Iran: EA's Chris Emery in The Guardian on Khamenei and Mousavi

The Latest from Iran (20 June): Will The Rally Go Ahead?
Iran: The 7 Lessons of the Supreme Leader’s Address

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Chris Emery has published in The Guardian Online an updated version of his article, "7 Lessons", on the significance and possible outcomes of the Supreme Leader's address on Friday. He filed this last night, well before the dramatic events of today, but his projections --- especially as Mir Hossein Mousavi has just reportedly addressed his supporters despite State threats and violence --- are even more significant:

Khamenei puts the ball in Mousavi's court

Even for a seasoned political animal like Iran's Supreme Leader, speaking at Friday prayers posed a severe challenge. Ayatollah Khamenei, recognising that he was unable to offer the disgruntled parties any significant concessions, reasoned that the wisest move was to increase the pressure on the political opposition centred on presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. Mousavi now faces an agonising decision: does he withdraw his backing for further demonstrations or risk being held directly responsible for any future bloodshed? Khamenei's speech thus primarily aimed to split Mousavi, and to a lesser extent fellow candidate Mehdi Karroubi, from their supporters.

As I write, in the wake of Khamenei's speech, reports suggest that Mousavi will defy an Interior Ministry ban and cross the Rubicon to attend tomorrow's demonstrations in Tehran's Enqelab Square. With Khamenei having drawn a line under the election result, explicitly warning Mousavi's supporters that they cannot influence his decision making, this could yet be the greatest challenge the Islamic Republic has ever seen.

In truth, Mousavi faces few viable alternatives apart from remaining a figurehead for the opposition. Whether or not he attends tomorrow's planned demonstration, it appears certain that his supporters will turn out again in huge numbers. Denied Mousavi's political backing, these masses would be isolated and more easily attacked as extremist rioters. Mousavi is thus in the unenviable position of being responsible for his supporter's political cover, while at the same time being held accountable for any potential violence perpetrated by either side. Faced with this dilemma, Mousavi will probably attend but urge extreme restraint.

It is possible, but probably unlikely, that Mousavi will be offered something he can take to his people by the Guardian Council, which is meeting with all four presidential tomorrow. There seems little, however, this arch conservative body can now offer Mousavi in terms of concessions. Even if Mousavi is persuaded, or simply threatened, to end his challenge this would not prevent tomorrow's demonstration.

Ominously, Khamenei used his speech to defend the feared state paramilitaries, the Basij, and criticised attacks on them by the public. There are unconfirmed reports that Basij and Revolutionary Guard forces are now grouping in large numbers on the streets of Tehran. The state's irregular enforcers will potentially view the Supreme Leader's moratorium on dissent as license to commit acts of violence in the knowledge that Khamenei has implicitly set Mousavi up to take the blame.

The Supreme Leader also came to Friday prayers apparently to mostly praise former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, not to bury his rival. This, again, was a calculated political manoeuvre. Following these conciliatory gestures, together with the Supreme Leader's strong backing of Ahmadinejad, any continued moves by Rafsanjani will appear increasingly brazen and disloyal. The Supreme Leader will also be buoyed by reports that Rafsanjani's efforts to rally opposition against the president among senior clerics have met a lukewarm response.

Khamenei was thus speaking to the presidential candidates, the people in the streets and influential power bases in Iran's political establishment. Predictably, the Supreme Leader also played the nationalist card. He called the election a "political defeat" for Iran's "enemies" and evoked Iran's titanic war with Iran, the ubiquitous "Zionist" threat and the continued intrusion on Iran's national sovereignty by the United States and Britain. The speech also went beyond criticism of these alleged intrusions. Khamenei put events in Iran in a wider geo-political context; highlighting the current turmoil in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. The message to Iran's international audience was clear: continuing instability in Iran is not in your strategic interests. The Supreme Leader equally sought to remind Mousavi of the danger of Iran descending into the chaos seen in its regional neighbours, where US military intervention has followed.

Overall therefore, the Supreme Leader's defiant rejection of any wrongdoing in these elections has put the ball firmly in Mousavi's court. His political future, and even personal freedom, may now depend on the conduct of tomorrow's demonstration and how the authorities respond.

Iran: An Iranian Live-Blogs the Supreme Leader's Speech

The Latest from Iran (20 June): Will The Rally Go Ahead?

Iran: The 7 Lessons of the Supreme Leader’s Address
Iran: Live Blog of Supreme Leader’s Address (19 June)
Transcript: Ayatollah Khamanei’s Speech at Prayers (19 June)

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Juan Cole has posted the following live blog from an Iranian correspondent, writing as Ayatollah Khamenei spoke on Friday. There are minor but significant corrections to our own live blog: for example, Mohsen Rezaei was the one opposition Presidential candidate who attended. There are important impressions of conflict, "Uncharacteristically, the Leader, gets hot...folks here and there interrupt his speech and he tells them to listen," and forthcoming violence, "The green light has been given to the [paramilitary basij to, excuse my language, to kick ass, chew gum, and take names."

Rough notes...The event is like the old Red Square May Day parades. We look to see who is there, and who is not. Dr. A, Larajani, Haddad Adel, the top leadership is all there. Karrobi and Mousavi are not...but Rezaei is, sitting in the back of the VIP section.

Supreme Leader emphasizes that difference in opinion, difference in program between candidates is normal, natural. But beware, for months the enemy had been laying the groundwork to label these elections a fraud. These elections which, with the exception of the vote for the Islamic Republic in Spring of 1979, were without rival. Iran represents a third way, between dictatorships and the false democracies of the rest of the world.

He speaks of the violence, it is clear that they are laying the groundwork for a crackdown. Chaos has to be stopped. The way of the law, rah-e qanun. There are laws and we cannot allow the killing or violence to continue, either by basijis or opposition (throughout the speech he condemns the mistakes of both sides, but as I will soon make clear, comes down in favor of one side).

Supreme Leader names Nouri and Rafsanjani by name, a remarkable act by his own admission. He lauds the long record of service of both men to the country, says that he has known Rafsanjani 52 years. Leader says while there is corruption in Iran, how can anyone say that Raf. is corrupt? Stands up for him. This is clearly a slap on the wrist to the current president, for what Dr. A[hmadinejad] said about Nouri and Rafsanjani during the debates. It is not Iranian, not appropriate for such ugliness to penetrate politics. Good words were spoken during the debates, but unfortunately nastiness and un-Islamic comments were made and we need to be careful...

Mousavi, Karrobi, and Rezaei were described by their previous post and experiences, they were all defended by the Leader as good men devoted to the I[slamic] R[epublic of] I[ran]. They are almost incidental, it is so so clear that this is a grudge match, beef, between Hashemi and Dr. A. The Leader himself said as much, saying that there has been a difference in opinion between the two men stretching back to 2005. Then came the kicker, the turning point, one sentence followed by a great cheer from the audience: There is a difference in opinion between the two, and my opinion (or preference) is closer to the president than Rafsanjani.

The Leader made his choice clear.

The green light has been given to the basij to, excuse my language, to kick ass, chew gum, and take names.

A particularly juicy twist, turning night into day and a shot at the U.S. and the 2000 elections, says that you can say that cheating occurs when the difference in the votes is close, 100,000 or 500,000, or 1 million. But 11 million? How can that be cheating?

But we have a process, we will count the votes with the representatives of the candidates present, the Guardian Council will fulfill its obligation.

More night-into-day-ism: Says that there are winners and losers in elections, and for the losers to now want the "rules" to be changed or modified is wrong.

Qanun, qanun, qanun. Law, law, law. It's unnerving the emphasis on the need for law and order.

By the end, and uncharacteristically, the Leader, gets hot...folks here and there interrupt his speech and he tells them to listen. When talking about U.S. and the west and the efforts of a certain American Zionist to launch a velvet revolution in Georgia, he says that these "aqmaqha" or idiots think that they can do the same in Iran...to use such language is really shocking in the Iranian context.

Bizarre ending, ends in weeping, because the Leader says that I love you more than you know...

Overall, it does not look good, worse than it ever was... "

Iran: The 7 Lessons of the Supreme Leader's Address

The Latest from Iran (20 June): Will The Rally Go Ahead?

The Latest from Iran (19 June): The Supreme Leader Speaks
Iran: Live Blog of Supreme Leader’s Address (19 June)
Transcript: Ayatollah Khamenei's Speech at Prayers (19 June)

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Chris Emery offers the following snap analysis of today's address by the Supreme Leader:

1. Friday's speech was a challenge, even for a seasoned political performer like Ayatollah Khamenei. Unable to offer concessions, he reasoned that the wisest move was to increase the pressure on the political opposition, especially Presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. So the Supreme Leader put an agonising decision upon Mousavi: does he withdraw his backing for further demonstrations or risk being held directly responsible for any future bloodshed?

The overriding objective: split Mousavi, and to a lesser extent fellow candidate Mehdi Karroubi, from their supporters.

2. Reports currently that Mousavi will defy an Interior Ministry ban to attend tomorrow's demonstrations in Tehran's Enqelab Square. As Khamenei has drawn a line under the election result, explicitly warning Mousavi's supporters there will be no change, Saturday's rally could yet be the greatest challenge the Islamic Republic has ever seen.

Mousavi has few alternatives to this course of action. Whether or not he attends tomorrow's planned demonstration, his supporters will turn out again in huge numbers. If they did not have Mousavi's political backing, they would be isolated and more easily labelled attacked as extremist rioters.

Mousavi is thus in the unenviable position of being responsible for his supporter's political cover, whilst at the same time being held accountable for any potential violence perpetrated by either side. Faced with this dilemma, Mousavi will probably attend but urge extreme restraint.

3. It is possible, but probably unlikely, that Mousavi will be offered something he can take to his people by the Guardian Council, which is meeting with all four presidential candidates tomorrow. There seems little, however, that the Council can now offer Mousavi.

4. Ominously, Khamenei used his speech to defend the feared state paramilitaries, the Basiji, and criticised attacks on them by the public. The State's irregular enforcers will potentially view the Supreme Leader's moratorium on dissent as license to commit acts of violence in the knowledge that Khamenei has implicitly set Mousavi up to take the blame.

5. The Supreme Leader came to Friday prayers to praise former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, not to bury his rival. Following these conciliatory gestures, together with the Supreme Leader's strong backing of Ahmadinejad, any continued moves by Rafsanjani will appear increasingly brazen and disloyal.

6. Khamenei was speaking to three audiences: the presidential candidates, the people in the streets and influential power bases in Iran's political establishment. To reach all three, he played the nationalist card. Iran was valiantly facing the threat of enemies: Western countries, "Zionists", Barack Obama, even "British radio".

This rather crude framing was buttressed by a more subtle geo-political lesson: Khamenei highlighted the current turmoil in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq to say to Iranians, "Look at these countries. Do you want to be as unstable as they are/have been?" It is also no coincidence that all three countries named have recently been the sites of American interventions.

7. The Supreme Leader's defiant rejection of any wrongdoings in these elections has put the ball firmly in Mousavi's court. The candidate's political future, and even personal freedom, may now depend on the conduct of tomorrow's demonstration and how the authorities respond.

[Enduring America is continuing to follow the situation in Iran very closely- for the latest, please subscribe to our updates.]

Twittering Iran: What the "New Media" Means for Politics, Protest, and Democracy

The Latest from Iran (20 June): Will The Rally Go Ahead?

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There has been a lot of ink spilled in recent days, particularly with "traditional" broadcasters unable to operate, over the significance of media like Twitter and Facebook for the demonstrations over the Iranian elections. Most of this, as we have noted, has been a fatuous, superficial "Twitter is fantastic" or "Twitter is overrated" reaction.

An American colleague, however, has pointed us to a thoughtful analysis by Professor Henry Giroux of Canada's McMaster University, published originally in CounterPunch: "The uprising in Iran not only requires a new conception of politics, education, and society; it also raises significant questions about the new media and its centrality to democracy."

The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

As the uprisings in Iran illustrate, the new electronic technologies and social networks they have produced have transformed both the landscape of media production and reception, and the ability of state power to define the borders and boundaries of what constitutes the very nature of political engagement. Indeed, politics itself has been increasingly redefined by a screen culture and newly emergent public spaces of education and resistance embraced by students and other young people.1

For example, nearly 75 percent of Iranians now own cell phones and are quite savvy in utilizing them.2 Screen culture and its attendant electronic technologies have created a return to a politics in which many young people in Iran are not only forcefully asserting the power to act and express their criticisms and support of Mir Hussein Moussavi but also willing to risk their lives in the face of attacks by thugs and state sponsored vigilante groups. Texts and images calling for “Death to the dictator” circulate in a wild zone of representation on the Internet, YouTube, and among Facebook and Twitter users, giving rise to a chorus of dissent and collective resistance that places many young people in danger and at the forefront of a massive political uprising. Increasingly reports are emerging in the press and other media outlets of a number of protesters being attacked or killed by government forces. In the face of massive arrests by the police and threats of execution from some government officials, public protest continues even, as Nazila Fathi reports in the New York Times, the government works “on many fronts to shield the outside world’s view of the unrest, banning coverage of the demonstrations, arresting journalists, threatening bloggers and trying to block Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, which have become vital outlets for information about the rising confrontation here.”3

It is impossible to comprehend the political nature of the existing protests in Iran (and recently in Moldova) without recognizing the centrality of the new visual media and new modes of social networking. Not only have these new mass-and image-based media—camcorders, cellular camera-phones, satellite television, digital recorders, and the Internet, to name a few—enacted a structural transformation of everyday life by fusing sophisticated electronic technologies with a ubiquitous screen culture; they have revolutionized the relationship between the specificity of an event and its public display by making events accessible almost instantly to a global audience. The Internet, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have reconstituted, especially among young people, how social relationships are constructed and how communication is produced, mediated, and received. They have also ushered in a new regime of visual imagery in which screen culture creates spectacular events just as much as they record them. Under such circumstances, state power becomes more porous and less controlled and its instability becomes evident as the Iranian government points to the United States and Canada for producing “deviant news sites.” As if such charges can compete with images uploaded on YouTube of a young man bleeding to death as a result of an assault by government forces, his white shirt stained with blood, and bystanders holding his hand while he died.4 Or for that matter suppress images of militia members along with other identifying information about the police and other thugs attacking the protesters. The Internet and the new media outlets in this context provide new public sites of visibility for an unprecedented look into the workings of both state sponsored violence, massive unrest, and a politics of massive resistance that simply cannot be controlled by traditional forces of repression.

The pedagogical force of culture is now writ large within circuits of global transmission that defy the military power of the state while simultaneously reinforcing the state’s reliance on military power to respond to the external threat and to control its own citizens. In Iran, the state sponsored war against democracy, with its requisite pedagogy of fear dominating every conceivable media outlet, creates the conditions for transforming a fundamentalist state into a more dangerous authoritarian state. Meanwhile, insurgents use digital video cameras to defy official power, cell phones to recruit members to battle occupying forces, and Twitter messages to challenge the doctrines of fear, militarism, and censorship. The endless flashing of screen culture not only confronts those in and outside of Iran with the reality of state sponsored violence and corruption but also with the spread of new social networks of power and resistance among young people as an emerging condition of contemporary politics in Iran. Text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the Internet have given rise to a reservoir of political energy that posits a new relationship between the new media technologies, politics and public life. These new media technologies and Websites have proved a powerful force in resisting dominant channels of censorship and militarism. But they have done more in that they have allowed an emerging generation of young people and students in Iran to narrate their political views, convictions, and voices through a screen culture that opposes the one-dimensional cultural apparatuses of certainty while rewriting the space of politics through new social networking sites and public spheres.

A spectacular flood of images produced by a subversive network of technologies that open up a cinematic politics of collective resistance and social justice now overrides Iran’s official narratives of repression, totalitarianism, and orthodoxy–unleashing the wrath of a generation that hungers for a life in which matters of dignity, agency, and hope are aligned with democratic institutions that make them possible. Death and suffering are now inscribed in an order of politics and power that can no longer hide in the shadows, pretending that there are no cracks in its body politic, or suppress the voices of a younger generation emboldened by their own courage and dreams of a more democratic future.

In this remarkable historical moment, a sea of courageous young people in Iran, are leading the way in instructing an older generation about a new form of politics in which mass and image-based media have become a distinctly powerful pedagogical force, reconfiguring the very nature of politics, cultural production, engagement, and resistance. Under such circumstances, this young generation of Iranian students, educators, artists, and citizens are developing a new set of theoretical tools and modes of collective resistance in which the educational force of the new media both records and challenges representations of state, police, and militia violence while becoming part of a broader struggle for democracy itself.

Any critical attempt to engage the courageous uprisings in Iran must take place within a broader notion of how the new media and electronic technologies can be used less as entertainment than as a tool of insurgency and opposition to state power. State power no longer has a hold on information, at least not the way it did before the emergence of the new media with its ability to reconfigure public exchange and social relations while constituting a new sphere of politics. The new media technologies are being used in Iran in ways that redefine the very conditions that make politics possible. Public spaces emerge in which data and technologies are employed to bypass government censors. The public and the private inform each other as personal discontent is translated into broader social issues. Global publics of opposition emerge through electronic circuits of power offering up wider spheres of exchange, dialogue, and resistance. For example, protesters from all over the world are producing proxy servers, “making their own computers available to Iranians,” and fuelling worldwide outrage and protests by uploading on YouTube live videos exposing the “brutality of the regime’s crackdown.”5

Demonstrations of solidarity are emerging between the Iranian diasporia and students and other protesters within Iran as information, technological resources, and skills are exchanged through the Internet, cell phones, and other technologies and sites. The alienation felt by many young people in an utterly repressive and fundamentalist society is exacerbated within a government- and media-produced culture of fear, suggesting that the terror they face at home and abroad cannot be fought without surrendering one’s sense of agency and social justice to a militarized state. And yet, as the technology of the media expands so do the sites for critical education, resistance, and collective struggle.

The uprising in Iran not only requires a new conception of politics, education, and society; it also raises significant questions about the new media and its centrality to democracy. Image-based technologies have redefined the relationship between the ethical, political, and aesthetic. While “the proximity is perhaps discomforting to some, ... it is also the condition of any serious intervention”6 into what it means to connect cultural politics to matters of political and social responsibility. The rise of the new media and the conditions that have produced it do not sound the death knell of democracy as some have argued, but demand that we “begin to rethink democracy from within these conditions.”7 These brave Iranian youth are providing the world with a lesson in how the rest of us might construct a cultural politics based on social relations that enable individuals and social groups to rethink the crucial nature of what it means to know, engage civic courage, and assume a measure of social responsibility in a media-saturated global sphere. They are working out in real time what it means to address how these new technologies might foster a democratic cultural politics that challenges religious fundamentalism, state censorship, militarism, and the cult of certainty. Such a collective project requires a politics that is in the process of being invented, one that has to be attentive to the new realities of power, global social movements, and the promise of a planetary democracy. Whatever the outcome, the magnificent and brave uprising by the young people of Iran illustrates that they have legitimated once again a new register of both opposition and politics. What is at stake, in part, is a mode of resistance and educational practice that is redefining in the heat of the battle the ideologies and skills needed to critically understand the new visual and visualizing technologies not simply as new modes of communication, but as weapons in the struggle for expanding and deepening the ideals and possibilities of democratic public life and the supportive cultures vital to democracy’s survival.

As these students and young people have demonstrated, it would be a mistake to simply align the new media exclusively with the forces of domination and commercialism as many do in the United Sates–with what Allen Feldman calls “total spectrum violence.” The Iranian uprising with its recognition of the image as a key force of social power makes clear that cultural politics is now constituted by a plurality of sites of resistance and social struggle, offering up new ways for young people to conceptualize how the media might be used to create alternative public spheres that enable them to claim their own voices and challenge the dominant forces of oppression. Theorists such as Thomas Keenan, Mark Poster, Douglas Kellner, and Jacques Derrida are right in suggesting that the new electronic technologies and media publics “remove restrictions on the horizon of possible communications” and, in doing so, suggest new possibilities for engaging the new media as a democratic force both for critique and for positive intervention and change. The ongoing struggle in Iran, if examined closely, provides some resources for rethinking how the political is connected to particular understandings of the social; how distinctive modes of address are used to marshal specific and often dangerous narratives, memories, and histories; and how certain pedagogical practices are employed in mobilizing a range of affective investments around images of trauma, suffering, and collective struggles. The images and messages coming out of Iran both demonstrate the courage of this generation of young people and others while also signifying new possibilities for redefining a global democratic politics. What the dictatorship in Iran is witnessing is not simply generational discontent or the power of networking and communication sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube but a much more dangerous lesson in which democracy implies an experience in which power is shared, dialogue is connected to involvement in the public sphere, hope means imagining the unimaginable, and collective action portends the outlines of a new understanding of power, freedom, and democracy.

NOTES

1. I take up the issue of screen culture and the challenge of the new media in Henry A. Giroux, Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism: Global Uncertainty and the Challenge of the New Media (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2006).

2. I want to thank Tony Kashani for these figures.

3. Nazila Fathi, “Protesters Defy Iranian Efforts to Cloak Unrest,” New York Times (June 18, 2009), p. A1.

4. Brian Stelter and Brad Stone, “Stark Images of the Turmoil in Iran, Uploaded to the World on the Internet,” New York Times (June 18, 2009), p. A14.

5. Ibid., Stelter and Stone, “Stark Images of the Turmoil in Iran,” p. A14.

6. Thomas Keenan, “Mobilizing Shame,” South Atlantic Quarterly 103, no. 2/3 (2004), p. 447. Keenan explores the relationship between ethics and responsibility in even greater detail in his Fables of Responsibility (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1997).

7. Jacques Derrida cited in Michael Peters, “The Promise of Politics and Pedagogy in Derrida,” Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies (in press).

8. . Allen Feldman, “On the Actuarial Gaze: From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib,” Cultural Studies 19, no. 2 (March 2005), p. 212.

9 . Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2. Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1987), p. 390.

Obama is Osama? It's All in the Eyes

For months, we've supported the efforts of our good friends at Conservapedia --- "the only online encyclopedia you'll ever need" --- as they tried to lay out the truth about Barack Hussein Obama. We cheered on the good Americans who saw the truth in the President's bow-down to the Saudi king. Alas, others have been sceptical and even downright satirical about these valiant effort?.

Thank goodness, then, that "mesbahihamza" has made the ultimate discovery. Why have Osama bin Laden and Barack Hussein Obama never been photographed together? Because....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w53TMpk6QNc[/youtube]