In Iran, both the regime and the opposition are working to co-opt Egypt's popular uprising
A wide range of observers, from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Fox News' Glenn Beck,
are warning that the downfall of the U.S.-backed dictator in Egypt
could lead to another Iranian style theocracy in the Middle East.
Others, such as New York Times columnist Roger Cohen,
are drawing parallels between the Egyptian protests and Iran's Green
Movement uprising of 2009. This debate is raging nowhere more fiercely than
in Iran itself, where many Iranians -- on both the right and the left -- are clamoring to claim the Egyptian revolution for themselves.
On
one side of the political spectrum are a group of conservative
parliamentary members, Revolutionary Guard leaders, and even the Supreme
Leader himself, who are trying to cast the Egyptian revolution as a
part of a greater Islamic uprising across the region. In a sermon
last Friday, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei painted the events in Egypt as
an "Islamic awakening" that signals an "irreversible defeat" for
American hegemony in the Middle East. Jahanbakhsh Mohebinia, a senior
Parliamentary member, went one step further, claiming
that the toppling of Hosni Mubarak's regime will result in the
formation of "the Continent of Islam" -- a phrase sure to send many a Fox
News commentator screaming for the airwaves.
On the other side
are Iran's youth and the leaders of the Green Movement, some of whom are
even taking credit for the popular revolution that is now taking place
in Egypt. Mir Hussein Mousavi, the man whose loss to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
in the 2009 presidential elections launched the largest and most
sustained demonstrations in Iran since the 1979 revolution, voiced
his confidence that "the starting point of what we are witnessing in
the streets of Tunis, San'a, Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez stems from the
demonstrations in the streets of Tehran, where millions of Iranians
marched in June of 2009." A statement in the university journal
Daneshjoo News made the point in starker terms: "The democracy movement
we started is spreading in the region and today we are witnessing the
awakening of the Arabs. It's time for us to once again join hands and
prove to the world that dictatorship must end."
It is this
latter notion -- that the events in Egypt could push Iranians to align in
popular demonstrations against their government -- that has raised the
ire of the country's regime. Iranian state media coverage of the
Egyptian demonstrations has been both ubiquitous and remarkably candid,
if a bit oblivious to its connotations. Iran's government-employed news
commentators have been quite critical of the use of force by pro-Mubarak
supporters against unarmed protesters on the streets of Cairo,
apparently totally unaware of the irony of their criticism. Meanwhile,
both leaders of the Green Movement and supporters of the Iranian regime
have taken turns claiming the mantle of the young Egyptian protesters
for themselves and comparing each other to Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak's regime. An absolutely riotous op-ed in Iran's Jahan News,
which is associated with the Revolutionary Guard, declared that "the
freedom- and justice-loving people of Egypt will do to the Arab dictator
what the people of Iran did with the Green Pharaohs," meaning the
leaders of the Green Movement.
The Egyptians themselves seem
either unaware or simply uninterested in the debate taking place in
Iran. Even the Muslim Brotherhood has backed away from any connection
either to the Green Movement uprising or to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
"The Muslim Brotherhood regards the revolution as the Egyptian people's
revolution, not an Islamic revolution," read a statement
by the organization. "The Egyptian people's revolution includes
Muslims, Christians and [is] from all sects and political tendencies."
The
protests in Iran, by employing new social media technologies to rally
against authoritarian regimes that wield total control over the levers
of communication, at the very least set the stage for what is now taking
place across the Middle East (I was among those who predicted in 2009
that the next target of the so-called Twitter Revolution would be Hosni
Mubarak). But what Iran-watchers have been eagerly waiting to see is
whether the dramatic success of the ongoing Arab push for democracy will
reenergize the dormant Green Movement in Iran and get Iran's youth back
onto the streets.
After all, Iran is facing many of the same
economic woes that plunged Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt into revolt. As
outlined by the Asia Times,
Iran's rate of economic growth is close to zero, compared to three
percent for Tunisia and 4.6 percent in Egypt. The official unemployment
rate in Iran is reported at about 15 percent of the working-age
population, and while that is roughly similar to the unemployment
figures in Tunisia, most independent estimates place Iran's unemployed
at closer to 30 percent. While Egypt's rate of inflation stands at an
astonishing 12 percent, that is approximately half of Iran's inflation
rate, which economists estimate to be close to 24 percent. According to
the United Nations, some 20 to 30 percent of Egypt's population lives
below the poverty line (the number in Tunisia is about eight percent).
Compare that to the approximately 25 percent in Iran.
All of
this has people wondering whether what began in Iran two years ago could
possibly make its way back to Iran in the near future. That is
certainly what the Green Movement hopes will happen; its leaders
recently petitioned
the government for a permit to stage a protest in Iran next Monday in
order to "show solidarity with the popular movements in the region and
specifically the freedom-seeking movement embarked on by Tunisian and
Egyptian people against their autocratic governments." There is no
chance the Iranian regime is going to let that happen. In fact, the
government has just shut down access in Iran to Reuters and Yahoo News,
perhaps in recognition that the events in Egypt are increasingly
difficult to spin into pro-regime propaganda. Instead, the regime has
announced it will stage its own rally in support of the people of Egypt
to coincide with the 32nd anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, which
takes place this Friday. Of course, the last time the regime tried to
celebrate the revolution's anniversary, it had to flood the streets with
tens of thousands of armed security guards and shut down virtually all
access to mobile phones and the internet, at a cost of hundreds of
millions of dollars, just to keep the event from being hijacked by the
Green Movement.
It was Egypt's foreign minister who perhaps best summed
up the situation in Iran by condemning the Iranian regime for
"distracting the Iranian people's attention by hiding behind what is
happening in Egypt."
"Iran's critical moment has not come yet,"
said Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. "But we will watch that moment
with great anticipation and interest."
Whatever happens in Iran Friday, we should do the same.
Photo: Tehran, June 23, 2009. Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images
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