August/September1999
Iran: At the brink of civil war?
Chanting "Commander in chief, Resign," "Down with the dictator," and "O
great leader, shame on you," tens of thousands of student youth took to the
streets in Teheran in early July, opening up a whole new and exciting
chapter in the struggle for freedom in Iran. Twenty years after Ayatollah
Khomeini used the taking of low-level U.S. embassy staff as hostages to
impose his own "satanic verses" on the Iranian Revolution, including in the
constitution the totalitarian office of the "Supreme Religious Leader"
(Faqih), new calls are being heard throughout Iran to curtail its powers.
After months of openly debating the anti-democratic nature of the role of
the Faqih and calling for its removal from the Constitution, demonstrators
denounced the current Supreme Religious Leader Ayatollah Khamenei,
Khomeini's successor. July 1999 will be remembered as a historic turning
point in Iran, a new chapter for the struggle for freedom that was for too
long driven underground under the whip of a counter-revolutionary regime
and ideology.
In less than a week, a series of protests and clashes cracked the
totalitarian shell, revealing a dramatic new view of the depth of
opposition and militancy of Iranian youth. At the same time, however, the
quick about-face by the reformist President Khatami in condemning the
protesters and the show of support by hundreds of thousands of the faithful
for Khamenei have exposed major fault lines between the ruling reformers
such as President Khatami and his numerous supporters, as well as the
continuing strength of the conservatives who command some mass support.
On July 8 nearly 200 students rallied against concerted attempts by
conservative judges and legislators to crack down on increasingly outspoken
Iranian journalists and papers. The demonstration was called to protest a
special clerical court order to close down a reformist daily newspaper,
SALAM, for publishing a damning document revealing high-level official
support for the assassinations of three opposition writers and journalists
last fall.
The author of the published document, Said Emami, was a major figure in
political police and very likely involved in the assassinations. Emami
himself may have been done away with to cover things up. On the same day
the Majlis (the house of representatives) gave preliminary approval to a
bill that muzzles the press.
The bill was authored by the same Emami before his death. The student
protesters denounced both moves and took to the streets. That evening
government thugs backed by police attacked a Teheran University student
dormitory, traditionally a hot bed of radical youth activism. This time,
however, the students fought and beat back the attackers. But hundreds of
students were injured, many were thrown out of windows, and at least one
person was killed.
By the next day nearly 25,000 students staged a sit-in at the university,
demanding the punishment of the attackers and the resignation of Teheran's
police chief, General Lotfian. Within 48 hours they were joined by
thousands of others. Other protests erupted in at least 18 major cities,
from Gilan, Mashhad, and Tabriz in the north to Yazd, Esfahan, and Shiraz
in the south. They demanded the protection of press freedoms and personal
freedoms, and an end to the dominance of conservative-backed vigilantes
backed by police.
Ayatollah Khamenei, in a gathering of his backers, proclaimed that the
protests were instigated by U.S. imperialism. He shed crocodile tears about
the vigilante attacks on the students while calling on the same vigilantes
to be ready for confronting this new movement. On Monday evening the
student sit-ins were attacked by these same vigilantes, and tens of
thousands were beaten and forced out of the university campus where they
had taken sanctuary.
On Tuesday July 13, Teheran became the scene of widespread street battles
spreading several miles to the north and south of the university campus.
Police cars were set on fire, businesses were closed down, stores were
emptied, banks were attacked, and even the sprawling bazaar was shut down.
The protesters were no longer only university students. Helicopters and
army units were brought in to surround the streets while plain clothes
security was sent in to smash what looked like a mass uprising.
Some reformers and student leaders have issued statements warning that
these street battles were fomented by right-wing fundamentalists to
discredit the reform movement. It is possible that there has been
infiltration of the movement by provocateurs and a movement like the
fundamentalists is easily able to operate at the level of provocation
since it has a genuine but shrinking base of people who are not obviously
part of the elite. Also, one cannot underestimate the efficacy of such
tactics, since they could split Khatami's base of support, driving away the
middle classes who are always cautious and wary of any kind of social
violence. Indeed, many of the leading reformers immediately distanced
themselves from these protests. Yet there are many other sources of
discontent as have been shown in earlier street protest.
But as Elaine Sciolino of THE NEW YORK TIMES, has correctly pointed out,
there is such high unemployment, so much alienation and pain in the life of
Iran's majority impoverished and 30-50% unemployed that the riots were to
be expected. She pointed out the rebellion in Islamshahr, a working class
suburb of Teheran, where in 1995 gasoline price hikes led to several days
of intense riots against the government. More recently in several Kurdish
cities in western Iran protests against the arrest of PKK leader Abdullah
Ocalan had also turned into mass rebellions against the Islamic Republic.
Most of these cities are still under martial law conditions as one reporter
for the KDP newspaper recently pointed out.
By Wednesday, July 14, however, "law and order" was once again restored
while a government-staged march bused in hundreds of thousands of
supporters in a show of support for the bruised feelings and aching heart
of their "great spiritual leader," Khamenei. But will they be able to erase
the memory of the heady days that preceded it?
-Cyrus Noveen
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