22.07.1999

Iran’s students demand democracy

A semblance of calm has returned to the streets of Iran’s cities after a week of violence, demonstration and counter-demonstration in the wake of the death of at least three student protestors.

The students were demanding the acceleration and increase of reforms started with the election of the ‘moderate’ president Mohammed Khatami in 1997. The protests, originally centred at Tehran University, were sparked by the banning of the liberal Salam newspaper and the introduction of new laws to further curb Iran’s press. The demonstrations were violently broken up by Islamic fundamentalist vigilante groups, supported by the police.

Yet this calm belies political crisis brewing at the top of society as well as below. Student leaders have called off further demonstrations - some for fear of provoking further attacks; some for fear that more unrest may force the hand of the ‘hardliners’ and undermine president Khatami. Yet there is a mood to press home their demands for reform.

While moderate student leaders aim to contain the protests and restrict themselves within the confines of the Islamic republic, others are espousing secularism and the need to overthrow the counterrevolutionary regime. Either way, a growing minority refuses to support one set of reactionary mullahs versus another.

It is clear that this democratic upsurge - the most important since the ayatollahs butchered the Iranian revolution of 1979-81 - goes much further than mere posturing in the lead-up to elections in February, as Liberal Democrat MEP Emma Nicholson suggests. In typical liberal fashion she has expressed her fear that the students might go ‘too far’. Her project is to reform the Islamic republic.

Needless to say, advocating consistent democracy is always to go ‘too far’ in Iran. Ministers and clerics are already baying for ‘rioters’ to face the death penalty. However, taking into account the blood-soaked history of the Islamic regime, so far the demonstrators have been treated relatively leniently, with Khatami expressing muted ‘understanding’ of their concerns. This is not just down to the students being the children of the elite, as no doubt many are. Division at the top of society is real, and it is this division which has allowed movement from below to find expression.

In the past few days, secret correspondence between the president and senior officers printed in the Iranian press shows the growing fault lines. According to the BBC, “In a letter to president Khatami, the military leaders say his reformist policies have led to chaos and they warn that their patience is running out.” Twenty-four senior officers signed the letter, including the commanders of Iran’s land, sea and air forces. Overall commander general Yahya Rahim Safavi was not a signatory. But his views are known to be equally hardline.

What is the basis of the split at the top? Crippled by war with Iraq and shunned by the west, the Iranian economy has only of late felt the reviving breath of trade with the United States and Europe, a development no doubt aided by the election of Khatami. However, moves to a more open society, both in terms of trade and politics, threaten the conservative and reactionary social base of the fundamentalists. The mercantile bazaar bourgeoisie, which dominates internal trade and credit, has a vested interest in a closed Iranian society. Its strong links with the mosque and a reliance on the limits of the domestic economy have been a pillar of the Islamic counterrevolution.            

The regime’s main support at the bottom of society has been from among the declassed urban poor. In origin this was the consequence of the depeasantisation of the peasants. However, more than 50% of Iran’s population was born under the ayatollahs. So the social dislocation that was exploited by the mullahs - with their promises of an anti-modern utopia - has given way to normalisation and therefore other possibilities.

Marcus Larsen