As the aftermath of the contested Iranian election continues, it's worth remembering that it isn't a military attack by the U.S. or Israel that the Islamic Republic of Iran fears most. It's a bloodless toppling of the regime as the result of reform and closer ties to the West.
The trademark green of Mr. Mousavi's campaign, while in theory representing of Islam, aggravated those fears, as many in power saw parallels with the "Orange" and "Rose" revolutions that overthrew repressive regimes in Georgia and the Ukraine.
Ironically, the bogeyman pointed to by fundamentalist Iranian clerics is the same one often cited by American right-wing conspriracists - liberal currency speculator and political philanthropist George Soros.
In 2007, Iran arrested and interrogated Haleh Esfandiari, an academic linked to Soros' Open Society Institute. The Iranians accused her of plotting to lure Iranian reformers and dissidents into a network aimed at devising a non-violent overthrow of the Islamic government.
The ministry said the foundation had "played key roles in intrigues that have led to colourful revolutions in former Soviet republics in recent years" and now aimed to overthrow Iran's government.
"In primary interrogations, she reiterated that the Soros Foundation has established an unofficial network with the potential of future broader expansion, whose main objective is overthrowing the system," it said.
Esfandiari's alleged confession then led to the arrest of another Soros/ Open Society associate, Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American social scientist. The Iranian government called Tajbakhsh "the manager and representative of American Soros Foundation in Iran." Both Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh were eventually freed after wrangling between the Iranian and American governments, but not before eliciting the following "confession" from Tajbakhsh.
The long-term goal of the Soros Foundation is to achieve an open society [in Iran]. The way to achieve this is to create a rift between the rulers and the people. Through this rift, those parts of civil society which were formed and strengthened according to the concept of open society will exert pressure on the rulers to change their conduct. This rift can be created like what happened in Georgia, or else this conduct can be altered gradually, through elections and other "soft" methods. In order to create this rift, either you weaken the central government, or else you strengthen that part of civil society which opposes the government.
The Iranian government's paranoia even led them to produce this bizarre public service message, featuring a CGI George Soros conspiring with John McCain and the CIA.
Iran's depiction of the American political elite includes a figure most Americans probably haven't heard of - Gene Sharp, a political scientist and author of the book "The Politics of Non-Violent Action."
Sharp's writings were critical in the over throw of repressive governments in Eastern Europe. He outlined strategies for destroying a regime's power by undermining their credibility with the people.
In Sharp's view all effective power structures have systems by which they encourage or extract obedience from their subjects. States have particularly complex systems for keeping subjects obedient. These systems include specific institutions (police, courts, regulatory bodies) but may also involve cultural dimensions that inspire obedience by implying that power is monolithic (the god cult of the Egyptian pharaohs, the dignity of the office of the President, moral or ethical norms and taboos).
This is ultimately related to nonviolent resistance because it is supposed to provide subjects with a window of opportunity for effecting change within a state. Sharp cites the insight of Étienne de La Boétie, that if the subjects of a particular state recognize that they are the source of the state's power they can refuse their obedience and their leader(s) will be left without power.
The truth is that despite Iran's paranoia (somewhat understandable given American interventionism in Iran in the past), there is little actual evidence of Western influence during the current Iranian Presidential campaign. Mousavi, preapproved by the clerics, is hardly an outsider - in fact, he was one of the key architects of the original Islamic govrnment. Still, the paranoia of the leadership towards reform and openness as a precursor of a "Velvet Revolution" that strips them from power might go some way towards explaining their heavy handed response to ANY move in the direction of greater liberalization.
According to a Middle East think tank:
After assuming the office of Supreme Leader in 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spent the next decade worrying about what he called "cultural invasion" by the West. In his view, the Islamic Revolution's "enemies," having failed to change the regime through military invasion (his interpretation of the Iran-Iraq War), invented a more sophisticated and invisible invasion -- a cultural one. The Islamic Republic allocated a hefty annual budget to resisting this invasion by jamming Western radio transmissions, supporting religious establishments, encouraging "committed revolutionary art and literature," and providing state radio and television resources sufficient for relatively sophisticated programming.
In his second decade of leadership, Khamenei is living in fear of just such a velvet revolution. Whereas his cultural invasion fears envisioned liberal, democratic values potentially subverting the cultural foundations of the Islamic Revolution, his current worries center on the notion that the revolution's enemies could recruit people through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) dedicated to humanitarian, child welfare, trade union, environmental, and antidrug issues. Accordingly, any social or cultural activity outside the regime's supervision is subject to suspicion, especially in the wake of the "color" revolutions that led to the replacement of leaders in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan -- countries close to Iran's borders.
