"A few moments ago, author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation and one of DC's best Iran experts Barbara Slavin wrote to me through Facebook and said: steve, iran ceased being an islamic republic a week ago. now it's just another military dictatorship.
"She is right. And given that collapse of legitimacy and the mystique of the Islamic Revolution, Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those who organized the head-crackers to assault Iran's citizens will probably have a fragile grasp on their lives from here on out."
"The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”
"A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.
"Dark smoke billowed over this vast city in the late afternoon. Motorbikes were set on fire, sending bursts of bright flame skyward. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had used his Friday sermon to declare high noon in Tehran, warning of “bloodshed and chaos” if protests over a disputed election persisted.
"He got both on Saturday — and saw the hitherto sacrosanct authority of his office challenged as never before since the 1979 revolution birthed the Islamic Republic and conceived for it a leadership post standing at the very flank of the Prophet. A multitude of Iranians took their fight through a holy breach on Saturday from which there appears to be scant turning back.
"Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.
"He has taunted millions of Iranians by praising their unprecedented participation in an election many now view as a ballot-box putsch. He has ridiculed the notion that an official inquiry into the vote might yield a different result. He has tried pathos and he has tried pounding his lectern. In short, he has lost his aura."
"But there is another corruption that Ahmadinejad represents – he embraces it enthusiastically – that makes millions more despise him. That is the corruption of being the nation’s moral scold and enforcer of propriety, through his militia known as the basiji. These are mostly teenagers recruited outside of the big cities, and given billy clubs and a uniform and then set loose in the cities, at universities, and anywhere else young people gather. There they monitor behavior, looking for anti-Islamic activities such as fraternization between the sexes, improper clothing or hair styles, disrespectful talk about the clergy or government, possession or use of drugs, or homosexual tendencies. They issue citations, beat people, send them to prison to be tortured, and some of their victims are hanged by the government in public using industrial cranes that slowly lift the victim high into the air.
"Of all the forces of repression in Iranian society, the basiji stand out as peculiarly insidious and loathed, their only counterpart elsewhere being the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For thirty years Iranians have lived with a repression that is ever-present, and in an ironical way inimical to the interests of Shi’ite Islam. Teenagers who might otherwise be devout in their religious beliefs and practices associate personal repression with Islam, so that over time the connection between religion and the people has dissipated. The more people turn away from Islam, the more frantic the Islamic Republic becomes to enforce its vision of an Islamic society, under the rule of the clergy.
"Since the 1979 Revolution, Iranians have become more worldly, not less. Satellite dishes are everywhere, and the internet is the mode of choice for many young Iranians when they wish to communicate not only to others in Iran, but elsewhere in the world. Business and commerce also have thrived using modern technology, and the clerical overlords cannot afford to shut down completely these tools, at least not for long. There are therefore vast segments of Iranian society that understand the modern world (not just the West, but China, Japan and elsewhere), and want to be part of it.
"This is indeed a volatile mix: a society of young people (most of the population is under 30) who have known nothing but personal repression all their lives; new means of communication within society that the government can censor but not completely control; a desire by many Iranians to join the rest of the world in a more open society where talk and travel are unlimited; a falling away of respect for religion and especially the ayatollahs and imams who run Iran; and a national election that features a candidate for reform (in the limited government-approved sense) vs. Ahmadinejad as the candidate for authoritarian and repressive rule.
"It is obvious that Ahmadinejad and Ali Khameni anticipated trouble after the election announcement, because there had been “student protests” before that the regime had to put down. But they misread the depth of social distress that exists in Iran. They interpreted the election as a fight between the established order and Hashemi Rafsanjani, and they badly overplayed their hand by not even bothering to count the votes, giving Ahmadinejad a ridiculously large electoral mandate, and then calling out the government forces of repression to deal with any unrest that might result. In that respect, like us, they didn’t see this revolution coming."
