Opinion: Riots in Teheran as protestors hit the streets over election

This has happened before, where protesters were beaten down by hard liners, but that obviously hasn’t stopped this generation from hitting the streets in huge numbers. The overwhelming win for the conservatives hasn’t gone down well, and allegations of widespread electoral fraud have poured oil on the flames. The overriding image is that the electorate just doesn’t believe it. Candidates have been placed under house arrest, and official disputes of results have been glossed over. The regime has trumpeted a landslide electoral success, and it’s looking like a rather hollow call, more like a form of denial. Protesters have been beaten by police, many obviously hurt. One person has apparently been shot in riots so far. The news of the conservative victory was more of a shock to the opposition because they’d actually been celebrating a win of their own, to be informed the following day that Ahmadinejad was the winner by Iranian media. There are real legal problems. Turnout is one of the them. Reports indicate that the conservatives did well in the low turnout zones, but moderates did better in high turnout areas. The LA Times explains:

In 1997 and 2001, amid high voter participation, reformist Mousavi ally Mohammad Khatami coasted to victory over conservative rivals with more than 70% of the vote, while Ahmadinejad received 62% of the vote amid tepid 48% turnout in 2005. His victory in this year's election with 80% turnout would suggest that many of those who stayed home or voted for his opponent last time voted for him this year, a phenomenon analysts consider unlikely.

Most electoral demographers would say it was impossible, a contradiction in terms. The demography is in plain view, too. The main protesters are student age, another echo of the riots in 2000, but this time they're getting cheered in the streets by older Iranians. Protesters are throwing rocks, setting fire to garbage cans, and there are a lot of them. Teheran’s shopkeepers went into lockdown, sheltering people and locking up as police moved in. The regime has publicly identified itself with this electoral result, and has thus successfully polarized Iran in the process. The underlying level of anger is the most obvious image of the response. Iran isn’t a backward country, despite 30 years of hard line fundamentalism. The students and their families do represent a large section of the population. These younger generations weren’t even alive when the revolution happened in 1979. There’s been a growing, and potentially decisive, disconnect between the regime and the young for the last 10 years. It’s more a matter of when that disconnect becomes fatal to the regime, than if. The regime also obviously considers that demographic worth stifling. It started filtering YouTube, and other websites, soon after the protests started. Iranian opposition leader Moussavi is trying to prevent the possible chaos of a national meltdown. The New York Times:

In a statement posted on his campaign Web site, Mr. Moussavi said: “Today the people’s will has been faced with an amazing incident of lies, hypocrisy and fraud. I call on my Iranian compatriots to remain calm and patient.”

For those who don’t know, hypocrisy is one of the worst crimes possible, in the Koran. Hypocrites are sentenced to all the six hells of Islam, a fact which is unlikely to be lost on the Ayatollahs, or the religiously educated Iranian public. Whether that’s any compensation for the three decades of hell the Iranian people have had to endure is debatable, but the gloves are off. The possibilities are looking pretty grim, too. Exactly how effective the opposition can be, in an unplanned outbreak of protest, is hard to measure. In the past, the regime has shown a talent for Stalinist, back door, middle of the night Gulag Archipelago style oppression, and there are some indications that’s already happening. Against this, there’s obvious support throughout Iranian society, and it’s been growing. If there’s a tipping point, this is the type of scenario that will find it. It’s unlikely that the regime will back off having given its blessing to the election result, either. Compromise could be viewed as giving a moral victory to the opposition, which is improbable, give the inflexibility of the regime regarding its own power base. Ahmadinejad is probably the person on Earth least likely to come up with any sort of reconciliation, so the fundamental split in the society is likely to widen. There’s another scenario here, which didn’t exist in 2000. The presence of a newly liberated Iraq next door may trigger a flood of opposition members into Iraq, if there’s a crackdown. There could be an Iranian opposition in exile, a mirror image of the original Islamic situation, pre 1979. Regimes come and go. The least stable are dictatorships, followed by oligarchies. The difference is that oligarchies fall to bits piece by piece, as they become more unworkable. The Iranian theocracy is an oligarchy. It’s now in direct opposition to a huge part of its society. The end is inevitable, but let’s hope it’s not a bloodbath. This could be the straw that finally ended the patience of the camel. Any camel driver will tell you, you don’t want to do that.