Spinning a revolution

by Gareth Smith March 3, 2011

written by Gareth Smith March 3, 2011

Early last month, the website of Mir-Hossein Musavi, co-leader of Iran’s opposition Green Movement, presented two pictures. One from Egypt showed police beating a protester, under the heading ‘heroic’. The second was a similar scene in Iran, from the 2009 anti-government protests, under the heading ‘agent of imperialism’. Musavi and his ally, Mehdi Karrubi, have compared Egypt’s elections of recent years, won by the Hosni Mubarak’ National Democratic Party, to Iran’s 2009 presidential election, after which the Greens disputed the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They have also highlighted the role of new means of communication used by protestors in both countries. But the implications for Iran of events in Egypt and Tunisia are not straightforward: if the demise of presidents Hosni Mubarak and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has unnerved the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and even the West Bank, the authorities

Gareth Smith

Gareth Smith was a distinguished journalist who reported from the Middle East for over two decades. He served as the Financial Times correspondent in Tehran, where he was the chief Iran correspondent from 2003, following his earlier role as Lebanon correspondent. Throughout his career, Smith covered Middle Eastern affairs for leading media outlets, including The Financial Times, The Guardian, and the BBC. He also contributed as an editor to Executive magazine. His work as a freelance journalist in the 1990s, focusing on the politics of Iran and Iraq, paved the way for his appointment at the FT. In 2009, he relocated to the west coast of Ireland, where he balanced freelance journalism with his passion for nature and the land.

Spinning a revolution

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