What will happen?

Neda, pictured above, killed in street violence, may be the face of the opposition.  A strong young woman, determined to have her voice heard, and killed in the process.

It has been just over two weeks since the presidential election that created an uproar in the Iran.  What has happened?  Well, protests, threats, accusations, bloodshed and tears.  Now the question is what will happen.  It is a difficult prediction to make.  The government is steadfast in its attempts to brush the massive public outcry of wrongdoing in the election under the proverbial Persian rug.  The opposition is determined to be heard and for concrete changes to be made.  Mir Hossein Mousavi has stated on his website that the government is threatening him directly, but has stated that he will not back down even under fear of death.  The government has taken the old stance that foreign interference is responsible for the unrest (even to the point of dismissing two British diplomats, which was reciprocated in Britain).  Opposition now needs recourse from powerful members of the government to succeed in their efforts.  One sign of growing divisions was visible at the recent celebration for Ahmadinejad’s victory.  Normally only the opposition reformers in parliament would not attend, however, this time only 105 of the 270 members attended and the powerful speaker of the parliament, Ali Larijani was notably absent.  Mr. Larijani has also been a vocal supporter of transparency, though not a reformer himself.  He has called on the government run television station to give Mr. Mousavi air time to speak about his grievances, but this request has been denied.  It appears that a rally to be held by another opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi will not be held.  Who knows what caused Karroubi to delay the protest, but pressure from government officials should not be ruled out.  In a show of support for the Supreme Leader, the other conservative candidate in the election, Mohsen Rezai, has given up his claims of election discrepancies.  Time may be on Khamenei’s side.  If the protests peter out, then he will gladly sit back and enjoy his despotism and hope it was just a fluke.  If something is going to happen, resulting in real change, it must be in the near term.  Perhaps they have weeks, but at the most months, or we may not see any real changes in Iran until another round of botched elections.

Iranian history continued:

Ayotollah Khomeini promised hope, change, and freedom to the Iranian people, but what resulted was a period of intense difficulty for the new government and the Iranian people.  Hoping to find the country week and unstable, and in fear of his own Shia majority in Iraq, Saddam Hussein took the opportunity to try and grab Iran’s large gulf oilfields through war.  With a massive military assault, Iraq hoped to also gain support of Iran’s Arab Sunni groups located in Iran’s southwest.  Those Iranians did not in fact join forces with Saddam and instead helped slow the invasion.  In just two years, Iran had completely repelled the Iraq back to the the pre-war borders, but the war continued for six more years.   Much of the Arab world and even the U.S. sided with and aided Saddam.  The war culminated with the US downing of an Iranian civilian passenger airliner, resulting in the loss of 290 passengers.  Fearing open war with the US, Khomeini decided it best to end the war and a cease-fire was agreed to in 1988.  One million or more casualties have been attributed to the war, one of the deadliest since WWII.  Saddam used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people, especially Kurds and Shias.  Ironically, the war caused Iranians to rally in support of the revolutionary government despite questionable domestic policies and the elimination of local opposition.  The underdog had won, but Khomeini was nearing death and big changes were about to happen.

Pictured above:  Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in 1983 at the height of the Iran-Iraq War.