Iranian leaders are nervous. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is eighty years old and does not have the religious prestige to simply anoint a successor as his predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did. Even children of the revolutionary elite question the values of their parents and the logic of the regime’s social restrictions. Protests, meanwhile, are becoming more frequent. In 1999, a violent security force reaction to a demonstration over press freedom morphed quickly into nationwide protests. In 2001, mass protests again hit Iran after Iranians, outraged by a rumor that regime officials had ordered Iran’s team to throw a World Cup qualifier, took to the streets. In 2009, it was the widespread belief that the regime had thrown the election which led to popular upheaval. More recently, in December 2017, economic protests erupted. Corruption is rife in Iran, and Iranians derisively refer to the children of government officials who flaunt their wealth as “little princes.” The most recent round which started with a sudden hike in gas prices appears to be the most serious yet.
Regime spokesmen and their ideological compatriots might deny popular unrest threatens the Islamic Republic, but it is clear that Iran’s top leaders and their security forces fear otherwise. Political space has shrunk within Iran. Once prominent politicians and political reformists now rot in prison. President Hassan Rouhani—despite cultivating an image as a moderate among Western diplomats—has not lifted a finger to win the release of former parliamentary speaker and presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi or former prime minister and presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. It is telling that the regime releases on bail a former Tehran mayor who murdered his wife but refuses to release those whose crimes were to question the trajectory of the system.
Beyond Green Movement leaders, Iranian security forces have rounded up many civil society activists, environmentalists, labor leaders, and intellectuals and condemned them to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. Such a move represents not justice but fear.
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