The heinous stabbing assault against British-American novelist Salman Rushdie was therefore inexcusable that even the administration of hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi disowned it, contending that the Islamic Republic could not become blamed for that episode of violence contrary to the persecuted writer, who else had just started to exercise some publicity after keeping a low profile for several years.
But because the literary world was rallying around Rushdie to reiterate their right to free speech and denounce aggression to stifle contrarian thought, it taken place that the attack, celebrated by hardliners in Tehran being an act of work vengeance against a good apostate writer, was also silently saluted by members of Iran’s opposition in exile, who didn’t wait around long before initiating the public indictment associated with Iran for apparently touching off this particular act of savagery.
The common denominator in the analyses churned out by Iran’s kaleidoscopic opposition factions, including their press corps, the more well-versed teachers and think-tank wonks, as well as their ideological doyen the self-proclaimed Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi , was exactly how barbaric the Islamic Republic is, since it had primarily already been the founder of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who released the death word against Rushdie in 1989.
Notwithstanding that the assailant was an US citizen and that the fatwa, although never officially withdrawn by Iran’s authorities, was sobre facto mothballed instead of part of an active controversy for nearly two decades, the anti-Iran hawks presented their talking points such that Iran would be depicted as being immediately liable for this criminal offence.
They argued that the responsibility for the assault lay with all the Islamic Republic, and the bottom line of their entreaties was that pressure about this malign regime needs to be ratcheted up and additional isolation should be inflicted on it.
It looked as though the stabbing from the author of The Satanic Verses had given all of them new ammunition contrary to the leadership in Tehran, and privately they cheered it as a blessing in disguise.
To be sure, the particular opposition chieftains feigned sorrow over exactly what had happened to Salman Rushdie plus lamented that free speech had been targeted, but it was the restored opportunity to gainsay the Islamic Republic that will nurtured their muted festive mood.
The same holds true in other episodes of national agony and group pain. Be it the tragic collapse of the Metropol building in June leading to 41 deaths, unparalleled water scarcity grasping the province of Khuzestan , or the fatal downing within 2020 of Ukraine International Airlines Air travel 752 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the opposition behemoth instrumentalizes the anguish of Iranian people to score political points.
It is usually during critical junctures of suffering simply by Iranians when the resistance finds it expedient to visit into overdrive and kick up sensationalized publicity campaigns, occasionally giving rise to debates on social networking on whether they really feel upset whenever Iranians are striving or facing an emergency, or if these doldrums merely oil the wheels of the anti-regime fanfare.
Iranian opposition cliques, including the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, monarchists by having an allegiance to the Pahlavi dynasty, media conglomerates funded by the Islamic Republic’s adversaries His home country of israel and Saudi Arabia, and ethnic separatists concur on a professed commitment to bring democracy to Iran, liberalize the country and rescue its people it is said are being tyrannized simply by an uncompromising theocracy alien to the concept of human rights.
Criticism justified
To be sure, it is not uncertain that the Iranian govt is tightening the noose around city society, cutting back private freedoms, charting the confrontational foreign policy that only antagonizes its neighbors and the West, and has stepped millions of Iranians into poverty with botched economic policies.
The state of press freedom in the country will be alarming indeed. Based on the Press Freedom Catalog 2022 released by Reporters Without Borders, Iran fares worse than Turkmenistan, Myanmar, Syria plus Yemen, ranking 178th among the 180 countries surveyed.
Democratic credentials from the Islamic Republic, despite its complacency on the quadrennial presidential elections it holds, are usually markedly deficient, to the extent that the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), in the Democracy Index 2021, ranked it 154th on the planet, trailing behind Eritrea, Belarus and Sudan.
There is absolutely no way the procedures of governance within Iran can be rationalized or the nation’s runaway democratic backsliding beneath the ultra-conservative President Raisi explained away. Specifically, as the establishment weighing scales up coercion against women in public spaces by waging an ideational war of attrition over Islamic hijab conformity, more Iranians feal alienated and negative at their rulers.
DC-based Statis Consulting, in a 06 election , put Raisi’s approval rating with 28%, an unprecedented low for an Iranian president at the end of their first year within office. And rankings don’t necessarily have to be evoked to capture the magnitude of public discontent over the nearly failed condition offering no possibility of betterment.
For one thing, Gallup found in a 2020 study that 50% of Iranians lacked confidence within their national government and much more than four within 10 believed their standard of living was decreasing.
Dubious ‘saviors’
Any alternative to the status quo should be a noticable difference, ensuring economic, social and political prosperity for a jaded inhabitants. But evidence abounds that the opposition lieutenants, whose rallying cry is the promise associated with democracy and independence, would not be marvelously different and afford Iranians what they aspire to.
Just like the Iranian government claiming sanctity on account of its ties with the divine like a theocracy, the resistance is also reasserting itself as a sacred collective that shouldn’t be profaned. If belittled by independent voices, the response is going to be incessant trolling on social media by internet armies prepared plus trained to raise the costs of critical controversy, ad hominem episodes and character assassinations.
On the one hand, the Islamic Republic discredits dissidents by libeling them as “Zionist agents” or US agents; on the other, the opposition badmouths its critics as regime loyalists.
The particular Iranian government has disfranchised religious minorities, and the Zoroastrians, Sunnis, Christians and Jews enjoy no security, nor are they eligible for political representation or even economic opportunities. The radicalized Iranian opposition mirrors that exclusionary attitude in a different way, and its discourse and ideology sees no room for Muslims, and even brags about being entitled to propagate Islamophobia, only because the Islamist government in Tehran provides weaponized religion in order to consolidate power.
This display of intolerance glosses over the religious fabric of Iranian society and the values shared by a plurality from the people, which cannot be ascribed to the excursion of the Islamic Republic 43 years ago.
The opposition superstars have shut the doorway on a sincere argument about their intentions and vision, and many of them are indulging in what is likely minimal democratic service to the Iranian people, that is, chorusing effusive eulogies of the Pahlavi household and touting them as the future inheritors of power and throne.
The particular Pahlavi royals ruled Iran for some fifty four years, and had been ousted in 1979 due to a popular uprising that was, for better or even worse, the reflection of the will from the majority of Iranians. When Iranians demand different things today, it hinges on their free vote to determine their politics future, not the well-heeled, deep-pocketed opposition idols prescribing plans of action to them thousands of kilometers away.
The Iranian opposition replicates the undemocratic practices of the federal government in Tehran, on the different scale and in a different fashion.
Of course , they have got not executed dissidents or imprisoned active supporters and workers and journalists, because they are not in a position associated with authority. But if their words and mass media behavior are any kind of guide, there is no guarantee they won’t proceed a spree associated with eliminating their detractors and silencing non-traditional voices if and when they rise to power.
A Chevening Scholarships alumnus, Kourosh Ziabari is really a 2021 Dag Hammarskjold Fund for Media fellow and a 2022 World Press Institute fellow. In 2015, he reported through the United States, Malaysia plus Pakistan on a Mature Journalists Seminar fellowship by the East-West Middle. Follow him upon Twitter @KZiabari.