Iran ’s Green movement in disarray

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Iran’s Green movement in disarray
20 February 2010

Iran’s bourgeois opposition Green movement has been thrown into
disarray by its failure to make good on its threat to stage mass
protests on February 11—the 31st anniversary of the overthrow of Shah
Reza Phalavi’s US-sponsored dictatorship.

Green supporters in and outside Iran had vowed to upstage the official
celebrations. Some had even forecast the impending downfall of the
regime led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.

Mohsen Sazegara, a one-time high official of the Islamic Republic who
now appears regularly on Voice of America’s Persian language
broadcasts, proclaimed February 11 “decisive—a day on which the
presence of the opposition in their millions can change the balance of
power in their favour.”

These hopes were shared by the US ruling elite, which has mounted a
three-decade-long campaign to overthrow the Islamic Republic. In a
February 11 editorial titled “Showdown in Tehran,” the Washington Post
declared, “If [the government] once again fails to stop thousands of
protesters from taking to the streets of Tehran and other cities, the
West will know that the extremist group that stands behind Iran’s
drive for the bomb is one step closer to collapse.”

But to the dismay of the Western media, Iran’s government was able to
marginalize the Green protests by mobilizing millions of its own
supporters and mounting a massive security operation.

Government threats and intimidation, the arrest of oppositionists and
the disruption of telecommunications had a significant impact on the
size of the Green protests. But the fizzling of the February 11 Green
mobilization was first and foremost a product of its privileged class
character and right-wing political orientation.

The Green movement is led by disaffected sections of Iran’s
bourgeois-clerical establishment and lacks any genuine mass support
beyond better-off sections of the urban middle class. Its recognized
leaders, former prime minister Hossein Mousavi, former Majlis
(parliament) speaker Medhi Karroubi, and former president Mohammad
Khatami, have all held leading posts in the Islamic Republic.

The principal bankroller of Mousavi’s lavishly-funded June 2009
presidential campaign was Hashemi Rafsanjani—a former president, the
current head of two key state institutions, and reputedly Iran’s
wealthiest businessman.

Rafsanjani, Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997, and Khatami, president
from 1997 to 2005, implemented neo-liberal economic policies that
dramatically increased poverty and social inequality, while they
sought a rapprochement with the US and the European powers.

Those who poured into the streets last June to protest the purported
theft of the presidential election came overwhelmingly from affluent
north Tehran neighbourhoods, as was readily admitted by such champions
of the Green movement as the New York Times and CNN.

There is growing worker discontent and unrest in Iran—over unpaid
wages, the replacement of permanent jobs with contract labor, and the
government’s plan to phase out price subsidies on energy, food and
other essential goods and services.

The Green opposition, however, has proven unable and unwilling to make
any appeal to the Iranian working class and urban and rural poor.
While Green supporters bristle at the mores and dress codes imposed by
the Islamic establishment, many are indifferent and downright hostile
to the socio-economic grievances and aspirations of Iran’s toilers. A
major complaint of the opposition is that Ahmadinejad squandered the
revenue from the 2005-2008 oil boom on social welfare programs.

In a recent letter to Green supporters, Mousavi conceded that the
Green movement is alienated from the masses. “Before the Revolution,”
wrote Mousavi, “it was a principle that the revolutionary forces and
the academic class defended the lower class. It was their honor to be
the poor people’s friend. … I regret that the intense political
problems resulted in less attention to the lower class of the society,
their problems and their rights.”

The Western media and political establishment, including their “left”
flank, have held the alleged stealing of the election from Mousavi to
be incontestable—so incontestable that evidence need not be marshaled
to prove it. But a recently released study conducted under the
auspices of the University of Maryland’s Program on International
Policy Attitudes demonstrates that opinion polls taken before and
after the June election—by experts from Tehran University and US-based
organizations—show that Ahmadinejad enjoyed majority support.

Last week, in a rare candid moment, Richard Haass, the president of
the Council on Foreign Relations and an advocate of regime change in
Iran, admitted to CNN that there was no proof Mousavi had won the
election or even that he was supported by more than 25 percent of
Iranians.

A February 15 New York Times article sheds light on the character of
the opposition and its crisis. The Green leadership’s attempts to
contain the protests so that they serve the objective of securing a
realignment in the policies and personnel of the Islamic Republic has
alienated many young oppositionists. Even more significantly, the
Times report points to the movement’s dependence on logistical and
political support from outside Iran.

The embrace of the Green movement by the Western media and governments
was long in the making. It was the result of a calculated attempt to
exploit fissures that had developed in the ruling elite of the Islamic
Republic under the weight of deepening social contradictions in Iran
and relentless imperialist pressure in the form of the US occupations
of Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which border Iran, and US-led
economic sanctions.

The calculation that the US could find ready partners within the
Iranian elite was founded in history. Under Rafsanjani and Khatami,
Iran had repeatedly sought to re-establish diplomatic relations with
Washington, only to be rebuffed by Democratic and Republican
administrations alike.

The last of these overtures, as documented in Trita Parsi’s book
Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the
United States, came shortly after the US’s March 2003 invasion of Iraq
and took the form of a “grand bargain.” Tehran reportedly offered not
only to assist the US in Iraq, but to cut off arms to Hezbollah, end
support for Hamas, and recognize Israel in all but name, in exchange
for the US lifting sanctions and providing Tehran with security
guarantees.

An Iranian émigré, Parsi was once an aide to Republican Congressman
Bob Ney, who acted as an intermediary in delivering the Iranian
government’s 2003 offer to the Bush administration.

Today Parsi is the president of the National Iranian American Council
(NIAC), a self-proclaimed representative of Iranian Americans and a
vocal proponent of the Green movement.

In a memo, titled “How Washington Can Really Help the Greens in Iran”
and co-written by Parsi and Rand Corporation analyst Alireza Nader,
the NIAC applauds the Obama administration for opting for targeted
sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and argues that
emphasizing military threats or reaching a quick deal on the nuclear
issue will damage US interests by undermining Iran’s bourgeois
opposition. “The green movement,” declares the memo, “will not and
cannot adjust its action plan to suit the US political timetable. But
if patience is granted—which includes avoiding a singular focus on the
nuclear issue at the expense of all other considerations— Washington
will access a far greater potential for change.”

Aware that in pursuit of the class interests of the Iranian
bourgeoisie, the Ahmadinejad-Khamanei regime is being forced by the
economic crisis and US-led sanctions to pursue increasingly right-wing
policies—including the elimination of subsidies and
privatization—sections of the Greens and their imperialist backers are
now hoping to exploit working class discontent.

Thus Mousavi has urged his followers to “become more integrated with
[the underprivileged] classes, and pursue their concerns and demands.”

Meanwhile, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operative and fellow of
the neo-conservative Foundation for Democracies think tank, enthuses
in a New York Times op-ed piece that Ahmadinejad’s increasingly
right-wing economic policy may enable the opposition to “draw into the
streets larger numbers of the mostazafan, ‘the oppressed poor,’ who
have been the popular bedrock of the regime since the 1979 revolution.”

No doubt there were well-meaning and sincere (though politically
naïve) young people who, out of opposition to the repressive Islamic
regime, became caught up in the Green movement. They should now draw
the requisite lessons.

Above all, the working class must not allow its opposition to the
regime to be subordinated to any section of the Iranian bourgeoisie.
Genuine democracy will be established only through the mobilization of
the working class and oppressed masses to secure their social
interests on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program.

Keith Jones

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/pers-f20.shtml

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