The Iranian Opposition: “What Now?”

The Iranian opposition is demoralized these days, too weak to withstand the powerful tools employed against them by the Iranian regime. The government has successfully blocked Internet sites, arrested protesters and sentenced them to death, and deployed its Revolutionary Guards to quell student rallies and street protests. In this WP article, Iranian activists have been asking about what had happened to their movement but were hoping for new strategies with which they could recoup and reorganize. For sure, their unity in number has been diminished as evidenced by thinning street protests. “I hope they can come up with new strategies, but I have no idea what those should be,” says a blogger who is also a member of an organization of Web activists. “But I guess the government would just repeat what they do normally; declare each protest illegal and flood the streets with security forces . . . In the end, the street is the only place where we can show how many people we are, but few people are ready to go to prison or get hurt,” he said.

Indeed, in countries where freedom of speech and expression is curtailed, the street has become the battleground for expressing dissent. As Natan Sharansky puts it, “freedom is rooted in the right to dissent, to walk into the town square and declare one’s views without fear of punishment and reprisal.” After all, public expression of dissent in order to succeed must have a grassroots mooring.

But the streets of Tehran or any of its town squares are not safe these days. Not if the Revolutionary Guards are standing in the way. The best place for the opposition to go seems to be the underground. The other is the information superhighway, if they can find another ramp to go back to it. These places, real and virtual, offer opportunities for the opposition to still be able to wage their battle and yet escape the repressive hand of their cruel government.