Bernard-Henri Lévy

(c) Alexis Duclos

Is this a case of massive cheating? A new kind of coup d’etat? How do we interpret the strange election in Iran, whose results were announced by media affiliated with the secret services and militia – even before the polls were closed? Considering the absence of international observers, the fact that the election officials demanded by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rivals were chased away from polling places with billy clubs, and the climate of terror in which the whole process was steeped, it is hard to come down on one side or the other with much certainty.

Nevertheless, three things have become quite clear.

The first is that, in every way, this election bore only the appearance of democracy. Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s main rival, was no less a player than the incumbent. On the key subject of Iran’s “right” to nuclear arms, he espoused positions that were hardly different from those of Ahmadinejad. And, when questioned about his opponent’s denial of the Holocaust, he didn’t hesitate to declare: “Even if there was a holocaust in Germany [we can appreciate the subtlety of the phrase 'even if'], what does that have to do with the oppressed people of Palestine, victims of a holocaust in Gaza [need we say any more?]?”
In other words, the Iranian Gorbachev has still not, unfortunately, taken center stage. The man who would be bold enough to advocate true perestroika remains inconceivable and unconceived in an Islamist republic that is, for the moment, sealed shut. And the observers who rambled on about the “alternative” presented by Mousavi, the former prime minister under Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as the all-powerful director of the Iranian equivalent of Pravda, were overly naive – a little like those who, during the ascendancy of the Soviet Union, talked about the otherwise imperceptible conflicts of factions within the master structure, and thereby further maintained the charade. This is a fact.

The other fact is the desire for change on the part of a substantial proportion – perhaps even a majority – of Iranian society. They include the angry voters whom we have seen defy the militiamen since Sunday. The women who, in Tehran, Isfahan, Zahedan and Shiraz, call for equal rights. The young people, constantly connected to the Internet, who have made Facebook, Dailymotion and the “I Love Iran” site the theater of a playful yet formidable guerrilla war. The taxi drivers, who are the messengers of freedom of expression. The intellectuals. The unemployed. The shopkeepers protesting a regime that is ruining them. In short, those who defiantly reject the defrauders. The bloggers and jokesters who oppose the whited sepulchers of the Islamist-military apparatus. The anonymous author of the joke relayed by text message via millions of cell phones, to the apparent delight of the protesters: “Why does Ahmadinejad part his hair down the middle? To better separate the male and female fleas.”

They voted, all of them, for Mousavi. But without illusions. For lack of anything better. Like the Polish under Solidarity, who, in the last years of communism, restrained their own revolution, waiting for the regime to self-destruct and implode.

Finally, the third certainty is that now, more than ever, the initiative in Iran must be taken by democracies. One of two things will happen. Either the partisans of realpolitik will prevail and we will bow down before the alleged outcome of the ballot boxes, and – like the French minister of foreign affairs in 1981 who, at the moment of the coup d’etat against Solidarity, coined the notorious phrase, “We will do nothing,” and thus confirm the worst. Or, we will use the means at our disposal – more numerous than we think, considering that Iran is a diplomatically isolated country, with a regime whose neighbors more or less secretly wish for its downfall, and a battered economy incapable of even refining its own oil. And we will avoid the double catastrophe of the intensification of repression, and perhaps bloodshed, in Tehran – and, the unstoppable strengthening of a jihadist state that, when armed with the nuclear weapons pledged to the Hidden Imam upon his apocalyptic return, would constitute a terrible danger for the world.

Let’s summarize. From these three certainties, considered together, arises a clear obligation: to aid and strengthen, with all our might, the Iranian civil society in revolt. We did this past with the USSR. We eventually understood, after decades of cowardice, that totalitarianism, in its ultimate state of putrefaction, only becomes strong when we are weak. And we discovered how to organize strong ties of solidarity with dissidents who ended up defeating the system. The equivalents of those dissidents exist in Iran, and we are discovering that they are infinitely more numerous and powerful than those who lived during the Soviet communist era. We must support them. We must encourage them. President Obama’s “outstretched hand”? Could it be extended to the youth – to the honor of a people that produced Avicenna, Rhazes, al-Ghazali and so many others? Such are the stakes.
Philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy is the author, most recently, of “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism” (Random House).
(Translated from French by Sara Phenix)