Back to Articles

The Youth and Clergies Ready for the Last Battle

By M.Behnoud

Last week, following the political unrests spreading to all the universities of the country, the Iranian ruling clergy sent the same note to their European friends, including Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister that they had sent to George Bush before: Leave us alone and let us deal with the students and the opposition the way we wish. You want our oil, well, buy and take it. This is the main message conveyed to all the countries and international organizations criticizing the violation of human rights in Iran, expressed in different languages during the past twenty four years. However, now that Iranian youth have lost all hope in any reformation taking place within the present Iranian ruling system and the United States of America and her allies have established their forces near Eastern and Western frontiers of Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the situation still as before?
Twenty four years ago, when the Iranian people poured out into the streets protesting against the Shah's despotic rule, the students had a special day, when they protested and shouted slogans against the ruling system. On September 7, 1964 the Shah's Regime opened fire at the students who demonstrated against the Richard Nixon's trip to Iran. Three students were killed and ever since then, the monarchy faced yearly demonstrations and protests throughout the country for twenty four years.
In the last year of the Shah's reign, when the students poured out into the streets in the memory of the above three students killed by the regime's special forces, the clergy gave many speeches for them and provoked them to fight against the ruling system that had shot their friends, and now, some twenty years later the children of the same students have their own day to protest, this time against those very clergies that are now ruling them. On July 9, 1999, the pro-clergy forces invaded the students' campus of the Tehran University, one person was killed, a female student disappeared and one of the students lost his eye and tens were brutally injured. Facing collective protests of millions of people, the clergy tried to console the students during the first days of that event and the Leader of Islamic Republic shed tears for them and promised to punish those who attacked the campus. However, during the next few days when the wounded students resumed their classes, none of those promises were kept. Instead, the students were imprisoned and even condemned to death while the invaders suffered no punishment, for they enjoyed the support of the ruling clerics. Since then the Islamic Republic too has a day to worry about the students' protests and unrests.
This year, since a few months ago, the students released the information that they intend to accompany the anniversary of the ninth of July with wide spread demonstrations and showed that they can no longer accept the Islamic regime and US authorities supported the students who had stated in their declaration that they are not unaware of the fate of Saddam Hussein and his regime and they are happy with the democracy now established in Iraq. A declaration that provoked anger among the anti-US ecclesiastics. Thus the security and military apparatus started to prepare themselves to go on war with the students. During one of the Friday collective prayers, Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful man of the Islamic Republic accused the students of having secret relations with the US and demonstrating on the will of Bush's government. Mohammad Yazdi, the conservative clergy said at the same collective prayer that the demonstrators are belligerents, and in the Islamic legal codes, the belligerent in the sense of one who is an enemy of God should be executed. In this way the ruling clergy tried to intimidate the parents and force them to prevent their children's participations in the demonstrations.
But the more effective measure was taken by the pro-government pressure groups who attacked a students' campus in the south of Tehran and wounded hundreds students and when as a protest the students poured out into the streets throughout the country, three thousand heads of the student societies were arrested. Meysam Joulaii who managed to deceive the guards and call his family from the dreadful Evin Prison told them that they would not be released until July 9.
The parents of the arrested students in Tehran gathering before the Evin Prison everyday since last week hoping to find some information about their children, at nights tell the runners of the TV satellite programs broadcasted from Los Angeles that they are tired of the Islamic Republic and they expect the world to come to their aid.
Ahmad Shirzad, the reformist MP, worried about his son who was arrested and not heard of for two days intended to go on strike by staying in the Tehran University so that his voice would perhaps reach the world, but the dean of the Tehran University who is also a reformist did not allow it. Shirzad was enraged and shouted, "I have lost hope in you Mr. the Dean and I have lost hope in the Minister of the Ministry of Sciences and I have lost hope in the President Khatami and I have lost hope in myself and I just hope people do something."
The majority of the Iranian urban citizens share the same feeling and have lost interest in the Islamic Republic, the government that having failed to educate their children the way it wanted now seems unable to forgive their sin in not thinking like the old clergies. There are hundreds of people in the prisons of Iran whose only sin is that after seeing the reformists failing to keep their promises, they lost all hope in the Islamic Republic and seized any opportunity to hold hands and cry harmoniously for the downfall of the government as they did nearly a quarter of century before. In Tehran, there is this belief that every quarter of a century, Iranians succeed to change their government and this is said in reference to the Iranian history in the past century that witnessed the downfall and banishment of four kings and one president.
Iranians were the first nation in the Middle East to establish a constitutional government during the first years of the twentieth century. If the clergies had fulfilled their promises, they would have established the first truly republic government in the Middle East. However, after the victory of the revolution, the clergy did not validate their promise and refused to go back to the religious schools and considered the government as theirs and routed out their political rivals and worst of all concentrated all the power in the hands of the leader for as long as he lives. Following these changes introduced to the constitutional law despite the will of the intellectuals and the people, the Leader of the Islamic Republic gained an unprecedented level of power not found anywhere in the world. Domination over the judicial power, having the last voice in the fundamental decisions related to the domestic and foreign policies and exclusive supervision over military and security forces and even the radio and television are among the leader's constitutional powers now. All these changes that transformed the Islamic Republic to a religious despotic ruling system were hidden from the eyes of the ordinary people and it was only the intellectuals and legal experts who protested against such changes and thus were condemned to long terms of imprisonment and death. The situation continued until 1997 when the people elected a reformist clergy as the President, but the whole apparatus under the leader's supervision turned against him. The people nevertheless still endured the circumstances and with their overwhelming participation in the parliamentary elections showed that they truly seek a radical reformation of the ruling religious system. So the followers of the religious leader turned against the Parliament as well and dragged the MPs to the courts and attacked their meetings and shut down the reformist newspapers and arrested the political activists and journalists. That is how the urban middle class reached the point to realize that the religious government is incapable of changing into a democratic system and the clergies in turn realized that in order to maintain their despotic religious rule they have no other alternative than to appeal to coercion and intimidation.
During the recent students' demonstrations that the ordinary people joined in immediately, the slogans were all against the religious rule and its life-long leader and the daily propaganda on the national radio and television and the newspapers under the supervision of the leader that called the demonstrators US agents and spies made the ordinary people to fearfully hide in their houses while nobody went to the streets to defend and support the clergies either.
Majid the twenty one years old student who has his own web log, writing daily for his young intellectual peers, remarked last week: "Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the anti-monarchial revolution said in 1979 that the Shah's regime has demolished the country, but fostered the prisons, but now although they have built hundreds prisons, they still do not have enough room for the four million students that should be arrested. It is now clear who has really fostered the prisons."
Mohsen, who is 64 years old, says, if the Islamic Republic had succeeded to fulfill what it had promised, it would have not needed to face any difficulties now and the young people would have supported the clergies as they did in the days of the revolution. However, the clergies who forced three million people to emigrate from Iran were hoping to keep the next generation under their control through the compulsory religious education and propaganda. But it seems that it was just a wishful thinking as the generation born and brought up under their rule and who are now more or less twenty fours years old seem more determined than their fathers in their decision to change the ruling system. In itself, this is a sign of the failure of the religious rulers in educating the young generation in the way they wanted, so now they have no other alternative than to witness their own downfall twenty four years after the days when they enjoyed 97% of the votes. Now even the religious young people are not ready to obey the orders of the clergies who are at the present fixing their eyes upon a bunch of aggressive semi-fascist groups and the one million armed men who have been faithful to them so far in the same way that the republican guards and Baath Party remained faithful to Saddam Hussein.
As the political experts anticipate, if the Iranian people manage to overthrow the clergies by their rebels and riots – in the same way that brought about the downfall of Millosovich in Yugoslavia – and a democratic government comes to power in harmony with the world order, the ruling system of Iran would be the second country of George Bush's axis of evil that would fall by the hands of people rather than the military intervention and this will be a greater promise to the ears of the US leaders who had said that after Iraq it is Iran's turn.
Even if the extremist clergies – as expressed by the advertising apparatus of the regime – succeed to restrain the coming crisis of July and stay in power, it will still be quite difficult for them to rule a majority who do not like to concede to anything less than their downfall. Addressing President Bush, an Iranian student disguised under the name of 'a pro-globalizationist' has written in his web log "the only language that the ruling clergies know is the language of coercion and they maintain their rule with the aid of this language and that is why as soon as they saw your intimidations, they betrayed Al-Qaedeh and showed willingness to yield to the international laws in regard to the utilization of the nuclear energy and ask to negotiate with you. Their only hope is to see the defeat of the forces led by US in Iraq and their departure from the territories next to the Iranian frontiers. Please do not be defeated, otherwise they will rip our skins."