November 5th, 2009 by Jason

Reports continue to filter in about yesterday’s protests on the anniversary of the American embassy takeover in 1979. Juan Cole suggests that, by protesting on this day, the opposition are “implicitly likening the government of Khamenei to that of the shah […] his regime is not less internally repressive.” NiacINsight has posted comprehensive summaries of the day’s events by the opposition website Green Freedom Wave (translated by the New York Times Company).

In addition to the protesters who were beaten by a baton-wielding militia, at least 12 people were arrested, including a university student, an AFP reporter and several members of the Office for Consolidating Unity (Tahkim Vahdat) as reported by Tehran Bureau. In addition, the reform cleric Mehdi Karroubi joined the protests, but was forced to retreat after a teargas attack sent his bodyguard to the hospital.

According to Time Magazine, the opposition was not able to field the same numbers as the protests immediately after the election, but nonetheless they are “pushing the Iranian government into a harder and harder line against its internal foes and into confrontation with the West.” This push, in turn, has left the “top echelons of politics and the clergy […] riven with dissent,” according to the Economist. Therefore, Nazenin Ansari and Jonathan Paris in The New York Times  conclude ”Iran is less stable and secure than at any time in the past 30 years.”

Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution also believes the opposition movement is “nowhere near an end.” The regime has seemingly lost its “ideological coherence and bureaucratic competence” as the elite struggle amongst themselves. Furthermore, the regime’s rejection of gradual reform “has unleashed dynamics that will eventually culminate in the demise of the absolute authority of Iran’s unelected leader.” However, Mehdi Khalaji perceives growing splits between opposition leaders who seek reform and the youth in the streets “aiming to bring down the very system of which their leaders are a part.” Therefore, “it is not only the regime in Tehran - but also the reformist ‘leaders’ who pretend to lead this movement - that fears the success of the green movement. Democracy in Iran will emerge only through a rupture with the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s ideals and Islamic ideology - concepts to which the accidental leaders of the green movement are still loyal.”

Babylon and Beyond details attempts by the state-run media to discredit foreign media coverage of the demonstrations, while insideIran catalogs the government’s efforts to belittle the protesters as a “group of rioters” advocating on behalf of Israel and the United States. In fact, many protesters were heard chanting “Obama, Obama, ya ba oona ya ba ma” or “Obama, Obama, either you’re with them or you’re with us.” Arshin Adib-Moghaddam contends the regime’s violence against the green movement has “made it all but impossible” for any Western leader to deal too closely with Tehran.

President Obama has been under serious fire from some commentators at home for not doing more to support the opposition, such as a recent editorial by the Wall Street Journal.   On the MESH blog, Philip Carl Salzman criticizes the President’s statement yesterday, “what good does it do to acknowledge the ‘powerful calls for justice’ of the Iranian people when you are about to throw them under the bus by trying to make deals with the regime that is shooting them down in the street, torturing them in prisons, and executing them?” Michael Ledeen joins in as well, arguing that while Tehran has failed to intimidate the Iranian people, it has intimidated President Obama into “appeasement.”

Ray Takeyh contends that President Ahmadinejad and his allies hope to use international negotiations “as a means to silence the criticism that  their domestic behavior merits.” He argues that the hard-liners in Tehran must know that if they continue to ignore human rights and democracy, “the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West.” However, Judith Miller sees no contradiction between negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program and “speaking out more vigorously in support of the dissidents who are fighting for reform at great personal peril.” For Miller, it is ironic that for so many years the regime has blamed everything on America in order to stay in power, but now the dissidents also “blame Washington for failing to champion human rights, reform and an end to dictatorship.” Roger Cohen also argues that “normalization is the last best hope for Iranian reform.”

Meanwhile, the fate of the nuclear negotiations still is in question. The head of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, asserts“Iran could be the door to a stable Middle East” if a nuclear deal can be forged.  Sadegh Zibakalam wonders whether, given Ahmadinejad’s history of standing up to hardliners, whether it is “possible” for him to do so again and strike a deal.

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