To begin with, it should be noted that the scale of the unrest in Iran - no matter how much the opponents of the Islamic Republic wanted otherwise - is much smaller than those that estimated the scope of similar protest movements about two years ago. Although both then and now many alarmist comments and even scenarios arose and arise, the culmination of which invariably becomes the “overthrow of the anti-people regime”.
In assessing what is happening in Iran, one cannot help but pay attention to the synchronized mass protest movements in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon, in Georgia and France, in Bolivia and Hong Kong. Among Western observers, there are already attempts to introduce the image of “Arab spring-2” into the media, although, of course, apart from Iraq and Lebanon, the French world can be attributed to France with certain sarcasm ... Once Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that “The grassroots movements that will universally lead to the triumph of democracy and the Western model will become the driving force behind changes on earth.” So far, this has not happened anywhere. Among citizens of all countries there is a growing demand for social justice, for the state to work more efficiently, this trend creates a mobilization resource of any kind of protest.
If we return to Iran, then the main participants in episodic riots for several years now are the marginalized part of urban residents, including a large segment of the student body, and the part of the national intelligentsia, who are accustomed to living in myths, that is, those sections of society that do not have as much traditional mentality as sometimes It is customary to consider how much they can simulate it. I think that among the protesters who took to the streets of Iranian cities, there were most of them. No unrest and unrest spread outside the cities, the rural population is indifferent to their slogans, which once again emphasizes the marginality of the protesters. Such a movement cannot reflect the will of the people, the proportion of active participants in the movement in society is negligible, it only imitates the will of the people, fulfilling a very specific order from the outside.
The involvement of external forces in the organization of the unrest is unlikely to raise doubts, although, apparently, the development of such scenarios in the Western “brain centers” has noticeably reduced its productivity. In the framework of these scenarios, a classical information war has been unfolding around Iran, which has, in fact, not ceased for four decades. As usual, hysteria about the mass unrest is escalating, there is a shaft of most often brutally edited videos from places. The mass effect is created by means well-known to specialists for a long time, photo and video materials clearly focus on episodes of events that show aggression as much as possible, the use of force by participants in events: arson, pogroms, etc.
In fact, the grandeur and significance of any mass movements of today is not determined by the number of people involved and their motivations, not by the logistics of organizing these movements, or even by financing, whether it has an internal origin or is it sponsorship of external actors.
The significance and effectiveness of mass movements is ensured by mass communications, and in this context, one of the most accurate, most effective counter-reactions of the Iranian leadership has been the restriction of mobile communications and the Internet.
Analyzing the external informational support of events, one can notice - and this is a very important point - that the interpreters strive to politicize the ideological component of the protest activity as much as possible, sometimes forgetting what, in fact, made the majority of the protesters take to the streets - a socio-economic subtext. Few people are able to note this fact: the cost of gasoline, the increase of which was the reason for the riots, was and remains in Iran one of the lowest in the world.
The increase in gas prices in Iran resembles the introduction of a fuel tax in France, which provoked the movement of "yellow vests," but, it seems, no one has yet made predictions about a new French revolution ...
Nevertheless, the socio-economic subtext makes us pay attention to endogenous factors. No external impact would make sense without support points within the country. These points of support in Iran are uncritical in themselves, they are not decisive, but they are difficult and compounded by a factor quite exogenous: American sanctions. Having observed this country many times and for many years, I can responsibly say that the level of social orientation of the Iranian state is much higher than that of any post-Soviet country, the vast majority of other countries. The mass stereotypes existing in this regard are not taken into account, the ideas of millions of people about Iran, based on television reports or the opinions of biased authors on Internet resources, cannot be a basis for understanding the country.
There is no reason to doubt the involvement of various structures in the organization of these events, primarily the special services, of at least four countries - the USA, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Great Britain. Probably even more dangerous than the pro-Western secular passionaries are terrorist groups incorporated in these movements, even if they are few in number and do not have a large resource. During the events, the participation of such groups as “Mujahhedin-e-Halk” and “Fedayan-e-Halk” will probably be recorded. Once they positioned themselves as left-wing parties and successfully collaborated with the KGB of the USSR in the fight against the shah regime, but then they fell under the supervision of the US CIA and the execution of orders of the Israeli Mossad and Saudi Al-Muhabarat Al-Amma. To date, both are terrorist, although in the United States and Great Britain they are excluded from the lists.
There are more recent radical religious and terrorist groups, in this context, Iranian sources mention the very small Arab Liberation Movement of Ahwaz, Ansar al Furqan, Ahwaz Martyrs Brigade, Kata'ib Ahrar al Ahwaz. “Mujahhedin-e-Hulk”, by the way, has training bases in the western provinces of Afghanistan bordering Iran - Herat, Nimruz, which, together with American curators and Afghan security forces, are regularly visited by the leader of this group, Maryam Rajavi.
Perhaps just the involvement of terrorist groups explains the fact that the current unrest in Iran has a noticeable criminal and coercive (by the Protestants) component.
The weakness in these events of political rhetoric looks very curious. In the events of two years ago, when the reason for the protests was an increase in egg prices, there were slogans calling for the overthrow of both the supreme leader and the government, and many demands of a foreign political nature: from the cessation of support for the Lebanese Hezbollah to Marg b Rusiya (Death Russia ") ...
The theory of "relative deprivation theory" (relative deprivation theory) states that revolutions and popular unrest occur, as a rule, not where people live permanently poorly, but where they understand (or imagine) that they can live better. Iranian authorities were forced to take unpopular measures due to falling budget revenues, which sharply decreased after the US decision of May 2 this year to cancel temporary permits for the import of oil and gas condensate from Iran for a number of countries (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Greece, Italy). The volume of Iran’s oil exports currently fluctuates at the level of 500 thousand barrels per day, for example, in 2017 this figure was about 2.5 million barrels.
There is an understanding of the complexity of the socio-economic situation in the Iranian political elite: there are no differences regarding the current crisis, for example, between the conditional “conservatives” represented by the supreme leader of Iran and the “democrats” represented by President Hassan Rouhani. It is important to understand this when building the scenarios of the following - even if you are a complete pessimist: the consolidation of the Iranian elite, with all its high pluralism, demonstrates the stability of the power as a whole: elite competition takes place within the same basic values, the same institutional system.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.