As I’ve said before, what we’re seeing in Iran is not a new revolution but the long-delayed continuation of the old one. From HuffPo:Since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution thirty years ago, Iran has asked many sacrifices of its youth in building and defending the Islamic Republic. In return, it promised education, jobs, and better standards of living. With every passing decade, the continuity of the Islamic Republic hinged on ensuring that each generation of Iranians was better off than their parents. Today, the dissension in Iran’s polity emanates from a growing gap between the promises and the dim reality facing its young citizens. The current political turmoil marks the breakdown of an intergenerational bargain. (Emphasis mine)
The 1979 revolution began as a popular revolt against economic and social inequality. Yet because the Shah had succeeded in retarding the progress of civil society, the mosque was only social base broad enough to take control of the levers of power. Something like that is happening again today.
For a Shah, substitute a military junta led by a weakened cleric and a demagogue with a penchant for apocalyptic rhetoric. Once again, civil society has been so retarded that only the institutions of power — the clergy and the military — can decide the issue.
What is encouraging, then, is that cracks are finally opening up in that regime. What began as protests in the streets of Tehran is becoming a schism between clerics, between soldiers, and between clerics and soldiers.
The Islamic Republic has worked hard to avoid formal partisan politics, but the stress of this moment has destroyed the monolithic character of Iran’s government in a very familiar way. Given the enormous demographic bulge of young Iranians, change may be revolutionary or evolutionary — but remains inevitable.
