Destroyed petrol pumps are pictured at a gas station, after protests against increased fuel prices, in Tehran, Iran November 20, 2019. Picture taken November 20, 2019. Nazanin Tabatabaee/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY
Whether
one is navigating past truckers driving along country roads, visiting
underground parties in the capital, or holding heated debates with members of
different political persuasions in cafes or shared taxis, Iran doesn’t feel
like a totalitarian dictatorship.
Forty
years after a violent revolution that overturned a small Western-oriented
elite, Iranians remain irrepressible and irreverent—as demonstrated recently by
massive protests that followed a government decision to increase fuel prices
overnight.
Even as
some close ranks behind the brutal repression by security forces of protests,
even those loyal to the state lash out in private moments at the regime.
In
private, a cleric in conservative Qom might counter regime ideology by candidly
bemoaning the decision to impose the hijab on women early in the revolution as
a “dead end” from which the regime is unable to reverse course.
Once
after an interview in which he celebrated his government’s successes, a tourism
official confided to this reporter, “I wish they would just go. When will they
go?” in reference to the regime’s ruling elite.
All of
this makes Iran’s decision last month to shut down
the Internet and seek to cut off Iranians from the world—as the regime
deployed security forces to suppress protests—so disturbing. It suggests a
widening divergence between the interests of the regime and the people; with a
potentially dangerous new direction for the country.
Iran’s
theocratic rulers since 1979 have purported to represent the interests of mardom—“the
people”—in justifying repressive moves as well as course corrections. Decisions
to prolong and then end the war with Iraq, to intensify and scale back the
nuclear program and to crack down violently on protesters after fraud-tainted
elections in 2009; were all done in the name of what mardom wanted and
needed.
But in
recent years, the term has come to define a narrower and narrower subset of
regime acolytes and parasitic hangers-on. And with the country’s ongoing
economic crisis and now the bloody crackdown over protests against fuel price
rises, the divergence of interests between the Iranian public and the
regime—and its decreasing base of support—has become more clear, and as seen
during the recent violence, more dangerous.
Much
criticism has been leveled—with justification—against the Trump
administration’s decision to unilaterally quit a nuclear deal with which Iran
was complying and to impose ever-more-draconian economic sanctions on the
Islamic Republic. But US President Donald Trump’s apparent pivot this summer
toward diplomacy—offering sanctions relief in exchange for a photo op with
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the United Nations—was a move that could
have called the regime’s bluff. Iranians had justifiable doubts about whether
any promises from Trump could be trusted. But given a choice of sticking to its
tired worldview and empty slogans or compromising with the Great Satan, Iran
chose the former.
Instead of a docile and pious nation, Iranians remain anarchistic, unruly and rebellious.
Indeed,
almost every step of the way since Trump came to power, Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei and his loyalists have put the interests of the nezam, the
regime, over those of mardom.
Faced
with dire sanctions, Iran could have loosened political restrictions as
President Mohammad Khatami did when confronting an oil price collapse in 1997,
and given Iranians more of an incentive to band together to work through the
tough times.
Instead, Iran’s rulers have stepped up repression of dissidents and ethnic and religious minorities and have increased the use of deadly force. Amnesty International says more than 200 people were killed by the regime’s official and semi-official shock troops during the spasm of violence in the aftermath of the fuel price hikes. Kaleme, the news website linked to the opposition movement led by reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi, says that at least 100 people were killed in one district of Tehran alone. The New York Times reported a similar bloodbath in the southwest city of Mahshahr, where protestors had fled into a marsh.
By way of
comparison, perhaps 70 people were killed in the months of demonstrations that
followed the 2009 presidential elections, and 21 died in the protests over
economic hardships that erupted in the countryside in late 2017 and early
2018.
Faced
with a budget crunch, Iran could have scaled back outlays to various corrupt
religious foundations and visibly curtailed support for politically and
financially expensive overseas operations that anger Iran’s neighbors and
potential European friends. Instead, in recent years, the regime appears to
have increased its risky behaviors, incurring commercial and reputational costs
for the Iranian people.
Indeed,
the regime seems hell bent on placing the entire burden of sanctions over its
interventionist foreign policy onto the very mardom for whom it claims to
speak.
IranSource provides a holistic look at Iran’s internal dynamics, global and regional policies, and posture through unique analysis of current events and long-term, strategic issues related to Iran.
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Since the
beginning of the revolution, the regime has used coercion, cooptation, and
persuasion to try to change the cultural DNA of the Iranian people. It failed
miserably, often retreating bitterly. Instead of a docile and pious nation,
Iranians remain anarchistic, unruly, and rebellious. For years, it appeared the
regime appeared to be adjusting to that fact.
But the
rigidity and violence shown during the recent protests is something new and
dark. The shuttering of the internet, in particular, hinted at the regime’s
willingness to use the crudest totalitarian tools.
Accounts
are still sketchy, but the Iranian public also appeared to show a new and
dangerous fearlessness. Leila Vaseghi, governor of the county of Qods between
Tehran and Karaj, described a wild gathering in front of her office after the
fuel price increase was announced.
“Instead of standing in front of the gates, the security forces retreated because they were afraid of the angry mob approaching the building,” she said in a statement reported by Iran Newspaper. “The protesters broke the gate and entered. One of them opened his shirt and told the guards, ‘shoot me if you can.’”
Somewhere within the top echelons of the elite, some probably imagine that a combination of electronic surveillance and brute force will be sufficient to maintain control. But the end result of such machinations will likely not be another China or North Korea, but another Iraq or Syria.
Borzou Daragahi is an international correspondent for The Independent. He has covered the Middle East and North Africa since 2002. He is also a Nonresident Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Security Initiative. Follow him on Twitter: @borzou.
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