Iran Redux Or: Clarify Your Terminology, Please

Robert Fisk says that Ahmadinejad is in trouble.

I've waited a bit to get back into this mess in part because my initial reaction was too hastily posted. It's hard to offer up anything resembling solid analysis at this point and that was even more true at the time I posted. It's been described by a blogger I read quite often on livejournal that Andrew Sullivan and the Tweeters are functioning as little more than a police radio which we can all listen to and believe that we know what is happening while the information presented is - when it is credible - often hard to interpret.

But I believe Fisk to be correct to be frightened by the "absolute conviction" found on both sides of the crisis in Tehran; the supporters of Ahmadinejad and Khomeni display a reverent obedience to Iran's recent violence, while the opposition is boldly calling for rights and freedoms which they have never had under the Islamic Republic.

There's where the interesting part to all of this lies. Iran has always been a "managed" democracy with very little resembling the democratic principles found in other countries. Now, the students and the protestors are laying claim to rights and privileges which have always been presented to them as being available but were in reality illusions. The protestors are not simply demanding that the person whom they think has been rightly elected take his official position, but also are condemning the anti-democratic and authoritarian nature of the clerical system. This denunciation of their autocratic government is thus separate and ultimately non conditional to the demand that Musovai's "election" be made official through a recount process. Even if Mousavi were to be elected, the clerical system would still be solidly in place.

This is the only thing I am sure of then: that these individuals, these protestors, are being incorrectly described as "reformists" when they do not wish to reform, they wish to fundamentally change; they are espousing revolutionary ideas and should be called revolutionaries. Perhaps their ideas haven't been focused yet, no manifesto drawn up and declared, but the fact remains that the comparisons to the 1979 revolution are appropriate and telling.

We can say that at least. Oh, and we can also say that the conservative movement in our own country has yet again shown that they are completely incapable of seeing anything in nonpartisan terms. Their desire for Obama to come out in support of Mousavi's supporters is one that would be disastrously realized. It would be a gift to the hardliners, a confirmation of their belief that this unrest is an American-Zionist conspiracy to destroy Iran. As usual, Anonymous Liberal offers a salient insight into the hypocrisy of people who not too long ago wanted to bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.