IRANIAN ELECTIONS ARE AN OCCASION FOR BUT NOT THE CAUSE OF MASSIVE PROTESTS
Daya Varma
The recent protests in Iran denote a rebellion against fundamentalism; the election outcome is just an occasion.
The landslide victory of fundamentalist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the defeat of reformist Mir Hussein Moussavi in the recent election triggered protests by the Iranian people of a dimension not seen since the 1979 revolution which overthrew the regime of the Shah. There is, however, a difference. Unlike the overwhelming support including by the Iranian left for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who returned from France to take over Iran in 1979, the current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is unable to control the events; this is both unusual and worth rejoicing. Many commentators have analyzed the election outcome and many have concluded that elections were fraudulent. That may be so. But the tenacity of these protests and the promise of a recount has had little influence on these protests, which indicate that the basis of this mass upsurge is not the election result but something else. Some on the left like to believe that protests are manipulated by Western imperialist powers, notably the US. Western powers are undoubtedly happy with these protests but they do not have the power to create a mass movement in Iran. One may therefore conclude that it is a battle between a latent but widespread secular sentiment in Iran and a powerful fundamentalist establishment. In this sense it is a ray of hope for the Islamic world.