Are Iranian Protests the Start of a Revolution?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Throughout the more than four decades that a theocracy has ruled the Islamic Republic of Iran, there have been periodic protests. They have always faded away or been crushed by the authorities, who brook little dissent. Is the current one different?

Sparked by the Sept. 16 death of a Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police,” today’s unrest has grown into one of the most sustained challenges to the regime in decades. Amini was arrested for not wearing the head covering known as the hijab in accordance with government standards. She was severely beaten and died because of police brutality.

Since then, demonstrations throughout the country have intensified and become more frequent in most major cities, spreading to smaller towns across the country, even to some remote and generally quiet areas.

Not surprisingly, authorities have responded harshly; thousands of Iranians have been arrested. Many have been sentenced to death, while hundreds of others have been killed on the street, according to estimates kept by human rights groups. Most of it goes unreported.

Ever since the crushing of the pro-democracy Green Movement in 2009, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has bolstered the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the paramilitary Basij, both tasked with defending the Islamic state by any means necessary. His selection of hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi as president in 2021 was part of the same process.

All of this has polarized the country. The leadership has nearly wiped out all opposition political groups including those who never wanted anything more than reforms, and it has even marginalized many insiders, such as former presidents -- reformist Mohammad Khatami, hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and moderate Hassan Rouhani.

Those now in power will fight hard for the status quo, making a revolution even more bloody. But for those seeking a democratic, more secular state, there’s little left but to fight. Iranian dissent inside the country is overwhelmingly democratic in aspiration.

In the past three months Iranian protesters have made it quite clear they consider the regime unreformable and are pursuing its demise. They consider Khamenei himself responsible for all their grievances.

And then there is the minority question. Around half of Iran’s population isn’t Persian. The Baluch, Arabs, Kurds, and Azeris dominate in provinces along the periphery and appear to have an increasing sense of national identity.

The Azeris, by far the largest minority, represent at least a fifth and perhaps as much as a third of Iran’s population. While deeply integrated into the Islamic Republic’s ruling elite, they have nonetheless stubbornly resisted a 100-year effort to Persianize their heartland in the northwest.

Zahedan, in the far southeast, a city home to the Baluch ethnic minority, saw 91 peaceful demonstrators massacred on Sept. 30. The authorities also intensified their repression in the Kurdish northwest of the country. On Nov. 30 Mahabad was encircled by the army, reinforced by tanks.

A transition to democracy might solve Iran’s ethnic troubles by allowing minorities the free exercise of their languages in schools and real political power in Tehran. The collapse of the clerical regime would bring on a great debate among Iran’s peoples about identity. 

And imagine a situation where Iran’s Arab Shiites enjoyed a decentralized arrangement within a democratic state. Would that not motivate the Shiites of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, who have been oppressed by Sunni princes, to fight for democracy? A free, democratic Iran where its Arab Shiites had a voice might be much more alluring to them than the Islamic Republic. 

So under a democracy, Iranians may loathe the Saudi royal family as much as, perhaps more than, the leaders of today. The Sunni-Shiite animus will remain, as will the Persian contempt for Sunni Gulf Arabs.

Maybe that’s the reason that, while expressions of support for Iranian protesters have been pouring in from around the world, those nations closest to Iran, its Gulf neighbors, have remained conspicuously silent. Most striking of all is the lack of any official response from Saudi Arabia, which one would expect to be pleased with the revolt against a regime that Riyadh considers its archenemy.

But the Saudis had watched with dread as a previous Iranian revolution transformed the region after 1979 under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and they worried its impact would spread to their kingdom. They still remain fearful of popular uprisings in neighbouring countries.

Also, given the pressure at home, might Iran unleash some of its allies to launch diversionary attacks against regional adversaries like Saudi Arabia? After all, the Saudis face Shiite adversaries in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

Still, Riyadh is quietly trying to aid the opposition in Iran. It is said to be funding Iran International, a London-based Persian TV channel, set up in 2017 as an opposition station and now beaming images of the protests back into Iran.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly called on Saudi Arabia to shut down the station. On Oct. 17, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned Saudi Arabia to tone down coverage of the protests. “This is our last warning, because you are interfering in our internal affairs through these media,” Major-General Hossein Salami said. “You are involved in this matter and know that you are vulnerable.” He didn’t have to say that out loud.