Part 16: A New Beginning

The June 2009 presidential election was a turning point not just for the liberal and conservative factions of the Islamic Republic, but for the history of Iran. The magnitude of events unleashed by the election would pose the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic in its 30 year history. People outside Iran would also get a front row seat to action as videos of mass protests would be posted on the internet for the world to see.

It was a new beginning for the reform movement returning from the dead and transforming into the Green Movement. It also brought the return of revolution in Iran as the opposition would look to the 1979 revolution for inspiration in brining change to the regime. For conservatives, the purge of democratic principles after the election represented the culmination of a decade’s long effort to create an authoritarian regime.

In the end, the election and its aftermath saw the final breakdown in the coalition of liberal and conservative Islamists that had maintained the Islamic Republic for 30 years. The disagreements about the dual authoritarian and democratic nature of the regime could no longer be reconciled as it had been in the past. Finally, a breaking point had been reached in which the conflicts arising for the 1979 revolution would burst back to the surface in a return of revolutionary conflict and spirit in Iran.

Faced with the prospect of losing power and their authoritarian gains, the new coalition of conservatives and neo-conservatives would no longer allow liberal Islamists to have a role within the regime or more generally tolerate any sort of dissent. Neo-conservatives led by President Ahmadinejad were at the forefront of this effort transforming the regime into what looked increasingly like a military dictatorship. For their part, traditional conservatives led by Supreme Leader Khamenei would go along with the creation of an authoritarian state viewing a possible liberal takeover of the government as a greater threat than the neo-conservatives.

For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, large segments of the population viewed the process of counting the votes to determine the winner of an election as completely fraudulent. The widespread perception that the presidential election was completely illegitimate ended the reform movement insofar as it was a movement to change the regime through internal democratic channels.

Since there no longer seemed anyway of actually winning elections in the Islamic Republic, then there was no incentive to participate within the confines of the regime. Those liberal Islamists that wanted to bring change from within the regime now had no choice but to work outside the confines of the regime. The leaders of the liberal Islamists would organize protests and mass mobilization of the population as they had done 30 years earlier to overthrow the Shah.

In the place of the reform movement, the Green Movement modeling itself on the original revolutionary movement that created the Islamic Republic would emerge. The same slogans and tactics of the 1979 revolution would be combined with modern advances in communication technology such as text messaging and the website Twitter in the hope that change could be brought to the regime. Reviving the original revolution in the modern world would lead to one of the first truly digital revolutions in which the actions of the Green Movement could be posted on the internet for the world to see.

While its leaders, organization, and even goals were not as clear as the original revolutionary movement, the Green Movement made up any shortcomings by the passion and intensity of its participants. Given the near monopoly of force by the regime, the mass demonstrations of the Green Movement would be violently suppressed by a newly authoritarian regime. Yet the spirit of the movement would not be as easily crushed, and millions of Iranians would continue to oppose the regime in the hope of one day brining about change.