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Iran: Bahareh Hedayat Letter from Evin Prison

“The problem of the Reformists was—and is—that they want to create a series of changes with little danger while also preserving and boosting the system.

But the hope-giving movement of today is free from the shrapnel of political Islam, and this is clear from its slogans. In order to explain what it wants and does not want, this generation of protestors has not resorted to any concept that has a religious or even quasi-religious pedigree, and this is a great accomplishment. This method and path were completely intuitive and arose out of the protestor’s collective wisdom.”

And that is not an exception. Whether in Tunisia and Egypt or Libya and Syria, the 2011 uprisings, and later the 2019 uprisings in Sudan and Algeria, did not resort to religious slogans and concepts.

One of the reasons for this accomplishment is that the current movement, in a completely self-motivated fashion, did not seek any coalition with the present political structure, because fundamentally, it had no relation to them; in contrast to the Green Movement, which basically came into being through a form of unwritten coalition with (occasionally discounted but generally acknowledged) elements of the Islamic Republic’s political structure.”

I somehow don’t see that the forces mentioned by Hedayat are able to overthrow the regime without the supported of other social forces – which she never mentions. Hedayat does not include the army. Is the Iranian army – and the police – as ‘homogenous’ as the religious establishment and shielded from any split? 

‘Revolution is inevitable’

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