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New Opinion: From Beirut to Tehran

Tue, Jun 06 2009

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s outrageous “victory” in the 10th Iranian presidential elections may yet turn out to have been a proverbial blessing in disguise. Reformers who are elected gently tend to be less reformist than those who are swept to power on a wave of national indignation.

And there definitely is a wave of national indignation, not only in Iran, but in capitals across Europe and in cities in the US, where alarm bells are ringing at the Iranian authorities’ apparent complete disregard for the democratic process, free speech and the right to peaceful protest. As we write, seven protestors have been shot dead by pro-Ahmadinejad gunmen, possibly members of the Basiji militia, a plain-clothes organization made up of civilian hardliners, while the police stood by. The violence came after a rally led by the defeated reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi in central Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square to protest the outcome of the ballot.

The winds of democratic change might just be sweeping Iran. Mr. Mousavi’s supporters are not ready to give up yet. Not since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 – ominously 30 years ago – have the streets of Iran witnessed such dissent. The demonstrations that followed the announcement that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won are unprecedented and simply too big to stop.

Sound familiar? Wouldn’t it be fitting if the inspiration for the protests came from events on the streets of Beirut over four years ago, when an unstoppable wave of people power succeeded in ejecting authoritarianism? There was strong evidence at the time to suggest that the Lebanese army was put under pressure by its Syrian overlords to brook no dissent from those who bravely demonstrated against the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the prolonged influence of Damascus in the country. Those whose decision it would have been to make that call knew that to order the soldiers to fire into the crowd would be cataclysmic. The rest, as they say, is history. In an extraordinary wave of public sentiment that became known as the Cedar Revolution, a new day broke over Lebanon.

The Iranian authorities appear to have more of an appetite for a scrap, and as blood runs in the streets of Tehran – and apparently in Shiraz too – it is worth remembering that such draconian measures issue from the leaders of a country that would have exerted not insignificant influence over Lebanon had the March 8 bloc prevailed at the June 7 polls. Events in Iran are a timely reminder of how the Iranian authorities, not unlike those in Damascus, do not tolerate dissent. If Lebanon needs to go shopping for a foreign patron, Tehran is not the place. Lebanese voters said as much when they entered the polling stations.

Back in Iran, protestors urged Ahmadinejad to “let go of the country.” If it is found that there were irregularities, Mr. Ahmadinejad must surely withdraw his candidacy and hopefully disappear. He is a dinosaur who counts his support among Iran’s rural population, a constituency to whom he can peddle his holocaust denial and his fiendish desire to wipe nations of the face of the earth. The people of Iran, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said, not only deserve respect; they deserve a leader who will not keep the region on the cusp of war.

One last thought: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asked Mr. Mousavi to seek redress through what he referred to as “legal” means. It appears the mullahs’ revolutionary fervor must have dampened since those tumultuous days three decades ago when Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Paris to lead the new Islamic Republic. They are the product of their own revolution, one that unseated the Shah from the Peacock throne. What goes around just might come around.