Living under the Boot

Dissenters. Some regimes arrest and torture you, a few arrest you with a couple of whacks to the gut or head, others arrest you and your entire family and send them for generations to come into a slave labor camp (yes, the latter is the warm and fuzzy world of North Korea)… might be a short confinement, years in hell or years in hell until an occasional amnesty or even a regime change. We’ve had our way with protests, setting some nasty precedents during protests during the Vietnam War for those old enough to remember.

The last time there were mass protests in Iran, accompanied by mass arrests, was 2009, just before the last presidential election that reinstalled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in that “top spot.” I use quotes, because the president is hardly “the man in charge,” and the elected legislature is hardly the last word on just about anything. The Ayatollahs, claiming direct communication with God, can reverse any decision they do not like or impose new rules regardless of legislative direction. Iran, after all, is a theocracy where the Word of God is an extra-legal mandate. It’s what happens when you push religious rules into government.

Ahmadinejad, seeming champion of Iran’s nuclear program that has generated massive economy-killing sanctions, is termed out. His followers are now locked in a power struggle with both traditional and reformist factions to establish who his successor will be, assuming the Ayatollahs even allow that office to continue at all. The strangest part of all of this is how pro-American Iran’s middle class has become, but they are powerless against the repressive Revolutionary Guards longing to arrest, beat and humiliate any with obvious pro-U.S. sentiments. With the Ayatollahs controlling the selection of qualified candidates for the election, you can bet that these pro-American sentiments will not rest with any acceptable coffice-seeker.

As Israel presses the United States to move military options to the fore, perhaps even willing to mount a preemptory strike on its own, to stop or at least delay Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon, tensions within Iran are at an all-time high. Will such a strike even matter? Will hordes of the pro-U.S. middle class die in the attack? Noting that Iranian officials seem to be present at every North Korean nuclear test, whether or not Iran’s nuclear facilities are attacked, many are concerned that Iran might simply buy finished nukes from Kim Jong-un’s regime, a nation that is rattling its nuclear saber directly at the United States.

And exactly what does the upcoming presidential election mean in this awkward mix? “With only three months to go in his second and last presidential term, [Ahmadinejad] has raised a series of controversies intended, experts say, to reshape his public image and secure the support of dissatisfied urban Iranians for his handpicked successor, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. It is all part of a power struggle ahead of the June election between Mr. Ahmadinejad’s faction and a coalition of traditionalists, including many Revolutionary Guards commanders and hard-line clerics.

“With the demise of the protest movement that sprang up after the last presidential election, in 2009, Mr. Ahmadinejad and his supporters have emerged in the unlikely role of the opposition. They are now fighting the traditionalists who, among other things, take a tougher line in negotiations with the West on Iran’s nuclear program and would like to abolish the presidency - a locus of opposition to their power.” New York Times, April 3^rd. Uh oh, not exactly the news we want to hear, and for many, the thought of Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad as a moderate reformist might be hard to swallow. However, relative to the clerics, he most certainly is.

When he leaves office and if his followers are not in power, Ahmadinejad faces the prospect of facing his own arrest and prosecution for cronyism and his opposition to the wishes of the more conservative elements in government. For example, as Iran officially backs the repressive Assad regime in Syria, Ahmadinejad has taken a very controversial stance in his political speeches: “The president has also taken to using the slogan ‘long live spring’ in his speeches, which some have interpreted as an allusion to the Arab Spring uprisings. ‘This way of thinking and talking about ‘Human Awakening’ is political mischief and dangerous,’ one newspaper wrote in an editorial.” NY Times.

In the longer term, the theocracy in Iran may not be sustainable, but in the meantime this extremist nation can wreak havoc internally and with the rest of the world. With its rather close ties to North Korea, the political winds seem to be blowing against what might be best for world peace and political stability.

I’m Peter Dekom, and these repressive regimes are profoundly dangerous to us all.