Iran V (Commentary): Endgame?

While reports remain muddled, it appears an endgame is nearing in Iran. Evidence indicates the protest movement is failing in its primary objectives of:

1. First, ensuring the Guardian Council, the body responsible to certify election results, declares the election results to be invalid;
   
2. Second, building a sustained, broadly supported protest movement that includes diverse segments of the population.
   

Instead, the movement appears to be succumbing to state suppression, but in this looming 'defeat' lies what is sure to be a long-term victory and progressive contribution to social change.

Regarding the first objective, CNN reports the Guardian Council on June 22 rejected any prospect of nullifying the election results, claiming "irregularities were reported before the balloting -- not during or after." Today, June 23, the Council has begun scheduling the inauguration of incumbent President Ahmadinejad, 'winner' of 62.63 percent of the 'vote.'

Regarding the second objective, CBS' Iran Watch cites a STRATFOR Global Intelligence paper, "The Iranian Election and the Revolution Test", and its analysis of the ability of the protest movement to incorporate broader segments of the population, ultimately concluding the movement was unsuccessful in expanding beyond the initial participating demographic of the so-called "twittering class".

The global media, obsessively focused on the initial demonstrators — who were supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponents — failed to notice that while large, the demonstrations primarily consisted of the same type of people demonstrating. Amid the breathless reporting on the demonstrations, reporters failed to notice that the uprising was not spreading to other classes and to other areas. In constantly interviewing English-speaking demonstrators, they failed to note just how many of the demonstrators spoke English and had smartphones. The media thus did not recognize these as the signs of a failing revolution.

Later, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke Friday and called out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they failed to understand that the troops — definitely not drawn from what we might call the “Twittering classes,” would remain loyal to the regime for ideological and social reasons. The troops had about as much sympathy for the demonstrators as a small-town boy from Alabama might have for a Harvard postdoc.

Yet, the fact that the protest movement is occurring de facto achieves a major victory, one which may turn out to be of world-historical significance in the mid- to long-term process of systemic social change of the nation and region. The Tehran Bureau, an independent news and commentary source on Iran, comments in "Iran Makes History Again" that

The levers of economic, military, ideological, bureaucratic, and police power are very tightly controlled by the existing elite in Iran, which makes the protests all the more remarkable. The potential for significant ramifications in Iran and the wider Middle East is great, given the role that Iran plays throughout the region. Of the two most significant events that impacted on the entire Middle East in the last two generations — the Arab loss in the June 1967 war and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 — the Iranian revolution has probably had wider and greater impact in the long run. Iran impacts on many parts of the region, because of its ideological influence and logistical support to Islamist movements in the Arab world, combined with its leadership of the “resistance front” of regional forces that defy and challenge the United States, Israel and conservative Arab regimes.

Thus, the protests have demonstrated the essentially contested nature of the power structure of authoritarian Islamic government, both as the material capacities and ideological content of its state institutions and managerial elite classes. While these protests have relied almost entirely on a narrow demographic, as noted above, Iranian clerics, an indispensable part of the governing class in Iran, have in very small numbers begun to march with protesters. This is a strong indicator that the regime and its ideology are deeply contested not only within the "twittering class," but within the elite sectors of society which have the "levers" of power "tightly controlled"; however, given the small numbers of clerics engaged in supporting the opposition, this split appears to be relatively contained, limited, and mostly nascent for the time being.

As such, current events in Iran are part of a process whereby the national and regional political consciousness is recognizing the legitimacy of post-1979 cultural and political authority as not guaranteed, desirable, or invulnerable and, in fact, to be contingent upon the ability of the state to subordinate the population by way of the "levers" mentioned above. The widespread dissent has already demonstrated this subordination to be no longer willful on behalf of the population, instead relying in part on the use of force on behalf of the state. All other, more preferable and effective "levers" have failed, evidence that the balance of power is shifting in favor of the governed and away from the governing. Afterall, state force is not an act of governing as such, it is violence intended to adjust the social order in such a way that the other, primary governmental "levers" may once again return to effectiveness and government may again resume.

The lasting impact of the protest movement is likely to be establishing the population, both as it thinks of itself and how it is thought of by governmental elites, as empowered to contest to what extent, if at all, it will be subordinated to the will of the state and thereby its capacity to shape the future of the nation.

While the protest movement may be falling short of its primary objectives, the fact that is occurring shows elite and state power have lost much more.