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Opinion

The lesson of the uprising in Iran

Hamid Enayat
Hamid Enayat
Updated: 07/05/23

Seven months after the start of the national uprising in Iran there is no doubt that the Iranian people are deeply unhappy with the theocratic regime that has ruled the country for four decades. The protests have brought to the surface frustration and anger that have been building for many years. The regime has responded with violence, repression and economic policies that have led to widespread poverty. Despite these difficulties, the Iranian people are demanding change and remain as determined as ever to continue the struggle for a free and democratic republic in Iran.

For years, Western governments, driven by economic and other interests, have refused to recognise the Iranian people's desire for regime change. Today, however, the prospects for change are undeniable.

Undisputed facts

The regime is sinking into an irreparable crisis with no way out of the current quagmire. The balance of power will never return to what it was before the protests began in September 2022.

After each wave of protests since 2017 the regime has weakened, its support base has shrunk and the economic and social crises have worsened. 

The objective conditions that call for change are unquestionable, as long as they are recognised by the various officials in the system. 

Each wave of protests and uprisings since 2017 has grown and radicalised, both in terms of demands and in the will of the population to confront the repressive forces of the regime.

The regime will persist in its policy of repression to the end, refusing to change its behaviour. Anticipating its collapse for internal reasons is therefore a fanciful idea. The only viable course of action is to overthrow the regime.

False narratives

As the protests continued into the autumn of 2022, several issues became the focus of discussion, mainly outside Iran, which ironically were initiated or encouraged by the regime. Here are a few examples:

Regime change will lead to Iran's disintegration

This narrative is both misleading and divisive, and comes from the Iranian regime itself. It serves as a strategy to counter the population's growing demands for total regime change. So-called "reformists" actively promote this discourse, insisting that the primary objective must be to keep the current regime in power. Thus, the notion of the country's collapse is used as a scare tactic to dissuade the population from seeking regime change.

Interestingly, by accusing Iran's various ethnic groups, such as the Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs and others, of separatism, the remnants of the Shah's dictatorship are in fact, wittingly or unwittingly, doing the regime a favour. 

In fact, there is no separatist movement among Iran's ethnic minorities. However, the Iranian regime uses agents to make such baseless accusations in order to obfuscate the situation and achieve its goals.

On the contrary, the NCRI maintains that the preservation of Iran's territorial integrity requires the recognition of the full rights of all Iranian ethnic minorities and encourages their participation in the national resistance for a secular and democratic republic.

Seeing Pasdaran as a force for change

The idea of relying on the Pasdaran Corps to change the regime is a strange one, but some defend it. A tweet from a Reza Pahlavi aide sums up this view perfectly: "Very interesting. Princess Yasmin says an Italian journalist who visited #Iran recently told her that many Revolutionary Guard members want her husband, Crown Prince @PahlaviReza, to return to #Iran to help save the country."

Reza Pahlavi had previously acknowledged contacts with the Pasdaran and the Bassij militia, saying he believed the Pasdaran had a role to play in bringing change and order to post-clerical Iran. 

The creation of a new opposition group called the Iranian Green Democrats Congress (IRGDC) in 2010 is one of the most elaborate plans hatched by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (VEVAK) in recent years. In a series of interviews with disreputable media outlets, a certain Reza Madhi presented himself as a former dissident general of the Pasdaran Corps. He has encouraged unsuspecting Iranian exiles to join him in forming an opposition coalition.

In 2011, the French daily Le Figaro published an article quoting an exiled businessman as saying that General Mohammad Reza Madhi, a former Pasdaran officer who was in charge of regime security for twelve years until 2008, had recently joined forces with Amir Jahanshahi, an officer linked to the Green Movement. Le Figaro adds that this former general claimed to have left Iran in February 2008 and to have remained in contact with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei until the coup d'état perpetrated during the sham elections in Iran in June 2009.

Two months later, on 6 April 2011, AFP published an article entitled "Iran: the formation of a new movement brings dissidents together". "The Iranian Green Democratic Congress (IRGDC) brings together most of the Iranian opposition groups, with the exception of the PMOI/MEK, the main opposition organisation in exile based north of Paris".

Although the new "movement" was composed of individuals of various persuasions, mainly constitutionalists and so-called Greens, its leading figure was General Mohammad Reza Madhi of the Pasdaran Corps. Their association was presented as an indication of their supposed support base within the Pasdaran.

Eventually, Madhi, Jahanshahi and Mehrdad Khansari (a former official of the shah's regime) formed what they called the "Green Wave", which was supposed to act as a "government in exile". Forty people attended the first meeting of this newly formed coalition on 26 March 2011, during which a nine-member governing council was elected. 

However, on 9 June 2011, Madhi suddenly appeared on Iranian state television, boasting that he had fooled the 'counter-revolutionaries'. State television and the official IRNA news agency trumpeted that Madhi had always been an agent of the regime's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (VEVAK) and that he had managed to infiltrate and deceive those claiming to be from the opposition.

The PMOI, after investigating through its network in Iran, refused to cooperate with them, leading to criticism and even harsh attacks accusing the PMOI of not wanting to cooperate with other opposition groups.

The regime propagates this misconception in an attempt to derail the course of the uprising. Reza Pahlavi seems to be unwittingly serving the regime's interests.

A destructive and divisive illusion

In January 2023, Reza Pahlavi and five other personalities - including a journalist, an actress and a former footballer - shared an identical Happy New Year message on Twitter. On 10 February 2023, at a conference at Georgetown University, this group was joined by two others in declaring the creation of an alliance, pledging to quickly publish their letter of solidarity aimed at uniting the entire opposition.

On 10 March 2023, the group released its charter and invited others to form an alliance. It also participated in several political forums, asserting a single demand: that governments and political institutions recognise it as a legitimate interlocutor in place of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

Despite its efforts, the group was met with overwhelming indifference from the Iranian people. Even a massive publicity campaign, supported by a television channel partly funded by Saudi Arabia, failed to rally support for the group.

Iranians' main concern about this alliance was the presence of Reza Pahlavi, as it evoked the dark days of his father's dictatorship, not only because he always refused to distance himself from his father's one-party system, but also because he actively supported and glorified it. He even called the 1979 revolution that overthrew him a sedition, which the Iranian people consider an insult.

His letter has also been heavily criticised from all sides. One of the most common criticisms was that he did not reject the dictatorship of the monarchical system in Iran, claiming that such a decision, if made, would be taken in the future. This stance was of particular concern to many Iranians who, during national demonstrations, chanted "down with the tyrant, be he shah or mullah". This deliberate omission was seen as leaving the door open to another dictatorship.

10 April 2023. Reza Pahlavi announced in a tweet that his ideas for broadening the alliance had been rejected by others. Consequently, he declared that he would also work with other groups. This statement was widely seen as the coup de grâce to the much-heralded nascent "coalition".

Subsequently, another member of the 'alliance', Nazanin Boniadi, an actress who became a political activist after the start of the protests in Iran and has no political background, deleted her Twitter account. 

In addition to Boniadi, two other celebrities who were part of the alliance - the actress and the footballer - have been notably absent since early March, showing no political activity.

Finally, on 21 April 2023, after Reza Pahlavi's trip to Israel, Hamed Esmaeilion, another member of the "alliance", announced his departure from the group. When asked about his decision, Esmaeilion revealed that Reza Pahlavi had tried to impose his own views and those of his associates on the group, which the other members had opposed. He added that no real effort had been made to establish an organisational structure with a mission statement and bylaws to which all members had to adhere. Hamed Esmailion said that monarchists rejected other Iranians as unpatriotic, claiming that only monarchists were true patriots. He also expressed concern about the systematic and damaging cyber-attacks carried out by Reza Pahlavi's associates against others in order to promote their own agenda.

This autocratic attitude was further evidenced during Reza Pahlavi's trip to Israel, where a small group of his Iranian supporters presented him with a crown and greeted him with chants of "Javid Shah", meaning "Eternal be the King".

Reza Pahlavi embarked on a tour of Israel in a desperate attempt to gain some degree of recognition, something his European tour had failed to achieve. However, the Israel tour did not help him; on the contrary, it backfired by reinforcing the idea that his main goal and ambition is to become the "king of kings", a title used by his father before he was overthrown by the Iranian people.

On 29 April, a rally was held in London to demand the designation of the Pashtuns as a terrorist entity. The rally degenerated into chaos when some associates of Reza Pahlavi tried to co-opt the event to support him, which was rejected by the participants. Subsequently, Pahlavi's associates began to insult his former ally, Esmaeilion, who was one of the speakers at the rally, accusing him of being an agent of the Pashdaran.

Coalition-building among political groups in a country, especially among groups opposed to a dictatorship, requires certain characteristics, without which such efforts would be divisive and counterproductive. First, such a coalition must have political, military or organisational weight, otherwise it will exist only on paper. In addition, it must :

  • Be based on common principles.
  • Be rooted in society and reflect the desire of citizens.
  • Include political groups and individuals with a clear commitment to democratic values.
  • Include people willing to make the necessary sacrifices. 
  • And, above all, be made up of groups and organisations committed to resisting the dictatorship. Indeed, in the absence of the possibility of free elections, legitimacy derives from resistance, which implies a commitment to freedom and democracy.

Hamid Enayat, political scientist and Iran expert linked to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, takes stock of seven months of revolution in Iran.

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