Kurdish reads: "Women, life, freedom." One of Iran's most influential actresses, Taraneh Alidoosti, for the first time appeared publicly without a headscarf.
The past 18 months, in a way, seem to be strange echoes of the '70s, including runaway inflation, the energy crisis, and Russia's expansionist military adventures, which are startling enough. The second Iranian revolution has begun, but we don't yet know its outcome. (Source: RCP/Winkejian translation)
Then came another uprising in Iran – like the one in 1978. The repertoire includes an elderly dictator who is dying of cancer and a country he controls tired of his rule and the corruption of his cronies.
History may not repeat itself, but on the streets of Tehran, history certainly rhymes the same way. In fact, the best way to paint a picture of the likely trajectory of the current Iranian uprising is to look back at the last revolution.
President Jimmy Carter said during his visit to Iran in 1977 that "Iran is an island of stability in a troubled region of the world thanks to the leadership of Shah Pahlavi," and Carter's unfortunate toast naturally received much ridicule in later years, but it is worth noting that until the last days of the Pah-Lenavi dynasty of Muhammad Reza Shah, Western government officials, intelligence agencies, and foreign policy intellectuals agreed that this prudent monarch, who had weathered many crises, would survive that crisis.
Behind the aura of rapid modernization and an increasingly affluent elite, Iran in the 70s was a country of widespread discontent. The corruption of the ruling class, the spurious social divisions brought about by the sudden oil wealth, and the frustration of working under a system that values crony and mercenary motives have led many to join the opposition.
Paradoxically, the king was haunted by his own successes. He created a modern middle class, but refused to provide it with a meaningful mechanism for political participation. His contract with the people is a transaction, and he exchanges economic rewards for the political negativity of the people. Even if Iran had not experienced a severe recession in the mid-70s, such a compact would not have been sustainable. Iranians want to have a say in the governance of the country. Even more alarming, the brutal Westernization has left large numbers of Iranians eager to restore centrality to Shiite traditions.
Every revolution needs a spark—and after a watershed event, things are very different. In the early days of the Iranian revolution, which officially began in October 1977, the Iranian people did not demand the dissolution of the monarchy, but for meaningful constitutional reform. They demanded freedom of the press, freedom to form parties, and freedom of elections. Intellectuals wrote petitions, university students stormed out of their dormitories, mullahs called for respect for religion in public life, and demonstrations were small and sporadic. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who is in exile, gets noticed as the storm gathers.
In August 1978, everything changed. On 9 August, terrorists exploded and set fire to the Rex cinema in the city of Abadan, killing 479 people. It was the worst arson in Iran's modern history. Khomeini, who lives in exile in Iraq, cleverly blamed the fire on the Shah of Iran, although it was later discovered that it was set by Khomeini's own followers. The Rex Cinema bombing was a turning point in the Iranian revolution. Before that, only die-hard opponents of the Shah of Iran took part in the demonstrations. After that disaster, many neutral people began to lean towards the opposition. As Khomeini became the leader of the popular uprising, the marches in Iran grew to several thousand. The king's belated promises of reform were cast aside because no one would trust a leader who put his people on fire.
Street protests, important as they were, were ultimately nationwide strikes that paralyzed the monarchy. A vibrant country suddenly descends into darkness. Newspapers stopped publishing, electricity was cut off, markets were closed, banks stopped processing transactions, and ports were piled up with uncleared goods. Most importantly, Iran's oil production stopped and the state stopped functioning. In the palace, in order to understand his own predicament, the king, who is suffering from cancer, is mired in various conspiracy theories.
At the White House, Jimmy Carter was confident that even if Shah Pahlavi lost his will, Iranian armed forces would come to restore order. He is not the only one with such misconceptions, as most Iran observers agree that a strong military will seize the moment. We often overlook the fact that national armies generally do not like to shoot their own people. Battling foreign enemies and suppressing ethnic uprisings is different from entering communities day after day to kill civilians. A determined national protest movement can weaken the morale of the army, undermine its cohesion, and induce conscripts to abandon the repugnant task of killing their fellow citizens.
The king fled, his army collapsed, and the revolution, one of the greatest populist uprisings in modern history, triumphed. Revolution has a deep meaning for all, and for liberals it is an opportunity to establish a representative government accountable to citizens. For devout believers, this is an opportunity to establish an order that connects religion and politics. Sharia is considered flexible enough to accommodate faith and freedom. This Islamic republic will provide cultural authenticity, economic stability, and participatory politics to a struggling mass. Except for the clergy who were in power at the time, no one thought that theocracy was the final outcome of this revolution.
The persistence of the current Iranian regime cannot be attributed simply to brutal force. The ingenuity of this system is that it includes in its authoritarian structure elected institutions that have little power but still provide some avenues for the public to express their grievances. Without such a safety valve, however superficial, the mullahs would face more protests than in the past two decades. Theocracy has all the hallmarks of dictatorship, but it also maintains a thin veneer of collective action.
Risking one's life to become a revolutionary for a seemingly distant (if not impossible) cause is one of the most important decisions a citizen can make. All social protest movements face enormous difficulties; Historical records show that most revolutions ended in failure. The Islamic Republic offers the masses the opportunity to participate in the affairs of the state, but is cleverly surrounded from all sides with a clerical institution that vets candidates for public office. Still, when an ordinary citizen is faced with the choice of whether to rebel against an evil system or cast a vote with limited impact, he is likely to choose the latter.
The Iranian regime has held lively elections, and various candidates have made various promises. In the 90s, Mohammad Khatami's commitment to reconcile religious precepts with democratic norms captured the imagination of the nation. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is best remembered for his blatant denial of the Holocaust – but at home he spoke of a fair distribution of wealth. More recently, Hassan Rouhani insisted that his nuclear diplomacy would attract foreign investment and revive Iran's stagnant economy. But none of these dreams became a reality, and Iranians today have lost their illusions. They know that theocracy remains in the hands of an unelected minority and that corruption is rampant. The current uprising shows that Iran's supreme mullah, Ayatollah Khamenei, has forgotten the most important lesson of the Shah's death — and sometimes desperate masses have no choice but to resist.
The 2021 presidential election is likely to be the most important in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As the cancer-stricken Khamenei considers an heir, he tries to secure a republic run by his most reliable cronies and an economy immune to foreign sanctions. Without even the illusion of "fierce competition," conservative stalwarts such as former parliament speaker Ali Larijani have been disqualified. The presidency is held by Ibrahim Raisi, a simple, unimaginative Holocaust murderer who sent countless people to the dungeons of power throughout his life. Hit by the mismanagement of the pandemic, angry people watched it all with considerable anxiety. Khamenei's efforts to consolidate his political legacy contributed to the collapse of the republic.
The Islamic Republic has faced protests since its inception. Liberals, secularists, student activists, disgruntled pastors, and the middle class all opposed the government at various times. The regime leaders quickly suppressed all this. They believe students are seduced by American cultural temptations. They argued that the middle class was too narrowly focused on material wealth to see the true benefits of the Holy Republic. For them, liberals are nothing more than apostates.
But there has been something new and dangerous during the demonstrations of the past few years. This is the revolt of the poor.
When Khamenei embarked on a new confrontation with the West, he tried to build a lean, self-reliant economy. The sanctions imposed after Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran deal in 2018 are seen as a blessing; They will force the Iranian government to clean up its internal order and cut subsidies that deplete the treasury. In another miscalculation, the regime believed that the poor – the main beneficiaries of the welfare state – would once again make sacrifices for the revolution. After all, this is a revolution of the oppressed, a revolution waged in their name to save them. Unlike the upper classes, the poor were the basic pillars of the republic. But in 2017 and 2019, poor people took to the streets to demand the overthrow of the regime.
The challenge for the clerical oligarchy was to send conscripted troops to culturally close shantytowns. The formidable Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) may be made up of a group of educated officers, but Iran's infantry is mostly drawn from conscripts. The average conscript may like to beat up well-behaved college students, but it is difficult to do it to people from their own class. The regime enforcers understood this and developed a clever containment strategy. The violence was followed by the paralysis of social media, cutting off contact between demonstrators, who then waited for the protests to subside. Those demonstrations that erupted were eventually suppressed, but the reasons for the discontent remained.
In the summer of 2022, an unusual spirit of division seemed to have descended on Iran, and the country and society went in a completely different direction. The mullahs were preoccupied with their nuclear strategy, economic tinkering, and re-imposition of draconian religious restrictions. Meanwhile, ordinary Iranians are protesting: teachers protesting their salaries, retirees protesting their welfare, farmers protesting against lack of water, women protesting against mandatory clothing in suffocating heat. As in 1978, economic anxiety, social envy, and political dispossession became a powerful force against the regime. This is of the Islamic Republic's own making. All channels of political expression are blocked by corrupt and arrogant ruling elites that demand discipline and sacrifice.
Then there were sparks. On September 16, a 22-year-old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested by morality police for wearing a headscarf and died in custody. Her merciless killing symbolizes the brutality of Mullah's rule. Cities, provinces and towns suddenly fell into protest. Slogans such as "Get out of the mullahs" and "We don't want your Islamic Republic" echoed across the country. The old trick of controlling the demonstrations did not seem to work, as conscripts were asked to shoot women, they hesitated, and the protests continued. Iran's chief justice, Goran Hussein Mohseni Eje, reportedly complained that security forces were "exhausted and demoralized." Ostensibly normal may return to the country, but Iranians of all classes and genders have lost their fear.
This summer's events seem strikingly similar to those of 1978. Amini's death, like the explosion at the Rex Cinema, provoked national outrage. Like the monarchy of the time, the regime had lost its narrative and positioning. Ali Khamenei once said: "I openly state that the latest riots in Iran were planned by the United States, the Zionist regime, their mercenaries and some Iranian traitors abroad who helped them." Shah Pahlavi thought the same thing, and he sent diplomats to question the Carter administration why the CIA was plotting against him. In September 2022, the country's oil workers issued a statement that augured ominously for the regime: "We support the people in their struggle against organized, daily violence against women, against the poverty and hell that dominate society." Khamenei, a young revolutionary from the time of the last Iranian revolution, will surely recall that it was the strike that weakened the monarchy and hastened its collapse.
Today, the mullah regime seems to take comfort in the fact that, after all, there is no charismatic individual or party to lead the opposition, and that the revolution needs revolutionaries after all. And the mullahs still control a range of security institutions. But these balances are fragile. The longer the protests last, the more likely it is to produce leaders who will lead the movement. At the same time, the mullahs would every day demand that their army kill poor and unarmed women. If the regime had only the military as its main support, it would have little power. The original Pahlavi kings had well-equipped armies and the seemingly omniscient secret agency, SAVAK, but their combined forces could not contain the movement for change. Records of the Pahlavi dynasty, published by the Islamic Republic, show that the king's generals were most worried about the cohesion of the army sent to the streets to suppress peaceful demonstrations. Today, it is entirely possible that similar concerns are in the regime's corridors of power.
The mullahs made almost the same mistakes as the monarchy they overthrew. The regime lacks an attractive ideology and protects itself with self-deceived words. It is led by a corrupt and detached elite who rely on conspiracy theories to justify their actions. The costs of its foreign policy clearly outweigh the benefits. The mullahs had forgotten the most important lesson of their revolutionary victory: the Persian army did not like to slaughter people.
The second Iranian revolution has begun, but we don't yet know its outcome.