Iran Analysis: Re-Defining the Green Movement (Verde)

Recently Ataollah Mohajerani, the former Minister of Culture in the Khatami Government, provoked much discussion and some criticism when he tried to set out his view of the groups within the Green Movement.

This week, writing in Rah-e-Sabz, Mohajerani tried to clarify his assessment.

The former Minister, claiming that his speech at Imperial College London had been taken out of context, writes that he sees three types of Greens:

A) Revolutionary: People who are against the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Imam Khomeini, and Islam. They want to overthrow the Islamic Republic and have been of this opinion for 30 years.

B) Revolutionary-Reformist: people who want to change the Constitution and remove velayat-e faghih (ultimate clerical supremacy).

C) Reformist: people who want to implement parts of the Constitution which have not been implemented, bringing out its full potential and following up on the post-election protest of "Where is My Vote?".  Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, Mohammad Khatami, and most of the political prisoners are in this category

Warning that the opposition "have all become like Keyhan", the hard-line newspaper, with its lies against the Greens, Mohajerani says that those in his first category are after the overthrow of the Islamic Republic; they  sympathize with and are comrades of the neocons, applauding American activists like John Bolton and Senator John McCain in Washington. This, according to Mohajerani, has been the style of overseas-based Iranian opposition for 30 years.

My observations

*It is a good sign that Mohajerani has tried to address the criticism of his views and of the “filtering” of the Green Movement.

*In the description of his first group "Revolutionaries", it sounds as if Mohajerani is saying that anyone who is against the revolution and Khoemini is also against Islam. Is he equating Khomeini and the 1979 Revolution with Islam? In that case, what is the difference between his view of the world and that of the current Supreme Leader, who equates himself with the Prophet?

*I am not sure where his descriptions of the Green Movement leave people like Neda Agha Soltan --- who, according to her mother, did not vote in the 2009 elections --- who were murdered during the street protests and have arguably become the potent symbol of both the Green Movement and the regime’s brutality.

*Mohajerani talks about the setting of conditions by some people for when they get to power (i.e., after the failure of the current regime leadership which, like many others, he takes to be inevitable). Setting such conditions is a bad thing to do, but it looks like Mohajerani is doing exactly the same thing. With his own description of the Green Movement, which is setting categories and conditions, where does this leave him?

*Mohajerani seems to say that everyone who is against the revolution and Khomeini is by definition a supporter of US neoconservatives. This appears to paint a  lot of not very similar people with the same brush.

[An aside: I think, (with his mention of “these people have been the same for 30 years” and his definition of the first “revolutionary” category of Greens, Mohajerani is mainly having a go at the supporters of the previous regime  of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.]

*Most importantly in my view:

The three sections of the Green Movement that Mohajerani describes are actually a sign of the opposition's strength. This indicates that the movement includes a range of people from the Islamic Republic’s former (and maybe even current) high-ranking officials to those who have been against the Islamic Republic even before its creation. This view of the Green Movement is of a loose coalition of almost all political groups and ideas, with the exception of Ayatollah Khamenei and a few people around him).

My conclusion....

Mohajerani and many other reformists, a lot of whom are paying a very heavy price, should be commended for their stand against Khamenei and his gang. With that stand, they have helped and are still helping the Green Movement.

When he was Minister for Culture, Mohajerani tried to open up the cultural environment --- within regime limits, it has to be said --- and was eventually forced from office. After the elections last summer, he did a series of interviews with Persian language media, in which he managed to prove (importantly, within the context of the Islamic Republic) that Ayatollah Khamenei, by his actions, no longer met the conditions to remain in the post of Supreme Leader. This should not be forgotten when arguing about different interpretations about the Green Movement.

By the same token, Mohajerani and other former high-ranking regime officials need to look and see what has gone wrong in the regime, in which they served not long ago, for it to have become the disaster it is today. The outcome of such an investigation could be very useful for all Iranians and the future of Iran.

This does not mean that we should blindly follow anyone who makes pronouncements, an allegation which has been made by many of the current young generation of Iranians against our parents’ generation. While we should remember and be thankful for the stand that people like Mohajerani are taking against Khamenei, we need more critical dialogue within the Green Movement. As Zahra Rahnavard said in a recent interview, “Those who are not criticized become stagnant like a marsh”.