Misreading Qazvin in Washington: On the Protests in Iran
By : Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi
Jadaliyya
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/34931/Misreading-Qazvin-in-Washington
Iran has featured protests throughout several provincial cities (e.g., Mashhad, Kermanshah, Rasht, and Isfahan) since they first started on Thursday 28 December 2017. Some reports indicate that conservative opponents of the Rouhani government in the north-eastern city of Mashhad initiated the protests. However, they have since spread and escaped their oversight. In the early stages, protestors’ demands largely revolved around spiraling prices of basic foodstuffs and bore the classic signs of frustration with the country’s ongoing economic torpor. Today, they reached Tehran and have been taken up in limited numbers by students around the university. As of yet, it is not clear whether we can speak of one protest movement or several protest movements, as there are different (and sometimes conflicting) grievances and solutions being articulated.
Appropriating “The People”
Commentators and self-styled experts have been quick to jump to hasty conclusions and decree what is driving the present bout of discontent. The giddy enthusiasm of the Trump administration, rightwing DC thinktanks, and many others is palpable. Predictably, the same voices who have consistently demanded Iran’s international isolation, along with the imposition of sanctions, military intervention, and regime change, have rapidly sought to bandwagon the recent expressions of discontent and appropriate them for their own imperial agendas. Such rampant and frankly malevolent opportunism is frustrating to say the least. Within the space of some twenty-four hours, and with only a small number of exceptions, nearly every mainstream Western media outlet has inclined to assimilate legitimate expressions of socioeconomic distress and demands for greater governmental accountability into a question of “regime change.”
Needless to say, these very same individuals and venues have time and again completely ignored the fact that countless strikes and protests from Khuzestan to Tehran, ranging from teachers to retirees, have become a regular occurrence in Iran since President Hassan Rouhani’s 2013 election. The latter’s administration and those sympathetic toward its agenda have sought on many an occasion to scale down levels of securitization and similarly distinguish between those citizens who express legitimate civic grievances and others who seek the system’s overthrow. These may seem like fine distinctions which fail to assuage the liberal conscience, but they are nevertheless immensely important for the institutionalization of legal and mutually recognized channels of civic contestation. These achievements and many others besides (e.g., indications of relaxed policing of “bad hijab” and the commuting of the death penalty for drug smugglers under two kilograms) are not inconsequential or to be belittled. They harbor implications for the lives of thousands if not millions of Iranians.