Iranian dissidents hope war will end era of the Ayatollahs
The voices of the young - mostly students - are growing louder as the regime in Tehran faces foes on many fronts.
The banner was unfurled over a Tehran bridge by night, with a message scrawled in spray paint. “Those who experienced the Iran-Iraq war,” it read, “demand no war again.”
The dissidents behind this modest protest a few months ago sought to cover their tracks, wary of the unforgiving punishment that befalls critics of the Islamic regime.
But they had decided to take the risk, one organiser in Iran said, because they “believe Iran is very close to opening a new regional war, which will cost Iran and all Iranians ... Enough is enough. If you don’t take risks, you can’t expect rewards.”
That moment feared by dissidents, who are mostly students - just like the ones that helped Ayatollah Khomeini overthrow the Shah in 1979 - has now come. Across the region, and above all in Israel and the US, the question is being asked as to how many such dissidents there are and what risk they pose to the Islamic Republic’s clerical leaders.
As thousands of Iranians flee Tehran in the wake of Israeli and American warnings to evacuate, those who contented themselves with putting up posters are calling for an open insurrection.
“Take to the streets and the squares because the future of us all is at stake,” they declared in a manifesto this week shared with The Times. “Destroy and disable street cameras. Light a fire in the streets and fight the regime’s mercenaries. Break the windows and doors of government and security facilities and block them and take them under your control.”
The plea, for now, has fallen on deaf ears. In Tehran residents are more preoccupied with their safety and an exit route. The Israeli defence minister is warning that the capital “will burn”.
Many opponents of the regime - the majority of Iranians, judging by the few reliable polls there are - have also been critical of the Israeli campaign, which killed civilians as it levelled apartment blocks in parts of Tehran where regime figures lived.
Toomaj Salehi, a dissident rapper who was jailed for his support of women-led protests in 2022, questioned how nine million people were meant to evacuate the capital. “If your intention is to kill the people of Iran, at least have the honesty not to hide the burden of that responsibility,” he said in an Instagram post, addressing Israel.
Despite the defence minister’s incendiary remarks, including saying the residents of Tehran “would pay” for Iranian missile attacks on Israeli cities, Israeli politicians and spokespeople have stressed their war is not with the Iranian people, and called on them to rise up against the regime.
While there has been no indication yet that an uprising is in the offing, criticism of the increasingly weakened government has certainly grown louder in Iran. A letter signed by several dissidents, including two Nobel laureates, called for Iran to agree to a ceasefire and stop enriching uranium, the key American and Israeli demand.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former minister who was later imprisoned for supporting anti-government protests and remains a popular figure among regime critics, called for a new constituent assembly to decide a constitution.
In a letter from prison he criticised the Israeli attacks as lacking any “political and moral justification” before adding of his own country: “I believe that for a peaceful transition to democracy, there must be an insistence on a constituent assembly to change the constitution, and compel the government to establish it.”
Iran has a disparate and scattered opposition, ranging from religious moderates and liberals to communists and the zealous Mujahidin e-Khalq, the remnants of a militant group that conducted numerous attacks in Iran around the time of the revolution, including a 1981 bombing that left Ali Khamenei, the future ayatollah, paralysed in the right arm.
Abroad, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah and self-styled crown prince who lives in Virginia, has been taking to the airwaves to support the Israeli attacks. Pahlavi enjoys little backing in Iran itself, but has a considerable following among Iranian expatriates.
“He’s the prince of nowhere,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. “The opposition can be described as a mix of activists and technocrats and moderates that would like to see the Islamic Republic move away from ideology and enmity, and transition to an empowered presidential and parliamentary system.”
That is a process in some respects already under way in Iran, where protests have been becoming more regular amid low turnout in elections and a deepening cynicism towards the regime.
“If there were no war I think there would have to be a modest acceptance that, with these key people still there, the Islamic Republic’s transformation wasn’t going to be quick, perhaps generational,” Vakil said. “What Israel is doing is pouring an accelerant on the process, and we are losing control in terms of understanding the direction.”
The Times
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