Robin Wright on the Green Movement's 'Manifesto'

Late last month, Gregg interviewed three Iranian opposition activists who told him of an emerging crack in the nascent Green Movement between the group's mainstream and those who had become more radicalized by the Iranian government's brutal crackdown. The movement had entered a crucial stage and needed a defined leadership and philosophy, they told him.

Robin Wright, a Washington Post reporter-turned-think tanker, believes the movement has remedied that problem, she writes in an op-ed today.

The release of an opposition "manifesto" - actually three statements from separate groups - signals the coalescence of the movement's philosophy, Wright says.

Wright is referring to a lengthy treatise released the other day by Mir Hossein Mousavi, the ostensible leader of the movement, and to two other statements put out recently by a group of expatriate intellectuals and university professors. (I'm trying to find hard copies of the latter two.)

The statement by the professors, 88 of them at Tehran University, is the least important; it calls on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to end the violence against the protesters and demand the release of detained students and the prosecution of those who used violence against them.

Mousavi's letter was more substantial, but as Gregg noted, demanded only "modest change." He rebuked the government's behavior toward those protesting the allegedly fraudulent June presidential election but signaled that he preferred reconciliation to conflict. His five demands included clear calls for more freedom of assembly and the release of political prisoners but also more amorphous goals such as increased freedom of the press and more transparent and responsive government.

The statement released by the five expatriate intellectuals, several of them religious scholars, is the most serious, as Wright notes. That makes sense: Activists living outside the country are in the best position to come down hard on Iran's government. The group is made up of philosopher Abdulkarim Soroush, a visiting scholar at George Washington University who's been associated with a number of American universities; "dissident cleric" Mohsen Kadivar, who spent time in prison and is currently visiting at Duke University; former parliamentarian and Islamic Guidance Minister Ataollah Mohajerani, who lives in England; journalist and activist Akbar Ganji, famous for his extended prison hunger strike (who I had the pleasure of interviewing once); and Abdolali Bazargan, an Islamic thinker and son of a former prime minister.

Their 10-point manifesto (take that, Mousavi) directly calls for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's resignation and for the end of clerical control over numerous aspects of the regime. Currently, clerics hold sway through Iran's incestuous system of government, where candidates for President, Parliament or the all-cleric Assembly of Experts (which chooses the Supreme Leader, himself a cleric) are all vetted by the Guardian Council, which is half-cleric and half-jurist, the clerics themselves being appointed by the Supreme Leader and the jurists nominated by the judiciary (the head of which is selected by the Supreme Leader) and approved by members of Parliament (whose candidacies are vetted by the Guardian Council).

The manifesto also calls for the release of political prisoners and for parliamentary term limits.

The likelihood of all this happening is rather slim, but then the purpose of the statement by the exiled intellectuals may be more to push the debate forward than to ask for modest, achievable concessions, as Mousavi did.

Close to a collapse?

The Iranian regime itself is not close to implosion, the indefatigable Leveretts write in a New York Times op-ed today. On a basic level, they say, using the size of respective rallies as a measuring stick, the government has a much larger base of support. The opposition movement simply isn't that popular, they argue. Furthermore, its goals haven't been articulated:

Those who talk so confidently about an 'opposition' in Iran as the vanguard for a new revolution should be made to answer three tough questions: First, what does this opposition want? Second, who leads it? Third, through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran?

But perhaps the Leveretts are too cynical. If you believe Robin Wright, then the first two questions have at least partial answers: The opposition, led inside Iran by dissident religious and political officials and outside Iran by exiled religious and political intellectuals, wants Ahmadinejad to step down, the expansion of basic press and speech freedoms, the end of political violence and imprisonment, and, potentially, an overhaul of the twisted, cleric-dominated system of elections and administration.

Through what process they'll achieve their goals remains the obvious and important roadblock. What pressure can the opposition exert on the regime? Soroush, the philosopher at George Washington University, told Wright that "we wanted to make it clear that [the opposition] is a democratic movement, and if it has a godfather, it is Gandhi." If that's true, then change might be a long time coming and will require the government to continue to apply unacceptably draconian measures in order to inspire a critical mass of Iranians to turn against their leaders. Otherwise, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad just don't seem inclined to concede.