Iranian protests put survival of clerical regime in question But what's next?

A few years ago, my friend who moved to Iran asked her music teacher what would happen if Ebrahim Raisi was suddenly elected president. The teacher replied: "You'd better wrap your head in a scarf when you go out". My friend thought that was a metaphor. But she was wrong.

Raisi came to power in the 2021 election, which was more akin to the appointment of an official by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the real ruler of Iran. In principle, the Iranian president merely provides the logistics of a dictator; he is something of a weak prime minister under a ruling autocrat. But in this case, Khamenei has outdone himself. Whereas Iranians have previously been allowed to choose from a pool of provisionally diverse and somewhat interesting candidates, this time the leadership has eliminated some 600 candidates from the presidential elections, removing from the list all of Raisi's somewhat well-known rivals, including the populist conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the end, most Iranians simply did not show up for the "elections", while 4 million of those who did show up crossed off all the candidates. "Winning" was Raisi, for whom the votes of millions of indentured state workers were cast.

In the summer of 2022, the president decided to tighten discipline and introduced new laws to enhance the moral police's control (a special police unit) over the clothing of Iranians. There have been rumours that the 83-year-old rahbar (spiritual leader) Khamenei is considering Raisi as his successor. Another potential successor, the son of Supreme Leader Mojtaba, a humble theology teacher at Qom's religious centre, has, it is unclear why he suddenly earned the title of ayatollah - an honorary title for Shia theologians entitled to rule independently on matters of Islamic law. They are both considered favourites of Khamenei, both have links and support within the powerful paramilitary body, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), under whose control Khamenei has effectively placed Iran's political system and economy. Raisi needs to work hard to increase its importance in the eyes of the Rahbar and push back Mojtaba.

On September 16, the vice police pounced on 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish girl walking around Tehran. She was wearing a hijab, but, according to the police, she was not wearing it properly. The girl was beaten after her arrest and died in the hospital a few days later. According to her relatives, she was perfectly healthy before her arrest. The incident sparked an outburst of anger, which has become a major event in Iranian politics in 2022.

The wave of protests, riots, uprisings, and strikes that followed the murder of Mahsa Amini has many causes. These include, above all, the dire state of the economy, skyrocketing prices (inflation, even according to official figures, is 50%), youth unemployment, the worsening situation of workers who are on temporary contracts across the country, and mounting environmental problems. Corruption and nepotism have become the backbone of Iran's economy. IRGC officers and other officials who run state-owned companies shamelessly embezzle funds from the treasury, privatising enterprises in favour of their kin. Such an economy cannot be successful and is essentially an organised robbery of taxpayers and the entire working population. Inefficient wasteful enterprises are bankrupting the country. The thin ruling layer of corrupt millionaire bureaucrats, which hides behind the mask of an "Islamic republic", has become politically isolated. All other strata of society - workers, students, professionals, farmers, the petty bourgeoisie - have turned their backs on him.

But the attack on Mahsa Amini was the straw that broke the camel's back. When a man who is not elected by society and calls himself "president" orders attacks on women in the streets because of a "wrong" headdress, it is infuriating.

By the end of 2022, Iran was still divided by the confrontation. Outwardly, most cities give a calm impression to those visiting the country. However, many women have stopped wearing hijabs. On the other hand, when you are walking down the street, a box of rubbish can suddenly erupt near you, after which young people will start building a barricade and throw stones at the police. 18,000 Iranians, including prominent actors and social activists, have been arrested, some face the death penalty, and several have already been executed. More than 500 people have died in the clashes, the authorities are acting violently. There are 50 security forces among those dead - protesters fought back. A video of a man stabbing and killing two Basiji (Iranian militia who attack and shoot demonstrators) went viral around the world.

Protests have been most widespread in Iran's two regions populated by ethnic minorities (subject to various types of discrimination), the Kurds and the Baluchis. But there are also occasional clashes in the capital and elsewhere.

Perhaps today, in the first days of January, one can already sum up the intermediate results. The Iranian authorities have managed to calm the protests in the capital to some extent or, at least, to reduce their intensity. However, they have not succeeded in subduing the ethnic regions. There, the movement is beginning, in some places, to take on the form of an uprising. Pockets of armed resistance are emerging, especially in the region of Sistan and Baluchistan.

In Southern Azerbaijan, the protests have not yet taken on such a militant character. Nevertheless, a lot depends today on the Azerbaijanis, one of the biggest nations in Iran.

"The government in Iran is strong," says my neighbour. His relatives live in Iran, he has been there himself. I tell him about the speeches of the youth. He shakes his head doubtfully: "The government can crush everyone". Perhaps he exaggerates. But the events in Iran have demonstrated several things.

First, power in the Middle East cannot rule quietly with such weak support. According to opinion polls, most people are on the side of the protesters. Anger will erupt outwards. Iranian society has reached the point where it erupts for no reason at all. One day this will end badly for the regime.

Secondly, with tens of thousands of well-paid assassins, the Basiji, the government can maintain control of the country for a long time. Perhaps not all power depends on weapons, as Mao Zedong believed, but for the most part, he was right. All talk of non-violent resistance under such circumstances is nothing more than a way of supporting the regime. Of course, resistance exists in various forms, perhaps even most of these forms do not involve violence, but without a mass armed movement, such power can hardly be overthrown.

Thirdly, mass protests in the modern era have become weak, and loosely organised and this may be the main problem for participants. The Internet and social media make it easy to organise flash mobs. All it takes is for one person or a small group to circulate a call to go somewhere, and protesters begin to flock there (assuming, of course, that there is already a strong public outcry against the prevailing social order). But this is not enough to change the social and political order. You need strong structures of counter-power, which can act on a permanent basis.

In the past, Iranians, particularly members of the working class, were much quicker and more effective in creating these structures. Elected workers' committees or councils in factories were able to stage a nationwide strike in 1978 that paralysed the economy and then tried to run their enterprises. These events were one of the reasons for the fall of Shah's regime (later, the workers' councils were destroyed by the Khomeini regime). One contemporary Iranian activist, Meisam Ali Mahdi, claims that even today there are small groups spreading similar ideas among workers and that they initiate strikes. Maybe so, but they are far from the scale of the 1978-1979 revolution.

Also, in 1979, committees were set up in poor neighbourhoods, taking over warehouses and distributing food and other things to locals - this helped the population to survive in the face of mass protests and strikes. My friend, an Iranian, now a university professor in a European capital, and then a very young man, was involved in this. He says he has never seen such a high level of social self-organisation as among the neighbourhood committees in 1979. We don't see anything like that today.

When Shah's guardsmen tried to launch a counteroffensive and crush the uprising on February 9-10, 1979, half a million Tehranis came to military bases, seized weapons, and fought back, defeating the enemy; the uprising headquarters, which coordinated the resistance, was at Tehran University at the time. Today's protests do not even come close to this level of self-organisation and radicalism, and without this, it is difficult to expect the regime to be eliminated.

Finally, in 1978-1979, during the last revolution, many ideological currents, factions, and parties - liberals, supporters of minority autonomies, Islamists, socialists - emerged and were active. Students, representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie, workers, in short, people from all social classes, discussed what kind of system they wanted and what should replace Shah's regime. Today the rebels themselves do not quite know what they want. They only know clearly that they no longer want the current regime. But what is there to replace it?

In pictures depicting a 'beautiful future Iran', young people and girls sit together in cafes, shopping, in short, enjoying consumption. Some say they want a normal system of representative Western-style parliamentary democracy instead of a dictatorship of a supreme leader; there are those who dream of restoring monarchy; there are a small number of socialists. But in three months none of the protesters has been able to describe a positive ideal clearly.

People cannot win if they do not understand what they really need and what they are shedding blood for. At best, the fruits of their victories in such a situation will be exploited by a handful of politicians.