Given the experience of the rule of the Shah, elections are probably necessary in Iran, and on basis it better have them for the office of President than for real holders of power.
They cannot be blamed too much for incompetence in rigging the results, as seems to be the case. For example, there was anecdotal evidence of five members of a family voting for an opposition presidential candidate whereas that ballot box officially recorded two votes for the that candidate. If vote rigging is stuffed up, as it were, the action necessarily undermines the legitimacy of the regime, and where that might go is unknown.
Here again, the skill set and background necessary to take more subtle actions, such as effect a blackout on media to the outside world is of a different kind that a mentality that will fire automatic weapons into a crowd and engage in other barbaric acts, some of which we have seen in action via video. Characteristically, authoritarian regimes require a selected thug caste. Apartheid South Africa was just another regime to use the same technique as an illustration of its universal application. They too have had and have a noble mission, much like soldiers sent to fight wars mostly against civilian populations in smashed outposts such as Iraq and Afghanistan.(The good thing about Iraq is that the imperialists now get to steal the oil. Success around! If only they could get the oil in Iran.) The BBC provides a profile of the Basij milita force
Large demonstrations do not look good, because people get the sense that the regime cannot control them by fear. But it seems there is another dynamic in play. Demonstrators are not now just carrying green ribbons. They have replaced black for green. They are mourning the dead killed in the protests. Juan Cole explains:
Today’s protesters are wearing green, which symbolizes Mousavi’s descent from the Prophet Muhammad. (Mousavi’s family name refers to the Seventh Imam (descendant of the Prophet with claims to divine knowledge), Musa Kazim, whose tomb is in Kazimiya, north Baghdad. Sayyid families, those claiming descent from the Prophet, often take one of the Imams’ names as a family name to honor them, though of course they are also claiming descent from the previous Imams right back to the Prophet.) The repertoires of protest the reformists are using echo those of the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution– they are chanting “God is Great,” mourning pious fallen martyrs, etc.– another sign that this movement is not just alienated secularized elites.
But now Mousavi’s his supporters are also sporting black ribbons to indicate that they are in mourning for the fallen. Typically, the dead will be commemorated again at one month and at 40 days. In 1978 such demonstrations for those killed in previous demonstrations grew in size all through the year, till they reached an alleged million in the streets of Tehran. Since the reformists are already claiming Monday’s rally was a million, you wonder where things will go from here.
And then there is the problem that mass demonstrations overthrew another authoritarian regime thirty years ago. What is significant about that overthrow is that regime had external support, which is crucial to the survival of the regime in Burma, as it is to that in Egypt, as it is to Israel, engaged as they in the deprivation, imprisionment and dispossession of the Palestinians. The rulers of Burma and Egypt would never allow elections that give rise to mass participation. Perhaps the rulers in Tehran should have taken lessons from those in Cairo.
When the fear induced by brutality is overwhelmed by numbers in demonstrations the rulers have real problems. There appears to be significant internal antagonisms with the ruling group which are not likely to be healed by the mitigating the demonstrators who do not at this point seem to be losing impetus. So it is possible that the regime could collapse, and then what happens?
These nonviolent demonstrations in Iran have worked in ways that anticipated, regardless of what happens to the government of Iran. They have demonstrated to the world through their television sets that people live in Iran and not “ants”, and thus they taken any bombing of their country off the table. And, of course, it is not clear that the Iranian people have not won a greater victory than they might have imagined when they turned out in record numbers to vote.
POSTSCRIPT:
Robert Fisk, it seems, is still reporting from the street in Tehran when other journalists have thought better of their personal safety.