Iran: the revolution will not be fossilised

• Last Updated: November 04. 2009 8:14PM UAE / November 4. 2009 4:14PM GMT

Bob Dylan may not be hugely popular in the Islamic Republic of Iran, but the grey beards of the revolution must be shaking their head and saying: the times they are a-changin’. Thirty years after that group of now-famous students stormed the US embassy, the revolution isn’t what it used to be.

For three decades Iranians have gathered outside the embassy building to celebrate the overthrow of the Shah and chant “death to America”. This year the rally was marred by election protesters chanting “death to the dictators” and clashing with Iranian security services. Wednesday’s violence and the post-election unrest are the visible symptoms of a regime in the midst of an identity crisis.

Despite the supposedly unifying ideals of the Islamic Revolution, Iran is a deeply fractured state. It would be easy to attribute these and other developments as a sign of maturity in the political system: the emergence of an opposition. That would be only partly true. While Iran has shown signs of developing a more varied political landscape, the complex interweaving of the opposition in Iran disagrees less on substance than it does over the proper interpretation of the Islamic revolution. Even now, the country still struggles to establish an identity other than the ideological opposite of the US.

It would also be a mistake to assume that because the student movement of 1979 and some of today’s senior religious leaders oppose the government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that they agree about anything else. It is far more complicated than that. In Iran, to be anti-Khamenei is not necessarily to be pro-West or anti-revolution. This was made abundantly clear by Mir Hossein Moussavi’s vociferous criticism of the recent nuclear deal in Vienna.

Any successful revolution struggles to shift gears and establish a state. In Iran, the danger is that the authorities become more enamoured of the revolution’s ideals and preventing them from growing stale than they are with building a functioning, vibrant political system. Three decades after the most iconic event in the revolution, Iran’s leadership clings to the notion that they can bottle that moment and preserve it. The vetting of candidates by a Guardian Council prevents any real opposition from emerging in national politics. The Revolutionary Guard is there to prevent a counter-revolution.

But the stifling of true opposition figures and the often heavy-handed tactics of the Revolutionary Guard have backfired. The former have been accused of being despots like the Shah, the latter of acting like the Savak, the Shah’s dreaded secret police. In their zeal to protect the ideals of the revolution, they have warped them; or so say their opponents in Iran.

Iran has had enough time to move beyond being defined by its opposition to the US. And in Barack Obama, Iranians have been presented with a rare opportunity to do so. But they have responded with anachronistic platitudes that apply to a world that exists only because the Iranian regime insists on keeping it on life support.

The Islamic Republic of Iran looks outward and sees what it terms “arrogant” and “bullying” powers, but it is past time that it looked inward and addressed the grievances of its own people. Otherwise, in its futile attempts to fossilise the revolution, it risks losing it completely.