The demonstrations which began in Iran on Dec. 28, 2017, have never completely petered out. Every few days, protesters seemingly spontaneously take to the streets in a different city or province motivated less by high politics than accumulated frustration with 40 years of corruption, repression, and failed economic promise.
Today, however, the slow motion uprising in the Islamic Republic took a new turn. Crowds have marched through the streets chanting “Marg bar Filistin” (Death to Palestine!), voicing their frustration at the priorities of an unelected leadership which prefers to transfer billions of dollars to a conflict in which Iran has no natural interest while many Iranians go hungry.
More significant, however, is the general strike which on Monday closed the Tehran bazaar. Here, for example, are bazaar merchants marching while chanting against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
#Tehran bazaar protests target Khamenei: “We don’t want an incompetent Supreme Leader, we don’t want it.” #بازارتهران pic.twitter.com/1qABjtuvyF
— Farnaz Fassihi (@farnazfassihi) June 25, 2018
The Tehran bazaar isn’t simply a traditional market in a city where shopping malls are becoming increasingly common, nor is it a tourist attraction. Rather, as former parliamentary speaker Abdollah Nategh-Nouri once explained, “The bazaar in Islamic culture has always been regarded as a focal point of cultural, social, and economic activities.” In Tehran, especially, it has historic significance as the place where revolutions begin.
Consider Edward Browne, a British scholar and Orientalist who presented one of the best first-hand accounts of Iran during the first decade of the 20th century. In 1905, as the shah traveled to Russia, Browne noted, “The Shah’s journey created a bad impression in his capital … and the bazaars were closed for five days.” Most scholars date the beginning of Iran’s constitutional revolution that same year to a general strike in the bazaar that followed the police beating of several merchants in a dispute over sugar prices.
It was the loss of bazaari support that ultimately doomed populist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh a half-century later and enabled the CIA-sponsored coup to succeed. As the late Iran scholar James Bill wrote, “As Mosaddegh began to seek extraordinary political powers for himself … the bazaar and religious groups angrily departed the coalition…. The loss of the traditional middle class was a serious blow to Mosaddegh; it effectively cut his connections with the lower middle classes and Iranian masses.” In Answer to History, the Shah’s post-revolution memoir, he acknowledged that the anger of the bazaaris helped push revolution, though he argued that his efforts to modernize the institution was necessary.
Regardless, it is hard not to see the bazaaris believing they had the last laugh as their turn and embrace of the Islamic Revolution helped topple a 2,000-year-old monarchy. As for revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he too understood the importance of the Tehran bazaar. In a Feb. 19, 1978 speech, he declared how the bazaar demonstrated popular support. “Even Tehran is ninety-percent closed, and it is no easy thing to close down Tehran,” he said. “With this kind of hullabaloo, they try to pretend that they have the support of the people. But this general strike is itself a living answer to them.”
Well, Mr. Khomeini, with the bazaaris denouncing your successor’s legitimacy, who has the support of the people now?
The Islamic Revolution was an accident of history, not the natural apex of Iranian political evolution. Like the Soviet Union and all other regimes that depend on repression rather than the consent of the governed, it is doomed to fail. The question has never been if, but when. And, increasingly, as regime officials send tens of billions of dollars outside the country, as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei nears the end of his life, as the economy continues its death spiral, and as protests now spread to the Tehran bazaar, it seems that the answer to that question could be tantalizingly near.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
