Yesterday I interviewed a guy who'd been involved in most of the protests, a friend of a friend who split his childhood and education between Iran and the US. It occurs to me that I'm drawing from an extremely biased sample set with these interviews. He was, however, interestingly fairly different from others I've talked to.
The first days after the election he and his friends were burning buses and fighting police and Basijis in the streets. The day after the election a friend had called him and said some people were gathering at Jaam-e Jam intersection. When he got there about 30 people were gathered, but before he knew it everywhere from Valiasr to Vanak was completely and spontaneously clogged with angry protesters. The chants on the first days, he said, were anti-Ahmedinejad (not Khamenei), "Freedom, Freedom," "Don't be scared, don't be scared, we're with you," singing "Yad-e Dabestani-e Man" (a famous song from the 79 revolution--ie even before opposition was organized and Mousavi et al made appeals to 79 part of their strategy people instinctively started doing it)
He was at Azadi Square the first day people got shot. He gave me a video he'd taken in front of the Basiji headquarters at Azadi Square where the first protesters were killed, which shows one guy getting shot and blood splatters from an earlier shooting, but this internet collection is too slow to upload it. Before that he and his friends had caught a plainclothes cop who was reporting on the protest on a walkie-talkie and started beat him up, but the crowd had stopped them.
He still goes to protests (he goes to all those announced on Mousavi's facebook) and still fights with the Basijis at every opportunity. He says they've gotten much better organized now, and they only attack small groups so they don't fall into the hands of larger crowds. Now it's a game of cat-and-mouse each time, fleeing down alleys where Basijis are afraid to follow them only to turn back and harass them again. He said that since Khamenei's speech declaring that further protests would mean bloodshed, "we knew nothing was going to change," yet he and his friends thought it all the more important to go out into the streets and show solidarity. He said there are always three layers of protesters, the aggressive ones shouting and fighting with the cops, those standing behind them, and those cowering scared out of their minds but still in attendance. The first layer's duty was to give heart to the others.
Despite his militancy, when asked about his hopes for change he, unlike others I've talked to, completely favored reform of the current system, not revolution or transition to secularism. "I don't think people want a regime change, they want major reform within the regime," he said, and added that Iran was fundamental a religious country and an Islamic govt isn't necessarily the wrong thing. This is why he thought outsiders (meaning Iranian expats esp the talking heads on Voice of America) couldn't connect with the homegrown movement--because they all saw regime change as the only way.
Asked what he saw as possible mechanisms for success of the green movement, he said "I look at it as Rafsanjani is the most key figure... there are a lot of instruments in the Constitution that you can use" and talked about checks of the Assembly of Experts on the Leader, the Leader and parliament on the president, etc. Street protest, he said, are really "not about what you're going to get in the street," but about pressuring insiders to affect change through official channels. "The minimum we got from the street protests was that we got rid of the religious police," although he figured this favored the regime as well: "I think they like people partying more, drinking more, smoking more...it keeps them off the streets."
I asked him what he saw as the best and worst case scenario for the next 6 months. Worst case was predictable: Mousavi and Karroubi arrested, further crackdowns. Best case scenario (ie he was still hopeful about his rehbar) was Khamenei turning around and realizing he had more to gain joining with "the religious crowd" opposing Ahmedinejad and the hardliners. I asked him what, if I had asked him the week after the election when clashes with cops were at their fiercest, what he would have said was best case scenario, and he said he'd have replied that best case scenario would be Khamenei getting scared and calling for a reelection, or the Guardian Council annulling the results.
So not much of a revolutionary for someone who's spent his summer battling paramilitaries in the streets. Compare that to the girl from Pasargad who'd peacefully protested a couple times, was hoping for a complete transition to secularism and desperately hoped that all the Islamic language of the opposition was purely instrumental to be cast off ie there's not necessarily a direct correlation between methods used and goals sought.
A couple days earlier I went to talk again to the oldish guy who'd lectured me on the Constitutional Revolution etc previously. After about 3 hours of spinning 9/11 conspiracy theories (including a lengthy discussion of the heat of burning jet fuel, the physics of the collapse of the non-twin tower building that fell, etc) and speculating on why a certain general had turned on Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and pontificating on the Founding Fathers conception of Republicanism and not really answering any of my questions, he told me that he was probably the most knowledgeable single human in Iran. Unfortunately he's in declining health and before it was too late he wanted to put together his accumulated knowledge into 2 or 5 volumes. Would I be interested in becoming his disciple and recording/cataloguing his thoughts on everything? He said I could think it over and get back to him in a few days.
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