The 2011 Arab Awakening had a Persian beginning, in Iran’s Twitter Revolution of 2009. That uprising against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rigged presidential election was brutally beaten back by the clerical regime. But it’s back in the streets and facing yet another crackdown. Can it topple the ruling ayatollahs?

In the long run, yes. The prospects for democracy in Iran are much stronger than elsewhere in the region. But for now, the Green Movement faces daunting challenges.

Unlike Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, etc. — artificial constructs with boundaries drawn in the sand by colonials — Farsi-speaking Iran is a distinct and historic civilization. And while Egypt dates back to antiquity, its modern rulers, like so many in the Arab world, have been propped up by outsiders.

What happens in Iran is indigenous. Outsiders have little influence — in particular, the U.S. Iran does not get foreign aid, nor is it dependant on western tourism.

What the Arab masses are doing now, the Iranians did 30 years ago. (That doesn’t mean the Arab revolts will descend into clerical despotism. There’s no appetite for it anywhere). The Iranian mass movement is as non-violent and inter-religious as the Arab ones. But unlike them, it has a history. And leadership. And deep roots in a civil society that’s stronger than any in the region. Its discourse — led by writers, poets, filmmakers, theologians — is highly literate and sophisticated, its slogans redolent of religious and political history, its insults sugar-coated in couplets from Rumi, Saadi and Hafez.

It has a strong feminist component as well, with perhaps the most vibrant websites and blogs challenging centuries-old male readings and interpretation of religious texts and Islamic laws.

But the movement faces an entrenched and sophisticated enemy. More than just being ruthless — as Hosni Mubarak’s and Moammar Gadhafi’s autocracies — Iran’s mullahcracy is layered.

Start with its clerical establishment. At its apex is the supreme leader, Ayatollah Syed Khamenei. He controls the Guardian Council that decides who gets on the ballot (turning elections into selections). He also appoints the conservative judiciary that cracks down on dissidents with summary justice, including executions. His minions man the neighbourhood mosques that dispense funds and favours.

Yet as powerful as he is, his is not a one-man rule, like Gadhafi’s or Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s in Tunisia. Unlike them and Mubarak, he has not amassed a personal fortune. Nor has Ahmadinejad, whose simple living is part of his appeal to the masses.

There’s the army and navy. But far more ubiquitous is the Revolutionary Guards Corps. Ostensibly a militia, “the guardian of the Islamic revolution,” it’s an empire. It oversees the nuclear and missile programs. It runs multi-billion-dollar business enterprises (in manufacturing, construction as well as the oil and gas sectors). It owns a foundation that helps the poor. Its assassins abroad target dissidents. It maintains a mini-militia, the Basijis, manned by uneducated thugs who, wielding batons and chains, attack peaceful demonstrators.

This elaborate and scary security apparatus has been used for years to crack down on domestic opponents, including the elected reformist president Mohammed Khatami (1997-2005). Student-led protests were snuffed out in 1999 and 2002. Dissident ayatollahs have been marginalized and put under house arrest. Ahmadinejad’s two leading opponents from the 2009 election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, a highly regarded former prime minister, and Mehdi Karroubi, a respected cleric, are still being hounded.

The regime has not lost control of the country or even parts of it, as happened in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. No officers have rebelled or joined the dissidents, yet.

In this epic indigenous internal struggle, outsiders should remember that if Iranians are forced to choose between their president and an American president, they’ll opt for their own. A joke has it that Ahmadinejad prays every day for an American or an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Barack Obama seems to understand. He has done well to isolate Iran, politically and economically, by persuading China, Russia and India to go along with sanctions.

“As the desperation of the regime increases, so does its penchant for violence,” says Payam Akhavan, professor of law at McGill University and an expert on his native Iran. “Its obsessive shows of force — parading missiles in military spectacles or destroying the nation’s youth in torture chambers — is nothing but a sign of its profound weakness. The will of the people will ultimately prevail. The question is, at what cost?”

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He suggests linking sanctions not to the nuclear program but rather to human rights violations. “That’d make the Iranian people a partner in the international campaign for democracy, and it’d make the Iranian leaders fear that they could end up as Slobodan Milosevic” — in the prisoner’s dock at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca

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