You say you want a revolution
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A protest in roses |
Quick thoughts on the protests engulfing Tehran after Iran’s rigged election:
- Mir-Hossein Mousavi is the political hero of the moment. But he’s recycled, and his reform credentials are suspect, like Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan. He served as prime minister in the ’80s, during which he was implicated in a massacre of 30,000 political opponents, supported seizing hostages from the U.S. embassy and wanted Salman Rushdie killed.
- It’s odd seeing politicians downshift into lesser roles. Mousavi was PM and now wants to be president. In California, Jerry Brown was governor, then mayor of Oakland, then attorney general. Immature political systems and star-struck voters keep these folks rattling around the political system instead of developing new blood.
- There’s a rural-urban voter split, much like in India. Ahmadinejad courted rurals while Mousavi won in the cities. Similarly, the BJP lost power by paying insufficient attention to rural voters, while Congress used a rural make-work scheme to keep villagers on their side. Only the broad ideologies are reversed in the analogy.
- The Basij paramilitaries beat up Tehran University students, much like the Pakistani army killed Dhaka University students and intellectuals.
- Modern arms have voided the ability of people to resist their governments. The U.S. Constitution’s right to bear arms was intended to allow citizens to overthrow an unjust government. But even if Iranian citizens all had rifles, what good would they do against tanks? Americans have rifles, but how effective would they be against (FSM forbid) a tyrannical American government with warplanes and JDAMs?
- Iran’s government hasn’t gone through a religious-secular split the way Italy did. In 1929, Italy’s secular government confined clerics’ power to Vatican City because they were politicians grabbing power under the cloak of religion. The mullahs’ actions in Iran over the weekend put the lie to their claim of enforcing morality and doing what’s best for the country. As throughout human history, a small cabal of thugs claiming moral authority through organized religion are trying to maintain their power, looting and privileges.
- CNN’s limited coverage included a lead story which accepted Ahmadinejad’s claim of a legitimate election at face value. An early NYT story did the same. Are these people mere stenographers or what? It echoes the long habit of the MSM of repeating verbatim the Pakistani military’s falsehoods about not backing Kashmiri militants.
I hope the long-suffering denizens of (figurative) Persepolis manage to overturn their rule by mullah junta. But I wish they’d picked a genuine reformer to do it with.
Andrew Sullivan and The Lede have been all over this story.
on Monday, June 15th, 2009, 2:31 pm in Military, Politics › 
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Nice post, Manish, with solid points. Sullivan’s coverage has indeed been superb. The real puzzle is, why do the ruling mullah’s not want to put in Mousavi, to at least put a “reformist” front on their regime? Forcing down Ahmadinejad seems likely to court an Israeli attack (scary, I know–very difficult to predict the consequences of that).
great analysis Manish..thank u
Well some things don’t make sense. I understand that all candidates including Mousavi are pre-screened by the mullahs. So whats the rationale behind rigging the elections for one of the pre-screened guys. It seems to me that the struggle is for real power, much beyond the election for a president who would have worked under the mullahs anyway.
Nice summary of the Iranian situation. Great comparisons to Indian electorate. One more point to add to that is that the Iranian electorate is multi-ethnic like India with Persian, Azeris, Kurds etc.
Agreed that Mousavi’s background makes him not the ideal reformer but looking at the crazy adamant policies of Ahmadinejad, he might be what the Iranians need right now.
I have been riveted to Andrew Sullivan and HuffPo over the weekend to get updates on Iran situation. Revolutions dont happen everyday.
If the Iranian government is a little more conciliatory towards the west compared to the last four years it will be a hugely stabilizing event in the world. Oil prices will go down and world economy can get back on track. But baby steps !!!
I was surprised by how many of the slogans I could understand knowing no Persian.
‘daulate-kudeta, istifa istifa’ (resign resign, govt of coup-de-etat)
‘Basiji-e bi-gheyrat, Doshman-e khoone mellat ‘(The shameless basiji, is the blood enemy of people)
‘nirooye entzammy: hemayat hemayat’(police forces, sympathize)
Then I remembered Inquilab Zindabad is derived from Persian as well.
sakshi: good to see you hereabouts again.
Hey, thanks! :)
word!
From the point Manish raised about the religious-secular split to Saskshi’s comment about slogans, I remembered the NYT article that covered the Lawyers “Long March” in Pakistan. The NYT reporter noted that some lawyers were chanting
“Azadi ka matlab kya, Ya ilahi il-illah”
To be fair, the BJP lost pretty soundly is most cities too
Really? I’m not. Farsi and Hindi/Urdu are sister languages.
As for the analysis, it’s a bit shortsided.
For one, I dislike Sullivan. He’s a showboating, finger wagging, pseudo-pundit who selectively repeats sh!t he overhears. There’s not a whit of Persian expertise in his brain and smacks of the arrogant-but-patronizing farangi caught up in his unfortunate but obligatory vicarious victimhood. And while I’m sure he believes he means well, he’s simply part of the western phenomenum that swoons and delights at the destabilization of a brown (in this case, Islamic) country underneath that superficial ‘concern for democracy’. More than just a bit of schadenfreude there.
The mullahs are directly responsible for Jerry Brown effect here. The young population wants a ‘reformer’ so they dragged out Mousavi as a cosmetic remedy. Essentially, they took the youth’s inexperience and idealism for a ride and they ended up getting more than they bargained for in light of the backlash.
Finally, comparing the thuggish Basiji beat downs to the massacres of the Pakistani army is crude at best. It cheapens the memory of those who died in Dhaka.
I have NO love for the Islamic regime in Iran- I hate it, in fact. But a little historical and cultural perspective is necessary to temper the western brouhaha over these protests.
what’s the backstory on the roses*?
*Hindi/Urdu for rose is gulab, comes from gul-ab or rose-water in perrrsian.
Darth, wow!! If you can’t sense the deeply humanistic sincerity of Sullivan, I feel sorry for you.
Plus, he could kick your ass!
I stopped reading Sullivan after his over the top ranting when Hillary was running for President. I just agree with Darth here.
Also far as I know Andrew Sullivan is not in Iran, the MSM is there. And there is much to be said for a cautious, sane coverage as opposed to putting up sensationalistic opinion posts.
As someone up there mentioned, all the candidates are pre screened and as Manish’s post makes clear, Mousavi is no saint. So I am not sure if this is such a historic event - even if its an election where the votes have been counted improperly. One is also faintly cynical - the Thai middle class have also been out on the streets in the recent past contesting election results but I haven’t seen any headlines like what we are seeing now.
As Darth says one may loathe the Iranian regime but its irritating to see coverage which paints one guy as bad and the other as good. Nothing in the world is that simple, not even humanistic sincerity.
darth paul,
Thank you so much for putting into words what I have been thinking every time someone has put up Andrew Sullivan’s site as credible analysis. The man knows as much about Iranian politics as any educated Westerner, which is to say, extremely little.
Also, this is not a revolution to overthrew Mullahs. It is a revolution between Mullahs. My sense is that Mousavi is being painted as a good guy because, well, American media and the people need and only comprehend binaries. And then if you throw into the mix young people (Americans LOVE the young people), the conclusion will be that young people must be for change, change is away from the mullahs, and therefore change is good. It is very simplistic thinking. There was similar coverage of Lebanon.
The comparison of the Bajii paratroopers with that of Pakistan/Bangladesh is cheap and unnecessary . If you want to make desi connections to the issue in Iran, just look to India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Afghanistan’s centuries old intermingling through language (Hindi/Urdu/Bangla is peppered with Farsi words), culture and literature (ghazals, prem kahanis, qawalli), and the people. However much the new India might want to demonize Muslims or Persians, the fact is that you cannot ignore hundreds of years of cross pollination of the cultures and the people.
You have it backwards. American gov has been aggressive towards Iran from its installing of the Shah to placing it on the existential plane that is the Axis of Evil. It is American warships patrolling the waters of the Persian Gulf right now and it is American troops who are stationed in the 100s of 1000s next door in Iraq. Iran has shown great restraint, I would say. I dont think America would respond so silently if there were Iranian warships patrolling the shores of America.
Wow, you guys are really threatened by a gay Brit with a PhD from Harvard–who knew (oh, yeah, I did–you don’t care for modernity).
The point is that both regimes went after university students early on as a core of radical opposition. And on Iran, Sullivan is a raw feed, he doesn’t claim expertise. He was excellent during the U.S. campaign.
Btw he was the first to call out the Clintons on their ugly race-baiting last fall.
Manish, I’m guessing that Mousavi’s phenomenal popularity comes from the fact that he isn’t a reformer really but he seems a little laxer about being strict than, say, the Council, which sent a 16 year-old to be executed. In a country that has the second highest number of people being executed peremptorily, it probably makes sense to many that change creep in, rather than sweep in. Plus, if young people in Iran go with anyone who offers to be an alternative, it doesn’t seem quite so odd. Also, the support that Mousavi is seeing now may not have shown up in the ballots. He’s probably become much more popular after the events of the past few days. From a lot of the garbled reports out there, it seems as though no one quite knows who is fighting and for what; it’s just violence and escaping violence. Which is a predictable degeneration. Also, however you look at it, there’s no denying the fact that the Basij are not government forces (they may be government-backed but they’re not official). Which means it isn’t anywhere near one-sided and this may be more civil war than revolution.
Finally, you forgot to mention Washington Post’s article on the guys who did an impartial survey and declared that the Iranian election results are most likely valid. Reading it might make the blood boil but it’s also a timely reminder that Twitter, Facebook etc aren’t the mouthpieces for rural Iran, which is supposedly Ahmadinejad’s vote bank.
anonandon,
there’s no denying the fact that the Basij are not government forces (they may be government-backed but they’re not official). Which means it isn’t anywhere near one-sided and this may be more civil war than revolution.
Seriously, what do you mean by that? Your comment seems totally irrational to me.
RaviT,
Maybe you can do your Sullivan tweeny fan-girling over at his site: ZOMG, Andrew Sullivan, I like totes love you, durrr.
Manish,
Okay, I see where you were going with analogy now, even though I am still not comfortable with it. But I see that you were not trying to make superfluous connections.
Yes, but his analysis of the Middle East in general is consistently infantile, orientalist, and reflective of his political ideology and western biases. I realize that he is a conduit for live tweets but whose tweets (if that is the word) is he choosing, etc? What’s the picture being constructed…and knowing Sullivan’s political agenda, why?
I agree with anondan here — we really have no idea what is going on. I am completely perplexed and I have been following Arabic and other news in addition to what I can get here.
Something is just not adding up with the coverage in the west. We are seeing only the urban elite represented in the news and we know that a vast majority of Iran is not the urban vote. The twitters are in English — Is there even a Farsi twitter? So who is speaking here? Again, these voices do not represent the majority of the rural voters, who are the very people who brought Ahmedenajad to power in the first time, shocking even the Supreme Council.
This is not a revolution against theocracy at all and I don’t think this is an attempt at movement towards secularism (whatever that means). For now, I am waiting to see what the hell is going on. Does Mousavi have a lot of support? Yes, it is evident. Does it mean that he won the election? I don’t know, but I don’t think so.
It is interesting (ironic, maybe) that you referred to the denizens of Persepolis in your original post. Majane Satrapi, interestingly enough, comes from an elite, wealthy family in Tehran — the people tweeting, essentially. I do then have to wonder what that demographic of kids who washed her father’s cadillac or of the maid who fell in with a wealthy boy next door would have to say about the elections.
I am not trying to undermine the legitimacy of the outcry here and I feel a solidarity with them for their bravery, but I just feel uneasy about the spin so far.
Btw, I love your blog! Thank you for all your hard work.
Salaam, there are dozens of Farsi twitters up and about. But they largely seem to be run by reasonably affluent, urban people. Considering the speed of the internet in places like Tehran, who knows what kind of internet coverage exists in small towns and villages?
RaviT, seriously, think about it. It’s not that irrational. A citizen militia may be backed by a government but not governmental. Take Godhra, for example: the mobs clearly had Narendra Modi’s support however, they were not state agents like the riot police or the army.
I am with Darth Paul and Salaam on Sullivan, who is first and foremost an establishment man with not much expertise on… well… anything, if you ask me :) I watched him on Bill Maher debating Naomi Klein and it showed how far his vision of reality is from that on the ground. His scapegoat for the economic crisis - well, obviously, the reckless debt-whoring average American citizen. No mention of Glass-Steagall, for example.
I’m also extremely skeptical of the ‘revolution’, with absolutely no disrespect to well meaning students /citizens; they are pawns in a much bigger game if you go by some analysts - like this article by former Indian diplomat M K Bhadrakumar (thanks to an SM commenter). That would be consistent with Mousavi’s political career.