As the protests in Iran intensified, and as a majority of the people, pro-Ahmadinejad and even those in the Mousavi camp, realized that the true objective of the opposition went far beyond the presidential election results, and as the core of the protestors turned ever-more violent, the liberal leaders of the mobs, Mousavi himself and Mehdi Karoubi, removed themselves from the daily activities of the protesters.
The greatest damage that Mousavi and Karoubi inflicted was not on the so-called Principalist, an ideological trend that Ahmadinejad represents, but ironically on the ideals of the reform movement, which was years in the making. Such a bourgeois-liberal movement, if it had the chance to mature, and follow the path of reform as they preached, would have been able to strengthen the republican side of the state and soften its side of theocracy.
The negative feature of the reform movement, should it ever succeed, would be its strong belief in the tenets of neo-liberal economic theories and believing in free market concepts and US rhetoric about democracy at its face value.
Time to retreat
Belatedly realizing the strong opposition of a great majority of the Iranian people to the damages inflicted on Iran’s international and domestic credibility, Mousavi and his sympathizers have come up with the idea of “national unity” to avoid facing prosecution for their role in the destabilization, that was demanded by some key clerical, political and…
