Arab News – by Alejo Vidal Quadras – October 29, 2022
The past month’s developments in Iran have taken much of the world by surprise. In so doing, they have also forced Western policymakers to wrestle with new questions about their prior justifications for a weak approach to dealing with the clerical regime in Tehran.
For the better part of four decades, that approach has been attributable to a widely-shared assumption that the regime’s hold on power was secure and that no viable alternative was waiting in the wings. The scale and boldness of the current, ongoing uprising challenges that assumption, especially when viewed in the context of a series of other recent uprisings that all demonstrated a strong element of organization and unified messaging.
Government-in-waiting
The first in that series, which began in the final days of 2017, prompted a rare admission from the regime’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Following unrest that had persisted for weeks in well over 100 locations, with protesters chanting anti-government slogans such as “death to the dictator,” the regime’s ruling cleric delivered a speech in which he attributed the rapid spread of unrest and provocative messaging to the leading pro-democracy opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.
That group has long advocated for a new revolution to overthrow the ruling mullahs, while insisting that the current system is more vulnerable than it might appear on the surface.
As the main constituent of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the PMOI has also played a leading role in establishing a sort of government-in-waiting. The coalition has chosen Maryam Rajavi to serve as transitional president in the aftermath of a long-sought revolution.
The current unrest gives the distinct impression that this revolution is closer to hand than ever. In fact, this was acknowledged recently by 170 members of the European Parliament, from various political groups, when they signed a statement that observed: “The prospect of regime change in Iran has never been so easy and accessible. It is the time now to recognize the Iranian people’s legitimate right to defend themselves.”
Right to self-defense
It should go without saying that recognition of this right to self-defense presupposes recognition of the organized opposition that is most capable of mounting an effective defense against regime authorities. This in turn demands that the EU and other world powers make concerted efforts to understand what the results might be of support for such an opposition. In other words, it is time for Western governments to think about what Iran might look like in absence of the ayatollahs.
I have made my own efforts to understand this while following issues related to Iran throughout my political career, which has lasted every bit as long as the regime in Tehran itself. While serving for 15 years as vice-president of the European Parliament, I came to recognize that member states, and the legislative body as a whole, generally struggled to formulate policy on Iran. Later, I found an opportunity to approach the relevant issues from a different angle when I chaired the Committee In Search of Justice.
Consequently, I have become intimately familiar with the Iranian regime’s penchant for human rights abuses and I have also developed a deep appreciation for the Iranian people’s growing resilience in the face of them.
Therefore, the public backlash against the death of Mahsa Amini last month at the hands of the “morality police” came as little surprise to me. Neither was I particularly surprised when those protests transcended their initial emphasis on the regime’s enforcement of forced veiling laws and ultimately grew into an anti-government uprising encompassing 190 cities in all 31 Iranian provinces, as well as 45 major universities.
More than 400 people killed
Since the first days of the uprising, the participants have been chanting, “Death to Khamenei.” This happens to be the very slogan that defined the, admittedly PMOI-led, uprising in January 2018, as well as at least half a dozen other protests in between.
In retaliation, security forces have fired tear gas and live ammunition into crowds, killing more than 400 people so far. More than 20,000 people have been arrested, with many of them sent to notoriously abusive political wards run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
However, this crackdown has failed to silence the dissent or prevent the spread of the uprising, during which teenage girls assumed an especially prominent role this month, before oil workers began to mount labor strikes in solidarity, thereby exerting economic pressure on an already vulnerable regime.
Insofar as Western policymakers have typically failed to recognize that vulnerability, they most likely did not anticipate that the uprising would persist for more than a month or demonstrate the continuity and geographic reach that we have seen.
But the uprising has achieved all of this and more through the support of the PMOI’s network of “resistance units,” the escalating influence of which over mass protests has received insufficient recognition in recent years.
Revise foreign policy
Now that that this influence is unmistakable, there are serious doubts about whether the clerical regime can survive this latest challenge. Even if it does, it is difficult to imagine that the regime can return to the status quo or avoid a resurgence in popular unrest after the next high-profile instance of abuse or corruption involving regime authorities.
This new reality makes it newly imperative for the Western world, and especially Europe, to revise its foreign policies and root out the faulty assumption that the mullahs’ hold on power is secure.
The aforementioned statement from 170 members of the European Parliament sets out what such a change of policy might look like. It recommends that the EU and its member states insist that all relations with the Iranian regime are contingent upon an end to the suppression of protests and the release of all persons who have been detained for taking part in the uprising.
It also urges Western governments and private-sector partners to formulate a solid plan to help the Iranian people maintain their organizational efforts by providing them with access to the internet, free of the regime’s filters and blocks.
These and other measures should be implemented on the basis of international recognition of the rights of the Iranian people to fight back against an oppressive, theocratic and, ultimately, illegitimate system, which is more vulnerable to public unrest than Western lawmakers were prepared to admit prior to this latest uprising.
• Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a Spanish professor of atomic and nuclear physics, was vice-president of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014. He is currently president of the Brussels-based International Committee in Search of Justice