The leadership of the Iranian Revolution holds its own distinctive interpretation of the events of the Arab Spring, which differs from the interpretation held by most of the world, and in fact even from that held by the protagonists of such a Spring themselves. Since the start of these events, the fate of which is so far unknown despite their success at toppling a number of decrepit regimes, Iran's leaders have raced to consider them to represent a victory for themselves and a late realization of their plans aimed at exporting their revolution to the countries of the region surrounding them. Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic Ali Khamenei spoke of the establishment of a “new Islamic Middle East”, on the basis of the fact that the regimes that had fallen – like the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes – were allies of the United States and were tied in relations devoid of enmity to Israel, and that the regimes that will replace them would therefore certainly be regimes opposed to those two countries. And in the past two days, in commenting on the recent events in Egypt, the Commander of the Quds Force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran), Qassem Suleimani, returned to speaking of “new Irans” that share enmity towards the United States. He listed those “Irans”, saying that they include Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, as well as Egypt, about which he said that it was “a new Iran whether you like it or not”. Perhaps a more accurate statement would have been for him say: whether the Egyptian people like it or not. Indeed, the last thing Iran takes into account in its assessment of the events taking place in the Arab region is the stance of the peoples themselves on these events, and the extent to which they have been influenced by the Iranian Revolution in their uprisings. As a matter of fact, in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, not one slogan was raised in the public squares in which revolutionaries gathered supporting the Iranian Revolution, praising its accomplishments, or even calling for open confrontation with “the Zionist entity”, which the propaganda coming out of Tehran calls for. All of the demands and slogans that were raised were directed against widespread political corruption and against the practice of inheritance of power in republics that have turned away from their allegedly democratic slogans. They also called for reform and for restoring the right of the people to decide on their affairs through a voting process with its results protected from the known process of fraud, as well as for taking care of general social affairs. All of these demands represent the antithesis of what the Iranian regime practices, as it aptly proved with its repression of the protest movements that spread in Iranian cities, as a reaction to the systematic fraud that had accompanied what has been called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's “election” for a new term in office. Had those protest movements been able to survive the repression of the Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran) and of those who supported it from within Iran and from abroad, they might have been considered the real beginning of the long-sought “Islamic Spring”. How then can the regimes arising in the region as a result of these revolutions be described as “new Irans”, when they face the repression of regimes and demand the respect of democratic change? Indeed, even Islamist movements in the countries that have witnessed revolutions (such as the Renaissance “Nahda” Party in Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Islamist movements in Libya and Yemen) have all placed confronting domestic problems at the top of their list of priorities, and have taken a politically moderate course that seeks to reach compromises with other movements, as Ghannushi did in Tunisia, or even a truce with prominent figures of the former regime, as the Muslim Brotherhood did in Egypt on the “Friday of the Last Chance”, when they took sides with the Military Council against the broad protest movement demanding it to relinquish power, in addition to their assertion, on various occasions, that they would respect the agreements ratified by the former regime, including the Camp David Accords. Only the Syrian revolution was spared the assessment of the Quds Force Commander of the Arab revolutions. Perhaps it is because he considers the “new Iran” to already be standing in Syria by virtue of the presence of the current regime in Damascus, and to be in no need of a revolution. Indeed, what the uprising of the Syrian people is calling for is the complete antithesis of Tehran's slogans and of everything it seeks to export to the Arab region.
