Simone Susskind

Do recent events in Iran indicate that the system established after Ayatollah Khomeiny’s 1979 revolution is crumbling?

Many times in recent weeks I have recalled a conversation in Teheran in 2004 with a group of lecturers at Mofid University – one of the great universities in the holy city of Qom, which has faculties of Islamic studies, political science and human rights. 

We were there to establish a friendship association between Belgian and Iranian women.

To our great surprise, we discovered that our interlocutors were involved in daily debates on all the subjects we had supposed to be taboo in Iran: democracy, human rights, women’s rights, and freedom of expression. 

At the end of a fascinating discussion, I asked these partners if they thought it was possible to reform the system from inside. Someone answered that there were two schools of thought on this, one holding that it was possible, the other that it was not – and that Iranian society was therefore doomed. 

Today, this comment now seems very pertinent: the situation that currently prevails in Iran cannot be maintained indefinitely. 

For a new and irreversible phase of evolution seems to be heralded by three recent developments: the so-called green wave which accompanied the recent election campaign, the huge mobilisation of supporters of the reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Moussavi;  and the abrupt announcement – against all forecasts – of the victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad. 

Indeed, events now seem to have developed well beyond the bloody suppression of the student revolt of a dozen years ago; well beyond the mobilisation of women and young people of 1997 that led to the presidency of Mohammed Khatami. It is also well beyond the relatively discreet demonstrations by women’s movements such as the one campaigning for “a million signatures”, a number of whose organisers were arrested and later released. 

The rejection of the results of a “democratic election in a non-democratic system” by members of the Islamic revolutionary establishment has apparently obliged Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad – supported by “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei and by numerous Bassiji (Guardians of the Revolution) – to take an extra step towards establishing a dictatorship. 

The president and his allies will no longer be able to organise elections similar to those we have seen since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Repression – already severe enough – will increase, affecting all opponents who fight the system from within. 

The population and a significant part of the clergy reject the policy of demagoguery led by Ahmadinedjad and his administration. When oil prices were at their highest, the huge revenues they generated were distributed to the poorest parts of the population without counting the cost – but also without any systems being established for employment creation or for the rational management of oil resources. (For example, during another stay in Teheran, I learned that China had become Iran’s greatest supplier of manufactured goods; this was gradually ruining a significant part of the middle classes, which consists largely of traders and artisans).

The masses are no longer swayed by demagogic attacks on the West and by appeals to their nationalistic sentiments. This is despite the fact that Iranians are patriotic, proud of their civilisation and culture. For they want their country to be a regional power. And, to protect themselves against neighbouring nuclear powers such as India, Pakistan and Israel, or against those “protected” by the United States, they also want nuclear weapons. 

The election to the US presidency of Barack Obama, with his openness and readiness for dialogue, can only appeal to them.

By not openly supporting the reformist camp and by not responding to the attacks of the Iranian leadership, the US and European administrations have managed the current crisis with praiseworthy diplomacy. So here is one suggestion that would certainly help isolate this leadership: Europe and the US President should formally recognise that the Iran-Iraq war was initiated by Saddam Hussein, and formally express sympathy for the Iranian victims of that conflict. The impact of such a symbolic gesture on Iranian society would be enormous. For we should recall that, in a war that was imposed upon Iran at the very beginning of the Islamic Revolution, each Iranian family lost at least one member. 

What now? Contacts between representatives of European, American and Arab civil societies with Iran should be resumed and strengthened. Of course, this should be done with great sensitivity and diplomacy. But it is clear that such contacts are as vital to Iran and the Iranian people as the very air they breathe. 

Simone  CONTACT _Con-39ECA921247 Susskind Simone 

President, Actions in the Mediterranean

Brussels-Belgium