Iran’s increasing turmoil: Growing desperation | The Economist
Tom Davos
Iranbs increasing turmoil: Growing desperation | The Economist
Iranbs increasing turmoil
Dec 29th 2009 From The Economist print edition
WHAT more can Iranbs ruthless rulers do to squash their opponents?
Since nationwide protests broke out last June over the disputed
results of presidential elections, the official winner, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, has pulled few punches. His security apparatus has
beaten and arrested thousands, tried scores of dissidents in kangaroo
courts, hounded others into exile, throttled the press and jammed
the airwaves. But the massive and violent demonstrations that
engulfed the capital, Tehran, and other cities on December 26th and
27th suggested that repression only deepens and broadens the
opposition.
Footage of the protests, shot by phones and spread via the internet,
revealed scenes of mayhem unprecedented since the 1979 revolution
that toppled the shah. Mobs of youths, including many women, attacked
and in some cases overcame squads of riot police. The rioters,
mostly unmasked in contrast to previous protests, apparently chanted
as many slogans against Iranbs supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
as against Mr Ahmadinejad. They set police vehicles on fire and
torched at least one police station. Plainclothes government thugs
fought back, bludgeoning isolated protesters and apparently shooting
several at close range.
At least eight people died in Tehran alone, including a nephew of
Mir Hosein Mousavi, a former prime minister who is widely thought
to have truly won the June election and who has become an opposition
figurehead. Some opposition sources say the nephew was bexecutedb
as a warning to Mr Mousavi. Kayhan, a newspaper that is a mouthpiece
for regime hardliners, countered with the charge that Mr Mousavi
had himself orchestrated his nephewbs shooting.
The violence was particularly shocking because the protests coincided
with Ashura, a solemn day in the Shia calendar that commemorates
the martyrdom of Hosein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
Reflecting Iranbs stark polarisation, government supporters and
opponents accused each other of desecrating Hoseinbs memory.
Reflecting a fear of generating new bmartyrsb to fuel further
protests, security forces took over Tehranbs cemeteries and nabbed
the bodies of those killed, preventing their immediate burial in
accordance with Muslim rites.
State news agencies say police arrested more than 1,000 protesters
during the riots. Dozens more campaigners have been jailed in a
dramatic widening of the purge against reformists that began in
June.
They include such luminaries as the 78-year-old Ebrahim Yazdi, the
Islamic Republicbs first foreign minister and now head of a banned
liberal party, as well as numerous close relations of prominent
dissidents, including a sister of Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel laureate
and human-rights lawyer. This tactic has often been used in Iran
to frighten prominent people, without stoking more public anger by
detaining them directly. So far the authorities have refrained from
arresting such figures as Mr Mousavi himself, but a new wave of
arrests has swept up many of their close associates.
As in the past, conservatives have blamed foreign powers for stirring
up the protests. Yet with the clashes persisting despite Iranbs
isolation from the outside world, this charge is carrying ever less
weight with the people. On the contrary, the governmentbs tactics,
along with Mr Khameneibs silence and the increasingly ungloved
intervention of the Revolutionary Guards, the elite military corps
that commands the plain-clothes baseej militia used for crowd
control, may reflect a growing sense of desperation.
Signs of the regimebs fading legitimacy are numerous. In December,
for instance, the head of Iranbs central bank issued a stern warning
that from January 8th it would no longer accept bank notes defaced
by extra words. In practice, this would mean taking millions of
notes out of circulation, following a quiet campaign by oppositionists
to mark them with anti-regime slogans.
More embarrassing still for a regime that describes itself as Islamic
is the governmentbs treatment of dissident clerics, including some
prominent ayatollahs. The most senior was Grand Ayatollah Hosein
Ali Montazeri, a confidant of the Islamic Republicbs founding father,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with whom he fell out of favour shortly
before the old manbs death in 1989. Placed under house arrest for
a decade, Mr Montazeri continued to criticise the government, siding
openly with the reformists after the tainted June elections.
Despite his isolation, Mr Montazeri remained popular, so his death
on December 20th was yet another occasion for protest. Rather than
risk demonstrations, the government saturated his official funeral
with baseej agents and banned memorial rites elsewhere, sparking
clashes in several cities. In recent days baseej forces have
surrounded the homes of two other prominent dissident ayatollahs
in a blunt effort to block them from becoming a focus for protest.
Perhaps worse yet for Iranbs government, its troubles at home have
crippled its foreign policy, at a time when it faces rising pressure
to curb its controversial nuclear programme. Western countries that
had shied from too strong a condemnation of Iranbs human-rights
record, for fear of empowering the more extreme nationalists and
threatening nuclear diplomacy, are losing patience. Even the
pragmatists among Iranbs friends, such as Russia and China, now
fear their longer-term and potentially lucrative interests in Iran
may be hurt by too close an embrace of the regime. If they refuse
to vote against tougher sanctions expected to be proposed soon
against Iran at the UN Security Council, even Messrs Ahmadinejad
and Khamenei may start to fear that their days in power may be
numbered.