ELAINE PASQUINI
Protesters express their solidarity with Iranian revolutionaries at a rally in Washington, DC, on Nov. 5, 2022. (STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI).
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2023, pp. xx-xx
Waging Peace
WASHINGTON, DC’S Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) hosted a panel on Oct. 18 to discuss Iran’s future in light of the wave of protests currently engulfing the country.
“In the 43-year history of the Islamic Republic there have always been protests, always been people pushing back,” noted Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, a non-resident senior associate at CSIS’ Middle East Program. “But what is different right now is the coalescing of disparate groups demanding fundamental change and more representative rights.”
Rezaian reported from Iran for the Washington Post for several years until he was arrested on espionage charges in 2014. He subsequently spent 544 days in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison.
Kirsten Fontenrose, a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, enumerated the indicators that political analysts look for as signs that a protest movement is seriously threatening a sitting regime.
The high participation of men in protests is one indicator, and presently men are out on the streets along with women, Fontenrose noted.
How well the sitting government is functioning is another gauge. “We’re looking at whether the security services have been undermined, and they are not,” Fontenrose said. Political elite infighting and elite support of the opposition, both important indicators, presently are not happening at high levels either, she added.
The turndown of the economy, which is presently the case in Iran, is another sign a regime is in trouble.
But Fontenrose said the most important indicators of political change are: an organized resistance, a charismatic opposition leader, an off-ramp for the current government and whether workers in the gas and oil industry go on strike. All of these critical components are presently missing in Iran, she noted, making the imminent fall of the government unlikely.
Rezaian’s wife, Yeganeh Rezaian, a senior researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists who was also detained by Iran in 2014, explained the difference between the current protests and the large 2009 Green Movement demonstrations. This time, she said, “the protesters are asking for fundamental change, not for small changes. People are not asking for reform within the system; people are asking for the change of the system.”
The younger generation is out in the streets “sacrificing everything they have, including their lives,” she noted. “I call it a women-led revolution because it started as a protest against 40 years of gender apartheid that this regime has imposed on Iranian women.”
Arash Azizi, an adjunct instructor at New York University who focuses on the history of socialist and Islamist revolutionary movements, said the government of President Ebrahim Raisi has lost its legitimacy and fails to represent Iranians on basic levels.
Azizi addressed the lack of formal opposition groups within the country. “Because of repression inside Iran, people have not made effective political organizations,” he explained. “Some regimes, I believe, you can overthrow without organization, but the Islamic Republic is not one of them.”
Azizi reminded the audience that “there is an Iran beyond this regime,” and the world should “legitimize Iranian civil society because we will be part of the future of Iran.”
“There will be a life beyond this regime,” Azizi declared. “The idea that it will always be in power is not true. It is quite clear that the Iranian nation-state…has traditions that go way back before the [1979 Islamic] Revolution and they will be here to stay, but this regime won’t be.”
“Despite all of our differences, what gives me hope is that the national identity of Iranians is strong and has a lot of credence compared to many countries,” he concluded.
—Elaine Pasquini
———————————————————