The current situation in Iran is an eruption of a pent-up anger that has been building up for 30 years, from the very first inception of the Islamic revolution. The inner contradictions of an 'Islamic republic' seem finally to have caught up with it. There is much more to the unrest and protests in Iran than meets the eye. This massive outpouring of pro-Moussavi, anti-Ahmadinejad sentiments among a sizeable segment of Iranian population must be viewed in a larger context.
Two major student uprisings of 1999 and 2003 against the government, at a time when the fifth President, Mr Mohammad Khatami,was leading the country are relevant. Both uprisings were against a repressive Islamic system of governance. They were brutally suppressed, and failed due to a disconnect between the grass root agitating youth and political leadership of the time. Soon after the terror strikes of 9/11 in the United States, a sizable group of Iranian youth organized a candlelight vigil for the victims of 9/11, in obvious defiance of the Iranian government.
Viewed against the backdrop of periodic surfacing of peoples’ discontent, what we are now witnessing in Iran, might very well emerge as a major civil disobedience movement not just against Ahmadinejad, but in fact for more civil liberties, economic opportunities, human, civil and women's rights -- so far all within the constitutional boundaries of the Islamic republic. But this may in fact extend to target the non-democratic institutions within the Islamic republic, such as the office of the supreme leader and that of the Guardian Council.
Out of a population of 75 million and a total of 46 million eligible voters, some 40 million, upward of 80 percent, voted in this election, and a significant segment of them are against the draconian doctrine and policies of the Islamic republic, the economic calamities (double-digit inflation and endemic unemployment) of Ahmadinejad's domestic policies, and his belligerent positions on a range of issues, from the inanities of his denial of the Holocaust to his vacuous and flamboyant positions on a number of regional issues.
As Grand Ayatollah Montazeri has just said, this movement is challenging the very legitimacy of the Islamic republic. That the elections might or might not have been rigged is now a completely irrelevant.
Two major student uprisings of 1999 and 2003 against the government, at a time when the fifth President, Mr Mohammad Khatami,was leading the country are relevant. Both uprisings were against a repressive Islamic system of governance. They were brutally suppressed, and failed due to a disconnect between the grass root agitating youth and political leadership of the time. Soon after the terror strikes of 9/11 in the United States, a sizable group of Iranian youth organized a candlelight vigil for the victims of 9/11, in obvious defiance of the Iranian government.
Viewed against the backdrop of periodic surfacing of peoples’ discontent, what we are now witnessing in Iran, might very well emerge as a major civil disobedience movement not just against Ahmadinejad, but in fact for more civil liberties, economic opportunities, human, civil and women's rights -- so far all within the constitutional boundaries of the Islamic republic. But this may in fact extend to target the non-democratic institutions within the Islamic republic, such as the office of the supreme leader and that of the Guardian Council.
Out of a population of 75 million and a total of 46 million eligible voters, some 40 million, upward of 80 percent, voted in this election, and a significant segment of them are against the draconian doctrine and policies of the Islamic republic, the economic calamities (double-digit inflation and endemic unemployment) of Ahmadinejad's domestic policies, and his belligerent positions on a range of issues, from the inanities of his denial of the Holocaust to his vacuous and flamboyant positions on a number of regional issues.
As Grand Ayatollah Montazeri has just said, this movement is challenging the very legitimacy of the Islamic republic. That the elections might or might not have been rigged is now a completely irrelevant.
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