Iran: The Power of Memory
As suggested in previous days, the decisive factor in who prevails in Iran is command of public perception. Regardless of the true result of last Friday's election, if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can persuade sufficient numbers of Iranians that he is the legitimate victor, the game is over. If he cannot, the opposite is true -- he and the entire clerical and military edifice behind him are in trouble. Defensive measures would then be required in order to save the regime.
Events of the last two days appear to show that Ahmadinejad is losing this battle. This is why we are witnessing such astonishingly rapid-fire concessions from the heretofore stone-faced government. That includes supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's order that the election be probed, the subsequent repetition of this order every 15 minutes over state-controlled radio, and the announcement today of a partial vote recount.
So what is in the minds of Khamenei, the powerful clerics who stand alongside him, and the rest of the regime?
It has to be 1979. It is the subtext of the entire drama in Iran.
Both those backing Ahmadinejad and those behind Mousavi recall viscerally that they once brought down a seemingly immovable regime, that of Shah Reza Pahlavi. And the youth who are too young themselves to have observed or participated in the taking down of the Shah have heard sufficiently detailed stories about it from relatives, friends and teachers to possess vicarious experience of the event.
Knowing and feeling how it was once done -- quite recently indeed -- makes both sides grasp what those crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands mean. Once you've done it once, the usual doubts about capability -- from one side, can we really do it; from the other side, there is no way that mob can unseat us -- vanish.
What unfolds next will be reaction to this potent memory.
Events of the last two days appear to show that Ahmadinejad is losing this battle. This is why we are witnessing such astonishingly rapid-fire concessions from the heretofore stone-faced government. That includes supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's order that the election be probed, the subsequent repetition of this order every 15 minutes over state-controlled radio, and the announcement today of a partial vote recount.
So what is in the minds of Khamenei, the powerful clerics who stand alongside him, and the rest of the regime?
It has to be 1979. It is the subtext of the entire drama in Iran.
Both those backing Ahmadinejad and those behind Mousavi recall viscerally that they once brought down a seemingly immovable regime, that of Shah Reza Pahlavi. And the youth who are too young themselves to have observed or participated in the taking down of the Shah have heard sufficiently detailed stories about it from relatives, friends and teachers to possess vicarious experience of the event.
Knowing and feeling how it was once done -- quite recently indeed -- makes both sides grasp what those crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands mean. Once you've done it once, the usual doubts about capability -- from one side, can we really do it; from the other side, there is no way that mob can unseat us -- vanish.
What unfolds next will be reaction to this potent memory.
Labels: ahmadinejad, iran elections, iranian elections, khamenei, mousavi, moussavi
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