Christopher Hitchens at a speech in the Commonwealth Club in California recently observed that the underlining principle of the Islamic Republic – the concept of ‘velayat-e-faqih’ (or rule of the jurist) – is based on the idea that the people of Iran are the children of the regime. The original concept of the velayat was for orphans, children, the mentally ill or lost in society were to be looked after as wards of the state. “Khomeini decided that this velayat should be extended to everybody. Everyone in Iran is now considered to be a child with the paternal authority vested in the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader…[it is] the father who will never go away.”
Many Iranian youngsters are literally children of the revolution. After the death of over a million people during the slaughter of the Iran-Iraq war, the regime offered substantial state subsidies to mothers to have more children. Ironically demonstrating the incentivising power of capital, the mothers responded and Iran’s birthrate dramatically increased so much that now more than half of the population is under the age of 25.
This generation – what Hitchens calls the ‘baby boomerang’, is one that not only didn’t live through the events of 1979, but it also has no first hand experience of the brutal war against Saddam Hussein.
It is particularly significant as the Iran-Iraq war is one of the major ties that bind Ahmadinejad’s cronies and supporters – having fought together on the battlefields at Khorramshar and Ahvaz, they are prepared to use both force and martyrdom to defend the Islamic republic on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan. The president comes from a different generation to the clerics, but also a different generation to the current protesters.
This generation is growing up and rebelling against the very system that created it. Like the proverbial teenager they have slammed the bedroom door in its parent’s face, are growing their hair and are trying to be as different as humanly possible as the previous generation.
The power of parenthood in Iran is vested in the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader, the latter of which appoints the former, and neither of which are elected by the people. Iranian culture is fond of mirrors as the Golestan palace in Tehran exemplifies – and this parental paradox is reflected in the illusory nature of Iran’s ‘democracy’. This is a society where there are some freedoms – for instance women drivers and transsexual rights – but ultimately the parent has the final say. As we saw with the election, there is an appearance of democracy, but things are finally stitched up at the Guardian Council.
It is this kind of attitude that must have led the Iranian foreign ministry to draft the letter sent to many MPs last week. Aside from its rambling incoherent nature and its cheap looking nature, it contains some assertions only a delusional regime would put forward.
“Insinuating that the election was fraudulent or just a show election by some media and foreign officials is a sign of political intentions and is a kind of insult to the intelligence of the people of Iran and a kind of overt interference in the internal affairs of other countries”
“concerning the killing of Mrs. Neda Agha sultan…this pre-planned incident was only an amateur propaganda move designed for special propaganda purposes which are under further investigation.”
There is little attempt to address the real concerns of the international community or the Iranian people – it is more a case of “we know what really happened, just trust us.”
As I implied in my last column, Iran will eventually escape this infantilised democracy and mature into a fully fledged political culture – a political culture to match the immense literary and artistic culture of Persia. But it may not be soon. If one believes in historical comparisons, you could see the Iran-Iraq war, with its trenches, machine guns and mustard gas as the equivalent of World War One. If it took Germany over 30 years to emerge from its periods of conflict, and another 40 to unify, then this generation may have some time to wait.
In the meantime, those who wish to see change will have to play by the rules as they are. An enabling parent has emerged as a potential kingmaker for Mousavi – the centrist cleric Hashemi Rafsanjani. If he does succeed in anointing Mousavi it would be a particular irony given that Rafsanjani helped remove Mousavi as prime minister after their many heated arguments on whether to accept western aid for reconstruction after the Iran-Iraq War. Mousavi was against, as it happens, giving pay to the lie that the former ally of Khomeini is some kind of stooge of a foreign power.
Rafsanjani has the political clout to make this happen – and has the motivation from his bitter political battle with Ahmadinejad during the 2005 elections to spur him on. It would require a shift in power to the Expediency council which he controls, however, and which in Iran’s opaque and complex political structure is supposed to mediate in disputes between the parliament and the Guardian Council. One new tactic that the opposition is trying – and expect more in the future – is to call for a popular referendum overseen by the Expediency council. This is unlikely to happen, but it was enough to spook the Supreme Leader into warning that it could lead to the “collapse” of the ruling elite.
Rafsanjani’s open defiance of the election result in the presence of Mousavi at last Friday’s prayers was an act of political courage and rebellion. Aside from the unknown quantity that is the basiji, the key remaining protectors of the regime are the army and the revolutionary guard. With rumours of dissent in both, it may only be a matter of time before the offspring hit back.