A Throwback to the Iranian Revolution: A look at the Green Revolution of 2009

“The enemies must know that the [Green movement] protests, which are a caricature of the pre-revolutionary ones, cannot undermine the system.”
- Ali Khamenei, August 2009

Despite the recent criticisms by both the United States media and the United States government regarding the country of Iran’s nuclear and political policies, there is a great amount of change that is occurring in Iran, particularly in the youth population: a movement from the hardcore fundamentalism of the Iranian Revolution to an ideal of a more moderate and modern political affiliation

On June 12th, 2009, the tenth presidential election was held for the new leader of Iran, between incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (a conservative and controversial figure) and three other challengers (Mir-Houssein Mousavi, Mohsen Rezaee, and Mehdi Karroubi). Despite a good deal of speculation by outside sources that Mousavi would gain the popular vote, votes came in with a two-thirds majority that Ahmadinejad had won the election. Almost immediately, however, the three oppositional candidates immediately rejected the official results, indicating that the polls had been manipulated, as Ahmadinejad was not believed to have won. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khameini, immediately stood up and took Ahmadinejad’s side in what should have been an act of decision by the Islamic republic’s clergy, but a revolution immediately began against the decision by a surprising amount of youth individuals in a movement that is now referred to as “The Green Movement.”

The effect of this movement was an immediate clamp-down by the Iranian government on the opposition, in a movement that echoes back to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The government began locking down the internet and cell phones that were being utilized in Iran, stopped electricity and food, and began violently silencing protesters who would gather against the election results. What is important to understand about this revolution, however, is that a majority of the people who were protesting were younger students protesting against the aggressive regime. However, it is not so much the movement itself to me that is as important as the method and group that began the movement.

The revolution was also known as the “Twitter Revolution,” because of the excessive amount of young Iranian revolutionaries who utilized online social sites such as Twitter and Facebook in order to organize, and thus the groups that were mostly involved were young college students. Modern politics frequently emphasizes the fundamentalist viewpoint in the Muslim world, but before this revolution, few media outlets really looked at the Iranian people as moderate in viewpoint. Despite the many lives that have lost after the June elections, this revolution provided more of an understanding of the less extremist views of Iran. Iranians aren’t just nuclear-power hungry extremists hoping to kill everyone in the United States. Iranians are people, just like us in the United States, and the media could do well to help the populace of the United States understand this.