As per my earlier post comparing Iran in 2009 and China in 1989, today's reports of Supreme Leader Khamenei's speech denouncing the dissenters has a eerie resonance.  It seems rather similar to the April 26, 1989 editorial in People's Daily in which the hard liners, led by Deng Xiaoping (China's "supreme leader" of the time), attempted to quash the protests.  Deng's intervention had the opposite effect, however, enraging student protesters and sparking what, until then, was the largest most politically significant march of the entire movement.

So, let's see what happens next .  Will the protesters in Iran now include a "reversal" of Khamenei's assessment in their list of demands?

Another point of comparison has also occurred to me.  The leadership of the current Iranian protests is obviously more politically prominent and powerful than that to be found in 1989 among the Chinese students.  Mir Hossein Mousavi is an establishment figure.  He is well connected within the Iranian political elite.  He is not a liberal in a Western sense; thus, if he were to come to power it is not at all clear that there would be fundamental structural political change in Iran. 

The leadership of the 1989 Beijing protests, by contrast, were inexperienced students.  They were outsiders who operated at a very large disadvantage: they had only limited access to information about the regime's strategy and tactics and did not have the kinds of technology now available (twitter, blogs, etc.) to facilitate mobilization. They were a fractious group, uncertain of precisely what they wanted and rather naive in their political calculations.

But what difference does this difference make?

It could be the case that with a more mature and influential leadership, the current Iranian protests might be able to succeed in ways the Chinese student movement could not.  Mousavi might have at hand resources and connections that could make a critical difference should the regime decide in favor of heightened repression (which the Khamanei sermon could bring).  On the other hand, however, it could be precisely this greater influence that could make Mousavi more dangerous to the regime.  In 1989, the protests could continue for weeks because, after all, these were merely students with no access to real power.  Zhao Ziyang and others could argue that they posed little real threat to the might and authority of the Party and they could bide their time while they sought a peaceful resolution.  Quite the contrary could be the case in Iran today.  Each day Mousavi persists, the weaker the regime appears, and the greater the possibility that Mousavi could persuade other elements of the power structure to come over to his side.  He poses a greater potential threat and, thus, Khamenei might want to dispose of him before his power grows….

At the end of the day, of course, we cannot know which way this will break. But is seems that we are at an even more critical juncture.