The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat recently published this column by Elias Harfouch on the situation in Iran:

 A ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Iran? 

1 June 2007

In line with what similar regimes do, Tehran could not find a better way to cut short voices within Iran than ‘uncovering’ a US spy network. These voices had expressed doubts about the dialogue that has begun in Baghdad with the ‘Great Satan’.

Thus, four Iranian citizens holding US citizenship were charged with working for the CIA. They were accused of planning a ‘velvet revolution’ - according to the Iranian version - that would eliminate the Islamic revolutionary regime, which has yet to lay roots down although its thirtieth year is just round the corner!

Could such a regime, established by Imam Khomeini, be so fragile that it is threatened by an academic activist, a journalist, a social scientist and a representative of a US non-governmental organization concerned with peace? Are the Iranian officials, who boast that they have ‘unlimited’ military capabilities according to a recent statement by President Ahmadinejad, so afraid of the activities of these four, even if we assume that they have a quality of espionage?

Regimes typically look for such kinds of false accusations, when they choose to direct their eyes at home, deciding to throw those who do not agree with their opinions in prisons, or send them to the gallows. Such could very well be the fate of these Iranian ‘agents’, or some of them. In light of this suspicious shift of attention towards these ‘criminals’ and ’spies’, these regimes are often preoccupied with all kinds of deals, conspiracies and calculations, in order to gain external protection and to provide refreshing oxygen to prolong the life of these regimes. Thus, the arrest of ’spies’ is an attempt by this regime to assert its legitimacy in the face of internal ‘conspiracies’, even though this self-same regime has been trying for three decades to get US recognition. Thus, the arrest of opposition figures and the holders of dissenting views, who are ‘acting against national security’ is a cover for secret contacts and deals in other capitals that have no goal but t! o grant the ruling order foreign ‘legitimacy’. This only comes after widespread suspicion everywhere over the honestly of the domestic ‘legitimacy’ the regime alleges it has obtained.

The Iranian Revolution fears the eruption of another ‘revolution’ that could remove the regime on the lines of the revolutions in Eastern Europe! If this fear is true, and if the Iranian regime already feels that its situation has reached the same level as those regimes in the late 1980s, then this indicates a state of serious internal deterioration, economically and politically, that the arrest of four ’spies’ will not help with. Probably the Iranian regime has not yet reached this state. Probably it is using the propaganda of foreign conspiracy to eliminate internal opponents whose voices are becoming even higher, and who are calling for reforming the course of the economy, public services and the regime’s political administration of foreign crises, most notably the management of the nuclear dossier which has only to emerge from a tunnel only to fall into another. So suggest the results of the meeting in Madrid yesterday between Ali Larijani and Javier Solana.

The strengths of regimes are provided by internal circumstances and economic conditions and the strength of its people’s conviction that the regime is offering them the best opportunities to progress. When the system starts tampering with these conditions, its fear of foreign ’spies’ becomes justified. This is what the Iranian situation now indicates, which was a prelude to the collapse of totalitarian systems of a similar type. The Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, whose fate the Iranians are afraid to meet now, did not fall by conspiracies, but by stretching their people’s patience to the hilt.

Iran may be far away from this situation, as we said earlier, but talk of the ability of the four ordinary Iranians to overthrow the regime just because they have US citizenships means that this regime is not any more confident of itself than its own opposition. It is also alarming that Iranian jitteriness over its fate is not consistent with the President’s statements that “the regime has passed the point of being afraid of falling”. There must be someone in Tehran to inform President Ahmadinejad that there is a ‘conspiracy’ afoot against the regime!