(L-r) Susan Glasser, Maziar Bahari and Suzanne Maloney discuss the Iran protests. [Courtesy Brookings Institution]
On Dec. 28, 2017, protests began in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city and home to the shrine of Imam Reza. Initially aimed at President Hassan Rouhani’s administration, protests quickly spread out of control to smaller cities such as Bandar Abbas, Ahvaz, Shiraz and Rasht. The country-wide protests led to the deaths of 21 people and the arrests of more than 400.
On Jan. 5, 2018, the Brookings Institution hosted a panel discussion on “The Protests in Iran,” moderated by POLITICO columnist Susan Glasser. She described the protests as “remarkable but little understood” developments which “seemed to surprise just about everybody.”
According to Maziar Bahari, founder of IranWire.com, “no one knows who exactly” is protesting, as there have been various slogans being chanted, including some in support of the Pahlavis and some in support of Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who played a key role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and was set to be Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s successor prior to a falling out between them. Bahari, whose memoir, Then They Came for Me, (available from the Washington Report’s Middle East Books and More) describes his experience being arrested in Iran during the 2009 Green Movement, added that Iran is experiencing widespread discontent that is “fertile ground for protests.”
In comparison to 2009, Bahari said, the protesters today “do not have a clear objective,” which has kept the middle classes from supporting them. Furthermore, the regime and Revolutionary Guards are “struggling for answers” as well as for a narrative—the protests have been called a plan of Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S.
Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, added that the protests have a “lack of an obvious figurehead” and are much smaller than the protests of 2009. However, the protesters are largely coming from the lower classes, which is the base of the Islamic Republic, Mahoney noted, and “it’s got to be deeply unnerving” for the regime.
While Bahari argued that the protesters do not separate the reformists and hardliners in the government, Maloney described President Rouhani as “the last best effort” for reform in Iran. Rouhani, however, has “run up against what’s possible in the Islamic Republic,” Maloney said. Further, she added, the JCPOA nuclear agreement was sold to the Iranians as something that would open the economy, and that has just not happened.
On whether or not President Donald Trump was right to voice his support for the demonstrators, Bahari stated that “they are going to blame America for everything in Iran” no matter what the president does. Bahari emphasized that, for one thing, the travel ban needs to be lifted, as it created anger toward the U.S. Maloney added that in 2009, during the Green Movement, she supported President Barack Obama’s decision to stay silent, but has since come to regret it, calling it a “reasonable calculation” at the time because Obama did not want to do anything that would hurt the potential for nuclear talks. Maloney also stated that the U.S. “should never stay on the sidelines” when it comes to the rights of people, and that “sometimes we simply have to do what is right to do.”
The most recent protests largely faded after a week, and the long-term effects or continuation of the protests is unclear. Just as it was when the protests began, the future may be hard to predict.
