Four years on, however, young Iranians have sloughed off that apathy and headed into the streets in their thousands, to wage passionate protest against an election they consider fraudulent. Young people who did not even bother to vote in 2005 are braving serious reprisals to support Mir Hossein Mousavi, the man they believe should have won power; Facebook martyrs co-opting the regime’s own ideology of martyrdom to incite even greater fury and protest.
So what has changed in Iran to bring about this remarkable shift? The answer lies partly in Ahmadinejad’s tenure as president, an era that has raised the misery quotient of most Iranians, regardless of class, age or ethnic background. But the scale of the protests being held across Iran today also suggests a despair that is more deep-rooted than simply outrage over what they see as a stolen election. In my view, it also reflects a fundamental antipathy toward a revolutionary regime that Iranians have grown to consider unaccountable, indifferent to the rule of law, corrupt and incapable of meeting its people’s basic needs.
I moved to Iran in the summer of 2005 to work as a reporter and start a family. I found life there difficult but bearable: the economy was poor, but buoyed by soaring oil prices; traffic and pollution were stifling, but you could hold hands in the street or have coffee with a friend of the opposite gender without risking arrest. Book stores stocked copies of the latest western bestsellers, and magazines and literary journals flourished. The authorities permitted the occasional rock concert, and tolerated young women’s flouting of Islamic dress codes. Even the murals of scowling ayatollahs had been repainted with cordial smiles. Iranians still wanted much more, but you if asked them if things were better than in the past, most would have said yes.
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