I was reading an email from Kerman by someone who had written, “Today, I was filled with hope and excitement. Kerman is a small city so I did not expect to see a lot of people because Internet access here is thin and restricted. But from a distance of one intersection before Azadi Circle (the spot where rallies were to be held to commemorate the 2011 election protests that resulted in the house arrest of Green Movement leaders), I saw police vans with steel cages and police officers who had lined up the stretch of the street all the way to the circle, to round up protestors. Innocent walkers-by who did not know what was going on asked others what was the problem.”
A year ago on this very day Mohammad Mokhtari and Sane Jaleh did not return home from the streets and hundreds of other people ended up in hospitals and the whereabouts of many Green Movement supporters suddenly became unknown. I wrote in this very newspaper that, “What we are going through is not communicated to the world as fast as the events of Tripoli are because we do not have an Aljazeera TV station which reports the events of other revolts in almost real time. It will take time for others to learn that we in Iran are paying as much for “free elections” as the people of Libya for rejecting Qaddafi, and the people of Egypt for rejecting Mubarak and their ruing regime.” I also wrote, “The Green Movement has already sacrificed a hundred martyrs and five thousand prisoners and has experienced the Kahrizak prison torture house. The Egyptians do not have a Kahrizak. And we do not have an Aljazeera.” I then concluded that we are only at mid-point of our struggle, not its end. So we are not at the same stage as Egypt or Libya even if the people’s leaders in Iran, Libya and Egypt appear similar.”
So where are we a year after the leaders of Yemen and Libya joined Mubarak and Ben Ali, and as Bashar Assad of Syria is struggling in the last dark chapter of his regime?
A Persian saying says that delay can bring benefits if God so desires, so our delay in arriving at our destination gives us time to learn each other better and assess our own dictatorial tendencies so that we can distance ourselves from the mistakes that our predecessors made in 1979. The great Iranian poet Sohrab Sepehri believed that “thirst for knowledge” was greater that the “fire of attraction,” which is precisely where we are today.
Our predecessors once experienced the “fire of attraction” but they lost their freedom before enjoying its fruits. But we are experiencing now the “thirst for knowledge” and are learning how much more difficult it is to plant the seed of wisdom than to uproot a regime.
It is true, as honorable Iraj Gorgin had said that the absence of television cameras has only prolonged the life of Bashar Assad’s regime, the absence of powerful and extensive communications among us has delayed our success. But this is not the whole story.
The Islamic republic has built its despotic regime on our weaknesses, and not on its own strengths. If it had any strengths it would cover up its ailments which are revealed on an hourly basis by insiders of the regime who seem to be on a race to outdo the others in this respect.
And even though we are only mid-point in our struggle, we have also had accomplishments during this past year and have added to our wisdom as we have reduced the trust in this regime through small steps.
So I will return to that email from Kerman. There was a time when we were afraid that the voices of protest and justice would remain behind the gates of Tehran and a few large cities. But now, this emails and others, and also news reports, tell a different story. We should not be taken over by journalistic reports that only sees the reform movement in streets and number of deaths and those injured. Read the Lebanese Alshara weekly in which former CIA officer Robert Baer is asked, “Why has NATO not intervened to create a no-fly zone in Syria?” as he responds, “NATO will not get involved before more Syrians die.” But is more than five thousand deaths as reported by the UN not enough, he is asked, to which he replies, “This is how this world and its politics work.”
Our movement does not deserve to accept these evil rules of the world. We are proud that on this February 14 too we shook those who want us divided across Iran.
