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Opinions

What Does the Islamic Regime Mean by "the Iranian People"?

November 11, 2020
Mehrangiz Kar
8 min read
Were the young people who later became known as "Supporters of Imam Khomeini" actually “the people”?
Were the young people who later became known as "Supporters of Imam Khomeini" actually “the people”?

In speeches, in sermons, and in public statements, high-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic try to justify their policies by appealing to a concept of "the people" that is both cynical and one-sided. It has been claimed, for example, that the Iranian people, in spite of all the hardships they have endured from US sanctions, still stand firm against the United States and do not consent to the slightest retreat in this confrontation. I am quoting here.

This claim is salt in the filthy wounds of the actual majority of the people, who have not played a decisive role in any of events related to Iran’s domestic and foreign policy.

To fully understand the scope of these exaggerations, we can leaf back through the 41-year history of the Islamic Republic and examine the role of “the people” (in the manner the term is meant by the Iranian authorities).

 

The Aftermath of the Islamic Revolution

In the general and specific sense of the word, what decisive role did “people” play in the occupation of the US embassy?

Were the young people who later became known as "Supporters of Imam Khomeini" actually “the people”? How much better it would have been if these ignorant children had instead been advised by the leader to avoid harming the national interest. They should have been sent to study politics at the best domestic and foreign universities, learned the etiquette of diplomacy, learned to cultivate their talents.

The group that was scrambled by the government to get around the "spy nest" and display public sympathy with the Supporters of Imam Khomeini line was also a drop in the ocean.

At the time, the people, in the truest sense of the word, were in a different mood. They were afraid of the aftereffects of the revolution, which of course they had enacted. They were concerned about the occupation of the US embassy. They feared the consequences of American anger and attributed it to the ignorance of the new rulers.

Today’s younger generation has the right to ask the generation of the revolution, why did they not block these stupid policies? It’s an important question. During that period, the heavily anti-American atmosphere had increased the degree of repression and many people were afraid of their own shadow. The labels "counter-revolutionary" and "servants of America" alone were enough for opposition members and critics to be annihilated by Khomeini's followers.

The fear was not just of the government, either. The fear of other people, who had fallen prey to the madness of power in the name of Allah, was too great to be described today. The masses of remorseful revolutionaries, and the masses of Iranians who did not take part in the revolution but merely watched it unfolded, were overwhelmed with helplessness looking across the borders. They survived on the false certainty that soon – very soon, and with American support – the page would turn again, and the new government would be overthrown. This hope kept the marginalized majority afloat. They didn’t bet on the revenge the US would take for the hostage-taking.

 

Enemy Policies and Incitement to War

Iran’s new foreign policy was based on the twin tenets "Death to America" ​​and "America can do nothing", and in the hands of Iranians who were not experts in public diplomacy. The Foreign Ministry had been purged of its older and more experienced diplomats. Young people new to the world, and a scattering of zealots chanting slogans, were drafted in to replace them. The pre-revolutionary foreign minister Abbas Ali Khalatbari was executed in 1980. It was the execution of modern diplomacy in Iran.

Obscenity, instead, became the discourse of diplomacy in the Islamic Republic. In official radio and television broadcasts, the names of heads of state were swapped out for insults. Saddam Hussein became "Saddam Yazid, the infidel". Religious scholars in other Muslim countries became "court clerics." They turned the language of diplomacy into a stream of bespoke curses, commensurate with their weaknesses in political education.

Continuing this inverted culture in foreign policy, the Iran-Iraq war broke out, and lasted for eight years. It could have ended much sooner. It was not the people who wished to prolong a war that was without the slightest benefit to them, and that cost them dear in both manpower and financial resources.

At Khomeini’s behest, though, the same puppets of the government shouted out slogans, in small groups that appeared large on television: "War, War, Until Victory", "The Road to Quds Passes Through Karbala", and similar bluffs.

The people – the real people – did not want this. They did not want the offensive language or insults to regional states, nor the continuation of a war that could have drawn to a close, and for which even Saudi Arabia had agreed to compensate Iran.

 

Which people assented to the occupation of the US embassy? Which people voted to continue the costly war? The old Iranian proverb that claims "silence is a sign of consent" cannot justify the harm done to the people by major political mistakes. The silence of the Iranian people in the face of foreign policy extremism was borne out of fear of execution, not out of consent!

In the 1990s and 2000s, they killed thousands of Iranian young people who were opposed to their rule. After that, no organized, powerful political force was able to rise up again. People in the border areas were driven into enemy fire or displaced, while citizens of other parts of the country lost half a lifetime in queues to buy basic goods.

Add to this picture Iran’s entry into the age of uranium enrichment and nuclear energy. How can Mr. Khamenei, the commanders of the IRGC, Hassan Rouhani and the other officials claim that “the people” were satisfied with these policies, which were harmful to the national interest and still are?

People in most countries have several tools at their disposal, with which to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with official policies. They are:

 

1. The Press

With a free press, experts for and against a given policy have a platform upon which to examine the benefits and harms of policies – wisely, not vulgarly. For example, those who agree or disagree with the state’s desire to enrich uranium should be able to publish a cost-and-benefit analysis without fear.

Did we have the benefit of this tool?

 

2. Parliament

A parliament created through free elections, in which candidates from across the political spectrum have had a chance to run, is another important means by which the people’s views are represented and acted on.

The Iranian parliament lacks these characteristics and includes only the representatives from a narrow group that supports the corrupted ideology of the government. It is not a parliament, either in the general or the specific sense. At the same time, the absolute power of the Guardians Council to veto their resolutions completely eliminates any trace of parliamentary independence.

Even the Guardians Council, itself being under the control of the Supreme Leader, has not been able to freely discuss or comment on the relative benefits and harms of, say, uranium enrichment.

The slogan "Nuclear Energy is our Inalienable Right" has been placed in the mouths of “the people” by the Office of the Supreme Leader. Government institutions have merely repeated it. The JCPOA has never been approved by this ordered parliament.

 

3. Independent Parties and Independent Civic Organizations

Have Iranians ever enjoyed a thriving civil society since the triumph of Khomeini's revolution? Where they even existed, NGOs have either been destroyed and their founders and members ousted, or been infiltrated and simply become arm’s-length government institutions.

There is no trace of independent political parties. The 1980s are remembered as the decade of executions of non-hardline revolutionary factions and political organizations. During the secretive period of Iran entering the uranium enrichment process, there was no trace of any partisan challenge, which ought to have been a sure sign of the involvement of the people – the real people – in developments.

 

In general, therefore, we should ask the following of those officials who spread lies every day about the resistance of “the people” against the United States:

Did the Iranian people have the ability to oppose the capture of the US embassy? Even the prime minister of the interim government, Mehdi Bazargan, resigned, but was there a free platform on which he could explain why? Did an independent parliament approve this anti-national security assault?

Have the Iranian people played a role in entering the uranium enrichment process? Were the free press and independent political parties allowed to analyze the issue in terms of the national interest and people’s livelihoods? Who has amassed wealth by circumventing sanctions? What role did the people play in the JCPOA? During the short period the JCPOA was in force, what was done with the money earned? Did it create any job opportunities, alleviate any poverty?

The rulers of Iran have absolutely no right to repeatedly claim to the world that the Iranian people are not willing to negotiate peace, or to normalize relations with the United States.

The rulers of Iran have no right to say that the hungry, thirsty, unemployed and homeless masses have chosen this situation themselves, nor that they are proudly “resisting” the United States, nor support the Supreme Leader and the talkative president who cling to their seats of power, as their handmaidens.

In the true sense of the word, the people have not imposed sanctions on their homes. The people did not give consent for rulers to plunder their national wealth and human dignity under the guise of "Death to America." The people did not and do not have the tools to enact these decisions themselves.

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