Nuclear Fears and Iran's Thwarted Democrats

Even with nuclear issues back on the front burner, Fae MacArthur Clark warns that the West must remember the lessons of Iran's summer of dissent. 

Website: http://www.bard.edu/bgia
Download pdf: Nuclear Fears and Iran's Thwarted Democrats

By Fae MacArthur Clark

Editor's Note: The following editorial reflects the views of the author and are not Bard College, its faculty or students.

NEW YORK – Oct. 19 -- Amid the growing storm about a nuclear Iran, the summer’s protests in Tehran seem to have disappeared, forgotten, into the archives of the public consciousness. The debate now appears to too often center around an Iran with no people, no culture, and certainly no history. But Iran does have a history – a history of democracy and a history with the United States, and the two are inextricably intertwined.

After WWII and the installation of a new Shah by the British, Iran began on what appeared to be a slow but steady move towards democracy. The younger Shah ceded more power to the parliament than it had ever previously been permitted.

The spring of 1951 saw the election of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq, the pro-democracy founder of the Iranian National Front. Mosaddeq nationalized the oil industry and won, with backing from widespread strikes and demonstrations, the right to appoint several key political offices which had previously been controlled by the Shah.

Mosaddeq’s victories, however, were short lived. The British, who had held majority control of Iran’s oil fields prior to nationalization, were growing increasingly unhappy with the state of affairs in Iran and in early 1953 convinced the CIA to overthrow Mosaddeq based on claims that Iran was leaning towards communism. The US-backed coup ousted Mosaddeq and returned the Shah to power from his brief exile in Rome.

What followed was over 25 years of Iranian autocracy backed financially and militarily by the US. In 1978, however, Iran shocked the world with the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution which concluded in a landslide Iranian referendum to transform Iran into an Islamic Republic. The 444 day hostage crisis which followed between the US and Iran only served to further deteriorate relations between the two countries.

In the years since the Islamic Revolution, the US has served as an effective target of vitriol towards which Iranian leaders can direct domestic discontent.

Now, however, 30 years after the ousting of the Shah, Iran has once again been rocked by demonstrations. Even government organized anti-Israel and anti-US protests mutated quickly into challenges to the regime. These brave dissidents failed to achieve their objectives and their voices have now been largely silenced. Yet the actions of the ‘green revolutionaries’ say something about the political nature of Iran and also about the image of the United States in Iran.

Unlike Tiananmen Square in 1989, there was no Statue of Liberty erected in Tehran. Instead, placards depicting Mosaddeq beside opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi were held high by the crowds, seeming to defiantly reject foreign intervention, an act which has brought nothing but greater repression in Iran’s recent history. And yet, the very fact of the protests themselves stands against attempts by Iran’s leadership to direct all domestic dissent overseas. 

Another Iranian revolution may not be on the cards for the immediate future. However, any excessive, and certainly military, pressure on Iran, particularly from the US, would almost certainly nip Iranian dissent in the bud, re-polarizing the Iranian people against a foreign enemy. This is not merely a question of the immediate future. Failure to allow Iran’s dissention to mature would neglect an opportunity for Iranian reform from within that hasn’t been seen since Mosaddeq. Excessive intervention now could merely restart a similar process to that which has played out since the 1979 coup. And do we really want to see a repeat of history?

We cannot afford to view Iran as merely a Muslim state threatening nuclear weapons capability. Our analysis must be much more nuanced than that.