Show The evolution of a revolution Robin Wright Special to the Los Angeles Times How ironic A regime that came to power through a brutal revolution ina in ina a country suspected of secretly d developing loping a nuclear w weapon weapon apon is now facing its biggest challenge from peaceful civil disobedience The largely silent street demonstrations by day and haunting chants echoing across rooftops by night are not so far a counterrevolution That's not even their intention What they are doing however is forcing Iran's Islamic regime to face the same ideals that have swept across ross five continents over the last quarter of a century the supremacy of popular will justice accountability and the transparency of power The demonstrators may not succeed Iran's New Right the war-hardened war second gener generation tion of leaders who wear hats instead of turbans still has the political power and the physical tools to contain the current confrontation That could couldwell couldwell couldwell well mean a second and final term for President Mahmoud J i and if it does the theocracy may increasingly evolve into a during the next four years But long term the feisty election campaign and the protests have given legitimacy to the core ideas of political change Its It's all so central to what the United States wants to see happen throughout the Middle East Yet its it's also so Iranian For 14 centuries has been about passionate belief about sacrifices in the name of perceived injustice and challenges to leadership These are the principles that stirred stored people to action when questionable election results were announced just two hours after the polls closed For a century Iranians have been political trailblazers in the nation 57 Islamic bloc During the 1911 1905 Constitutional Revolution a powerful coalition of intelligentsia bazaar merchants and clergy forced the dynasty to accept a constitution and Iran's first parliament In 1953 the democratically elected National Front coalition of four parties led by Prime Minister Mohammed pushed constitutional democracy and forced the last shah to flee to Rome until US U.S. and British intelligence orchestrated a coup that put him back backon on the Peacock Throne And in 1979 yet another coalition of bazaar is clergy gy and intellectuals mobilized the streets to end dynastic rule that had prevailed for about 2500 years So the angry energy unleashed last week week from the northern Caspian coast to southern Shiraz is the natural sequel spurred on by century technology and the Internet Each of the first three phases left indelible imprints on l Iranian anian politics The fourth will too The 1999 student protests failed because they involved only one sector of society it was a body without a head or a strategy But the current swathed green-swathed uprising involves an emerging coalition that includes students and sanctions- sanctions strapped businessmen taxi drivers and former presidents civil servants and members of the national soccer team Key clergy have thrown j in hi their turbans too Ayatollah Hossein Ali the designated heir hen hento to the revolutions revolution's founder until his criticism of the regimes regime's injustices in 1989 issued a virtual dismissing the election results and urging Iranians to continue reclaiming th their ir dues in calm protests He also warned security forces not notto notto notto to follow orders that would eventually condemn them before God Today censorship and cutting telecommunication lines cannot hide the truth wrote Senior clerics in the holy city of many of whom never favored an Islamic republic for for fear fear its flaws would taint Islam also have not embraced the election outcome Even the brother of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hadi himself a cleric and former member of parliament ent urged that an impartial committee investigate the election results and provide a full public the coalition expands the stakes are widening well beyond who ends up as president The two faces of the Islamic Republic Ali and 6 former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mir are now pitted against each other The religious ideologue gue against the lay technocrat The two men embody the central d debate bate that increasingly has obsessed Tehran over the last three decades Is the Islamic Republic first and foremost Islamic or a republic In other words does Gods God's law or mans man's law have the last word The debate was once beyond public reach No longer Unless can satisfy the protesters all the brutal tools of Revolutionary Guards and paramilitary will willbe willbe willbe be unable to sustain his legitimacy At the same time however hundreds of thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets not to reject the current constitution but rather to demand that the individual rights it guarantees are enforced Past international crises are being invoked to forecast Iran's fate supporters fear Iran's security forces will re-enact re Chinas China's crackdown in Square Regime supporters If compare to tofo fo former mer Soviet President Mikhail fe fearing ring the undoing of their own revolution if he prevails But whatever happens in hi Iran will be distinctly Iranian in style and outcome The movement already has invoked Shiite symbolism Mourning traditionally is marked in commemorations on the third seventh and days after a death a cycle also used to galvanize greater public outrage when the shahs shah's forces killed protesters in 1978 The commemorations often led to new clashes and more deaths and then volatile new cycles of mourning It was no accident that called for forthe forthe the mass demonstration Thursday to mourn the dead killed Monday The cycle is only beginning The I day commemorations traditionally are most important The stunning protests in m this fourth phase of Iran's political journey will change the country county further her The only only i M question is IS how long it will it-will will take k f Ij t J I |