Iran: 'I'm Not So Sure I Want to Die Yet'
A simple calibration underlies the diminishing of protests in Tehran: The regime's bet -- correctly -- that those unhappy with the June 12th election results aren't prepared to pay the ultimate price for the right to express their opinion.
As an example, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Farnaz Fassihi quotes a 33-year-old woman who is rethinking her participation in the street demonstrations of the last week: "It's now crossed the line. If you come out it means you are ready to become a martyr. And I'm not so sure I want to die yet," the woman says.
While his dispatch isn't poetry, Sky News correspondent Tim Marshall has it about right: "In the short term it still looks like game over; in the medium term it looks like game on."
Like Russia, Uzbekistan and other dictatorship-based governments, this regime has learned from the mistakes of brethren in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and is seeking as a priority to knock out the pillars of any resistance before they are set in place.
Indeed, in his long public speech last Friday denouncing the protesters and their alleged foreign supporters, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei explicitly cited the 2003 uprising that ousted Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze. Foreigners backing the Iranian demonstrators “thought Iran is Georgia," Khamenei said. "Their problem is that they don’t know this great nation yet.”
So, the regime has threatened to execute and try alleged offenders of public order; it has interfered with communications between would-be protesters by blocking Internet, telephone and television; and it has blocked mourning of those killed. The regime understands the last item most profoundly since the actions leading to the 1979 revolution were in part sustained by 40-day mourning periods for victims of the Shah.
Karin Laub of The Associated Press reports that on the possible show trials. Quoting state-run radio, she writes that Ebrahim Raisi, a top judicial official, said, "Elements of riots must be dealt with to set an example. The judiciary will do that."
Yet small demonstrations of defiance continue. "Protesters came up with new techniques, such as turning on the lights in their cars at certain hours of the day and honking their horns or holding up posters," Laub writes. She quotes an unidentified Tehran resident whom the AP staff got on the phone saying, "People are calmly protesting, more symbolically than with their voices."
The most frequent report in terms of next steps that one hears involve a general strike -- the shutting down of industries, public transportation, shops in the bazaars, for instance. Reports say that Mousavi's own Facebook page calls for a general strike, though I don't see this notice there. Such strikes could be effective since they would be far harder to stop than protests.
One notable aspect of these events is that, contrary to reporting leading up to the elections, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no rogue or loose cannon. The remarks by Khamenei last Friday, along with subsequent comments by the Revolutionary Guards, eerily resemble the president's.
So that when Ahmadinejad trails off on yet another incoherent diatribe on foreign conspiracies and perfidy -- the outbursts that many, including at O&G, regarded as the main impediment to a diplomatic breakthrough with the West -- he has simply been parroting his bosses.
As an example, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Farnaz Fassihi quotes a 33-year-old woman who is rethinking her participation in the street demonstrations of the last week: "It's now crossed the line. If you come out it means you are ready to become a martyr. And I'm not so sure I want to die yet," the woman says.
While his dispatch isn't poetry, Sky News correspondent Tim Marshall has it about right: "In the short term it still looks like game over; in the medium term it looks like game on."
Like Russia, Uzbekistan and other dictatorship-based governments, this regime has learned from the mistakes of brethren in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and is seeking as a priority to knock out the pillars of any resistance before they are set in place.
Indeed, in his long public speech last Friday denouncing the protesters and their alleged foreign supporters, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei explicitly cited the 2003 uprising that ousted Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze. Foreigners backing the Iranian demonstrators “thought Iran is Georgia," Khamenei said. "Their problem is that they don’t know this great nation yet.”
So, the regime has threatened to execute and try alleged offenders of public order; it has interfered with communications between would-be protesters by blocking Internet, telephone and television; and it has blocked mourning of those killed. The regime understands the last item most profoundly since the actions leading to the 1979 revolution were in part sustained by 40-day mourning periods for victims of the Shah.
Karin Laub of The Associated Press reports that on the possible show trials. Quoting state-run radio, she writes that Ebrahim Raisi, a top judicial official, said, "Elements of riots must be dealt with to set an example. The judiciary will do that."
Yet small demonstrations of defiance continue. "Protesters came up with new techniques, such as turning on the lights in their cars at certain hours of the day and honking their horns or holding up posters," Laub writes. She quotes an unidentified Tehran resident whom the AP staff got on the phone saying, "People are calmly protesting, more symbolically than with their voices."
The most frequent report in terms of next steps that one hears involve a general strike -- the shutting down of industries, public transportation, shops in the bazaars, for instance. Reports say that Mousavi's own Facebook page calls for a general strike, though I don't see this notice there. Such strikes could be effective since they would be far harder to stop than protests.
One notable aspect of these events is that, contrary to reporting leading up to the elections, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no rogue or loose cannon. The remarks by Khamenei last Friday, along with subsequent comments by the Revolutionary Guards, eerily resemble the president's.
So that when Ahmadinejad trails off on yet another incoherent diatribe on foreign conspiracies and perfidy -- the outbursts that many, including at O&G, regarded as the main impediment to a diplomatic breakthrough with the West -- he has simply been parroting his bosses.
Labels: ahmadinejad, iran, iran elections, khamenei, mousavi, moussavi, rafsanjani
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