As the world marks the 43rd anniversary of the 1979 Iranian Revolution this month, desperation and resignation have come to define Washington’s actions towards the Islamic Republic.
So why am I optimistic?
The theocracy in Tehran is not at all what those who deposed the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had in mind when they toppled the dynastic leader. It was Ruhollah Khomeini who ruthlessly exploited the disarray resulting from the so-called Islamic revolution to crush his rivals and consolidate power in the hands of the ayatollahs, effectively replacing one dictatorship with another. As those loyal to the Supreme Leader purged those deemed subversive to the new system, one prominent voice of dissent – the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (Mujahedin-e-Khalq or MEK, as they were known in Farsi) – grew louder.
The MEK – a group that championed a tolerant, inclusive, democratic form of political Islam – played a key role in the Shah’s ouster but quickly fell out of favor with Khomeini’s faction, becoming the principal adversary to clerical control and the strongest proponent of the democratic ideals that inspired the revolution in the first place.
In 1981, the MEK staged a march on the parliament building to demand restoration of those ideals, but the newly established theocracy opened fire on the protesters. The indiscriminate killing set the stage for repeated clashes between the government and the people – lethal confrontations that continue to this day.
In 1988, as the eight-year Iran-Iraq War drew to a close, Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the mass execution of those who persisted in supporting the MEK. “Death commissions” were convened at prisons throughout the country, and the regime began interrogating political prisoners over their beliefs and affiliations, sometimes for as little as one minute, before issuing death sentences. Approximately 30,000 people were killed, 90 percent of them affiliated with the MEK.
The scale of the killing was so profound that some experts have characterized the 1988 massacre as among the worst crimes against humanity since the Holocaust. Though many Western governments shamefully turned a blind eye to the killings, the courageous families of those who lost loved ones have found support in the Western policy community in recent years. And calls for justice are growing.
Now, after more than three decades, it appears that a former Iranian prison official, Hamid Noury, will be the first to face legal accountability for the killings. He is currently on trial in Sweden, where authorities asserted the principle of universal jurisdiction over violations of international law. Dozens of survivors of the massacre have testified against him, and the trial is expected to conclude in April. The legal proceeding has increased awareness of the massacre, the impunity its perpetrators have enjoyed, and the opportunities that exist to hold key figures responsible.
The awareness could not have come at a more critical time.
One of the main perpetrators of the massacre, former Tehran Deputy Prosecutor Ebrahim Raisi, was appointed the new president of the Islamic Republic in June. Amnesty International described the development as a “grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran.” But that impunity is now being challenged. In fact, formal calls for Raisi’s arrest may have prevented him from traveling to the U.N. General Assembly and a climate summit in Glasgow this past fall.
The prospect of such a high-level arrest and international prosecution is one reason that I am optimistic about the possibility of large-scale change in Iran 43 years after the revolution. But the present-day situation in Iran has as much to do with the failures of the 1988 massacre as it does with the inaction of Western powers. The fact of the matter is that neither the regime’s hostile actions nor its callous indifference to its citizens has dampened the spirit of those seeking a democratic transition in Tehran.
In January 2018, more than 100 cities and towns became the sites of simultaneous protests that made no secret about their support for regime change. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was soon compelled to acknowledge that the MEK played a leading role in organizing the uprising, despite the regime’s claims that the group was all but destroyed in 1988.
In November 2019, that message was driven home by another countrywide uprising, this one encompassing nearly 200 localities and featuring now-familiar chants of “death to the dictator.” About 1,500 people were killed in a matter of days after authorities opened fire on demonstrators, but the same anti-government slogans re-emerged two months later following revelations that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was responsible for shooting down a commercial airliner near Tehran.
The January 2020 protests set the stage for a mass boycott of parliamentary elections the following month, and that electoral protest would be repeated in June 2021 when the regime moved to appoint Ebrahim Raisi as president. Though the appointment went forward, it did so under a dark cloud of the regime’s growing illegitimacy.
Repeated skirmishes across the country between the regime and the Iranian people – including disaffected groups from teachers to pensioners to victims of government-backed investment schemes – broke out in February, July, and November of last year.
Interestingly, the Iranian people appear no more intimidated by threats of reprisal from the Raisi government than they were of his “moderate” predecessor, Hassan Rouhani. Although the rate of executions has skyrocketed since that presidential transition, the pace of public activism has also accelerated, and the opposition has made significant domestic inroads.
The clearest example of this came on January 27 when state television and radio stations had their signals disrupted to broadcast an image of Khamenei crossed out with a red X and accompanied by pictures of opposition leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. MEK affiliated “Resistance Units” in various cities have also recently taken to posting large images of Mrs. Rajavi and calling for continued defiance.
Whether the regime can survive the twin crises of domestic unrest and growing calls for international accountability to celebrate another anniversary is an open question. But that it is being asked at all should help Washington shake off its desperate posture and overcome its resignation toward Tehran.
Prof. Ivan Sascha Sheehan is the executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore. Opinions expressed are his own. Follow him on Twitter @ProfSheehan