Those Leverettes

I have made several comments under SKA here and below is my latest.

Leverettes' arguments are so void of intellectual rigor and knowledge of the Iranian history and culture that their "three questions" come across as mere rhetorical ones. As a matter of fact their "questions" are nothing more than simplistic highlighting of contrasts between this movement, and in their mind, the Islamic revolution of 79. Their argument then goes something like: the 1979 Revolution succeeded, our three questions show how different these two movements are, therefore this movement is doomed to fail! Then they look for "data" from regime's propaganda outlets and a questionable poll to back their so called "analysis". This is so embarrassing for someone who carries the titles of director of this and professor of that. Even their knowledge of the 1979 revolution seems to be embarrassingly shallow and limited. For example, contrary to what Leverettes think the only clear consensus among the political forces of the time was to depose Shah. Even the constitution that according to the Leverettes Khomeini had in hand upon return to Iran was 180 degrees different from what was passed later on (the first version was pretty much a copy of the French constitution and there is no such thing as Velayate Faghih in the French constitution the last time I checked).

Now let's be more specific about their questions. The 1979 revolution obviously enjoyed strong central leadership. Let's even give it to the Leverettes that its "demands" were crystal clear from day one. Nowhere in their piece have they shown that strong central leadership or clear demands are prerequisites to success of a movement. Josh Sharyar refuted this claim by means of an example. Another example is Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1905- 1911 that succeeded with almost no central leadership through a loose alliance of merchants, western educated intellectuals, clerics, provincial strongmen, and tribal leaders. As a matter of fact there are other parallels between the two movements. They both started from relatively limited demands but expanded later, to some extent as a result of the brutal actions of an unyielding government (the Constitutional Revolution initial demands were establishment of the so called "house of justice"; the green movement started off with "where is my vote" slogan) . The increased communication and exchange to the rest of the world are key factors in both movements. More interestingly they both display a serious rift within Shia clergy as to the role of the religion in matters of State.

During the past few months, the protesters seem to be increasingly united around their opposition to Seyed Ali Khamanei. No one can tell exactly the circumstances by which Khamanei may be deposed or the movement may succeed in its minimal demands. One thing that is near certain is that the regime will have extremely hard time surviving events of magnitude and intensity similar to Ashura's if spread continuously over several days/weeks.