While the sources of last year's post-elections trouble in Iran may not have dried up, calm prevails, with the protest movement fractured and ineffective, writes Amani Maged in Tehran Last year Iran experienced an unprecedented outburst of post-election turmoil. Following the announcement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory in the presidential elections of 12 June 2009, Tehran was engulfed in waves of mass protest demonstrations that eventually turned ugly. A year later, Al-Ahram Weekly conducted interviews with people from different walks of life in Iran. During my brief visit to Tehran, I sensed that discontent was still in the air, although its voice was muted, whether from fear of the authorities or out of concern for the country's welfare. I had a particularly memorable conversation with a taxi driver who complained at length about the economic circumstances in Iran. Life under the shah was better, he said, adding that he along with many others believed in the reform movement and the need to change the current regime. He cautioned me that he would end up in prison if I published his name. Mohsen Eftekhari, proprietor of a carpet store, confirmed that the Revolutionary Guards were in complete control of the streets and that calm prevailed. In his opinion, there was little likelihood of renewed disturbances now that religious authorities had intervened and asked the people to rally around Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei. I met Saada Jeralidrim on Shariati Avenue, one of the major thoroughfares of downtown Tehran. A teacher at a private school, Jeralidrim pointed to some workers in the process of painting a street lamppost and said, "Do you see how they're painting them all white? They used to be green and have the reformists' slogans on them." She paused for a moment, then resumed: "The regime is getting rid of all signs of the green movement." At the official level, I met former president Mohamed Khatami, although he declined to discuss domestic affairs and kept our interview focussed on Egyptian-Iranian relations. I also had the opportunity to meet Presidential Advisor Ali Akbar Javanfekr, who stressed that while calm now prevails, "foreign hands" were still tampering with Iran's stability. According to national security expert Sadeq Al-Husseini, the situation on the ground is stable and the players in the domestic equation have reached equilibrium. There remained vestiges of agitation at work, especially among the third and fourth generations after the revolution. However, this is by no means an indication that Iran has weakened domestically. Rather, it is the product of things that had begun to brew long before the elections. He went on to explain what exactly, "A group of reformists from inside and outside the regime had started to disseminate their renunciations of the Iranian revolution's ideology and policies. At first they did this secretly, but then more and more publicly as the elections approached. They blazoned such slogans as "Iran first" and "Not to Gaza or to Lebanon, but to you, Iran, we give our soul and blood!" Such ideas are unacceptable to the Islamic revolution. They also shouted, "Death to Russia" and "Death to China" and waved pictures of the shah. "All these notions go against the Iranian Islamic project, which supports all liberation movements and transcends geographic boundaries. The Palestinian cause is, of course, a part of the Iranian creed rather than just a question of interests. However, the opposition openly called for striking the Palestinian cause from the Iranian creed, whereas the Iranian leadership succeeded in epitomising these principles, as has been borne out in the war on Lebanon, in Gaza and in the steadfastness of the resistance." In Al-Husseini's opinion, such political and ideological recantations might have passed without incident under proper domestic conditions where there was no foreign meddling and under an international climate that was not inflamed by such pressing and turbulent issues as the Palestinian cause. He also felt that reform leaders, notably former President Khatami, Karrubi and Mousavi, and reformist thinkers had lost their impetus and lacked grassroots support. "They are political parties without followers, elites without roots," he said. From where did the foreign meddling come? "From close to the decision-making kitchen," Al-Husseini replied. "We have documented hundreds of networks that were planted in Radio Sawa, Saudi Arabia and American locations in order to transmit thousands of signals. There were contacts with foreign embassies. Michael Leyden met with so-called "oppressed national minorities" who had fled abroad and they organised a meeting with the Mujahedin-e Khalq in Ashraf Base in Iraq. They also tried to reactivate the Shah's people. All these actions were undertaken in order to infiltrate into the body of Iranian society." Were those elites who issued ideological retractions aware that the West would climb aboard their movement and use it to its own ends? "I don't know. Perhaps their naivety allowed them to be turned into a fifth column. When they became aware of this, they split into several factions. Some quit the movement saying that they had never intended for this to happen. Others held to their opposition stances but denied any relationship with the West. A third group officially sided with the West. These include Ataollah Mohajerani, Mohsen Kadivar, who moved to London, and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who settled in Germany." Al-Husseini continued: "Many woke up to the fact that the country was in peril and that the targets were the head of the Islamic revolution and the nuclear programme, with the aim of weakening the state. The regime dealt with the opposition in a manner that did not violate Islamic law. Khamanei gave explicit orders to security forces not to fire a single bullet at demonstrators unless in self-defence, as was the case during the attack against one of the Basij positions." Amir Mousavi, a strategic affairs expert, maintains that the crisis is not over as its causes are still seething beneath the surface. There is still evident opposition to Ahmadinejad and reformists still believe that there are security abuses. The opposition is no longer visible and its precise situation is unclear, especially given the ban on demonstrations, the closure of the opposition press and the fact that the regime has regained full control over the street, which continues to cheer the government. But Mousavi stressed again that the crisis remains. Although the regime clearly has the upper hand, and in spite of its anxieties about Western intervention and sedition, Mousavi predicts that the approximately 150 detainees will be released within the next few weeks. He foresees a scenario beginning with a petition to the Supreme Guide followed by an amnesty intended to ameliorate the domestic climate. Ayatollah Mohamed Said Al-Noamani is a religious authority from Al-Najaf who has lived for many years in Iran. He believes that last year's elections, in which the opposition won 13 million votes versus 24 million votes in favour of the incumbent Ahmadinejad, were a healthy phenomenon that showcased democracy in Iran. As for the events following the elections, they were blown out of proportion by the media. "There is no internal crisis," he stated. "At the sign of any foreign threat, the people will rally around their leadership." Echoing the views of others I interviewed, the religious authority also believed that outside forces had tried to provoke strife but that the government overcame the challenge. Religious authorities form one of the most powerful forces on the domestic front. They can move the people with a single word. Naturally they played a key role in last year's events and will continue to do so in the future. Not that the Shia clergy is a homogenous entity. The stars of some religious officials have risen while those of others have fallen. Within the hawza -- the seminary that produces senior Shia clergymen -- there is also considerable diversity of opinion, with some religious officials having questioned the concept of rule by the clergy. One prominent reformer is Ayatollah Sanei who was recently expelled from the hawza. According to Hadi Afqahi, a strategic affairs expert close to Iranian decision-making circles, Sanei was a disciple of and strongly influenced by the late Ayatollah Montazeri who had been demoted while Ayatollah Khomeini was still alive. In the wake of last year's elections, Afqahi said, Sanei had issued some incendiary statements. "He said that the government was illegitimate and illegal, exhorted the people to heed the call to protest, and defended Mir Hussein Mousavi's calls to hooliganism. Sanei also said that rule by the clergy is a heresy and he crossed all red lines when he issued a fatwa that the veil was not compulsory for women. Naturally, he was stripped of his religious rank." On Montazeri, whose star had risen last year, Afqahi said that he had become the spiritual guide of the green movement in spite of the fact that he had been sentenced to house arrest 20 years previously due to his opposition to Khomeini. In addition, Montazeri had defended Mahdi Al-Hashemi who was found to have been a traitor on the grounds of involvement in assassination operations before the Islamic revolution. Eventually Khomeini pardoned Montazeri and issued instructions to have him reinstated at the hawza, on the condition that he refrained from politics. At the time of the elections, Montazeri disobeyed this injunction. As Afqahi put it, "He returned to politics in order to sow the seeds of dissension among the youth and drive them to demonstrating and acts of violence."
