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You know, I probably should weigh in on the situation in Iran, given that my chosen field of study is Near Eastern Studies (the reason I'm taking Political Science as my undergraduate degree is because that's what my first choice university wants its Near Eastern Studies PhD students to have as an undergraduate degree) but really, I've been afraid of two things. The first is an entirely selfish fear that I'll get it wrong and anyone who wants to hire me later on will read my errors and decide I can't really know what I'm talking about. The second fear is a bit more global, and a bit more important. You see, the charges the Iranian government is most prone to throw at dissidents is that they're anti-Islam and pro-West. As an American Jew, I don't want to give the Ayatollahs any more ammunition for that particular charge by making plain the support I so desperately give for the protesters.
I have to think about this for a minute.
Ever since just before the election day, I saw Western people online posting about how we in the West have to remember that Iran has a functioning democracy. Every time I read it, a little bit of steam gathered deep inside my ears, waiting until there was enough pressure to send jets of it hissing around my head. That is a gross mischaracterization of the Iranian governmental system. Yes, Iran has elections, and yes, Iranians get to vote for their president, but most of the power rests not with the voters or their elected officials, but with the Ayatollahs and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is not elected by the people, but by the Assembly of Experts, a secretive panel of religious scholars whose members must be approved by the government. Whatever you want to call that, please don't call it democracy.
Also, Iran does not have freedom of the press or freedom of religion, or right to criticize the Ayatollahs. Lacking as it is in the free exchange of ideas, and holding women hostage, the way it does through religious edicts nominally for their own good, Iran is no free society, a precondition for any functional democracy. No matter how many elections are held in such a society, it remains tyrannical. Without freedom of the press and the right to criticize the whole government, no voting public can gather information on the office seekers independently. The pick of the Ayatollahs is given preferential treatment. When women are held hostage, any man who cares about any woman, be it wife, mother, daughter, or sister is held hostage through her. This is not to say that Iran can't become a functioning democracy on its own without Western intervention. At its inception, the United States had slavery, laws that gave women as much power as children, and forbid men without property from voting, and places where one could be arrested for not attending church. Iran can overcome this.
This should all of course be prerequisite knowledge for this current situation, and all of it must be taken into account when discussing the protests. It helps explain why aiding the protesters as outsiders is not the best of ideas.
On a scholarly level, I'm thrilled. I'm over the moon to have the chance to watch this unfold. A few weeks ago, if anyone had asked me if Iran were ripe for revolution, I would have explained how it was less likely to rebel than other states in similar situations because it was a revolution against a horrible repressive government (the Shah was friendly to the West, but he was absolutely brutal towards his own people) that brought the Ayatollahs to power in the first place. I would have told you that that this fact created a sense of helplessness among many Iranians, because they fought the good fight to get rid of their tyrannical government, and look, something just as bad took its place. But right now, I watch as just such a revolution may just be ready to begin. I'm fascinated.
On another level, the level that cares that politics control people's lives, I'm terrified, and anxious, and exalting all at once. Certainly as an American, I would like to see the least of the protesters' potential effects come to pass, that is the ascension of Mousavi to the presidency, because he supports beginning a dialogue with President Obama, and since he supports the founding of privately owned news stations and the lessening of women's' inequality, the lives of many Iranians would become better as well. However, I'm afraid that this is all just a flash in the pan, that the protesting will soon stop, that the protesters, Mousavi, or the reformist impulse will be discredited as a foreign ploy, or that the Iranian government will crack down and tighten its grip over the country. I'm almost as afraid that the protesting will accomplish nothing more than Mousavi's rise to power. That would do nothing about the underlying problems in Iran with the Ayatollahs. Likewise, I'm anxious that perhaps the protests might become full scale revolution and that it will either be crushed and make the Ayatollahs more controlling and harsher, or that it will help bring to power another authoritarian regime, thus renewing the sense of hopelessness I wrote of above.
More than all of that, however, I'm hopeful. I'm anxious, I'm eager, and I'm hopeful that the Iran I get to talk about next year or in grad school might be a very different Iran I have been learning about until today.
However, as excited and hopeful as I am, and I really hate to say this, in the final analysis, non-Iranians, especially Westerners, especially Americans need to stay out of this and not offer the protesters too much support, not because it isn't our business, or because it's the Iranians' problem, but because our support can damage the protesters' cause within Iran. No, I don't think the Ayatollahs read my blog (though for all I know Ayatollah Khamenei has a super special addiction to English-language Harry Potter fanfiction that he just can't kick) but I'm pretty sure the accumulated noise of the western blogosphere filters into their consciousness, as well as that of the rest of Iran, and I don't want the level of support we're all showing to be interpreted as somehow proof that the protesters are following an American agenda, so yes it's great that they're protesting, (yes it's really really really great!) but I'm really leery of non-Iranian attempts to help the protesters, lest we give the Ayatollahs more excuses to say that it's all an American plot to overthrow them in our perceived war on Islam.
I hate sitting back and not doing anything as I watch this unfold, but I want to give the protesters every chance of success, and in this case, that means, frustrating as it is, staying out of the fray.
I have to think about this for a minute.
Ever since just before the election day, I saw Western people online posting about how we in the West have to remember that Iran has a functioning democracy. Every time I read it, a little bit of steam gathered deep inside my ears, waiting until there was enough pressure to send jets of it hissing around my head. That is a gross mischaracterization of the Iranian governmental system. Yes, Iran has elections, and yes, Iranians get to vote for their president, but most of the power rests not with the voters or their elected officials, but with the Ayatollahs and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is not elected by the people, but by the Assembly of Experts, a secretive panel of religious scholars whose members must be approved by the government. Whatever you want to call that, please don't call it democracy.
Also, Iran does not have freedom of the press or freedom of religion, or right to criticize the Ayatollahs. Lacking as it is in the free exchange of ideas, and holding women hostage, the way it does through religious edicts nominally for their own good, Iran is no free society, a precondition for any functional democracy. No matter how many elections are held in such a society, it remains tyrannical. Without freedom of the press and the right to criticize the whole government, no voting public can gather information on the office seekers independently. The pick of the Ayatollahs is given preferential treatment. When women are held hostage, any man who cares about any woman, be it wife, mother, daughter, or sister is held hostage through her. This is not to say that Iran can't become a functioning democracy on its own without Western intervention. At its inception, the United States had slavery, laws that gave women as much power as children, and forbid men without property from voting, and places where one could be arrested for not attending church. Iran can overcome this.
This should all of course be prerequisite knowledge for this current situation, and all of it must be taken into account when discussing the protests. It helps explain why aiding the protesters as outsiders is not the best of ideas.
On a scholarly level, I'm thrilled. I'm over the moon to have the chance to watch this unfold. A few weeks ago, if anyone had asked me if Iran were ripe for revolution, I would have explained how it was less likely to rebel than other states in similar situations because it was a revolution against a horrible repressive government (the Shah was friendly to the West, but he was absolutely brutal towards his own people) that brought the Ayatollahs to power in the first place. I would have told you that that this fact created a sense of helplessness among many Iranians, because they fought the good fight to get rid of their tyrannical government, and look, something just as bad took its place. But right now, I watch as just such a revolution may just be ready to begin. I'm fascinated.
On another level, the level that cares that politics control people's lives, I'm terrified, and anxious, and exalting all at once. Certainly as an American, I would like to see the least of the protesters' potential effects come to pass, that is the ascension of Mousavi to the presidency, because he supports beginning a dialogue with President Obama, and since he supports the founding of privately owned news stations and the lessening of women's' inequality, the lives of many Iranians would become better as well. However, I'm afraid that this is all just a flash in the pan, that the protesting will soon stop, that the protesters, Mousavi, or the reformist impulse will be discredited as a foreign ploy, or that the Iranian government will crack down and tighten its grip over the country. I'm almost as afraid that the protesting will accomplish nothing more than Mousavi's rise to power. That would do nothing about the underlying problems in Iran with the Ayatollahs. Likewise, I'm anxious that perhaps the protests might become full scale revolution and that it will either be crushed and make the Ayatollahs more controlling and harsher, or that it will help bring to power another authoritarian regime, thus renewing the sense of hopelessness I wrote of above.
More than all of that, however, I'm hopeful. I'm anxious, I'm eager, and I'm hopeful that the Iran I get to talk about next year or in grad school might be a very different Iran I have been learning about until today.
However, as excited and hopeful as I am, and I really hate to say this, in the final analysis, non-Iranians, especially Westerners, especially Americans need to stay out of this and not offer the protesters too much support, not because it isn't our business, or because it's the Iranians' problem, but because our support can damage the protesters' cause within Iran. No, I don't think the Ayatollahs read my blog (though for all I know Ayatollah Khamenei has a super special addiction to English-language Harry Potter fanfiction that he just can't kick) but I'm pretty sure the accumulated noise of the western blogosphere filters into their consciousness, as well as that of the rest of Iran, and I don't want the level of support we're all showing to be interpreted as somehow proof that the protesters are following an American agenda, so yes it's great that they're protesting, (yes it's really really really great!) but I'm really leery of non-Iranian attempts to help the protesters, lest we give the Ayatollahs more excuses to say that it's all an American plot to overthrow them in our perceived war on Islam.
I hate sitting back and not doing anything as I watch this unfold, but I want to give the protesters every chance of success, and in this case, that means, frustrating as it is, staying out of the fray.
