The aftermath of the June presidential elections in Iran marks a further deterioration of systemic human rights violations in Iran. The numbers of those protesting the official results and their ability to mobilize despite having harsh censorship and a state media boycott imposed against them have confirmed that at least on a regional level, Iranian society is relatively strongly emancipated. The continually escalating repression of the governing regime directly corresponds to the level of active advocacy for greater civil rights in the country.
The human rights situation in Iran was in poor shape long before the elections and deteriorating ever since 2005 when Ahmadinejad first became president. In terms of numbers of executions, Iran takes second place in the world after China with its billion-person population. Together with Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Iran is the only country to have officially administered the death penalty for minors under the age of 18. The position of ethnic and religious minorities has deteriorated, and harsh sentences with no possibility of parole are being given to bloggers and journalists. Long before post-election turmoil the Revolutionary Courts were holding show trials against both human rights defenders who are convicted of “threatening national security” because of their critical opinions or their contacts with the west.
Unpredictability of the regime’s behaviour can be seen in the recent conviction of two brothers, Drs Arash and Kamiar Alaei. They have received sentences of three and six years in prison for their participation at a medical conference in the USA, where, as renowned experts on HIV prevention, they are alleged to have planned to overthrow the regime through a network of NGOs and scientific exchange programmes. The rather absurd idea of their showcase conviction is that doctors would be able to somehow manipulate power in a state controlled by the secret police, members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Nevertheless, the Iranian regime is currently spreading the paranoid sense that a “Velvet Revolution” is being initiated from outside the country and using that paranoia to justify its repression of any post-election protest.
The policy of the “Axis of Evil” initiated by the previous US administration contributed to this genuine paranoia. Some representatives of this policy, at least during US President George W. Bush’s first term in office, dreamed of redrawing the political map of the Middle East and delivered significant financing into what were often dubious hands to support the political changes in Iran.
Still an Islamic Republic?
However, it would be a mistake to automatically equate the critique of current conditions in Iran with an attack on the existence per se of the “Islamic Republic” that came into being after the 1979 revolution. It is their own “children” among others - to be precise the protagonists of that revolution and the former close collaborators of Ayatollah Khomeini – who consider the current regime illegitimate. It is thus no surprise that 30 years after the Islamic Revolution, many of those protagonists either live in exile, or under house arrest (not to mention those who have been executed) or are politically engaged in Iran for a gradual change in conditions. The high spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, who was originally considered by Khomeini to be his probable successor (and who has been living under house arrest for 20 years), has labelled the current political system in Iran the oligarchic dominance of one group over the rest of society, a group which is “neither Islamic, nor republican, but purely dictatorial.” The elections and the subsequent suppression of the protests have demonstrated the degree of political polarization in the country. It has also confirmed the exceptional economic influence and power of the Basij Militia and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard which stood in for the usual forces of order to suppress the postelection protests.
What is taking place in today’s Iran is not primarily a dispute between western influences and the concept of the Islamic state, as the country’s current leaders would like to present the issue. Rather, it is much more a clash between the concept of republicanism with an Islamic face, which derives its power from the sovereignty of the people (and therefore from more or less freely elected institutions), and a government of conservatives and Revolutionary Guard commanders led by the Supreme Spiritual Leader Ali Khamanei, whose office claims absolute power in key decisions. Opponents of the status quo and critics of rights restrictions are labelled by the regime as enemies of God (mohareb), irrespective of whether they wear the traditional turban of religious authority or a western suit. The broad definition of the opposition to the tendencies of Ahmadinejad and his patron Ali Khamenei not only includes students open to western culture and the westernized elite of northern Teheran, but also some ayatollahs and protagonists of the post-revolution regime who reject religious dogmatism and the concentration of power, even though many of them accepted that very same model under Khomeini and helped to construct it. Video footage of the street protests on the web shows middle-aged women dressed in the traditionally conservative chadour doing their best to prevent the intervening security units from beating up protestors. This can hardly be considered a demonstration of western-organized unrest.
The surprisingly direct, open intervention by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei defending the legitimacy of the elections indicates that he is not willing in the slightest to participate in power-sharing in the “Islamic Republic”. Neither wants to allow even limited changes within the framework of the regime, such as those that might be brought about by the government of the formerly loyal prime minister of the Khomeini regime (1980-1988), Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The reason, besides economic and political power interests, is evidently fear of a liberalized atmosphere and greater societal openness. Iranians would no doubt then be much more critical not only with respect to restrictions of civic freedoms, but also with respect to the poor economic and social situation in Iran, and possibly on a massive scale.
What direction are future developments in Iran heading? No one could have predicted the dramatic results of the presidential elections after the limited plurality of the campaign and the television duels between the candidates, which were rather unheard-of for the region. There are antagonisms at work within the governing camp over what level of repression to use against that part of society which is continuing to protest, balancing between the desire to not to further escalate the strong polarization and the desire to thoroughly suppress all opponents and criticism. Here the Supreme Leader expresses the opinion that the other presidential candidates, Mousavi and Karroubi, are not agents of foreign powers (understood to be the UK and USA), while elsewhere he mentions the need to take action against the study of the humanities at university, which is said to be weakening faith and causing the current split in society. In any event, the current level of repression is alarming and unlike anything for the past 20 years: Television broadcasts of confessions made by people who later say they were given as a result of physical and psychological torture, direct testimony of rape and torture, and people being sentenced en masse without the possibility to defend themselves individually.
Both the very probable manipulation of the elections and the remarkable repression that followed them have weakened the already low acceptance of the current political system among the reform-oriented public. While the security unit interventions, including those by the Basij Militia and Revolutionary Guards, have “stabilized” the situation in the short term, from a medium-range perspective they have reduced or minimised the outlook for conducting gradual (evolutionary) changes in a peaceful way within the existing system. In the camp of the “green” opposition there is deep frustration over the stolen elections, even though the expectation of the victory of an opposition candidate was not high after the failure of the reforms of former President Khatami (1997-2005).
Limited yet still options
In this situation, what position should Europe and the USA take? They should take a critical, principled stance on human rights violations while keeping their distance from the various political actors involved in the power struggle. Such a “principled” stance is unlikely to bring about any tangible results for the foreseeable future and will very probably not influence the behaviour of the Iranian authorities. However, any other stance would at a minimum play to the arguments of the current regime that the West is not serious about its human rights critique of Iran and is using it purely as a political instrument in an effort to weaken Iran from within, change its political system to one advantageous to the West, and prevent it from rising to the level of a regional superpower. It is therefore politically counter-productive (and probably also delusional) for the EU and USA to link their hopes of greater democratisation in Iran to their expectations of a possible breakthrough on the nuclear issue. Leading personalities of Iranian civil society such as Shirin Ebadi have emphasized, in contrast to the claims of the Iranian security units and the Revolutionary Courts, that they are not seeking political power or a change of political system, but the strengthening of civic freedoms. Some even claim that the West should concern itself with the Iranian problems it can influence, such as human rights, not with those which are actually a “fait accompli”, such as the successful completion of the nuclear programme.
The European Union needs to maintain its openness to Iranian society as a whole through culture, scientific exchanges, and stipends, even if the opportunities for cooperation are very limited. These two components of the EU’s political position – active openness and criticism – can be partially contradictory, because a critique of the regime will certainly not lead to its greater willingness to cooperate with the West, given that is not very willing as it is. European diplomacy is addressing similar conflicts in its positions toward other countries where it has much more economic and political influence than it does in Iran, so far with mixed results.
It is evident that the EU and USA prefer diplomatic negotiations to further confrontation in the priority area of the nuclear issue and that despite the critique of his re-election, they are prepared to indirectly legitimize Ahmadinejad as their partner. What is important is that both during negotiations with Iran and when engaging on Middle Eastern geopolitical or energy issues, the will and the capacity to be actively concerned with human rights questions must remain in place. Political steps should be planned with a long-term perspective in mind and with a view towards how they will impact all of Iranian society. That is much easier said than done.
Erik Siegl – the author has dealt as a diplomat with the Human Rights issues and currently works for Heinrich Böll Foundation