The View from the West

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

'Death to nobody' protests test Iran's divided leadership

By: The Economist

9/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

111Last week's anniversary provided more gripping scenes, as Iranians used the official celebration of that event to take to the streets once again, this time to protest against their own government and their country's controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose re-election in June they still hotly dispute.

The green movement, as the opposition calls itself, had held no big rally since Jerusalem Day in mid-September, when protesters turned an officially sponsored event into an anti-government one. On Nov. 4 they did it again. Thousands came onto the streets, despite dark warnings from the authorities.

There were big demonstrations in Tehran, and reports of others in provincial cities such as Arak, Isfahan, Mazandaran, Rasht, Shiraz and Tabriz.

The Internet hummed with tales of opposition protests, replete with videos and photographs. It was hard, however, to assess the size of the crowds.

Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric who ran for president and has since been one of the most outspoken critics of Ahmadinejad's government since his disputed re-election, made an appearance in Tehran but left swiftly as his car and guards were attacked by security forces.

Other opposition leaders were unable -- or were not allowed -- to appear. Mir Hossein Mousavi, who is popularly thought to have really won the election, was said to have visited a cultural centre but was surrounded by security forces. Muhammad Khatami, a former reformist president who backs the opposition, was unseen.

All the same, without the backing of bigwigs, the government's foes poured on to the streets.

As before, the police and the Basij, a vigilante force that backs Ahmadinejad and answers to the powerful Revolutionary Guard, came out in strength, too. Protesters were beaten, arrested and drenched with tear gas. Some chanted "death to the dictator," often shouting accusations that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, was a murderer.

Others, in a new twist of sloganeering, cried "Death to nobody!"

At the official rallies celebrating the taking of the American hostages, U.S. and Israeli flags were burned as usual. But footage of the opposition demonstrations shows posters of Khamenei's bearded face being stamped on.

So the image of Iran's official leaders is still being tarnished in the lingering post-election turmoil. The protests are unlikely to bring the government down, but its legitimacy is being questioned in a way that was once unthinkable.

The top echelons of politics and the clergy are riven with dissent. The day before the celebration of the siege, Hossein Ali Montazeri, a grand ayatollah now aged 87 and who was once the heir apparent of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said that the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in 1979 had been a mistake.

Such divisions may partly be causing Iran's government to equivocate in the face of the West's latest proposals for solving the dispute over Iran's nuclear plans. In a statement issued on the anniversary, U.S. President Barack Obama said the U.S. did not wish to interfere in Iran's internal affairs. But he stressed that, while his fist was still unclenched, the onus was on Iran to grasp it.

Instead, Khamenei once again lambasted the U.S. for its attitude to Iran's nuclear program.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 9, 2009 A15

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