Not every protest is anti-government (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
Ayatollah Khomeini was a fundamentalist cleric who inspired the 1979 Islamic Revolution to overthrow a millennia-old history of Iranian monarchy. He was also, legend has it, an athletic young man who became the leapfrog champion of his village of Khomein and the surrounding area. Whenever I think of political change in modern-day Iran, it is the face of this surly mullah in the winter of his life that appears in my mind.
In 1979, furious Iranians marched in towns and cities across Iran, holding up pictures of Khomeini. Now they march once more: equally as enraged, equally as determined to bring revolution.
It’s been six weeks since protests broke out after the murder of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian-Kurdish woman, at the hands of Iran’s brutal and sinister morality police, uniting different parts of society across age, class, and ethnic boundaries. Women now burn their hijabs daily and cut off their hair. Parents boycott schools. Protestors continue to line the streets. All the while, Iran continues to be strafed by international sanctions, a failed nuclear deal, and spiralling inflation and unemployment. The people have had enough.
The regime, though, fights back. It has cut off the internet, desperate to strangle coordination between protests and to stifle the flow of information out of Iran. But that’s impossible: with the help of VPNs, social media is driving international awareness, with protests breaking out in solidarity across dozens of countries. Yet still the crackdown continues. Iran State TV and its various News Agencies are pumping out regime narratives almost 24/7. Forced “apologies” by protestors who have supposedly seen the error of their ways — after, I would guess, much torture — are now a daily feature on evening TV. And, of course, the killings never cease; the Norway-based Iran Human Rights organisation estimates that more than 200 Iranians have been murdered to date.
When I look at the Iranian protests in 2022, I cannot help but compare them to 1979. There are clear parallels: the fact the protestors just want the mullahs gone; the centrality of the hijab; a background of economic decline; rumours of Iran’s leader being weakened by cancer. But there is one difference this time: speed.
In January 1979, just a month before the revolution, Khomeini was still in exile, as he had been since 1963. From a cottage in Neauphle-le-Château, in the French countryside near Paris, Khomeini continued the work he’d begun in Iraq: recording revolutionary sermons, speeches, anti-Shah rhetoric, and the ideology of the Islamic Government onto cassette tapes, which were then sold in Europe and smuggled into Iran. These were then broadcast and duplicated by mosques and distributed — illegally, of course — throughout the country. It was through this system that Khomeini, who was obviously barred from appearing on Iranian media, was able to mobilise Iranians to action. It took him years.
Today, however, the thousands of Iranians pouring onto the streets are likely to have been mobilised in the space of just a few hours by communications technologies that did not exist in 1977-79. Yes, it is now harder than at any other point since internet came to Iran to access it properly. But the government’s ban is not total. Email providers, including Yahoo Mail and Mail.com, are blocked, but, for some reason, Gmail, iCloud, and ProtonMail are not. It’s tricky for the protestors to mobilise, but it’s not impossible.
On the face of it, this can only be good. A popular revolution can only succeed if it’s, well, popular. But digitally powered protests carry as many disadvantages as advantages and, when it comes to turning them into successful revolutions, counterintuitively, perhaps even more. Here, the benchmark is the ultimately unsuccessful 2011 Arab Spring, which took place in the age of early social media: when Facebook was already established and Twitter was booming, but Instagram was in its infancy. It has been called the Facebook Revolution and it bears comparison to Iran today — in particular the case of Egypt. There, protestors hoping to overthrow the dictator Hosni Mubarak endured many of the hardships Iranians have faced over the last decade or so: police brutality, electoral fraud, lack of political freedom and liberty, and economic turmoil.
Their response was clear: revolution, powered by social media. As Fawaz Rashed, an Egyptian protestor, described at the time: “We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” The demonstrations kicked off on 25 January 2011, known as Police Day in Egypt, and never looked back. Facebook pages such as “We are all Khaled Said” — which gained 100,000 followers in three days after spreading images of a man murdered by Egyptian police for exposing on-duty drug taking — were key fora of the revolution. The #Jan25 hashtag became collective, digital rallying cries, unifying the people around the first protests before the Egyptian government blocked the internet for five days. It was all too much. Three weeks later, Mubarak resigned. The revolutionaries had won.
Or had they? Mubarak was gone. But who would replace him? Social media had enabled Egyptians to mobilise hundreds of thousands onto the streets. This gave Mubarak a choice: cling on to power through massacres of a scale unknown even in Egyptian history or back down. He chose the latter. But the structural strength of social media — its ability to transform every Egyptian protestor into their own mini-broadcaster, amplifying messages and helping to mobilise others — proved to be the revolution’s downfall. Social media is, by nature, diffuse. It is not built around the architecture of central nodes, be it states or, in the case of revolutions, leaders.
So, when Mubarak fell, there was no one to replace him. Millions across the world watched in awe and triumph as he scuttled from power. But the job was only half done. The revolutionaries had no one to replace him. They had no leader — only thousands of Facebook accounts that were incredibly effective in getting the message about Mubarak out, but obviously unable to govern in his place. The revolutionaries had meandered into a void, into which Muhammad Morsi and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood gratefully stepped. A few years later, after attempting to make himself a de Facto Pharoah, he was overthrown by the former General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi — in essence a Mubarak Mark II.
Now contrast this with 1979. Many date the beginning of the 1979 Revolution to the January 1978 student protests in defence of Khomeini, after the government newspaper Ettela’at labelled him a “British Agent” in an article entitled “Iran and Red and Black Colonization”. Simply put, the revolutionaries built their protest around the figure of Khomeini. Indeed, the revolution was said to have succeeded when his plane from Paris touched down at Tehran airport on 1 February 1979.
Fast forward to today, and Mahsa Amini’s name has become shorthand for Iranian revolutionary aspiration; her hashtag has been tweeted millions of times. But she can never be more than a martyr. No leader has yet emerged. Instead, the protests are organised by different people or groups in different cities and towns on an almost ad hoc basis.
The truth is that if the mullahs were to collapse tomorrow, there are no signs that a democratic movement would sweep to power. Opposition groups such as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq have their supporters, but they remain far from being a government-in-waiting. It is far more likely that the security state — led by the Revolutionary Guard Corps — would step into the void and make apparent what is already largely a fact: that Iran is no longer a clerical state but is now ruled by a Praetorian Guard.
In 1979, Iranians held up images of Khomeini. In 2022, they tear them down. They know they want the regime gone but they have no one to hold up in its place. For a revolution to succeed, it’s not enough to be against someone; you have to be for someone else. It’s not enough that Khamenei loses. Someone else must win.
Until that time, the mullahs will continue to cling on as murderously and barbarously as they always have, and Iranians will continue to die. For years Palestinians would say they needed a Saladin. They were wrong. What they need is a Ben Gurion. What the Iranian revolutionaries need now more than anything else is a Khomeini. Until that happens, this will only ever be half a revolution.
David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)
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SubscribeThe silence from the 3rd wavers in the West regrading these genuinely courageous women in Iran tells you all you need to know about them.
I have always found it interesting that feminists who are firebrands about the failures of our society have little or nothing to say about egregious violent misogyny elsewhere. In the case of Afghanistan senior women democrats went so far as to suggest that being sold of as a wife (I.e. sex slave) at age 15 to some Taliban fighter was no big deal since they were ‘used to it.’ Similarly the complete indifference to actual slavery in the world today – as opposed to 150 years ago – or the actual murder of aboriginal people in South America for their land today – as opposed to here years ago. It tells you all you need to know about the true sincerity of activists.
Peter, the reason for this, although I would say it’s not a good reason for Western feminists to give up the fight, is that whenever we Western women have stood up for other women from different violently abusive cultures, we have been attacked as racist. Fighting FGM (I’ve been fighting against this for 30 years now) the most abominable, heinous act of GBH on a child, and carried out on British children of mostly Somalian and Nigerian decent here in the UK was met with ‘you’re a racist’. We must respect their culture!!! Even if it’s a human rights abuse it seems! This defence of this most shocking abuse mostly comes from the Left. And was repeated when we spoke of ‘honour’ killings, forced and chid marriage and polygamy, all practiced with impunity in this so called modern liberal democracy. The attack has always been ‘you’re a racist’ to be criticising these lovely ethnic people and their ‘values’. What makes you think that your Western feminist values are better than these traditional and religiously supported gender based abuses, eh?
You make a very good point, Elaine. It all stems from the ‘no culture is better than another’ mantra. Dare I say, some cultures need to experience their own enlightenment, and we need to revisit and reaffirm ours. Keep up your fight, and more power to your arm.
can I post a comment?
There was no democratic ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt. The liberal protests never had the support of more than a tiny proportion of the population – and then only in Cairo. Most of the broader opposition to Mubarak came from the religious right. What is happening in Iran is fundamentally different – though I suspect the writer is right about the lack of cohesion amongst the opposition.
Not to mention that Iranians aren’t Arabs and the phrase “Arab Spring” has become a by-word for instability and despair in the region (in contrast to the positive portrayal in the western media). We need to get away from using the same trope for any middle eastern country with civil unrest. Iran is a big regional powerhouse which completely crushed the last uprising there (green movement) which led to no concessions. My money would be on the same result this time. Unfortunately.
Similarly, appending the word “gate” to any perceived scandal. A cheap and lazy media gimmick.
Indeed. And this is the autumn in the northern hemisphere. Persian Autumn does sound a bit ‘end of days’ mind you.
A big part of the MeK not making a good government in waiting might be the fact that they are an insane cult hiding out in Albania because most Iranians hate them.
The Iranian regime is sending weapons (and apparently soldiers) for Russia to use in Ukraine. The Islamist ideology is hardly relevant any more – what matters is the naked and ruthless exercise of power at all costs, and the suppression of any form of democratic expression. As with Russia. The regimes in both countries have led their peoples into the desert.
Zelenskyy and the west have a lot to answer for
when it comes the current conflict in Ukraine.
The president was overthrown with the US, NATO and the EU meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs.
NATO has encroached upon Russia’s back yard over the years. Since 2014, Ukraine has conducted a war shelling Ukrainian citizens in Eastern Ukraine.
Russia is only partly to blame for this conflict.
Ukraine is is a hapless pawn in the game.
No-one in the West cares about Ukraine, some want the war to continue indefinitely.
This is the US’s proxy war against Russia.
Zelenskyy must be forced to negotiate a settlement with Russia.
Yawn
Do you dispute that ?
“Yawn” is pretty pathetic.
Are you happy that our government
Is spending £billions to prolong a war that is NONE of our business ?
You really need to stop reading the Daily Mail and watching the BBC.
It IS our business, as Chamberlain discovered in 1939 after calling HItler’s menacing of Czechoslovakia in 1938 “a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.” Putin’s idea of a revived Russian “empire” includes all the former Soviet republics, and other countries like Poland. Why do you think the Swedes and Finns, who have been neutral for so long, are now clamouring to join NATO?
I’m happy about spending some money with no lives lost in the west to grind down an entity that repeatedly threatens us with nuclear conflagration. That’s a huge win – but you’d rather see Putin the dictator establish his new empire?
I dispute that there was any overthrow of Ukrainian government by NATO or the US.
And even if that where true about the Maidan uprising, Zelensky was not part of that. He won the election in 2019 as an opposition party.
And why do you think Russia has the right to a “backyard”. What about the sovereignty of the Ukraine?
I agree.
And I would add that anybody who is unable to describe the Holodomor has no business commenting on Russia/Ukraine relations.
I suspect most commenters here know all about the Holodomor.
I VERY much doubt it!
I think Bill feels he’s an expert and the rest of us should bow down to his wisdom. No idea why he’s on Unherd where readers don’t appreciate censorship by supposed ‘experts’.
I dunno about “most”; many, yeah.
So you’re a big fan of censorship then? Only experts can talk about a subject?
Thats what led to extreme covid lockdowns and its consequences. So called experts banning alternative views.
Please explain why Russia is entitled to a backyard?
Same reason as America is entitled to a back yard. Remember the Cuban Crisis of 1962?
The Soviet Union put nuclear missiles on Cuba. NATO has not been putting nuclear missiles in the Eastern European nations in NATO.
After the Cuban crisis was over, the Cuba continued as an ally of The Soviet Union with conventional weapons for the rest of the Cold War. Same as the Nato states like Poland etc now.
No explanation is required.
It is self evident.
Tell that to the people who live in the so-called ‘backyard.’ Realpolitik at its nastiest.
You don’t like freedom, eh?
Self evident? How?
So there are at least 15 brain-washed warmongers in the commentary.
Are you prepared to have your children
fight and die for Ukraine ?
Would you fight and die for Ukraine ?
You despicable fools.
And so ends the so-called argument. True colours and all that.
Yup he’s lost it.
The Ukrainians seem to be quite happy to do most of the fighting and dying; indeed, if they weren’t, it would be a waste of time trying to help. There are a small corps of foreign volunteers, but the bulk of the fighters (and the casualties, on their side) are Ukrainians.
Frankly, this site suggests quite different level of discussion than simply repeating slogans of Russian propaganda. To bring it back to reality, several questions may be asked: 1. Why Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th? 2. What are goals of Russian invasion now? 3. What is Russia doing in Ukraine eight month later? 4. Should Putin be forced by all means available to leave Ukraine and restore its territorial integrity? That usually cuts empty rhetoric. And perhaps the most “interesting” question #5: What do you think Putin is going to do next if he wins (God forbids!)?
As for the last claim that Zelensky must be forced to negotiate, that is what Russians are trying to accomplish by bombing Ukranian cities and killing innocent civilians, including children. In fact, they are proud of it and some of leading Russian propagandists have been openly calling to kill as many as possible, while others calling to create mass starvation suggesting that would bring Zelensky to the negotiation table. Should the West agree with that or to help destroying genocidal Russian regime? The answer is obvious. Soo before calling other people “fools” I recommend taking a pause and think it through. Unless of course you get your compensation from Moscow which is also possible.
Yet another heartless critique that doesn’t even deign to mention the democratic wishes of the countries that joined NATO and did so for protection. Russia doesn’t need protection from NATO, which has never threatened Russia. Russia’s neighbouring states — former Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact countries — need protection from the nasty Bear still dreaming of Empire.
The only bit I agree with is it’s the “US proxy war against Russia”. Absolutely correct – and a brilliant way to grind down the bampot Putin who thinks genocide is acceptable.
I have always felt that if only we would take the Iranians in, quit the sanctions, let them have tourism on the scale it could be so we visited and got familiar with how amazing the country is, let them be part of the world fully – that democracy of a sort would fallow naturally – we keep them contained.
Only like them and their Mullahs, West and Iran are locked in this destructive relationship, which seemingly has no way out either. They are a good people, they like the West, they respect education, as immigrants they are entrepreneurial and successful..Keeping them isolated helps keep this stalemate of Mullahs, isolation, Great Satan, going. Maybe it has some comparison to the Balkans in the Soviet times, and they moved on when their strong men fell. Remember when Enver Hoxha and Ceaușescu fell….because the West was open to them then.
It didn’t work with China. The extra money that flowed their way has if anything made them more authoritarian and assertive, why do you presume the Iranian regime would be any different?
Very good point.
The difference is that Xi has broght growth, self-confidence and pride to the common chinese due to their economic success and military power. Polls have shown that the chinese rate economy higher than democracy – which they have no traditions for. In addition; the government doesn’t discriminate/subordinate women in particular. None of this is atributable to Iran, with whom they share the total lack of (individual) freedom and democracy.
No, it was Deng who brought “growth, self-confidence and pride to the common Chinese”. Xi is busy marching them backwards.
What do you mean, “let them”. The Persians I know were modern, educated, urbane, and well-travelled under the Shah. The mullahs isolated the country by choice and declared war on the world. The barbarians running the country into poverty and desperation for 43 years want it that way.
Valerie Jarrett’sObama’s insane nuclear deal was ended by Trump; had it not been, God only knows what destruction would have been unleashed. Ultimately, Iran in Iran’s problem, and it looks like her people are finally doing something about it – as are many in the West, who have also had enough with our own repressive regimes.I lived in Iran until we had to evacuate in February 1979. We loved it there and I agree it was quite a free country then. Things didn’t completely turn until the soldiers refused to fire on their citizens. I remember that day well when Khomeni returned. The middle classes and students did not want or expect a theocracy, they thought they would get a fairer society and one a bit more respectful of their religion. There were people from all over the world there and we all got along. I met many disillusioned young people in London and Germany, some of whom had lost friends to the regime. My late husband always hoped one day we could go back, being forced to leave it always felt like unfinished business but too late now. I hope someday it becomes a relatively free country again.
Bit naive.
A complete misunderstanding of the nature of Islamic fundamentalism.
Eh? Bit tricky when they kept sending people over to kill us when we didn’t support their religious views.
But I agree that opening up could lead to a wave of change, but it needs tactics, a plan as it sometimes doesn’t work (like with Russia). It’s very sad as the vast majority are wonderful people, they would complement western culture in so many interesting ways.
I listen to Mayhar Tousi on Iran. He understands it.
Absolutely correct.
A restatement of Thomas Hobbes’ caution against dispensing with even bad governments, because the alternative is often worse.
It seems so. I’ve just been reading the article on Albania.
A wise and accurate assessment. See also Malcolm Gladwell;’s perceptive essay Small Change, Why the Revolution will not be tweeted https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell
Are you Professor Tim Luckhurst of South College, Durham, please? If so, then could you possibly email [email protected]? Some conference trade may be coming your way. Very many thanks.
Sunak should closen ties with India and Israel, and come out to the electorate in honesty about the global and national Islamic terrorist threat, with courage and without fear of the media and the national socialist ‘ fifth column’, and start dismantling their defences, including hate crimes.
Totally fatuous. The protestors *can’t* have a Khomeini. Khomeini came out of institutions which were centuries old – the Shah had already banished him in the 60s because he represented a threat because he could mobilise an entire *preexisting* constituency – the faithful. Sure, there is a certain titilliation in the fact that Khomeini used the media of the day – tape cassettes from the suburbs of Paris. And in the chaos of the revolution, many progressive hopes were – for a few months – pinned on the revolution, Islamism or no Islamism. But that was all over in the first year, 18 months. It died with the hopes of people like Bani Sadr and Sadeq Ghobtzadeh. But there are no institutions in Iran representing the values the protestors are fighting for. This central flaw in the article is compounded by lots of casual laziness… Mursi as “Pharaoh” – really? And how exactly *could* there be a Palestinian Ben Gurion when the prerequisites – wide freedom to build the institutions of a future state, including trade unions, banks, suburbs, sports teams, an indigenous Academy – a wide range of social, economic and political institutions which Ben Gurion then stepped forward to lead – have been ruthlessly suppressed by the state of Israel? (Its no coincidence that the current Hebrew word for terrorist – מחבל – had the related but very different meaning of “saboteur” before 1948. The Zionist movement understood very well the conditions that allowed them to build their nationalism and diligently ensured they would not be available to Palestinian nationalists seeking to challenge them in their turn). Faux sophisticated. Lazy demi-scholarship.
I do not know who is going to come out on top in Iran, but I know that it is not going to be a teenager. There are people behind all of this, and there are people waiting in the wings, as they have been doing since before many of these courageous schoolgirls’ parents were born.
The longstanding neoconservative and liberal-interventionist aim has been to install the utterly insane PMOI/MEK as Iran’s new regime. That is the weirdest political cult in the world, and it has been in exile since 1981, meaning that it has no constituency in a country of which half the population is under 30 years of age.
Consider how the world turns, since that outfit was headquartered for many years in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where it participated in atrocities committed by the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard. During the Iraq War, Biden’s, Bush’s and Blair’s Boys bombed the PMOI/MEK into surrender, as part of a deal with Iran to hand over certain al-Qaeda suspects who were of course in any case opponents of the Iranian regime. Oh, how the world does turn.
Opponents of the Iraq War were screamed down as Islamists and revolutionary Marxists due to the presence of a few of each in our enormous ranks. But now the plan is to hand over Iran to the people who really do manage the remarkable feat of being both, yet who were nevertheless closely allied to Saddam Hussein.
The Americans have relocated the PMOI/MEK to Albania, which is now a member of NATO. It also maintains a considerable presence in the France of Emmanuel Macron. And it is allied both to Israel and to Saudi Arabia, with that latter alliance, at least, showing us that its Shia principles are truly worth as much as its Leftist ones.