Turmoil

Iran seems to be on the verge of yet another revolution. Angry protestors are in the streets, refusing to accept the official outcome of presidential elections held this weekend.

Four candidates contested the presidency of this large and problematic nation. Only two really mattered: the charismatic sitting president Akhmadinejad and the reform-minded Moussavi who served as prime minister during the time of the bloody and inconclusive Iran-Iraq war.

Neither might seem to be the ideal leader for a confused nation.

Akhmadinejad, during his tenure as president, brought his nation into confrontation with the West because of his support for radical Islamist groups abroad and his controversial nuclear weapons program. He is a populist politician, dispensing patronage generously, even as he postures as a hardliner on doctrinal issues.

He rose to power upsetting the preferred candidate of the clergy, Rafsanjani, by a narrow margin. His populist politics did not sit well with the theocracy that was installed after the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the modernizing dictatorship of the Shah.

When he ran earlier against the preferred candidate of the clergy, Akhmadinejad roundly criticized the clerical elite for corruption and incompetence. Rafsanjani, as a case in point, controlled the country’s pistachio industry along with several large businesses. By contrast, Akhmadinejad led a Spartan life and continues to live in humble dwellings even after he had assumed Iran’s presidency. His first term as president saw the rise of that elected office from relative insignificance in the Iranian scheme of things into the most important post of power.

When the startling official results were announced, however, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini threw his support behind the reelection of Akhmadinejad. That set the stage for a possible confrontation with the forces of reform catalyzed by the last election campaign.

Moussavi, for his part, is an ironic character. He served the clerical elite loyally as prime minister many years ago. He is a remnant of what is called the “first generation” of the Iranian revolution, the intellectuals who supported the fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini as he led the country against the modernizing but oppressive dictatorship of Shah Pahlavi.

In the last electoral campaign, however, he has come to personify the possibility for reform in a system controlled both by the clerical oligarchy personified by Rafsanjani and the oppressive apparatuses of the security establishment personified by Akhmadinejad. The “second generation” of the Iranian revolution is generally seen as composed of the army elite and revolutionary guards that are veterans of the Iran-Iraq war.

Moussavi somehow struck a chord among the younger Iranians. About 60% of Iran’s present population were born shortly before or after the 1979 Revolution and are not emotionally captive to the passion of that period.

As an indication of Moussavi’s remarkable appeal to the youth, Iran’s authorities tried to shut down the social network sites such as Facebook that served as a major method for mobilizing political support for the reformist challenger. The effort to shut down internet sites intensified even more in the excited wake of the elections, when angry protestors began spilling into the streets.

Iran is a political puzzle that defies simplification. It is not widely known that Persians compose only 53% of the population. The rest are composed of other ethnic groups: Kurds, Armenians, Turks, Tajiks and, yes, even a well-treated community of Jews. It is a country with, as mentioned earlier, a profoundly youthful demographic profile. It is a society that underwent extensive westernization under the long rule of a liberal monarchy and then abruptly thrown back to medievalism during the orthodox rule of the clerics.

I had the chance to meet Akhmadinejad a few years back, when the Asian Parliamentary Union meeting was held in Tehran. He was, as usual, dressed in his bargain-basement beige jacket and well-worn trousers. He had a pair of shoes that had definitely seen better days. But when he entered the hall, his charisma filled it. He was a well-trained engineer but did not seem to have the sophistication required to manage the complex forces at work in his society.

In the streets, I took great effort to converse with ordinary Iranians. Despite the omnipresent security apparatus, they seemed surprisingly outspoken. They talked about the corruption of the elite, the waste of government money supporting militants abroad such as the Hizbollah and Hamas, the isolation of their society from the global mainstream.

These conversations reminded me of similar casual exchanges I had with ordinary Russians on the eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse. These were angry, fearless conversations that brought up to the surface the many discontents that ran as strong undercurrents in daily life.

I imagine that the many discontents shared in private conversations must have found catalyzing media in the rapid spread of social networking sites. This is why the government has stepped up efforts to curtail access to these media.

No matter how repressive a regime might be, however, we know that any attempt to keep the rest of the world out will be futile. Short of staying out of the digital age, no government could completely block the subversive effects of free social (and therefore political) interaction on the web.

Once before, Iranian society has demonstrated its capacity for explosive political events, conflagrations that seem nearly spontaneous. Elections everywhere, no matter how manipulated they might be, invariably have the effect of polarizing the forces of discontent present just underneath the formal social order. This is why the world is keenly watching the streets of Tehran today.