Harvard Profs. Doubt Iranian Opposition Success

Despite a week of consistent protests following a disputed presidential election in Iran, most Harvard Middle East scholars interviewed in recent days said they doubt the Iranian opposition will succeed in ushering their own reform-minded candidate into power, though the professors said the events have left the Islamic Republic weaker.

Most professors said they view a widespread crackdown by the Iranian government as more probable than an overhaul of the existing regime structure, though the majority also said they could not write off the possibility of a full-fledged revolution.

The protests began a little over a week ago, when thousands of Iranians took to the streets after officials announced a landslide victory for incumbent hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. Protesters alleged widespread electoral fraud, and rallies intensified throughout the week, and have since drawn sometimes violent reactions from the government.

Kennedy School Professor Graham T. Allison, whose specialties include Iran and international defense, said that the outcome of those protests is more likely to resemble Tiananmen Square in 1989 rather than Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. But he added that recent elections, whose results he said were most likely fraudulent, have “significantly weakened” the legitimacy of the “mullah-cracy.”

Kennedy School Professor Emeritus Marvin Kalb, whose area of expertise also includes Iran, also said he does not see a new regime taking charge, even if the current structure will have to accommodate new realities. “No matter what happens over the next couple of weeks and months, the government of Iran cannot stay the same,” Kalb said.

Nonetheless, Kalb said that a significant shift has already taken place: “People are prepared to go into the streets and say things they have been afraid to say or not willing to say in the past 25 years.”

History Professor Charles S. Maier ’60 compared predicting a revolution in Iran to a weather forecast.

“It’s like saying, ‘Will the weather be fine tomorrow or rainy?’ No one can tell you with authority,” he said. “It seems hard to believe a revolution can take place, but that seemed hard in 1979 too, and it seemed hard in many other places [where revolutions occurred].”

Maier added that “a serious type of long-term civil war” would most likely be necessary for a revolution to take place.

But History Professor Roy P. Mottahedeh, who specializes in Middle Eastern intellectual history and is of Iranian descent, said he believes a revolution may occur, and added that it is important to remember that since martyrs sanctify any cause in the Iranian context, the more people the regime kills, the more the opposition will feel “sanctified.”

Mottahedeh also suggested that the West may not have as much to fear from the threat of a nuclear Iran as it thinks.

“The Iranian government is so disorganized that God knows if they even know where [the nuclear program] is,” he said. “It’s fractured, I should say—not disorganized. So fractured that one part doesn’t know what the other part’s doing.”

But Law Professor Alan M. Dershowitz said that the United States must take whatever steps necessary to ensure that Iran does not procure a nuclear bomb.

“This is a suicidal nation,” he said. “It’s a terrorist nation.”

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.