Even during my time in Tehran nearly three decades ago, a jagged chasm had opened up between the people and the regime. The revolutionary fervour had paled; resentment with an oppressive cleric regime, clothed in religious righteousness, muscled by a ruthless security system and supported by shadowy financial structures was evident. The invasion of private space, the curtailment of personal freedoms, economic hardship and growing estrangement from the world deeply troubled the people, heirs to a rich and highly sophisticated civilisation.
A close friend observed that these children of the revolution would come out on the streets again but “only when they are ready to die”. My friend is no longer with us but from on high he would have watched his compatriots being shot dead on the streets of Tehran, Karaj, Kermanshah… not by an enemy force, or an occupying power, but by their own guardians.
And yet, as I write, nobody quite knows what is going to happen in Iran.
Will the “loaded and locked” US war machine, now looming over Iran, unleash its spleen on the Ayatollahs? Will Donald Trump, turbo-charged by his machismo for technological blitzkrieg, rain hell on Iran? And what then? Retaliation and counter-retaliation by Iran and Israel? Civil war, ethnic divide and disintegration? Chaos in the world’s crucial cockpit?
Reuters
Now that US-Iran talks are underway, Trump will likely hold his “armada” as a negotiating threat. Major regional players like the Saudis, Qataris and Turks have been cautioning the US against military intervention. Trump, too, is averse to anything that is not a quick win with a high tom-tom potential: a regional mess in the run-up to the mid-terms cannot be his preferred option.
In any case, there is little hope of a new dawn over Tehran. The regime, though battered by bombs and protests, is too well-entrenched to simply simper away. The protest movement made up of merchants (bazaaris), pensioners and the Gen Z has not yet produced a man for the magical hour. The Pahlavi Prince, exhorting the protestors from his gated, luxurious estate in Maryland, may not have the requisite courage or charisma; the Iranian people, recalling the Shah’s repression, may not relish a monarch, no matter how well disguised. In fact, the hour for regime change may have already passed. If Trump gets a nuclear deal that he can flaunt, and Iran gets to keep its ballistic missiles programme, these protests and the loss of so many precious lives—many in the flower of their youth—may just pass into history.
And the most haunting of all questions: how many people have died? The numbers game is again afoot: the authorities put the figures of those killed at over 3,100, linking most deaths to terrorism, whatever that means. The Wall Street Journal put the numbers variously at 6,000 and 10,000, referencing human rights researchers. The Guardian, a few days earlier, put the figure of the dead at 30,000; Iranian diasporic sources talk of even a higher number. But even in a post-truth world, numbers will ultimately be out: even the dead want to be counted. Already there are calls, including within Iran, for greater transparency about the victims.
Would these deaths have been worth anything in these cynical, venal, morally-bankrupt times? The answer, if one is to keep faith in the human spirit, must remain yes. Iran, where Shiite tradition reveres martyrs, must someday honour these dead. Perhaps by discarding the indignity of the grey body bags and giving them a resting place in that rose garden of martyrs, the Behesht-e Zahra, Tehran’s sprawling cemetery where, among others, lie the martyrs of the revolution and those of the Iran-Iraq war.
The author was India’s high commissioner to the UK and ambassador to the United States.