Joshua Muravchik: Neocon Corner

Joshua Muravchik on international affairs.

Iran: What We Can Do

Last Thursday (February 11), the anniversary of 1979’s Islamic Revolution, the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime succeeded in keeping control of central Tehran, thwarting the hopes of the Green Movement to turn the day into another display of public protest.

The authorities relied on three tactics. First, they mobilized hundreds of thousands of their own people, busing them in from around the country, to fill the city center. These included members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij militia, and other security personnel. In addition, thousands of civilian marchers took part in the official commemoration. There is no way to know how many of these marchers were genuine regime-supporters and how many were government employees or individuals otherwise beholden to the authorities, participating under duress. But they occupied the strategic terrain.

Second, the regime arrested many oppositionists in the weeks leading up to February 11. No one knows how many since the arrests are not announced and families are not notified. Some prisoners have been executed and more executions have been threatened. Once someone is hauled in there is no telling when, if ever, he or she will be released. The mothers of those who are believed to have been arrested stage continuous vigils outside of Evin prison, seeking information about their loved ones. These vigils have become the most poignant ongoing manifestation of popular opposition and the focus of widespread sympathy. But in the days before February 11, the mothers, too, were arrested, according to reports on Iranian Web sites.

On February 11, security forces rushed to beat and/or arrest those who did demonstrate. Sending a message that no one is safe from thuggish abuse, the son of presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi was among those beaten. He displayed nasty bruises on his body and reported that he was also threatened with rape. More shocking, Zahra Rahnavard, the 64-year old wife of the likely true winner of the presidential race, Mir Hossein Moussavi, was assaulted with fists and batons. (Rahnavard, who pushed her husband toward a more reformist stance during the campaign, now may be the most popular leader in Iran, according to the Green Movement’s polls.)

The third tactic employed against the opposition was to disrupt its communications by technological means. On the eve of February 11, the government banned Gmail, the e-mail server used by many of the movement’s adherents. It interfered with cell-phone service and Internet access and intensified jamming VOA, BBC, Radio Farda, and other foreign broadcasters. (Astoundingly, apparently still in pursuit of rapprochement with Iran’s bloody rulers, Obama’s National Security Council asked U.S. government broadcasters to play down this jamming or not report it at all.)

Although these tactics worked, the Greens don’t count the day as a clear defeat. Protests were successfully mounted in a handful of other cities and even in pockets of Tehran, where, for the most part, protesters repaired to the rooftops to shout “Allahu akbar.” Their next target date is Chaharshanbe Suri on March 16th, the eve of the last Wednesday of the year on the Iranian calendar. This ancient Persian holiday, also known as the festival of fire, is traditionally observed with nighttime bonfires and feasts. This year, the festivities will be infused with political symbols and slogans, and this will be much harder to suppress because these will not be centralized but dispersed in neighborhoods and parks all over the city and the country.

While the Green Movement devises new tactics of its own to cope with the repressions, the question we Americans and others outside Iran must ask is: Can we do anything? The answer is yes. True, we are helpless to prevent the arrests and beatings or the mobilization of the regime’s automatons, but we have it within our power to counteract its technological warfare against the Green Movement. We can put up a communications satellite dedicated to the needs of the Greens to facilitate Internet and other electronic communications despite government interference. Contrary to the NSC’s knee-jerk appeasement, we should protest loudly any jamming of our broadcasts—and we should find ways to retaliate. And we can launch TV Farda, a complement to Radio Farda, the Farsi surrogate broadcast service operated by Radio Free Europe. Currently, VOA TV’s Farsi broadcasts reach millions but are constrained because VOA speaks for the U.S. government. In contrast, a “surrogate” service like Radio Farda or TV Marti (to Cuba) speaks for the indigenous people who are excluded from power. A surrogate Farsi TV station would give the Greens a powerful weapon with which to counteract the regime’s vicious machinations.

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