Smoke and Mirrors at Tehran Demonstration

Friday, 18 February, 2011

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Roya Jafari

As dusk fell and the tear gas swirled through Enqelab Street, a dozen demonstrators huddled in a dark apartment-block basement. Only minutes earlier, they had been out in the street, punching the air and shouting "Death to the dictator!" as a squad of armed riot police charged towards them.

A Tehran traffic policeman – a different breed from the Revolutionary Guards and their allies – opened up the basement entrance and allowed them to escape the mob of Basiji volunteers and plain-clothes officers now tearing through the alleyway.

Suddenly, it looked like they had found us. Glass shattered as they broke the door and windows of our hiding place.

The protestors, a mixed bag, begin to panic. An elderly woman who was spouting anti-government slogans moments ago sat crouched behind me, weeping and praying.

We were trapped, and we knew it.

But as the minutes passed, the noise died away. The traffic cop alerted us that the coast was clear. Relieved, if flabbergasted, everyone shuffled out of the basement.

The Basiji must have known we were inside. So why did they leave us be?
This was February 14, the day Iran's opposition movement re-emerged in full force after 14 months’ absence from the streets.

While the opposition Green Movement has clearly been inspired by the wave of protests in Egypt and other Arab states, the Iranian regime has also tried to appropriate these grassroots uprisings.

Both opposition and establishment in Iran are playing by different rules than their neighbours.

In addition, both have learned new tricks since the violent confrontations that followed the 2009 presidential election.

As the incident with the Enqelab Street basement shows, for all their show of brute force, government security forces appeared keener on intimidating and dispersing the crowds than on launching violent attacks.

This was a more sophisticated tactic than the way things were in 2009, when untrammeled violence was used against protesters. While police arrested and beat some in the crowd this time, too, it was clear the aim was to sow panic without exacerbating public anger more than was necessary.
Oddly enough, because Tehran is a traffic nightmare at the best of times, the authorities kept public transport running until the last few hours of the protests, when the violence peaked. Opposition supporter could simply hop on a bus if things got too hot.

For its part, the Green Movement has learnt lessons from its 2009 defeat, and added to its repertoire of methods.

Internet and mobile phone connections were badly disrupted ahead of the February 14 protest, but activists were still able to organise effectively, using “virtual private network” (VPN) technology to evade internet blocks.

At ten in the evening before and after the day of protest, chants of "God is great" and "Down with the dictator" echoed from rooftops and windows in the city centre. This time-honoured tradition was coordinated via Facebook, even though the social networking site is permanently blocked in Iran.

Facebook was abuzz with Green songs, videos and political debates.

The government, meanwhile, is in an awkward position – one in which its credibility is placed in doubt.

For weeks it has embraced the popular uprisings in the Arab world as mirror images of its own Islamic Revolution. How, then, can it support the people of Egypt and their courageous actions, while simultaneously suppressing a demonstration at home whose stated aim was to express solidarity with Cairo and Tunis?

This question, already put by some western leaders, is likely to galvanise Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, allowing them to re-emergence from what was virtually internal exile.
The tens of thousands who converged on Tehran's Azadi Square delivered a clear message – despite being labeled a corpse by the government, the opposition is very much alive.

Yet the opposition has a long way to go before it can claim an Egyptian-style success.

The very act of testing the political waters with this protest is likely to bring down some kind of retribution from the regime.

And the movement is still dogged by the same problems it faced in 2009: unclear goals, a diffuse organisational structure, and crucially, a failure to speak to key segments of the Iranian electorate.

While the middle classes of central Tehran participated in the demonstration with gusto, the well-off residents of north Tehran remained aloof, as did the poorer communities of the south of the city.

Much has been made of the recent cuts in government subsidies, which saw exponential hikes in bread, fuel and utility prices. But the notable absence of the city's poor strata from this protest suggests that in contrast to Egypt and Tunisia, economic hardship is not going to mobilise the population.
The presence of strong, well-equipped security forces will also hinder the Green Movement from gaining the kind of momentum that propelled the uprising in Egypt. Even as the demonstration continued, many Tehran residents seemed to yearn for a return to normalcy.

Just minutes after emerging from the basement hideout I had shared with the demonstrators, I turned a corner to see a fast-food vendor kicking away the broken glass and debris and reopening his shop.

Down the next street, another trader, surrounded by idle Basijis, was selling kitchy, heart-emblazoned teddy-bears. It was Valentine’s Day, after all.

Roya Jafari is the pseudonym of a journalist based in Tehran.