A lion in the streets
Anatomy of a counter-revolution
ISN’T THIS where we came in? Only this time the film is being run backward as the children or by now grandchildren of the demonstrators that once demanded the Shah be toppled look back on his rule as a golden age. Now they’re calling for the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to give up power.
The religious fanaticism of that earlier revolution has been replaced by more mundane concerns like high prices for the basic necessities of life and high unemployment to match. Welcome to the West and the West’s workaday problems, young protesters. It’s good to have you join the contemporary world instead of concerning yourselves with questions about medieval wars and theology. Now we can all talk the same language, loaded with statistics and businessspeak as it is.
Once again the pace of technology is proving faster than that of ideology, which is good news for those of us heartily sick of refighting long-ago wars for causes now lost in the mists of history. It’s long been known that classic revolutions devour their own, but the process now has been speeded up so instant crowds can be generated with the touch of a button. Want a crowd of protesters? There’s a handy-dandy app for it just a thumb’s push away.
Now it’s the “reformers” who must explain why their much touted reforms have failed, and why they have any business staying in power. Iran’s current president, Hassan Rouhani, won re-election promising to revive the country’s stalled economy. But instead of shifting into high gear it continues to sputter and cough. It turns out that even dictators must answer to public opinion or go, and the faster this one goes, the better it will be for his beleaguered country.
By now even Iran’s officialdom and its controlled press have had to acknowledge that there’s something rotten in that sore beset state. How long before this counter-revolution reaches its Thermidor as the political pendulum swings and a freer Iran emerges? Soon, let’s hope. But it’s easier to talk about a brighter future for that country than to achieve it. The same bullyboys who crushed Iranians’ hopes for freedom less than a decade ago in 2009 are out cracking skulls once again, and once again they could prevail.
Once more Iran’s storm troopers, formally known as Revolutionary Guards, seem determined to crush their opposition. And to do so, they don’t hesitate to identify their own interests with the whole country’s, claiming that they “will not allow the country to be hurt.” Dictators may come, dictators may go, but they all still equate the country with themselves and not the people they insist on misruling.
IN EVERY age, the old are tempted to hold onto power while the young are impatient and eager for their turn to shape society’s destiny. “Young people are angry and frustrated without a hope in the future,” says one Iranian journalist. If only Iranians in general team up with “these small groups of determined students, there could be a real problem.” And it couldn’t happen to a more fitting bunch.
This time Donald Trump is tweeting to good purpose. To quote the tweet he sent out about developments in Iran, “the entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other than the vast military power of the United States, Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most . . . Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching!” As freedom rings even for a police state like that Tehran’s mullahs run.
This country’s State Department also spoke out in support of the protesters. “Iran’s leaders,” the statement out of the department declared, “have turned a wealthy country . . . into a economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos.” A spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, Bahram Ghasemi, could only denounce these statements out of Washington as “meddlesome” and “opportunistic.” In that case, our diplomats should meddle more and find new opportunities to support the cause of freedom in Iran and around the world.
It’s all the Americans’ fault, to hear Iran’s controlled press tell it. Yet even Tehran’s propagandists had to acknowledge the protests that it’s been studiously ignoring until now. Despite all the regime’s efforts, word about the protests is getting out, spreading and roiling Iran’s oily politics. Here’s hoping this wildfire of opinion continues to spread.