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Reuel Marc Gerecht-La rivoluzione del 12 giugno 16/07/2009 Weekly Standard, June 29, 2009

THE JUNE 12 REVOLUTION Reuel Marc Gerecht Weekly Standard, June 29, 2009 The modern Middle East has had numerous "game-changing" moments, when history turned. Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798, Muhammad Ali's conquest of the Nile Valley in 1805, and the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 introduced Europeans  and European ideas into the region. The British discovery of oil in Persia in 1908, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Saudi conquest of Mecca and Medina in 1925, the awakening of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936, and the God-father-like victory of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Cairo in 1954 further accelerated tradition-crushing Westernization and gave birth to  nationalism, pan-Arabism, and contemporary Islamic fundamentalism. The Israeli triumph in the 1967 Six Day War, the Iranian revolution of 1979, the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and the birth of Iraqi democracy two years later buried secular pan-Arab dictatorship, politically inflamed the Islamic identity, and set the stage for the growth of representative government in a more religious Middle East . The Iranian presidential election of June 12 may soon rank with these history-making events. We may well look back on it as the "June 12 revolution" even if-especially if-the regime cracks down on the supporters of Mir-Hussein Mousavi, the candidate who ran second to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the dubious official vote tally. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), which almost destroyed the Islamic Republic and forged the reputation and character of then-Prime Minister Mousavi, most Iranians have been exhausted revolutionaries. More like sheep than foot-soldiers of a dynamic faith, Iranians have largely veered away from confronting their increasingly unpopular rulers. Now the election appears to have stiffened their backbones and quickened their passions.They've had enough of their unpleasant, joyless lives. The election has given a  wide variety of Iranians-many of whom would not voluntarily associate with each  other because of religious, political, and social differences-a simple and transcendent rallying cry: One man, one vote! Even the supreme leader's favorite, President Ahmadinejad, must obey the rules. It is in some ways a bizarre situation when hundreds of thousands of Iranians rally to protest the outcome of an election that was rigged from the beginning.... Yet it is in part precisely because this election was so strait-jacketed that it has become pivotal. We don't know yet how aggressively Iran 's clerical overlord, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad rigged the balloting. Ahmadinejad remains popular in small town Iran and among the urban poor. His constant attacks on the corrupt revolutionary elite-especially the fabulously wealthy cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who probably bankrolled Mousavi's run for the presidency-resonate, even among highly Westernized Iranians who align themselves with the "pragmatic" Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad's undiminished Islamic zeal, which he marries with Iranian nationalism, appeals to many, especially those who fought in the ghastly Iran-Iraq war and retained their faith. Nevertheless, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad felt compelled to cheat. It is the crudeness of it all that is so revealing and damning. Although Iranians have a reputation for being subtle, elegant, and polite, their political manners  are usually pretty rough. The government blatantly announced a majority of 63 percent for Ahmadinejad less than two hours after the polls closed. If Khamenei had only allowed a respectable delay for counting all the paper ballots, and then had Ahmadinejad win by just a few points (as he might actually have done), the massive protests  probably would not have happened. Khamenei surely knew that Mousavi could be a stubborn man, blessed with a real revolutionary's sense of honor and no awe whatsoever for Khamenei's status as successor to the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.... Khamenei, who worked with and struggled against Mousavi for a decade, knows the  former prime minister politically as well as anyone. The supreme leader knows that what Mousavi lacks in charisma he has always made up in doggedness. That Khamenei baited the candidate, and so carelessly denied millions of Iranians the illusion  that their votes mattered, shows how insular and insecure Khamenei, a politicized cleric of some intellectual sensitivity, has become in his august office. Whatever Mousavi has inside, it was enough to scare Khamenei profoundly, and not just because the supreme leader didn't want to hand a victory to Rafsanjani, Khamenei's brother-in-arms-turned-foe. Without Rafsanjani, the reformist cleric Mohammed Khatami would never have risen  to the presidency, which he held from 1997 to 2005.... Khamenei backs Ahmadinejad overwhelmingly for one reason: fear of Khatami.... Not Khatami personally, but what he represented between 1997, when he won the presidency by a landslide, and 2000, when the regime fully recovered its authoritarian composure. Although certain American analysts like to belittle the historic importance of Khatami ("Really just Khamenei with a smile"), the movement behind him terrified Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps (Pasdaran).... Raised on a diet of mostly Western thought that the creation of the dictatorial Islamic Republic has only amplified, Iranians have had quite a bit of democratic  conditioning, that prelude to representative government that "realists" believe  a people must experience before they can handle democracy. As Khosrokhavar revealed in his astonishing book Avoir vingt ans au pays des ayatollahs ("To Be Twenty in  the Land of the Ayatollahs"), Western ideas-especially feminism and the right of individuals to define themselves-are more powerful today in the deeply conservative holy city of Qom than they were 30 years ago. Khamenei began to realize in the 1990s what Khomeini instinctively knew from a richer understanding of Islamic law and  the human condition: A majority of Muslims can do the wrong thing if given a chance. Khamenei acted so crudely and rashly on June 12 because he'd already seen this movie. What's happening in Iran now is all about democracy, about the contradictory and chaotic bedfellows that it makes, about the questioning of authority and the personal curiosity that it unleashes.... Where Iranians in the 1990s could try to play games with themselves-be in favor of greater democracy but refrain from saying publicly that the current government was illegitimate-this fiction is no longer possible. Khamenei has forced Mousavi and, more important, the people behind him into opposition to himself and the political system he leads. Unless Mousavi gives up, and thereby deflates the millions who've gathered around him, a permanent opposition to Khamenei and his constitutionally ordained supremacy has now formed. Like it or not, Mousavi has become the new Khatami-except this time the opposition is stronger and led by a man of considerable intestinal fortitude. Everyone in Tehran may have crossed the Rubicon. It was always questionable whether the office of the velayat-e faqih [supreme leader] would survive Khamenei; he has now pretty much guaranteed that it will not.... [W]ho knows what could happen if Khamenei were so stupid as to rerun the election fairly? Mousavi would probably win, perhaps by a wide margin, since he would have already faced down Khamenei and Ahmadinejad in a head-to-head battle. The prestige, attraction, and fear of  established power, what the Iranians have historically called heybat, would have vanished. And if the winning margin were large enough, it's possible that the Revolutionary Guard Corps, with whom Khamenei has made a Faustian power-sharing bargain, would back down from a military coup. The Corps is not a monolith.... The smart money should still be on a coup by the Revolutionary Guard if Khamenei does not stand firm against Mousavi and a repeat of the 1990s.... The Guard's commanders, who are among the most ideologically committed Islamists in Iran , certainly would be willing to kill their countrymen to protect the system they cherish. But there may be cracks in the rank and file's esprit that are hard for outsiders to see.  Whether Khamenei fears this is impossible to know.... It's not difficult to foresee the Islamic Republic spiritually unraveling. If it  does, the most important experiment of Islamist ideology since the birth of the  Muslim Brotherhood will have proven itself-to its own people, to the clerical guardians of the faith, and to the world-a failure. Unless Mousavi withdraws and leads his  followers in a renewed quietist retreat, the Islamic revolution, which shook the Muslim world 30 years ago, will now become either a real laboratory of democracy or a crude and violent dictatorship that might rival the Baathist regimes of Iraq and Syria in its savagery. Either outcome would be momentous. It's a pity that President Obama has trapped himself in a doomed outreach to Khamenei. Even if Mousavi wins the present tug-of-war, he'll probably support Iran 's continued development of nuclear weapons. He was in office when the Islamic Republic first became serious about building the bomb; his powerful backer, Rafsanjani, is the true father of the nuclear program; and there is little reason why Mousavi would want to anger a pro-nuclear Revolutionary Guard Corps that had refrained from downing him. But for there to be any chance that Iran will cease and desist from its nuclear quest, Mousavi must win the present struggle. If Ahmadinejad and Khamenei triumph, they will not relent. For them, and for the Revolutionary Guard behind them, nuclear weapons are the means to become global players and secure the power they can no  longer confidently draw from their own people. Triumphant, the Revolutionary Guard, who have overseen all of the Islamic Republic's outreach efforts to Arab extremists like Hamas and Hezbollah, will surely get nastier abroad as they become more vicious at home. The principal issue right now inside Iran isn't the nuclear question. It's what it has been since Khomeini died: How do you escape from a religious revolution?  Mousavi might, just might, have an answer. Even if he is not our friend-and turns out to be in many ways our enemy-we should all pray that he wins. President Obama would do well to be just a bit more forceful in defending democracy for a people  who must surely have earned his respect. Iranians will forgive the president his "meddling." He does carry, after all, the name of the man-Hussein, the prophet's grandson-who long ago defined Shiism's boundless admiration for those who defend their people and their faith from tyranny. (Reuel Marc Gerecht, a Weekly Standard contributing editor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)