Iran, the Beautiful

I said a few entries ago that I was following the Iranian election with considerable bemusement. After the events of this weekend, it's safe to say that I'm now following post-election events in Iran with considerable captivation. Hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets, risking their lives to dispute a presidential election that looks, smells, and tastes like a fraud. (We Americans know an electoral fraud when we see one.) In all the years since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, I never believed that there were so many Iranians who were so disaffected. First, it should be said that notwithstanding everything that's happening there right now, Iran is a democracy, arguably the only democracy in the Middle East besides Israel. People get to vote for their leaders, though in this case their choices for president were one of 4 men handpicked by Ayatollah Khamenei. They also have the freedom to assemble and voice their protest against the government, though there are limits to that right, as we're seeing before our eyes. There's a Constitution and a Parliament, both of which must adhere to Sharia, or Islamic law.

Is Iran a perfect democracy? Of course not. Khamenei, or whoever occupies the position of the "Supreme Leader," controls the security apparatus and the armed forces, and has the final say on the candidates who run for office. Women in Iran are still second-class citizens when it comes to politics, education, and employment. Many of the freedoms we know in the U.S. don't exist in Iran. But let's give credit where credit is due. Iran is a credible Islamic democracy, with Islamic rules and limits. The fair comparison is not to the U.S. or Western Europe. The fair comparison is to Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, where there are no elections, even sham ones, and where royal families and political elites retain power in perpetuity and rule with an iron fist.

For all of its warts, Iran is a sophisticated, though evolving, democracy. This weekend we saw its limits and how far it needs to go. We saw police in Darth Vader riot gear, looking every bit as ominous as the movie character they resembled, cracking down on protesters, who themselves were becoming increasingly impassioned. Jittery cell phone videocams recorded screams, tear gas, fires, people running away, people shot, people lying on the ground bleeding. A young Iranian woman, "Neda," who'd been marching peacefully with her father, was shot and died before our eyes. Her final moments were recorded and posted on YouTube: blood trickling out of both sides of her mouth, her blank eyes staring at the sky. It was graphic and shocking to see. This young, anonymous woman achieved a tragic fame in death that she never could have dreamed of in life. Much like the students who were killed at Kent State, Neda was a casualty of political anger and spiraling violence. While the names of the Kent State students are long forgotten, YouTube has ensured that Neda's never will be.

What's happening in Iran is truly inspirational. People literally dying for their vote in their own country. People who know that they are taking their lives into their own hands when they hit the streets decked in green. The Iranian police and paramilitary squads have to be shocked at the size and ferocity of the crowds they are seeing. But the tide hasn't stopped. To protesting Iranians, their cause is worth the risk of death.

America used to be that way. Americans used to protest things, stand up for what's right, stand up for fairness, justice, and the American way. And we used to do it en masse, not with a trickle of hippies in Birkenstocks and tie-dyes, but with a FLOOD of people of every stripe, color, and creed. The March on Washington. The Vietnam War protests. The 1968 Democratic Convention. Kent State. But that was all in 1960s, and early 70s. We don't do that kind of thing anymore. Certainly not over an election. I mean, fuck, the 2000 election stolen by Bush was grounds for a sizable protest with some yelling and "hell no" chants, wasn't it? Do you remember one? I don't. The 2000 election was as fraudulent as the 2009 election in Iran, but when it was finally over, and Bush took power, you heard nary a whimper out of most Americans. Okay, maybe at cocktail parties and on some news shows, but on the street? NOTHING. It all blew over by Christmas. Americans take to the streets over one of THEIR elections? You must be joking. There's football to watch! Thanksgiving turkey to eat!

Oh, I find it hilarious how outraged our Senators are that one man, Ayatollah Khamenei, the "Supreme Leader" of Iran, gets to decide the result of this election. In 2000, nine people (actually five) on the United States "Supreme Court" decided that Florida should have no recount, effectively handing the election to Bush. In Iran, the judge of last resort is Khamenei. Here it's a partisan majority in the Supreme Court. Really, how different are they? Maybe Gore should have fought the 2000 result like Moussavi is doing. Maybe he should have had his own Green Revolution. Too late, sick fate.

Historical digression: It bears mentioning that Iran had a more secular democracy once. A democracy without Islamic law and clerics and Assahole-ah Ayatollahs. In 1951, the Iranian Parliament selected Mohammed Mosaddeq as Prime Minister. MM was a normal dude, he wasn't a cleric or anything like that. The problem with MM was that he wanted to nationalize Iran's oil, you know, so the IRANIAN PEOPLE could benefit from their own natural resources. Britain didn't like that because well, see, they wanted Iran's oil to benefit the BRITISH PEOPLE. So in 1953, Winston Churchill convinced President Eisenhower that MM was going all Commie on us. Eisenhower didn't like Commies. No one likes Commies. But everyone does love oil. Iranian crude. Black gold. Working together, the British and American intelligence services effected a coup d'etat and overthrew poor Mosaddeq. Code name: Operation Ajax. I shit you not. They literally "cleaned things up." Out went the bad Commie democrat and in his place, UK/US installed an old reliable monarch, Reza Shah. Reza and his son, who took power after his death, were a 20th Century versions of the Saudi royal family. They ruled Iran with an iron fist while ensuring the free, non-nationalized flow of Iranian oil to Britain and the United States. Just say "no" to nationalization!!! Unless of course American banks and insurance companies are failing, then say YES!!!!

The point of this brief history lesson is that things blew up in 1979 when Iranians took their country back, deposed the Shah, and installed an Islamic theocracy. One has to wonder if Britain and the U.S. had left well enough alone in 1953, let Mosaddeq stay in power and allowed Iran to evolve as a secular democracy, whether we'd ever have seen self-righteous pricks like the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Ayatollah Khamenei running things 30 and 50 years later. I think not. But short-sighted American foreign policy often leads to this kind of blowback. See Exhibit B: Mujihadeen, American support in Afghanistan, 1979-1990. Today, Iran seems to have strayed from its revolutionary ideals. That's the problem with revolutionaries: once they take power, they get so addicted to it that they come to resemble the very autocrats they overthrew in the first place. Now the Iranian religious police and secret service are as thuggish as ones the Shah used to use to retain his power. But, history repeating itself the way it does, young Iranians, who make up the vast majority of the population in that country, are chafing under Islamic law and absurdly conservative rules that require women to wear the hijab and treat them as second class citizens (not good odds when women make up 65% of the Iranian population).

Young Iran wants change. It wants freedom. It wants better relations with the West. And they're willing to die to get it. The other half of Iran? The half that voted for Ahmadenijad? It likes things the way they are and thinks Mahmoud and Khamenei are doing a wonderful job standing up to the West and keeping Iran in line with its Islamic ideals. So there's a political split in Iran, you might say it's a red-state-versus-blue-state divide.

Sound like any place you know?