Could the Mullahs Fall This Time?
From The Daily Beast of December 27, 2009.

by Rouzbeh Parsi & Trita Parsi
 http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-s…

With the government growing increasingly desperate—and violent—the new clashes on the streets in Iran may very well prove to be the breaking point of the regime. If so, it shows that the Iranian theocracy ultimately fell on its own sword. It didn’t come to an end due to the efforts of exiled opposition groups or the regime change schemes of Washington’s neo-conservatives. Rather, the Iranian people are the main characters in this drama, using the very same symbols that brought the Islamic Republic into being to close this chapter in a century-old struggle for democracy.

Protests flared up again because of Ashura, the climax of a month of mourning in the Shiite religious calendar. It is a day of sadness for the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussain, who was martyred in 680. And this year the commemoration coincided with the seventh day after the death of dissident Grand Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, adding to the significance of the day. Ashura is also a reminder that the eternal value of justice must be defended regardless of the odds of success. This has provided the relentless Green movement with yet another opportunity to outmaneuver the Iranian government by co-opting its symbols and challenge its legitimacy through the language of religion.

This battle cry for justice in all its simplicity is where most political conflagrations start. It is the deafness of the powers that be that often make them the kernel of something larger and more earth shattering. It is testimony to the arrogance of power that a simple and rather modest call for accountability and justice is beaten down only to return, demanding more, and less willing to compromise and accommodate.

And it wouldn’t be the first time. In 1906, the call for a house of justice went unheeded and was followed by demonstrations, and eventually transformed into a demand for a written constitution. Similarly Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, in his imperial ineptitude, brought on himself an increasingly anti-monarchical coalition, ranging from liberals and communists, to the victorious Islamists who forged the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Ashura, with its story of perseverance and martyrdom in the face of overwhelming force of oppression, was a perfectly stylized allegory for the struggle between the mighty state of the Shah and the revolutionaries at the end of the 1970s. The Shiite mourning rituals with their revisiting of the dead on the 3rd, 7th and 40th day of death provided the demonstrators then, as well as now, with the opportunity to both remember those who died for the cause as well as re-iterating their opposition and condemnation of that state repression. This played an important role in bringing the simmering political discontent to a boiling point and wearing down what was perceived as the all-powerful Pahlavi state in 1977-78.

It is even more important this time around since there is no extensive leadership structure that steers the opposition. The ability to bring out crowds for important days of the calendar, religious and revolutionary ones, reminds everyone that they are not alone in their opposition to the current government.

No one can predict a revolution nor say with certainty when an authoritarian state loses its footing if not its grip. For it is not necessarily its ability or will to repress that will falter as much as ordinary people’s unwillingness to allow themselves to be cowed and intimidated. It is a battle of wills where, on the one hand, the constant mobilization and tension pervading a discontented and rebellious society tests the state machinery’s ability to endure as they try to perform their functions (including repression). Weighing in on the other side of the balance is the patience and capacity to stomach pain and suffering of the protesters and their sympathizers in all quarters of society.

Today a significant number of the original revolutionaries of 1979 are imprisoned or being harassed by shadowy groups from the borderlands of state authority. The constituency of the Islamic Republic is becoming increasingly alienated as the hard line faction ruling Tehran demands loyalty to an increasingly surreal understanding of, and vision for, Iranian society. Not much is left of the dynamism and visions that fuelled the revolution of 1979—but having learned from that experience the demands of the reformist movement today are much more sophisticated and their abstention from violence so much more promising for the future.

The State’s ability to use the language of religion to repress these developments is failing. Again and again religion has proven itself to be much better suited as a language of resistance than governance. This became increasingly clear to Khomeini himself after the success of the revolution. In the constant bickering within the revolutionary elite, Khomeini increasingly invoked reasons of state for justifying actions, demoting religion to the role of ideological veneer. By the end of his life he stated that the state could abrogate the basic principles of Islam if it deemed necessary for the survival of the Islamic Republic.

Instead of a system where religious thinking controlled and wielded state power he ended up with an arrangement where the state utilized religion for its own purposes, emptying religion and its language of substance, discarding it on the growing heap of unfulfilled promises of the revolution.

Ashura, the commemoration and the principle it invokes, proves to be relevant yet again, as those who hold the reins of power in Tehran unleash violence against their own people. Undoubtedly the people of Iran will persevere in their quest for greater freedom and justice through their non-violent transformation of the system from within. It will indeed be ironic if the Iranian theocracy begins to crumble on the most important religious day of the Shiite calendar.

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Rouzbeh Parsi is Research Fellow at the European Institute for Security Studies. Trita Parsi is the President of the National Iranian American Council and the 2010 Recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

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Shot: Seyed Ali Mousavi, 35 and father of two, the opposition leader’s nephew.

Iranian police opened fire into crowds of protesters on Sunday, killing at least 10 people, witnesses and opposition Web sites said, and setting off a day of chaotic street battles that seemed poised to deepen the country’s civil unrest.

The nationwide protests, on the holiday commemorating the death of Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, were the bloodiest and among the largest since the uprisings that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election last June, witnesses said. Hundreds of people were reported wounded in cities across the country, and the Tehran police said they had made 300 arrests.

The authorities’ decision to use deadly force on the sacred Ashura holiday infuriated many Iranians, and some said the violence appeared to galvanize more traditional religious people who have not been part of the protests so far. Historically, Iranian rulers have honored Ashura’s prohibition of violence, even during wartime.

Tehran’s Enghelab Square – The authorities last night tried to assert control over Tehran by reportedly declaring a 7:00 p.m. curfew and outlawing all gatherings of more than three people, a source inside the capital told the Guardian.

The move followed announcements by opposition supporters of plans to meet in some of the city’s main squares and parks to mark Sham-e Ghariban, which is part of the Ashura ceremonies.

News of Mousavi’s nephew’s death, reported by the reformist website Parlemannews, was certain to send shock waves through Iran’s opposition Green Movement.

There were reports of at least four other fatalities in Tehran and four more in Tabriz as tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered for the Shia Ashura ceremonies and to voice anger against the government.

Parlemannews reported that Mousavi had gone to Ebn-e Sina Hospital, where the body of his nephew had been taken. He was accompanied by the dead man’s parents and fellow reformist politicians.

Rah-e Sabz, another reformist website, reported large crowds of people moving towards Ebn-e Sina Hospital in a show of solidarity with Mousavi after the death.

Rah-e Sabz also reported at least four other people were killed in the capital, including an elderly man who was shot through the forehead at a crossroads in Tehran city centre. Two others were said to have been shot nearby at Kalej bridge, in Enghelab Street. Rah-e Sabz, citing witnesses, said crowds held up the elderly man and started chanting slogans against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Another person was reportedly killed after being beaten on the head with a baton, according to Rah-e Sabz.

Meanwhile, Rouydad News, another opposition site, reported that four people were killed in the northern city of Tabriz.

Crowds prevented security forces from taking away those wounded in the Tehran shootings. According to other eyewitness reports, members of the hardline Basij militia attacked demonstrators with daggers and knives.

Disturbances were also reported in Isfahan, Shiraz, Masshad, Arak and Najafabad, where the Rah-e Sabz described the situation as “severe”.

Najafabad, birthplace of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who died last Sunday, has witnessed several outbreaks of unrest in the past week.

Today’s religious ceremonies – marking the 7th-century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hossein – coincides with the ritual seven-day mourning ceremonies for Montazeri, who had repeatedly criticised the government and denounced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election last summer as invalid.

Ashura ceremonies commonly feature vast crowds of people marching and beating their chests in memory of Imam Hossein, who is seen as a martyr against oppressive government. This year the opposition pledged to use the holy day to voice continued opposition to the government.

The authorities responded by warning of a huge crackdown. Hospitals and emergency services were put on alert to expect large-scale casualties.

The authorities are taking a risk in using lethal force against protesters during the Islamic month of Moharram, during which war and bloodshed is deemed to be religiously haram, or forbidden.

It raises the likelihood of a series of mourning cycles, as required by Shia tradition. It was such a mourning cycle that fatally undermined the Shah’s regime when it tried to suppress demonstrations in 1978.