First things first, this is without a doubt the most significant unrest in Iran since the 1997 student-led protests, if not bigger. But lets be clear about one thing, this generation is far from revolutionary. Of course, I wasn’t alive in the 1970s, but I am certain when I tell you that that generation was something extraordinary. Regardless of political orientation, Islamist, Marxist, or nationalist, those revolutionaries were fervently committed to their revolutionary aims and would not hesitate to lay down their lives for their cause. They braved bullets and massacres… one after another. And up to the run-up to Feb. 11th, 1979, the date of the triumph of the revolution, an estimated 20,000 died. As much as I respect my own generation, I strongly believe that we don’t have the stones to see any protest movement through until the very end. Our amazon.com/BMW/facebook generation, to which I am of course a member, is far from revolutionary like in the 1970s. The 1970s was about self-sacrifice and I just don’t see that amongst our generation today, even though the protests in Iran are very powerful. Also, I think it’s important to note that unlike the Shah’s regime, this regime has mastered the art of making sure that protests don’t spiral out of control into a full-blown sustainable nationwide protest movement. The regime’s ability to use force and its effectiveness in quarantining and isolating protesters is unmatched in recent Iranian history. Furthermore, their access to an ideologically die-hard segment of the population (see Ahmadinejad’s victory rally) provides the regime with crucial support in crucial junctures. This is in stark contrast to the Shah and his regime, which could not even muster the support of the peasantry, the supposed benefactors of the White Revolution, in his final hour on throne. But make no mistake about it, what’s happening in Iran is massive and very very serious. Although it’s still too early to tell how long Mousavi will drag this out, he has already proven a more formidable opponent than former reformist President Muhammad Khatami. When he was president, Khatami cowed in every power struggle with the conservatives in power and refused to draw on his popularity amongst the people to pressure the unelected conservatives to desist from blocking his reforms. Mousavi, however, has lodged a complaint against the election results with the Guardian Council and, more importantly, has made effective and unprecendented use of his popularity by calling on his supporters to continue to protest against the election results. I think it is also important to note that the issue of Ahmadinejad vs. Mousavi is part of a bigger contest pitting Khamenei against Rafsanjani, which is why Ahmadinejad, a Khamenei loyalist, was attacking Rafsanjani and his sons (he called them all thieves) during his debate with Mousavi, because Mousavi is perceived as being a Rafsanjani loyalist. In other words, the struggle between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is part of a bigger internal power struggle between Khamenei and Rafsanjani, which is also why Khamenei quickly endorsed the election results. Anyway, although I was late in offering my analysis on the post-election turmoil (I was preoccupied with family events this past weekend) I was covering the events closely and will be frequently posting here. Stay tuned.
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“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.”
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let it be heard
Please don’t insult people’s intelligence Pouya. The protesters in 1997 were not full of themselves and their actions were not tantamount to a public stunt. They also had the mind not to rally for a con man and moron wife. I cannot believe what Huff Po is reporting about this – she is NOT Michelle Obama.
So where are these legal claims about the votes being miscounted? Why hasn’t Mousavi brought these electoral anomalies to light? Because even he knows that they do not exist. He knows that his dumb supporters are out numbered, but that will not stop him from exploiting them and asking them to act stupidly for his benefit. This his forte, actually. Look at his record and you will see that this makes perfect sense.
I just want to say that I think it is absolutely disgusting of Rafsanjani to seek this supreme leadership the way he is. What he is doing to these youth (I’m so sick of hearing about ‘the youth! the youth!’) for his own end, even after all the wealth he has amassed on the backs of people, he has no shame about him. I said this in the other post; I hope Khamenei deals with him. This is a grudge that goes back to the death of Khomeini. He was rightly never considered and he should learn to see himself as the nothing more than a lottery winner.
Nazanin , I am so happy that you post here and hope to more site like this,
Thanks Nahid, I also wonder about what Rafsanjani might be offering people in exchange for support during this stunt. He’s never been above whoring himself out. “Dear Mr. President Obama, let’s make a deal, please?”
May be, one of his stunt will be the Holocaust musuem in Iran.
Smiley — I didn’t know ’til now that nahid denies the holocaust, and I didn’t know that Arash claimed that Stalin killed more Jews than Hitler did. Either way, Holocaust denial is quite disgusting and those who engage in it are the lowest of the low (especially Ahmadinejad). And of course Stalin did not kill even remotely close to the number of Jews that Hitler did.
I think the New York Times hit the nail on the head with their Op-Ed/analysis of the situation: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/opinion/15mon1.html
Your name jewish-zionist speaks volume , you have no credibility at all and your nytimes.
Parisa K’s analysis on the other thread was phenomenal.
iPouya — your silence in the face of the thuggery and savagery of the Basij and other government gangs, beating up young people and women on the streets of Tehran, speaks volumes about your true political and philosophical views. If Israeli soldiers attack Gaza, you can’t sleep at night. If savages in your home country attack your “hamvatans,” you’re silent. Quite disgusting.
Are you really comparing the Iran’s government’s response to the demonstrations to the war crimes that the ruthless Israeli military machine visited upon the Gaza Strip in Dec./Jan (to which you were completely in support of)??? Wow.
Iran’s election results were reported by its Interior Ministry in six waves. The first wave covered about one-third of the total vote; there were then two relatively large waves that reported about 20 percent of the vote each, and then three smaller waves that reported the remainder of the vote. What other observers have found is that, over the course of the six waves, there is an extremely strong, linear relationship between the number of votes reported for Ahmadinejad and the number reported for his principal opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi (who had declared victory before any results were officially announced):
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/statistical-evidence-does-not-prove.html