Like the campaigns to bring to power pro-US regimes in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), the campaign around Mousavi has been backed by powerful sections of the Iranian establishment and supported by Washington, the US media and the European powers. As in Tehran, better-off layers of the urban middle classes dominated the large opposition protests in Tbilisi and Kiev.
In the absence of a socialist alternative, the masses of Iranian workers and poor voted for the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has built a base of support among them by adopting a populist persona, denouncing corruption within the clerical elite, and providing a measure of social welfare assistance. The working class remained aloof from the anti-Ahmadinejad protests, seeing nothing to support in the pro-market policies of Mousavi.
As with the opposition movement headed by Mousavi, the opposition movements in Georgia and Ukraine styled themselves as democratic, while promoting pro-market economic policies and the opening of the countries to Western investment.
Mousavi is a longstanding figure within the existing regime and is a proven defender of the interests of the Iranian bourgeoisie. Considered a protégé of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, Mousavi was prime minister from 1981 to 1989, overseeing the suppression of left-wing movements and presiding over the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in the devastating war with Iraq.
