What will happen in Iran tomorrow? Or the next day? (Actually, it is already tomorrow, I believe, in Iran.)
Andrew Apostolou in TNR:
And as the turmoil stretches into its second week, there are two very important factors for the Greens to consider: First, the regime’s security forces have been stretched. The number of protests across all of Iran has been impressive–outside of Tehran, there have been protests in in Sari, Tabriz, Isfahan, Kerman, and Rasht, to name just a few–and they have prevented the police from concentrating and crushing dissent as they did during the student uprising in Tehran in 1999 and the 1992 Mashhad riots. Although regime violence still seems to be continuing in the provinces, the scope of protests is making the security forces’ job more difficult.
Second, though Mousavi has successfully increased pressure on the regime, tomorrow could be a turning point. Khamenei will lead Friday prayers at Tehran University. Regime supporters will be there in strength, with plenty of bussing to help pack the crowd. Two weeks ago at Friday prayers, Khamenei sat and watched as the regime-organized crowd shouted for Ahmadinejad.
While what Khamenei says tomorrow matters, how the crowds behave could have greater consequences. We know that Mousavi has been debating about how to respond. Mousavi initially wanted his people to ring the university and shout so that Khamenei could hear them. Mehdi Karrubi, his ally and fellow unsuccessful presidential election candidate, wants his people to attend and wear black. Then Mousavi changed his mind and told his people not to attend. He knows that this could lead to violence, which will discourage some of his supporters from demonstrating and dissuade others from joining him. In addition, the regime will accuse him of politicizing Friday prayers (which is the regime’s prerogative). Many of Mousavi’s supporters are highly conservative people who believe in the fundamental value of the Islamic Republic, but do not care for Ahmadinejad and his antics. Having them with him strengthens his hand. Losing them will marginalize him. He has now decided to hold his next march on Saturday, and he will be joined by former President Mohammad Khatami.
Three things I can’t figure out, though. (1) If Khamenei’s preparing for a bloodletting, why would he want his face out in public at Friday prayers before it begins? All that does is drive home the fact that he’s complicit in it. (2) The Guardian Council’s still supposed to meet with all four presidential candidates on Saturday to talk about the vote. Is a crackdown tomorrow meant to keep that from happening or is the crackdown actually set for Saturday, after the meeting, which is bound to prove unsatisfactory to Mousavi? (3) If it’s true, and it probably is, that Rafsanjani is rounding up support from top mullahs in Qom for him and Mousavi, why haven’t we heard anything from them yet? Surely they’d want to come out in favor of the protesters before a crackdown begins, to throw the full weight of their authority against the Guard in hopes that they’ll back down in fear of damnation. As it is, if the last thing Iranians see before a Tehran Tiananmen is launched is Khamenei intoning about religion at Friday prayers, they’re apt to target the whole clerical system for reprisals. Good news for the west, not so good if you’re a mullah. Might want to speak up while you can.
Daniel Drezner looks at the long term future:
An Iran led by a representative government unfettered by the clerics is a game-changer on several levels. If a new Iranian regime wants to talk turkey with the Obama administration, then the United States suddenly needs Russia a whole lot less. Authoritarian states everywhere will become much more nervous about contagion effects. I’m not sure how the Sunni regimes in the region would react to a liberalizing Iran, but I’m betting that they wouldn’t like it. Come to think of it, the effect on Iraq is unclear as well, but I’m pretty sure there would be some effect. I’m trying to game out how it would affect energy markets, and my head hurts from trying to weigh the cross-cutting effect on all of the variables.
As the previous paragraphs suggest, I’m pretty sure a Rubicon has been crossed in Iran that can’t be uncrossed. This isn’t 1999 and 2003 — too many days have passed with the Khamenei regime on the defensive. The regime as it existed for the past twenty years — hemmed-in democracy combined with clerical rule — is not going to be able to continue. With the largest protests of the past week scheduled for tomorrow, I think this ends in one of two ways: the removal of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei from power, or bloodshed on a scale that we cannot comprehend.
Actually, come to think of it, those two outcomes are not mutually exclusive.
Scott Peterson in the Christian Science Monitor
Delirium at Daily Kos:
TehranBureau, which is based outside Iran but has generally been pretty good, reports “trustworthy sources” saying that “many Sepaah commanders [Sepaph is IRGC] have been arrested, because they are opposed to what is going on and in particular to the plan for tomorrow”. An update clarifies: “Apparently, the plan is to create chaos and bloody confrontation between Basij and Karroubi and Mousavi demonstrators, in order to justify hard crack down and have Khamenei announce the end of “soft” confrontation in the Friday prayers.”
Other sources (mostly low-profile Iranian twitter users, with accounts predating the current turmoil and not very good anonymity, so I’m not going to link them) are reporting that Karoubi and Mousavi are canceling their Friday demonstrations, postponing them to Saturday, without explanation; one source links this statement from Karoubi in Farsi; anyone able to confirm it says that? That would seem to indicate Mousavi and Karoubi have heard enough similar rumors, and take them seriously enough, to try to sidestep something planned for Friday.
It should go without saying that hopefully I’m wrong, and things will go as well as can be hoped for under the circumstances. The weakest link in this speculation seems to be the TehranBureau report, which no other sources have confirmed. The canceling of planned Friday rallies, which does seem confirmed, seems to indicate something is up, though.
UPDATE: Daniel Larison
Ahmadinejad is certainly the ruthless front man (his shrewdness might well be called into question at this point), and he is subordinate to Khamenei, who does have the final say. Together, they do appear to have neutralized the reform forces, because those forces have been reduced to protesting in the streets to little effect. It is improbable that these forces are going to acquire power, and they do not have the means to take it from the authorities, and so they have been for all intents and purposes stymied and neutralized. Remember, this is a news report. It is not an editorial opining on whether or not this is a good outcome. But it is the outcome, or at least it was quite reasonable to make such a statement about what appeared to be the case three days ago. Three days later, this description seems reasonably accurate. Unless something dramatic changes in the next week or two, these protests are going to exhaust themselves, peter out and dissipate, which is all that the regime needs to keep going. No one has to like this, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
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June 19, 2009 at 8:10 pm
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