Using the satire of a German film as a metaphor, this article examines how the Revolutionary Guards have taken control of the narrative around Iran’s leadership, keeping Mojtaba Khamenei out of public view while steering the country toward continued confrontation.
"Good Bye Lenin!" is one of the finest films produced by German cinema in the past twenty years in the tragicomedy genre.
It was directed and co-written by Wolfgang Becker alongside Bernd Lichtenberg. The film had a remarkable presence at several international festivals, including the Berlin International Film Festival and the BAFTA Awards for non-English language films, and it was nominated for Golden Globe Awards. It starred Daniel Brühl and Katrin Sass in the leading roles.
The film tells the story of the mother of a young man named Alexander Kerner, who is 21 years old, and a girl named Ariane. At the end of the socialist era in East Germany, the mother, Christiane, falls into a long coma after seeing her son being arrested for taking part in a protest against state policies. She remains in this condition for eight months, from 1989 to 1990. During this period, the Berlin Wall falls, Germany is reunified, and Western life and products enter the former East Germany.
Alexander and Ariane become integrated into the new Western lifestyle. Alex starts working for a company that distributes television and satellite subscriptions, while his sister Ariane works at Burger King, with all the symbolic significance this carries. In mid-June 1990, Christiane wakes up from her coma, but the doctor tells her family that she cannot endure another shock.
Fearing that the fragile mother might suffer from the shock, her children hide the news of the transformation that East Germany has undergone, especially the collapse of socialism and the socialist society in which she had spent her life. To help her recover without experiencing a shock, they prepare a room for her decorated in the style that was common in the Eastern Bloc.
They also search through the garbage for food cans from the socialist era, sterilize them, and refill them with new food. They even go as far as recording news broadcasts and showing them on a television in their mother’s room, presenting them as current news, with the help of a family friend.
In short, Alex is required to transform their 79 square meter apartment into a miniature version of East Germany and convince his mother that socialism is still alive. All of this is presented in a comedic form filled with meanings and symbols related to the transformations that marked the transition from socialism to capitalism, not only in East Germany but throughout the Eastern Bloc as a whole.
The mother gradually recovers and comes to understand the changes that took place after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This film caught my attention because of the ironic way in which Germans chose to talk about their recent history and create the necessary contrasts between what existed before and what happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Some of this satirical imagery can be transferred from the seventh art to help us read the behavior of the Iranian regime, at the heart of which stands the Revolutionary Guards, the country’s real ruling power. This can be seen through their tightening of their grip on Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, or whatever remains of his image.
The Revolutionary Guards have succeeded in hiding the Supreme Leader from everyone while speaking in his name throughout the months of war with the United States and Israel, and continuing to do so until today. In his name, they have made decisions and taken positions. The matter even reached the point where Mojtaba did not attend his father’s funeral, making it valid to say that we have moved from the Hidden Imam to the Hidden Supreme Leader.
Perhaps the Revolutionary Guards’ violations of the memorandum of understanding with Trump, along with the return of the naval blockade and military strikes, make clear that Iran’s declared positions are tactical in nature and reflect the confrontational nature of the Revolutionary Guards more than they reflect positions coming from the Supreme Leader, with everything that a figure in such a position is expected to do in terms of prioritizing Iran’s and the Iranian people’s interests from a strategic perspective. Instead, the country is moving toward a complete slide into a broad confrontation with the United States and Israel, a confrontation that may be closer than ever before.
Indeed, many accounts confirm that the Revolutionary Guards are the ones ruling in the name of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, while the latter may be in a state of complete disability that prevents him from carrying out the responsibilities of governing. He may also lack the ability to know the reality of what is happening beyond the narrative promoted by the Revolutionary Guards. His situation is closer to that of Christiane, the mother in the film "Good Bye Lenin!".
The widely circulated account following the Iranian agreement with Trump says that President Masoud Pezeshkian threatened to resign if the memorandum of understanding with the United States was not approved. Iranian propaganda agencies promoted the idea that the Supreme Leader accepted it reluctantly and held Pezeshkian responsible for the consequences of accepting the memorandum and its provisions for Iran’s interests. This account, whose source is undoubtedly the Revolutionary Guards, reveals a severe weakness in the Supreme Leader’s position, or at the very least shows that events have overtaken him and that he has become a hostage in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards.
