Unravelling Tehran

Hooman Majd walks you through the complex matrix of Iranian politics.

When protesters occupied Tahrir Square in Cairo this year,and foreign governments were still hedging their bets on whether to defend Hosni Mubarak or not,various dates were being tossed in the air. They still are. Would 2011,a milestone for the Arab world,be akin to 1989,when regimes toppled like dominoes in eastern Europe? Would it be akin to 1979,when the Shah was deposed by a coalition of diverse strands of Iranian society,only for Ruhollah Khomeini to outwit the rest and effect the ayatollahs revolution and set off a reconfiguration of global alignments in the Middle East? Or would it be,in fact,more similar to 2009,when the streets of Irans main cities were taken over for protests against what was seen to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejads stolen election?

We know now how Egypt is turning out. But as protests sweep other part of the Middle East,including Iran,Hooman Majd would be likely to caution against drawing too many parallels between the Jasmine Revolution and the re-ignited Green Movement,so named because Ahmadinejads challenger,Mir Hossein Mousavis campaign adopted the colour with great effect. This book is,on publication,already somewhat behind the news,given not just the changed neighbourhood but also the reorientation of at least the West to old and trusted Arab friends. But in this account of the 2009 protests,Majds caution against over-simplifying still holds. The complexities of Iranian politics have beaten veteran Iran watchers,and it is useful to be walked through the maze with Majd especially now,with the leaders of that summer protests,Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi,once again under house arrest.

Majd uses his status as an outsider-insider an Iranian exile in New York,yet in touch with the minutiae of Iranian politics through his network of relatives,who include former president Seyed Mohammad Khatami,and his regular visits to the country to anticipate the questions of his international readers. The crux of his argument is that the Green Movement should be viewed as an Iranian civil rights movement,not a regime change of the sort visualised by outsiders. Irans protests should not,he argues,be clubbed with those in other countries: Iran suffered political fissures in 2009 precisely because the establishment and almost everyone in the opposition could be considered a part of the establishment had split so openly,not because dissidents had burst on the scene. Everyone on either side of the political spectrum,as least those inside Iran,had once been united in establishing the Islamic regime,and together they had led Irans quest for independence and an independent political system. The challengers of 2009 had not,he emphasises,disconnected from the revolution of 1979.

Irans president functions in interaction with various poles: the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei,successor to Ayatollah Khomeini,the Guardian Council which has a veto on who may stand for elections,the Assembly of Experts composed of Islamic scholars directly elected for an eight-year term,and through the protests of summer 2009 headed by Mousavi supporter Ayatollah Rafsanjani,which elects the Supreme Leader and monitor his performance,the Expediency Council whose advisory powers vary with the patronage it enjoys of the Supreme Leader and the Majles the Parliament. Then there are the clerics of Qom,who were divided in their loyalties during 2009.

Drawing on the events of 2009,and dramatically jumbling them up in a non-chronological way for good effect,Majd shows that there are enough cross-linkages amongst these players to avert a regime change of the sort many outside Iran had anticipated. In any case,he points out that the glue of Iranian pride is too strong: Iran is the only country in the Middle East to have been a multi-ethnic nation-state,with the same name in Farsi or Persian and with identifiable borders,for millennia. Foreigners are often impatient with mandatory nods to Irans civilisational depth in even the shortest analysis on Iran. Majd is not the first to point out that Persian nationalism,and a sense of the country having been wronged in the 20th century,informs how Iranian leaders present themselves to the people and to foreigners. But he does so by showing how Irans regime and the dissent within operate in this common matrix.