Ten years ago, the Green Movement not only challenged the Iranian regime but also Washington's Middle East policies. Now, Trump's policies have emboldened Iranian hard-liners and cornered reformists even further.
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The hard-line Iranian regime, which had faced little public resistance since it seized power in 1979, was taken by surprise by a mass movement in the wake of the 2009 elections, which reformists called fraudulent. Although the mass protests were targeted at then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the country's real rulers, the Shiite clergy, could sense that it was the beginning of a larger socio-political revolt.
The regime used brutal force against the Green Movement and arrested reformist presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The massive crackdown, however, didn’t deter the millions of Iranians from taking to the streets of Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz to defy the security forces and chant slogans against the regime.
Thousands of Iranians clash with police in June 2009 after defying orders to end protestsImage: Getty Images
"After shaking off the blow, the regime responded with calibrated force, eventually beating the protesters back off the streets after killing dozens, staging show trials, rounding up leaders, and sentencing activists to lengthy prison terms," wrote Borzou Daragahi, an Iran expert, in a column for Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, adding that Mousavi and Karroubi are still under house arrest.
The candidates for the Iranian presidency, parliament and other national offices are approved by the hard-line Council of Guardians, which leaves little room for anti-regime candidates to contest the presidential vote. Still, supporters of reformist candidates saw an opportunity to unseat Ahmadinejad and propel moderates to the presidency. The spontaneous outbreak of protests against election rigging showed the simmering anger against the status quo.
Emboldened hard-liners
Iran's Islamic Revolution 40 years on
40 years ago, the revolutionaries led by Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran. Anger against the Western-backed Shah regime helped Khomeini establish his hardline Islamic system, which still dominates the country.
Image: Reuters/Official Khamenei website
'I feel nothing'
On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran from exile in France. When a reporter asked him how he felt upon his return to Iran, Khomeini replied: "Nothing — I feel nothing." Some analysts interpreted his remarks as the Shiite leader's idea about embarking on a "divine mission" where emotions hardly mattered.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Images
The Shah ran out of time
Two months before Khomeini's return to Iran, an estimated six to nine million people took to the streets in the country's major cities. The demonstrations were largely peaceful, compared to the violent September 8, 1978, protests. The Shah regime, headed by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, had realized that its time in power was over and that they could not stop Khomeini's return.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/UPI
Even women rooted for Khomeini
The revolutionary mood was so intense in Tehran that even many women celebrated Khomeini's return, ignoring the fact that Khomeini had slammed Shah's measures for women's emancipation in exile. In 1963, the Shah of Iran granted women the right to vote.
Image: picture-alliance/IMAGNO/Votava
A spectacle of exuberance
In 1971, the Shah and his wife Farah Diba (seen in the picture) staged a lavish spectacle on the ancient site of Persepolis to mark the "2,500th anniversary of the Iranian monarchy." Many heads of state attended the event. Khomeini, in his message from exile, condemned the monarchy as "cruel, evil and un-Islamic."
Image: picture alliance/akg-images/H. Vassal
Exile and death
Under pressure from the Islamic Revolution, the Shah (left) had left Iran on January 16, 1979. After spending time in several countries, he succumbed to cancer on July 27, 1980 in Cairo, Egypt.
Image: picture-alliance/UPI
Consolidating power
In the beginning, women's rights were not a major issue for the Islamic revolutionaries. They only imposed hardline Islam after consolidating their victory.
Image: Tasnim
Soldiers join the revolution
Upon Khomeini's return to Iran in 1979, the military did not confront the protesters. On February 11, the army declared itself neutral. Despite that, the revolutionaries executed several generals in February and April.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/EPU
New government
Soon after his return, Khomeini declared the monarchy, the previous government and parliament illegal, and said he would appoint a government "because of the fact that this nation believes in me." According to Iran experts, it was not self-deception but reality.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/FY
The liberal face of the revolution
Mehdi Bazargan, a scholar and pro-democracy activist, had campaigned against the Pahlavi dynasty, for which he had been incarcerated for several years. Khomeini appointed him as his first prime minister, although Bazargan was critical of him as well. Bazargan had called Khomeini a "turbaned Shah" after a meeting with the Ayatollah in Paris. He remained in office for only nine months.
Image: Iranian.com
Occupation of the US Embassy
In November 1979, radical Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran and took the embassy staff hostage. The students were fearful of Shah's return to power with US help. Khomeini took advantage of the situation. He dismissed his opponents as "US allies."
Image: Fars
Ali Khamenei – guardian of the revolution
In 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was elected by the expert council to succeed Khomeini. Khamenei, to this date, has the ultimate power over all state institutions. Although the 79-year-old does not have the same charisma as his predecessor, he represents the policies of Iranian hardliners who refuse to reform the system and continue to persecute dissidents.
Image: Reuters/Official Khamenei website
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The Green Movement was not reactionary; it represented the aspirations of Iran's urban middle class that could no longer be fulfilled under a theocratic system. It demanded an overhaul of the political system, more freedom and more rights in the country. The Green Movement, thus, was more than just the popular "Where is my vote?" slogan.
Iranian expats around the world, including the United States and Europe, backed the Green Movement. The international community also expressed its support for the demonstrators. But the Green Movement activists were also against the policies of the US and its Middle Eastern allies - mainly Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The movement's anti-imperialist stance was thus different from the regime's anti-US rhetoric. It emphasized that Washington's policies for the Middle East were actually emboldening their country's extremist regime and not weakening it.
Ten years after the Green Movement took the country by storm, it has fizzled out, and the Iranian regime is more powerful than ever. The current US-Iran conflict continues to strengthen the regime and its leader, Ali Khamenei. Before Donald Trump became US president, Iran's moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, was able to bring Iran closer to the international community, but he is no longer in the driving seat.
"A military confrontation with the US would be a godsend to Iran's hard-liners. They would try to use it to further militarize the domestic sphere and appropriate all levers of power," Ali Vaez, an Iran project director at the Crisis Group nongovernmental organization, told DW.
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Experts have said that a military conflict in the Persian Gulf has shrunk the space for Iranian progressive groups even further. The 2017-18 protests against the ruling clergy and the feminist protests against headscarves are a thing of the past now. The anti-US and anti-Israel narrative, which the regime has used since the 1979 Iranian Revolution to consolidate its power, has gained a new life due to the latest US-Iran flare-up.
Future of moderate movements
Some analysts paint a brighter picture for Iran and have said that despite the Green Movement’s perceived demise, its democratic ideals have seeped into Iranian society and are making their presence felt in an indirect way.
"Although the Green Movement has ended physically, three elements of the movement are still alive: the democratic demands of the Iranian middle class; the use of street protests as an alternative to the ballot box; and last but not least, the continued resistance," Reza Alijani, an Iranian activist who left Iran for Paris after the 2009 unrest, told DW.
"However, we should be aware of two important changes that have occurred in the past few years: the emergence of economic dissidents and the society’s insistence on more radical political approaches to deal with problems," Alijani added.
Frustrated Iranians take to the streets in anti-government protests
The mass protests in Iran were initially about economic woes and foreign policy. Now, demonstrators are questioning the country's system of government. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is blaming the "enemies of Iran."
Image: Reuters
Disillusionment on the rise
High unemployment, high inflation and a deepening divide between poor and wealthy Iranians: The economic crisis in Iran is a major cause of frustration for many people. The easing of international sanctions following the 2015 nuclear deal has not improved people's living conditions as expected.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo
Public uprising
The majority of protesters so far are poor Iranians. People from major cities across the country converged on the capital, Tehran, to vent their anger when demonstrations began on December 28. They have since expanded to cities and towns in almost every province.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/STR
Political demands
It is not clear who is spearheading the protests, or if anyone is leading them at all. The demands have, however, become more political: stop backing the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, no intervention in Syria and Iraq. The protesters are urging the government to focus on domestic problems. There have also been calls for Ayatollah Khamenei to step down.
Image: twitter_arteshbood
'Enemies of Iran'
Five days after the demonstrators first took to the streets, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, reacted to the protesters' demands, accusing "enemies of Iran" of using "different tools including cash, weapons, politics and [the] intelligence apparatus to create troubles for the Islamic Republic."
Image: picture-alliance/Anadolu Agency/Salampix
Harsh response
Authorities report that 450 people were arrested in connection with the protests. Twenty-one people are believed to have died in violent clashes, among them 16 demonstrators. They are the largest protests Iran has seen since the disputed 2009 presidential election.
Mansoureh Shodjaei, a women rights activist based in the Netherlands, said that although the Green Movement no longer has a physical presence in Iran, the impact of its democratic approach and the types of its demands and methods have greatly influenced the Iranian politics in the past decade.
"The Green Movement represents non-violence, individuality and the importance of citizens rights and pluralism," she told DW.
But the Green Movement’s legacy is under pressure from external factors. The international community has done little to support Iran's civil society. Its policies are focused on larger narratives about geopolitics, that have weakened progressive voices in the Islamic country.
Experts have said that the failure of the Green Movement, and other moderated voices in Iran, not only expose the Iranian regime, but also the role of the international community in its dealings with Iran.
