A non-existent revolution in Iran
Kabir Taneja
Over the past few weeks, Iran, the seat of Shiite Islam and one of the tripoles of influence in the Middle East, saw a spurt of protests erupt across various towns and cities as the countrys large youth demographic voiced their anger against stunted economic conditions, stale job market and the global pandemic of the failures of trickle-down economics.
According to figures provided by Iranian reformist parliamentarian Mahmoud Sadeghi, more than 3,700 people have been placed under arrest by the Iranian authorities. This is not the first time protests in Iran have made global headlines, previously, in 2009, similar protests led by economic stagnation and social constrictions erupted in the capital Tehran, only to be quenched effectively by the police forces.
The general public discourse around such events in Iran usually pendulums between the ill-informed and the critically ill-informed. For some reason, in a lot of public perception, including in India, Iran is perceived as a hermit-state. This debris of thought from the post-9/11 era when, during the run-up to the Iraq war, while delivering the State of the Union speech on 29 January 2002, the then US President George W. Bush clubbed Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the axis of evil.
Prior to this monikers aiding the very problematic terminology of war on terror, American and Iranian ties, while fraught, were still facing towards the positive direction. Perhaps due to these chains of events, perception amongst the generalised debates remains that Iran is some sort of a hermit state, like North Korea, and the truth cannot be further away from such discourse.
Encouraged by the small measure of space provided by the government for demonstrations in Mashhad, thousands of Iranians expressed their dissatisfaction with the governments economic and foreign policies, and their anger at the Islamist government that has been in power since 1979. The protesters have included government and private-sector employees whove seen prices going higher every day in recent years, retirees who dont receive their pensions on time, people who have lost money in different investment schemes, and others who believe theyve been deprived of their rights as Iranian citizens.
Many protesters chanted against recent developments that have served to only add insult to their injuries both in terms of the governments domestic policies and its dreams of hegemony in the region.
On Dec. 10, President Hassan Rouhani presented his budget, which essentially would make life more expensive for citizens and, at the same time, include generous allocations for religious organizations in Iran and elsewhere. The slogan Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, I Give My Life for Iran was repeated in the protests across different cities. Many Iranians regard their governments generous help to the Palestinian Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, Syrian Assad regime and Yemeni Houthis as unnecessary and even treasonous.
Despite peoples passion and energy, no one knows what is happening in Iran. Analysts are confused and mostly silent. And the people on the streets are not supporting any individual or group; they have chanted slogans against Rouhani and Khamenei, but unlike in 2009, there are no leaders to guide them.
Rouhani has, at the time of this writing, reportedly gathered his ministers and advisers to assess the situation. So far, Rouhanis government has managed only to blame the demonstrations on its conservative critics. Rouhanis vice president has implied that the hard-liners are using peoples economic problems to bring down the government. Some hard-liners have been happy about the anti-Rouhani slogans, but many of them have chastised protesters for chanting slogans against the supreme leader, who is supposed to be a sacred being.
Hundreds of people have been arrested in cities around Iran in the past 48 hours. No one has been released as of this writing. It would be interesting to know what their interrogations have been about and what charges are being brought against them.
The demonstrations have shown the dissatisfaction of Iranians with the regime as a whole both the so-called pro-reform Rouhani and the conservative Khamenei. Dealing with this outbreak of hatred may unify the regime for a short while, but, inevitably, the factions will start their infighting again. Rouhani and Khamenei have different interests and bases of support. They cannot coexist peacefully and simultaneously cater to their constituencies.
Rouhani cannot ignore the destructive role of the ayatollahs cohorts in the Revolutionary Guard and their firm grip on the economy. The Guards practically run Irans policies in the wider region including supporting Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah and they have made a mockery of Rouhanis attempts at rapprochement with Irans neighbours and the West.
Under international sanctions for a good part of the past decade due to its nuclear programme (which Tehran maintains is for peaceful energy purposes), the Iranian economy suffered significantly as foreign investment dried up and international financial highways came under heavy scrutiny for Iranian money.
More than 60 per cent of Irans population is estimated to be under 30 years of age (2013 figures as per the World Bank), rendering the issue of employment and economic aspirations one of the biggest challenges to the Government of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate, trying to end an impasse with the West and open up his country to rapid growth.
Iran holds some of the largest oil and natural gas reserves, and till some years ago, was Indias second largest supplier of crude oil. In fact, the Mangalore oil refinery in southern India was specifically designed to handle the heavy crude variety of oil that India imported in large quantities from Iran.
Labelling these Iran protests as revolution and thinking any public dissent in the country is a call for regime change, is a disservice both to the Iranian people, who had patiently weathered many storms as their political class negotiated a long and tiresome deal with the P5+1 group of Western nations and came to an agreement, one that was deemed historic then, but today faces the careless disruptions of the international order under US President Donald Trumps Administration.
While Trump has publicly given support to the Iranian protests (devoid of following an actual policy), President Barack Obama had maintained a distance in 2009 when similar events had occurred, not to spook the Iran nuclear negotiations that he was hoping would become an enduring part of his legacy.
However, the latest protests, as Reza Marashi, Research Director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), correctly illustrated in his writings, were about the long fight for civil rights in Iran, and not entirely about regime change.
A lot of discontent in Iran currently comes from how the countrys political structures work, the challenges from the conservative lobbies to Rouhanis presidency and the role of the Ayatollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (an elite military force only answerable to the Ayatollah) in the countrys economy.
The success of the nuclear deal was important to the Iranians as they expected their economic situation to get significantly better, and the youth, particularly in rural areas, looked towards being gainfully employed.
However, regional politics, the Syrian war, the never-ending race for Shia-Sunni supremacy between Saudi Arabia and Iran saw Tehran increase its spending in arming Shiite rebels across Syria to defeat the Islamic State and other Sunni insurgencies, not necessarily returning the liberated lands to the people, but replacing the vacuum with their own brand of militias.
The costs for these policies were tremendous, both economic and human, so much so that Tehran went shopping to Afghanistan for Shiite fighters, bringing them to Iran for training and then deploying them in Syria as local reinforcements started to get exhausted.
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These regional battles of hegemony only exasperated an already precarious social situation in the country. While it is not out of the questions that factions within Irans polity, looking to undermine a moderate Government, may have played some sort of role in the events that unfolded, the fact that the said uprising was leaderless, directionless and largely purposeless yet still getting branded as a revolution with regime change as the end-game, shows more recklessness from a large yet significant part of the Western discourse than just highlighting Irans internal political troubles.
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