Demonstrations have continued in Tehran, this time to commemorate the 1999 student protests at Tehran University. Instead of large demos, smaller brushfire protests took place all over the city on Thursday. The reaction of the authorities has been to send squads of police and paramilitary Bhasij into the streets to try to club and teargas the protesters into submission.
Why have the authorities chosen to avoid using overwhelming force? There have already been about 20 deaths since the election, but not nearly enough force has been applied to quell protests of this magnitude. The fact that the protests keep breaking out and morphing must be worrying for the authorities. There are several possible reasons for this restraint by the regime. The lessons of the revolution and the 1999 demonstrations have been learned; that killing stimulates rather than suppresses protest, that is, if less than overwhelming force is applied, but this also begs an important question: why isn’t it being applied?
In any use of force there is always a danger of escalation, and if this were to happen, the government might not be able to rely solely on the Bhasij thugs to carry out the task of suppression. It might be necessary also to bring in the Revolutionary Guards, the nation’s main armed force.
However, while the Guards are under the control of the hardline leadership, the rank and file are, from the regime’s point-of-view, less reliable. Judging from the testimony of Guards officers who have spoken out, it is touch-and-go as to whether the troops would be willing to fire on the demonstrators if ordered to do so. The Guard itself is split between reformers and hardliners
Since the protests broke out in June old splits have widened and new ones have begun to develope within the ruling circles. According to Al Arabiya and sources in Iran, the powerful Assembly of Experts, which has authority over the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei himself, is split between hardliners and reformers, with its head Ayatollah Rafsanjani gaining ground against the supporters of Khamanei and Ahmadinejad.
None of this, however, could have taken place without the mass protests and demonstrations both inside and outside of Iran, and indeed, the protests are the cause of these changes. That is the main reason why it is important to keep the international support for the people of Iran going. The less legitimacy the regime has, the quicker it is likely to unravel.