“Almas ro faghat be almas tarash midan.” Only a diamond can cut another diamond! The very entrenchment of the mullahs’ regime in Iran—Khamenei’s own son is also his chief of staff, and a brother of President Ahmadinejad holds a significant rank among the Basij—highlights the extent of this typically Persian proverb. A saying which protestors in the streets of Tehran and other major provincial cities have now adopted as their leitmotif: namely, to utilize the emerging opposition movement from within the circle of the Shiite clerics themselves. According to them, it’s the only way to weaken the powers of the Supreme Leader, advance their demands, and achieve an improvement—even a relative one—in individual freedoms.
Some students, of course, questioned the value of aligning with former President Hashemi Rafsanjani during his Friday prayer on July 17: should they demonstrate when the man himself, like all former presidential candidates, comes from a widely despised background? Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.
Like a program in palimpsest, these youths believe that a day will soon come when, having somehow rid themselves of the most conservative elements in the Guide’s entourage, they can also discard “the remainder of the turbaned ones,” as explained by one of the leaders after June 12, who has just received his “sentence to several months of firm imprisonment” by a provincial court. Boldness from some, calculation from others. Because these young people cannot ignore the risk of their instrumentalization by reformists who, from Mohammad Khatami to Mehdi Karroubi, “contest the election” and “condemn the repression.” They will not hesitate to use them to regain power. Without necessarily changing anything about the “Velayat-e faqih” once their goal is achieved. The unknown remains: will there be a Gorbachev or only a Khrushchev for a “de-Khameneization” of Iran?
The question “What future for the Ahmadinejad regime?” is thus raised. It justifies the significant dossier devoted to it by “Middle East,” a new publication from Aréion, a group already specialized in the fields of geopolitics and strategy. In his editorial, Frank Tétart, Professor of Geopolitics at the University of Paris I and at Sciences Po, insists on the necessity to “promote mutual understanding between East and West, by providing keys to understanding this complex region and subject of multiple representations.” An ambition almost as vast as the area covered by the magazine, which spans from Mauritania to Pakistan, similar to the “American Greater Middle East.”
To take stock of the thirty years of the Islamic Republic, “Middle East” opens its columns to significant intellectual figures: Olivier Roy, director of research at EHESS, provides, through an exclusive interview, his “perspective” on Iran’s place and its relations with other Arab states in the region. The dossier then expands with the reflections of his colleague at the CNRS, Bernard Hourcade on the future of an ever-ambivalent Iranian regime as soon as the option of its international opening arises. It concludes with an interview with Fariba Adelkha, a member of Ceri, discussing women’s participation in the latest presidential elections and the growing influence of women in the professional society of Iran. Numerous exciting contributions pedagogically enriched with tables and maps, capable of illuminating the requirements of the specialist or initiating the lay reader to the intricacies of politico-religious power. One might regret the dominant “Sciences Po” flavor of the texts at the expense of a sometimes more telling evocation of field news. Additionally, interesting articles on the theme of “Islamic finance” are noted, although none of them lift the veil, so to speak, on potential links with terrorist movements or networks.
Questions are also raised about the somewhat lonely conviction—considering the latest IAEA report—of the former French Ambassador to Iran, François Nicoullaud, who believes that “the purpose of the Iranian enrichment program has not yet been declared.” Mention should also be made of the sad declaratory strategy of President Ahmadinejad against Israel, which casts a notably more dubious light on Iran’s “conventional” nuclear interests as deemed by Olivier Roy. If he rightly insists on the shift in regional power dynamics, favoring the latter, between Sunnis and Shiites, his statement might need more caution if it took into account the traditional rivalry between Persians and Arabs: Shiite religious dignitaries from Najaf or those from the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia—even Kuwait—still display relative mistrust towards their Iranian counterparts as shown by the endless quarrels over the designation of “Marja-e taqlid,” the religious inspiration source that imposes itself on all Shiites worldwide. One of the figures of the Iranian clergy—Hassan Khomeiny, the grandson of the revolution’s founder—did not recently threaten, an ultimate insult, to leave for the holy city in Iraq if forced to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his re-election? As for researcher and Iran specialist Fariba Adelkha, she announces, slightly ahead of time, a sentiment recently expressed by Hillary Clinton about the fact that “no major foreign policy decision will be made by the Iranian power in the aftermath of these elections.” She surprises further when she asserts that “from her point of view, these elections are a near non-event.” At the time of his interview, Olivier Roy did not note, either, “a political activism of the population against the regime.”
However, it is clear that the participation of thousands of students in the protest movement does not wane: even if they do not take to the streets every day, they now “exploit any event on the calendar to express their hostility to the regime”: just before the 10th anniversary of the 1999 university riots in Tehran, the student slogans spontaneously mobilized Iranian youth from Mashhad to Shiraz, from Tabriz to Kerman. This was also the case for the Friday prayer on July 17, led by Rafsanjani, or for the celebration of the fortieth day dedicated to the dead of the first uprisings. All these are illustrations of the systematic strategy adopted by the protestors. Barely recovered from the scuffles at the Behesht Zahra cemetery, where he was prevented, on Thursday, July 30, from paying his respects at the grave of the young Neda, Mir Hossein Mousavi had already informed his supporters of the next appointments: the inauguration ceremony of President Ahmadinejad at the Parliament in front of which his supporters massively gathered. Then, the following day, the night of “Nime Shaban” commemorating the birth of Imam Mahdi, the hidden Imam who founds the Twelver Imamism. A significant symbol. The severe injustices suffered by the Iranian youth—arrests, arbitrary detentions, beatings, and threats of being listed on the Basij files at the risk of being persecuted daily and banned from traveling abroad—had, moreover, a perverse effect for the regime: that of gradually involving other family members, sometimes more favorable to the outgoing president. Not to mention regular army officers whose testimonials of dissatisfaction—and a likely thirst for revenge against the Praetorian Guards instituted by the Islamic Republic—are multiplying.
Unless there is a strictly repressive turn by the Iranian authorities, unlikely given the collective configuration of the regime, and despite the economic interests linking the caste of religious dignitaries, there is little doubt that the protest movement will continue while relying on the internal dissensions of power: “We have overcome our initial fear,” recently confided an Iranian in his twenties who said he no longer feared engaging in telephone conversations as at the very beginning of the protests. From the rooftops of houses where they shout “Allah u akbar” or from cars that honk loudly on Vali Asr Avenue, the Iranian youth, despite threats from the security apparatus, displays an unyielding determination.
“Middle East“, geopolitics, geoeconomics, geostrategy, and societies of the Arab-Muslim world, issue 1, August – September 2009, 10.95 Euros.
