Iranian students chomping at the bit?

Interesting dynamic in the Student Day protests in Iran noted by Alireza Ronaghi, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran:

"Opposition leaders are trying to calm them [the students] down and prevent any kind of violent clash that could harm the movement in a way that could be irreversible... it seems like the students are moving ahead of their leaders and it's not going to be easy for anyone to control the situation."

Meanwhile, the lead article in the "Iran" section of PressTV, the English-language Iranian government-controlled news outlet, is "Paris exhibits Emdadian paintings". Three quarters of the 123-word article allotted to today's student protests describe the historical foundation of Student Day, the killing by the Shah's regime of three students protesting a Richard Nixon visit in 1953. Today's substantial protests are described as "sporadic clashes" with "anti-government protesters" who have "attempted to hijack the occasion."


Move along, not much happening here....

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.

"Mousavi is not Khomeini, and Khamenei is not the Shah"

While no one knows what the endgame will be in Iran, Karim Sadjapour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace speaks with authority about the personalities of the principals and the dynamics of their power struggle (h/t Steve Coll):

The weight of the world now rests on the shoulders of Mir Hossein Mousavi. I expect that Khamenei’s people have privately sent signals to him that they’re ready for a bloodbath, they’re prepared to use overwhelming force to crush this, and is he willing to lead the people in the streets to slaughter?

Mousavi is not Khomeini, and Khamenei is not the Shah. Meaning, Khomeini would not hesitate to lead his followers to “martyrdom”, and the Shah did not have the stomach for mass bloodshed. This time the religious zealots are the ones holding power.

The anger and the rage and sense of injustice people feel will not subside anytime soon, but if Mousavi concedes defeat he will demoralize millions of people. At the moment the demonstrations really have no other leadership. It’s become a symbiotic relationship, Mousavi feeds off people’s support, and the popular support allows Mousavi the political capital to remain defiant. So Mousavi truly has some agonizing decisions to make.

Rafsanjani’s role also remains critical. Can he co-opt disaffected revolutionary elites to undermine Khamenei? As Khamenei said, they’ve known each other for 52 years, when they were young apostles of Ayatollah Khomeini. I expect that Khamenei’s people have told Rafsanjani that if he continues to agitate against Khamenei behind the scenes, he and his family will be either imprisoned or killed, and that the people of Iran are unlikely to weep for the corrupt Rafsanjani family.

As the Shah tentatively cracked down, killing dozens of protesters here and hundreds there, those seeking his overthrow kept coming back for more. Sadjapour suggests that while Khomeini was more ruthless than the Shah, Khamenei may prove more relentless than Mousavi. Rafsanjani is a wild card, though. And the Iranian people have that Shiite reverence for martyrdom. But can any people resist a truly ruthless crackdown? Perhaps only when the soliders in the tanks refuse to roll.