Brian M Downing
Over the years since the 1979 revolution, Iran has seen several uprisings against the mullahs and generals. They are part of a long history of protests and democratic aspirations led by young urban dwellers that go back over a century. Previous triggers have been electoral fraud, shortages, and corruption. The present uprising was set off by the death, at the hands of the regime’s virtue police, of a young woman protesting laws on wearing hijabs imposed after Khomeini took power in 1979.
The turmoil spread to most major cities and to Kurdish and Baloch regions where resistance to Persian dominance has long simmered. It’s in its fortieth day, A period of global activism, especially involving women, has led to hope for change in the austere Islamic Republic. The issue will not be settled by urban protests alone.
Weakening repressive capacity
States aren’t overturned and sweeping change does not come by protests alone. There has to be weakness and defection in the state, especially in its repressive capacity. The Arab Spring showed that when rulers maintained support from repressive assets, they stayed in power. Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Egypt are cases in point. Where repressive capacity withered away, so did the state. Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen follow this pattern. Iranians know well that defections in the state were crucial to sending the shah packing and opening the way to regime change.
There are probably many in the officer corps and state who see the morality police as annoyances and nonessential to regime control. There are even reformist mullahs who have openly expressed that view. After all, neither China nor Russia, Tehran’s chief supporters now, have strict control over their populations without anything like hijab edicts. At present, however, the Iranian police, Basij paramilitary forces, and the IRGC seem loyal to the mullahs and generals. Repressive capacity is intact.
Opposition in parliament
The Iranian government has an elected branch, the Majles, which seats a fairly broad range of political beliefs, including liberal reformers. It even has a Jewish member. The Majles is a consultative body only and not a meaningful legislature.
Such bodies can, amid turmoil, assert themselves against a beleaguered government. Some have declared themselves to be the legitimate basis of government and brought down tyrants. Boris Yeltsin took a position with the Russian duma amid the faltering military coup of 1991 and the Soviet Union fell. The French Estates-General did the same as paralysis hit the Bourbon state in 1789. Heads soon rolled.
Tehran’s Majles, however, has thus far not asserted itself, let alone presented itself as the legitimate government. The will for change may be present but reformers likely sense that their moment has yet to arrive and that any challenge to the mullahs and generals would bring fearful retribution and perhaps elimination of the Majles altogether – and some in it. Neither the Estates-General nor the duma had that concern when their moments came.
Part two: Kurdish, Baloch, and Azeri separatism
©2022 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to fellow Hoya Susan Ganosellis.