Iran Faces a Choice Between Change From the Top or Rebellion From Below

A camp of progressives, including prominent political prisoners and civil society activists, is gaining momentum in Iran and calling for a constitutional referendum and a more democratic system

Editor’s note: While the Stimson Center rarely publishes anonymous work, the author of this commentary is a Tehran-based analyst who has requested anonymity out of legitimate concern for their personal safety. The writer is known to appropriate staff, has a track record of reliable analysis, and is in a position to provide an otherwise unavailable perspective.

In his annual Nowruz address on March 21, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei acknowledged that there were “bitter events last year” but pointed to the economy and rising inflation with no mention of the anti-regime protests that convulsed the country for five months.

In a second speech later that day in his home city of Mashhad, Iran’s Supreme Leader for the past 34 years sought to absolve himself of responsibility for the crises and instead blame others, including even the long-gone regime of the Shah. In a backhanded recognition of popular discontent with the theocratic regime that replaced the Shah, Khamenei referred obliquely to opposition calls for a “change of the constitution,” blamed external enemies for the unrest, and claimed paradoxically that their hostility was the product of the “successes of the Islamic Republic.” 

As protests in the wake of the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody last September have waned and Iranians mark the Persian New Year with ever more limited resources, the Islamic Republic is attempting to project an image of a return to normalcy. There have been concerts, film festivals and other cultural events and a big engineered turnout of regime supporters for the 44th anniversary of the Iranian revolution in February. There have been diplomatic steps, including a China-brokered deal to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. But there is no disguising Iran’s deep morass and Khamenei’s failure to resolve the political deadlock.

According to Mohsen Ranani, a professor of economics at the University of Isfahan, the regime “is spiraling down with no prospect of return because of its own dysfunctionality and its own weaknesses. It is unclear how long it can postpone its own fall even when it resorts to heavy handed security and police state measures.” Ranani added in a gutsy article on his webpage that “the Islamic Republic is in the one before last stage of its downfall and has so far avoided the final step by resorting to violent police measures.” The only way to avoid “collapse from the bottom,” Ranani said, is significant “reforms from the top.”

Opposition media outside Iran have been calling the protests a revolution and minimizing the chances for reform. But revolutions are hard to plan and even harder to predict. They are the complicated outcomes of intertwined events and accidents and impose their own will on everyone concerned. The alternative to revolution is gradual, managed, organized, demand-based and continuous reforms using modern, civilized, and peaceful means rooted in civil societies. At the present stage, it is impossible to predict which of these two paths Iran will take.

Alongside the calls for regime change, particularly outside the country, a general framework for an alternative to the regime is slowly emerging from within Iranian society at the grassroots level. There are three distinguishable groups of entities and political figures calling to alter the status quo. They can be roughly characterized as conservatives, moderates, and progressives.

The conservative group – not to be confused with the regime’s reigning hardliners — faults a lack of good governance and wants to broaden the scope of those included in decision making circles. This group argues that since parliamentary elections in 2020 — when reformists and pragmatists were largely barred from running — Iran has been on a downward path. The group includes former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, who was disqualified from running for president in 2021, and former president Hassan Rouhani and some of his top ministers and technocrats. Eshaq Jahangiri, first vice president under Rouhani, told the reform-oriented Ham-Mihan newspaper recently that widening the decision-making circle “may be the only feasible path to save the Islamic Republic.”

The moderates include reformist parties and figures loyal to former president Mohammad Khatami, who issued a long statement in early February on ways to end the current deadlock. Khatami called for “a return to the full text of the constitution and honoring and implementing all its articles, including the ones on people’s rights and liberties.” However, Khatami himself acknowledged that “this solution is unlikely to succeed because the strong stone-like barrier of the establishment forces.”

Reformist parties such as the National Trust of Mehdi Karroubi, a 2009 presidential candidate who is under house arrest, have supported Khatami, but the public at large seems unimpressed.

The third camp—progressives—is the one gaining momentum in Iran. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former prime minister and 2009 presidential candidate who, like Karroubi, has been under house arrest since 2011, issued a statement in February calling for a referendum on the existing constitution, a free and fair election of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution if the existing one is rejected, and a referendum on the new constitution and transition to a new system. A few days after the statement was published, more than 100 political activists, entities, and groups, including many prominent human rights activists and lawyers, endorsed Mousavi’s plan. The signatories including prominent human rights defenders and activists including Narges Mohammadi, Nasrin Sotoudeh, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, as well as many others who have been repeatedly imprisoned for their views. The statement has been attracting more and more public support albeit at a slow pace.

Clearly, Khamenei feels threatened by this progressive movement. In his Nowruz speech in Mashhad, he asserted that “the main objective of the enemies in broaching the concept of structural transformations is to change the identity of the Islamic Republic [so that] pure and revolutionary Islam fades into oblivion.”

In short, there is no easy or fast solution to the current dilemma. Khamenei’s obstinate emphasis on continuing current policies without any prospect of reform may be the regime’s worst enemy. Because there are no signs of flexibility and logical thinking from the top, we should expect continued unrest from below.

Protests are likely to occur more often and at shorter intervals, with more fundamental demands. As Iranians the world over mark a new year, there is little hope of change in the near future, but a growing understanding of its necessity.

Photo: Adam Jones.

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