Christmas is No Time for an Iranian Revolution
Letter From Tajrish
Article Summary and Author Biography
In an effort to halt Iran's nuclear program, Washington and the West have been ramping up the pressure with sanctions and threats of war. None of it will work. The Green Movement has been vanquished, and the country -- both its leadership and its people -- are poised not for revolution, but more of the same.
HOOMAN MAJD is the author, most recently, of The Ayatollah's Democracy: An Iranian Challenge.
Reading List
An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on Iranian politics.
Holiday shopping in Tehran. (Morteza Nikoubazl / Courtesy Reuters)
It was Christmastime in Tehran, and forecasters were predicting another early snow. On a cold day last December at the bazaar in Tajrish, the wealthy historic neighborhood in northern Tehran, shoppers avoided the exposed alleyway stalls and instead headed for the warmth of the nearby mini-malls, which were as overheated as any in the United States. Inside one, kids gathered around the window of a Christmas shop to gaze at the ornaments and plastic Santas inside. A few other shops also had Christmas decorations -- perfectly legal in the Islamic Republic, even if the religious authorities frown on them. Christians are free to celebrate as they wish -- there are even Christmas trees for sale on the sidewalks in the Armenian neighborhoods of Tehran.
The decorations contrasted sharply with the thousands of black and green "Ya Hossein" flags fluttering outside virtually every street-side shop, celebrating Shia Islam's Imam. There were the vans and cruisers of the Gasht-e Ershad, the morality police, who guard Persian society from sartorial affronts to Islam. This year they extended their unwelcome presence well into the winter months (they normally appear in the spring, when coats come off for the season, and are gone by the early summer), lest a stray strand of hair poke from underneath a woman's scarf, or, worse yet, her coat not quite reach her knees.
So it was Christmas, but it was also Moharram, the Arabic name for the month in which Hossein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad and patron saint of Shias, was martyred in Karbala. It is the most holy month for Shias, celebrating as it does their most venerated saint, whose martyrdom is their very raison d'être. As some Iranians went about their daily business, shopping for food and household items, the more pious attended mosques for mourning ceremonies -- rites that for hundreds of years nothing, not even international crises, revolutions, or the winds of war could prevent, much less interrupt. And this year Iran indeed faced a mounting international crisis. Over the last year, the West had ratcheted up pressure to combat the country's nuclear program, but still, its virulent rhetoric, increased sanctions, and even covert action had not changed Tehran's plans.
I lived in Tajrish for most of 2011. A few days prior to my December stroll in the bazaar, mobs attacked the British embassy in downtown Tehran. They also stormed its park-like Qolhak Garden compound, a short cab ride from where I was staying. The attack aired live on state TV -- itself an indication that state media had advance notice, making the siege the talk of the town for a few days.
Many, both abroad and in Iran, had assumed that the government was behind the attacks. And Iranian politicians (with the glaring exception of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) stopped short of praising the mobs but sparred for a few days, eager to outdo one another with their revolutionary credentials -- this, of course, being an election year in Iran. But the mob's ignorance of world affairs, and therefore probable lack of sponsorship at the highest levels of government, quickly revealed itself in the anachronistic graffiti it scrawled on the embassy's walls: "Down with Elizabeth."
(To add a bit of context, it's worth noting that one anti-regime Iranian said to me the day after the attack that he thought the British themselves were behind the assault. So obvious, he thought, because it would validate their actions in sanctioning Iran's central bank. That, plus the fact that the British control the mullahs anyway, he said. Logic be damned, in conspiratorial Persia.)
The ransacking of the British embassy capped an annus horribilis for the Iranian leadership. Throughout the year, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and every politician in between have seemingly been at odds with each other over just about every possible matter of state. The result is an uncertainty and nervousness among officials, and a kind of political paralysis in which it has become hard for people to know exactly who is in charge, or even whom to blame for policy gone bad. But it was also a terrible year for the Iranian people. They are baffled by the West's approach to dealing with their country's nuclear program -- the stated aim is a change in policy, but the result is only general hardship. Big-city dwellers complain about rampant inflation, a strangled economy, and general inconvenience on a daily basis.
On the street, nowhere is the impact more evident than at any one of the many foreign exchange bureaus where Iranians gather to monitor the flat screens that show the almost minute-by-minute slide in the rial. Men and women gather at the kiosks to buy dollars as a hedge against crippling inflation; many think that the government will soon run out of greenbacks as international sanctions clinch Iranian banks. The country's financial culture is cash -- there are no credit cards -- and the government routinely pumps hundred-dollar bills into circulation in an effort to keep the currency stable. The strategy has backfired. By the end of last year, confidence that the regime could withstand international financial pressure -- particularly after the British government cut all financial ties with Tehran -- had sunk to an all-time low.
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