How Regimes End
Protests in Iran
Douglas Muir has a very interesting post running down some of the political science on “protestor versus regime” scenarios. Unfortunately, it ends on a somewhat depressing note:
And finally, the government is both willing and able to use massive force: China, Burma, Armenia. In these cases, the government wins. There is, in recent history, not a single clear counterexample. If the government keeps its nerve, and the men with guns stay loyal, and the regime is willing to escalate without limit — the government wins.
Relevance to Iran: Looks pretty high right now. While there are some reports of unease among the security forces, it appears the police and the military are holding steady.
Until and unless this changes, Ahmadinejad looks quite secure — green paint and massive street protests notwithstanding.
One hopes this will prove wrong.
42 Responses to “How Regimes End”
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June 18th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
ha ha
June 18th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Menino may be the reining dictator of Boston for the last 18 plus years, but that is a picture of uprisings in Boston, MA not Iran!
June 18th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
lol
June 18th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I support the Boston resistance. We demand affordable Legal dinners and rate cuts for T!
June 18th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
John Yoon Akbar!
June 18th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
So how did the USA get created?
Could it have something to do with the French surrender monkeys — who shipped us 100,000 muskets in a covert op just to poke the British in the ass with a sharp stick?
Insurgencies work –even against violent government reprisals –but they sometimes require dedication and support from outside.
The Shah’s SAVAK was no pack of creme puffs –yet the Mullahs succeeded in overthrowing his regime, once he contracted cancer. As I recall, Ahmadinejad was one of the young insurgents. Has been around the rose bush a few times, so to speak.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Please, Don, remind me which foreign power stuck their nose in in 1979 to back the Iranian revolution?
It seems to have slipped my mind.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Re: Could it have something to do with the French surrender monkeys — who shipped us 100,000 muskets in a covert op just to poke the British in the ass with a sharp stick?
Yes indeed. But it also had to do with the fact the regieme was located hundreds of miles away, in an era without rapid transport or instant communication, which made it a lot harder for the regime to operate effectively, and much easier for a foreign power like France to intervene.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Slightly OT: Saxby Chambliss is an ignorant yahoo.
Chris Matthews had him on, and asked him about our involvement in the 1953 coup that eliminated Iranian democracy, and whether our reputation would make it counterproductive for us to loudly support the opposition. Chambliss’ reply was, “If you go out and ask those people protesting in Tay-ran about what happened in 1953, I don’t think any of them would know what you’re talking about.”
Wow. Just wow.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
One of the issues, of course, is that Russia and China LIKE having an anti-American regime in Iran.
Given that the Caspian Sea basin may be the second largest reserve of oil in the world, I suspect the protesters will be gunned down like dogs if they get too passionate.
The other thing a covert operation like a foreign-funded insurgency requires is ..er..covertness. In communications, specifically. The Iranians probably don’t have a chance in hell of intercepting and triangulating on spread spectrum transmissions and satellite uplinks — but the Russians probably can. Lot harder to overthrow a government if you have to follow Moscow Rules.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Tell that to the Tamil Tigers. Insurgencies can work, but often all they can do is rack up a big body count before getting their ass kicked.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
They are Shia, they are hoping to get shot. That’s what the mourning protest shit is about. That’s how the Shah fell. The Shah made martyrs and there would be a bigger protest to mourn them. Then they would make more, and the cycle continued until the massive crowds were uncontainable or controlable.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
That is some quality stupid.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Re joe at 9: “Chambliss’ reply was, “If you go out and ask those people protesting in Tay-ran about what happened in 1953, I don’t think any of them would know what you’re talking about.””
————-
Ole Saxby thinks the world is populated by people as uneducated, ignorant and stupid as the Georgia hicks who voted him into office.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I’m short on time and looking at that it’s a crude cariacture, but the thrust is right.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
I think Muir assumes way too much here. He basically has three givens:
1) If the government keeps its nerve, and
2) the men with guns stay loyal, and
3) the regime is willing to escalate without limit — the government wins.
Well it’s true that where these three have held true, the government always wins, but there’s no reason to believe the three will hold true. 1 is probably a gimme (3 as well), but 2 is a lot more difficult to maintain, especially as soldiers are ordered to do more and more eggregious stuff. I mean, that’s basically how a lot of revolutions happen (e.g., France, Russia) – the army turns against the regime.
@ Don Williams – for the US, I would say 2 didn’t hold – while the British regulars stayed loyal, the militias and the colonial regulars did not. Plus, there are plenty of other reasons to treat colonial wars of independence different from actual revolutions.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Chambliss’ reply was, “If you go out and ask those people protesting in Tay-ran about what happened in 1953, I don’t think any of them would know what you’re talking about.”
Just once on one of these shoutfests I’d like to hear someone respond to this kind of nonsense with “Senator, with all due respect, you’re a fuckin’ idiot. Be quiet, start listening and maybe you’ll learn something for a change.”
June 18th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
I’m not so sure that the army hasn’t lost its nerve. What’s so interesting about the Iranian protests is that military power has been diffused among several groups. This is in great contrast to China, where the military was more monolithic. So, when the order came down, it was followed.
Here’s my very bad scenario – the Iranian military splits into factions and you have a full-fledged civil war. I’m thinking more and more that this scenario is likely simply because of the level of elites involved with the protesters, and the fanaticism of the Basij.
I think that Gary Sick’s article, found here is a good one because it shows that there really is a leadership vacuum in Iran right now. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see someone new pop up on the horizon, probably from the military.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Re Joe at 7: “Please, Don, remind me which foreign power stuck their nose in in 1979 to back the Iranian revolution?
It seems to have slipped my mind. ”
————–
Well, the Republicans say President Jimmy Carter did. Inadvertently, of course.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Muir is correct – you should read the history of the 1848 revolutions to see that this kind of end game for civil revolt is not new.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Saxby Chambliss would totally say that.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
What is so stupid about Chambliss’s comment is that the Iranian Mullahs came to power ON THE BASIS of overthrowing the American puppet Shah.
We are not just talking about people forgetting about a foreign coup in their country 50 years ago — we are talking about the Mullahs failing to emphasize one of their primary sources of legitmacy.
Hard to believe that coup history is not recited every year in Iran’s schools –especially given how some of the Mullahs had family members tortured by the Shah’s Savak.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I think Saxby Chambliss could pick out the spot where the evil Yankees killed his great-great-great-grandfather. I think he still doesn’t like them.
But the Iranians don’t care about the 1953 coup. That’s just America-hatin’ to say so.
Idiot.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
“Hard to believe that coup history is not recited every year in Iran’s schools”
It’s actually not. Well, it sort of is but the regime hates Mosaddeq.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
The American Revolution is an absurd comparison – struggles for independence by outlying regions or overseas colonies are different from revolutions in the metropole.
The history of the 1848 revolutions is worth looking at, although rather depressing. One might note, though, that sometimes revolutions do work, at least in their immediate purpose.*
To NYC_Charles’s point that the security forces might, indeed, not hold firm (there seem to be some signs of this already), it should be added that I don’t think it’s clear the government will keep its nerve. Moussavi isn’t some outsider who’s trying to overthrow the regime. He’s an insider, and he has a lot of support from insiders. Certainly Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are now committed, and would have a difficult time backing down, but it doesn’t seem at all clear that their position is completely secure.
*The comparison that keeps coming to mind for me for this revolution is the July Revolution in France in 1830 (although I think Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are much readier to fight than Charles X and Polignac were). Like the Islamic Republic, the restored Bourbon monarchy was an awkward composite of a kind of reactionary dream of a state based on the true religion that had never really existed before and a more modern, liberal parliamentary regime. Like Khamenei, Charles X had, after a period of experimentation with moderate liberal and constitutional rule, turned to ultra-right wing policies.
In July 1930, following unfavorable election returns, Charles X and his chief minister, Polignac, proumulgated a series of edicts to more or less take control of the state and remove whatever remaining parliamentary checks there were on the king’s power. As in Iran, this led to popular uprisings. As in Iran, the principal opposition leaders were cautious moderates who wished to largely preserve the existing system. They hoped merely to force Charles X to withdraw the edicts and appoint a moderate ministry, not to remove him from the throne – much less to start a republic. So, similarly, the opposition leadership in Iran seems to have initially just wanted the real results of the election, not to actually remove Khamenei, much less end the Islamic Republic.
In 1830, Charles X ultimately called in the troops to suppress disorder, only to find that they wouldn’t obey his orders. He blinked very quickly, and started to make concessions, but it was too late. The moderates who had hoped to preserve his rule found that they, too, had to demand the king’s abdication, because the Parisians would not accept him continuing to be on the throne. They managed, however, to avoid the danger of a republic by getting the Duke of Orléans, a liberal cousin of Charles X, to accept the throne.
If the security forces become unreliable, this seems like a plausible model for how events in Iran might play out – Khamenei is removed and replaced with a more liberal Ayatollah (Montazeri being Louis Philippe here?), but the structure of the Islamic Republic remains, only somewhat altered. On the other hand, it seems unlikely to me that Khamenei is going to go as easily as Charles X did, so we might get something rather bloodier.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I don’t know. China and Burma are exceptionally tightly controlled politically. Iran has been, as far as autocracies go, relatively open. I don’t think the analogy is entirely comparable. The legitimacy of the theocratic leadership rests on the premise that there is some degree of power-sharing with some democratic choice. If elections aren’t valid, then that contract falls apart.
All of that may make it much more difficult for the army to be used as hardliners would like to. It’s the same reason Britain couldn’t suppress India.
Now, I’m not saying that the opposition movement won’t succeed at making changes or even – if this goes on long enough – fundamentally changing the regime, but I’d say the odds are a little better than for Burma or China.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
John,
I don’t think that Charles X is a good analogy for the Islamic Republic. We should remember that the Islamic Republic was founded as an explicitly _revolutionary_ state. It was born out of anti-monarchist sentiment, and based on the premise that power should rest with the pious and devout rather than with traditional hereditary authority. In that sense it bears more resemblance to religious revolutionaries like Cromwell and Savonarola than to Catholic unltraconservatives like Charles X.
Interestingly, I’ve also heard it said that Khomeini based his political ideology at least in part on Plato’s theory of the Guardians.
And I disagree with Mr. Yglesias’ point about violent insurgencies: there is no reason to believe they can’t succeed, even in the modern world. I strongly dislike the FARC, but they do prove that a revolutionary insurgency, for better and worse, can at the very least survive in the modern world if conditions are right, even in the face of massive US military aid. The partial victory of the Nepalese Maoists is another example. More generally, the reason there aren’t as many armed revolutions any more, at least in places like Latin America which used to be a hotbed of revolution, isn’t necessarily because the revolutionaries were crushed on the battlefield, it’s because they realized that at least for the time being they could make progress through the ballot box. The revolutionaries in Venezuela and Bolivia decided to try to go the electoral route, and they’ve succeeded for the time being; if they are ever excluded from the political process, I’m sure they would go back to armed struggle.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Up with the citizens of Boston! Down with the tyrannical oppression of mayoral candidate Yoon!!!
The revolution will not be televised in Boston, but will be twittered!!!
June 18th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Here’s my very bad scenario – the Iranian military splits into factions and you have a full-fledged civil war. I’m thinking more and more that this scenario is likely simply because of the level of elites involved with the protesters, and the fanaticism of the Basij.
Good god, could that be anymore depressing. But I don’t think it will come to that. The Basij is that fanatical, but I think the establishment figures supporting the protests would blink before it actually got to that point.
I think they’re motivated partly on principle of the nature of the Islamic Republic and partly out of oppurtunism. But I don’t they’d actually would be willing to go to the wall for the protester movement. Risking house arrest is one thing, a horrible civil was is another.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
The problem with this idea that if government forces stay loyal nothing else matters is that everything else–all the other factors listed on Muir’s page–can have an effect on whether government forces remain loyal.
It’s like saying that if the U.S. Electoral College all supports Candidate X it doesn’t matter which way the votes at the ballot box went–X will become president. This is a true statement, but it would give a misleading impression to someone who didn’t understand that the Electoral College is mostly determined by votes at the ballot box.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Regarding Jim T’s (#18) comment about a split in the military: Military of Iran. It already is split. I know what you’re meaning is a political split between the:
- Artesh (regular Army)
- Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards)
- Basij (theoretically suborned to the Pasdaran, but answerable directly to the civilian leadership, and a ready supply of armed street thugs)
The government created this split system to reduce the odds of a coup. The Basiji are doing the dirty work on the streets at the moment. If you see uniformed Pasdaran called out to corral their little brothers, that’s when you’ll know things are getting seriously weird.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
If an Iranian were as stupid as Saxby Chambliss: “I bet if you asked all those Americans what country attacked them in 1941, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about.”
June 18th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Regarding Mossadegh, I don’t think the regime much likes him. He was a reformer, a very moderate, bourgeois social-democrat, and revolutionaries tend to despise reformers. That said, I’m sure they despise those who engineered his ouster even more.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
The men with guns haven’t been asked to fire them. In fact, from some reporting, they have intervened to protect demonstrators from the militias that normally punish protest with both brutality and impunity.
I’d say the loyalties of the men with guns haven’t been established yet. And there is no real grounds for asserting that “the police and military are holding steady”. They are letting the protests not only continue but grow. What line in defense of the government are they holding steady‘?
June 18th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
In China the protestors were students, for the most part. They had some potential value to the regime, in the future, but they were not going to be missed very much. If killed, imprisoned, exiled or blacklisted, they could be replaced. China’s economy was based on unskilled labor.
In Iran, I suspect a large percentage of the skilled workers necessary to keep their oil production, electrical grid and the technical aspects of their national defense, while not protesting, might sympathize with the protestors and might have been against Ahmadinejad.
That might not be significant. If it is significant, the regime might not care. But if there are mass strikes instead of just street protests, the regime might find reasons to be less violent.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
In a democratic but polarized country, election loosers can demonstrate and riot, and the winners can be a bit worse for the wear, but work it out. Venezuela is an example.
One feature of Iranian system is that it approves some opposition. Rafsanjani and Moussavi are members of that approved opposition. Non-approved opposition is dealt with rather harshly (although, on a good day, they may be deemed harmless and shown leniency, as an American-Iranian journalist experienced recently. I understand that they even did not beat her up, and not all her predecessors were so lucky.)
It also appears that the “regime” broke some of its own rules, and unlike, say, Mugabe or Burman SLORC, it is not altogether unimportant to them. So first, Moussavi is very much ambulatory, and I guess the preferred solution is to make some show of “checking irregularities”
I guess that the idea is to recount, say, 5 boxes in public and make all presidential candidates agree with the results. If Moussavi will still object, well, legal channels should review the complains. From the furor of revolution to the sleepy pace of Minnesota — that would be an ideal, I guess.
So far, the repressions seem mild — if you compare with, say, Tienanmen, and the members of the approved opposition are treated with gloves (demostrators are NOT approved, but as I said, standard Chinese/Burman fare would be to make mass arrests on epic scale, close all universities, make a purge of disloyal employees etc.). Moussavi has a hand to play: his voluntary concession would be of high value. Will he extract some real concessions? Is it possible? Would an old fox like Rafsanjani join Moussavi if there was no hope?
I have no idea. The subtle part of what is basically a dictatorship is to provide the disaffected with approved leaders (while making short work of the un-approved ones). This gives the regime more options, but will they be able to use them? And how? I have hard time making a mental model of their thinking.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
calling all toasters Says:
June 18th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
If an Iranian were as stupid as Saxby Chambliss: “I bet if you asked all those Americans what country attacked them in 1941, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about.”
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!?
June 18th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Whether violent insurgencies can win is completely irrelevant to the Iran case, where there IS NO “violent insurgency”. What we have in Iran is a case of protests which occasionally have been violent depending on who started shooting first and why.
Matt: “One hopes this will prove wrong.” What does this mean? Matt wants Rafsanjani to win? Because that’s all that will happen if Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are tossed. And there is ZERO evidence that might occur at this point.
Moussavi is Rafsanjani’s stalking horse. If you get Rafsanjani or some mullah beholden to him in place of Khamenei, things might seem better for Iran, but for the US and Israel, there will be little effect. Rafsanjani is as unlikely to give up uranium enrichment as anybody else in Iran. And he doesn’t like Israel either.
Khamenei just told Moussavi to shut up or get out. That doesn’t sound like Khamenei is sweating his control of the situation.
June 19th, 2009 at 12:04 am
By the way, what is this photo from Iran?
A sleepy street, a few protesters, all carrying “YOON” signs? Is YOON an inept Latinization of “Moussavi”? Affectionate nickname? Is it possible that the photo is actually from Boston and has precious little to do with Iran?
June 19th, 2009 at 1:40 am
Slightly OT: Saxby Chambliss is an ignorant yahoo.
Chris Matthews had him on, and asked him about our involvement in the 1953 coup that eliminated Iranian democracy, and whether our reputation would make it counterproductive for us to loudly support the opposition. Chambliss’ reply was, “If you go out and ask those people protesting in Tay-ran about what happened in 1953, I don’t think any of them would know what you’re talking about.”
That’s my senator right there. Damn it to hell.
A former student of mine passed along these messages from a friend of his who lives and works in Tehran and has witnessed the street protests first-hand.
http://teacherreaderwriter.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/postcard-from-iran/
http://teacherreaderwriter.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/postcard-from-iran-ii/
June 19th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Hector – obviously the analogy is nowhere near perfect, as no historical analogy ever can be. But I do think that there are some reasonably interesting similarities, in terms of
1) the composite nature of the existing regime, which in both Restoration France and post-Revolution Iran tries to balance traditionalism with liberalism; and
2) The cautious nature of the opposition, which is, to some extent, within the system and does not wish to overthrow it entirely.
I also think it’s possible that Khamenei, in trying to steal the election, made a similar error to that made by Charles X in 1830. Whether this proves to be the case will have to wait on events.
Beyond that, I’ll just say that a revolution is very different from an insurgency, and that the models for the success of an insurgency don’t really apply to revolutions focused on the capital.
June 19th, 2009 at 6:41 am
The picture is an in-joke.
Yglesias is hoping for the removal of the automobile-centric Menino regime and its replacement by the bicycle-friendly Yoon.
Confusing to a recent arrival to be sure, but also decipherable.
That plus actual faces of actual demonstrators in Iran could help security forces there some day in a crackdown.