Over the past couple of months ordinary Iranians, mostly the unemployed ones, have asked me whether I think there will be war as they know I keep up with the news on the Internet. I tell them, “No, but things will get much worse.”
Last week a half a dozen of them gathered in my office and once again the topic of war came up. Specifically, they ask whether or not they would pick up a rifle, if Iran was attacked. These are mostly ordinary workers in their twenties that don’t read newspapers, surf the Internet or watch the VOA or BBC. The news they get is mostly through the car radio and the evening news on the state-run TV channels. I thought they should see a video that I had downloaded. I showed it to them. It was of the helicopter pilot singing “Bye Bye American Pie” just before his Hellfire missiles splattered a “terrorist”. You can see it for yourself here.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=652_1341423015
I explained to them if a military confrontation takes place between Iran and America, it would not be like the Iran-Iraq war but would consist of drones, carpet bombing, and non-stop missile attacks – and none of them would have to go to the front lines holding a rifle because not one single American soldier would step foot on Iranian soil. The look on their faces when I told them this made it clear that this was information that nobody had ever given to them.
During our discussion one of them, Abbas, said something that I found to be very interesting. Abbas said he had gone to a mosque and noticed that a group of Basij members were sitting around talking about war, so he decided to ask them some questions to find out how they would react. Essentially, what the Basij members told Abbas was that the main reason they were Basij was because they were being offered motorcycles and various other financial incentives, and that these were the only reasons they were part of the Basij. As far as fighting for the regime, all of them had said they would refuse to fight.
I bring this up because the issue of war is on the minds of most Iranians in Iran, and what they want to know is why. They are trying to make sense of very complicated geopolitical forces, but have access only to state controlled media that they know can’t be trusted, especially given the fiasco of the presidential elections of 2009.
So, if the Basij won’t fight to keep the regime in power, and angry protestors are pouring into the streets either demanding cheaper chicken or their votes to be counted, how is the regime going to go to war and hope to defend the country? Firing off missiles in the desert and making unrealistic threats about closing the Straits of Hormuz are not going to fool anybody.
Almost everyone in Iran believes that Khamenie holds the key to this complex and extremely deadly situation. He has succeeded in becoming so powerful that no other power center in Iran is in a position to make decisions regarding war and peace. Once again one man’s decisions affect an entire nation. This situation is the number one reason why the 1979 revolution failed, and so there has to be change. Already there are voices within the regime voicing alarm and attempting to find a solution.
The peaceful path is for the regime to come to terms with its failures and immediately begin the process of transitioning to a democratic system of government based on the rule of law, by allowing a real opposition to exist and not savagely crushed, as it happened three years ago.
When Abdollah Nouri, a former regime insider suggests holding a referendum on Iran’s nuclear activities, it is indicative of the existence of a dammed up force in the country ready to burst. The regime has enough intelligence and security agents across the country and therefore knows how serious the level of discontent and anger is and how close it is to boiling over. It can wait for the dam to burst and flood the nation, or it can play a constructive part in the process of Iranians taking control of their own country and creating the society they want. And this means a revision of the Constitution, whereby the necessary tools are given to Iranians to manage their own affairs rather than being told what to think, to wear, to say, and to believe in.
The first few steps are essential in creating the necessary environment for revising the Constitution. One essential tool is a free press, because without a free press it is impossible to know where the problems are, and if you don’t know where or what the problems are, how can they be solved?
There must be freedom for peaceful gatherings, creating political groups and parties, and holding peaceful demonstrations, because these are the essential means through which citizens can organize and create the society they want.
There must be free and fair elections, conducted transparently and monitored objectively without taking sides, so that the voting process can not be corrupted, manipulated, and turned into a hoax. Amazingly, even the present Constitution allows these essential elements, but their implementation has been blocked by the hardliners.
Most important of all, Khamenie needs to make peace with Iranians. As a first step he must free all the political prisoners and journalists, and allow the banned newspapers that have been closed down. Making peace on the domestic front is essential for making peace on the foreign front.
There are no reasons for Iran to be interfering in issues that are not in its national security interests, with the most obvious being interfering in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The injustice being inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israel should be left for them to deal with. There are no reasons for Iran to be supporting Assad or the opposition to him; the problems in Syria are for Syrians to solve.
Making peace on the domestic front will ensure peace on the foreign front. But, unfortunately this is up to one man who most likely is surrounded by advisors that, instead of telling him the truth are making him blind and deaf to reality, just like the Shah. When Iranians shouted marg baar diktator [death to the dictator] from the roof tops in 2009, they were referring to Khamenie, not Ahmadinejad. If Khamenie refuses to address Iran’s domestic problems at this critical time, or makes the wrong move on the foreign front, and military
confrontation does take place, Iranians will start shouting from the roof tops again, but this time the fate of Khamenie will most likely be similar to the Shah’s.
Assuming the Constitution is revised and it is decided that there needs to be a separation of mosque and State, the clerics may want to reflect on where they went wrong. They will need to ask themselves why the best and brightest, numbering 200,000 a year, leave Iran. They will need to ask themselves why there exists rampant corruption throughout government agencies. Why there are so many drug addicts in Iran. Why there is so much “parti baazi” [nepotism and bribery] in the judicial system. Why a very large sector of society has developed hatred for the clerics and even considers the ruling clerics as being non-Muslims.
Blind obedience to ideas and writings that are from hundreds of years in the past has not worked and insisting on conformity has not lead to an Islamic utopia, which many thought they were voting for back in 1979, but instead has bought the country to the very precipice of war.
