Why Recent Events in Russia Echo Challenges Ahead for the Mahsa Movement

Opinion:Why Recent Events in Russia Echo Challenges Ahead for the Mahsa Movement

Mahyar Etminan -June 26th,2023

On June 24^th, 2023 news media around the world stopped their regular programming to show live footages of Russia in turmoil. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner group, was marching toward Moscow with his army facing no resistance.

The whole world was connived that Putin’s demise was coming to fruition in matters of hours. As quickly as Prighozhin was marching toward Moscow, he suddenly turned back in a mysterious and intriguing fashion. Although the details are scant, we were told that a last-minute deal between Putin and Prighozhin averted a Ku de ta. For now, Putin has regained his reign and has survived a major threat to his power.

This reminds me of another similar scenario that occurred a few years back in Venezuela. A group of patriotic Venezuelan soldiers headed by a helicopter pilot Oscar Perez set out to topple Maduro’s government. He even attacked the presidential palace with this helicopter. Unfortunately, Maduro’s loyal officers with the help of Russia quashed this revolt. Perez was eventually captured, tortured and the rest as they say is history.

For those who say if Iranians had a legitimate opposition leader during the Mahsa movement, we were all now living in a new democratic Iran by now, well Venezuela did have one in Juan Guaido. Juan Guaido was the accepted opposition leader to Maduro and later became president elect by capturing more votes than Maduro. Many Venezuelans demonstrated in the streets in his support, with larger numbers than those in Tehran

. Guaido even had robust and vocal support from vital western leaders. None of these helped him to go all the way to the Finish Line. Five years have past and Maduro is still in power and Venezuelans are still languishing in poverty.

What am I trying to say by these two parallels? That toppling the Islamic Republic is not as easy as the many so called Iranian political analysts on Farsi YouTube channels make it out to be. Thinking that a remedy might be found in the Iranian diaspora creating another ‘me too’ political party, building a so called ‘national’ media (not funded by other governments) or creating more robust support for the Iranian opposition leaders, mainly Reza Pahlavi, is a fallacy.

Today’s dictators spend billions of dollars to extend longevity by creating think tanks, cyber armies and of course crack down squads not to mention support from governments who prefer to negotiate with the devil they know rather than the devil they don’t know. The years when the CIA could hire a group of thugs and overthrow regimes in different parts of the world are long gone.

Each government or dictatorship should be viewed as a separate entity. Drawing parallels between Iran in 2023 and Iran in 1978 or the fall of Apartheid in South Africa is not an ‘apples to apples’ comparison. At the end of the day, sometimes doing nothing might be more fruitful than doing ‘something’ that ultimately might detrimental and futile in the fight for democracy. Although unsuccessful, the near toppling of the Putin regime was a shock to the world. But just as snipers are trained to patiently wait for days for the opportunity of a perfect shot, Iranians need to be patient and wait for the right kill.

Mahyar Etminan is a Professor and an enthusiast of Iranian politics