In a live broadcast on Iranian state television a mullah gives spiritual advice. An in-caller is talking about her marital problems, then she suddenly says: “Coincidentally, my husband has the same name as our newly elected president, Mir Hussein Mousavi,” The moderator silences, the program is interrupted.
On money you will nowadays often find a green victory sign or the words “Down with the dictatorship”. Or a thumbnail portrait of Neda, the best known dead from the unrest in the days after the election in June. The print works give a professional impression, instructions circulate on the internet.
A football match in Isfahan, many spectators wearing green. The television cameras are trying to avoid these images. However, Green is the colour of the football club in Isfahan; now the club is requested to find a different colour.
The movement for democracy is visible in Iran, despite of all repression, torture and show trials. It is not strong enough to stop the Ahmadinejad government. But it is strong enough to keep the country in tension. Because meetings are banned, official occasions are subverted, eg. last Friday: During the anti‐Israel Quds rallies tens of thousands held their fingers up forming the V‐sign, demanded the release of imprisoned reformers. On this day, an experience from June repeated and changed the psychology of society: It is possible to take to the streets and defy prohibitions. It is dangerous but possible.
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The young, the students whose creativity influenced the aesthetics of the movement, still burn for the hope of something great to happen, a radical change ‐ in the system as in their lives. More prudent Iranians fear the power vacuum of a regime falling apart rapidly.
The 68‐year‐old Mir Hussein Mousavi, a candidate in June, remains the figurehead for all sides; but it is the width of the movement which makes him virtually incapable of acting. Coming from the system himself, the former prime minister wants to win as many of Ahmadinejad’s conservative opponents as possible. For the moderates within the nomenklatura, Mousavi offers a great advantage, an insider explained: “You know, he might take away their power, but not their lives.” But at the same time Mousavi has to appear unyielding, if he doesn’t want to lose the support of the young, and of the modern middle classes.
On the street outside his home, the regime has installed surveillance cameras. When Mousavi leaves home, a double cordon accompanies him: his own people and a troop of the Revolutionary Guard. The danger of being arrested is become greater for the leading group, so earlier plans for founding a party or a mass organization were discarded. The movement for democracy is to expand as a “network” which can’t be banned.
“Everyone appreciating the Iranian and Islamic identity of the country as a value and the constitution as the fundament for action is welcome “said Alireza Beheshti, a close adviser Mousavi. “The framework of the Islamic Republic should remain, but with corrections”, can be heard in Mousavi’s vicinity. Especially the civil rights under the constitution should show to advantage, including freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
In his statements “to the people of Iran”, which Mousavi only can send out on the internet, he calls for: a reform of the electoral law, press freedom, the licensing of private radio and television stations, a law prohibiting the military to intervene in economics and politics, the release of political prisoners and the penalisation of atrocities in the prisons. In Tehran, it is said that along with this minimum catalogue subject-specific sections have begun “with the preparations for a new government”. Members of the current administration as well as Iranians living abroad are said to be involved in these groups.
Replacing the powerful revolutionary leader, a group of five to eight clerics should directly be elected by the people for a limited period of time. They should represent a religious pluralism equivalent to the freedom of choice in Shiite everyday life, where believers are free to choose the teachings of a scholar they want to follow. In future, nobody should be allowed to rely on divine authority. Mousavi: “Nobody has the right to say: How I look at the Islam is the one and only valid way.”
This will be no quick go. Sustained pressure and a progressive wearing down of Ahmadinejad’s regime could force him to resign over the medium term, that is the hope. Mousavi does not insist in replacing him. To gain time for the elucidation of the population, an intermediate solution might be necessary. This could look like this: Ahmadinejad resigns in favour of the Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. The moderate, popular conservative had recognized the width of the People’s Movement in June, when he estimated the demonstrators to be in the three millions.
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Mousavi is resembling the figure of the king in chess: small moves, in case of danger retreat, always covered by his men. It is not cowardice. His fellow campaigners assume the movement to slide into the underground, to radicalize and to narrow dangerously, if Mussawi is detained. He sees himself as someone who can open an unbloody way to change. But then the people have to decide which system they want to live in.
For the first time since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Iranian opposition abroad has found a common language with the forces of change within the country. This opens up options that were unthinkable only recently. In the case Mousavi and Karroubi are arrested, the leadership of the Green movement would automatically be taken over abroad. Soon a statement will be released in Tehran, saying a five‐member committee in the diaspora ‐ the names are not disclosed ‐ is authorized to replace the leadership in case needed. The symbolic gesture says a lot in a country where the fear of foreign agents is almost obsessive. And Mousavi signals the regime: Look out! If you arrested me, you obstruct the peaceful path to change.
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