More Reports Of Hezbollah Thugs Beating Iranian Protesters

Of all the regime’s atrocities, both great and petty, it’s something small like this that might finally detonate its legitimacy.

The Iranian Revolution is built on two pillars. The first involves populism and popular rule, enshrined as the “Republic” part of the “Islamic Republic.” Iran’s democratic trappings, such as they are, provide a point of pride for Iranians. Both domestically and internationally, Iranians contrast their system with autocratic Sunni regimes. The protests have been so fierce in part because the loss of that democratic legitimacy strikes at the core of Iranian identity.

The other pillar is the peculiar kind of Islamic nationalism that Khomeini managed to create by fusing Iranian nationalism with political Islamic. If Lenin’s trick was to harness Russian nationalism in the cause of Communism – to get revolutionaries to identify vanguard Soviet Communism an expression of Russian greatness – Khomeini did the same thing with Shiite Islam.

The Iran-Iraq war gave Khomeini the opportunity to make Iranian nationalism indistinguishable from fanatical Islam. He called on Iranians to defend the country in the name of Islam and deployed “martyrdom operations” that could only be justified by Islamic theology. A country looking to explain to itself why waves of pubescent boys are being sent across mine fields to clear the way for the soldiers behind them – that’s a country that’s going to reach out for some powerful ideological machinery.

Khomeini managed to attach his brand of Islam to powerful, millennial-old sentiments of Persian pride. But the flip side was that Iranian political Islam, in contrast to Sunni-motivated political Islam, relies on nationalism to get some of its emotional oomph. All of which is a very roundabout way of saying that this is not going to play well:

The Guardian’s Robert Tait sends this synopsis: “The man, who has come from a small town in the eastern province of Khorasan and has never been in Tehran before, says he is being paid 2m rial (£122) to assault protestors with a heavy wooden stave… Other volunteers, he says, have been brought from Lebanon, where the Iranian regime has strong allies in the Hezbollah movement. They are said to be more highly-paid than their Iranian counterparts and are put up in hotels. The last piece of information seems to confirm the suspicion of many Iranians that foreign security personnel are being used to suppress the demonstrators. For all his talk of the legal process, this interview provides a key insight into where Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believes the true source of his legitimacy rests.

There have been rumors circulating since the first days of protests that some of the regime’s thugs were yelling at students in Arabic. If a cell phone recording of that emerges it puts the Iranian-ness of the regime front and center. If Hamas thugs are involved then it piles Sunni/Shiite tensions on top of Persian/Arab dynamics. In any case the regime’s nationalist underpinnings, critical in and of themselves but also a linchpin to the regime’s Islamic legitimacy, would be shredded.

Well, except for the part where the regime’s rural supporters are paranoid and conspiratorial enough to dismiss even video evidence. That’s going to be a little trickier to navigate (h/t: Judith).

References:
* Massacre near Iran’s Parliament? Audio: Eyewitness describes massacre [Hot Air]
* Neda Soltan’s family ‘forced out of home’ by Iranian authorities [Guardian]
* Iran crisis: live [Guardian]
* How Neda Divided My Family [Daily Beast]

Previously:
* MSM Meme Congeals: "Republicans" Are Trying To Ruin Things By Getting Obama To Speak Out On Iran
* Watchers Council Results – Watching Obama Watching Iran
* Obama Now Just Making Up Previous Statements About Iran