The state of the Movement
in Iran (by Movement I mean that for freedom, secular democracy, and human
rights sometimes called the Green Movement after its once signal unifying feature)
is, in a word, moribund. At best, it’s comatose.
Credit for that sad state of
affairs belongs equally to the Islamic Republic regime and to the Green
Movement’s putative “leaders”, Mr. Mir Hossein Moussavi Khamenei and Hojat
al-Islam Mehdi Karroubi, along with their close ally and fellow Followers of
the Line of the Imam* alumnus Hojat al-Islam Mohammad Khatami. While my human rights sympathies tell me I
should protest the house arrest without trial or even charge of opposition
political figures, the no-nonsense pragmatic part of me doesn’t give a damn if
Moussavi and Karroubi stay there until the next Big Crunch sixty trillion years
from now.
*Here
I am referring to the faction from the early Islamic Republic also known as Maktabis
(Radicals), those most slavishly and sycophantly devoted to every utterance
from the mouth of the first Rahab-e Enghelab (“Leader of the Revolution”), Grand
Ayatollah Ruhollah Mostafavi Moussavi Khomeini.
The university students allied with them in those early days called
themselves the Student Followers of the Line of the Imam, and they were the
ones who seized the U.S. embassy in November 1979. Neither of these should be mistaken for the
current Followers of the Line of the Imam and the Leader faction in the Majlis
which is just as slavishly and sycophantly devoted to every utterance from the
mouth of the present Rahab-e Enghelab, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere
that when we were recruiting members for a new student activist group on campus
at UTC which became the Myles Horton Club that we had both pro- and
anti-Khomeini Iranian students aboard.
Not only at the initial meeting in September 1984, but a representative
from each group on the board and usually at least one or two from each group at
our various activities. At the time, I
was beginning my junior year as a pre-seminary political science major with
minors in history, religion, and psychology.
If not with brotherly love,
the two Iranian factions were at least tolerant of each other, and if not
speaking at least not actively attacking each other while in club activities. The Myles Horton Club was then perhaps the
sole venue in the world where that occurred or was even possible, but then we
were all gathered together against a common enemy: the crooks, liars, and
thieves of the Ronald Reagan administration.
None of us knew why cocaine
was so cheap and plentiful in our area (Southeast Tennessee-Northwest
Georgia-Northeast Alabama), just that it was all over the place and that the
price had collapsed from $100 per gram to $15-$25 per gram so that it was no
longer just for the rich and shameless in bigger cities. It would be another two years before Eugene
Hasenfus’ Southern Air Transport cargo plane was shot down over Nicaragua
exposing Reagan’s secret cocaine-financed support for the Contras and another
three before internal political feuding among Khomeini’s acolytes exposed the
backdoor American and Iranian secret deals that formed the third leg of the
tripod.
Fast forwarding thirty
years minus one, among my friends on Facebook are Iranians who are Greens, pro-reformists,
pro-Ahmadinejad, pro-principlist, pro-royalist, Basijis, Sepahis, atheist,
Zoroastrian, devout Shia, Bahai, Sunni, pro-labor, Persian, Gilaki, Mazadarani,
Ahwazi, Azeri, Kurd, Sufi, pro-Khomeini, pro-Shariati, pro-MEK, pro-Banisadr, National
Front, and any combination thereof. A
lot of these pro’s are anti’s of several of the others, but if I tried to list
all the combinations not only would I go insane but this essay would grow
longer than the unabridged Encyclopedia Britannica
in its original hardcopy form.
My personal sympathies and
political views where Iran is concerned align me with the National Front and
with former president Abolhassan Banisadr.
I am, naturally, anti-principlist but I am also anti-reformist, not
because I oppose the so-called “reformist” movement’s supporters, some of whom,
or their parents, are now some of my closest friends, but because I vehemently oppose
the reformist leaders, every single one of them, the above-mentioned three of
whom are at the pinnacle of reformist hierarchy.
I’ve been involved with the
movement for freedom and secular democracy in Iran since it first started
coalescing out of the ether of totalitarian theocracy in the spring of 2009, coming
together primarily under the Moussavi campaign (but also under the Karroubi
campaign) as an Iranian-style thumbs-up (the same as “giving the Finger” in
America) to “the system”. If there’s one
thing I’ve learned from all my activities with the Movement, it’s that any such
movement should not pick as its leading figures persons whose first name after
the end of the (hopefully nonviolent) revolution will become “Defendant” while on
trial for genocide and crimes against humanity before the International
Criminal Court.
The so-called reform
movement was not born out of recognition that the very existence of the Islamic
Republic was itself an offense against the Iranian people, against Islam, and
against all of humanity. The so-called
reform movement was born because those afore-mentioned Followers of the Line of
the Imam who had controlled nearly every aspect of life in Iran during the
Islamic Republic’s early days found themselves out of power. The so-called reform movement is about
putting back into power those who erected the very structures which the
rank-and-file in the streets want to destroy.
The so-called reform movement, including those myriad well-financed
organizations which call themselves “Green”, is about offering the Iranian
people lipstick on a pig when they want freedom and democracy in a secular
Iranian Republic.
For Chattanooga’s
contribution to the world-wide mobilization of the 99% in support of the Occupy
movement on 15 October 2011, I wore my treasured “Democracy for Iran” T-shirt
given me by my good friend and fairy godmother, Atieh Bakhtiar. An Iranian-American couple passing by to
check out our rally praised the sentiments on my shirt but told me they couldn’t
support the Green Movement because of its purported leaders. I replied that I didn’t support Moussavi or
Karroubi either, and, hopefully, neither did my friends in Iran.
Those now styling
themselves as reformists were heavily involved in some of the worst atrocities
of the early days of the Islamic Republic, to which Moussavi and Karroubi said
they would like to return in their last public statements on 14 February
2011. The hezbollahi, attacks on rallies
by non-Islamic Republican Party groups, the komitehs, the early massacres, the
Iranian Cultural Revolution, the suppression of labor unions, the Reign of
Terror, the extension of the Iran-Iraq War beyond 1982, the Prison Massacres of
July 1988-April 1989, the organization of Hezbollah in Lebanon (now actively
supporting Bashir al-Assad in Syria)…in all these, the later so-called “reformists”
were at the forefront and often in the director’s chair.
In his last months, Grand
Ayatollah Montazeri completely repudiated both the Islamic Republic and the
doctrine of velayet-e faqih, which he himself had drafted. And he admitted he had been wrong, that it
was a mistake. Likewise, in an interview
on 10 October 2010, former president Banisadr said, “This [the Islamic
Republic] was an important experiment in Iranian history, and it proved that a
blend of religion and state is doomed to fail. We see the results clearly
today.”
“The Green Movement’s
main goal has always been to revive the ideals and aspirations of Imam
Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution,” said Moussavi in his 14 February 2011
statement. Speak for yourself,
dude. “I remain faithful to the ideals
of Imam Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution of 1357 (1979),” said Karroubi
in his own statement that day. At least
he made clearly he spoke for himself.
Both statements are identical in essence to that of Khatami in the
aftermath of Ashura 2009 on 12 January 2010, “Our
position has been and always will be clear: Islam, revolution and the Islamic
Republic.”
To support persons who
clearly to go back to the “good ol’ days” like those mentioned above, who are not
only unrepentant of their actions then but firmly defensive and proud of them
is like it would be to support one faction of the leadership of Cambodia’s
Khmer Rouge against another and hope for a better outcome.
Elsewhere in that October
2010 interview, Banisadr said, “Iran is not just one color. Iran is full of
different ethnic minorities, even religions. There are also different
political tendencies; we can’t ignore them and say that they don’t exist.
We can’t say they are all one color and that color is green; this is
problematic. By the way, we have tried different colors before, green
(sabz jameh), a different green, white, black, yellow and red. None
has worked. Let’s say that in our history we haven’t had good experience
with the different colors. If freedom is our ultimate goal, we must make
this movement reflect all of Iran, the rainbow that Iran is. It
embodies all colors except the color of being dependent on foreigners.
Everyone can participate in this colorful movement.”
One of the main obstacles to
change in Iran is that one section of the Iranian people can’t and won’t trust
the leaders of another section of the Iranian people. That’s because the great game of politics in
the Islamic Republic is between different factions within the regime using
their supporters among the Iranian people as pawns, as leverage against the
other factions. If the Iranian people
would simply abandon their leaders to their sandbox and be citizens rather than
subjects, they would attain goals they all want. It’s time for the Rainbow Movement.
And as Bobby Sands said in
the diary he kept the first seventeen days of his hunger strike at Long Kesh in
1981, “Everyone, republican or otherwise, has his or her particular part
to play. No part is too great or too small. No one is too old or
too young to do something.”
2 comments:
Do you think there is going to be a War with Iran?
Syria is now a quagmire to the NWO.
No, there's not gonna be war with Iran. The outcome of the conflict in Syria is inevitable, Assad will fall. How soon is another question, and how much of a mess the country will be in for how long after he falls yet another.
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