A group of Iranian students heckled a speech by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami in Tehran today.
Students chanted “Shame on you” and “Where are your promised freedoms?” to express their frustration with the failure of Iran’s reform movement.
A visibly-shaken Khatami defended his record and criticised the powerful hardliners who have closed newspapers and jailed dissidents.
The Iranian regime was founded by a student movement and it looks increasingly clear that a student movement will be its downfall. Iranian students have gotten measured bits of freedom, and they know enough about the outside world to know that they’re being systematically oppressed. President Khatami was supposed to be a great reformer, but the Guardian Council still has the real power within Iran. As Ed Morrissey notes:
The students understand that Khatami essentially sold the reform movement out in order to remain in power. As the mullahs act to consolidate their power this year by closing newspapers and arresting bloggers who dare to speak out against the government, students have lost all patience with those who promise reforms but deliver nothing but oppression. A political explosion is building in Iran, and as the safety valves of debate and protest continue to get closed off, the closer we are to detonation. Khatami and his so-called reformist allies will suffer the effects of the blast just as surely as the Governing Council mullahs to whom they sold out.
Meanwhile, the US should do everything it can to reach out to the people and groups supporting democracy and reform in Iran. In the face of European incompetence and impotence on Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions, the only way to stop the Iranian bomb is probably a home-grown overthrow of the mullahcracy that is bent on acquiring WMD.
Morrissey is correct. The only way to ensure that an Iranian nuke doesn’t threaten world peace is to get rid of the mullahs — but a military option is and always has been out of the question. However, with the mullahs slowly losing control and Iran sandwiched between two nascent democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the pressure on the mullahs is only growing. Adding to this is the return of the Najaf strain of Shi’a Islam that preaches that democracy and Islam are compatible. Now that Ayatollah Sistani is no longer being suppressed by the Ba’ath Party in Iraq, he’s free to spread his message worldwide. This could have a profound effect on the situation in Iran, especially as Sistani has been one of the strongest supporters of democracy in Iraq.
In comparison to the murderous terrorists in Iraq, the students of Iran are the real freedom fighters. It is not a matter of if the Iranian regime falls, but a matter of when. Insh’Allah the revolution will be a peaceful transfer of power along the lines of the ongoing Orange Revolution in the Ukraine rather than a bloody and violent revolution. The students of Iran have shown much bravery in pushing their government for more freedoms, and their bravery and love of democracy and freedom is an example to the rest of the world.
