Between the Mullahs and Bush
Schmidle, Nicholas
Between the Mullahs and Bush Iranian Student Movement Loses Its Place By Nicholas Schmidle Illustration by Caitlin Kuhwald On December 6, a crowd of more than 1,000 rambunctious students booed...
...But the students, following requests from university officials who feared a reprisal of violence, kept away...
...The students don't know what they want, and they have forgotten their real role," Bijan said...
...The main role of a movement, he claimed, is to be the "eyes and ears" of the people...
...the hardliners have won...
...In a country where foreign meddling in Iranian affairs is cast as the greatest bogeyman of all, the impression of American interference only plays into the mullahs' hands...
...We can't hope to do more than that," he said...
...It [the unrest] was an ugly and offensive incident," Khatami said, "which marred the image of our dear, patient, rational people...
...Instead of contemplating the possibilities of Islamic democracy, students dedicate themselves to finding a job, or better yet, a green card...
...And one-fifth is totally reliant on outside powers-they support all measures to correct the 'current situation.'" Looking back, some think that the mullahs' perception of outside support eventually crushed the movement in 2003...
...The first time we met, at a park in northern Tehran, I asked him what happened to the movement since 1999...
...There are different groups [of student activists], but without a common objective...
...Embassy in 1979...
...It was a thinly veiled reference to Iran...
...Iarrived in Tehran the first week of July, hoping to catch the student movement in full stride...
...At least one was killed, and twenty injured...
...Since the events in July 1999, and encouraged by periodic bursts of student dissent on Iran's campuses, an influential cast of foreign policy advisers in Washington has grown infatuated by the likelihood of Iranian university students doing Bush's long-desired dirty work-enacting regime change in Tehran...
...Frankly, he admitted, the student movement in Iran is dead...
...Khatami, Khatami, where are your promised freedoms...
...For the next eight days, thousands rioted in Tehran and eighteen other cities across the country...
...One-fifth of university students want nothing changed," said a Tehran University law student...
...Three-fifths want more democracy...
...Nowadays, some seek to affect a similar fate upon the mullahs, while others seek only to realize the democratic potential of a constitution that has, according to Semati, "relatively liberal potentials...
...The students I interviewed consistently cited a lack of organizational focus, an aging and divided leadership, and an overall sense of intimidation by the government or its squads of fundamentalist goons as the main reasons for its failure...
...It only gives them [the regime] another reason to crack down...
...They are all now leading reformists and act as the ideological guides for the students...
...The population, Semati said, "has come to identify the nuclear program [and their support for it] with the folks in charge...
...We have no student movement," he said repeatedly...
...The student movement tried to be the only factor to fill the vacuum of civil society" said Bijan, another student leader and veteran of the movement...
...After 1997, the students dropped their state of fear," explains Tehran University political science professor Hadi Semati...
...they chanted...
...In 1994, Siamak was arrested after writing a few dozen articles and jailed almost a year in Tehran's notorious Evin prison...
...No stones were thrown, no tires were burnt, and no signs were held reading "Death to the Dictator," as they were in summers past...
...But the students also overestimated themselves...
...The student movement is starting again from zero," Siamak said...
...He is getting more interested in raising a family than overthrowing the government...
...Back in Washington, Iran-watchers described the protests as the first step toward a counterrevolution in the Islamic Republic...
...Why does Bush not allow our country to have them...
...Now, the president has become something of a tragic joke among many Iranian students...
...We are not crazy dinosaurs...
...In the 1970s, removing the Shah became the raison d'?tre for millions of Iranians...
...The student movement failed in Iran for a handful of reasons...
...Leading this pack has been the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen...
...But students beyond this core who, five years ago, joined the protests, are now consumed with more tangible goals...
...Instead of being a movement, they sometimes want to be a political party...
...They grew convinced that the system was theirs to change, and jumped ahead of what the wider population was ready to accept...
...It tried to carry the hopes of everyone...
...Even Bijan, in his mid-twenties, is past his prime...
...Pakistan and Israel have nuclear weapons," one student said to me while we walked on the former Shah's palace grounds in northern Tehran...
...Sure, he said, there is, and will always be, a core group of ultra-political students rearing to change the government...
...Sharp, young technocrats are much less threatening than radical democrats...
...On the single most significant day for the student movement, Tehran University was quiet...
...Soon after the July 1999 crackdown, and Khatami's unsympathetic reaction to the hundreds of jailed students, the president's weaknesses became evident...
...Other times they want to be rioters...
...Without strong leaders, many of whom either remain in jail from past demonstrations or have since taken themselves out of politics, the movement's focus is muddled...
...The tough economy, the false impression of democracy, and the government's willingness to use force on its people to suppress dissent are just a few examples...
...Eight years before, Khatami caught the students' imagination when he brandished a miniature copy of Iran's constitution and vowed, in the same speech, to uphold the rule of law...
...During the week marking the fourth anniversary of the 1999 protests, the authorities, offering an alternative, licensed a pop band to perform seven nights of outdoor concerts...
...They waited for Khatami's backing...
...Given the likelihood of violence, detention, and potentially long prison terms if they attended the protests, many young people opted for the concert...
...Since then, no one has heard a peep from the once-threatening student movement...
...Between the Mullahs and Bush Iranian Student Movement Loses Its Place By Nicholas Schmidle Illustration by Caitlin Kuhwald On December 6, a crowd of more than 1,000 rambunctious students booed and heckled and mocked Iranian President Mohammad Khatami in an auditorium at Tehran University...
...We don't want Bush's support," Bijan said, becoming angry...
...In his inauguration speech colored by assumptions of the regime's frailty and the students' strength, Bush pledged to support "democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile everywhere...
...But they are also balding, and not likely to lead any other big stunts...
...If the public feels its pockets are being served," Semati explained, "they are ready to forgo democracy and freedom...
...While a majority of people agreed on the need for reform, not everyone foresaw the need for drastic change...
...In November 2004, thousands of students formed a human chain around the Atomic Energy Organization building in Tehran, not to protest the government's gangbusters-like approach to pursuing nuclear technology, but their apparent willingness to compromise...
...But they underestimated the clerics as being just a bunch of old guys whose time was over...
...Many students, Siamak said, are wising up and learning a valuable lesson-stay out of politics...
...But the students may not want Bush's support...
...In June 2003, when a small demonstration against rumored tuition hikes led into another round of violence, Ledeen wrote, "[The students] smell tell-tale odors coming from the undergarments of the doomed leaders...
...What they failed to realize in 1997 was just how little power Khatami had...
...They finished second, only to China...
...With Bush's belligerent rhetoric toward Tehran on the rise, many students have turned to embrace Iranian nationalism, their country's nuclear aspirations, and, by a twist of irony, the mullahs they have long despised...
...With the right blend of moral and financial support from Washington, Ledeen contends, the students can overthrow the regime...
...On the morning of July 9, 1999, a group of militant vigilantes, Ansar-e Hezbollah, sought to crush the students' optimism by storming Tehran University's dormitory complex, beating students in their sleep and throwing some from second- and third-story windows...
...Anxious over the prospects of change, the students overestimated their constitution-toting president and his ability to implement the rule of law in Iran...
...Nearly ten years younger than Siamak, Bijan spent the five years prior to Khatami's election attending small meetings at Tehran University with former student activists who orchestrated the takeover of the U.S...
...Emboldened by Khatami's promises after the 1997 campaign, the students grew less intimidated by the hardliners...
...Two weeks later, Siamak, a student leader involved in the reform movement from its infancy in the early 1990s, agreed to see me...
...The students are very disappointed because they paid a heavy price for supporting Khatami," said student leader Abd Allah Momeni, "but in return they got nothing...
...But the regime has not restricted itself to using sticks...
...Khatami, Khatami, shame on you...
...Tehran University's most popular department is not political science or philosophy or religion, but engineering...
...Two weeks after the last protesters were corralled into Iranian paddy wagons, Khatami crushed the hopes of thousands of students in a speech in the city of Hamadan...
...Iran has become a country of young adults," said Semati, "and an age bracket not so susceptible to revolutionary activities...
...even a horse can't bear this weight...
...But on the highly anticipated day marking the dormitory incident five years before, I did not smell any of the telltale odors Ledeen described-and there were plenty of mullahs on the street...
...Nicholas Schmidle is a graduate student and freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C...
...In August 2004, a handful of Iranian students competed in the Global Physics Challenge in Beijing...
...Bijan regularly attends meetings for various student groups where the energy and excitement of reform remains heady...
...Lined up just outside the university walls, beefed-up numbers of police, military, and Revolutionary Guards carried nasty weapons at their sides...
...It never came...
...Rather than expressing his solidarity with the demonstrators, as many expected, he trashed their efforts...
...Did you know that 4,000 people were arrested the night after Bush's statement...
...As anti-government protests picked up, George W. Bush mouthed support for the embattled students...
...But arguably the greatest factor to determine the present fate of Iran's student movement has been the students' misjudgment of President Khatami...
...In June of that year, the students clashed with authorities once again...
...But for Bijan, age is not an excuse for apathy-there are plenty of other reasons for that in Iran...
...Bush's belligerence may leave the mullahs still firmly in charge-clean undergarments and all...
...It had nothing to do with this honorable nation or the university students...
Vol. 69 • April 2005 • No. 4
