Does it matter who is running the Green Movement?
Mehdi Khalaji argues in an article that Mousavi Karoubi and Khatemi by accident ended up as the Green Movements front figures and that they are not the real organizers of the movement. He also argues that the protesters “are aiming to bring down the very system of which their leaders are a par.”
He writes that
Despite being lauded as modernizers, opposition front-runner Mousavi and his two green movement colleagues are deeply loyal to the ideals of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, and advocate a theocratic political system. Had Mousavi come into office following the June 12 presidential election, he would not have challenged the political order. He would have tried to fix the Islamic Republic’s internal and external crises through slight policy tweaks. Nor would the West have seen an “opening” of the sort that some suggest. Indeed, Mousavi’s rivalry with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has little to do with the current regime’s foreign policy and far more to do with internal power struggles, economic policy, and, to some extent, cultural agendas. A new leader would not have fundamentally changed Iran’s position on nuclear policy or its regional role. The reason is simple: Everyone who ran for president concedes that foreign-policy decisions should fall to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
and he adds that:
None of the reform candidates could have predicted that, following the mass vote-rigging during the presidential election, a popular movement would arise. These “leaders” had only a small role both in organizing and creating the movement, but they were swept into power by a spontaneous and improvised groundswell. The government had carefully vetted candidates, keeping anyone too reformist from running. So the grass-roots movement was left with a choice between two evils: Mousavi, the lesser one, and Ahmadinejad.
Mousavi reluctantly became the symbolic leader of the green movement, but he, Karroubi, and Khatami remain aloof. Today’s demonstrations, for example, were imagined and promoted by bloggers and leaders of human rights and women’s movements for at least two months. It was only last week, after these plans were well circulated (and the Grand Ayatollah had warned against them), that Mousavi issued a statement calling for demonstrations on Nov. 4.
and he concludes by writing that:
If you want to know the unconventional nature of this movement — and what the people who have bravely taken to the streets really want – don’t listen to Mousavi, Karroubi, and Khatami.
Since the true representatives of reform owe little to them, a successful green movement would likely push them aside anyway.
This is why it is not only the regime in Tehran — but also the reformist “leaders” who pretend to lead this movement — that fear the success of the green movement. Democracy in Iran will emerge only through a rupture with the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s ideals and Islamic ideology — concepts to which the accidental leaders of the green movement are still loyal.
I agree with most of the above arguments, but it is foolish to diminish the possibility that Mousavi, Karroubi, Kahatemi, etc. could very well become the new rulers of Iran if the Green Movement succeeds with reaching its goals. We should not forget that it was not the Ayatollahs that brought down the Shah, but rather different leftists groups and national liberation movements, like the Kurdish one, that did this. But the end result was that Khomeini, which was used by the leftist groups as a symbol to rally support of the different groups of society, grabbed power. Another similarity between the leftist movement and the Green movement is that in the same way that different groups of todays Iranian society is falling for Mosavis promises of more civil liberties, the leftist organizations fell for Khomeini’s promises of civil liberties.
The people that are taking part in the Green Movement need to get rid of Mousavi, Karoubi, Khatemi and so on before any real change could be possible, partly because these individuals will never be able to rally the support of Kurd’s, Balochs, Arabs, and so on, but also because that if the Green Movement, hypothetically, removes Ahmedinejad and Kahmenei, the real supporters of Mousavi, Karoubi and Khatemi would be the ones that would be prepared to use violence to ensure that they are the ones to take over power. And in such a scenario, the people would have to start the struggle over again from scratch.
