Iran Analysis: The Regime's Ultimate Challenge "We Will Kill You"

Sometimes a story doesn't take shape immediately. Sometimes words are put out for the public, their possible significance only emerged when they are repeated, reprinted, recycled. Sometimes the speaker may not even realise how "big" his declaration is going to be.

Sometimes, even when two people have their lives cut short for reasons far beyond their specific place in this world, the act is only fulfilled in days and weeks to come.

So it may prove with the hangings of Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour, two men whose arrest for alleged membership of a "monarchist" group took on its imposed meanings in the conflict which began two months later and is still ongoing. So it may prove with the speech of an Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a man whose long, confirmed membership within the Iranian regime reaches the point where he argues that Iranians could and should be put to death.

It may prove so for, twelve days before the anniversary of 22 Bahman (11 February), Jannati --- as not the speaker at Tehran's Friday Prayers but as the head of the Guardian Council, the body that supposedly gives legitimacy to Iran's elections --- saw not the ballot box but the coiled noose, the cocked trigger, the unsheathed blade and said, "Do it!":

God ordered the prophet Muhammad to brutally slay hypocrites and ill-intentioned people who stuck to their convictions. Koran insistently orders such deaths. May God not forgive anyone showing leniency toward the corrupt on earth.

Only weeks after the Presidential election in June, another Friday Prayers speaker, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, had held up the possibility of death for "rioters", albeit less dramatically than Jannati. The regime, however, did not opt for executions. It tried the security measures to disperse and even beat demonstrations out of existence. It tried the mass, loudly public trials of August. It tried hundreds, thousands of arrests in the night. It tried the expulsion, "filtering", detention of those who might provide information that the protest continued. It tried firings and termination of studies.

Still the protests continued. Even in the "lull" after 13 Aban (4 November), the university campuses maintained the show of resistance. Then, when the regime may have convinced itself that it was primarily the students who were troublemakers and they could be contained and separated from "good" Iranians, tens of thousands (how many tens of thousands?) who were not students came out on the streets of Tehran and other cities on Ashura (27 December). They demonstrated and, in some case when they were confronted, they pushed back the security forces who had tried to remove them from visibility for the past six months.

When the history of this conflict is written, Ashura may take its place --- alongside the march of millions of 15 June and the demonstration five days later which ended in more lives lost --- amongst the most symbolic moments. For if 15 June showed the possibility and 20 June the danger, Ashura revealed the endurance of the challenge to the regime. The regime --- frustrated, concerned, panicked --- initially responded by calling from the highest levels for "good" Iranians to demonstrate their loyalty. And even after tens of thousands (how many tens of thousands?) responded, the regime was possibly still frustrated, concerned, panicked.

It did so in the thought that this might not be enough. This Government, this Supreme Leader had to prevent the mantle of the 1979 Revolution from being wrested from its grip on 11 February.

So more, many more detentions during the demonstrations and during the night. More disruptions of communications. More finger-wagging and shaking of the head from the Supreme Leader. More, shriller declarations of the "foreign menace".

But this might not be enough. So on Thursday, less than two weeks before a public display which may or may not signal that this regime will never again be legitimate, its officials put to death two men. And even those two men had no connection with the post-election events, they were bound to it --- as they had been with their "confessions" during the Tehran trials of August --- by the pronouncement that nine others, some of whom were Ashura demonstrators, had been sentenced to the same fate.

So on Friday, an Ayatollah who has claimed leadership in this system since 1979, who is a staunch supporter not only of the "system" but of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the "head of the system", defined that legitimacy not by elections, freedoms, discussions, public and private compassions but by the shout:

"Do It!"

He does so, I think, without the full recognition of the challenge he has set, not to those whom he opposes but to those whom he is nominally defending. For now, to make the warning real, the regime must put to death a few representatives not only of the pre-election "threat to national security" but of the post-election resistance and even of the specific defiance on Ashura. It must act before 11 Bahman, hoping that it suppresses the opposition rather than supporting it with more martyrs, more symbols of injustice and abuse.

To make the warning real, it cannot come just from an Ayatollah Jannati. It must also come from the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, whom Jannati called out yesterday. And it must be endorsed by the Supreme Leader. Ayatollah Khamenei may wish to stand aside from this ultimate threat but this week he has faced his own challenge --- Mehdi Karroubi speaks, speaks again, clarifies, reiterates a different "Do It": get rid of this President and this illegitimacy that threatens to crumble not just a Government but an Islamic Republic.

For what Jannati set out --- not only to the Green movement, not only to Mssrs Mousavi, Karroubi, and Khatami, but also to his Government and Supreme Leader --- was this command, a command that defines how far this regime has advanced since June 2009:

To Assure Your Legitimacy, You Must Kill.

Comments

[Nova Imoet]

i agree about this post....
kil..kill.killl

[Megan]

Scott,

Paragraph 4 should be 22 Bahman and 11 Feb.