Despite four years of non-stop pressure, arrests and intimidation, Iran’s dissidents are still finding ways to show their resilience.
Protest messages still ricochet around social media despite cybercops’ attempts to control the Web. Angry graffiti pops up and is then quickly painted over by authorities. Mourners at the funeral of a dissident cleric flashed V-for-victory gestures and chanted against the state.
But just a look at the sidewalks around Tehran’s Mellat Park shows how far Iran’s opposition has fallen as the country prepares for Friday’s presidential election.
Four years ago, girls on rollerblades sped around the park delivering fliers for the reform camp’s candidate-hero Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Emerald-coloured head scarves and wrist bands representing Mr. Mousavi’s Green Movement were in such demand that bloggers would list shops with available fabric.
This time, there are just a few subdued election placards for candidates considered fully in sync with Iran’s ruling clerics. Security forces and paramilitary volunteers are never far away.
Mr. Mousavi and another opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi, are under house arrest and hundreds more activists, bloggers and journalists have faced detention as part of relentless crackdowns since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in 2009 brought accusations of vote rigging and something Iran has not seen since the 1979 Islamic Revolution – huge crowds in the streets chanting against the leadership.
Iran’s forces for reform are not so much crushed as now bottled-up tightly. Now the election that marks the end of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s eight-year era also brings another moment of political transition: whether the loose affiliation of reformists, liberals and Western-leaning activists can somehow remain relevant in a time when the guardians of the Islamic establishment are consolidating their defences.
“There is no shortage of people in Iran who would like to see a different way of being governed and a different world view from the leadership,” said Theodore Karasik, a security and political affairs analyst at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. “[The] trouble for them is that they [are] now fragmented and disorganized. This is exactly what Iranian authorities want to see.”
The entire process has been derided by Western governments and rights groups as a farce after Iran’s election overseers – all loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – blacklisted former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from the ballot despite his lofty status as one of the architects of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Opposition voters now face the choice of whether to boycott the polls or turn to whatever they see as the least objectionable candidate. So far, the top figures of the reform movement, like former president Mohammad Khatami, have not given an indication to their supporters which avenue to take – meaning a unified strategy may only emerge at the last minute, if at all.
Some reformists have migrated toward former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani as a sort of default, since he is closely aligned with Mr. Rafsanjani. Mr. Khatami’s former vice-president, Mohammad Reza Aref, has made a strong bid to draw reformist voters, speaking with the most passion about freedoms Wednesday during the second television debate among the eight candidates.
Others have gravitated to Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf in hopes his hands-on reputation could halt the downward slide of Iran’s sanctions-wracked economy.
But there is little sense left of the unified Green Movement that poured onto the streets in 2009, momentarily stunning authorities with once-unthinkable acts of rebellion, such as burning portraits of Ayatollah Khamenei.
In advance of this week’s elections, security forces and intelligence units have been bolstered to the point where any form of dissent – in public or online – risks arrest. The chief of the national police, General Ismail Moghadam, recently warned: “Police will confront individuals who have counterrevolutionary behaviour.”
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