EVOLUTION TOWARD REVOLUTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF STREET PROTESTS IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN.

• Author: Ghasseminejad, Saeed

INTRODUCTION

Protests are a regular feature of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Using street power to advance incremental change or voice frustration with government policy, protests--such as those in 1999 and 2009--have been closely identified with the country's reform movement. However, since 2017, a new wave of anti-government demonstrations has swept the country, expressing broad discontent and a desire for revolution. To support this claim, we outline domestic conditions and analyze five measures of change across major Iranian protest movements over the past two decades. Our work draws on scholarship by Ted Robert Gurr and Alexis de Tocqueville, demonstrating how raised expectations for change produce rebellion when met with failed political realities.

Specifically, we examine four key instances of protests with the broader aim of substantiating the claim that protests have drifted from courting reform to coveting revolution. These cases include the 1999 student protests after the forced closure of a reformist publication; (1) the 2009 protests over a contested presidential election that led to the Green Movement; (2) the 2017-18 demonstrations; (3) known as the Dey protests, which began over broad economic issues; and the late 2019 protests that were sparked by the revocation of gas subsidies. (4)

The five observable factors that indicate Iranian protesters' revolutionary aims are: slogans, organizational structure, demography of participants, geographic distribution of protesters, and the use of violence against them.

We first trace domestic Iranian developments while laying the theoretical foundation for our argument. Next, we present supporting open-source data, before finally offering broad trends gleaned from the data and end with a case for future testing.

DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS IN IRAN

Over the past three years, Iran has faced the most explicit anti-regime protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. On 28 December 2017, unrest broke out in Mashhad initially over the country's economic state. (5) These demonstrations soon morphed into an anti-government uprising in over 80 cities nationwide. (6) However, a glance at macroeconomic indicators when the unrest erupted reveals that Iran's financial health was comparatively better than in recent years.

In 2013, Iran's newly elected President Hassan Rouhani inherited an economy with inflation rates at 39 percent, and a deep recession. By March 2015, Rouhani slashed the inflation rate down to 12 percent, and to 9.6 percent by mid-2017. (7) Iran's economy began to rebound once the 2015 nuclear deal (8) went into effect in January 2016. (9) According to the Statistical Center of Iran, GDP increased by 10.8 percent from March 2016 to March 2017 while non-oil GDP increased by 6.2 percent. (10) Why would Iranians then flock to the streets, when conditions were better than they had been in recent memory?

Alexis de Tocqueville's understanding of the relationship between reform and rebellion--known as the "Tocqueville Paradox"--helps make sense of Iran's pattern of unrest. "Experience teaches," de Tocqueville wrote, "the most dangerous time for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform." (11) Tocqueville argues that reforms raise expectations, and when the implementation of such reforms fall short of expectations, citizens are aggrieved and more likely to revolt. Following similar logic, Gurr hypothesized that men rebel when faced with "relative deprivation," where expectations of improvement are not met in reality. (12)

Indeed, prior toenteringofficeandbeforeattainingtheJointComprehensive Plan of Action, the Rouhani government promised economic empowerment, political and social freedoms, and an end to international isolation. (13) With commercial development and more interaction with the West, "hardliners will accommodate popular interests in time," Iranians were told. (14) Iran was on a path to becoming a normal country, or so they hoped.

Rouhani proved incapable of delivering on these promises. While Iran's GDP grew in the wake of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, this growth mainly benefitted ruling elites (15) and upper income groups (16) largely with regime ties. Foreign investment was awarded to companies controlled by the state, the supreme leader, or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its affiliates. (17) Average Iranians thus did not reap the deal's dividends. At the same time, Iran continued pouring billions into Bashar al-Assad's war against the Syrian people. (18)

Similarly, earlier major uprisings in the Islamic Republic took place surrounding reformist administrations. (19) Students took to the street in 1999 during the Khatami presidency, when conservative forces blocked reformists at nearly every turn. In 2009, hopes of electing a reformer were crushed by interference in favor of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's preferred candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Scholars have made no secret about how unfulfilled demands by Iranians have tarnished the idea of change through reform. (20) Recent scholarship by the sociologist Misagh Parsa endorses this assessment, claiming Iran is heading toward upheaval rather than a gradual evolution out of Islamist autocracy. (21)

FIVE OBSERVABLE FACTORS Slogans

Slogans chanted during demonstrations in Iran serve as a barometer for popular sentiment. While anti-government slogans can be excepted in any demonstration, protests studied in this essay evolved to not only reflect this sentiment, but also featured chants that grew from criticism to rejection of the Islamic Republic, a willful transgressing of taboos, and an increasingly nationalist message.

July 1999 saw the most impactful protests to date since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Following a series of reformist press closures, (22) protests on Tehran University's campus were violently quelled, leading to a days-long explosion of demonstrations in Tehran and other urban centers. (23) The slogans at these protests represented a breach of a clear taboo of targeting Iran's establishment, chanting, "Death to autocracy, death to monopolists," (24) and even, "Death to Khamenei." (25) Chants reportedly went so far as to promise vengeance for the loss of fellow university students, claiming: "We will kill, we will kill those who killed our brothers." (26)

Ultimately, the 1999 protests are remembered more for the damage done to the reformist cause (27) than for the slogans deployed against the Islamic Republic. (28) But a decade later in 2009, a new series of protests similarly tied to the reform movement emerged from Tehran. Rather than die down after several days, the protests, known as the Green Movement, lasted for 20 months and featured a diverse array of slogans by demonstrators responding to an increasingly repressive political environment. (29) This environment, according to Parsa, led to a shift from slogans that were merely contesting a stolen presidential election--most famously, "Where is my vote?" (30)--to those targeting the supreme leader. (31) In other words, from reform to revolution against the entire system.

Initially, protesters sought to draw on religious leitmotifs to invoke legitimacy Chants featured, "God is Great," in Arabic, which was similarly shouted from rooftops in the heyday of the 1979 revolution. Another religious slogan was "Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein,"--referencing both the reformist presidential contender Mir-Hossein Musavi and Imam Hossein, the martyred grandson of the Prophet Muhammad whose death is still mourned by Shiite Muslims. (32)

While this approach was ultimately dropped, 2009 remains noteworthy from the standpoint of slogans because it featured the first critique of Iranian foreign policy during nationwide protests. (33) That slogan--or a variation on its translation--is "No to Gaza and Lebanon, I will give my life for Iran." (34) Fundamentally nationalist in nature, the chant puts Iran, not Islam, at the center of an Iranian's life and death. It continues to be heard in every major iteration of protest. (35)

This nationalist critique has permeated recent protests. Consistent with greater publicity of Iranian interventions abroad, slogans began to target the Islamic Republic's regional activities. (36) In 2017, the refrain "Leave Syria, think about us" was popularized. (37) That chant continued throughout 2018, as did slogans against Khamenei, Rouhani, government corruption, (38) and even velayat-e faqih--guardianship of the jurist--a cornerstone principle of the revolutionary regime. (39)

The broadening of rhetorical targets for protesters intensified greatly during the Dey protests of 2017 to 2018. It is therefore a strong indicator of the disenfranchisement of Iranian protesters since 2017, and represents a post-partisan moment for Iranian demonstrators. No chant encapsulates this better than the popular attack on both political flanks--often erroneously referred to as moderate and hardliner, respectively--in the Islamic Republic: "Reformists! Principalists! The game is over!" (40)

In 2018, protesters took this one step further, embracing the United States, dubbed the "Great Satan" in the Islamic Republic's political vernacular. Even in the face of U.S. sanctions, protesters proved they were willing to point a finger at their own government for its shortcomings, claiming:

"Our enemy is right here, they are lying that it is America." (41)

One of the most significant taboos broken by the Dey protests was the touting of pro-monarchial slogans and even praising of...