I've been mesmerized by the events in Iran since the election "results" that came in this past Friday, results that favored the ruling president -- Holocaust denier, artist censor and homo-hater Ahmadinejad -- over the opposition candidate, Mousavi -- symbol of hope for reform for many of Iran's youthful population, including young women. The supposed victory was announced implausibly fast and by such a wide and obviously fraudulent margin that millions of Iranians immediately took to the street [photos], and have returned every day since, a spontaneous populist expression of outrage at the top-down control by the ruling mullahs over so many aspects of day to day Iranian life. Cries of "coup" and "dictatorship" have risen up in a country where freedom of speech is not a given, and speech is often punished.
Having opened my Twitter account only a few days prior, I found most of my news there, tagged #iranelection, a feed of comments from folks inside the country and around the world that continues to renew itself at a shockingly fast rate, far outpacing reporting by traditional news outlets. (The failure of the mainstream media to pick up on what was happening on the streets has itself become a story within the larger story of the events.) With websites and radio shut down inside Iran and foreign reporters arrested and beaten, these dispatches from everyday Iranians marked a new means to bear witness, demand accountability and seek aid at a time of heightened crisis. There are signs that the pressure is working -- Iran's s0-called Supreme Leader has been forced to dial back his original dismissive rhetoric and now says election results will be investigated. What happens next is at this writing frighteningly uncertain. There are reports that the mullahs are feeling the heat, both from the the massive display of popular outrage as well as criticism from governments worldwide, though other reports warn that we might be seeing a Tiananmen Square-level crackdown against protesters, or a civil war.
I know no more about Iran's political workings than any other U.S. amateur news junkie, but I do know that the Islamic Republic of Iran has never been a place where personal freedom has had much of a foothold, and so whether Ahmadinejad keeps his chokehold on power or Mousavi's popular support edges him toward the center, we're still looking at a country run by religious fundamentalists. Even the vision of hope revealed by the past few days of mass protest, largely by young people -- Iran is a country where a third of the population is under 30 years old -- can't erase the fact that the protest generation has been raised in a country where anti-Semitism is official policy, where homosexuals are executed in public for having sex (there exists an underground railroad for queers who want to leave the country), and where women struggle for any measure of political influence. Beliefs and attitudes must be resisted as surely as individual politicians. Mousavi, a former hardliner, has only recently been a voice of liberation; could he possibly provide the kind of change that would bring true freedom to the people of Iran? Would a queer man or woman living in Tehran, or an artist, or an atheist, experience some measure of freedom under a new regime?
If there is anything that has sparked my interest in the past few days' astounding political display, it is not the hope for one candidate, or even, really, for "all the votes to be counted," but for the people of this vibrant and storied nation to create for themselves the possibility of freedom. Separate church and state: that is my real wish for this new Iranian revolution. Only then will real change take root.
