Tens of thousands of Iranians transformed today’s official Quds Day demonstrations into mass protests against the regime, defying warnings from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and threats of violent retaliation from the Revolutionary Guards.
President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad used the annual day of protest against Israel and in solidarity with Palestinians to deny the Holocaust. But as official loudspeakers declared “Death to Israel”, the crowds responded with “Death to Russia” (Moscow was quick to recognize Ahmedinejad’s election after the contested June 12 poll).
The protests confirm that Ahmedinejad is now considered a peripheral figure, with the popular opposition focused on Khamenei and the Islamic Republic itself, Iran analyst Mehdi Khalaji told a Washington meeting today.
“People are looking for a democratic system and rejecting Islamic ideology,” he said. In the absence of active leadership from Mousavi or Kharroubi, the protests provided further evidence that people were “self-mobilized.”
But the opposition has been disappointed by the lack of international support, Khalaji told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. As Karim Sadjadpour has noted, the US refused to recognize the Islamic Republic for 30 years, then starts to do so when its own people reject it. “When we need Obama to be President, we had Bush. Now we need Bush to be President and we have Obama,” said one reformist.
“Something fundamental has been changed,” said Khalaji, when discontent is rife across social classes and when Ayatollah Montazeri, the principal architect of the Veliyat e Faqih, doctrine of clerical rule, denounces his creation.
For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, state TV stopped broadcasting the Quds demonstrations and the regime’s leaders were heckled. Despite the heavy presence of plainclothes and uniformed security forces, protesters consistently subverted the regime’s slogans and rejected solidarity with Iran’s foreign proxies, shouting “death to the dictator”. “Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon, I give my life only for Iran”, was another frequent chant.
Reports suggest that reformist former president Mohammed Khatami was attacked by knife-wielding basiji militia.
While the U.S. and other democratic Western powers prepare to negotiate with the regime over its nuclear aspirations, a leading expert on nuclear proliferation is pessimistic about their prospects of a settlement.
“Democratization has been the most critical factor in prompting or accelerating de-nuclearization,” said Harvard University’s Stephen P. Rosen, citing the cases of Argentina, Ukraine and South Africa. The “best chance” of curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambitions is to “change the nature of the regime,” he told the Washington Institute meeting.
In any case, the protests since the June 12 election have likely confirmed Khamenei’s “oft-stated view that the nuclear issue is simply a Western excuse to advance its plot to overthrow the Islamic Republic,” write Khalaji and Patrick Clawson:
The fear of a velvet revolution, accompanied by the deep fissure within the Iranian elite, seriously complicates efforts to negotiate with Iran. Khamenei, given his views of the West, may see little advantage in resolving the nuclear impasse. Even if he decides to engage the West — and no evidence suggests that he will — forging a consensus among the badly divided Iranian elite to permit such a bold change of direction would be no easy feat.
[...] Digest – November 9, 2009 By David Lowe Iran’s fraudulent presidential election last summer has spawned ongoing street protests and mass demonstrations, as students, women, human [...]