Teheran 2009 – Iran 1979 or Tiananmen Square 1989?

“It has given me back my voice. The amazing thing is that I didn’t know I had one, but now they can never force me to shut up again. Our Government has spilled our blood, that will never change, and we will never stop.”
- Hossein – an Iranian engineer quoted Sunday, in the online edition of the London times.

Watching protestors take to the streets in Tehran this week, I wondered if what we were witnessing was going to be Iran 1979 or Tiananmen Square 1989?

On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Kahamenei warned protestors that any future violence would be their responsibility. This signaled that the regime was ready to crack down. Mir Hossein Mousavi was a trusted confidant and member of the inner circle that staged the 1979 Iranian revolution. Would he defy his fellow leaders and break 30 years of friendship to support the protestors, or would he back down?

On Saturday Iran had its answer. Mousavi said he was prepared for martyrdom. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets and were met with violent suppression. At least 10 protestors were killed, hundreds were wounded and more were arrested. Today the BBC reports that Tehran is quiet but in shock. Mousavi issued a statement late today calling for the protests to continue to but asking for restraint on both sides.

The Mullahs are responding with old world tactics to a new world situation. In 1989 the Chinese were able to suppress the Democracy movement in Tiananmen Square because the protesters were geographically concentrated and communication with the rest of the country was cut off. It was easy for the Chinese government to control the situation, roll the tanks in, arrest, kill and disperse the protestors.

Iran is different than China was in 1989.

The current protests in Iran are nationwide. The Iranian Government has tried in vain to kill communication between the protestors. In the bad old days, all a dictator had to do was cut off communication via landline telephones and make statements on state run TV and radio to define the reality for the country.
No more.

Today Iranian protestors are heavily using new, hard to control methods of communications like Facebook, Twitter and SMS messages on cell phones to organize massive anti-government protests all over the country. Each person is their own reporter, using their camera phones to send images of the crackdown all around the world. The Iranian government won’t be able to deny their suppression, like China has done with the 1989 protests.

In this way Iran 2009 is similar to Iran 1979. The Shah was no more able to stop supporters of the Islamic revolution from passing cassettes of Ayatollah Kohmeni’s sermons from hand to hand, than the current Iranian government can stop tweets from phone to phone.

Jon Leyne a correspondent for the BBC writes there are other parallels to the 1979 Revolution.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8109101.stm). He sees striking similarities in not only size of the demonstrations, but also in the wide range of socio-economic classes in the streets.

Leyne writes:

“The demonstrators are very much the same mixture of educated, well-to-do north Tehraners and lower-middle class.
They are often more religious people who do not have a lot more in common with each other than a dislike of the way the government tells them how to live their lives, and a feeling that there is serious corruption and inefficiency at the top.

The big difference is that in 1979, the tough, heavily-bearded ultra-religious characters you used to see marching in the demonstrations are now on the other side.”

In 1979 when the street protests started few people thought the Shah would be gone in less than 10 weeks. Right now few people think the Iranian regime will fall. At this point the protestors are simply demanding a re-run of the presidential election while still supporting the fundamental structure of the government.

But the Mullahs are swimming against the tide of history. Unless their crackdown is accompanied by some real change, at some point the choked down rage the people feel will explode again. In 1997 Mohammad Khatami was elected president on a reformist platform. Ayatollah Ali Kahamenei and his allies stifled those reforms. The bitterness of that suppression is part of what is fueling today’s anger. If the government succeeds in putting down this challenge, that bitterness and anger will grow even stronger. It will tick in people’s hearts like a time-bomb ready to explode.

After crushing the protests in Tiananmen Square, China began reforming its economic system. These reforms opened opportunities for the average Chinese and remade the country into an economic powerhouse. These changes would not have happened without the Democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. But because of these reforms the government survives and the Tiananmen protests are memory not a rally cry.

If they survive this challenge the Mullahs would do well to lean that lesson. If not they will be swept away by history, like the Shah, the Czar, the Soviets and a long list of dictators who met challenge with hard reaction instead of true reform.