Mousavi has vowed that the movement will persist in its intention of opposing the regime while shunning all violence, and continue our peaceful methods.
If the regime controls the streets of the nation’s cities, then the Green Movement will strive to dominate its cyberspace, in order to expose the regime’s mendacity, brutality and incompetence. We need to spread awareness, this is what they fear. This is their vulnerable point. If we can spread awareness, there will be a huge popular force behind the demand for change…We have to expand social networks, websites, these are our best means. These work like an army. This is our army against their military force, he wrote on kaleme.com.
Excluded from politics and traditional mass media outlets, it may have no other option.
This strategy of educating the public and seeking to increase its audience and influence in the country should not yield results any time soon, however.
Nevertheless, many opposition sympathizers believe that Mousavi’s reluctance to lead and his indecisiveness have weakened the movement and thus helped the regime reassert the control it seemed in real danger of losing last summer.
The movement opposes the regime but refuses to confront it directly in the streets.
Mousavi does not want to organize mass demonstrations which could lead to the death of many supporters at the hands of the regime’s ruthless security apparatus.
Yet, how the regime responds to peaceful demonstrations is its responsibility, not Mousavi’s.
True enough, the regime has never hesitated to shoot and kill unarmed civilians, thus displaying its true, barbaric face to the nation at large.
That is one additional reason why this regime must be deposed as quickly as possible.
Would mass demonstrations accomplish this, and is the Green Movement still capable of mobilizing such huge crowds?
The question is no longer relevant as Mousavi now refuses to go down that road.
At the heart of it, this was and remains a brutal fight, a raw assertion of power. Facebook has no answer to the vigilantes of the Basij roaming the streets of Iran looking for prey. Twitter can't overcome the Revolutionary Guard with the wealth and resources granted them by a command economy they have managed to organize to their own preference, wrote Fouad Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, in the WSJ.
Seeking to disseminate the truth about the regime on the internet is no doubt useful politically, but it shall be insufficient to topple it.
Moreover, it is far from certain that toppling the regime is Mousavi’s ambition.
He is a reformist, not a revolutionary.
As such, what doest the Green Movement want?
What are its objectives?
What strategy has it devised to realize them?
The fact that these questions have not received adequate answers has alienated some opposition supporters.
What have the opposition leaders been able to do for my friends who are still in jail? I am a backer of the reform movement. But what can we do without any leadership? a student from Mashhad told the NYT.
It seemed to many that the Green Movement leadership had only one initial strategy, support the spontaneous mass demonstrations, and when that failed to compel the regime to concede the election was fraudulent, and its security apparatus was able to crack down on the protest movement and jail thousands, Mousavi hesitated, then failed to propose a viable alternative to achieve his objectives.
The absence of a clear political strategy to oppose the regime undermined Mousavi’s position and status as opposition leader.
Since the election, many lost their lives. Many were jailed ... but what has changed? Mousavi does not deserve to be our leader. He is part of the regime, a demonstrator arrested last year and now free told Reuters.
Some opposition supporters no longer believe in seeking accommodation with the regime, and believe instead that, due to its ruthless repression, it has forfeited its moral right to rule.
Why risk our lives to make a change, when it is completely unclear what the outcome will be? First we made our voices heard on the street, but we did not have a Plan B when faced with the harsh reaction of the state, an office manager told the WP.
Without clear leadership, the Green Movement runs the risk of becoming irrelevant and superfluous.
Should we conclude that the Green Movement is a spent force, which, in the end, serves no useful purpose?
Hardly.
Though calm seems to have been restored across the nation, many Iranians can sense what they call the fire under the ashes.
There is fire beneath the ashes. Anything can make this fire blow again, agreed Shirin Ebadi, a human rights lawyer who won The Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, and is now currently in exile in Europe.
The Green Movement did succeed in compelling the regime to reveal its true nature to Iran and the world. By cracking down on a movement that simply wanted to know where is my vote, the regime revealed its ruthless, cynical and nihilistic nature.
The nation was not ruled by a cast of enlightened clerics, but by thugs in the security apparatus, dominated by the IRGC that did not intend to relinquish its privileges in order to respect the will of the people.
This was now clear to all: the lines have been drawn. There is no longer any pretense. On one side are the Revolutionary Guards, the security/intelligence apparatus, a small faction of reactionary and ultraconservative clerics, and a narrow social base, probably about 15-20 percent of the population. On the other side is everyone else, wrote Muhammad Sahimi in tehranbureau.
In retrospect, it could be said that the first Islamic Republic (1979-2009) had fallen, and that a second republic, more cruel and unapologetic in its exercise of power, had risen, wrote Fouad Ajami.
A darker night of despotism has settled upon the weary people of Iran, he added.
The regime is now dominated by the IRGC, which, during last summer’s unrest, played a key role in preserving the power of Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The leadership of the Guard has been handsomely rewarded for the services rendered.
It has been granted lucrative contracts recently, such as an $850 million pipeline deal granted to GHORB. The company has close links with the Guard.
In addition, the Guard was also awarded a $7 billion oil project in the South Pars oil and gas fields. The Revolutionary Guards are making the case that they are the guarantors of the regime's survival and security. From Ahmadinejad's perspective, this is case of 'you do our business and we'll give you yours', Mark Dubowitz, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies policy institute, told The Telegraph.
The Guards have also earned handsome profits from the smuggling networks that they control.
In addition, the IRGC and Basijis hold thirteen of twenty-one cabinet positions in the Iranian government.
Has Ahmadinejad thus won the day?
Although the IRGC is clearly in control of the country, there are signs that internal divisions are undermining it, a number of officers who recently defected to Turkey revealed.
One suggested that the IRGC was able to repress the protest movement only by enrolling young and poor recruits from the countryside. The older guards seemed to have refused to shoot at unarmed demonstrators.
Secondly, the Supreme Leader has been badly battered by the events of the last twelve months.
By forsaking his traditional role of arbiter, and openly supporting Ahmadinejad against the people, he has lost much of his authority and credibility, and undermined the very function of Supreme Leader, thus the regime itself.
An important psychological barrier has been broken: Khamenei is now explicitly held responsible for the ills of the nation, wrote Muhammad Sahimi.
Mousavi himself, hitherto a regime insider from the earliest days of the Islamic Republic of Iran, no longer hesitates to criticize the Supreme Leader.
Those at the top (of the ruling system) think they are special creatures of God almighty and that God pays special attention to (him); that whatever he says must be carried out ... and there is no belief in collective logic, he wrote, according to the NYT.
The regime, now dominated and controlled by the security apparatus is politically impotent and incapable of addressing the nation’s ills.
More than 90 percent of people would support a settlement between the camps, because people want the problems solved. But it is as if they do not want any solution, Abbas Abdi, a political analyst, told the WP.
Maintaining the status quo, from which it so lavishly benefits, is the regime’s top priority.
Yet, other ills may prove far more threatening to the regime’s political longevity.
Many Iranians lament their low salaries, and the high inflation and unemployment rates.
The regime will have to tackle these issues if it does not want the opposition to exploit the countries economic woes and see embittered workers and the unemployed join the ranks of the political opposition.
Concomitantly, the Green Movement has also succeeded in encouraging Iranians to be more autonomous and politically aware.
People have absolutely gained something, a certain degree of individual independence. They began to decide for themselves that they would go out to protest, to follow the news. This is something that has happened for everybody. In different areas of their lives they are losing patience and are not likely to say anymore that they will put up with things, a medical student told the NYT.
There is little we can do in the West to, practically speaking, help Mousavi and the Green Movement.
Any overt interference would bolster the regime’s claims that they are being manipulated by the West to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Yet, we could more emphatically support their efforts to democratize the nation’s political system.
In addition, why are we so obsessed with Iran’s nuclear program, yet so indifferent to its flagrant human rights violations?
Shirin Ebadi has dismissed the West’s approach to Iran as hypocritical.
Would it not be wiser to support Iran’s democratic opposition that, should it come to power would be probably much more amenable to negotiating a deal with the West on the nuclear issue then the current regime?
We have once again failed to support those who defend values we purport to embody, and with what results?
There is no guarantee that categorical American support would have altered the outcome of the struggle between autocracy and liberty in Iran. But it shall now be part of the narrative of liberty that when Persia rose in the summer of 2009 the steward of American power ducked for cover, and that a president who prided himself on his eloquence couldn't even find the words to tell the forces of liberty that he understood the wellsprings of their revolt, concluded Fouad Ajami…
It is not too late.
Let us hope that MM. Obama, Sarkozy, Cameron and their colleagues will at last find the words and wholeheartedly support the valiant democracy activists in Iran…
(the photograph above of the Green supporter is by Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters)