On the other hand, to nip this movement in the bud by repressing it as violently as last November’s demonstrations would be to forget that most of the passengers killed by this miscalculation were Iranians or of Iranian origin and that social discontent had already been immense before this tragedy. It would be to underestimate the fact that the Iranian leadership has just committed a fault which would require sanctions at the highest level of the state and that a bloody repression would only add another political crime to the incapacity that the Islamic Republic has just shown.
On the other hand, to nip this movement in the bud by repressing it as violently as last November’s demonstrations would be to forget that most of the passengers killed by this miscalculation were Iranians or of Iranian origin and that social discontent had already been immense before this tragedy. It would be to underestimate the fact that the Iranian leadership has just committed a fault which would require sanctions at the highest level of the state and that a bloody repression would only add another political crime to the incapacity that the Islamic Republic has just shown.
If the protest does not die down by itself, this regime will once again be faced with an impossible alternative.
Yesterday, it had the choice between avenging the assassination of General Soleimani and endure further American attacks, or doing nothing and confessing its weakness to its vassals in the region. It had resorted to a false pretence by striking two American bases in Iraq after having warned the Iraqis – and thus the Americans – of this raid.
No one was fooled, but their pride was saved – but what to do now?
What to do, because, as much as one can pretend to carry out military reprisals, one cannot pretend to repress popular anger, growing and emboldened by the weakness of this regime. On Sunday, students in Tehran were careful not to trample on the Israeli and American flags painted on the ground on purpose so that everyone could wipe their soles on them. The demonstrators shouted that the enemy was not “in America but right here”. Between the Islamic Republic and the United States, the Iranian students chose America, or at least an agreement with America.
Never has the rejection of the theocracy been so clear. Never has it been so clear that Iran no longer wants the regime it has broken with since the election and re-election of the reformer Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and 2001, the six months of protests following the fraudulent re-election of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 and the November 2019 protests against rising petrol prices. For more than twenty years now, the Iranians have openly aspired to an end to their theocracy, but the new fact is that the reimposition of American economic sanctions has emptied the state coffers and that at the same time Lebanon and Iraq no longer want the Iranian protectorate.
Never before has this regime trembled so strongly down to its foundations, and although the monopoly of arms provides it with the power to act, it can no longer afford the slightest mistake. Order to fire could precipitate a revolution. Failure to do so could be the first sign of an abdication.
