The unrest in Iran

One thing that democracies have over autocracies is that these allow people to take out their steam, to freely express their pent-up feelings, to openly and most raucously vent against the incumbent regimes. As any Indian would know, there are always a million mutinies afoot against the powers that be, local, State, central et al. And once they have come, harangued to their hearts’ content against the real or presumed wrong-doers, they invariably return home.

Democracies may not offer instant solutions to myriad problems the people face – and they face countless problems alright – but they allow instant airing of dissent, protest, and anger. In sharp contrast, autocracies try and keep a tight lid over peoples’ feelings, suppress them with an iron fist and generally frown down upon any expression of dissent. It is why what is happening in Iran since the first protests broke out on December 28 has attracted global attention. Given the nodal position Iran occupies in the Middle East, and its sponsorship of militant insurrections in the region, and its nuclear ambitions, disturbingly the protests have since spread to a much larger swathe of the Shia-majority Islamic Republic.

The immediate cause might have been the high prices of bread and eggs but, since then, people are emboldened, highlighting several grievances. Young people are particularly aggrieved for want of work; others grouse against the rising price of petroleum products, still others about the lack of freedom and the growing interference of the religious police in their private lives. And when the economy is not doing well enough, and the failure of a couple of smaller banks cost tens of people their meager savings, it is natural to resent the rising costs of Iranian intervention in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc. to resist the Saudi-led efforts to establish their own Sunni writ in the region. Above all, the inordinately high allocation for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, who like the army in Pakistan, are a law unto themselves, is an eyesore for the common Iranians who want funds to be allocated for the improvement of their own socio-economic conditions.

The recent disclosure that the Revolutionary Guards account for over forty percent of the total budgetary expenditure, and the allocation in the latest budget was further raised, while that for social welfare slightly pared, has further fuelled the anti-regime fires. Though President Hassan Rouhani, a known moderate, himself has said that there is space for people to protest in a peaceful manner, others have hinted at the Saudi hand in fanning the country-wide protests. The former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been arrested for inciting unrest. Popular social media messaging and video services have been suspended. Yet, the protests are far from dying. Indeed, protesters are now targeting the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Most Iranians believe that the clergy and the Revolutionary Guards skim off the Iranian wealth, leaving little for the ordinary people. In 2015, when Iran undertook to cap its nuclear ambitions in exchange for the partial withdrawal of economic sanctions, it was believed that there would now be greater prosperity for the people. The Obama-curated deal was now in danger of being nixed by President Donald Trump. But, in the two years since the lifting of the sanctions, Iran has further embroiled in other peoples’ wars, resulting in the hemorrhaging of the state revenues. Paradoxically, the more Trump decries the ‘brutal repression’ in Iran, the less the chances of the Iranian Government buckling down under the protests. His silence will help the cause of the protesters who are probably together in seeing America as a common enemy.

After a fortnight of unrest, more than twenty people were dead, hundreds detained, but given the tensions within the ruling establishment, things are not very clear as yet. Rouhani is inclined to accommodate the protesters as far as possible while the powerful clergy led by Khamenei is pressing for a brutal crackdown. The Revolutionary Guards, who are a state-within-the-state, like the army in Pakistan, and as corrupt and nasty, too seek to suppress the protests. Unless wiser counsels prevail, the popular protests are most likely to be put down with sheer force – just as it was done back in 2009, which will be such a pity because Iran, unlike several other nations in the region, does maintain democratic pretences, with periodic elections for the president down to the local level governments. Iranian people in their day to day lives exercise far more freedoms than, say, they do in the chief Sunni theocracy, Saudi Arabia. Hopefully, a negotiated end to the unrest will be found soon.