Democratic underground
February 17, 2012
Iran's opposition Green movement has been appeared quiet since the government crackdown on protests in the aftermath of the presidential election in 2009. But this week, protesters took to the streets again. On Tuesday, the coordinating council for the Green movement called for unofficial protests - official ones are not tolerated by the Islamic government.
Opposition activists held silent marches and in the capital, Tehran, traffic was disturbed. During the night, the call "Allahu Akbar" sounded from the city's rooftops. The Green movement has employed this call, which means "God is great," since 2009 to protest against the Mullahs. The Islamic government can hardly punish people for calling on God.
The latest protests were scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the arrests of Mehdi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the two leading figures of the Green movement. In February 2011, Karroubi and Moussavi called on the people to take to the streets in solidarity with the uprising in Egypt. The demonstrations were forbidden and the two opposition leaders were placed under house arrest.
Opposition alive and well
Since then, the situation in Iran for the opposition has deteriorated, said Farhad Payar with the Berlin-based organization Transparency for Iran, which campaigns for human rights and freedom of the press.
"There are no independent newspapers anymore, the opposition is constantly imprisoned," Payar said. "The foreign broadcasters, including the Deutsche Welle, are blocked. There is no freedom of speech anymore."
Despite the heavy-handed state repression, Payar said he is convinced that the Green movement is alive and well.
"As long as the people want regime change, this movement will continue," he said. "You cannot force these thoughts out of people's heads with police violence. That has never succeeded in the history of humanity."
Hamid Dabashi from Columbia University in New York said he is of the same opinion, adding that if the Green movement isn't reduced to rallies and demonstrations, then you can claim that it's absolutely alive and well.
Green movement split
Dabashi, an internationally renowned Iran expert and cultural scientist, is of the opinion that international pressure and the threat of military force against Iran has had a positive effect on the Green movement.
He said he believes that the threat of force has split the right-wing, neoliberal group - which supports sanctions and calls for a military strike under the cover of a humanitarian intervention - from the rest of the movement.
This right-wing of the Green movement does not have any interest in freedom, democracy, rule of law or the national independence of Iran, Dabashi said. With their split, the Green movement is no longer the vague and heterogeneous group it once was, but rather it has become more unified.
War strengthens regime
Nader Hashemi, assistant professor at the University of Denver and an expert on the Green movement, saw the situation very differently.
"I think the international environment with respect to Iran and the attempts to quarantine Iran, to sanction Iran, to possibly bomb Iran has created an internal environment that has made it very difficult for the Green movement to maneuver," Hashemi told Deutsche Welle.
"Whenever your country is subject to an external attack that unites people around the theme of national independence, nationalism - it makes it much more difficult to talk about internal divisions within the country."
According to Hashemi, the escalating tensions between the West and Iran are actually strengthening the regime and weakening the opposition.
Fear of the people
Hashemi is also convinced that the regime has become paranoid and fears the Green movement.
"Right now the regime claims that there is no Green movement, but if that's the case why are the Green movement leaders in jail?" Hashemi asked. "Why did the regime deploy thousands of its security forces on the streets yesterday throughout Tehran to prevent silent protests from taking place? Why is the regime spending millions of dollars on a daily basis to censor and block the free flow of information?"
The regime is aware of its illegitimacy, Hashemi said, adding that the Islamic government knows that it does not enjoy the trust of the people. The highest echelons of power are reportedly fighting over how to deal with the protests.
Representatives of the regime know that opposition figures like Karroubi and Moussavi cannot simply be put on trial. The regime is also aware that a large portion of the people stands behind these opposition figures. A legal proceeding would destabilize the country, according to the rationale of the leadership.
The representatives of the Green movement do not stand just for democracy. People like Karroubi and Moussavi belonged to the leading figures of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, lending moral authority to the opposition.
Pre-election fissures
Despite the repression, the Green movement is in the position to exercise a lot of pressure on the regime, according to Payar from Transparency for Iran, who said "there are divisions in the highest levels of the leadership - there is disagreement over how dissidents should be dealt with."
According to the cultural scientist Dabashi, an official with the Revolutionary Guards recently compared Ayatollah Khamenei with the secular, pre-revolutionary ruler Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlevi. The Shah governed Iran until 1979 and his regime was also rooted in tyrannical rule. The Islamic regime in Iran is demonstrating strength to the outside world, but on the inside things are boiling, according to Dabashi.
Parliamentary elections are coming up in March. Whether or not this will stir up the political landscape remains uncertain. A large number of the reformers categorically rejected the elections and will not participate. No reformer in the country has positive expectations for the vote. Dabashi has already labeled the elections as a "joke."
Democratic direction
Many Iran observers said there is only a remote chance for political change from within the system. Since the protests were put down in 2009, it has become public knowledge that the government in Tehran is ready to suppress every political opening with extreme force and will not shrink form murder. The majority of the opposition is therefore in exile, imprisoned, or dead.
But Nader Hashemi from Columbia University believes that the Iranian regime is living on borrowed time:
"You cannot forever…maintain an authoritarian system in the face of important sociological, demographic and historical forces that are pushing and moving Iran in the direction of democracy."
Author: Lewis Gropp / slk
Editor: Friedel Taube