United in their fervor for a new regime for Iran, South Florida’s growing opposition movement has Tweeted, rallied and marched to draw attention to the contested presidential elections in its homeland.
Now, the movement is shifting its sights to what should come next in Iran. But, unlike the unity of the protests, local Iranian leaders are sharply divided on what course the country should take.
Some are supporting reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate. Others see Mousavi as a tool to get what they want — a more democratic and secular alternative to the current regime. Still others are pressing for the entire political system to be scrapped so that hard-line Muslim clerics do not control virtually every aspect of Iranian life.
”The infighting is there and it has to take its course and go through tests,” said Ferey Kian, a North Miami businessman and adjunct professor who helped organize a recent forum at Florida International University.
The push for political change got a boost from President Barack Obama on Tuesday, even as the country’s Islamic rulers in Tehran announced that there would be no revote.
Obama, in his strongest comments yet on the contested elections and massive street protests that followed, said at a White House news conference that the world is ”appalled and outraged” at the crackdown on demonstrators. More than 17 people have died since the June 12 elections.
In Iran, the leadership dashed opposition hopes for new elections, although officials said recently that votes cast in 50 cities exceeded eligible voters in those locations by three million.
Iranian Americans here have reacted to the election by holding rallies in downtown Miami, North Miami, and perhaps the region’s most apolitical locale: Lincoln Road. Those in Palm Beach County and elsewhere have inquired about how to get involved.
At a recent rally on FIU’s main campus in West Miami-Dade, a dozen Iranian and Iranian-American students from the public university and the University of Miami met to echo the demands of protesters back home. The reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be overturned, they said.
”What we want is a simple reelection,” said Amir, 28, a Ph.D. candidate in international relations who declined to give his last name because of fear for family in Iran. “We don’t want a revolution. We don’t want a regime change. We don’t want violence.”
Amir had his own vision for Iran, evidenced in the poster he carried. It bore the image of Mousavi.
Amir was among the Iranians who voted at 41 election sites in the United States. He cast his ballot for Mousavi at a hotel in Tampa.
”Given the circumstances, among the candidates, he is the best,” Amir said.
Indeed, there are Iranians here who view Mousavi as a John Kerry-like figure: a ho-hum alternative to a deeply unpopular incumbent — but an alternative nonetheless.
”South Florida doesn’t have a pro-Mousavi opposition — it’s mostly against the Islamic regime,” said Abdolrahim ”Abdy” Javadzadeh, an adjunct FIU sociology professor.
Javadzadeh noted how opposition protests in Iran have largely assumed a life of their own, independent of Mousavi. The same, he said, could be said of those no longer in Iran.
”There’s no leadership,” Javadzadeh said. “For those outside of Iran, there are factions — so many groups that don’t agree on basic things.”
Some local Iranians seeking a more secular government said they are not putting all their hopes on Mousavi because of his connection to the current regime. Before he emerged as the figurehead of Iran’s bubbling reform movement, Mousavi was very much a political insider.
He belonged to the Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah and brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979. Mousavi then served as prime minister from 1981 to 1989 — a bloody chapter in Iranian history because of its war with neighboring Iraq.
On Saturday, more than 100 people — most of them with Iranian roots — poured into an auditorium at FIU’s north campus to learn more about Iran. The discussion was lively, if not sometimes raucous.
Older audience members argued over the Iranian flag — a potent symbol that highlights the divide between religious and secular Iranians.
Some thought that the pre-revolution flag — which bears a lion — should be the dominant flag. Others favored the current flag — with its monogram of Allah.
In an effort to move past the flag debate, Boca Raton attorney Omid Ghaffari-Tabrizi read aloud a manifesto that has circulated on the Internet since the protests erupted.
Its seven demands — ranging from stripping the supreme leader of his title and power to freeing political prisoners — impressed him.
”They’re coalescing around an idea — rather than an emotion,” said Ghaffari-Tabrizi, 25, who urged the group to consider the manifesto. “It’s an idea to move on.”
This report was supplemented by material from McClatchy, The Associated Press and the New York Times Service.
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