The Iranian opposition leader and ex-presidential candidate Mr. Mousavi was taken to the hospital this week with a life threatening cardiac condition. This event injected new energy into the opposition movement (at least on the web), and may have far reaching, and unforeseen, consequences. According to the "guardian", Mr. Mousavi's spokesperson in paris, Mr. Ardashir Amir-Arjmand, is saying that "Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, bore ultimate responsibility for his (mousavi) well-being."
This naturally occurring event has, somehow, raised the stakes in the political struggle against the regime in Iran. Prior hostile statements from the green movement were directed at, and limited to, president Ahmadinejad and his government. It is a major shift for the green movement to openly and directly attack the supreme leader (the real dictator of Iran). By the green movement, I mean it's leaders and not the poor revolutionaries on the streets, who already risked their lives a few years back shouting anti-Khamenei slogans. At the time, the opposition "leaders" chose to remain committed to working within the Islamic republic system; much good that did them.
In 2009 post election semi-revolt, the green movement leaders, Karoobi and Mousavi, made it clear that they were not committed to what their followers really wanted, the overthrow of the Iranian theocracy. This timid stance, left the revolutionaries on the streets in "no man's land", and discouraged many ordinary Iranian from joining the green movement.
The indecisive leadership, or lack of leadership, in the face of the brutal "shock and awe" tactics by security forces, doomed the pacifist green movement to failure. Three years later, the green revolution legacy is hundreds of deaths, thousands of political prisoners, many more self-exiled rank and file, and a top leadership under house arrest dying of old age.
Three years ago, the green movement could have been the beginning of something huge in Iran; Mousavi could have chosen a different, more defiant, path of courage to match the heroism shown by his young supporters who staged peaceful demonstrations under a de facto Marshall law.
Instead of fully committing to the revolution on the streets and risking prison, Mousavi and Karoobi got one and a half years of humiliating house arrest for their, attempted, half ass "revolution light".
Instead of taking it to the next level and risking death as a hero, Mousavi may now die at age 70 from a heart attack. In hindsight he might have preferred the legacy associated with the first option, the heroic death that triggers true change in Iran.
Instead of galvanizing a revolution and leading the nation into a new era, we now have a beaten down leader, withering away under house arrest. It would be an extreme irony if Mr. Mousavi was to become more impactful in illness (or death), than he ever was at the height of the green movement.
In any case, the green movement's only way back into the political arena is to join the upcoming "chicken revolution", when Iranians revolt en mass to protest chicken prices. I hate to admit it, but chicken has an unusual unifying effect on the different Iranian opposition groups within Iran. For whatever reason, it doesn't have the same effect on opposition groups based outside Iran, but perhaps that's yet to come.
Viva the chicken revolution!
