Old dogs, old tricks, tired people

Americans and Zionists are the sole audience of a play they have commissioned and sold out.

                - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Dec. 29, 2009, explaining the Ashura Day antigovernment protests

US President Barack Obama and the leaders in Israel have revealed their agenda by supporting the Iranian opposition.

              -  Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar] Moslehi, paraphased by PressTV (Iranian government media), Jan. 4, 2010

Israel does not wish the Qur'an to exist in this country. Israel does not wish the 'ulama to exist in this country. It was Israel that assaulted the Fayziyeh Madrasa by means of its sinister agents. It is still assaulting us, and assaulting you, the nation; it wishes to seize your economy, to destroy your trade and agriculture, to appropriate your wealth. Israel wishes to remove by means of its agents anything it regards as blocking its path...In order for Israel to attain its objectives, the government of Iran has continually affronte us in accordance with goals and plans conceived in Israel.

            - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, June 3, 1963, "The Afternoon of Ashura," speech denouncing a raid by the Shah's police on the Madrasa from which Khomeini habitually delivered his speeches, in which several students were killed.    

"Not Gaza, not Lebanon. I die only for Iran."

  - Green movement protesters, Tehran, Sept. 18, 2009   (Quds Day, the anti-Zionist extravaganza)

Exhorting the Iranian people, denouncing the regime

An opposition leader finds "proof of life" in the Iranian people's protest:

As we are gathered here, according to the information reaching us, all the major cities of Iran are closed down: Tehran, Tabriz, Mashhad, Qum...

The people have identified the true criminal. It was obvious before, it is true, but some people didn't recognize him as such or didn't dare speak out. Thanks be to God, this barrier of fear has collapsed and the people have discovered the true criminal and come to understand who is responsible for the misery of our nation.

The center for religious learning in Qum has proven its vitality; the people of Qum and the respected students of the religious sciences have fought the government...with their bare hands, with a courage rarely equalled in history, and yielded their martyrs. When the agents of the regime spilled into the streets and alleyways of Qum and attacked the people--according to the reports we have received--the people resisted them to the utmost degree possible, both before and after the massacre, thus proving how alive they are. They proved that they were alive, not dead!

- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
  "In Commemoration of the First Martyrs of the Revolution"
   February 19, 1978

A prayerful assembly in Iran

From Green Brief 31, perhaps the best current source for news inside Iran, a couple of snippets highlighting the tenor of state-sanctioned worship in the Islamic Republic:

Karroubi was assaulted in front of Tehran University as he tried to enter the compound to join the prayers.

It is worth mentioning that there was a loudspeaker inside the mosque which chanted, "Death to America!", but every time that slogan was heard, people loudly replied with, "Death to Russia, Death to China!"

Many women were reportedly stabbed with knives by Basijis dressed as women. Several mosques around the city were packed with Basijis waiting to come out and clash with protesters...Basijis even attacked people who had come to prayers.

The Basij are religiously indoctrinated from an early age as they're trained in the means of state terror. This is the modus vivendi of the theocracy established by Ayatollah Khomeini, the "enlightened Imam," according to Mousavi, who brought "unprecedented enlightenment" to Iranian society -- and who, according to Rafsanjani yesterday, "always said that without the participation of the people the Islamic government would never be successful."

Let's recall that compared to Khomeini, the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad thugocracy is kind and gentle. Instead of mass beatings, the enlightened Imam went in for mass executions, untold tortures, and, when war came, human wave sacrifices of indoctrinated teens. He also empowered a cadre of theocrats, starting with himself, to place their own authority ahead of that of the Koran -- let alone the people.

Can those who devoted their life's service, and continue to pay lip service -- and probably heart service -- to one of the twentieth centuries last great killers lead a movement for meaningful change? Perhaps, for a season. Gorbachev did it.

Ahmadi non grata?

Neil MacFarquhar and Gary Sick have both emphasized the extent to which Ahmadinejad has packed the organs of government with his loyalists over the past four years. Both sketch out a stealth militarist takeover of Iran's religious establishment -- with the extent of Khamenei's assent or leadership left somewhat ambiguous.

In today's New York Post, Amir Tahen shows the other side of the coin -- the pushback against Ahmadinejad and his power grab at all levels of Iranian society:

His legitimacy is challenged at all levels of Iranian society, including every segment of the Khomeinist establishment. He has to invoke Khamenei's authority in support of every move he makes. He is the first Islamic Republic president to have split the Khomeinist camp so deeply, and perhaps permanently.

Whenever I think, 'no government can long stand after such a loss of legitimacy,' I remember: the former Soviet Union. Cuba. Burma. North Korea. But still...Iranian society has been more free than any of those. Memory of its last revolution is still fresh. Powerful factions in its existing power structure dislike Ahmadinejad and resent the coup. There is reason to hope

Sofie's Choice, Tehran edition

We generally think of free speech as a guarantee of self-expression and the flow of information -- the right of all to input and output. Iran's theocratic geniuses have found a way to split this atom. Tehran Bureau reports:

Government officials are asking residents in north and northwest Tehran to choose: either keep their much prized — but illegal — satellite dishes, or continue chanting, “Allah o Akbar!” or “God is Great,” the revolutionary slogan piercing the capital every night, but not both...

In north and northwest Tehran some residents have been ordered to choose between keeping their satellite dishes or taking part in the “Allah o Akbar” chant that takes place every night from city rooftops and windows.

The message is simple: “We’ll let you watch your CNN, your BBC, and your favorite entertainment shows, as long as you do not join the 10 p.m. chorus!”

Sofie's choice: you can learn the truth, and stay silent, or you can speak the truth, and stay ignorant. You can pray or play, but not both. I am reminded, somehow, of Mousavi's rather fantastic vision of the founding of Khomeini's earthly paradise:

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven. This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism. Imam’s fantastic art was to neutralize these dichotomies. I had come to focus on Imam’s approach to neutralize the burgeoning magic of these.

Mousavi claims for "Imam's fantastic art" a balance that ever existed and never will. You can't rule as God's mouthpiece and respect the people's right to information and dissent. That is a miracle beyond God's power to deliver.

Islam and republicanism may be compatible. Theocracy and republicanism, never.

Mosssdegh, the Shah, Khamenei and "outside interference" in Iran

The Iranian government's claim that the mass demonstrations of the past week are instigated by foreign enemies sounds laughable to Western ears, and perhaps at this point to most Iranians. Mousavi counters this claim with his own revolutionary credentials and professions of fealty to the 1979 Revolution.

It's worth remembering, though, that by reviving this one-hopes-by-now-exhausted old charge, the regime is tapping into the founding trauma of modern Iranian history -- the CIA-controlled coup that toppled the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and installed the Shah as sole ruler. Fury over that disastrous action, which arrested Iranian political development, was the fuel that allowed Khomeini to hijack the revolution of 1979. Stephen Kinzer, in his fair-minded and thorough account of Mossedegh's leadership and the coup, All The Shah's Men: an American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (2003), recounts that fear that the U.S. would try to reinstall the Shah prompted the taking of the U.S. Embassy hostages:

Soon after the Shah was overthrown, President Jimmy Carter allowed him to enter the United States. That sent Iranian radicals into a frenzy of rage. With the blessing of their new leaders, they stormed the American embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two American diplomats hostage for more than fourteen months. Westerners, and especially Americans, found this crime not only barbaric but inexplicable. That was because almost none of them had any idea of the responsibility the United States bore for imposing the royalist regime that Iranians came to hate so passionately. The hostage-takers remebered that when the Shah fled into exile in 1953, CIA agents working at the American embassy had returned him to his throne. Iranians feared that history was about to repeat itself (p. 202).

That paranoia, rage and opportunism shaped the major player on today's stage:

One of Ayatollah Khomeini's closest advisers, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, who later succeed him as the country's supreme leader, justified the regime's radicalism by declaring, "We are not liberals like Allende and Mossadegh, whom the CIA can snuff out" (p. 203).

John McCain's suggestion that the U.S. President call the Iranian election "a sham" would surely resonate in Iran. As usual, though, McCain is deaf to exactly how his self-righteous simplicities resonate in the country with which he concerns himself.

Between the Basiji and the Green Wave

Can Mousavi win the hearts and minds of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basiji? Conversely, can he hold the hearts and minds of his most passionate followers? Two pieces highlighted in this morning's Daily Dish -- one by the New Yorker's Laura Secor and the other by "Simin Mesgari" (pseudonym?), a Green Waver writing in The Street, a samizdat newspaper circulating among the protesters -- pose each of these questions in turn.

Secor:

I think there is still a battle being waged for the hearts and minds of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij. Successful nonviolent movements in other countries have depended on the cooptation of the rank and file in the armed forces; one remembers the moving scenes of Serbian riot police embracing demonstrators...

Iran is not Serbia. The relationship between the people and the revolutionary shock troops is far older and deeper than anything that took root during Milosevic’s relatively brief tenure. By 2000, Milosevic’s fiefdom was rotten to the core; it survived on corruption, the fear of exposure on the part of many criminals and war profiteers, and hostility toward the world. The Islamic Republic, by contrast, was born in a people’s revolution and built on faith in a religion that is deeply held by most Iranians. The state’s ideology is not the hollow construct of political elites, as communism was by the time it collapsed in much of Eastern Europe. Rather, Iranian Islamism was forged over decades, in long struggle with the despotic regime of Mohammad Reza Shah, and from the potent raw materials of Iranian nationalism and Islam. Although the country’s constituency for democracy is vast and growing, the regime has a constituency, too, and it is passionately loyal and heavily armed.

The purpose of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij is the defense of the Islamic Revolution and the Supreme Leader. Rarely have the true believers in the militias been forced to consider the possibility that these two functions might come into conflict. Such a moment may have arrived...

Mesgari:

Mousavi knows too well how deep the wound is. He also knows that his green bandage is only a first aid cover for this wound and not a cure....

Mousavi knows that not all “this” is for him.

He knows very well, and we also know very well that had there been a “better” candidate than Mousavi with a “lesser evil past” which had chosen yellow colour for his campaign, the nation would have gone yellow and Mousavi would have demoted to Ahmadinejad’s position. …..

Velayat-e Faqih or the “Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists” is the red line which Mousavi has expressed he won’t cross – this red line is now being crossed by those wearing green....

It would seem that the more immediate problem -- with the longer odds -- is the one framed by Secor. But Mesgali's challenge raises the core longer term question. The 1979 revolution got past the Shah and then was hijacked by the most ruthless and autocratic among the contestants for power. Mousavi, as Karim Sadjapour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has pointed out, is no Khomeini -- he's the Gorbachev, the Kerensky, the reformist not the revolutionary. As Secor points out, though, Iran's current power structure is not "rotten to the core" in the sense of having lost all support; it still has the buy-in of at the very least a large minority. A reformer who professes passionate loyalty to the state apparatus he helped found may be the best hope for change Iranians can believe in.

Mousavi's Paradise Lost: Khomeini's Republic

There is much to honor in Mousavi's statement issued today: his pledge never to hurt a countryman, his call for freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, rule of law.

And yet, he advances those principles in service of a delusion: that to uphold them is to return the revolution coopted by Ayatollah Khomeini to its pure origins, in which these principles flourished. From the start of his campaign, Mousavi has called for a restoration of the rule of law as established by the Islamic Republic. That is, for restoration of something that never was. Today, he laid out a vision of paradise lost, paradise to be regained:

30 years ago, in this country a revolution became victorious in the name of Islam, a revolution for freedom, a revolution for reviving the dignity of men, a revolution for truth and justice. In those times, especially when our enlightened Imam [Khomeini] was alive, large amount of lives and matters were invested to legitimize this foundation and many valuable achievements were attained. An unprecedented enlightenment captured our society, and our people reached a new life where they endured the hardest of hardships with a sweet taste. What this people gained was dignity and freedom and a gift of the life of the pure ones [i.e. 12 Imams of Shiites]. I am certain that those who have seen those days will not be satisfied with anything less. Had we as a people lost certain talents that we were unable to experience that early spirituality? I had come to say that that was not the case. It is not late yet, we are not far from that enlightened space yet.

The "enlightened Imam" would be the man who massacred tens of thousands of opponents and crushed all dissent, who prolonged ruinous war with Iraq for six fruitless years after turning back Iraq's initial territorial gains, and in that war sent teens and even preteens in waves of thousands to clear minefields with their bodies (the first Basiji, today's murderous militia); who imprisoned women in the hijab and generally set women's rights back fifty years: who murdered the leaders of the Baha'is and made second-class citizens of the rest; who impoverished the country with his contempt for economic management; who united the people by demonizing the United States (against whom Iranians did have ample cause for resentment) and institutionalizing the murderous Antisemitism that now, adopted in full by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, threatens the world's stability -- who in short, made Khamenei look like a piker when it comes to crushing human rights and subverting the Republican government Mousavi professes to value.

Mousavi casts his current rivals as destroyers of "Republicanism"and hence of the Revolution:

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven. This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism. Imam’s fantastic art was to neutralize these dichotomies. I had come to focus on Imam’s approach to neutralize the burgeoning magic of these.

He treasures the notion that Islam and Republicanism are compatible. Perhaps they are. But Khomenei united them in demonic form by modeling the Islamic Republic after Plato's Republic -- the oldest blueprint we have for totalitarianism. The Guardian Council that falsified the vote count last week was a real-world enfranchisement of Plato's ruling class of philosopher kings. Khomeini's republicanism like Plato's, is based in absolute faith in the absolute wisdom of an educated elite invested with absolute power.

His rewriting of the history of the Islamic Republic notwithstanding, Mousavi has committed himself to the human rights that Obama today cast as the universal law of humanity:

As I am looking at the scene, I see it set for advancing a new political agenda that spreads beyond the objective of installing [sic] an unwanted government. As a companion who has seen the beauties of your green wave, I will never allow any one’s life endangered because of my actions. At the same time, I remain undeterred on my demand for annulling the election and demanding people’s rights. Despite my limited abilities, I believe that your motivation and creativity can pursue your legitimate demands in new civil manners.

We advise the authorities, to calm down the streets. Based on article 27 of the constitution, not only provide space for peaceful protest, but also encourage such gatherings. The state TV should stop badmouthing and taking sides. Before voices turn into shouting, let them be heard in reasonable debates. Let the press criticize, and write the news as they happen. In one word, create a free space for people to express their agreements and disagreements. Let those who want, say “takbeer” and don’t consider it opposition. It is clear that in this case, there won’t be a need for security forces on the streets, and we won’t have to face pictures and hear news that break the heart of anyone who loves the country and the revolution.

Leaders can be transformed by the contract forged with their followers in the crucible of events. Mousavi's pledges to institute the rule of law and respect human rights constitute a religious man's strongest oath to his people, made with the world listening, in mortal political combat with those whom he charges with trampling those rights. Let's hope that if by some miracle he does come into power he will work to fulfill these pledges, whatever his delusions about the blood-soaked Khomeinist past -- and his own role in it.

Ahmadinejad's "free and fair choice" for "Palestinians"

Jeffrey Goldberg points out that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was repeating something he's said many times when he responded as follows to George Stephanopoulos' question whether Iran would accept a two-state solution:

Whatever decision they take is fine with us. We are not going to determine anything. Whatever decision they take, we will support that. We think that is the right of the Palestinian people, however we fully expect other states to so as well.

True enough -- Ahmadinejad has said this many times. Goldberg puts no credence whatever in Ahmadinejad's disavowal of violent intent, so he either didn't notice or doesn't think it worthwhile to point out that this is a trick response -- it doesn't mean what westerners take it to mean.

The trick is apparent in this earlier instance cited by Goldberg:

In 2007, Ahmadinejad told Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes, "The decision rests with the Palestinian people. This is exactly what I'm saying." Pelley asked him, "And if that decision is a two-state solution, you're good with that? You could support a two-state solution?" His response: "Well, why are you prejudging what will happen? Let's pave the ground first for a free and fair choice. And once they make their choice, we must respect that. All the people, all the Palestinian people must be given this opportunity, allow them to make their own decisions" (my emphasis).

Ahmadinejad spelled out more openly what he means by "a free and fair choice" at a "Holocaust Conference" in Teheran in December 2006. The Iranian artist Arash Nourouzi, in an article carefully parsing Western mistranslations of Ahmadinejad's various remarks about Israel, pieces this translation together from various sources:

"As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated."

He said elections should be held among "Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner.

So: a "free and fair choice" is a referendum including everyone living within the boundaries of Israel and the occupied territories. A referendum, in other words, that would vote Israel out of existence.

Perfectly logical if you accept Ahmadinejad's premise that the "Zionist regime" is fundamentally illegitimate. It is part and parcel with the stance that Iran has taken against Israel from Khomeini's time (see Nourouzi again): the "Zionist regime" is evil, it will "vanish from the page of time" as did the Soviet Union, the Shah of Iran's regime, and Saddam's, but Iran has no intention of precipitating this inevitable end by direct attack.

Given the vitriolic hatred of Ahmadinejad's statements about Israel, Goldberg and other friends of Israel have good cause to doubt Iran's disavowals of intent to themselves make Israel "vanish from the page of time." But the position is not variable, or even particularly ambiguous. In fact it arguably bears some resemblance to the U.S. Cold War stance vis-a-vis the Soviet Union as laid out in George Kennan's famous telegram: be patient, oppose the adversary's aims by means short of all-out war, and confidently anticipate its collapse from internal (in this case, demographic) pressures.