As Tunisian President-for-Life Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled into ignominious exile two weeks ago, democrats around the world found hope in the notion that Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution would spread to Iran. The images of demonstrations from Sidi Bouzid to Tunis reminded Americans of the massive 2009 protests that gave rise to Iran's opposition Green Movement, and as pro-democracy movements inspired by Tunisia emerged in Egypt and Yemen, many observers saw a chance for Iran to be next. But looking closer, it's clear that Iranians -- from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on down to the Green Movement opposition -- view the Tunisia situation as vastly different from their own, and not one that's likely to spill over into a renewed push for democratic reform in their own country.
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Despite the examples of Ben Ali and Egypt's beleaguered President Hosni Mubarak, Iran's leaders are far from running scared. In fact, Tehran is taking a distinctly more triumphalist understanding of the roots and effects of the Tunisian protests than American commentators would expect from another authoritarian Middle Eastern government -- particularly from one facing its own challenges from opposition forces.
In the week following Ben Ali's frantic flight to Saudi Arabia, reactions from Iranian officials and state-supported media were, as always, bold and self-assured. But this is no skin-deep grandstanding designed to force a positive spin on an unsettling example of political upheaval. Where Washington sees an anti-authoritarian uprising, Tehran describes a 1979-style rejection of a U.S.-supported secularist: Ahmadinejad referred to the Tunisian uprising as an expression of the people's will for an Islamic order, and the Iranian Majlis voted overwhelmingly to support the "revolution."
The conservative press thoroughly rejects any suggestion that the uprising in Tunisia is at all comparable to the Green Movement. A hard-line paper associated with the Revolutionary Guard Corps ridiculed comparisons in opposition media outlets between the economic conditions that helped spark the Tunisian riots and Iran's economic struggles, arguing that Tehran's recent success in implementing risky economic reforms was a testament to the regime's durable popular mandate.
Hossein Shariatmadari -- one of the Islamic Republic's most influential conservatives -- used the Tunisian events to underscore the hard-liners' far-fetched claims that Iran's 2009 post-election violence represented a purely Western-oriented conspiracy. Writing in the hard-line Kayhan newspaper a few days after Ben Ali left the country, he likened the masses of Iranians who poured into the streets demanding a recount of the last presidential election to the despotic Ben Ali regime. By his logic, Tehran's repression of the protests and the Green Movement -- a Western plot -- was actually what emboldened Tunisians to seize their own independence from American-endorsed autocracy.
Shariatmadari explained, "When the Muslim nations of the region see clearly that not just one arrogant power but all arrogant powers with all their powers and capabilities have been bitterly defeated against the Islamic faith and national perseverance of the Muslim people of Iran, do you not think that they would rise up for the liberation of themselves and their homeland from under the dominance of dictators and foreign colonialism?" While this idea may sound preposterous to American ears, the resonance it holds in the upper echelons of the Iranian leadership only points to a more assertive Tehran.
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