Brian M Downing
Unrest is again sweeping Iranian cities. This time it was set off by official deceptions about the Ukrainian airliner disaster. Iran has a long history of large-scale protests stretching back a century. Last November the government raised gasoline prices which led to jarring protests in many cities. Security forces quelled the unrest by killing some 1,500 protesters, most of them young and urban. After the fraudulent 2009 election, protests swept the country. Casualty figures are uncertain.
The best known case took place in 1979 when angry, determined crowds forced the shah into exile and welcomed Khomeini. Since then, a clerical-military government has solidified and built up repressive capacity. What might this round of unrest lead to?
Opposition
The protesters are mainly young, educated, middle-class urban-dwellers. They feel the mullahs and generals should grant them a say in public affairs – far more than they have with the elected but largely consultative parliament. There are more specific complaints.
Protesters also object to state corruption. Oil and gas revenue isn’t responsibly distributed. A small clique has managed to get fabulously wealthy from national resources and even clerics have been in on it. Ayatollah Rafsanjani, a former president, amassed a fortune of $1 billion, presumably not on government salary and religious stipends.
The powerful IRGC is also under criticism. Like the armies of Pakistan, Egypt, and China, it controls many industries and limits outside competition. Protesters also object to IRGC expenditures in overseas wars in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.
Support
The government has a reservoir of legitimacy drawn from defending the nation in the Iraq war of the eighties, much as the Soviets did with the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. If not for war and victory, neither government would have lasted so long.
The power of war legitimacy is of course receding, especially in younger minds for whom the war is official propaganda and family lore, not personal experience. War legitimacy, however, has been strengthened by the ongoing conflict with the US, Sunni states, and Israel. It intermingles with piety and centuries of Sunni oppression, and strengthens government support in rural and working-class populations.
Those who support the mullahs and generals see protesters as at the least showing bad timing. The nation is besieged. This is no time to weaken the government and show disunity to enemies. Other supporters see protesters as dupes of foreign powers, a fifth column, traitors. They have to be treated harshly.
Many mullahs and almost all generals are prepared to silence internal dissent once again. They did so late last year and they will do so again. They have the security forces, militias in working-class districts, and new technologies for tracking down dissidents.
There is no evidence that security or army units will support the protesters, as they did in 1979. The generals helped quash Syrian rebels through extraordinarily violent means. They are at least considering the same methods on the streets of Tehran.
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The protests are unlikely to force meaningful change at the top or paralyze the nation. The mullahs and generals will continue low-level strikes on American and western targets in Iraq, Syria, and the Gulf. This will strengthen their support from the working class and rural dwellers and make protesters appear all the more treasonous.
What will the young urban dwellers do next? They realize they will not achieve change through peaceful protest. They have tried several times since the 2009 election and each time they have been teargassed, beaten, arrested, and shot down. Some will turn to violent methods – assassinations and bombings. They may learn the techniques from foreign-backed groups already inside Iran.
© 2020 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.