Google 1970s Iran vs now. It’s an interesting contrast of how quickly societies can change; and some would argue, not towards the future but backwards.
Google 1970s Iran vs now. It’s an interesting contrast of how quickly societies can change; and some would argue, not towards the future but backwards.
YSK: Iran’s new incoming president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on the campaign trail presented as a moderate and said he would abolish Iran’s morality police, so the era of enforced Hijab might be coming to an end. He assumes office on the 30th and I expect there will be an internal struggle between his admin and established power over the issue, but since the morality police were a focal point of the last major protests there’s a lot of popular support for abolishing or at least reforming them.
I"m not up to date on Iranian politics but wouldn’t the supreme leader essentially say “yeah, no…we’re not doing that” and that would be the end of it? or are they more like a monarchy type figure.
The “supreme leader” is more like John Roberts in a US context than the actual dictatorial leader of Iran. The Iranian government actually resembles the US government in a lot of ways where the Supreme Court is under the control of the Mullahs. I’m sure no one in America can imagine what it is like to live in a country where the supreme court is filled with religious fundamentalists.
The difference is that Iran is already where the fundies want it. John Roberts is still trying to take us there.
Not objecting to your point, just musing.
That is the shame of the revolution and the lesson tankies refuse to learn. The mullahs and their followers didn’t start or fight any of the battles. They came and restored peace in the resulting power vacuum.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. A “tankie” would probably tell you that the Islamic Revolution was an entirely predictable and avoidable backlash to the pro-western government that was installed via coup in the 50s. Allowing Iran to govern itself would have almost certainly lead to a better result for everyone - that is, everyone except the capitalists who pushed for the coup in order to retain control of Iranian oil for another twenty years.
In an earlier comment I reference that the material conditions in Iran are due to the coup in 1953, but I don’t think in this chain and it was in my mind when I wrote it. I was talking about a specific lesson from 1979.
The revolution was a communist revolution brought forth by Iranian leftists and students who had no ability to plan for after the collapse of the Shah’s government. They were more focused on the revolution than leadership and long term success, maybe they thought the Russians were going to help but it is hard to know because they were all executed. My uncle was among them. I don’t blame them the need for revolution is always present but before the revolution there was no solidarity among the people so when the revolution came the socialist coalitions collapsed and Khomeni came from Qom to establish the Islamic republic.
The lesson is that before we can be aggressive and support wars and violence we need the next regime to have roots in the ground. This is why I believe that orgs like Richard Wolff’s democracy@work are more important than anything else we can do as leftists because once time comes where the capitalists need to be removed we need to have the foundation of the society that comes next in place already or else we’re going to end up with barbarism, like how most of the 20th century communist attempts went and no longer exist. In this specific scenario democratizing the enterprises in Iran would have disrupted the Bazaari and may prevented the rise of the current Liberal government in Iran.
The dig at tankies was not because I am a liberal but because I am a disgusting trot.
For a second I missed the sarcasm of your last sentence
Basically, yeah. There’s the Guardian Council which has the power to decide who is eligible for running for President. So democracy is kinda just for show there.
But the fact that they allowed someone moderate to run indicates Guardian Council maybe be open to such changes?
We’ll have to wait and see.
Not really, they allowed him to run as he’s a nutjob and thought nobody would vote for him, while retaining an illusion of that all sides are available for election. He’s been described as an Iranian Trump. Then surprised pikachu this reformist nutjob gets elected. This is going to be an interesting run.
You really shouldn’t be so dismissive of someone that you know nothing about. For starters, Pezeshkian has been in public service/electoral politics for like twenty to thirty years, he isn’t some outsider he’s a prominent figure in the moderate camp within the government who spoke out against the government’s repression of protests in 2020 and 2022.
Jesus Christ.
Tankies when American candidates don’t garner enough votes in an actual primary: “THE DUOPOLY WILL NEVER LET REFORM HAPPEN”
Tankies when candidates are literally removed from the ballot if the ultraconservative Guardian Council doesn’t like them: “Give them a chance, it might work 🥺”
me: these should be analyzed along different lines because they are different things
you: this is dictatorship apologia
As an aside, I never denied that Pezeshkian is highly religious and socially conservative by American standards, I merely pointed out that a pillar of the campaign that he was just elected on was abolishing the morality police. He’s run for president before, he’s spoken out against the MP and the government in the past, and yes he was approved to run for president again in spite of all of that context by the guardian council, because clearly they don’t seem to view the morality police as a completely sacrosanct aspect of Iranian society.
Oh boy, I sure am glad that the clerics of Iran are only involved in religious exploitation and not capitalist exploitation! Profit-seeking capitalist exploitation surely doesn’t factor in THEIR decision making, unlike the USA!
You guys are having a really dumb argument. Thanks for the wiki article though.
AFAIK the Supreme Leader’s powers mostly extend to approving candidates, and Pezeshkian got approved even with his reformist politics.Nope, I was thinking of the Guardian Council.The Supreme Leader has veto power and general oversight over the executive branch of government, but it’s vague. He can’t remove the president without the courts or parliament going along with an impeachment process. I don’t think he’ll step in unless it turns into a big problem, since he’s allowed reformists to operate in the past, but noone can say for sure.