Iran: The Uncertainties of Oppression and Protest

After more than a week of mourning, memorials, dramatic confrontation, and arrests, Iran has "settled" into uncertain tension this morning.

The uncertainty on the Government side is what can be offered beyond threats. Those were in abundance on Tuesday, with high-profile members of Parliament, including the Speaker Ali Larijani, the Revolutionary Guard, and the state media issuing declarations of crushing dissent and cutting off hands.

That was the start and end of a post-Ashura position, however. President Ahmadinejad popped up briefly but only to put the label of foreign-run "masquerade" on the protests. The Supreme Leader has still not been heard since Sunday. There have been, as an EA reader has helpfully informed us, pro-regime rallies of unknown size (the label "thousands" has been used in the state media reports and Reuter's account of those reports --- see video in separate entry) but even these were framed now as objections to Ashura "rioting" rather than an assertion of Government legitimacy.

On the opposiiton side, there is an inevitable retreat from the high point of Sunday's demonstrations --- inevitable because of the need to re-group and re-organise, inevitable because the regime's strategy of arrests seeks to prevent any regroups and reorganisation.

An EA reader asked yesterday, "Who now leads the movement?" It is both the strength of and challenge for this movement --- with Mousavi and Karroubi under "semi-house arrest", their chief aides in detention or re-arrested in the last 72 hours, and communications under constant attack --- that it draws strength from a collection of groups who persist and proceed despite the Government attempts to hammer them out of existence.

That in itself is enough to ensure that there will be another emergence of mass protest. However, even as the movement lives and --- in moments like Sunday --- "wins", the question grows: "What is that movement 'for'?" Indeed, the regime's own attempts to make that question irrelevant only bring it to the centre of political consideration and concern.

Because the regime has ruled out compromise --- not only the compromise of the increasingly-distant "National Unity Plan" but also the compromise of the legal measures demanded by Mousavi and Karroubi --- the notion of resolution within the system recedes. A movement which was largely propelled by the perception of a rigged election has moved beyond that election to a confrontation with the religious as well as secular foundations (at least the foundations as embodied in the current leadership) of the Islamic Republic.

The easy answer, seen in the slogans of recent protests, is "Throw the Rascals Out" or even "Death to the Rascals". But that increasingly turns general demands for change into a showdown of Opposition v. the Rascals --- the so-called "radicalisation" which has become a handy label to stick on dissent.

And, then, what if the Rascals do go? Where then the Islamic Republic?

That may be an uncertainty which, in practical terms, does not have to be confronted immediately. Opposition can propel itself just by opposing. But if the protests are seeking to win over and mobilise those who initially did not support its call for change, then the necessity of setting out a "positive" may emerge even before the fantasy of the Supreme Leader hopping a jet to Russia takes on the shape of a possibility.

With each passing day, the regime is shorn of its own claim of the "positive" in Iran --- politically, economically, socially --- and falls back on the "negative" of fighting a supposed evil. The defining issue for the opposition, as it moves beyond the symbolism and political reality of a "leader" (first Mousavi, then Karroubi) may be whether it can avoid doing the same.