sign in sign up
<<
Home , 2018 Dervish protests, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Fatemeh Karroubi, Iranian Green Movement, Iranian Revolution, Mehdi Karroubi

1

This thesis has been approved by

The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology

______Dr. Stephen Scanlan , Sociology Thesis Adviser

______

Dr. Elizabeth Lee Director of Studies, Sociology

______

Dr. Cary Frith Dean, Honors Tutorial College 2

PROTEST AND POLICE:

AN EXPLORATION OF THE GREEN MOVEMENT AND THE 2017-18

IN

______

A Thesis

Presented to

The Honors Tutorial College

Ohio University

______

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of

Bachelor of Arts in Sociology

______

By

Zachary Gheen

June 2019

3

Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 4

II. POLITCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT OF IRAN ...... 7

III. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE...... 15

IV. METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...... 25

V. FINDINGS ...... 30

VI. OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITATIONS ...... 51

VII. CONCLUSIONS ...... 56

VIII. REFERENCES ...... 59

4

I. INTRODUCTION

Over the past ten years, the has stood out as an area of significant political unrest. In 2009, for example, demonstrators took to the streets under the leadership of Mir Hossein Mousavi, , and their close associates in Iran.

Following the contested July 2009 , millions gathered in major urban areas to call for the removal of the incumbent President (Drissel 2017).

While initially quite strong, bringing out anywhere from an estimated hundreds of thousands to millions, what came to be known as the Green Movement was brutally repressed. Dozens of protestors were killed, hundreds were injured, and thousands were arrested (Hashemi and Postel 2010). Significantly, the Green Movement is the largest popular movement in Iran since the Iranian in 1979 at this point in time.

While efforts in Iran were being stifled, a contentious wave was preparing to arise across much of the , ultimately with varying results. In and

Egypt, long-standing presidents were removed from office, with a military coup soon following the efforts in the latter of these countries. In places like Syria,

Yemen, and Libya, civil conflicts raged and caused enormous displacements of peoples and massive deaths (Gelvin 2015). Syria has experienced massive death tolls as a result of the that began in 2011, and has only recently came to a close. The United

Nations provided estimates of the death toll until 2016, after it became impossible to verify the number of deaths as a result of the difficulties in obtaining reliable information and that estimate was reliant upon data from 2014 (Specia 2018). As I near completion of the present analysis, Algerian protests pressured 82-year-old Algerian president

Abdelaziz Bouteflika to not pursue an additional term and extend his power past the 5 twenty-year mark. While this has been made, protestors are urging the

Algerian president to immediately step down before any sort of negotiations between the government and protestors will be made (BBC 2019).

Returning to Iran, lively protests emerged in several provincial towns beginning in

December of 2017. These protests were notable in that they did not occur in the large urban centers typical of the 2009 Green Movement. The protests were seemingly comprised of economically disadvantaged young men. Contentious messages calling for the downfall of Khamenei especially garnered international attention

(Dehghan Kamali and Graham-Harrison 2017; Gast, Andone, and Fox 2018). Following the beginning of the more recent round of protests in 2017, dozens of Iranian women were arrested for violating Iran’s strict official dress code by publicly removing their mandatory headscarves (Mackintosh 2018). Subsequently, Iranian police arrested prominent lawyer and prosecuted her for a multitude of charges related to her work. She has been sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes

(Magra 2019).

The emergence of new protests in Iran provide scholars an opportunity to investigate thought-provoking variations in protest dynamics over the last 10 years. As alluded to above, the recent protests in Iran are a far departure from the 2009 Green Movement.

Seeking to be at the forefront of this conversation, this research seeks to identify important similarities and differences between the Green Movement and recent Iranian protests as well as the potential connections between these movements. More specifically, this research explores the interaction between protest policing and protest 6 dynamics in particular seeking to provide a deeper understanding of Iranian protest experience over the last 10 years.

Although research regarding protest policing has been quite popular in the field of social movement studies, scholars have surprisingly paid relatively little attention to protest repression tactics in authoritarian states (Earl 2003). Earl notes the critical theoretical differences between forms of repression in democratic and authoritarian societies. Iran provides a very interesting theoretical case and that is why I examine it here. Rather than relying on a - dichotomy, scholars of electoral have noted that many hybrid states do not fit nicely into this simple framework and have adopted terms such as semi-authoritarianism (Ottaway 2013) and (Zakaria 1997). Iran has an interesting place in this conversation.

While there are , regular changes in power, and institutionalized political parties in Iran, they are not without their problems. For example, no national or international authority monitors elections to ensure their fairness. Council vets all

Iranian presidential candidates and is a hegemonic authority in the country. While reversals of power between conservative and reformist parties are common in the presidency as well as the , the clerical establishment in Iran has made its preference for the conservatives clear. Political parties are therefore heavily regulated and monitored by the state (Ghobadzadeh and Rahim 2016). This combination of authoritarian and democratic elements may serve to challenge many classical assumptions that generally do not acknowledge this dynamic. This research examines this relatively untouched territory in social movement studies. 7

Another key dynamic of this research is that it focuses on a non-Western case. Many of the most thorough works that detail the policing of protest rely primarily on non-

Western cases (Davenport, Soule, and Armstrong 2011; Della Porta and Reiter 1998;

Earl, Soule, and McCarthy 2003) As Loveman demonstrates, considering non-Western examples can challenge many sociological assumptions regarding social movements. By analyzing high-risk activism in Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, Loveman found that severe repression stimulates certain forms of social movements. While one would generally assume that severe repression would encourage a general demobilization of protest efforts, Loveman suggests that severe repression may in fact inspire repression from certain sectors of society as a result of the severity itself (Loveman 1998). In this research by examining the non-Western case of Iran, I therefore challenge many assumptions about social movement dynamics, protest policing, and its forms.

II. POLITCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT OF IRAN

To ground this research properly, I will give a brief overview of the modern history of

Iran. The current government of Iran was founded within a revolutionary context. As the

Iranian has cemented itself within the Iranian political dimension, it has continuously butted heads with reformists and those unhappy with what they feel to be the unfulfilled promises of the . The following section will trace Iran’s political history since the 1979 revolution, and will draw attention to the important dynamics that have greatly contributed to the protests of the last decade.

With the fall of the Qajar Empire in 1925, and the subsequent rise of Reza

Pahlavi and the Pahlavi state, Iran has long experimented with different political and economic models. Throughout all of these developments, Iran remained a significant 8 place of interest to the foreign policy of a number of powers, including the British

Empire, Germany, the , and the (Amanat 2017). Because of disastrous and antagonistic relationships with these superpowers, continued grievances accumulating at home, and an uneasiness about the Pahlavi state’s friendly relationship with the United States, revolution broke out in 1979.

The end of the first Pahlavi era began with the onset of World War II. During

World War I, the Germans had supported the Iranian nationalist project. German expertise was crucial to many of the financial and infrastructural projects initiated by the

Pahlavi regime. German-run technical schools prepared young Iranians to work in new industries. Although this was a lucrative relationship for the Iranian state, it was not without its risks. Russian invasion was imminent, and the Germans were uninterested in sending aid. The Pahlavi state then reached out to the British, the archrival of the Soviet

Union at the time, who also refused assistance.

Three events quickly unfolded that ultimately spelled out the end for ’s rule. First, a pro-German coup was staged in , led by Rashid Ali Gailani. Although the British quashed this , Gailani and his troops fled to Iran. This deepened

British suspicions of Iran’s true relationship with Nazi Germany. Second, a joint force of

British and French forces had invaded Syria and Lebanon, demonstrating that European powers were not afraid to extend their forces into the Middle East. What finally sealed the Pahlavi’s fate, however, was the eventual alliance between the British and the Soviets against Nazi Germany. With the Allies victory, they demanded an expulsion of all

German nationals from Iran. While this was obviously to weaken Iran and prime it for invasion, the state had no choice. The state was in no position to negotiate, and offered 9 full access to the Iranian railroad system as a sign of good faith. However, this was to no avail, as Allied forces began their invasion of Iran in August of 1941. Following this, massive panic and unrest erupted across Iran. Reza Shah was forced to flee. The only consolation given to Reza Shah was the promise that his son, would assume the throne (Amanat 2017).

The rise of Mohmmad Shah served to steer Iran back to its pre-Pahlavi trajectory.

While the democratic experiment largely proved unsuccessful in the pre-Pahlavi years, this did not stop Iranians from considering a new politically pluralistic state again.

Despite the Allied occupation remaining one of the most painful and dark periods in

Iranian historical memory, it coincided with national movements to nationalize the

Iranian oil industry, the opening up of political space, greater freedom of the press, a parliament system, and a budding labor movement. New ideologies that emerged included , ultra-, and some elements of Islamic .

While it is ironic that this new age of pluralism was ushered in by the same occupying forces who initially supported the military coup led by Reza Shah, they each had their own particular reasons. The Soviet Union viewed the fractured Iranian state as an opportunity to foster another communist ally, whereas the British were chiefly concerned with their dominance over the oil industry. The devastated Iranian economy allowed the occupying forces to have incredible purchasing power.

In order to jumpstart the economy again, the Iranian state began searching for foreign aid. The most well equipped to provide aid in the post-World War II years was the United States. American support allowed the previously dismantled Iranian army to be reorganized. Still reeling from economic stagnation, the Iranians sought ways to 10 nationalize the oil economy and back out of predatory agreements pushed primarily by the United Kingdom. The British were again unwilling to cooperate – they themselves felt that the oil revenues were necessary to rebuild after the destruction of World War II.

The Iranian quest toward oil really began in 1951. British nationals were forced out of the oil fields, and the issue was brought to the U.N. Security Council.

Despite British anger, the American government urged them to reconsider any serious conflict with the Iranians, fearing Iran would fall under communist control. Although

British nationals had been forced off the oil fields, this did not stop Britain from initiating a powerful trade embargo on Iranian oil. Negotiations had grinded to a standstill, sparking protests across Iran. After the embargo went into effect, the Iranian government cancelled all diplomatic relations with Britain. This combativeness, which was mainly espoused by the Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddeq, extended into his relationship with the shah, the army, and the Americans.

Considering this position, the Americans grew ever more fearful of Iran falling under Soviet influence. In June 1953, a plan for CIA-backed coup in Iran against

Mosaddeq was approved. With the shah’s reluctant approval, the first coup attempt was staged, and failed miserably. In response, Mosaddeq dissolved the Majles (the Iranian parliament), and called for an end to Pahlavi rule. The communist Tudeh Party lent its support to Mosaddeq. However, a second coup attempt was carried out days after this first. With his home surrounded, Mosaddeq surrendered to the Iranian military (Amanat

2017).

Coinciding with the downfall of Prime Minister Mosaddeq at the hands of the

Pahlavi military, alongside U.S. and British support, Iran again returned to autocratic rule 11 by the Pahlavi family. With the return of the shah, the Iranian stage initiated a series of reforms known as the in 1963. These reforms were designed to endear the shah to the Iranian peasantry, and to significantly weaken the status of the landed elites. The White Revolution was often described as the set of policies that would usher

Iran into the modern age, making the state economically competitive. Alongside significant land reforms came greater visibility for Iranian women. Two policies in particular, and liberal social programs, did not win the shah many favors among the economic and clerical elite. In the context of the White Revolution, future

Supreme Leader emerged as a leader of dissent. The protests led by

Khomeini were brutally repressed, with security forces declaring and bringing in tanks to break up the gatherings. Although repression was heavy-handed through the 1960s and 70s, dissent managed to persist through a cultural renaissance.

Television, film, radio, and the arts enabled a culture of dissent to persevere. The first signs of revolution appeared alongside the beginning of the Carter Administration, who happened to be the first U.S. administration to raise concerns about the mistreatment of the Iranian people by the shah. In addition, the shah’s health began to fall under question.

In the early , he was diagnosed with lymphoma. In 1977, Ali Shari’ati, a prominent revolutionary intellectual, and , Khomeini’s oldest son, died.

Both deaths were seen as suspicious, and many suspected foul play by the shah and his regime. Following the deaths, massive protests erupted, and martial law was once again reinstated throughout many Iranian cities. On September 8, 1978, one of the most notorious events in the history of the Iranian Revolution occurred. Iranian troops opened fire on a crowd consisting of protestors and guerilla fighters who had gathered in Jaleh 12

Square in . After two hours of fighting, 95 individuals lie dead, and many more wounded. This event served as one of the primary motivators for the Iranian military to lose its faith in the Pahlavi state. The crisis came to a head on November 5. The shah appointed a military government, hoping that it would quell the unrest. However, the military was ultimately unwilling to enforce martial law. On , 1979, Ayatollah

Khomeini arrived in Iran. He was welcomed by , and sought to initiate a new government over the following 10 days. The speed and ferocity of the in Iran shocked the world (Amanat 2017).

This takeover was not as peaceful as Khomeini would have liked, however. The new clerical government spent the next 4 years silencing nearly all dissent emanating from the Pahlavi remnants, the Iranian left, and some religious detractors. In the face of the rapid and surprising political changes brought along by the Iranian Revolution, the economic situation remained relatively the same. Even though the Islamic sought to increase industrialization, the state was heavily reliant on oil. The increasingly young population grew tiresome of the unfulfilled promises of the revolution, and elected the reformist to the presidency in 1997. Khatami’s ideas represented a significant departure from what had been the norm in Iranian politics since the eve of the revolution. He sought for a more lax, open-minded approach to domestic issues, and pushed for an end to the isolationist and antagonistic persona Iran had cultivated in foreign affairs. With nearly 70 percent of the electorate behind him (with 80 percent voter turnout), it seemed as though days were numbered for Iranian hardliners.

Fearing the reformist currents taking hold, the conservative forces rallied together. By the end of Khatami’s second term in 2005, his reform efforts were blocked, 13 and he was politically isolated. The election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August of

2005 pursued efforts to reverse the few reforms initiated by Khatami, much to the establishments delight (Amanat, 2017).

Unrest, while flaring up periodically, was largely quiet during Ahmadinejad’s first term. His reelection in June 2009, following serious allegations of vote tampering, sparked the largest protests in Iran since the Iranian Revolution. Led by the defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, millions marched throughout Iran in support of , democracy, and accountability. This movement demonstrated to the Iranian regime, as well as the international community, that the desire for reform within the is alive and well, despite the dangers posed by the repressive efforts of the state (Amanat 2017). The Green Movement was conceptualized in two different ways by its supporters. One side expected large, structural changes to the Iranian state that sometimes went as far as calling for the downfall of the Supreme Leader. Others, more typical of the reform movement, called for meaningful constitutional reforms and an expectation of free and fair elections. Although both were unsuccessful, some felt optimistic with the election of in

2013. Important campaign promises included an effort to release Green Movement leadership from , and a de-escalation of security in the Iranian political space.

Both remain unfulfilled, however. (Haghighatjoo 2016).

On December 28, 2017, Iranians initiated the largest popular movement against their leadership since the 2009 Green Movement. These protests were met with swift repression as police opened fire on protestors. Significantly, chants and acts of resistance targeting Supreme Leader occurred in several cities with posters being 14 removed and “Death to Khamenei” chants being uttered. Chants in support of the shah, who fell in 1979 were also recorded. While turnout in the peripheral provinces appeared larger than during the Green Movement, participation in of Tehran was limited. Overall, turnout was much lower than in the Green Movement. The spread and intensity of these protests was especially shocking (Dehghan Kamali and Graham-

Harrison 2017). Economic complaints were at the heart of many protests. was widespread, especially amongst the increasingly youthful Iranian population. When were lifted after the Iran nuclear deal, the Iranian people had expectations of prosperity. Although the sanctions were lifted, many entities remained on blacklists, and new sanctions have since been implemented by the United States (Gast et al. 2018). President Rouhani’s decision to share the state budget was especially controversial. Although seemingly done as part of an effort to increase transparency, the move backfired by revealing massive cuts to subsidies for the poor, all while increasing spending on the military and on religious institutions. These religious institutions are also known to serve as credit companies, further compounding the frustrations felt by some

Iranians (Cunningham and Mufson 2018).

This research seeks to understand the differences presented between the Green

Movement and the 2017-2018 protests. I focus primarily on the changing nature of movement leadership, the evolution of the Iranian repertoire of contention, and the ways in which the Iranian state has asserted control over media access in the country. Each of these contribute to an overall understanding of how repression interacts with contentious politics, and the change that comes as a result. 15

III. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

In carrying out this analysis, I build on a foundation of social movement research grounded in three areas: 1) the changing nature of movement leadership in response to repression; 2) the evolution in repertoires of contention; and 3) the use of media by the state. I am particularly interested in teasing out how repression intersects with and radically alters the nature of each of these dynamics. As such, in this section I first provide an overview of repression as a foundation of the research and then examine literature that comments on the intersection between repression and the additional areas noted above.

Repression

Earl (2003) argues that dominant definitions of repression are inadequate, contending that many do little to differentiate between different types of repression. In addition, these common descriptions often fail to acknowledgement key theoretical different between state type and form, as alluded to above. Earl adopts Tilly’s (1978) definition of repression which defines repression as any action that raises the cost of collective action by a contentious party (Tilly 1978). One particular strength of this definition is that it does not limit repression to state action. Earl notes the growing influence of private actors in the field of repression. Secondly, Earl encourages scholars to look beyond the obvious forms of repression, such as arrests, intimidation, and murder.

Commonly, works focusing on repression focus too heavily on the use of force, obscuring the role of more covert forms of repression such as the restriction of movement through law or the use of government-friendly media. This work by Earl results in a three-dimensional conceptualization of repression: the identity of the repressive agent 16

(state representative, state-affiliated, or private), the character of the repressive action

(coercion or channeling), and the un/observability of the repressive action. Earl concludes by demonstrating the power of the developed typology to suggest further research interests (Earl 2003).

Khawaja (1994) makes a similar distinction between repression types, differentiating between preventative measures (such as expulsion and house arrest), actions against individuals, and collective punishments in their analysis of the interactions between collective action and different forms of repression in Palestine. This distinction between different forms of repression allows Khawaja to analyze how each repressive action affects collective action in different ways. For example, Khawaja demonstrates that direct repression resulted in higher rates of collective action, contrary to expectations. Even more surprising was that Khawaja found that repression targeted at individuals was especially catalyzing for collective action, again contradicting common theoretical assumptions. By distinguishing among these types of repression, Khawaja’s findings were expanded farther than if repression had been theorized as a singular concept (Khawaja 1994). This leads me to define repression broadly, which I conceptualize as any action that served to increase the costs of engaging in contentious politics in an effort to reduce the intensity or frequency of contention.

Movement Leadership

The practice of targeting protest leadership with repressive efforts, which has occurred widely in Iran, is not a new practice amongst police forces. At the 1997

Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, a set of meetings with representatives from 18 different countries to promote free and open trade was held at the University of 17

British Columbia (UBC). The possibility of protest from human rights activists troubled many representatives from nondemocratic states. In turn, these representatives began pressuring the Canadian government to insulate their representatives from protest efforts.

Fearing a loss of foreign investment, the Canadian government complied. A critical aspect of the policing efforts over the course of the summit was what Ericson and Doyle

(1999) term “preventative arrests”. These arrests targeted protest leaders, and would take place in the days leading up to a planned protest. In one case, three plainclothes officers arrested a protest leader after delivering a speech at a UBC building. The leader was tackled, muzzled, and thrown into an unmarked car. Following this incident, he was charged with assault causing bodily harm by allegedly injuring the ears of a UBC security guard with a bullhorn used during a protest speech two-and-a-half weeks before the

APEC meeting. This individual, along with others arrested during the APEC meeting were released, but only on the terms that they would cease participating in APEC protests

(Ericson and Doyle 1999). An interesting detail noted by Ericson and Doyle is that the arrests of protest leadership spurned further protests, instead of stifling them, but this is not explored in the research. Similarly, authorities targeted protest leadership during the

2002 World Economic Forum (WEF). Prior to one gathering, protest leadership attempted to negotiate with police to allow for a lane of traffic to be left open for the protest concession to pass through. Police rejected all attempts at negotiation, and subsequently arrested leadership and some onlookers. Again, however, the effect this had on future protests is not explored (Vitale 2005).

While sociologists tend to be hesitant to explore social movement dynamics related to the role of movement leadership, the field of counterterrorism studies has quite 18 thoroughly explored the topic (Falk 2015; Johnston 2012; Jordan 2009; Mahmood 2015;

Price 2012). If one can accept that a terrorist organization is a form of collective action, the application of this literature base becomes clear. The targeted killing of capture of terrorist leaders, often referred to as , has become one of the primary tools used by states across the world in addressing .

Examining the relationship between and suicide bombings in the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Falk’s (2015) research suggests that there is a positive relationship between the two, in that killing political or spiritual figures in the various

Palestinian resistance movements seemed to be linked to a decrease in suicide bombing attempts. However, this finding is left unclear for several reasons. Other key factors in reducing the amount of suicide bombing attempts could be the military takeover of the

West Bank, which occurred in 2002, and the subsequent construction of the separation fence in 2003. When data from Gaza is isolated, where those dynamics do not apply, the results are much more conclusive of a positive relationship between targeted killings and a reduction in suicide bombing attempts. As Falk notes, however, this research does little to suggest how targeted killings affect the operations of terrorist groups (Falk 2015).

Price (2012) criticizes scholar who employ a methodology similar to that of Falk

(2015) for several reasons. Primarily, Price argues that it makes little sense to measure terrorist activity solely through quantifying the number of attacks. The reality is that terrorist actions encompass things beyond suicide bombings or other attacks. For example, several terrorist incidents involve solely property damage. To measure the effect of decapitation on terrorist groups, Price elects to code a group as inactive if they have not carried out a violent act in the past two years. This is then crosschecked with 19 whether or not the group’s leadership was killed, captured, or both. First, Price finds that decapitated groups have a significantly higher mortality rate than groups with leadership still present. Second, earlier removal (i.e., within the first year of a group’s existence) results in higher mortality rate as well. Third, it appears that method of decapitation

(capture, killing, or both) makes no statistical difference in mortality rate; all three are effective at ending group actions. Fourth, any form of turnover, not just decapitation, results in a higher mortality rate. Fifth, Price finds that group size has no effect on group survival. Finally, the data suggests that religious groups are less resilient than nationalist groups following decapitation. It is important to note that these findings run counter to the consensus of the counterterrorism field, which states that decapitation at best has no effect on terrorist actions, and at worst is counterproductive and results in an increase in terrorist action. Price acknowledges that while in the short-term, attacks may increase, overall the strategy is effective because it has a lethal effect on groups themselves (Price

2012).

Research carried out by Jordan (2009) demonstrates the uncertainty of this question in counterterrorism studies. While Price (2012) found a positive relationship between decapitation and terrorist group demise, Jordan instead finds that decapitation is a counterproductive strategy overall. Groups who have not experienced decapitation had a higher rate of decline when compared to groups who have experienced decapitation, calling into question the effectiveness of the strategy. Despite these counterintuitive findings, Jordan was able to identify that several key characteristics: group size, group age, and group type; were important explanatory attributes. Larger, older, 20 religious/separatist groups were more resilient than smaller, younger, ideological groups

(Jordan 2009).

In sum, this literature base demonstrates that there is anything but consensus on how the repression or removal of leadership affects a movement’s livelihood. While many social movement scholars have not explored the effect that leadership repression or removal has on movements, counterterrorism scholars are still prioritizing debating the overall effectiveness of leadership decapitation as a policy before they investigate the more specific effects of leadership decapitation. My research seeks to be a step in answering these questions by tracing the alterations in the Iranian movements over the last ten years.

Repertoires of Contention

Actions that are available and known to those engaged in contentious politics is part of what is referred to as a movement’s “repertoire of contention” (Tilly 2005). The available repertoires of contention for claim making depend upon the political opportunity structure of a society. Political opportunity structure refers to the opportunities available and threats posed to those involved in contentious politics and to alterations of those opportunities and threats to contentious politics (Tilly and Tarrow

2007). The two most important state qualities for understanding a government’s ability to influence the political opportunity structure is the government capacity to affect to influence the population, activity, and resources in its territory and the degree of democracy experienced by the society. As Tilly and Tarrow (2007) explain, large- capacity governments make significant changes when they decide to intervene in their population; they alter distributions of wealth through taxation, the control the flow of 21 people and resources. Low-capacity governments may attempt the same activities, but to a much lesser effect. Democracy, in this case, refers to the extent that citizens have encompassing and equal rights, and a large degree of direct influence over state officials and policy (Tilly and Tarrow 2007).

Tilly and Tarrow use these two qualities to map regimes along four categories: high- capacity undemocratic (which they place Iran in), low-capacity undemocratic, high- capacity democratic, and low-capacity democratic. These typologies allow for very different manners of contention. For example, high-capacity undemocratic regimes are notable for their tendency to feature “…both clandestine oppositions and brief confrontations that usually end in repression,” (Tilly and Tarrow 2007, pg. 56), whereas low-capacity democratic regimes are known to attract military coups and ethnoreligious conflicts. Tilly and Tarrow identify six properties that define political opportunity structure in regimes:

1. The number of independent centers of power

2. The regime’s openness to new actors

3. The instability of current political relationships

4. The presence of important allies/supporters for claimants

5. The tolerance/intolerance of collective claim making

6. Significant changes to the above items

The properties above affect the sorts of opportunities and challenges presented to people engaged in contentious politics. In instances where political dynamics are rapidly shifting, regimes tend to stick with tried-and-true methods of repression, leaving challengers in a much more flexible position. At times, this flexibility pushes some 22 challengers to form alliances with power holders, which limits both the flexibility of challengers and the rigidity of power holders. These fast-changing relationships make the course of contentious politics terribly difficult to predict. In sum, Tilly and Tarrow suggest that understanding changes in contentious politics requires an analysis of “A regime’s relations, institutions, opportunities, threats, and repertoires. Contention feeds back. It also reshapes political relations, institutions, opportunities, threats, and repertoires…” (Tilly and Tarrow 2007, pg. 67). Techniques of repression and repertoires of contention respond to one another, shaping the contentious environment in a society.

State Use of Media

Following Khawaja’s (1994) suggestion that social movement scholars conceptualize repression as being more than just standard police arrests, this research considers the state use of media as a potential repression technique. Throughout the coding process, it became apparent that several high-profile policing acts had media statements attached to them either before the policing had occurred, or after a protest event was repressed

(sometimes both). In addition, the data reveals that Iranian state officials would often use media channels, typically owned or significantly influenced by the state, in order to associate protesters in both movements with extremely negative sentiments. The following section reviews how state governments in societies with a highly controlled media environment utilize this media environment as a tool of repression.

Contrary to what common assumptions may be, authoritarians’ relationship to the media is not one of complete and total domination. Rather, a certain degree or form of media independence actually proves useful to a regime, as identified by Lorentzen

(2014). A common challenge to authoritarian states is corruption. Allowing investigative 23 reporting on local-level bureaucrats acts as a check on local corruption. This serves multiple purposes, such as improving the efficiency of the state economy, and allaying the possibility of corruption being cited as a motivator for revolt. Importantly, a regime will still desire to maintain control over reporting even on local-level issues; there is a danger that widespread local reporting could reveal that discontent is a widespread feeling amongst the population. Another measure relevant to a regime’s decisions regarding the media environment is the level of social tension present in the country.

When tensions run high, more is necessary to prevent revolt. When they are low, censorship can be eased up. The goal is that, through this strategy, discontent is kept at a constant level. By controlling the kinds of information available to potential challengers, a regime can have its thumb on the possibilities of contention. Another contradiction is the assumption that the liberating power of the Internet forces authoritarians to lessen their own grip on the media. Rather, Lorentzen finds that regimes instead increase their influence over the media, making the true state of affairs rather blurry with varying representations between media sources (Lorentzen 2014). This research complicates our understandings of authoritarians’ relationship to the media.

Rather than a simple conflict between the media and the state, there is a deeper level of calculation where the state must consider different tradeoffs regarding the openness of its media environment.

Stockmann and Gallagher (2011) came to a similar conclusion. Again, contrary to our expectations, the commercialization and liberalization of media sources has not occurred in tandem with political liberalization in authoritarian . While some have hoped that with increased global integration, some of the ’s authoritarian 24 tendencies would be tampered down, what has been observed is instead adaptation.

Although there are has been a large increase in the number and forms of media in China, many adopt positions that follow closely with the party line. For example, media coverage of labor disputes has proven highly popular. Several anecdotal stories involve a wronged worker seeking legal retribution against a cruel employer. What typically follows are instructions or advice for readers on how to best navigate the legal system to address workplace problems. This demonstrates that the Chinese state and its affiliated media partners have identified ways to spin state problems in positive messages. Rather than writing about poor working conditions in China, or the difficulties involved with the legal process, what instead readers are presented with is a report on the legal tools available to Chinese citizens. Despite an increase in litigation, this is may not be an example of anti-regime sentiment or instability. Rather, it may be an attempt to convert to an authoritarianism that is more stable; a conversion made possible through commercialized media. Rather than liberalized media posing a challenge to the state, the state instead finds methods to increase regime stabilization through the press (Stockmann and Gallagher 2011).

All of these scholars used modern China as a case study to explore authoritarian governments’ relationship to the media. By focusing on Iran as a case study in this research, I hope to provide new insights on this relationship. Given Iran’s heavy reliance on oil in its economy, government-media relations may look different when compared to a state like China, which is less dependent on raw resources in its economy (Egorov,

Guriev, and Sonin 2009). Egorov et al. suggest that oil-rich countries are notable for their significantly less free media environments. Whereas states like China are very dependent 25 on economically efficient relationships with bureaucrats to manage the state economy, oil-based economies are less interested in compensating for corruption given the large amount of rent that can be collected from oil revenues. Essentially, poor economic policy and mismanagement is easier to overlook with the gains that oil produces. This also provides a large incentive for a leader to stay in power. The wealth generated from oil is vast, and controlling the media may protect the regime from revolt or revolution (Egorov et al. 2009).

The literature review for this research occurred alongside the data collection and coding process that I detail below and as encouraged by a grounded theory approach I take in this analysis. As such, the literature reflects the emergent themes that arose from my data.

IV. METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

A vast part of the Arab world and Iran has shown diverse protests in terms of size, intensity and repertoires of contention in the last decade. There has been a great deal of work investigating the Iranian Green Revolution (Dabashi 2011; Hashemi and Postel

2010)and the Arab uprisings (Gelvin 2015; Kurzman 2012; Nabavi 2012), but the wave of Iranian protests beginning in December of 2017 provides social movement studies with a new arena to investigate. At this time, very little is known about these current protests in Iran. Since this is a relatively new development, it is useful to approach this research with a methodology guided by grounded theory. The hallmarks of a grounded theory approach include an open, systematic, and comparative coding system that is constantly refined until the appropriate concepts have been uncovered from the data. In keeping with this approach, more specific lines of inquiry will be developed as data are 26 collected and interpreted (Mattoni 2014). Initial theories and ideas will be modified and improved as the data uncover new concepts. The research questions above serve as a firm foundation, and significant deviation is not expected.

A grounded theory approach is especially useful when considering newly arising protests and potential social movements where there is little existing data. As illustrated by Glaser and Strauss, grounded theory is theory that “fits” the data. The processes of data collection and theorization are interrelated. As more data are collected, initial theories are refined. This, in turn, informs further data collection. Grounded theory is therefore primarily concerned with the intentional generation of theory, and this theory is to grow out of an open and comparative coding system (Glaser and Strauss 1980).

As Glaser, Strauss, and Charmaz all emphasize, grounded theory approaches resemble a set of guidelines and principles with an opportunity for creativity and flexibility, rather than a rigidly defined set of methods. Charmaz especially emphasizes the use of rich data capable of producing a thick description. The ideal data set captures the full range of events, details about participants’ views and actions as closely as possible while revealing changes over time, and contributing to the formation of analytic categories that can be compared within the dataset (Charmaz 2006).

Many of the data collection methods that Charmaz suggests (in-depth interviews, ethnographies, elicited texts) from which a thick description can be crafted require direct participation on the part of subjects (Charmaz 2006). Because this is not easily achievable in this project, I instead use news media reports, newswires, and news transcripts from multiple mainstream media sources. Care is taken to address the different potential biases that are associated with using media sources to study protests. Biases can emanate from 27 both the sources and the researcher themselves. News media sources tend not to detail each event of a protest movement. Of the ones that are selected, only a highlight of the different important details are included. Researchers must take care to, as close as possible, collect enough records to trace a movement sufficiently. The ideal way to do this is to collect articles from multiple, independent sources (McCarthy, McPhail, and

Smith 1996).

For this research, news media reports will be coded for information that begins to answer the following research questions:

1. What are the fundamental differences between the Green Revolution and the

current Iranian protests and why are these contrasts seemingly so prevalent?

2. How has repression interacted with movement leadership, repertoires on

contention, and the Iranian media environment throughout both protest

movements?1

In the initial stages, I used a general coding scheme. Initial codes were open enough to ensure that potential lines of intrigue were not eliminated before they can be sufficiently explored, and specific enough that they can be meaningfully built upon and elaborated.

Throughout the data collection process, reflection and analysis of emerging themes took place, further developing the coding scheme. I replicated this process until synthesizing concepts emerged. As Charmaz explains, this reflective process can be difficult to end.

1 This research question emerged as a result of the grounded theory approach that I took. Interactions between police and protestors quickly emerged as a synthesizing concept. The previous two research questions were kept general enough so that this third question had room to emerge. I also considered the following research question: What are the connections and considerations between the Green Revolution and the current protests in Iran in terms of socioeconomic status, age, gender, rural/urban status? However, data did not permit for feasible analysis of these considerations. 28

Typically, researchers arrive at a point where further refining adds little to the coding scheme and synthesis. Additionally, the introduction of new data into the dataset will not considerably change the concepts developed, assuming that appropriate data have been collected throughout the research process and concepts are allowed to rise out of the data itself. In order to make data collection feasible for the more recent protests, articles were collected up until December 27, 2018, the one-year anniversary of their outbreak in 2017.

The data coded in this research resulted from around 220 articles, split evenly between the Green Movement and the recent protests in Iran. I considered several media sources for analysis. All sources were from Western outlets, with a roughly even distribution between American and British outlets. Future research should consider coding Persian-language sources, an opportunity I will expound upon later in the opportunities and limitations section. All media pieces were collected through

LexisNexis. The sources used and the number of items can be found below in Table 1.

This diversity in sources was intended to reduce the effects of selection bias as much as possible. It cannot be totally done away with, this is a reality of working with media data

(McCarthy et al. 1996).

29

Table 1: Sources of Media Data for Analysis

Source Number of Documents

Associated Press 57

BBC Monitoring 32

Christian Science Monitor 16

CNN International 2

Financial Times 31

The Guardian 32

The New York Times 36

The Washington Post 30

While earlier protest event analysis research has been rather strict about solely focusing on protest events as units of analysis, more recent projects have expanded their focus on protest actions and the interactions within them (Koopmans 2004; Kriesi 2012).

In this research, I took this expansion a step farther by also coding the different repression techniques utilized by Iranian police. My grounded theory approach informed this decision; I recognized important differences between how the two movements were policed, and updated my initial codes to include how each protest event was policed.

Initially, I considered all codes equally. However, as the research evolved, the interaction 30 between protest behavior and police action emerged as the most interesting track both theoretically and personally. I defined codes before the coding processes began in order to help ensure intra-coder reliability. In sum, the codes fell along two primary lines for the most part: actions/responses by parties involved in the protests, and demographic information regarding the protests. I coded actions and responses for protestors, government-affiliated parties, loyalist factions, and members of the reformist movement in Iran. Demographic information coded includes educational status, economic status, age, gender, location, and overall movement composition.

This study seeks to identify key similarities and differences between the Green

Movement in Iran and the Iranian protests that began in late December 2017. I will take a grounded theory approach developed by the works of Glaser and Strauss (1980) and

Charmaz (2006). The hallmarks of a grounded theory approach include an open, systematic, and comparative coding system that is constantly refined until the appropriate concepts have been uncovered from the data. In keeping with this approach, more specific lines of inquiry will be developed as data are collected and interpreted (Mattoni

2014). Beginning theories and ideas will be modified and improved upon as new concepts are uncovered in the data. The research questions above serve as a firm foundation, and significant deviation did not occur.

V. FINDINGS

As a result of the grounded theory approach that I adopted, I found that repression altered three critical dynamics of protests in Iran over the past decade. First, there were important differences in leadership styles between the Green Movement and the 2017-

2018 protests. The Green Movement was notable for its publicly known leadership 31 figures in Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The same cannot be said for the

2017-2018 protests. I suggest that this was a strategic decision on the part of recent protestors in Iran, as Mousavi and Karroubi had been placed under house arrest for several years at this point. In addition, I also found that the repertoires of contention have altered greatly in the past decade. The Green Movement had large protest marches, whereas the recent protests are much more unpredictable, and have at times devolved into violence and property damage. Again, I argue that the repression experienced by the

Green Movement helps to explain this new manifestation of protest in Iran. The state has made it clear that large, organized protest events will not be tolerated, which may be why one observes smaller, seemingly less organized protests throughout 2017 and 2018.

Finally, I note that throughout both movements, the Iranian government has heavily repressed the social media available to Iranian citizenry and severely limit journalistic freedoms within the country.

Role of Leadership

Green Movement

As the Green Movement labored on, its leadership found itself increasingly pressured by the Iranian government. Beginning on , 2011, Mir Hossein

Mousavi, , Mehdi Karroubi, and were placed under house arrest as retribution for their involvement in the movement. At the time of this writing in 2019, these individuals are still under house arrest. This house arrest has coincided with an extreme limitation on the leaders’ ability to communicate outside of their home environment. While this may have been the most publicized action targeting movement leadership, the Iranian government made protest leaders a key target in their 32 protest policing strategy against the Green Movement. The governing authority in Iran must preapprove protest activity and this led to multiple denials of applications submitted by Green Movement leadership. In addition, it is critical to note that movement leadership was not contained to Mousavi, Rahnavard, and the Karroubi family. Rather, there existed a notable middle-level group of leaders crucial to the operations of the

Green Movement. While the Green Movement sought to carry out a rally to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the first movement protest in June 2010, Mousavi and Karroubi found themselves overwhelmed with the workload required to maintain the movement in the absence of key aides. Karroubi has been quoted saying “If this movement has a leader except the people, the authorities will quickly eliminate him. When Mr. Mousavi and I established a four-member committee to help those hurt in the post-election incidents, three of its members were quickly arrested and imprisoned. So the essential task it was meant to carry out was left undone” (Tait 2010a).

The Iranian police targeted several other notable individuals including Mousavi’s nephew, who was shot through the heart after police forces opened fire on Green

Movement protestors. His body was held for over 24 hours as state coroners conducted

DNA tests to identify it, violating Islamic tradition that calls for the deceased to be buried as soon as possible after death. Others who have faced arrest include the brother of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami and the granddaughter of Ayatollah

Khomeini. Karroubi’s son, Ali, was arrested and beaten to the point of requiring hospitalization. Green Movement leadership itself recognized the policing strategy of the

Iranian state when Mousavi stated “I explicitly and clearly state that an order to execute, murder and imprison Mousavi or Karroubi won’t calm the situation. I’m not afraid to be 33 one of the people have offered in the struggle for their just demands,” (Tait

2010b).

The Green Movement leadership was already severely weakened by the time of their house arrest in February 2011. Shortly after the December 2009 protests, which were some of the largest over the course of the Green Movement and coincided with the traditional holiday of , Mousavi released a statement in which he recognized the of the election that the Green Movement initially sought to challenge. Shortly afterward, Mehdi Karroubi and other leaders followed suit (BBC Monitoring 2010).

Continual moderation was a hallmark of the main Green Movement leadership. Mousavi and his companions were wary to challenge the organizational core of the Iranian state – criticism of the ayatollah was never something the leaders engaged in. While the Green

Movement did have a strong reformist tone, it still was couched in the basic premises of the Iranian Revolution, which necessitates some level of clerical authority in Iran.

Primarily, this stance of moderation and non-confrontation was undertaken in hopes that it would lessen the severity of any potential backlash and repression (Slackman 2010).

Despite these efforts of moderation and conciliation, the state moved forward with its hostile approach of arresting protestors, firing into crowds2, introducing large barriers to organization, as well as allegations of and suspicious suicides in prisons. This strategic decision proved overall to be ineffective in curbing the violence posed by the state. quoted the weakness of Green Movement leadership as described by an office manager who stated, “Ultimately, it’s useless to be leaderless”. He

2 This was done in a few different ways. Sometimes police would fire live rounds indiscriminately. At times, however, some noted that paintball guns would be used either to mark protestors for later arrests or to avoid killing women in the crowd. 34 went on to say that only a serious leader with clear goals could encourage him to reengage with the movement (Erdbrink 2010). Student protestors expressed similar frustrations. One female university student explained, “If we had a strong charismatic leader we wouldn’t have marched in the streets dazed and confused yesterday. I see the opposite side as the winner today. A temporary winner… We don’t have a central command. We were like a broken chain, thrown all over” (The 2010).

As mentioned above, the Green Movement leadership was placed under house arrest in February 2011. In the face of this, protests continued, albeit with a much smaller number and much more limited base. Largely, university students became the ones to pick up the mantle of leading protests affiliated with the Green Movement. Iranian youth called for protests to occur regularly on Tuesdays through March 2011 to express solidarity with the imprisoned leaders (MacFarquhar 2011). Throughout the Green

Movement, the student population took control in organizing protests in and around university campuses. While Mousavi and others were searching for institutional means to investigate, sue, and prosecute those who allegedly rigged the Iranian , students continued taking to the streets under intense pressure from police

(Yong 2010). Protester dissatisfaction was also an important quality to consider regarding the leadership of the Green Movement. In addition to the recently mentioned strategic moderation, large planned protests also ended up being cancelled by Mousavi and others.

Organizers planned protests on both the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the Green Movement throughout 2010. The protest organized around the date of the revolution largely died out due to intense regime pressure, while the protest occurring in June 2010 to celebrate the first year of the Green 35

Movement faced significant government countermobilization, and a denied protest permit from the state. Police presence was notable even in the days leading up to the June 2010 anniversary protest –the possibility of violent confrontation was almost undeniable. This cancellation drew harsh criticism from other reformists, who targeted Mousavi and

Karroubi primarily as being ineffective, indirect, and irrelevant leaders. Considering this context, it is unsurprising to see the student-led movement persevere despite the leadership’s house arrests.

Recent Protests

When compared to the Green Movement, the 2017-2018 round of protests in Iran display important differences in the form and nature of protest leadership. The more recent protests have been described as leaderless and disorganized by prominent Iranian activists such as Bahman Amoei, who had been imprisoned several times for his political activities and critical journalism. Describing the recent protests, he states that “There is no vision, no leadership, and the protests will not lead to any chain reaction across the country, at this point” (Erdbrink 2018c). This notion that the recent protests are shocking and volatile is somewhat common. Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of International

Crisis Group called the protests “an explosion of the Iranian people’s pent-up frustrations over economic and political stagnation. This is neither a revolution nor a movement”

(Dehghan 2017). In contrast to the Green Movement, no clear leadership has emerged.

While some in the Iranian community have been actively fanning the flames via social media platforms such as Telegram, no one seemingly holds the same position that either Mousavi or Karroubi held in the Green Movement (Gambrell 2018). As it stands currently, it seems that most find out about protest opportunities through their social 36 media networks, instead of from the direction of any high-level leader (Erdbrink,

Kirkpatrick, and Tabrizy 2018). A related, but slightly different phenomenon that has occurred during this recent round of protests is the interaction between Iranian celebrities and the protests. For example, former Iranian soccer star called for a consumer and reached at least 800,000 shares (Erdbrink 2018b). Although these are notable individuals, again, they are not operating at the same levels of involvement that was typical of Mousavi and Karroubi.

Although some have labelled these recent protests as leaderless, the true nature of these protests may be more complex than that. Clearly, the political opportunity structure of Iran is exceptionally narrow for potential challengers. The regime has displayed an intense intolerance for collective claim making. Protest leaders remain under house arrest and over the past decade, thousands of Iranians have been arrested for their involvement in either the Green Movement or the protests spanning from 2017 to 2018, and several have died because of government actions against protestors. Those in prison face extremely harsh conditions with significant overcrowding, a lack of communication with detainees’ families, and serious allegations of rape and torture being among the chief concerns. This repression, particularly when it targets protest leaders and their tasks in maintaining a movement, has had noteworthy effects on the movements themselves. A noticeable amount of Green Movement supporters expressed their impatience and frustration with movement leadership and their extremely cautious mode of operating.

However, Green Movement leadership had good reason to be wary. Although they miscalculated and believed that peaceful protests would heed off violence at the hands of the regime, this was not the case. Instead, Green Movement protestors were devastated, 37 and left intensely unsatisfied with the approach pushed by Green Movement leadership.

After the house arrest of Green Movement leadership in February 2011, the main organizing responsibilities fell to student leaders. Even though they sought to maintain the movement, numbers fell drastically, and it did not take much longer for the Green

Movement ultimately to fizzle out.

The recent protests have faced significant repression as well, but nothing comparable to the house arrest of Mousavi and Karroubi and their family members.

Because of the seemingly leaderless, almost ad hoc of protest organization, the repression faced by these more recent protestors mostly has centered on protest events themselves. At times, the regime has located individuals through their social media postings and arrested them as a result, but the data does not reveal anyone organizing on the same level as that of Mousavi and Karroubi. While there is no clear leader in this recent round of protests, I argue that labeling these protests simply as disorganized and chaotic is misguided. It is now abundantly clear that large, organized protest movements, such as the Green Movement, face near insurmountable difficulties operating in Iran. The regime has employed multiple techniques and strategies that target both leaders and average participants. In addition, the regime is notable for its countermobilization strategies3, which can sometimes make it seem like protestors are few in comparison to regime supporter turnout (Dabashi 2011).

3 According to Dabashi (2011), on the day of government rallies, public schools and government offices are given the day off and offered bus transportation to rally locations. Food and drinks are provided. Nongovernmental agencies and private businesses are threatened with the prospect of losing rewarding government contracts. Exams are cancelled, seminaries are mobilized. Specific camera angles and staging locations are selected to magnify the appearance of the crowd. Televised videos of the rallies are doctored, also to illegitimately magnify the numbers in the crowd. 38

As a result, I speculate two different potential explanations for why protests in

Iran have taken on this seemingly leaderless quality in the past several years. First, the role of social media must be considered. Some may view it as a tool available to protest leaders and organizers to disseminate information, recruit potential protestors, and to air grievances and build a community based on those shared grievances. Alternatively, perhaps social media has the potential to assume the role that a typical protest leader would inhabit. We may assume that the role of a leader is to be a figurehead for their organization, to rally those sympathetic to their movement, and to put a voice behind the shared struggles of a group of people. Social media communities may be able to do each of these tasks through a community-based process. The second possible explanation as to why protests in Iran have shifted from a large, organized, and bureaucratic structure to a looser, seemingly unorganized manner of operation is that the leaders who organize the more recent protests choose to maintain a more anonymous or at least more obscure position in the movement. One of the primary lessons learned from the Green Movement is that the state does not tolerate large, structured movements, and will be repress these with impunity. The popularity accrued by individuals like Mousavi brought great danger

– both to themselves and to their family members. A more underground, or horizontal, style of leadership could serve to protect these leaders from the deadly attention that the

Iranian regime has shown protest leaders in the past.

While social movement studies have been wary of the topic of protest leadership, this research suggests that leadership style (or the presence/absence of leadership), has critical implications for the actions of movement. Whereas the Green Movement had easily identifiable and influential leaders who directed the movement’s actions, the search 39 for leaders in the more recent protests in Iran has turned up few leads. The woes of the

Green Movement leaders, which include the arrests and deaths of family members, as well as their own house arrest to this day, makes the prospect of organizing contentious politics in Iran a highly risky venture. I argue that this perilous environment explains the transition of leadership styles in Iranian protests over the past 10 years from a more recognizable style to an ambiguous type. The fate of the Green Movement leadership likely serves as an example to others in Iran who would seek to challenge the regime significantly. On the other hand, it may be the case that a leader in the traditional sense is unnecessary due to the advent of social media platforms. Social media communities could serve very similar roles typically held by movement leadership, circumventing the need for an individual to put themselves at such risk.

Evolving Repertoires of Contention

Repertoires of contention evolve in response to changing political opportunity structures in a society. The political opportunity structure consists of several qualities including the number of independent centers of power, a regime’s openness to new actors, the instability of current political relationships, the presence of important allies/supporters for claimants, the tolerance/intolerance of collective claim making, and significant changes to any of the previously mentioned items. (Tilly and Tarrow 2007).

This analysis will map the evolving repertoires of contention of Iranian protestors over the past 10 years to changes in the different aspects of political opportunity structure. I argue that, similar to alterations in protest leadership, state repression played a decisive role in compelling Iranian protestors to adapt to their new realities. Just as public, identifiable leadership was a dicey position to hold, so too are certain forms of 40 contentious politics. In addition, I argue that changes in leadership style relate to changes in repertoires of contention. Demonstrations typical of the Green Movement look incredibly different from protests that one could expect from the 2017-2018 protests in

Iran.

Green Movement

At its height, the Green Movement organized protests around official and traditional holidays in Iran. While protests began shortly after the allegedly rigged presidential election in the summer of 2009, Green Movement supporters were energized by the celebration of Ashura, a religious holiday that has been given many different meanings by different Muslim groups over the years. One of those meanings is a celebration of resistance and martyrdom inspired by the death of Hossein bin Ali, the third of Shia . Falling in late December 2009, the Green Movement was notorious for appropriating state-sanctioned Ashura celebrations. This was in part a tactical innovation on the part of the Green Movement. Although protests themselves were highly controlled and repressed, the regime was unable to prevent people from gathering ostensibly to celebrate official and religious holidays (Bozorgmehr 2009). The

2009 Ashura celebrations coincided with the death of the reformist-aligned cleric

Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. Montazeri, although being a member of the revolutionary core that brought theocratic rule to Iran in 1979, viewed the clerical role in

Iran differently than the conservative clerical establishment did. Rather than advocating that the religious establishment rule supreme in Iran, Montazeri called for clerics to serve in an advisory role. While he began sharing this criticism in the 1980s, his words took on a new significance with the rise of the Green Movement. His charges against the clerical 41 establishment took root in the movement. Montazeri passed away in late December 2009 in his sleep at the age of 87. His funeral procession served as a home for dissidence, with tens of thousands gathering to protest in the holy city of . Typically, the deaths of well-revered holy men are memorialized seven days after their deaths. With Montazeri, his seven-day celebration fell on the day of Ashura, providing a flashpoint for Green

Movement protestors to organize around. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi made appearances in the funeral procession, and there are allegations that Mousavi’s car was attacked, and that at least one his associates was injured. Regime forces were seen tearing down banners and posters Montazeri, and there were reports of scuffles between protestors and regime supporters. Protest also spread to Montazeri’s birthplace in Nafajabad, Iran (Murphy 2009).

Another notable holiday that garnered a strong protestor response was organized around Quds (Jerusalem) Day. is a holiday that celebrates solidarity with the

Palestinian cause and anti- created in opposition to the Israeli Jerusalem Day celebration. While government rallies in Iran typically push this message of solidarity,

Green Movement supporters used these celebrations to target both tyranny abroad and at home. Mousavi saw the Quds Day protests as a clear example of the resiliency of Green

Movement members. Quds Day was celebrated in September, months after the conclusion of the contested presidential election. Despite consistent repression, supporters persevered and co-opted the Quds Day celebrations. To Mousavi, these protests proved that the Green Movement was not just a flare-up of political frustration and stagnation in Iran. Rather, a full-fledged social movement was born after the 2009 election– and was here to stay (BBC Monitoring 2009). Another event that proved to be 42 useful for assembling protestors were the anniversary celebrations of the Iranian

Revolution, another event typically reserved for pro-regime demonstrations. Again, this was useful in circumventing protest restrictions (Bozorgmehr 2010).

In February 2010, Green Movement leadership planned to hijack official celebrations of the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. However, Green

Movement supporters were crushed under the weight and pressure exerted by regime forces. Turnout was incredibly small, and was constrained by arrests, intimidation, and crowd control. Describing her experiences in the heavily repressed Green Movement protests, a 26-year-old woman named Saina explained, “I think a failure has triggered debates and tactical analyses that have been needed for a long time now.” Remembering the violence experienced by some protestors during the Ashura demonstrations, she stated that “It seemed like a lot of people were tired of being brutalized and continuing to go out into the streets,” (Worth 2010). This event led some in the movement to turn their criticism inward. As mentioned above, key leaders had been arrested by this point, leaving Mousavi and Karroubi without the critical support needed to be efficient leaders.

The most common focus for criticism was on a Trojan horse strategy developed and disseminated by movement leadership. On , 2010, Green Movement members had planned to interrupt a speech by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by reaching the center of the pro-regime crowd that was gathered, and then removing their conservative outer clothing to reveal a sea of green-clad Green Movement supporters. However, the near opposite happened. Authorities identified many movement supporters early in the day and either arrested or intimidated. Although it seems as though pro-government turnout was lower than previous years, the Trojan horse strategy 43 failed miserably, and stood as a time of reckoning for the Green Movement. The future was unclear (Worth 2010). What was clear, however, was that the typical strategy of organizing around religious and official holidays was no longer effective. The Green

Movement continued to sputter after this failure, leaving movement leadership in a vulnerable position, which ultimately culminated in the house arrest of Mousavi and

Karroubi in 2011.

Recent Protests

Recent protests have not typically materialized around any notable dates or events at this moment. Rather than a continuous movement that uses holidays as timely dates to organize around, the data suggests that Iranian protestors throughout 2017 and 2018 more typically were responding to more specific, local grievances. For example, many protests were in response to economic stagnation. At the turn of 2018, Iranian president Hassan

Rouhani publicly unveiled the state budget, which displayed a large increase in spending for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to roughly $8 billion4, as well as large amounts of money given to religious foundations. A significant point of contention among Iranian protestors was the apparent disconnect felt between Iranian citizens and their rulers. The expansion of IRGC funding is thought to be a result of the force’s increased participation in foreign conflicts in places like Syria. While Iranians faced intense and local corruption at home, the regime engaged in costly foreign ventures, creating frustration and resentment (Bozorgmehr 2018). In a Telegram video message, one man asked, “Why are you listening to the voice of the voiceless from

4 This is around two-thirds of Iranian defense spending 44

Syria, Lebanon… and not listening to us within our borders? Why do you want to wipe out our savings accounts and promise us worthless stocks in return?” With the slow economy, some have taken to depositing their savings into credit institutions linked to the religious organizations that have experienced an increase in state funding. Despite this investment, some of these credit institutions have started to collapse – along with the savings of disaffected Iranians. These institutions are under the direct supervision of the regime, but are still closing with little or no advance notice, sparking several protestors to action (Cunningham and Mufson 2018). When protests began to break out in the tail end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, some of the primary targets were financial institutions. Spurned by banks who confiscate land and farming equipment to collect on late loan payments, young men in the provincial town of Izeh took over the city and violently confronted Iranian police barehanded (Khosravi 2018). On December 31, 2017, armed protestors attempted to take over military bases and police stations through Iranian provincial towns. In addition, they ransacked banks, broke windows, overturned cars, and lit firetrucks on fire. At the end of the day, at least 13 people were killed in total (Karimi and Gambrell 2018). As has been alluded to, the 2017-2018 protests are much more extraordinary due to their violent nature. For example, in February 2018, there was an instance where a protestor drove a bus through a group of several police in Tehran, killing three and wounding several others. In a separate attack on the same day, a member of the was ran over a killed, and yet another was stabbed to death (Erdbrink

2018a). While there were instances of violence with the Green Movement as well, standard protests were much more the norm. In the 2017-2018 protests, violence was quite common. 45

These data imply that there are important differences between the repertoires of contention of these two movements. While the Green Movement protests consisted of standard protests, centered on national holidays, the 2017-2018 protests were much more volatile. Violence was not unheard of at Green Movement protests, but the 2017-2018 protests were known particularly for their violence. To explain these differences, I adopt

Tilly and Tarrow’s (2007) approach to understanding contentious politics. As was mentioned earlier, the Iranian regime has made it clear that large protest movements will not be tolerated. Significant challenges that threaten the status quo, such as the danger that was posed by the millions who marched with the Green Movement, can expect to be heavily repressed. If there truly was in the contested 2009 Iranian presidential election, which suggests that that regime is very closed off to new actors.

Mousavi himself was not a regime outsider. He had served in the Iranian government during the Iran-, for example, and lived a relatively quiet life up until his presidential run. Even his run was somewhat quiet, as evidenced by the fact that the

Guardian Council, who vets each presidential candidate, allowed him to run in the first place.

I argue that the narrow political opportunity structure of Iran may have contributed to the violent shift that has taken place in Iranian protests. As was mentioned earlier, Iranian protest leaders face a perilous task. Being a public, influential leader such as Mousavi or Karroubi can very well land someone under house arrest, with family members being under arrest as well, or even dead. The role of leadership is unknown with the 2017-2018 protests. The violence displayed may be a result of a lack of a moderating influence in the form of protest leadership. Green Movement supporters were 46 frustrated and annoyed by Mousavi and his companions’ restraint. While government forces were arresting, beating, and killing protestors, Green Movement leadership continually advocated for temperance and self-control. While this irritated the thrashed

Green Movement supporters, it nonetheless kept protests largely peaceful. The same cannot be said for the trajectory of the 2017-2018 protests. Without a Mousavi or

Karroubi in place to regulate protest activities, it is conceivable that recent protestors acted out against the regime to the point where they engaged in violence. If the social media-based community leadership style is reflective of the reality of recent Iranian protest leadership, it calls into the question the idea that social media communities can perfectly substitute for traditional leadership. Social media-based leadership can carry out some typical leadership activities (i.e., recruitment, information sharing, and public image) but other activities such as protest moderation, are more difficult for such leadership to handle. Still, there is the possibility that there are individuals potentially viewed as leaders who have chosen to remain underground or anonymous. If this is the case, perhaps this underground/anonymous leadership encourages this type of protest activity. Given their more concealed nature, they could be more willing to confront the regime directly as compared to the more public personas adopted by Mousavi and

Karroubi. On the other hand, their veiled status could make it difficult to assume a traditional leadership position. Within their own movement, they may not be taken seriously. Mousavi and Karroubi held a well-respected position in the Green Movement, for the most part, due to their public nature. It was Mousavi and Karroubi who stood up, challenged the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and then assumed the mantle of movement leadership. At this point, no such individual who carries a reputation like this 47 has been identified for the recent protests. As a result, it is plausible that this underground/anonymous leadership cannot exert the same level of control over this new movement.

State Use of Media

Ubiquitous throughout both the Green Movement and the 2017-2018 protests is the Iranian regime’s use of media resources as a method of repression. While the previous two sections spoke on repression in the typical sense (i.e. arrests, crowd control, etc.), Earl (2003) and Khawaja (1994) both urge social movement scholars to expand their definitions of repression and consider a wider variety of activities that impede contentious politics. In the following section, I will document how the Iranian state utilizes its domination over the media environment in Iran through two different strategies: controlling the population’s access to social media, and regulating journalistic activity. Both strategies were common in both movements and remained relatively similar throughout both as well.

Through official media channels, the Iranian regime sought to delegitimize the

Green Movement in several ways. The most prominent method was by labelling the movement as a foreign pawn, either being manipulated by or created by Western or Arab powers. Iranian state television aired a program titled “The Green Wave”, which posited that the Green Movement was a plot generated by the BBC and by al-Jazeera. Soon after this program aired, Hossein Sobhaninia, the deputy head of Iran’s National Security and

Foreign Policy committee called for action against both CNN and BBC’s Persian- language programming. In his statement, he asserted that “Without a doubt, foreign media, and especially the BBC’s Persian service and radio, are the main orchestrators of 48 disorder in the country, guiding rioting elements that support neither the candidates nor the Islamic revolution,” (Erdbrink 2009). The relationship between the Iranian regime and government-aligned media outlets is quite direct. At the height of the Green

Movement, a memo was leaked from a state-owned broadcaster that included instructions on how to propagandize the protests. Methods for undermining claims of police brutality were given, and story angles were pushed. For example, the memo stated that “In continuing with the policies of normalization, pacification and clarification of national media to confront the sedition, the propaganda should focus on seditious people’s hostility toward the Islamic regime and Islam,” (Slackman 2010). Another strategy designed to hinder protest activity were misinformation campaigns. For example, some outlets began to state that protests were planned outside of the Russian embassy to protest

Moscow’s quick recognition of Ahmadinejad’s victory. Coupled with this, there was a near total expulsion of all non-Iranian journalists. Those who remained were forced to operate under tight restrictions (Black 2009). Allegedly false videos were common during the Green Movement. Notably, state-run programming aired a video that depicted the image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution, being desecrated and torn apart by students. Such an act would be highly scandalous – the memory of Khomeini is one that is held in special esteem in Iran. This incident, which reformists claim were fraudulent, was used by conservatives in Iran as justification for increased pressure being placed onto the Green Movement (Peterson 2009).

The regime media strategy stayed consistent during the 2017-2018 protests as well. Only days after their outbreak in late December 2017, Iranian conservative media began labelling the protests as a foreign conspiracy (England 2017). With the recent 49 protests, the official line was typically that the United States and its partners were inciting protests within Iran in order to justify reinstating the sanctions that were lifted with the advent of the Iran nuclear deal. President Hassan Rouhani made this exact argument in front of Iranian lawmakers (El-Ghobashy 2018). Ayatollah Khamenei continued this theme as well, arguing that the United States and were conspiring to overthrow the

Islamic Republic using the demonstrators (Cunningham 2018).

Media blackouts were a constant reality between both protest movements. In order to constrain the Green Movement’s message, Gmail messages were filtered for content, and the Internet was essentially shut down (The Guardian 2010). Facebook,

Twitter, and several pro-Green Movement websites were also shut down in Iran. Even cell phone service was limited, making organizing an incredibly difficult task (Associated

Press 2009). With the outbreak of the 2017-2018 protests, both Instagram and Telegram were shut down in order to maintain “peace and security” (Dehghan 2017). Later on in the 2017-2018 protests, however, the regime began using social media sites to identify protestors, and to discourage citizens from engaging in the protests. Sanam Vakil, analyst at Chatham House explained that the Iranian regime become “really sophisticated in using social media to police society and groups. They very quickly started doing that, sending messages using social media to warn people not to join the protests,” (Adam

2018). This intrusion into social media has had significant effects on Iranian citizens. One individual, Maryam explained her wariness of social media (in this case Telegram), stating “It’s too dangerous. It’s too controlled. We are afraid to say something about them, so we say just, ‘Hi, how are you?’” (Adam 2018). This clearly demonstrates how, 50 even without a direct threat, the regime has intimidated certain citizens into compliance with their media strategy.

Following Lorentzen (2014) and Stockmann and Gallagher (2011) findings, which suggest that authoritarian states’ relationship to the media is not one of complete and total domination, this research also suggests that authoritarian states develop a strategic relationship to the media. Rather than complete and total domination, Lorentzen,

Stockmann, and Gallagher explain that modern authoritarians have adapted to the new commercialized and globalized media environment. Realizing that completing commandeering the press is impossible, authoritarians are moved to realize opportunities for regime stabilization through the media. This research suggests that this is a more recent development in Iran. Throughout the Green Movement, journalists were arrested by the dozen, and websites were constantly being closed down. Some social media sites remain closed to this day, having never been allowed in the period of time between the time of the Green Movement and the emergence of the 2017-2018 protests. The invasion of social media websites like Telegram by the Iranian regime represents a new frontier in state repression. Iranian protestors have already been pushed into a more disorganized and volatile position during the 2017-2018 protests that were mainly organized on social media. If social media itself becomes impossible to organize protest on, it is difficult to say what the future holds for potential political contenders in Iran. With so many avenues for contentious politics being intolerable to the regime, it feels as though Iran is a powder keg, just awaiting the moment where the pressure has to be explosively released. 51

VI. OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITATIONS

Several additional avenues for future research emerged as I analyzed my findings.

The ability to engage with Persian-language resources, whether it be social media pages or media accounts, holds very rich possibilities for understanding protests in Iran. In addition, an increased focus on protests that occurred at critical junctures, such as immediately following the house arrest of Green Movement leadership, may prove to hold valuable information. Also, the role of diaspora activists is a dynamic that could be incorporated into further study.

This research relied solely on newspaper data from outlets. While

I was able to gather a great deal of information from these resources, the ability to read

Farsi would have proven to be an excellent supplement to my understanding of recent political events. Several media pieces mentioned that their quotes were translated from an

Iranian source, such as the website run by Mousavi and his associates called kaleme.com which is of particular interest. This website provides breaking news and analysis from a reformist-friendly perspective. At times, Mousavi himself would use the website to release statements. If I had the ability to read the information on this website, or have it translated by a reliable translator, my findings would be much stronger. While this was a limitation in this research, it does shed light on where future opportunities may lie.

Considering the difficult situation for critical media in Iran, it would be interesting to see how websites such as kaleme.com operated at the time of the protests examined here. It appears that the site has not been updated in around two years, with the last posts being published in June 2017. While it may be unfortunate for researchers that the website has not been updated, the more important question is why? This does not coincide with 52

Mousavi’s 2011 house arrest. During that time, Mousavi has had little contact with the outside world. Investigating the fate of kaleme.com and related websites could shed light on the exact techniques that the Iranian government uses to control the domestic media environment.

With movement leadership being such an understudied aspect of contentious politics, this research suggests several additional avenues for further study. More information on protests that were nominally affiliated with the Green Movement that occurred after movement leadership was placed under house arrest would serve to more clearly illustrate the integral role that leadership played in the movement. Particular attention could be paid to Green Movement protests that were chiefly composed of university students. Given that they were the subset of Green Movement sympathizers to assume organizing responsibilities after the house arrest of Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi

Karroubi, and their respective families, university student protests serve as an excellent case study example that could be used to explain the function of movement leadership in the Green Movement.

As for the more recent protests in Iran, there is just simply not sufficient information available in media sources to confidently gauge the nature of leadership in the movement. When compared to the Green Movement, the recent protests were much more spontaneous, irregular, and smaller than protests typical of the Green Movement.

There appeared to be a large amount of media interest in the protests in late 2017 and early 2018, and then coverage began to dwindle. Key insights may be found in the

Telegram channels that are home to many disaffected Iranians who organize small protests though deciphering these will require a working knowledge of Persian. However, 53 there is important understanding that could be discerned by combing through Persian- language Telegram channels and identifying instances of protest leadership from the past year and I hope that such research can occur in the future.

Future research on the evolution of the Iranian repertoire of contention should again investigate the protest actions of Green Movement sympathizers after the house arrest of Mousavi and Karroubi. If there was a sudden shift in the radicalism of Green

Movement protests, that could be evidence of the moderating effect that movement leadership plays in developing a movement’s repertoire of contention. Once again, the more information that can be gathered from Telegram channels, the better. The media sources in this dataset never mentioned whether or not the violent actions of the recent protests were pre-planned. This information would help to answer exactly why the recent protests took a violent turn. On one hand, it could have been premeditated violence from the protestors. On the other, perhaps it was an in-the-moment response to police activities. In all cases, future research should continue to track changes in how Iranian protests are policed, how protestors engage in contentious politics, and the reciprocal relationship between the two.

An additional theme that I did not engage with was the role of the in contentious politics. While those in the Iranian diaspora played an important role in communicating the plights of Iranian activists to Western audiences, it was difficult to place them into the overall discussion engaged in this analysis, which was to tease out the relationship between state repression and protestors, and the effects that each party had on the repertoires of the other. Given the recent fate of those such as Jamal

Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian dissident and Washington Post writer who was allegedly 54 assassinated by Saudi agents in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2018

(Stancati and Said 2018), it is critical that scholars consider the experiences of diaspora activists. Social movement studies had already become interested in transnational activism, and that focus should correspond with attention to transnational repression as well. With the Khashoggi case, it is clear that a state has the capacity to repress individuals outside of its territorial boundaries. The threats faced by those engaged in contentious politics in diaspora communities should be taken seriously, and research should begin to investigate why and how states engage in operations like those allegedly perpetrated against Khashoggi.

A potential path of research surrounding the dangers faced by diaspora activists could be to analyze reports they have chosen to give about the threats on their safety that they are aware of. For example, in May 2019, it became public that prominent Arab

Spring activist Iyad el-Baghdadi had been made aware of serious threats on his life emanating from , who he has been very critical of in that past. After being deported from the United Arab in May 2014 as a result of his activism,

Baghdadi eventually found refuge in Oslo, Norway, where he has remained active since.

After the CIA tipped off the Norwegian government about a threat on Baghdadi’s life, he was taken into hiding. In an interview with Ari Shapiro on NPR’s “All Things

Considered”, Baghdadi explains the “dark logic” of this threat. Baghdadi explains:

There's kind of a dark logic here, which is that if someone who lives in Norway -

which is supposed to be one of the safest countries in the world - has to be taken

into hiding, then what do you think the situation is like for someone who lives in a

far less safe country, someone, you know, a human rights activist or a dissident 55

who lives, let's say, in Istanbul or in Lebanon? I mean, in a way, Mohammad bin

Salman has already benefited because he's sent these ripples of fear among

dissident communities across the world (NPR 2019).

Although Baghdadi is justifiably tight-lipped about the exact details of the threat he faces, given its ongoing nature, his comments do shed some light on what the potential effects of this strategy to punish dissidents outside of a government’s territory may be. The

Saudi Arabian government is demonstrating that no one who is critical of their government is truly safe; not in Turkey, and not in Norway. In light of the very real, dangerous, and current threat faced by these activists, I struggle to see any other safe way to investigate this question using contemporary examples. Studying how activists respond to the transnational threats could prove to be an important future direction for social movement studies.

The role and experiences of the Iranian diaspora was absent from this research, but that does not mean that the diaspora did not play an important role in the contentious politics that occurred. In both the Green Movement (Fassihi and Rhoads 2009) and the

2017-2018 protests (Parvini 2018), the Iranian diaspora made itself known through protests, information gathering and sharing, and advocacy. Just as the diaspora has been organizing, they also experienced repression themselves. Some diaspora activists reported receiving suspicious and threatening messages on social media, and also reported cyberattacks (Freedom House 2017). By considering the role of the Iranian diaspora, I potentially could have extended my understandings. For example, some in the

Iranian diaspora may have served in de facto leadership roles on social media during the

2017-2018 protests, a fact that may have news media accounts may not have been able to 56 detect. Future research should make attempts to incorporate contentious politics amongst the Iranian diaspora, given the increased ability for both contention and repression to reach beyond state boundaries.

VII. CONCLUSIONS

This research sought to explain the noticeable differences that manifested between

Iranian protest movements from the last 10 years. The Green Movement was a large movement that fought for civil rights and accountability in the aftermath of the contested

2009 Iranian presidential election. Led by defeated candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and

Mehdi Karroubi, this movement brought millions out into the streets of Iran. Almost as powerfully as the movement emerged, it was also powerfully repressed. Over the time it was active, thousands of Iranian citizens were arrested for their involvement in the movement, facing treacherous prison conditions and likely human rights abuses, while hundreds more were killed. The Green Movement was incredibly stunning to many at the time. It had brought out dissatisfied crowds not seen in number since the Iranian

Revolution in 1979. Even though the movement had impressively sprung onto the Iranian political scene, it was unable to withstand the onslaught it faced from the Iranian police and security forces. Devoted to , Green Movement supporters were battered, and swiftly became vexed with the tepid responses offered by movement leadership.

While part of the Green Movement leadership’s weak persona was due to their strategic miscalculations, my findings suggest that the Iranian state was very intentional about making movement leadership a dangerous occupation. Feeling that any harm to

Mousavi or Karroubi would ignite tensions, the state instead sought to target mid-level 57 leadership, and to deny organizational privileges to the movement. Protest requests were denied, and police were organized days ahead of planned protest events. Being a leader within the Green Movement was unquestionably difficult. When it became clear that the movement was on its last legs, the Iranian state placed Mousavi and Karroubi under house arrest, where they remain to this day.

The legacy of the Green Movement lives on in the 2017-2018 protests. The

Iranian government has made it amply clear that a large, organized movement with identifiable leadership will not survive in contemporary Iran. Therefore, I argue that this explains why the recent protests appear to be leaderless. Whether leadership actually exists or not is a question needing further attention. I posit that if any leadership does exist, it is most likely anonymous or underground. However, I also entertain the possibility that some of the traditional roles held by a movement leader may have been supplanted by new social media communities—another issue meriting further consideration. With the 2017-2018 protests, protest events were largely organized on the social media app Telegram. No clear, consistent individual appears to be linked to these protests, which may be evidence of a more horizontal, community-based approach to leadership in contrast to the very public leadership like that of Mousavi and Karroubi.

This research represents the very first attempt to research and make sense of the outbreak of protests in Iran that began in late December 2017. While it appears that protests have slowed down as I complete this thesis, it remains to be seen how domestic politics within Iran, as well as the state’s quarrelsome relationship with the United States, strategic relationship with , and continued foreign interventions shape the Iranian political landscape and that of the larger region. This research demonstrates the 58 importance of considering how repression contributes to shaping the manner in which contentious politics manifests. In less than a decade, protests in Iran have demonstrated incredible differences in both movement leadership and repertoires of contention, both of which I argue are a result of the repressive actions of the Iranian government and various forms of policing it pursues—both traditional but also less obvious.

By considering a non-Western and non-democratic example, I complicate some assumptions regarding the analysis of protest policing – primarily, the assumption that governments are limited both by the expectations of their people, as well as constitutional constraints (Della Porta and Reiter 1998). While these dynamics are still at play in Iran, the latitude that authoritarian governments possess in policing their citizens is an important dynamic that must be explored. As a result of this authority in Iran, protests have essentially been relegated to small, unorganized, possibly leaderless movements; a far cry from the Green Movement from almost ten years ago. I do not suspect this development to reverse itself anytime soon and the future of contentious politics in Iran remains unclear. Future understanding of contentious politics in Iran will further necessitate that researchers comparatively examine past movements and trace how repression may have altered them so as best to understand the present. 59

VIII. REFERENCES

Adam, Karla. 2018. “As Protests Go on, Iranian Wrestle with Fear, Foreboding and Coded Messages.” January 6.

Amanat, . 2017. Iran: A Modern History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Associated Press. 2009. “SUPREME LEADER: IRAN VOTE WAS ‘DEFINITIVE VICTORY.’” New York Post. Retrieved May 20, 2019 (https://nypost.com/2009/06/19/supreme-leader-iran-vote-was-definitive- victory/).

BBC. 2019. “ Protests: President Bouteflika to Quit before 28 April - BBC News.” Algeria Protests: President Bouteflika to Quit before 28 April. Retrieved May 20, 2019 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47776725).

BBC Monitoring. 2009. “Iran’s Reformist Leader Issues Statement Opposing Foreign Sanctions – BBC Monitoring.” Retrieved , 2019 (https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/f18et93b).

BBC Monitoring. 2010. “Iran Analyst Says Recognising Government Exonerates Reformists – BBC Monitoring.” Retrieved June 3, 2019 (https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/f18n09db).

Black, Ian. 2009. “Iran’s Anti-US Protests Could Turn on Ahmadinejad.” The Guardian, November 4.

Bozorgmehr, Najmeh. 2009. “Iran Protesters Hijack State Occasions.” Financial Times. Retrieved May 19, 2019 (https://www.ft.com/content/ebd545ca-f49a-11de-9cba- 00144feab49a).

Bozorgmehr, Najmeh. 2010. “Rivals Claim to Be Khomeini’s True Heir.” Financial Times. Retrieved May 19, 2019 (https://www.ft.com/content/727e4c7e-1675- 11df-bf44-00144feab49a).

Bozorgmehr, Najmeh. 2018. “Rouhani’s Budget Transparency Stokes Iran Unrest.” Financial Times. Retrieved May 19, 2019 (https://www.ft.com/content/d3f6eebe- f9e0-11e7-a492-2c9be7f3120a).

Charmaz, Kathy. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory. ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.

Cunningham, Erin. 2018. “Iran’s Leader Blames U.S. for Unrest but Says Public Demands ‘Must Be Answered.’” Iran’s Leader Blames U.S. for Unrest but Says Public Demands ‘Must Be Answered.’ Retrieved May 20, 2019 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/irans-leader-blames-us-for-unrest-but- 60

says-public-demands-must-be-answered/2018/01/09/7f1e9fde-f54b-11e7-beb6- c8d48830c54d_story.html).

Cunningham, Erin and Steven Mufson. 2018. “Behind Iran’s Protests, Anger over Lost Life Savings and Tightfisted Budgets - The Washington Post.” Behind Iran’s Protests, Anger over Lost Life Savings and Tightfisted Budgets. Retrieved May 19, 2019 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/behind-irans-protests-anger- over-lost-life-savings-and-tightfisted-budgets/2018/01/06/64993a66-f23f-11e7- 95e3-eff284e71c8d_story.html?utm_term=.e79ce0257672).

Dabashi, Hamid. 2011. The Green Movement in Iran. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers.

Davenport, Christian, Sarah A. Soule, and David A. Armstrong. 2011. “Protesting While Black? The Differential Policing of American Activism, 1960 to 1990.” American Sociological Review 76(1):152–78.

Dehghan Kamali, Saeed and Emma Graham-Harrison. 2017. “Iranians Chant ‘Death to Dictator’ in Biggest Unrest since Crushing of Protests in 2009 | World News | The Guardian.” Retrieved September 20, 2018 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/30/iran-protests-trump-tweets).

Dehghan, Saeed Kamali. 2017. “Rouhani Acknowledges Iranian Discontent as Protests Continue.” The Guardian, December 31.

Della Porta, Donatella and Herbert Reiter, eds. 1998. Policing Protest: The Control of Mass Demonstrations in Western . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Drissel, David. 2017. “The Rise and Demise of the Iranian Green Revolution: Collective Action Framing in Social Media.” Pp. 139–60 in Non-Western Social Movements and Participatory Democracy, edited by E. Arbatli and D. Rosenberg. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Earl, Jennifer. 2003. “Tanks, , and Taxes: Toward a Theory of Movement Repression.” Sociological Theory 21(1):44–68.

Earl, Jennifer, Sarah A. Soule, and John D. McCarthy. 2003. “Protest under Fire? Explaining the Policing of Protest.” American Sociological Review 68(4):581– 606.

Egorov, Georgy, Sergei Guriev, and Konstantin Sonin. 2009. “Why Resource-Poor Dictators Allow Freer Media: A Theory and Evidence from Panel Data.” The American Political Science Review 103(4):645–68.

El-Ghobashy, Tamer. 2018. “Iran’s Parliament Delivers Rare Rebuke to Embattled President Rouhani - The Washington Post.” Iran’s Parliament Delivers Rare Rebuke to Embattled President Rouhani. Retrieved May 20, 2019 61

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/irans-parliament-delivers- rare-rebuke-to-embattled-president-rouhani/2018/08/28/34ba556a-aac1-11e8- 9a7d-cd30504ff902_story.html?utm_term=.f74036c61eff).

Elizabeth Mackintosh. 2018. “Iranian Police Arrest 29 for Involvement in Protests.” CNN. Retrieved March 17, 2019 (https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/middleeast/iran-arrests-29-women-after-hijab- protest-intl/index.html).

England, Andrew. 2017. “Nationwide Protests Test Rouhani’s Commitment to Reform in Iran.” Financial Times. Retrieved May 20, 2019 (https://www.ft.com/content/f6adef0e-ee26-11e7-ac08-07c3086a2625).

Erdbrink, Thomas. 2009. “More Protests, Bitter Words As Iran Churns.” June 18.

Erdbrink, Thomas. 2010. “A Year after Its Rise, Iranian Protest Movement Stymied and in Disarray.” June 11.

Erdbrink, Thomas. 2018a. “5 Security Officers in Iran Killed in Clashes with Dervishes.” , October 10.

Erdbrink, Thomas. 2018b. “Iran Is Changing, but Not in Ways Trump Thinks.” The New York Times, October 10.

Erdbrink, Thomas. 2018c. “Protests Pop Up Across Iran, Fueled by Daily Dissatisfaction.” The New York Times, October 10.

Erdbrink, Thomas, David D. Kirkpatrick, and Nilo Tabrizy. 2018. “How Corruption and in Banking Fueled Iran’s Protests.” The New York Times, October 15.

Ericson, Richard and Aaron Doyle. 1999. “Globalization and the Policing of Protest: The Case of APEC 1997.” British Journal of Sociology 50(4):589–608.

Falk, Ophir. 2015. “Measuring the Effectiveness of Israel’s ‘Targeted Killing’ Campaign.” Perspectives on Terrorism 9(1):2–26.

Fassihi, Farnaz and Christopher Rhoads. 2009. “Iran Diaspora Joins to Protest Ahmadinejad.” Wall Street Journal, September 18.

Freedom House. 2017. “Iran Country Report | Freedom on the Net 2017.” Iran Country Profile. Retrieved June 2, 2019 (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom- net/2017/iran).

Gambrell, Jon. 2018. “Q&A: What’s Happening with Iran’s Ongoing Protests?” AP NEWS. Retrieved May 14, 2019 (https://apnews.com/918282d48f4542fc90d2edf89070071a). 62

Gast, Phil, Dakin Andone, and Kara Fox. 2018. “Here’s Why the Iran Protests Are Significant - CNN.” Retrieved September 20, 2018 (https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/30/world/iran-protests-issues/index.html).

Gelvin, James L. 2015. The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know. Second edition. Oxford ; New York, NY: .

Ghobadzadeh, Naser and Lily Zubaidah Rahim. 2016. “Electoral Theocracy and Hybrid Sovereignty in Iran.” Contemporary Politics 22(4):450–68.

Glaser, Barney G. and Anselm L. Strauss. 1980. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. 11. printing. New York: Aldine.

Haghighatjoo, Fatemeh. 2016. “The Green Movement and Political Change in Iran.” Pp. 224–50 in Power and Change in Iran: Politics of contention and conciliation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hashemi, Nader and Danny Postel, eds. 2010. The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House Publ.

Johnston, Patrick B. 2012. “Does Decapitation Work? Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Targeting in Counterinsurgency Campaigns.” International Security 36(4):47–79.

Jordan, Jenna. 2009. “When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation.” Security Studies 18(4):719–55.

Karimi, Nasser and Jon Gambrell. 2018. “Iran Protests Have Violent Night; at Least 13 Dead Overall.” . Retrieved May 19, 2019 (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/1/iran-protests-have-violent- night-at-least-12-dead-/).

Khawaja, Marwan. 1994. “Resource Mobilization, Hardship, and Popular Collective Action in the West Bank.” Social Forces 73(1):191–220.

Khosravi, Shahram. 2018. “Opinion | How the Other Half Lives in Iran.” The New York Times, January 20.

Koopmans, Ruud. 2004. “Movements and Media: Selection Processes and Evolutionary Dynamics in the Public Sphere.” Theory and Society 33(3/4):367–91.

Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2012. Political Conflict in Western Europe. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kurzman, Charles. 2012. “The : Ideals of the , Methods of the Iranian Revolution.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44(01):162–65. 63

Lorentzen, Peter. 2014. “China’s Strategic Censorship.” American Journal of Political Science 58(2):402–14.

Loveman, Mara. 1998. “High‐Risk Collective Action: Defending Human Rights in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina.” American Journal of Sociology 104(2):477–525.

MacFarquhar, Neil. 2011. “Mystery Deepens on Status Of Iran Opposition Leaders.” The New York Times, March 1.

Magra, Iliana. 2019. “Iran Rights Lawyer Sentenced to 38 Years in Prison and 148 Lashes, Husband Says.” The New York Times, March 14.

Mahmood, Sara. 2015. “Decapitating the Tehrik-i- : An Effective Counter-Terrorism Strategy?” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 7(6):24–29.

Mattoni, Alice. 2014. “The Potentials of Grounded Theory in the Study of Social Movements.” Pp. 21–42 in Methodological practices in social movement research. New York: Oxford University Press.

McCarthy, John D., Clark McPhail, and Jackie Smith. 1996. “Images of Protest: Dimensions of Selection Bias in Media Coverage of Washington Demonstrations, 1982 and 1991.” American Sociological Review 61(3):478–99.

Murphy, Brian. 2015. “Iran Police in Fierce Clashes With Cleric Mourners.” Associated Press. Retrieved May 19, 2019 (https://www.foxnews.com/story/iran-police-in- fierce-clashes-with-cleric-mourners).

Nabavi, Negin. 2012. “The ‘Arab Spring’ as Seen through the Prism of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44(01):153–55.

NPR. 2019. “Human Rights Activist Iyad El-Baghdadi Says U.S. Warned Of Saudi Arabia Threat.” NPR.Org. Retrieved May 26, 2019 (https://www.npr.org/2019/05/15/723686069/human-rights-activist-iyad-el- baghdadi-says-u-s-warned-of-saudi-arabia-threat).

Ottaway, Marina. 2013. Democracy Challenged The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism. New York, NY: Brookings Institution Press.

Parvini, Sarah. 2018. “Southern California’s Iranian Diaspora Watches Protests from the Edge of Their Seats - Los Angeles Times.” Retrieved June 2, 2019 (https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-protest-reactions- 20180103-story.html).

Peterson, Scott. 2009. “Iran Protesters Say Torn Khomeini Photos Were Staged.” Christian Science Monitor, December 14.

Price, Bryan C. 2012. “Targeting Top Terrorists: How Leadership Decapitation Contributes to Counterterrorism.” International Security 36(4):9–46. 64

Saeed Kamali Dehghan. 2017. “Rouhani Acknowledges Iranian Discontent as Protests Continue.” The Guardian, December 31.

Slackman, Michael. 2010. “Steady Drip of Leaks Corrodes the Core of the Iranian Regime.” The New York Times, January 6.

Specia, Megan. 2018. “How Syria’s Death Toll Is Lost in the Fog of War.” The New York Times, April 14.

Stancati, Margherita and Summer Said. 2018. “Saudi Arabia Says Evidence Points to Premeditated Killing of Khashoggi.” Wall Street Journal, October 25.

Stockmann, Daniela and Mary E. Gallagher. 2011. “Remote Control: How the Media Sustain Authoritarian Rule in China.” Comparative Political Studies 44(4):436– 67.

Tait, Robert. 2010a. “Iran Election Anniversary Protests Face Severe Crackdown.” The Guardian, June 9.

Tait, Robert. 2010b. “Iran Opposition Leader Mousavi ‘ready to Die’ for Reform.” The Guardian, January 1.

The Associated Press. 2010. “Iran Opposition Reassesses Options after Crackdown.” The Denver Post. Retrieved May 14, 2019 (https://www.denverpost.com/2010/02/12/iran-opposition-reassesses-options- after-crackdown/).

The Guardian. 2010. “Iran: Trials of Strength | Editorial.” The Guardian, February 12.

Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

Tilly, Charles. 2005. Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.

Tilly, Charles and Sidney G. Tarrow. 2007. Contentious Politics. Boulder, Colo: Paradigm Publishers.

Vitale, Alex S. 2005. “From Negotiated Management to Command and Control: How the New York Police Department Polices Protests.” Policing and Society 15(3):283– 304.

Worth, Robert. 2010. “Opposition in Iran Meets a Crossroads on Strategy - The New York Times.” Opposition in Iran Meets A Crossroads On Strategy. Retrieved May 19, 2019 (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/world/middleeast/15iran.html?mtrref=r.se arch.yahoo.com&gwh=4A9DC44D570C245774FCCC1FACBA50D3&gwt=pay). 65

Yong, Will. 2010. “Iran Opposition Leader Urges Prosecution in Vote Fraud and Abuses.” The New York Times, June 15.

Zakaria, Fareed. 1997. “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.” Foreign Affairs, November 1.