Message | 24.01.2020 social movements / organizing – war / peace – west asia – iran – west asia in focus "iran is on the verge of an explosion"
An interview with iranian blogger mina khani
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Mina khani comes from iran and lives today as a left-wing author and artist in berlin. she started as a blogger 10 years ago, writing in farsi about political and social issues. For the last three years, she has also been publishing texts in german on the political situation in iran. She writes mainly about social movements, especially the women’s movement. Their texts in farsi and german have been published mostly in left-wing newspapers and magazines. Mina khani has also worked as a dancer and actress. Harald etzbach spoke with mina khani about the current protest movements in iran.
Harald etzbach is a historian and political scientist and works as a translator and journalist. He publishes mainly on West Asian and North African issues and on U.S. foreign policy.
Harald etzbach: in iran, there have been various demonstrations and protest movements in recent months: the protests in november of last year, the funeral marches for the killed commander of the quds brigades, qasem soleimani, and now the protests following the shooting down of a ukrainian passenger plane. What are the dynamics behind these demonstrations, how do they relate to each other, who is supporting them??
Mina khani: To answer that, you have to look back a little. In the last two or three years, certain sectors of society have repeatedly taken to the streets, especially the poorer classes. There has been a series of strikes, the student movement has organized protests inside and outside the universities. Women were very active everywhere, as were the national minorities, especially Arabs and Kurds. So it has been simmering all along.
What happened in november? After the cancellation of the nuclear agreement by the u.s. government, revolutionary leader khamenei personally established a body consisting of president rouhani, ali larijani, the president of parliament, and justice minister ebrahim raisi, which can make decisions that are then immediately valid. this very body, which bears the somewhat unwieldy name "economic coordination council of three organs of the state," met in november and decided, as it were from one day to the next, to increase the price of gasoline. They probably wanted to impose some kind of shock therapy. The protests that broke out just one day later and then quickly spread nationwide had two aspects: an economic one, because the gap between rich and poor is widening in Iran, leading to an unbearable situation, but also a political one, because people were outraged by the increasingly undemocratic actions of the government.
The protests were then put down in an extraordinarily bloody manner.
Yes, but even then the discussions continued. It wasn’t reported so much here in the west, but there were daily news reports in Iran about the arrests and the people who were killed, the number of people who were killed, etc. There were calls from family members of the dead to take to the streets again. In one case, an entire family was arrested at a funeral service after publishing such an appeal. The atmosphere was very tense all the time.
Then came the assassination of soleimani by the u.s. This gave the Iranian state the opportunity to use the soleimani funeral march for its propaganda: there were problems here and there, but when it came to the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s borders, Iran’s foreign policy, etc., it was not a problem. Go, then the people stand behind the state. It was a big orchestration, and I think the state actually mobilized its entire following for it. Shortly thereafter, the Ukrainian passenger plane crashed, with the Iranian government stubbornly denying for three days that it had anything to do with it, before admitting that the Revolutionary Guards were responsible for the downing. It’s very important to see that the protests that started then refer in their slogans and demands to the demonstrations of last november, so there is a continuity there. I believe that all this diversity in the protests is related to the different social and political divisions in Iranian society. Different social classes or political forces express their protest in different ways.
It is often said that the protests in november were mainly carried by the lower class and national minorities, while now it is mainly the middle class that is on the streets. Is this a correct assessment?
This seems a bit simplified to me. Also in november, people from different social classes participated in the demonstrations, that becomes clear when you look at the names and the families of those arrested and killed in november. It is also the case that part of the middle class has been socially relegated due to the economic crises of recent years. These people still have the corresponding habitus, but they have lost a lot.
But one thing is really different about the recent events. The number of people who sympathize with the victims of the plane shooting is much greater. One does not need to have done anything to identify with the victims. It could have happened to anyone. You don’t have to be political, you don’t have to be on the streets, you don’t even have to be against the political system, you just have to get on a plane to become a victim of the miserable situation in Iran. I think it shook a lot of people, and it made people from the middle class, who were a little quieter before, speak out – including celebrities from sports, the arts, or journalists from state television who published a statement and resigned.
Can you comment on the role of women and national minorities in the protests??
When the Islamic republic was founded, its founder, ajatollah khomeini, relied on two divisions to mobilize the population: the gender division and the national division, which is expressed in very religious terms in iran. Especially during the war against Iraq, this played a big role. Khomeini tried to turn Iran into a Shiite god-state, so women, for example, should dress a certain way and move less in public. There was resistance to it, but ultimately khomeini got his way.
But there was also a narrative about "other believers" and "non-believers". This affected the mostly Sunni Arabs and Kurds in Iran, but of course also the Bahais, for example, who are not recognized at all. Kurdish society in Iran is particularly politicized, and it was Kurds who opposed the regime at the very beginning of the Islamic republic. These divisions have continued until today. But it is becoming increasingly clear that other national minorities do not really see themselves as part of Iranian society either. This has to do, among other things, with the fact that many of them live in geographically marginal areas of the country. This has led to the formation of strong national movements in recent years, especially in the southern parts of Iran – in Baluchistan and in the areas inhabited by Arabs.
The regime is trying to defame the protesters as agents of the West in a familiar way. Trump has pledged his solidarity to the demonstrators on twitter in farsi. On the other hand, there are videos showing students at Tehran University avoiding stepping on the flags of Israel and the United States that are placed on the ground in front of the university building. What do you think about this development??
The Islamic republic completely adopted the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist discourse of the left immediately after its founding. That is, it is no longer a sign of resistance in Iran to be pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionist. Anti-Zionism is an ideology propagated by the state. This is the background against which the events at tehran university are to be seen. Also, when people do something inside the country, it sometimes means something different than when the opposition does it abroad. It’s not that the students are now pro-Trump or pro-Zionist. The pressure of having to do certain things and not being able to decide for themselves is simply hard to bear for many people in iran. One has to see these things in the context of the implausibility of the Iranian state and not as a differentiated, reflected position on Israel or Palestine.
The student movement has clearly distanced itself from trump’s statements. First of all, of course, because they don’t want the movement to be associated with U.S. interference, because that would give the regime justification for repression, but also, of course, because they don’t agree with the whole U.S. agenda in the region.
What is the position of opposition currents in Iran and in the diaspora on the current protests?? Are there explicitly leftist positions??
The situation is getting worse, and the slogans and forms of protests are becoming more and more radical. And whenever things get explosive, it’s an opportunity for the various currents of the opposition to make their mark. Within the Iranian diaspora, however, the left has become very weak. This is not to say that there are few left-wing Iranians, but they are somewhat perplexed by recent developments in Iran. For the right-wing opposition, it is different, as they are not afraid to cooperate with pro-Western institutions, where there is enough money. The Iranian left is also making it very difficult for itself, it is very absent, also in the confrontation with the western left. The right-wing opposition, on the other hand, is being courted. As a result, iranians have a certain image of the opposition abroad: people who get a lot of money and want to tell us what to do. Nevertheless, many iranians in the country are turning to this opposition even because of the strong repression. For example, they send videos to the relevant television stations simply because they want them to be reported on. Often they are unable to identify the political forces behind such broadcasts. It is therefore very difficult to analyze on this basis which Iranian forces are cooperating with which forces abroad.
In any case, it can be said that the workers and teachers in Iran, who are the best organized, refuse to establish contacts with such institutions. At the same time, they are very reserved about the protests so as not to jeopardize their own ability to work. The student movement has become very left-wing in recent years. You can see this in slogans like "students and workers, unite" or "work, bread, freedom", which are taken up by the workers, just as the slogans of the workers are taken up by the students.
If you follow the discussions of iranians on social networks, you will notice that the voices of the left may be quieter in the diaspora, but they are quite loud in iran itself. This is remarkable, since the left in Iran is subject to massive repression. The whole discussion about the connection of social and political questions, the national question, the women’s question, is carried out by the left in Iran in the trade unions or the student associations. The Iranian left tries to do a lot of organizing from the bottom up, grassroots work, but the left avoids being in the center because then they immediately become targets for regime repression.
What do you think will happen in the future?? In november, protests were bloodily suppressed. Amnesty International spoke of several hundred dead and thousands of imprisoned people. The dark figure is probably significantly higher. Is a similar scenario now looming??
After the shooting down of the Ukrainian passenger plane, you could see that the regime was a little more cautious, not in terms of arrests, but in terms of deaths or an internet blackout. I think this is because the regime now feels that the international public is watching, that the pressure is still there. The dissatisfied sections of the Iranian population are reacting very quickly at the moment. All it takes is one little trigger and they’re back on the street. It is obvious that the Iranian state cannot continue as it is without organizing massive resistance.
One thing is very important: for several years now, no matter why people protest, they always shout "down with the dictatorship". It is about floods, this slogan is shouted, the gasoline prices are increased, it is shouted. The connection is very clear: we live in an oligarchy and dictatorship, where we are not free to shape our own lives and to find political and social ways to get out of the misery. this is the cornerstone of my analysis: as long as this situation does not change fundamentally, and as long as people do not feel freer and also live a better life, this dissatisfaction will continue to exist and will be impossible to conceal. In my opinion, Iran is on the verge of a huge explosion, even bigger than the one we have seen so far.