June 14th, 2010 by Farid

Despite the opposition’s cancellation of Saturday’s protests marking the one-year anniversary of the disputed presidential elections, there were nonetheless small, scattered protests, during which 91 people were arrested in the streets of Tehran. In an e-mail interview between reformist leader Mehdi Karoubi and CNN, Karoubi proclaimed, “the Green Movement today is stronger and more mature than last year.” Karoubi added that the future of Iran is in the hands of the people and the success of the Green Movement is secured by the diverse participation of its population.

In today’s interview with Mehdi Karroubi by LeMonde, he stated, “I am determined to bear everything to continue the fight…what is happening in Iran is a real betrayal of the people and the ideals of the revolution.” This was said after the attack on him by a group of thugs in Qom. In contrast to this optimism, Con Coughlin argues in the Telegraph that “the Green Movement, of course, is nothing like the force it was last year, when it succeeded in mobilising hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters, who brought large swathes of the country to a standstill.”

However, according to an interesting piece by Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the obstacles facing the Green Movement are not simply the lack of mobilization into the street. Sadjadpour lists five key challenges that the Green Movement must overcome:

1. Go beyond street protests- also to emphasize the percentage of people willing to sacrifice for their cause rather than the mere number of protesters.

2. Organize abroad

3. Reach out to “Ali the plumber”- meaning that the the Green Movement must reach out to the working-class Iranians who are currently in favor of Ahmadinejad

 4. Steer clear of Khomeini’s legacy- as Sadjadpour argues “No matter how you slice it, Khomeini can never be a credible or inspiring symbol for a movement that purports to champion democracy and human rights.”

5. Pick up the pace

In today’s piece by Juan Cole,  the Green Movement is neither dead or unimportant. “It can survive and be influential if it finds new tactics or repertoires of sustainable collective action that cannot so easily be forestalled by the security forces, and if it identifies some simple, practical change it wants legislated other than the holding of new elections.”Nevertheless, Cole points out several concerns to the Obama administration in its policies to Iran: The U.S. will probably need to engage with a fairly stable regime in Iran and direct negotiations do not constitute betrayal of the Green Movement, do not expect any radical change in the nuclear issue if the Green Movement comes to power, and any strike on Iran by the U.S. or Israel will destroy any hope for political change reforms in Iran.

Posted in Elections, Events, Iran, Reform, US politics |