Iran's Future: "In Time Things Will Change" (Tehran Bureau)

Iran’s Future: Interpreting “The Lord of the Rings” (Time)
The Iran Crisis (Day 15): What to Watch For Today
The Latest from Iran (25 June): The Sounds of Silence
Latest Video: Resistance and Violence (24 June)

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Tehran Bureau has been exemplary during this crisis in providing both the best possible information and cutting-edge analysis. On Thursday, it went further, writing both a eulogy for the immediate protests and a call of hope for the political movement of the future.

A View from the Frontline

Last week, a group of friends and I organized a medical team to help the wounded and injured in the streets. As we sewed up gashes and patched up wounds on the beautiful battered faces of our dear Iranians, we kept asking ourselves, “What have they become? Have they no regard for the life for a fellow human being? For the life of a fellow countryman? For the life of a neighbor? For the life of a cousin? For the life of a brother? For the life of a sister?”

It wasn’t long before Basij militiamen took away our identity cards. After reporting us to the university, I was called in by a disciplinary committee and reprimanded. I was told I had put my future career and even my life in jeopardy. I was told to think about the consequences of my actions.

As I left the committee members, the events of the past two weeks fell into place:

The government had a plan. They thought their plan was perfect. They had devised a perfect fraud in which regardless of how people voted, only one name would emerge as the winner: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It was to be the start of an era of unopposed rule.

By creating the appearance of a free and open atmosphere, by creating hope of change, people would turnout in high numbers. A high turnout at the ballot boxes would give them an aura of legitimacy in the eyes of the world. It would give Ahmadinejad a mandate.

But they made a fatal miscalculation; they underestimated the people.

When the results were announced, nobody in their right mind believed them. Even the most optimistic of Ahmadinejad supporters didn’t believe he could win by such a margin.

This prompted widespread unrest. For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic the ruling establishment had to contend with masses in the streets. These masses had not been dragged there by intimidation or by promise of a reward. For the first time the masses were not chanting pro-government slogans.

This was something entirely new; it was a nation rising up in defiance of all the tricks the government has been pulling over the years.

Despite their miscalculation, the supreme leader and the revolutionary guard elites were not ready to make any concessions; they knew too well. Even a single step back would have been a starting point from where things would cascade down to the eventual breakdown of their perfect autocracy.

So they took a firm stand against the very people who had brought them to power 30 years ago. History will be the judge but I believe that this was their second and most fatal miscalculation. You can never put out a fire by beating it, the flames may wane but underneath the ashes will go on burning. Wheels have been set in motion. A vast movement has started to take place. In time, the tide will turn.

In February 1979, during the time of the revolution, the army chiefs decided to prevent bloodshed and a civil war, so they refused to crack down on the demonstrators. They were thanked for this by swift executions that took place as soon as the revolutionaries came to power.

Sepah, or the Revolutionary Guard, is apparently determined not to go down the same path.

The decision of the current government to brutally crack down on the protesters and demonstrators led to the massacre of June 20, 2009, a day that will go down in history as the Black Saturday of the Islamic Republic. Thirty years ago, 17 Shahrivar 1357 [September 8, 1978], the Pahlavi Regime made the same fatal mistake. That Black Friday was the turning point from which the Pahlavi Regime never recovered.

We had hoped for a swift and decisive victory, first in the election and then through our defiance, but our high hopes were crushed with bullets, batons and tear gas. Now the mood is that of defeat, anguish and despair.

Fear has crept in and taken hold. Everybody now speaks in whispers. We are depressed and hopeless. Perhaps the main reason everyone feels so down is that before the election we had such high hopes. We flew too high and then fell down or rather were brought down by Basij and anti-riot police.

This struggle has had its toll on us all. I have never seen so many people grieving. This is a social malaise. At the personal level, each of us still feels robbed of our vote, our freedom, our friends, our brothers and our sisters.

We are disillusioned, battered and betrayed. Many are talking about leaving the country. Many young souls are looking for the first exit. Emigration perhaps. A mass exodus may be under way.

In the past few days, I have been feeling down and depressed. I had a sense that all was lost, and the frequent rains, which are extremely unusual for this time of year, added to the sense of melancholy overcoming me. My uncle, who experienced the revolution, told me however, “Evolution takes time. This was just a start; in time things will change.”

I hope so.

Politics and power are dirty things, much more so than depicted by Romain Gary in “L’Homme a la colombe.” Even so, the protagonist, also a young soul, emerges victorious. We are sacrificing ourselves to make a statement, which the corrupt politicians ignore and the mass media manipulates. But people, generation after generation, pass this on from heart to heart as a slogan for integrity, bravery and freedom.

Maybe this will be our legacy. Maybe years from now, we will recount the stories of these days to the generation after us as the turning point that made all the difference, if not in our lives, perhaps at least in theirs.

Iran's Future: Interpreting "The Lord of the Rings"

Iran’s Future: “In Time Things Will Change” (Tehran Bureau)
The Iran Crisis (Day 15): What to Watch For Today
The Latest from Iran (25 June): The Sounds of Silence
Latest Video: Resistance and Violence (24 June)

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In the last two weeks, there have been a series of high-profile films on Iranian state television; some have interpreted the surge as a reward offered by the authorities to stay off the streets. Those screenings, however, may have had an unexpected side effect. The airing of The Lord of the Rings trilogy led one Tehran viewer to re-interpret the film, not only for Iran's present but for its future.

Watching The Lord of the Rings in Tehran

In normal times, Iranian television usually treats its viewers to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week. But these are not normal times, so it's been two or three such movies a day. It's part of the push to keep people at home and off the streets, to keep us busy, to get us out of the regime's hair. The message is "Don't worry, be happy." Channel Two is putting on a Lord of the Rings marathon as part of the government's efforts to restore peace.

Lots of people, adults and kids, are watching in the room with me. On the screen, Gandalf the Grey returns to the Fellowship as Gandalf the White. He casts a blinding white light, his face hidden behind a halo. Someone blurts out, "Imam zaman e?!" (Is it the Imam?!) It is a reference, of course, to the white-bearded Ayatullah Khomeini, who is respectfully called Imam Khomeini. But "Imam" is at the same time a title of the Mahdi, a messianic figure that Muslims believe will come to save true believers from powerful evildoers at the time of the apocalypse. Isn't that our predicament?

I wonder which official picked this film, starting to suspect, even hope, that there is a subversive soul manning the controls at seda va sima, central broadcasting. It is way too easy to find political meaning in the film, to draw comparisons to what is happening in real life. There are themes that seem to allude to Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the candidate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims to have defeated: the unwanted quest and the risking of life in pursuit of an unanticipated destiny. Could he be Boromir, the imperfect warrior who is heroic at the end, dying to defend humanity? Didn't Mousavi talk about being ready for martyrdom?

And listen: there is the sly reference to Ahmadinejad. Iranian films are dubbed very expertly. So listen to the Farsi word they use for hobbit and dwarf: kootoole, little person. Kootoole, of course, was and is the term used in many of the chants out on the street against the diminutive President.

In the eye of the beholder in Tehran, the movie is transformed into an Iranian epic. When Gandalf's white steed strides into the frame, local viewers see Rakhsh, the mythical horse of the Rostam, the great champion of the Shahnameh, the thousand-year-old national epic. "Bah, bah ... Rakhsh! Rakhsham amad!" someone says in awe.

At the moment, the ancient Treebeard bears Pippin through the forest, and the hobbit asks, "And whose side are you on?" Those of us watching already know the answer: Mousavi! Treebeard is decked in green, after all.

That's as much as we can see of an opposition viewpoint on TV. The news has a droning sameness, the official message being "politics is a nasty business, but now it's over." At least nothing is really being hidden anymore. Except for that first night, Saturday June 20, the broadcasts have not shied away from the violence. But they've found a way to turn it inside out, make it about the protesters and not what has happened. When they want to make a point, they lay it on, 10 minutes, sometimes close to 15. As a friend says, "This is not news. It's interpretation."

TV reporters interview regular folk on the streets and in the parks for very much the same sound bites. Khastekonande, says one person, describing the protests as "getting old." Says another: "I'm a businessman. For my business to succeed, I need for there to be calm." "We just wanna make some bread, take care of our lives and our business." "The ones who are rioting aren't of the people. I don't think that they're part of the people." "It's been several days that I haven't been able to bring my son and daughter to the park because of the violence." And so on.

And so we're glued to the trilogy. We are riveted. A child in the room loudly predicts that Lord of the Rings will put an end to the nightly shouts, that people will not take to the rooftops and windows because this film will keep them occupied. Besides, there is a worrisome rumor going around that the Basij are marking the doorways of those households that continue to call out "Allah Akbar!" at night, a reverse Passover.

The child goes on to report that the kids on his school "service" (the long Toyota vans that act as school buses for Tehran's students) have been chanting, "Pas rai e ma koojast?! Pas rai e ma koojast?!" (Then where is our vote?! Then where is our vote?!) I ask what the driver is doing while all this goes on and the kid tells me that the driver honks along. Honk honk-honk-honk! Pas rai e ma koojast?! Honk honk-honk-honk!

But the child is wrong about the evening shouts. Suddenly they begin, as a low roll from the park. Then they quickly build upward. "Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!" No way. We rush to the window. They have continued night after night, beginning at 10 and continuing for 30 minutes. Each time I've lost faith, I've been wrong. Iranians are proving to be a sturdier lot than I have given them credit for, much mightier even than the formidable kootoole who stand in their way.

And so we see political meaning even in the notice that one part of the trilogy is ending, asking us to be ready for the next. In edame dare: This is to be continued. The phrase has become our hesitant slogan, our words of reassurance. As does this conversation, translated from Farsi, from the movie: "I wish the ring had never come to me ... I wish that none of this had happened." "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." In edame dare. This will be continued. People are not going to let up so easily.

The Latest from Iran (25 June): The Sounds of Silence

The Iran Crisis (Day 14): What To Watch For Today

NEW Iran: A Tale of Two Twitterers
NEW Iran: A List of Those Killed and Detained (12-23 June)
NEW Iran: An Iranian Blogger on “The Beginning of the End”
The Latest from Iran (24 June): Afternoon Violence
Latest Video: Resistance and Violence (24 June)

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2115 GMT: A slow evening, probably the slowest since the start of the crisis. There are still reports of "God is Great" from the Tehran rooftops but no evidence of significant public or private shifts.

Some activists are talking of a mass release of green balloons at 1 p.m. local time on Friday, which would be soon after the Supreme Leader has led the prayer service at Tehran University. The Iranian Government, however, continues to throw bureaucracy at the opposition; the Ministry of Interior has informed Mir Hossein Mousavi that a permit for a march will only be issued if one week's notice, in person, is given.

2000 GMT: The BBC has posted the video of its interview with the doctor who tried to save the life of Neda Agha Soltan.

1755 GMT: Presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei, who apparently had switched sides in the battle with the withdrawal of his complaint over vote fraud, has tacked back today. He has said that the withdrawal of his petition to the Guardian Council is not a withdrawal of people's concerns about the Iranian system. He will pursue the issue of the system's cruelty to people until he "gets results".

1735 GMT: Self-proclaimed geopolitical wizard Thomas Barnett, who conjured an "arc of instability" to help rationalise the 2003 war in Iraq, comes out with this defense of "the devil you know" today: "Ahmadinejad, with his record — again, in Nixon-esque fashion — for doggedly hating the regime's avowed enemies (Israel and America), could likewise employ a Nixonian reversal under the right conditions."

So let me get this straight: instead of working with the Presidential candidate (Mousavi) who said just before the election that he thought the Iranian rhetoric on Israel had been too harsh and that he welcomed international negotiations over any Iranian consideration of a nuclear weapons programme, Barnett prefers that the US work with a President (Ahmadinejad) who has been unremittingly hostile on Israel, who has frustrated his own diplomats, and who has put forth the notion of "Western interference" to deal with issues over his re-election? Idiot.

Sorry, that is inappropriate.

Amoral idiot.

1725 GMT: Report that large number of anti-riot police and paramilitary Basiji are preventing people from stopping at the grave of Neda Agha Soltan.

1720 GMT: Correction: contrary to earlier report (1410 GMT), Seyed Alireza Beheshti, editor-in-chief of pro-Mousavi newspaper Kamaleh, has not been released from detention.

1635 GMT: Who Killed Neda? Javan newspaper, associated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard, has declared that the expelled BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, hired a "member of the rabble" to shoot Neda Agha Soltan.

1615 GMT: Hezbollah towing the line. Agence France Press reports, "Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Thursday accused the West of fomenting protests in Iran over this month's presidential election but added that it had no worries about the stability of its main foreign backer."

1525 GMT: We've received reliable information that prominent reformist politicians such as Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a spokesperson for the Khatami Government, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, Deputy Interior Minister under Khatami, are under mounting pressure "to sign confessions and to appear on state controlled TV programs confessing to spectacular conspiracies against the national interests of Iran, in collaboration with foreign governments". Ramezanzadeh's wife yesterday conveyed her husband's message to the public to disregard any televised confessions that may be extracted from him or other leaders of reform in Iran.

1410 GMT: Report that Seyed Alireza Beheshti, the editor-in-chief of the pro-Mousavi newspaper Kalameh Sabz and the son of the late Ayatollah Beheshti (a key figure in the 1979 Revolution), has been released from detention. Also reported that 66 of the 70 faculty detained after their meeting with Mir Hossein Mousavi yesterday have been freed.

1330 GMT: Reports continue of clashes at Enqelab Square, with protesters setting a bus on fire and trying to push back riot police. Claims that tear gas has been used.

1215 GMT: Some demonstrators have tried to reach the site for today's protest, Vali-e Asr Street at Enqelab Square, but Iranian security forces are trying to block any assembly. Army helicopters are flying overhead.

1145 GMT: Fifteen minutes before today's demonstration was supposed to begin. Both CNN and Al Jazeera are now featuring the statement of Mehdi Karroubi's Etemad Melli Party calling off the memorial march: "Despite all the efforts exerted by the sheikh of reforms [Karroubi] to prepare a site for the mourning ceremony, the ceremony will not take place on Thursday."

1130 GMT: News services are picking up on the latest statement of Mir Hossein Mousavi, posted on his website. He calls on supporters to continue demonstrating but to show restraint. He blames those who rigged the election for the violence and bloodshed. Perhaps most significantly, in looking for clues to future political manoeuvres, Mousavi says his access to others is "highly restricted" and he is under pressure to abandon his demand for an annulment of the election.

1100 GMT: The Effects of the Crisis. Iran's position in Afghanistan may be one of the casualties of the current conflict. CNN's Atia Abawi reports, "Drove by a big poster of Neda in Kabul, across from Iranian Embassy. Pic[ture] of her death and Afghan TV crews interviewing people. Poster of Neda was larger than most presidential campaign posters in the city."

0950 GMT: Tantalising (unconfirmed) story of the morning: "Ali Larijani was threatened [with] impeachment by Ahmadinejad supporters in parliament. Hoseinian,Tehrani, and Resai threatened Larijani [with] censure. Previously Larijani said that its not fair the GC [Guardian Council] supports a candidate [Ahmadinejad]."

0830 GMT: The story, which we noted yesterday, that 70 faculty members were detained after meeting Presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi is now circulating in the mainstream press.

0825 GMT: Ayatollah Montazeri, the one-time successor to Ayatollah Khomeini, has sent a fax to Agence France Presse, warning, "If Iranians cannot talk about their legitimate rights at peaceful gatherings and are instead suppressed, complexities will build up which could possibly uproot the foundations of the government, no matter how powerful." He urged the Iranian Government to set up an "impartial" committee with full power to find a solution to the election crisis.

0815 GMT: He Speaks. Via Fars News Agency, President Ahmadinejad has put himself back in the political arena, blasting Barack Obama for interference in Iranian affairs.

0700 GMT: On the BBC' flagship radio programme, Today, Jeremy Bowen has focused on the news --- which we noted yesterday --- that more than 180 of the 290 members of Parliament invited to President Ahmadinejad's "victory party" did not attend.

0600 GMT: A message on Presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi's website clarifies the postponement of today's march (see 0500 GMT). A spokesman says the memorial to those killed has been delayed by a week.

Iran: New Technology, New Protest, New System?

The Latest from Iran (24 June): Peering Through the Clouds
LATEST Video: The “Neda” Protests (20-23 June)
Twittering Iran: What the “New Media” Means for Politics, Protest, and Democracy

Dr Colette Mazzucelli, who has written for our partner website Libertas, joins Enduring America to offer her thoughts on the possibilities and challenges of new technology in the current political crisis in Iran:

The aftermath of the Islamic Republic’s national elections are a testament to the will of a people to protest in unprecedented ways against the results of the June 12 vote. The reform movement has gathered momentum to demonstrate the widespread use of new technologies, cell phones, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and video imaging uploaded to the Web, as it voices popular opposition to the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the last week, this mass revolt has evolved into a direct confrontation with the rule of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; the nationalist argument that dissent is fomented by the interference of foreign powers fails to impress the protesters. Although the state ban on reporting by the Western media continues, citizen reporting of a brutal crackdown by pro-government militia, the Baseej, and the police provides a moment to moment chronicle of events.

Thus, the world bears witness to a loss of legitimacy in a theocratic regime that is neither republican nor respectful of human life.

Those Iranians who voted for the reformist challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, made the brave choice to lay down their lives for the right to be heard in peace without fear of retribution. The clerical leadership, whose grip on power is tightening, relies increasingly on the militarization of the regime in its attempts to quash popular grievances and to deny millions of Iranians the right to channel their dissent in peaceful ways. Will the Islamic Republic, legitimated by the 1979 Revolution, use this crackdown to deny the Iranian people their human right of expression, which is the popular hope for the future of the women and youth across the country? Or will another revolution spring in time from the right of Iranians in a republic to choose their leaders?

The outside world continues to rely on the images, the quotes, the accounts coming from Iranians in the midst of civil violence. In a week, their movement evolved well beyond a contested election within an accepted regime. The Supreme Leader’s edict at Friday prayers on June 19 stating that the election results were a “definitive victory” for Ahmadinejad unleashed a furor that crossed sacred red lines in the system. Observers arguing that the elections reveal the potential to open the system to democratic forces cite rising aspirations of key groups: the two-thirds of Iran’s population that is under 30 years of age and the university-educated women. These groups dominate a growing movement on the streets of Tehran and other smaller cities.

Since the 1979 Revolution, different governments have left their mark on the revolutionary Islamic Republic’s regime. Under Ahmadinejad, observers witnessed the progressive and systematic undermining of republican government. Institutions, which, in a republic should be responsible to break up government information monopolies, are under state control. Professional journalists inside the country are the victims of brutal repression. Public forums online, which normally allow a variety of ideas to challenge erroneous argumentation, are subject to deliberate interruption.

It is that Ahmadinejad effort to curb public space and responsibity that is now challenged by the reaction to the attempts to use the Presidential vote to propagate the myth of legitimacy. Even the Supreme Leader is now open to criticism from the segment of the population led by the protesters. The demonstrations have also exposed fissures within the clerical elite.

There is not yet a call for regime change, but will the crowds of protesters grow in size if Ahmadinejad is sworn in next month? In his campaign, Presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi was able to tap into the frustrations of highly educated youth and a population where the elimination of illiteracy led to rising expectations. Their future is bleak in an economy that faces double-digit unemployment and high inflation.

It is here that the new media technologies come into play. In a vibrant marketplace of ideas, individuals must be exposed to diverse ways of thinking. A segmented marketplace, defined by scholars such as Snyder and Ballentine, is characterized by blockages that prevent the exposure of individuals in one market segment to ideas expressed in others.

On the surface, that segmentation can reinforce a system, as it seals off much of the population from troublesome political, economic, and social challenges or filters (and thus distorts) ideas until they are "acceptable". However, the segmentation can also leave areas open to capture by partisan segments. In the last two weeks in Iran, the media inside the country has not been able to compete with the amateur reporting of the citizens on the streets who use Twitter to provide real-time accounts of civil unrest. Their voices define a public space separate from state control.

The audacious and extraordinary use by the Iranian population of social networking tools and new media is a call to explore ingenious ways that America, in concert with Europe and other countries, can use public diplomacy to demonstrate solidarity with the people in Iran. Intervention in the classical sense is not an option. The Iranian people must decide their own fate without the interference of foreign powers.

At the same time, the brutal repression of the Iranian movement for reform is a striking illustration of “sovereignty as responsibility”, meaning that “sovereignty carries with it a responsibility on the part of governments to protect their citizens.” What are the international consequences of the failure, as in iran, to exercise that responsibility? In the aftermath of President Obama’s Cairo speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has the opportunity to forge a global coalition, which can weigh those consequences aand respond as events in Iran evolve.

It is difficult to ascertain, day to day, how widespread the popular defiance to the Supreme Leader is likely to be. In the absence of organized leadership, can this movement endure over the time period necessary to foment revolution? If challenges to the regime also emerge from the bazari or from the oil industry in the form of strikes that paralyze the economy, there could be changes in leadership. In Qom, an important center of Shiism, clerics are not unified behind President Ahmadinejad. Dissent among ruling conservatives is unlikely to subside in the wake of parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani’s statement about the election result, explaining that “a majority of people are of an opinion separate” from that of a minority.5

In his reference to the influence of outside powers, particularly Britain, the Supreme Leader spoke on behalf of the ultimate victor in the June 12 election, Iranian nationalism. Fundamentally, his address reiterated the myths which Ahmadinejad and his supporters in the Revolutionary Guard exploit to “overemphasize the cultural and historical distinctiveness of the national group, exaggerate the threat posed to the nation by other groups, ignore the degree to which the nation’s own actions provoked such threats, and play down the costs of seeking national goals through militant means". Inside the regime, the population is experiencing a militarization unprecedented in its 30-year history. The influence of the Baseej is particularly disturbing, given the wide latitude its members have to act beyond the rule of law. None of the horrific acts by these paramilitary forces to enforce the power of the state are condemned by the regime.

President Obama cited Martin Luther King in his recent statement: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The world must bear witness to what analyst David Gergen has termed a “Tiananmen Square unfolding in slow motion". New technologies can play a decisive role to prevent darkness from descending on the country.

In the last four four days, social networking tools have captured the fate of Neda, the name given to the young Iranian woman shot in the chest this weekend. As Robin Wright explains, Neda, which means “the divine calling,” has emerged as the symbol of a popular movement whose dynamics begin to resemble those of the 1979 Revolution. In the Shia country that is Iran, has the regime made her a martyr for the freedom its people die to achieve? Time will tell if those segments of Iranian society whose will to forge a democratic revolution is collectively anchored in the concern for people, not regimes.

Iran: More than Khamenei v. Rafsanjani? (Gary Sick and a Response)

The Latest from Iran (23 June): Preparing for Thursday
Iran Latest: A Khatami Action Plan?
Iran: 2+2 = A Breakthrough? (Mousavi and the Clerics)

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I think Gary Sick's work is among the best in US-based analyses of Iranian politics, and this blog is no exception. He considers the Supreme Leader's decision "to get out in front as the spokesman of the regime" and focuses on the manoeuvres of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani as he "stay(s) behind the scenes as a master strategist".

That said, I think Sick reduces the situation too much to a Khamenei v. Rafsanjani contest. Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mohammad Khatami, and Mehdi Karroubi are far from bystanders or foot soldiers in this battle; indeed, they have moved towards centre stages in the last few days (see our posts over the last 48 hours on the developing steps in the protest movement). And there are numerous arenas in this contest, from the seminaries at Qom to Parliament possibly to the inner sanctum of the Revolutionary Guards.

And I think Sick (like Robert Fisk in his column today in The Independent of London) risks "disappearing" the demonstrators who have reshaped political dynamics since a week ago Monday. This is not to say, of course, that People Power replaces Rafsanjani in any potential showdown with Ayatollah Khameini and President Ahmadinejad. On the other hand, Rafsanjani, Mousavi, Khatami, and Karroubi depend on a continuing protest and, yes, resistance for leverage in their political challenge. It is very much a hand-in-hand relationship (at the risk of stretching an analogy, as was the case in the Philippines in the toppling of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986).

So I think we may be past the point where, as Sick puts it, there will be "a negotiated solution in which everyone saves face". But whether negotiation or confrontation, this is not just (again to borrow Sick's analogy) a chess match. It is three-dimensional chess, and there are more than two players.

Reading the Crisis in Tehran

GARY SICK

Here are a few observations about the situation in Iran based on my own experience of watching the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis from the White House thirty years ago.

Don’t expect that this will be resolved cleanly with a win or loss in short period of time. The Iranian revolution, which is usually regarded as one of the most accelerated overthrows of a well-entrenched power structure in history, started in about January 1978 and the shah departed in January 1979. During that period, there were long pauses and periods of quiescence that could lead one to believe that the revolt had subsided. This is not a sprint; it is a marathon. Endurance is at least as important as speed.

There may not be a clear winner or loser. Iranians are clever and wily politicians. They prefer chess to football, and a “win” may involve a negotiated solution in which everyone saves face. The current leadership has chosen, probably unwisely, to make this a test of strength, but if they conclude that it is a no-win situation they could settle for a compromise. The shape of a compromise is impossible to guess at this point, but it would probably involve significant concessions concealed behind a great public show of unity.

Leadership is key. Ayatollah Khamene`i, the rahbar or Leader, has chosen – again probably unwisely – to get out in front as the spokesman of the regime. Unlike his predecessor, the father of the revolution Ayatollah Khomeini, he has openly taken sides with one faction over another. He is clearly speaking for the ultra conservative leaders of the Revolutionary Guards and their equally reactionary clerical supporters, who fear any possible threat to their dominant power. Curiously, President Ahmadinejad has largely vanished from sight, which adds to the impression that he is more of a pawn than a prime mover in this affair.

On the other side is Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, the erstwhile colleague and now principal antagonist of the rahbar. He has chosen, as he usually does, to stay behind the scenes as a master strategist, leaving the public field to Mir Hossein Mousavi and the other disappointed candidates and their followers.

The irony of two former colleagues now competing for power over the expiring corpse of the Islamic Republic that they created with such grandiose expectations, is lost on no one. The important sub text, however, is that these two understand very well what they are doing. They know how a revolt can be turned into a revolution. They also know they have everything to lose. The shared consciousness of high stakes has until now prevented an all out political confrontation between rival factions in the elite. That may help explain why the rahbar and the Revolutionary Guards were so reckless in their insolent contempt of the reformers and the public. They may have believed that no one would dare take it to this level.

Now that it has arrived at this point, both protagonists are faced with decisions of unprecedented gravity. There has been nothing like this in the thirty year history of the Islamic Republic, and today there is no Khomeini father figure to moderate and mediate among the warring factions. They must improvise in conditions of severe uncertainty. If anyone tells you that they know how this will turn out, treat their words with the same regard you would have for any fortune teller peering into a crystal ball.

For the United States, the watchword should be Do No Harm. The situation in Iran is being exploited for short term domestic political purposes by those who have been looking for an opening to attack the Obama administration. Wouldn’t it feel good to give full throated expression to American opposition to the existing power structure in Iran? Perhaps so — but it could also be a fatal blow to the demonstrators risking their lives on the streets of Tehran, and it could scotch any chance of eventual negotiations with whatever government emerges from this trial by fire.

The crisis in Iran is an Iranian crisis and it can only be resolved by the Iranian people and their leaders. There is no need to conceal our belief in freedom of speech and assembly and our support for the resolution of political disputes without bloodshed. But we should not be stampeded by domestic political concerns into pretending that our intervention in this crisis could be anything but pernicious.

Can President Obama play chess as well as he plays basketball?