Iran Security Forces Rush Demonstrators, Who Chant “We are Not Afraid”

10 July 2009 :: staff

Post election demonstrations in Iran are getting more confrontational, as smaller numbers of angrier demonstrators continue to suffer physical assaults at the hands of militia and security forces. With conservative clerics stepping up their questioning of the legitimacy of both Pres. Ahmedinejad’s re-election and the continued rule of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, demonstrators have reportedly been heard chanting “Death to Khamene’i” for the first time.

It remains unclear from translations in foreign media whether the demonstrators have been chanting “Down with Khamene’i” or “Death to Khamene’i”. Another new chant that has been widely reported is “We are not afraid”, sometimes coupled with “We are all together”. The demonstrators confronting security forces in recent days are being described as a “hard core”, but it is also unclear what degree of organization there is in the most recent rallies. Opposition leaders remain defiant, but have urged demonstrators not to risk personal harm.

Increasingly, observers note the atmosphere of real fear among Iran’s rulers that their power is in jeopardy. The Star Ledger reports:

The consensus they fashioned around a religion-republican form of government is cracking under the pressure of what has become theocratic tyranny.

The re-election of Ahmadinejad was fatally tainted; results were broadcast even while ballots were still being cast. And the claimed two-to-one victory margin for Ahmadinejad seems especially incredible considering the massive pre-vote street support for Mousavi.

The election was used as a legitimizing device, not as a measure of the people’s will, and it was done in so panicked a way as to be obviously manipulated to any who observed the actions of top officials, like the supreme leader himself. What followed was a sublime awakening in which Iranians, in the millions, demanded respect for the republican underpinnings of their revolutionary constitution.

For decades, the tension between republicanism and theocracy has been a constant source of division among top officials. In the late 1980s, those around the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini warned him not to diverge from republicanism, lest his government come to be seen as illegitimate, due to tyrannical practices. Some believe Khamene’i —the current supreme leader— was among those who viewed those moderating voices as a threat to the revolutionary system, and that with his rise in 1989, a long struggle for the soul of the Islamic Republic began, with opposing forces pitted against each other in the current turmoil.

Salon.com has reported that the first page of school history books quotes Khomeini: “Omid e man ba shoma javanha hast”, meaning “My hope is with you, the youth”. In fact, the youth are now seen as being at the root of the opposition movement, forming a kind of wall of conscience against the abuses of the powerful. The Salon author, who conceals his last name for security reasons, writes:

That the vote was against Ahmadinejad there can be no doubt. Consider this: Over the 30-year history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, some 30 percent of the population has never voted. These are the true disbelievers, citizens who take pride in having a blank shenasname, or identity booklet. They are the friends and family members who take every opportunity to remind the rest of us, at the dinner table, caught in traffic, sitting in the park, that voting is a mistake, that you ought not participate in a system that is at its core rotten.

The question of whether a vote against the ruling clerical establishment could be of any use has morphed into a demand that all votes be counted. Millions of new voters turned up to reject the questionable policies of the hardline president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and demand moderating, modernizing reforms. Iran’s system is in practice authoritarian, but rooted in the idea of national historical greatness in which the Persian dream is not to be denied.

There is, in this ancient idea of Persian greatness, a strikingly similar root of righteous individualism to what motivates American civic and political defiance. The people are more concerned now with their right to speak truth to power and to govern through the government, not to be commanded by tyrants.

That popular ideal has bled away from Ahmedinejad’s authoritarian populism to the growing opposition movement, which has brought major clerical figures like former president and Khamene’i rival Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to its cause. There are persistent rumors of a behind-the-scenes effort to build consensus among the Assembly of Experts to possibly sanction or recall Khamene’i.

The New York Times blog, The Lede, has posted multiple videos and the accounts of an eye-witness, who writes:

I was immersed in a crowd of around 300-400 people who had obviously intended to head to Enghelab and were turned around – I am unsure if they came from Vali Asr square (one of the original meet points according to the vague and scatted “calls to action”). They were shouting, mostly “Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein” and “We are all in this together.” This was after 5 pm. From the South (Enghelab St.) the police came north, buttressed with a phalanx of black clad riot police with rubber batons. I saw them swing at many individuals to move them along.

The witness goes on to write “I then realized the bad medicine was coming our way. I stepped out for a preemptive move and it looked like whack-a-mole. Every 5 yards some riot cop was swinging like it was T-ball tryouts.” Though signs of non-violence and peaceful protest were offered, the eye-witness account suggests security forces simply assaulted the demonstrators indiscriminately.

The Basij militia are reported to be directly involved in the physical attacks on opposition demonstrators, and the Guardian’s Julian Borger has reported that Ayatollah Khamene’i's son Mojtaba is now in direct control of the Basij. That news signals for many Khamene’i's abandoning of the republican principles of the Iranian constitution, wherein even the supreme leader is equal before the law, a possible attempt to establish a family-run circle of power at the top of the Iranian security forces.

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