“I don’t know what solidarność means in Persian. But this is what it looks like….”
This is the facebook comment of a Polish friend. Across the globe these days, when looking at the massive protests in Iranian cities, memories come back of Berlin, Budapest, Prague 1989 – in other words, of the peaceful revolution against European communism that ended the Cold War, heralded the collapse of the Soviet Union and meant the demise of state socialism as well as a triumph for market democracy. Manifestations of mounting anger about a regime suppressing freedom, the global excitement, the regime’s reactions ranging from helplessness to intransigence to violence, its allegations of “foreign interference”, but above all, the feeling that we are seeing one of those rare but momentous points in time when history is made by the people in the street (quite literally): Whoever has lived through those dramatic months at the end of the eighties in Europe, had a clear sense of déjà vu this week about Iran.
So is this ’89? The short answer is no, because a collapse of the mullah regime is not imminent, according to most observers. The long answer is, however, that depending on further developments, this may very well be something like Prague in 1968. And I am less referring to the violence applied by Soviet troops then, although massive violence now seems to follow in Iran. The much more important parallel is that most of the people then, and certainly all of their leaders, did not want to abolish socialism. They wanted “socialism with a human face”, just like the demonstrators in Iranian cities constantly repeat they are not marching for “regime change”, only for their votes to be respected, for reform and more personal freedom. And come to think of it, even Poland’s striking shipyard workers in August 1980 did not dream about a market economy. But they paved the way for its arrival 9 years later, just like it took the Czechs and Slovaks 21 years to make Venceslas Square again reverberate with their protest – and this time, it was for the end of communism, period. But all that means that in a wider sense, and with all due respect for cultural and historical differences – yes, we may witness some sort of ’89 moment, if not now, then in 1 or 2 or 3 years, not in 10 or 20. (Maybe YouTube and twitter have helped accelerate history, too). After all, it took a whole year from the first massive protests against the Shah in 1978, to the takeover of Ayatollah Khomeini in early 1979.
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An agreement was tentatively reached on 21 October in Vienna between Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), France, Russia and the US. Details of the deal are still not public and the deal is not sealed yet (the Iranian delegation needs clearance from Tehran). Still, the general elements of the deal are known and they raise important questions and leave some critical matters of Iran’s nuclear dossier essentially unresolved. Iran has agreed to ship a significant share of its Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) stockpile to Russia for further enrichment. The fuel will then be processed into fuel rods and returned to Iran for use in its Tehran Research Reactor, under IAEA safeguards. Pending clarification of what additional elements the deal addresses and includes, here are five questions that presumably remain unanswered.
