Newly-elected President Ahmedinejad is defiant of criticism despite the protests from the Moussavi camp in Tehran and (it is said) in other cities.

He rejected claims of vote-rigging and he summarized the other side’s position with some accuracy but also equal scorn: “They may be upset … They spent a lot of money to make propaganda [and] they expected to win, so it is natural that they are disappointed and upset.”

The official Western reaction has been muted – caution then ‘dismay’ with ‘real doubts’ from the US (not exactly a ringing endorsement of the dissident opinion) about the poll. Comment was shunted sideways in the US to Vice President Biden.

Israel’s Lieberman predictably called for co-ordinated action against Iran that he is not going to get. Europeans tended to condemn the post-election crackdown rather than the result. The Iranian President was expected to be in Moscow on June 15th so the Russian view is clearly relaxed.

Assume Nothing

The Western media have tended to whip up the protests as far more important than they probably are, although, equally, the President’s claim that they were ‘unimportant’ is going far too far. They are important for two reasons:

• the social technocrats of Iran’s future are clearly minded to Western values and they must be either accommodated or crushed in the next two decades, at least from a clerical perspective;
• the urban middle classes are angry at the pain they are feeling from populist economic policies and, without 'bourgeois buy-in' to the regime, the clerical establishment has a serious long term political problem in the making.

But it also has to be said that the President appeared to find no difficulty in getting working class Iranians and party workers out to a more peaceful rally to celebrate his victory.

The bottom line is that, with clerical backing, the President is in power for four more years (in itself a time limitation that places him well above most regional Western allies in terms of democratic credentials).

The liberal media are still convinced of vote-rigging but no hard evidence has yet been provided. What has been provided looks a little dodgy in places. The question remains open but we have to say that clerical instincts drive towards fair practice.

The country has not hitherto seen anything other than a bit of vote tinkering (not unknown in the West). The consensus is really held together largely by the undemocratic Guardian Council in pre-disqualifying counter-revolutionary or ‘unsuitable’ candidates in advance.

So, the jury is out but there are arguments in both directions – including that the reformists are quite capable of inventing media material for their own ends.

The Clampdown

Much attention is given to the clampdown on social networking sites, disruption to communications, jamming of the BBC, media censorship and restrictions on foreign journalists.

While not condoning any of these in normal times, one has to wonder whether the entire political technology of ‘colour’ revolutionism, with its mobilization of activists through the use of new technologies, forces the hand of the authorities.

Is not some drastic action required if (and we use the conditional advisedly) majority opinion threatens to be overturned by a well funded activist operation in a form of non-bloody Bourgeois Bolshevism?

We may be seeing both the high point and the low point of organised liberal protest in emerging world environments. The real question is whether these revolts actually do reflect majority opinion (a presumption as much as an assumption in the case of dictatorships).

Or do they merely represent the aspirations of ‘vanguard classes’ (in effect the urban middle classes) against the interests of the conservative masses? There is a liberal tendency to behave like communists in believing that their moral rectitude can overwhelm 'less aware' or less educated publics.

So it is possible (and we cannot know this) that this may be the revolution that has no clothes. A full democracy with rights in which the media and new technologies can be manipulated and an obvious dictatorship dependent on a capital city might both be vulnerable to colour revolutionism ...

... but a conservative democracy, in which the interests of the wider country are ‘protected’ against vanguardism, might soon see restrictions of these types as necessary in protecting that democracy against minorities and foreign influence.

Possible Faults In Western Perception

In reading any commentator this morning, you have to ask whether the writer has become emotionally engaged or not in a reformist campaign which expressed their aspirations, their values and those of their sources much more than that of ‘objective’ reporting.

The Western Press have a tendency to see such events in apocalyptic terms. The reality is that Iran remains an opaque society to Western generalists and that these latter have tended to depend on interpretations from parties that have an agenda.

The Western Press also tend to see Iran through the eyes of their own concerns (anti-Western rhetoric and verbal attacks on Israel) yet, self-evidently, there is a significant cultural benefit in attracting working class votes with a ‘by jingo’ message in any country that feels under threat.

Iranian voters are unlikely to vote along any lines other than their own personal, community or regional interest but, if Iranian workers and poor are anything like their counterparts from Idaho to Vladivostok, their default position, all things being equal, will be ideologically patriotic.

If the middle classes of Tehran could not come up with economic arguments for these people to vote for them, then some vague progressive liberalism is scarcely going to do it. It would be like a progressive Labour leadership with student and intellectual support but no local government or trades union muscle.

The establishment certainly worked against the reformists, but then it could be argued that the reformists had the advantage of substantial ‘free’ money and expert advice in manipulation for their campaign. The attempt to paint this crisis in terms of good and evil is flawed from the start.

On Populism

Populism works – at least until its contradictions surface. Ahmedinejad’s policies may have contributed (it is said) to inflation and unemployment but they were redistributionist. There will have been beneficiaries who would know that the goose that laid the golden egg would be killed with a reformist victory.

Similarly, a worker might legitimately ask whether he lost his job because of populism or sanctions – and if sanctions, then the reformists may be said to be in league with those responsible for sanctions.

The apocalyptic liberal prediction that Iran has stepped back from democracy to theocracy is also still unproven. It was never a democracy in the Western sense in any case.

It may even be that the struggle that has taken place as 'big' money and Western values entered into an Iranian election for the first time may cause a re-think.

Iranian society could conceivably become more democratic in some respects (in terms of popular responsiveness), perhaps at the expense of elite groups attempting Western-style political management.

Indeed, almost everything stated about Iran in terms of its inner tensions and past attempts to build consensus by the establishment (in this case, clerical) could be said about any Western polity.

The ‘riot factor’ is only greater here because Iran was created in its current form barely thirty years ago out of a national revolution, but there is no reason to believe (as of today) that it is about to implode.

The probability is that, in four years time with four years to prepare, anti-populist forces will have adapted to the challenge and developed a much wider appeal. The first stage to that process would be for them to dump consultants and build a base in the country.

The West is clearly shaken by events. It gambled and it lost on the outcome. It is probable that the regime will simply follow the path of the last four years with a secure enough domestic base to do so. Since the US remains committed to engagement, the future is open …

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