Iran Feature: Facebook and A Resurgent Opposition? (Habibinia)

Journalist and researcher Omid Habibinia submitted this commentary to EA just before the start of Monday's opposition rallies on 25 Bahman:

Last Thursday evening, while many Iranians were following the news of the revolutionary reforms in Egypt and the dethroning of another dictator in the Middle East, security forces in Iran were breaking into the residence of students, political activists, and even family members of Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, to arrest them and blunt the call for demonstrations against the regime on Valentine's Day.

The revolutionary incidents in Tunisia and Egypt have astounded and stimulated the Iranians, who returned to their homes after a nine-month challenge against the regime just before the last Valentine's Day. Many asked themselves and others during the past weeks: "Why have Tunisians and Egyptians made it, but we did not?"

Many, including me, tried to find an answer. Almost everyone agreed that the reformist leaders prevented the revolutionary transformations from being fortified, after the actions which reached their climax on the day of Ashura of 27 December 2099 had terrified the Iranian regime with the possiblity of overthrow.

So many Iranians, imitating the Egyptian and Tunisians, have opened a Facebook page in order to spark a new street demonstration. This is an interesting and ironic contradiction: many Iranians believe that Tunisians and Egyptians found the idea of using Facebook for organising and informing each other from the Iranian protest movements of 2009, but I barely found any sign of this while chatting on Facebook with Egyptian and Tunisian revolutionaries.

The Facebook page for 25 Bahman now has almost 50,000 followers. I managed to speak to one of the directors of this page and told him that an unorganized demonstration which lacks any planning and common demands will not persist, a year since the movement seemingly led to stagnation and went underground, because Tunisia and Egypt are far different from Iran.

There is a risk that these continuous calls, if they do not produce a significant number of protestors, will increase the mood of hopelessness and pessimism amongst Iranian youth and therefore consolidate the power of the regime, which has been utilising any tools, such as massive executions, to suppress and intimidate during the past year.

However, the regime has already been terrified: Mehdi Karroubi, who is known by some as more reckless than Mousavi, was put under house arrest last week. The contacts between Mousavi and Karoubi and his family are highly restricted. The most important sign of the regime’s fear wis the dramatic decline in Internet speed and the disorder in connections. Many services such as the weblog template Wordpress --- in a country which has the 4th-largest population of weblog journalists --- are blocked. Access to Facebook and Twitter is already impossible from inside Iran, even through common proxies.

Some people have been sceptical that nothing will happen on 14 February, as this call, which has implicitly been supported by the reformists, will not attract the people who have been fed up with what they see as compromise and retreat.

However, when Mousavi and Karoubi submitted their request to the Ministry of Interior,some advisors of the leaders announced that the rally will definitely be held anyway. That invigorated the Facebook campaign: many who have been angered and sulking at the previous tactic of participating in the demonstration held by the Government have found an opportunity to call for demonstration.

Yet there are many factors and variables which make the revolutionary role of Facebook in Iran awkward. Facebook was first noticed in Iran in February 2008. Months before the June 2009 Presidential election, not only Facebook but also Twitter, Friendfeed, and even some reformist websites which had been filtered for years were made available, stunning everyone.

As the results of the election were released, it became obvious that this instant free access was a part of the show drawing in people and deceiving them to participate in a legitimation of the regime’s existence. Yet, although the regime got the best of Facebook to identify its opponents, it had no idea that this freedom was a double-edged sword, as it faced demonstrations and street hostilities.

After the bloody repression of the demonstration of 20 June 2009, in which there were reports of up to 50 people killed including Neda Agha Soltan, there were fewer daily protests and rallies were limited to special occasions. All this brought more experience and reflection, but it also brought the opportunity to the regime to mobilise all its forces.

Many people say protesters should have stayed in the streets the way Egyptians stayed in Tahrir Square, so that the challenge would have continued. They could have carried on 15 June 2009, when --- according to the Tehran Mayor --- about 3 million people had come to the streets. They could have encouraged the people to stay in the streets. Then the revolutionary transformations which have come in Egypt and Tunisia could have started in Iran. Yet this could have terrified the reformists, who had been occupied with bargaining with the existing hierarchy and would have been scared if they lost control of the situation amidst the threat of an overthrow of the regime.

Although there are no precise statistics on the number of Facebook users in Iran, it is estimated that about 700,000 people were active from February 2008 to June 2009. Many of these are still managing to log in, continuing to spread information and express their idea while keeping in touch with friends,especially those abroad.

In heated debates on Facebook, some still support Mousavi and Karroubi’s leadership for a more gradual reform, some are willing to count on the leadership of the mass movement and itscollective wisdom. Some see the need for a dramatic revolutionary transformation instead of the illusive pipe dreams in the reformists’ leadership, which ended in failure of the protest rallies in 2009.

Amidst those debates, 14 February will be a day on which it will be proven whether Facebook can once more succeed in playing a in organizing the protestors against the dictatorship.. The events in Tunisia and Egypt have opened a new door to Iranian youth, one from which they had been scared away by the reformists: Revolution.