Analysis of the Iranian Situation

Here is one of the best analyses of the Iranian situation. From it I've pulled out a few tidbits:

What we can see in Iran today are two simultaneous struggles, one from below (people with legitimate grievances against their government), and one up above (a power struggle between factions).

Although many had hoped that the post-electoral struggle in Iran would be a one act play, this one seems more likely to be headed into a saga that is four or five acts long. Like many previous social movements throughout history, this has turned from a hundred yard dash into a marathon.

The dynamics of this struggle are also very different than those that have occurred in other countries. The Iranian system is kind of “a state within a state.” There is an elected part of the government – the president and parliament – but they are answerable and subject to a Supreme Leader and the various bodies of Islamic clergy that choose him and that, on paper at least, serve as a check and balance to his powers.

That dual state apparatus, although designed to maintain those in power, has caused the regime of Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad – very much joined at the hip - the problem of having to defend itself on two fronts at once. If it loses control of only one of those institutions, it loses everything.

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About ten years ago, a deep split emerged in the high clergy that, under the Iranian Constitution, has the final say over all matters and is above the elected government in the hierarchy of state. About half of those theocratic leaders came to the view that the theocratic system is not desirable, that involving itself so heavily in political institutions was making them dirty (or defiled). Although that sentiment is heavy in Qom, the religious seat of power, the objective conditions have not appeared – until now – to provoke action toward reform.

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There are unconfirmed reports today that a national strike is underway already, including by Iran state television which has reported that today, Tuesday, thirty percent of workers in the country have not shown up on the job.

If state media is admitting 30 percent, it is a safe bet that adherence to the strike is larger than that. It would also be very impressive because the government has warned that any citizen that participates in a strike will be fired from his and her job, or lose his or her space in the public markets. Thirty percent compliance on what is only the first day a strike would also be heartening for the resistance because some sectors – specifically a call by the Grand Ayatollah and spiritual elder Montazeri for three days of mourning beginning tomorrow, Wednesday, have not kicked in yet.

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The regime is thus not only defending itself on two major fronts: against the citizens in the streets and the dissident clergy above. It must also be acting around the clock to keep any single one of those “autonomous networks” from acting in a unified manner.

The regime is thus spread very thin as it is being nipped at from so many directions at once. The longer this dynamic continues, the less chance the regime has to remain in control. It’s finite resources cannot indefinitely defend on all those fronts at once.

If past civil resistance struggles across the planet under authoritarian regimes are prologue, once the street demonstrations calm down the regime will likely set about arresting (or assassinating) every movement leader it can find. Tyrants usually look to “decapitate the leadership,” perhaps quite literally under the Iranian system. The movement, thus, has to find a way to decentralize if it is going to prevail.

A prolonged or indefinite General Strike would be very difficult in any land, but particularly in a country like Iran with 40 percent unemployment: the well from which to draw “replacement workers” (read: scabs) is very deep.

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Another interesting dynamic is that those in charge of the regime lived through and were active in the 1978-79 revolution (as were those like Rafsanjani and Mousavi who are engaged in the power struggle up above against the regime). The moves made so far by the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime smack of a certain paranoia that 1979 could repeat itself, and seem designed to head it off at the pass. An example of that is how the families of the martyrs created over the past week – including that of the young woman named Neda who was assassinated by Basiji sniper fire and become a global cause celebre – have been ordered by state forces not to hold public funerals for their fallen sons and daughters (in 78-79, the funerals of martyrs became the loci of protest marches).

Likewise, the Mousavi electoral opposition, as well as other key sectors like students and labor, have very much echoed the slogans and tactics of 1978: “Allah O Akbar” and “Marg Bar Dictator” (“God is Great” and “Death to the Dictator” being the renovated slogans of that era).

But here’s where it gets interesting: about 75 percent of the Iranian citizenry today was born after 1979. While the elders of the resistance have the experience of having lived through and won a revolution, and their experience is very valuable to the opposition, the wild card in this thing is the young people. This is especially true when it comes to communications systems – Internet, cell phones, etcetera – in which the side that has the youth has the capacity to remain one step ahead of the regime in the speed at which it communicates among its ranks and to the rest of the Iranian population and to the world. (Just as most aging folks need a teenager to figure out how to work the remote on the DVD player, all revolutionaries need them to do the same on a societal scale.)

It is evident that the youth of Iran are overwhelmingly in favor of change and if one had to set Vegas odds on whether the regime can prevail, the odds would be stacked against it in large part because the nation’s youth have had it and are energized to sustain the “five act play,” if necessary, to win control of their lives and country.

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According to Gooya citing Rava News, the people of Iranian Kurdistan have begun a strike in support of the people's movement for freedom.

In response to calls for a one-day strike in Kurdistan by human rights organizations, student groups, unions, and political associations, today, Tuesday, the people of Kurdistan, in support of the people of Iran, have not gone to work.

The reporter of Rava News from Saghez, the second largest city of Kurdistan, reports that despite government warnings, 90% of the shops in the bazaar and other public places are closed, and there are plans for a calm civil protest in one of the city's main squares.