Iran’s Student Upheavals: What Happens Next?

While much Western attention has been focused on Iraq, Iran has continued to undergo a series of student demonstrations which have shown unusual persistence and intensity, despite government crackdowns. Though by most accounts the student protests have not provoked the kind of violence the country experienced in July of 1999, the persistence of the protests and the readily apparent alienation of the students from the governing institutions of the Islamic Republic have led some to see the latest protests as a potentially pre-revolutionary phenomenon, while others have seen it as likely to provoke a hardline reaction which will elminate the accomplishments of the reformers in recent years, possibly forcing the resignation of President Mohammad Khatami.

The demonstrations really began with the death sentenced passed on November 6 against Hashem Aghajari, a university professor and dissident. The biggest confrontations seem to have been those December 7-10 at the University of Tehran, but demonstrations have continued there and at many other universities. Despite crackdowns when the demonstrators leave the campuses, there seems to have been a certain degree of tolerance of demonstrations that do not take to the public streets. Although the Aghajari sentence was the spark that ignited the protests, they have become the vehicle for student demands in a wide range of areas, including demands to abolish those instruments of the state which have frustrated democratic reforms, such as the Council of Guardians, and even to abolish the basic principle of vilayat-e faqih upon which the Islamic Republic is founded.

Student protests are an Iranian tradition, but observers well remember that the fall of the Shah and the Iranian Revolution itself began on the campuses. The protests are often depicted as an aspect of the struggle between moderate reformists and hardliners, thus as part of the “culture wars” going on in Iran’s power struggle. But unlike the reformists, the students are questioning the underpinnings of the Islamic Republic itself, and thus may represent a new stage in Iran’s political evolution.

This Dossier looks at some of the roots, concerns and possible consequences of the continuing student rebellion.

Hashem Aghajari, a professor at Tarbiyat Modarres University, was sentenced in November to death, as well as to eight years in prison, and was banned from teaching for 10 years. Obviously the death sentence would seem to trump the teaching ban, but perhaps the court feared being overturned or a pardon. Aghajari was accused of, among other things, blasphemy and apostasy because of a speech he made in June 2002 calling for “Islamic Protestantism”.

Aghajari invoked the late ‘Ali Shari‘ati, a widely respected writer against the Shah who has often been invoked by the Islamic Republic as a martyr hero, but whose ideas of democracy and freedom would not likely sit well with the clerics who actually rule Iran today. Aghajari — speaking on the 25th anniversary of Shari‘ati’s death — argued that the ruling clerics are not divine and that faithful Muslims were not automatically required to obey them. He thus questioned the fundamental underpinnings of Ruhollah Khomeini’s principle of vilayat-e faqih or rule by a senior cleric, the fundamental principle of the Iranian state.

Aghajari, who is affiliated with a leftwing group known as the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution (not to be confused with the Iraqi-based People’s Mojahedin or Mojahedin-e Khalq), admittedly went well beyond what most Iranian dissidents have been prepared to say openly. But it was not his arrest (more or less a foregone conclusion) but the death sentence which provoked the student upheavals. Though the execution has not yet been carried out, it has become a major cause celebre for the students.

And, of course, a potential challenge of considerable seriousness to the government. The reformist wing of the government, led by President Khatami and his allies, has long sought to increase democratic responsiveness and liberalize Iranian society in a gradualist way, without challenging the fundamental underpinnings of the regime, which many of the reformists helped to found. Critics like Aghajari have seemed to stand outside the Iranian body politic, challenging the very assumptions on which the Islamic Republic is founded. Most have been silenced in rather less drastic ways than the attempt to silence Aghajari, of course, at least since the early days of the revolution.

Because Aghajari is an academic, and because his argument seems to have touched a chord among student critics of the regime, his words were particularly inflammatory. For one thing, in the peroration of his speech, he specifically linked his concept of “Islamic Protestantism” to the Islamic concept of ijtihad, or the use of individual reasoning to arrive at religious truth. Although ijtihad is fully accepted in only one of the four legal schools of Sunni Islam, it is a fundamental principle of Shi‘ism. He specifically said that “First of all, ijtihad is not limited to one group. Second, ijtihad does not mean that only one cleric is the marja‘-e taqlid,” the source of tradition which is the title given to senior scholars in the Shi‘ite tradition. Some have sought to insist that the rahbar, the religious leader who exercises the vilayat-e faqih, must be a marja‘-e taqlid, and even among the senior clerics there are those who decline to acknowledge that rahbar ‘Ali Khamene’i deserves the latter title.

In addition, Aghajari’s original speech last June seemed to challenge the clerical establishment as “afflicted with petrifaction and sclerosis” and called for Islamic Protestantism as an “ongoing project”.

This may seem esoteric and theoretical, but it does strike at the fundamental underpinnings of the state. And there is plenty of evidence that among the student demonstrators, a commitment to principles like the vilayat-e faqih is not automatic. In fact, many of the students see the institutions of the Islamic regime as standing in the way of true democracy in Iran.

This is where the student demonstrations create a special challenge. Young Iranians, and particularly university students, were strong supporters of President Khatami when he emerged to lead the reform movement in 1997. At each step of the way, the reformists won every election: two for the Presidency, elections for Parliament, for municipal councils, and so on. But at each stage the Council of Guardians, the judiciary, and other conservative clerically-dominsted institutions blocked reformist legislation or barred the candidacies of leading reformers. While Khatami has occasionally threatened to resign, he has generally had to accept the limitations on his elected power, and as a result many of his supporters have become frustrated or disgusted with the system as a whole.

The student upheavals are thus, in some ways, perhaps more of a challenge to the regime than the more violent demonstrations of 1999. But how serious a challenge?

Some observers have predicted a strong backlash from the hardliners, perhaps a backlash that could indeed force a Khatami resignation and a consolidation of power by the conservatives. But that, of course, could provoke an even greater response, perhaps a genuinely revolutionary situation. A few commentators have gone so far as to see the student upheavals as the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic’s system.

That may be a bit of wishful thinking, but when one adds to that the possibility of violent regime change in neighboring Iraq, the possibility that a simmering protest movement could be a catalyst for more dramatic change in Iran — another member of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”, after all — is perhaps not as far-fetched as it might seem at first.

What is clear is that the standoff between the hardliners and the reformists has frustrated the students and perhaps many others. Demographically, Iran skews very young: half the country have been born since the 1979 revolution and nearly two-thirds are under 30, so many of the techniques used by the regime to woo support — images of the revolution, memorials for those killed in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war — have little impact on those who do not actively remember those days.

Revolutionary movements that ossify have a tendency to alienate younger generations. While occasionally an old revolutionary like Mao Zedong may try something like the Cultural Revolution to “reinvigorate” revolutionary spirit, the results are usually disastrous, as they were in that example. In Iran, the old guard are denounced for merely repeating the same slogans. The disaffected young initially saw Khatami and the reform movement as a way to bring about change from within the system. While they continue to try, the tendency of the Guardians Council to reject reform legislation and disqualify reform candidates has meant that reform has remained limited to a few cultural and other spheres. Whenever reform seems to be gaining too much too rapidly, either the judiciary or the Guardians Council steps in. Key figures are arrested, newspapers closed, and the hardline Hizbollah and Basij street gangs turned loose against reform demonstrators.

These frustrations first exploded in the 1999 student violence. They have returned since the Aghajari verdict, though they were never entirely absent.

And the frustrations are not likely to go away. The Council of Guardians continues to confront Parliament over efforts by the Majles to pass a bill banning torture and otherwise protecting human rights. After the Guardians rejected an earlier version of the bill, it was amended, but on January 8 the Guardians rejected the amended version. Parliament can take the bill to the Expediency Council, which arbitrates disputes between the Parliament and the Council of Guardians, but it is unlikely to win. And thus on yet another key plank in the reformers’ platform, legislation remains blocked. Khatami has frequently threatened to resign if efforts to pass reform legislation continue to be blocked, and some analysts now believe that the hardliners are calculating that if Khatami goes, the reformists will be weakened even further. In short, they may be prepared to call his bluff and accept a resignation, which could leave the hardliners in full control.

This sort of frustration also is seen in the trial of ‘Abbas ‘Abdi, a pollster, who was accused — and convicted after his own admission — of providing polling information to the Gallup organization that showed Iranian sentiment favored improving relations with the United States. One may say that that is, of course, what pollsters do, but ‘Abdi was charged with espionage, for providing information to foreign clients that harmed Iran. In December he accepted responsibility with a “confession” which further disillusioned many reformists, because ‘Abdi, who had been a fighter in past battles with the hardliners, seemed prepared to admit the hardline charges were justified.

The question, then, is where does everyone go from here? There seem to be several possible scenarios:

• More of the Same. Despite mounting frustrations among the younger reformers, President Khatami has not been able to win any major battles with the hardliners. But he has not resigned either, despite many threats to do so. The stalemate could go on.
• Khatami resigns; the hardliners win. If Khatami does carry through on threats to resign, the hardliners might find themselves in an unassailable position. They have controlled the student demonstrations so far, by using arrests, detention, and street-fights led by the Hizbollah and Basij. They might be able to consolidate their power.
• Khatami resigns; the streets erupt. Of course, Khatami’s resignation might be the final straw for the students, and they could take to the streets. In 1978, it was the fact that increasingly broad elements of Iranian society — the Bazaar merchants, the middle class, ultimately even the Armed Forces — joined in demonstrations against the Shah that finally made his position untenable.
• The pressures continue to build, and a revolutionary explosion occurs. Most Iranians do not seem, quite yet, ready for a violent revolution. Older Iranians have experienced both a revolution and an eight-year, bloody war. But younger Iranians want change, and if the hardliners continue to block change within the system, the questioning of the system will increase. The students are already demanding that the government hold a referendum on limiting the powers of the Council of Guardians and other instruments of continued hardline control. If nothing happens, an explosion could indeed not be out of the question.
• Regime Change in Iraq provokes greater pressures in Iran for democratic change. Supporters of the US efforts against Iraq suggest that regime change in Iraq could be a catalyst for democratization in the Arab world. Iran is not Arab, but it is a neighbor of Iraq, and one with a domestic liberalization movement of some force. A US-backed regime change in Baghdad combined with a US occupation of the area next door could have unpredictable effects on the reform movement and perhaps encourage the reformists to strike a decisive blow.
• Regime Change in Iraq provokes new waves of anti-Americanism, strengthening the hardliners. Of course, if the “Great Satan” establishes itself on Iran’s western border, as it has already established itself on its eastern border in Afghanistan, the Iranian hardliners could use that fact to inflame a new wave of anti-Americanism which could be turned against the reformers, just as ‘Abdi’s reporting on pro-American opinion in a poll was turned against him.

Municipal Elections Due
A new round of municipality elections are due on February 28, and they may give further indications of the state of opinion in Iran, though past experience has been that the reformers win the elections every time, and just simply cannot do much with the power they gain.

Nearly 225,000 candidates have reportedly registered for the town and municipality council elections. Among them are members of some banned groups and Zahra Benoudi, who is the wife of Hashem Aghajari, the same man whose death sentenced provoked the dissent. For the municipality elections, the Council of Guardians does not have to rule on every candidacy as is the case for the Parliament or Presidency, but there are of course ways in which the judiciary or the other hardline bodies can seek to block candidates from running (or from winning).

There has been some comment on the fact that the number of candidates registered is well below that in 1999, but in 1999 the elections were the first ever held for local government under the Islamic Republic, and the novelty no doubt had something to do with the turnout.

It is hard to predict with confidence what is going to happen in Iran. The reformers seem unable to catalyze their political support into an effective change; the hardliners retain the instruments of state coercion and the constitutional ability to block real reform. The student rebellion is real and is a challenge to the state, but it is not (yet, at any rate) comparable to what happened in 1978-79, and it certainly remains susceptible to harsh government crackdowns. Several days of demonstrations in Tehran December 7-10 led to numerous arrests and violence in the streets, and there are continuing reports from around the country of similar crackdowns against demonstrators in provincial universities.

Iran is probably not yet in a “pre-revolutionary” situation. But there is widespread disillusionment with the ossification of the Islamic Revolution and the intractability of the hardliners. There is also a growing frustration among the young with the inability of the reformist bloc to engineer genuine changes and institute genuine democracy. Demands for fundamental structural change are growing, and those demands are producing further crackdowns from the hardliners. It is clearly a delicate situation and may become a dangerous one.

And over all this remains the sword of Damocles: the possibility of unpredictable ripples from a US war against Iraq, destabilizing or stabilizing as may be. As noticed in the scenarios discussed above, several different results can be imagined, from catalyzing genuine democratization to producing a fierce anti-Western backlash that would take Iran back to the virulent days of the 1980s. And there is a range of options in between.

Home

Current Issue

About Us

Back Issues

Resources

Subscribe