The clip below is from Roozbeh Farahanipour’s appearance on Pars TV on August 8, 2009.
Farahanipour discusses his recent clandestine trip to Iran and the situation in Iran in general on Rafi’s program.
The clip is roughly 30 minutes.
I recently posted a blog entry of a video clip where Roozbeh and I explain how to organize political campaigns in Iran. An Iranian posted a comment explaining that these “velvet”, “orange”, and other colorful “revolutions” are not possible in Iran, and I completely agree.
To begin with, a revolution means a 180 degree change, however various entities have wrongly attributed the label ‘revolution’ to the various reforms that have taken place in Eastern Europe and else where.
If a political movement is working within the framework of the constitution and electoral laws and they are able to have their preferred candidate voted into office, that is not a revolution. Rather it’s the electoral process working. These countries in which these colorful ‘revolutions’ took place did not have a vetting institution for candidates like the Islamic Republic’s Guardian Council. In addition, these countries’ constitution did not decree that they are the government of God, as the Islamic Republic’s constitution states. Therefore, the relevant democratic institutions and processes existed, very much unlike the Islamic Republic.
As such, the previously- mentioned events that have taken place should really be labeled as ‘reforms’ because there is nothing revolutionary about it.
Just because Iranian reformists were / are able to have one of their candidates vetted by the Guardian Council, and as a result of the [s]election process the reformist candidate wins, does not mean that this constitutes a <pick a color> revolution.
Establishing a secular republic (by default overthrow of the Islamic Republic) in Iran is a real revolution.
So let’s call those working within the system of the Islamic Republic as what they are, reformists and changes within as reforms, not revolutions.
