t r u t h o u t - William O. Beeman | Ignorance on Iran May Lead to an Unwise Attack
Ignorance on Iran May Lead to an Unwise Attack
By William O. Beeman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 24 June 2005
Tehran - The United States may still attack Iran, and for all the wrong reasons.
Two recent analyses, both appearing a day before the final runoff to determine the Iranian presidency (June 23, 2005) reveal how this may happen, and what the logic behind such an attack may be.
The first analysis, by former United Nations nuclear arms inspector Scott Ritter, distributed through the Al Jazeera website, claims that the United States' assault on Iran has already begun. Ritter asserts that the terrorist organization Mujaheddin-e Khalg (known as the MEK or MKO in the West) is operating as a strike force under CIA direction, and that the United States is preparing to stage military attacks from Azerbaijan.
The second analysis appears in the Boston Globe, by Ray Takeyh, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who claims that the "counter reform" movement has led to the successful candidacy of former mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the first round of presidential elections in Iran - and possibly in the runoff as well - is entirely the doing of Iranian chief jurisprudent Ali Khamene'i. Takeyh's analysis echoes an infamous paper issued by the Committee on the Present Danger - an organization of ex-Cold Warriors that has retooled itself as an anti-terrorist organization. The paper, issued December 20, 2004 was entitled "Iran: A New Approach" and was authored by Mark Palmer and George Schultz. The main point of the paper was to paint Khamene'i as a Saddam-style dictator.
Both of these analyses have inherent flaws, but taken together they spell something quite ominous. I'm not quite ready to believe Ritter's pronouncement that the attack is already underway, despite the fact that Seymour Hersh predicted that it would happen about now in "The Coming Wars," in The New Yorker on January 24 and 31 of this year. However, I do believe that Ritter is reporting on a movement that significant elements in the Bush administration want to happen, and for which they may have laid the groundwork.
There are a lot of random facts that lend credence to Ritter's claims. Last year, there were fake elections in Azerbaijan. The ex-dictator of that country, octogenarian Haidar Aliev, was rumored to have already been dead two months before the election. The installation of his unqualified ne'er do well son Ilham, to applause from the Bush administration, allowed the completion of an oil pipeline from the Caspian region across former Soviet Georgia to Turkey, bypassing Iran.
Additionally, there have been continued contacts between Iranian Azerbaijani separatist Mahmudali Chehregani and the Bush administration. Moreover, there are apparently real plans for the Bush administration to establish a military base in the Republic of Azerbaijan, the better to stage the kind of attack on Iran about which Ritter is writing.
There is continued administration contact and support for the MEK, and support from a number of US senators and congresspeople. Ritter's scenario begins to look probable if not real.
However, Takeyh's piece (along with the paper from the Committee on the Present Danger) is the more dangerous of the two analyses, because of its attribution of a genuine social movement to a single person. This makes it tempting for administration hawks of limited intelligence (of all sorts), susceptible to the avalanche of neoconservative blather on Iranian politics, to think that all one has to do is topple Khamene'i and the whole Islamic Republic will fall like a house of cards. This is truly dangerous thinking, and it is blatantly not in the long term interests of the United States or Iran for the US Government to act upon such a flawed assumption.
The elections took almost all Iranian analysts by surprise, because of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's strong showing. However, this development should not have been unforeseen.
Iran is still engaged with internal revolutionary dialog. The original Revolution of 1978-79 was a drive for purification of the Iranian soul as much as anything else. This need for spiritual and moral purity was the element that engaged the middle and upper classes in the end, encouraging them to oust the shah against their own economic interests (something that should not surprise Americans, given the past two presidential elections).
The pull of the spiritual is obviously still strong in Iran, and Ahmadinejad has been able to embody this in his image of simplicity, humility and spirituality successfully. He further combines his image with an economic message that promises that the fruits of the revolution - namely the elevation of the mostazefin (downtrodden) - can still be achieved.
Ahmadinejad's persona and his message are clearly irresistible to people who see the original ideals of the revolution slipping away, through the increasingly Westernized behavior and sensibilities of the salons and boutiques of North Tehran. In short, the social forces that are driving the Ahmadinejad supporters are real, broad, and clearly very powerful. Any American move to attack Iran, or to try to achieve regime change through the narrow measure of trying to topple Khamene'i or any limited group of individuals, will fail. The Iranian public supporting Ahmadinejad and what he represents will reject any replacement for the current government, and the rest of the Iranian population will consider anything initiated by the United States to be tainted.
The day may come when Washington will finally try to understand Iran on its own terms, but I think the world will have to wait for a very long time for this to take place.
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William O. Beeman has been observing the Iranian presidential elections from Tehran. He is professor of Anthropology and Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. His forthcoming book is The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Praeger).
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Iranians Vote in Tight Presidential Run-Off
By Edmund Blair
Reuters
Friday 24 June 2005
Iranians streamed to the polls on Friday in a presidential run-off that could toughen policy toward the West and end tentative moves toward liberalization if a hardline candidate beats Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Voters stood in long lines in poor south Tehran, a stronghold of ultra-conservative Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has won over Iran's religious poor with promises to share out Iran's oil wealth more fairly.
"I will vote for Ahmadinejad because he wants to cut off the hands of those who are stealing the country's national wealth. He wants to fight poverty, fraud and discrimination," said Rahmatollah Izadpanah, 41, queuing in south Tehran.
In wealthier uptown parts of the capital, Rafsanjani voters turned out in fear Ahmadinejad would revive the strictures and purges that followed the 1979 Islamic revolution. Some polling stations were busy but many in north Tehran were quiet at first.
"Our freedom is at stake. I have asked all my friends to cast their votes as early as possible," said Somayeh, 23, in a veil but with make-up that conservatives frown upon.
Political analysts say the election result is too close to call, with the contest reflecting deep social divisions apparent in the Islamic Republic's population of 67 million people.
Rafsanjani, a cleric bidding to regain the post he held from 1989 to 1997, has recast himself as a liberal with vows to preserve the reforms of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, who loosened Islamic social rules and pursued detente with the West.
"I intend to play a historic political role ... to stop the domination of extremism," Rafsanjani, 70, said after voting.
Ahmadinejad, 48, a surprise contender in the run-off, says ties with Washington are not a priority. He is a staunch supporter of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in matters of state in Iran's system of clerical rule.
Fears of a Purge
"Today is the beginning of a new political era for the Iranian nation," Ahmadinejad said when he voted.
Opponents fear Ahmadinejad will purge ministries and other bodies, citing what he did to municipal bodies as Tehran mayor.
The interior, culture and economy ministries are among those held by Khatami-backed reformists. Bijan Zanganeh, oil minister of OPEC's second largest producer, made his loyalties clear by turning up at a Rafsanjani rally this week.
Washington says the election is unfair because an unelected religious body blocked the vast majority of would-be candidates.
Many analysts say the US criticism may have spurred turnout in last week's first round, helping it to reach 63 percent of the 47 million eligible voters.
"The more people who participate in the election, the better it will be for the next president and for protecting Iran, and achieving our goals," said Khamenei, one of the first to cast a ballot in the second round.
The run-off is between the top two of seven candidates from the first round. It is the first time since the 1979 revolution that a presidential poll has gone to a second vote.
The election has exposed deep splits among Iran's mostly youthful electorate. The minimum voting age is 15.
Rafsanjani voters tend to be from upper and middle classes who are tired of Iran's isolation, want more social freedom and back his plans to liberalize the state-dominated economy.
Ahmadinejad, a former instructor of the Basij militia, zealous guardians of the revolution's ideals, has support among the religiously conservative working-class, who struggle to make ends meet and for whom strict Islamic codes are no worry.
To them, Ahmadinejad is an outsider challenging the vested business interests of Rafsanjani's wealthy family and others they believe have benefited most from booming oil prices.
Reformist candidates beaten in the first round and now backing Rafsanjani accuse the hardline Revolutionary Guards and Basij of backing Ahmadinejad, charges dismissed by Ahmadinejad.
Polls are due to close at 7 p.m. (1430 GMT) but may be extended up to 11 p.m. (1830 GMT), as in the first round.
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Saturday, June 25, 2005
Monday, June 20, 2005
CFR Publications: Beeman: Rafsanjani Victory Probable, But Not Certain, in Iran's 'Real Election'
CFR Publications: Beeman: Rafsanjani Victory Probable, But Not Certain, in Iran's 'Real Election'
William O. Beeman, professor of anthropology at Brown University and an expert on Iran's culture and social patterns, says he was stunned on his recent trip to Tehran by the Western-style campaigning underway for the June 17 presidential elections. Most surprising to him was the strong support shown by young women and men for the frontrunner, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Iran's electorate, Beeman says, is largely united on the need for social reform in the country and the desirability of a peaceful nuclear-energy program. But they have divided their support between three leading candidates, and a Rafansanji victory is not assured. Despite the role of the conservative Council of Guardians in selecting the presidential candidates, "there's no question that this is a real election and it really is happening," he says. "And this is not an election that is controlled and it's not an election where we know the outcome."
Beeman, whose latest book, The 'Great Satan' vs. The 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, will be published soon, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on June 15, 2005.
Other Interviews
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You've just come back from a visit to Iran where you got a flavor of the presidential election campaign that just wrapped up. Can you give us a brief description of what you saw?
What's fascinating about this campaign is that it is, for all intents and purposes, a very Western-style campaign. The candidates, even the frontrunner, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, have lucid [campaigning] techniques that we would think of as being essentially Western for the election. Obviously, they're all taking the election quite seriously. Hashemi Rafsanjani has also put in his platform--in fact, all of the candidates have put in their platforms--measures that we associate with the reformist movement.
Like what?
Well, for instance, for Rafsanjani, one of the more important points of his campaign is increased rights for women and attention to the needs of young people. It's very interesting. Among his campaigners, he actually has some very powerful spokeswomen, who are out on the stump with him and are, I'd say, doing a fantastic job in representing him as a can-do candidate who can really mediate between the demands of the public--which is increasingly requiring or demanding that the government liberalize in important ways--and the traditional mullahs, who still hold significant power in the country. He also has recruited, it seems, hundreds of very young people to run the streets and hand out flyers and buttonhole people. It's amazing to see the impression that this gives--that it is women and youth for Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is 70.
Why do you think these young people, who might normally be supporting the reformist candidate, Mustafa Moin, are supporting him?
Well, he actually trucked in [to Tehran] hundreds of folks from his native province in Iran. He comes from the area around Yazd. And it seems a lot of his relatives, and a lot of his relatives' friends, and people who would like to see him elected from his local area have made the trip to Tehran and are doing this work. I think that it would be wrong to characterize them entirely as coming from that area, but that's certainly where a bunch of them came from.
Have there been any reliable political polls?
Well, we've seen political polls. Now, it's hard to tell whether they are reliable or not, because they've varied tremendously from day-to-day. Earlier, around the 8th of June, the polls suggested the second-place runner was Mohammed Baqur Qalibaf, who used to be chief of police in Tehran. And his campaign has been the slickest thing I've ever seen. I am astonishingly impressed with the print and media images he has been able to generate. He has been turned into an absolute glamour boy.
He also has a pilot's license and a PhD in geography. He's not a person without accomplishments. He was also an early member of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran, so it's very interesting. He led a crackdown on the student population in 1999, but he also has this very, very modern image.
He's in his early 40s, and I actually have a collection of posters of him that were really impressive. In one, he is in a pilot's uniform next to an Iranian jet, looking like a glamorous aviator. There's another one that's a poster in a very untraditional format. It's in a long, horizontal strip that simply has the upper part of his face kind of staring out at you, and it's all black and white, except they have enhanced his blue eyes. So you see this black and white poster with these electric blue eyes staring out at you, and in Iran, of course, most people have brown eyes. There are people who do have blue eyes--they're thought to be the descendants of Alexander the Great--it's one of the myths people have. The poster projects an extraordinarily arresting image, and he's attracted a lot of young people, who believe him to be, again, a person who has a kind of can-do attitude and is very powerful.
What about the great bugaboo, the "Great Satan"? Have any of the candidates talked much about the United States?
Rafsanjani has, of course, and in fact--in very coded terms--he has come out and said he is the one who can actually deliver on creating a rapprochement with what he calls "the world community," or "nations outside of Iran." He doesn't say the United States directly, but I think everybody who hears his campaign material knows that's what he's talking about. After all, he has an extraordinary advantage in Iranian politics, in my opinion, and that is that he was involved with the Iran-Contra affair directly [in which elements in the Reagan administration secretly sold missiles to Iran and used the proceeds to fund illegal covert actions in Nicaragua]. Despite being up close and friendly with the United States at that time, he has not suffered politically at all. The great danger in Iran has always been that the person who would try to achieve some kind rapprochement with the United States would immediately be tainted politically by his enemies in such a way that would make him ineffective. In this particular case, Rafsanjani has been completely, seemingly unscathed. So he has already, in important ways, addressed particular problems politicians have had. I think he feels he can go forward.
How does this election work? Does there have to be a run-off if no candidate wins a majority?
Yes. I think everyone feels that Rafsanjani will be the frontrunner, and probably will win between 30 percent and 40 percent of the vote.
And who will be second?
Up until last week, Qalibaf was running second. But just before I left, a new poll came out, which actually put Moin, the reform candidate, in second place. So that was a big surprise and we don't know exactly what it all means. I had a chance to chat with Moin's chief spokesperson, who's also a woman, and she's a formidable lady who is quite confident he will do extremely well in the election.
And what is Moin's background?
He's held a number of government posts, including minister of culture, I believe. But he's been continually involved with the government, and I think that's one of the reasons why he was allowed into the election. The important thing is people did see him as a serious challenge. He was originally excluded from the list of candidates by the Guardian Council. When people essentially expressed dismay about this--and there was a very widespread feeling that this was too heavy-handed on the part of the Guardian Council--[Supreme Leader] Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei personally requested that he and another candidate be included again.
During the last parliamentary election, two years ago, there was a boycott of the election. Why was that?
The reason people were trying to boycott the elections was because the Guardian Council had excluded nearly 2,300 candidates.
Is there another boycott going on?
There has been an attempt to boycott this election, but not a very well-organized one. In talking to people around Tehran, lots of folks expressed real dismay at the election, and said they were really unhappy that the candidates they feel would be strong reformists were excluded again from the candidate list by the Guardian Council. So there are a number of people who plan not to vote. Actually, though, when you talk to them--you can't do a huge sample just talking to people informally--but I was struck by the fact that not everybody who plans not to vote was doing so out of political protest. A lot of them were just unexcited by the list of candidates. No one really seemed to fire them up. Moin, as thoughtful and important a candidate he is in terms of representing the reformers, is extremely dull.
I heard he's a terrible speaker.
He's quite a bad speaker. Also, what the public is expressing, as is reflected in candidates' statements designed to attract votes, is an insistence that the reform movement go forward. And they want any candidate that will move the reform movement forward, even incrementally. A lot of people are saying, "You know, we don't really like Mr. Hashemi [Rafsanjani]. He's kind of a very clever, old-style politician and all that. But he is the one that is likely to be able to actually deliver on some of the points of the reform movement that we insist on. And Moin, as much as we like his philosophy--he's not going to be able to deal with the clerics and the clerical establishment.'' Qalibaf, also, is favored largely because he's seen as a very strong figure. So the strength in these candidates actually turns out to be a very important point.
It's interesting that all the conservatives couldn't coalesce behind one candidate.
There's a fourth candidate, cleric Mehdi Karrubi, who is a very interesting person. He was a speaker in parliament who ran afoul of the other clerics and he has been a rather important protest figure from within the clerical establishment. He has tried to circumvent them by wrapping himself in the mantel of the late Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini [the Islamic Republic's founder] in his campaigning. His campaign pieces that appear on TV--again, very slick pieces of work--start out with a big picture of Ayatollah Khomeini, and the camera pans out, and you see Khomeini speaking to a crowd, and there's Karrubi right there next to him. So people who might be uncomfortable voting for a completely secular candidate, or who feel the flames of the revolution are still alive, might be more comfortable voting for Karrubi, even though right now the current clerical establishment is not very happy with him.
Does the clerical establishment back Rafsanjani?
Actually, they don't. They're backing Qalibaf. Rafsanjani has been a real political survivor. I mean, not only did he serve as president twice already, but he also headed up a body called the Expediency Council. This is an unelected post that, more or less, he created himself, and it was a council designed to mediate between the parliament [the Majlis] and the clerical establishment. It was created because, during the reform presidencies of [Mohammed] Khatami in his two terms [1997-2005], the Majlis was continually coming up with laws that were vetoed by the Guardian Council, and it really made the public furious. So there was a need for somebody to step in and try and resolve this.
There are two major international issues for Iran: the nuclear issue--which has involved the European Union and the United States--and Iraq. Do these issues come up in the campaign?
The nuclear issue does come up, but I think there is no question that the public, all the candidates, and the current establishment are completely unified on this point: Iran should be developing its nuclear industry.
Here's one point that utterly escapes us in the United States, and I really wish people in power could understand: The discourse on the nuclear question between the United States and Iran is almost a complete disconnect. The United States, not to put too fine a point on it, thinks Iran is going after nuclear weapons in order to do some damage to the United States and its allies. To put it really crudely, as one adviser connected to the White House told me, "Look, we know Iran wants to develop a nuclear bomb to drop on Tel Aviv." This kind of statement just utterly and completely floors me.
The Iranian side of the discourse is that they want to be known and seen as a modern, developing state with a modern, developing industrial base. The history of relations between Iran and the West for the last hundred years has included Iran's developing various kinds of industrial and technological advances to prove to themselves--and to attempt to prove to the world--that they are, in fact, that kind of country.
The nuclear-power issue is exactly that. When Iranians talk about it, and talk about the United States, they say, "The United States is trying to repress us; they're trying to keep us down and keep us backward, make us a second-class nation. And we have the ability to develop a nuclear industry, and we're being told we're not good enough, or we can't." And this makes people furious--not just the clerical establishment, but this makes the person on the street, even 16- and 17-year-olds, absolutely boil with anger. It is such an emotional issue that absolutely no politician could ever back down on this question. But again, the public, when you ask them about nuclear weapons, they just sort of look at you like you are crazy. Because that's not even close to what it means to them.
Shifting gears, do you think there is any possibility the young people of Iran might attempt to spearhead a revolution against the government?
In the last 15 years, the youth of the country have now come to the fore in massive numbers. Right now, of course, we know that something like 70 percent of the population is under the age of 25. But what is really important is that, although the population as a whole is very youthful, it will be within the next five years that the majority of the voting population will have no knowledge of the revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini or anything that went on in 1978 and 1979. My prediction is that, within five to ten years, there's going to be such a change in Iran that it will make our heads spin.
The young people are absolutely hell-bent on reform. But they're willing to wait. The students, the really kind of intrepid students at the University of Tehran, are not interested in violence and they're quite articulate about it. They certainly don't want a foreign-installed government of any sort, and they said, "We're engaged in a quiet revolution."
And what are the main reforms they want?
First of all, they're concerned with personal liberty. The simple fact is that, at least in Tehran, I would say everybody does just about anything they want in private. The government has absolutely stopped going into people's houses and, in fact, private behavior is now, I would say, virtually completely free. The government has repressed people who've been expressing opposition opinions in very prominent places. They've arrested some bloggers and one student at the University of Tehran who wrote a letter to [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan that got a lot of attention, and he was put in jail for a few months. But it was the government itself that released him eventually, which is quite interesting. So the young people would like the de facto personal liberties, which people have just sort of seized for themselves, to be essentially acknowledged by the government as a whole.
The women in particular, who staged a demonstration while we were there for women's rights, want important reforms within the legal system to reach an accommodation between Islamic law and what they would consider to be a modern stance for family law, in particular. The question of whether women can participate in public life has been absolutely resolved. There is just no question. Women are there and in every way, in every area of public life, and they're not going to go away. They are actually one of the strongest forces for reform in the country. And anybody in the United States who still believes women in Iran are somehow helpless victims of male hegemony is expressing an incredibly inaccurate and outmoded view.
They're still required to wear head coverings. But beyond that, you see everything in the world. What it is, is modest dress. And modest dress is, by the way, incumbent upon both men and women. But what the women have done is to develop all sorts of very stylish ways to achieve that. So they'll have a head covering that may expose a lot more hair, which is considered erotic in Iran, and maybe a very light coat that they'll be wearing with pants. We see, for young girls, it's evolved into kind of a head covering, a jacket over a blouse, and maybe even jeans. The whole thing has become extraordinarily fashionable.
After the election, should the United States say anything?
I think that the United States should certainly not undercut the election, whatever happens. The Bush administration has the most unfortunate habit of saying negative things just when things are starting to get better. We had an enormously important possibility of an opening to Iran after the Bam earthquake [December 2003] only to have President Bush, on New Year's Day, come out and again make hugely negative remarks about Iran. If the administration can't say anything nice, then they really should say nothing. Whether one likes the fact that candidates were vetted before the election or not, there's no question that this is a real election and it really is happening. And this is not an election that is controlled and it's not an election where we know the outcome. And if it does go into a run-off, even though Rafsanjani is now a favored candidate, it's not clear that he would win, because the other candidates, and there are several, might throw their support to his opponent.
William O. Beeman, professor of anthropology at Brown University and an expert on Iran's culture and social patterns, says he was stunned on his recent trip to Tehran by the Western-style campaigning underway for the June 17 presidential elections. Most surprising to him was the strong support shown by young women and men for the frontrunner, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Iran's electorate, Beeman says, is largely united on the need for social reform in the country and the desirability of a peaceful nuclear-energy program. But they have divided their support between three leading candidates, and a Rafansanji victory is not assured. Despite the role of the conservative Council of Guardians in selecting the presidential candidates, "there's no question that this is a real election and it really is happening," he says. "And this is not an election that is controlled and it's not an election where we know the outcome."
Beeman, whose latest book, The 'Great Satan' vs. The 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, will be published soon, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on June 15, 2005.
Other Interviews
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You've just come back from a visit to Iran where you got a flavor of the presidential election campaign that just wrapped up. Can you give us a brief description of what you saw?
What's fascinating about this campaign is that it is, for all intents and purposes, a very Western-style campaign. The candidates, even the frontrunner, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, have lucid [campaigning] techniques that we would think of as being essentially Western for the election. Obviously, they're all taking the election quite seriously. Hashemi Rafsanjani has also put in his platform--in fact, all of the candidates have put in their platforms--measures that we associate with the reformist movement.
Like what?
Well, for instance, for Rafsanjani, one of the more important points of his campaign is increased rights for women and attention to the needs of young people. It's very interesting. Among his campaigners, he actually has some very powerful spokeswomen, who are out on the stump with him and are, I'd say, doing a fantastic job in representing him as a can-do candidate who can really mediate between the demands of the public--which is increasingly requiring or demanding that the government liberalize in important ways--and the traditional mullahs, who still hold significant power in the country. He also has recruited, it seems, hundreds of very young people to run the streets and hand out flyers and buttonhole people. It's amazing to see the impression that this gives--that it is women and youth for Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is 70.
Why do you think these young people, who might normally be supporting the reformist candidate, Mustafa Moin, are supporting him?
Well, he actually trucked in [to Tehran] hundreds of folks from his native province in Iran. He comes from the area around Yazd. And it seems a lot of his relatives, and a lot of his relatives' friends, and people who would like to see him elected from his local area have made the trip to Tehran and are doing this work. I think that it would be wrong to characterize them entirely as coming from that area, but that's certainly where a bunch of them came from.
Have there been any reliable political polls?
Well, we've seen political polls. Now, it's hard to tell whether they are reliable or not, because they've varied tremendously from day-to-day. Earlier, around the 8th of June, the polls suggested the second-place runner was Mohammed Baqur Qalibaf, who used to be chief of police in Tehran. And his campaign has been the slickest thing I've ever seen. I am astonishingly impressed with the print and media images he has been able to generate. He has been turned into an absolute glamour boy.
He also has a pilot's license and a PhD in geography. He's not a person without accomplishments. He was also an early member of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran, so it's very interesting. He led a crackdown on the student population in 1999, but he also has this very, very modern image.
He's in his early 40s, and I actually have a collection of posters of him that were really impressive. In one, he is in a pilot's uniform next to an Iranian jet, looking like a glamorous aviator. There's another one that's a poster in a very untraditional format. It's in a long, horizontal strip that simply has the upper part of his face kind of staring out at you, and it's all black and white, except they have enhanced his blue eyes. So you see this black and white poster with these electric blue eyes staring out at you, and in Iran, of course, most people have brown eyes. There are people who do have blue eyes--they're thought to be the descendants of Alexander the Great--it's one of the myths people have. The poster projects an extraordinarily arresting image, and he's attracted a lot of young people, who believe him to be, again, a person who has a kind of can-do attitude and is very powerful.
What about the great bugaboo, the "Great Satan"? Have any of the candidates talked much about the United States?
Rafsanjani has, of course, and in fact--in very coded terms--he has come out and said he is the one who can actually deliver on creating a rapprochement with what he calls "the world community," or "nations outside of Iran." He doesn't say the United States directly, but I think everybody who hears his campaign material knows that's what he's talking about. After all, he has an extraordinary advantage in Iranian politics, in my opinion, and that is that he was involved with the Iran-Contra affair directly [in which elements in the Reagan administration secretly sold missiles to Iran and used the proceeds to fund illegal covert actions in Nicaragua]. Despite being up close and friendly with the United States at that time, he has not suffered politically at all. The great danger in Iran has always been that the person who would try to achieve some kind rapprochement with the United States would immediately be tainted politically by his enemies in such a way that would make him ineffective. In this particular case, Rafsanjani has been completely, seemingly unscathed. So he has already, in important ways, addressed particular problems politicians have had. I think he feels he can go forward.
How does this election work? Does there have to be a run-off if no candidate wins a majority?
Yes. I think everyone feels that Rafsanjani will be the frontrunner, and probably will win between 30 percent and 40 percent of the vote.
And who will be second?
Up until last week, Qalibaf was running second. But just before I left, a new poll came out, which actually put Moin, the reform candidate, in second place. So that was a big surprise and we don't know exactly what it all means. I had a chance to chat with Moin's chief spokesperson, who's also a woman, and she's a formidable lady who is quite confident he will do extremely well in the election.
And what is Moin's background?
He's held a number of government posts, including minister of culture, I believe. But he's been continually involved with the government, and I think that's one of the reasons why he was allowed into the election. The important thing is people did see him as a serious challenge. He was originally excluded from the list of candidates by the Guardian Council. When people essentially expressed dismay about this--and there was a very widespread feeling that this was too heavy-handed on the part of the Guardian Council--[Supreme Leader] Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei personally requested that he and another candidate be included again.
During the last parliamentary election, two years ago, there was a boycott of the election. Why was that?
The reason people were trying to boycott the elections was because the Guardian Council had excluded nearly 2,300 candidates.
Is there another boycott going on?
There has been an attempt to boycott this election, but not a very well-organized one. In talking to people around Tehran, lots of folks expressed real dismay at the election, and said they were really unhappy that the candidates they feel would be strong reformists were excluded again from the candidate list by the Guardian Council. So there are a number of people who plan not to vote. Actually, though, when you talk to them--you can't do a huge sample just talking to people informally--but I was struck by the fact that not everybody who plans not to vote was doing so out of political protest. A lot of them were just unexcited by the list of candidates. No one really seemed to fire them up. Moin, as thoughtful and important a candidate he is in terms of representing the reformers, is extremely dull.
I heard he's a terrible speaker.
He's quite a bad speaker. Also, what the public is expressing, as is reflected in candidates' statements designed to attract votes, is an insistence that the reform movement go forward. And they want any candidate that will move the reform movement forward, even incrementally. A lot of people are saying, "You know, we don't really like Mr. Hashemi [Rafsanjani]. He's kind of a very clever, old-style politician and all that. But he is the one that is likely to be able to actually deliver on some of the points of the reform movement that we insist on. And Moin, as much as we like his philosophy--he's not going to be able to deal with the clerics and the clerical establishment.'' Qalibaf, also, is favored largely because he's seen as a very strong figure. So the strength in these candidates actually turns out to be a very important point.
It's interesting that all the conservatives couldn't coalesce behind one candidate.
There's a fourth candidate, cleric Mehdi Karrubi, who is a very interesting person. He was a speaker in parliament who ran afoul of the other clerics and he has been a rather important protest figure from within the clerical establishment. He has tried to circumvent them by wrapping himself in the mantel of the late Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini [the Islamic Republic's founder] in his campaigning. His campaign pieces that appear on TV--again, very slick pieces of work--start out with a big picture of Ayatollah Khomeini, and the camera pans out, and you see Khomeini speaking to a crowd, and there's Karrubi right there next to him. So people who might be uncomfortable voting for a completely secular candidate, or who feel the flames of the revolution are still alive, might be more comfortable voting for Karrubi, even though right now the current clerical establishment is not very happy with him.
Does the clerical establishment back Rafsanjani?
Actually, they don't. They're backing Qalibaf. Rafsanjani has been a real political survivor. I mean, not only did he serve as president twice already, but he also headed up a body called the Expediency Council. This is an unelected post that, more or less, he created himself, and it was a council designed to mediate between the parliament [the Majlis] and the clerical establishment. It was created because, during the reform presidencies of [Mohammed] Khatami in his two terms [1997-2005], the Majlis was continually coming up with laws that were vetoed by the Guardian Council, and it really made the public furious. So there was a need for somebody to step in and try and resolve this.
There are two major international issues for Iran: the nuclear issue--which has involved the European Union and the United States--and Iraq. Do these issues come up in the campaign?
The nuclear issue does come up, but I think there is no question that the public, all the candidates, and the current establishment are completely unified on this point: Iran should be developing its nuclear industry.
Here's one point that utterly escapes us in the United States, and I really wish people in power could understand: The discourse on the nuclear question between the United States and Iran is almost a complete disconnect. The United States, not to put too fine a point on it, thinks Iran is going after nuclear weapons in order to do some damage to the United States and its allies. To put it really crudely, as one adviser connected to the White House told me, "Look, we know Iran wants to develop a nuclear bomb to drop on Tel Aviv." This kind of statement just utterly and completely floors me.
The Iranian side of the discourse is that they want to be known and seen as a modern, developing state with a modern, developing industrial base. The history of relations between Iran and the West for the last hundred years has included Iran's developing various kinds of industrial and technological advances to prove to themselves--and to attempt to prove to the world--that they are, in fact, that kind of country.
The nuclear-power issue is exactly that. When Iranians talk about it, and talk about the United States, they say, "The United States is trying to repress us; they're trying to keep us down and keep us backward, make us a second-class nation. And we have the ability to develop a nuclear industry, and we're being told we're not good enough, or we can't." And this makes people furious--not just the clerical establishment, but this makes the person on the street, even 16- and 17-year-olds, absolutely boil with anger. It is such an emotional issue that absolutely no politician could ever back down on this question. But again, the public, when you ask them about nuclear weapons, they just sort of look at you like you are crazy. Because that's not even close to what it means to them.
Shifting gears, do you think there is any possibility the young people of Iran might attempt to spearhead a revolution against the government?
In the last 15 years, the youth of the country have now come to the fore in massive numbers. Right now, of course, we know that something like 70 percent of the population is under the age of 25. But what is really important is that, although the population as a whole is very youthful, it will be within the next five years that the majority of the voting population will have no knowledge of the revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini or anything that went on in 1978 and 1979. My prediction is that, within five to ten years, there's going to be such a change in Iran that it will make our heads spin.
The young people are absolutely hell-bent on reform. But they're willing to wait. The students, the really kind of intrepid students at the University of Tehran, are not interested in violence and they're quite articulate about it. They certainly don't want a foreign-installed government of any sort, and they said, "We're engaged in a quiet revolution."
And what are the main reforms they want?
First of all, they're concerned with personal liberty. The simple fact is that, at least in Tehran, I would say everybody does just about anything they want in private. The government has absolutely stopped going into people's houses and, in fact, private behavior is now, I would say, virtually completely free. The government has repressed people who've been expressing opposition opinions in very prominent places. They've arrested some bloggers and one student at the University of Tehran who wrote a letter to [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan that got a lot of attention, and he was put in jail for a few months. But it was the government itself that released him eventually, which is quite interesting. So the young people would like the de facto personal liberties, which people have just sort of seized for themselves, to be essentially acknowledged by the government as a whole.
The women in particular, who staged a demonstration while we were there for women's rights, want important reforms within the legal system to reach an accommodation between Islamic law and what they would consider to be a modern stance for family law, in particular. The question of whether women can participate in public life has been absolutely resolved. There is just no question. Women are there and in every way, in every area of public life, and they're not going to go away. They are actually one of the strongest forces for reform in the country. And anybody in the United States who still believes women in Iran are somehow helpless victims of male hegemony is expressing an incredibly inaccurate and outmoded view.
They're still required to wear head coverings. But beyond that, you see everything in the world. What it is, is modest dress. And modest dress is, by the way, incumbent upon both men and women. But what the women have done is to develop all sorts of very stylish ways to achieve that. So they'll have a head covering that may expose a lot more hair, which is considered erotic in Iran, and maybe a very light coat that they'll be wearing with pants. We see, for young girls, it's evolved into kind of a head covering, a jacket over a blouse, and maybe even jeans. The whole thing has become extraordinarily fashionable.
After the election, should the United States say anything?
I think that the United States should certainly not undercut the election, whatever happens. The Bush administration has the most unfortunate habit of saying negative things just when things are starting to get better. We had an enormously important possibility of an opening to Iran after the Bam earthquake [December 2003] only to have President Bush, on New Year's Day, come out and again make hugely negative remarks about Iran. If the administration can't say anything nice, then they really should say nothing. Whether one likes the fact that candidates were vetted before the election or not, there's no question that this is a real election and it really is happening. And this is not an election that is controlled and it's not an election where we know the outcome. And if it does go into a run-off, even though Rafsanjani is now a favored candidate, it's not clear that he would win, because the other candidates, and there are several, might throw their support to his opponent.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
POLITICS-US: Bush and Hawks Try Pre-Emptive Strike Vs. Iran Vote
POLITICS-US: Bush and Hawks Try Pre-Emptive Strike Vs. Iran Vote
WASHINGTON, Jun 18 (IPS) - A familiar clutch of hardline U.S. hawks who led the march to war against Iraq have tried to carry out yet another pre-emptive strike. But this time it wasn't military.
As millions of Iranians prepared to vote for the successor to Pres. Mohammed Khatami Friday, the group, helped along by a strong denunciation by Bush himself, mounted what could only be described as an orchestrated public-relations campaign to discredit the elections even before they took place.
”Today Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world,” Bush declared in a statement issued by the White House Thursday afternoon. ”Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy.”
Bush's statements, which were echoed by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, and to a somewhat less categorical extent by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, offered some reassurance to the hawks, particularly some prominent neo-conservatives outside the administration who have pressed their own longstanding campaign for ”regime change” in Teheran with growing intensity.
At the same time, however, their own efforts to discredit the election at the eleventh hour highlight their growing concern that a new president in Iran may actually be someone with whom, as Margaret Thatcher first observed about incoming Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev 20 years ago, the West might actually be able to do business.
That concern rose sharply late last month when State Department officials quietly urged both the Republican Congressional leadership to hold off action on the Iran Freedom Support Act that would impose new sanctions on Iran pending ongoing negotiations between the so-called EU-3 -- Britain, France, and Germany -- and Iran over its nuclear programme.
”These guys want regime change,” said one knowledgeable source who asked not to be identified, ”and they're very worried about anything that could divert from that. They want to ensure that the White House won't get any funny ideas about making a deal with a new Iranian government.”
Thus, the hawks' mantra Thursday on the eve of the balloting, was that the elections won't make any difference because hardline elements led by the unelected supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and the Guardian Council, which did so much to hobble outgoing Pres. Mohammed Khatami and the reformists, will continue running the country regardless of who wins.
”Any normal person familiar with the Islamic republic knows that these are not elections at all...,” wrote Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in an article headlined ”When Is an Election Not an Election?” posted on National Review Online (NRO) Thursday morning.
”They are a mise en scene, an entertainment, a comic opera staged for our benefit. The purpose of the charade, pure and simple, is to deter us from supporting the forces of democratic revolution in Iran.”
That theme was echoed in a series of events and other columns published Thursday, including one, by Kenneth Timmerman in NRO (and reprinted Friday by the Washington Times) entitled ”Fake Election, Real Threats” in which he predicted that no more than five percent of eligible voters in Teheran would turn out.
Another appeared in the Washington Times by Nir Boms, vice president of the new Centre for Freedom in the Middle East and previously vice president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and Elliott Chodoff entitled ”Facing the Iranian Elections,” and a third in the New York Times by AEI vice president Danielle Pletka, entitled ”Not Our Man in Iran,” a reference to the front-runner, former President Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose presumed victory, she wrote, was due to the ”machinations of the mullahs.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Sam Brownback, a Christian Right leader close to both hard-line neoconservatives and Iranian-American followers of Reza Pahlevi, the ambitious, U.S.-based son of the former Shah, charged in a floor speech that the elections were ”bogus,” while at AEI headquarters across town, a discussion on the elections featured a presentation by founder of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohsen Sazegara of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who predicted, ”No matter who wins the presidential elections, there will be no real changes in Iran's domestic or foreign policy.”
Despite the certainty with which these views were expressed, many U.S.-based Iran specialists, while agreeing that powers of Khameini and the Guardian's Council clearly circumscribed what an elected president could do, said that the depiction of the election as a sham was simplistic at best, a deliberate distortion at worst.
Contrary to Pletka's assertion that Rafsanjani was chosen by the mullahs, said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University, ”Those who are closest to the actual election process have stated repeatedly that Rafsanjani was seen as dividing the mullahs and was not-so-subtly opposed in his candidacy by Khamenei.”
That view was echoed by Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul, directors of the Project on Iranian Democracy at the conservative Hoover Institution in California, in an article in Friday's International Herald Tribune. Rafsanjani and Khamenei, they wrote, ”now àare at each other's political throats,” signaling ”clear division within the ruling elite” of the kind that could well presage ”the beginning of political liberalisation.”
What's more, according to Milani and McFaul, Rafsanjani and Mostafa Moin, a reformist who is tipped to be Rafsanjani's likely rival in a run-off Jul. 1, have both gone further than Khatami ”in challenging the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic and its current leadership” and in advocating improved relations with the United States.
A close reading of the hawks themselves also disclosed serious inconsistencies. While insisting, for example, that ”millions of 'officially cast' ballots (were) manufactured weeks ago, to ensure the right guy wins and that enough votes will have been cast,” Ledeen confessed that even he didn't know who would win.
Like Pletka, Ledeen had assumed ”that Rafsanjani would walk away with it.” But since Khameini overruled the Guardian Council so that Moin (”a nasty pseudo-reformer”) could join the field, he was no longer so sure. Moin ”might be more convincing as he plays that most difficult role,” Ledeen went on: ”the moderate face of islamofascism.”
To some Iran specialists, such speculation serves only to demonstrate that, as in the run-up to the war in Iraq, some hard-liners are trying to fit the facts into their preferred policy.
”Michael Ledeen has never been to Iran; he speaks no Persian,” said Brown University Professor William Beeman, who observed the campaign in Teheran during the past week. ”He has minimal credibility in assessing the Iranian elections, or evaluating the political situation there.
”It is clear that the neo-cons are desperate to deny any credibility to the Iranian people in this election àby continuing to promulgate the image of helpless Iranians cowering under tyrannical rule -- the better to justify some kind of attack leading to 'regime change,”' Said Brown, author of a forthcoming book, ”The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs:' How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.' (END/2005)
WASHINGTON, Jun 18 (IPS) - A familiar clutch of hardline U.S. hawks who led the march to war against Iraq have tried to carry out yet another pre-emptive strike. But this time it wasn't military.
As millions of Iranians prepared to vote for the successor to Pres. Mohammed Khatami Friday, the group, helped along by a strong denunciation by Bush himself, mounted what could only be described as an orchestrated public-relations campaign to discredit the elections even before they took place.
”Today Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world,” Bush declared in a statement issued by the White House Thursday afternoon. ”Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy.”
Bush's statements, which were echoed by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, and to a somewhat less categorical extent by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, offered some reassurance to the hawks, particularly some prominent neo-conservatives outside the administration who have pressed their own longstanding campaign for ”regime change” in Teheran with growing intensity.
At the same time, however, their own efforts to discredit the election at the eleventh hour highlight their growing concern that a new president in Iran may actually be someone with whom, as Margaret Thatcher first observed about incoming Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev 20 years ago, the West might actually be able to do business.
That concern rose sharply late last month when State Department officials quietly urged both the Republican Congressional leadership to hold off action on the Iran Freedom Support Act that would impose new sanctions on Iran pending ongoing negotiations between the so-called EU-3 -- Britain, France, and Germany -- and Iran over its nuclear programme.
”These guys want regime change,” said one knowledgeable source who asked not to be identified, ”and they're very worried about anything that could divert from that. They want to ensure that the White House won't get any funny ideas about making a deal with a new Iranian government.”
Thus, the hawks' mantra Thursday on the eve of the balloting, was that the elections won't make any difference because hardline elements led by the unelected supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and the Guardian Council, which did so much to hobble outgoing Pres. Mohammed Khatami and the reformists, will continue running the country regardless of who wins.
”Any normal person familiar with the Islamic republic knows that these are not elections at all...,” wrote Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in an article headlined ”When Is an Election Not an Election?” posted on National Review Online (NRO) Thursday morning.
”They are a mise en scene, an entertainment, a comic opera staged for our benefit. The purpose of the charade, pure and simple, is to deter us from supporting the forces of democratic revolution in Iran.”
That theme was echoed in a series of events and other columns published Thursday, including one, by Kenneth Timmerman in NRO (and reprinted Friday by the Washington Times) entitled ”Fake Election, Real Threats” in which he predicted that no more than five percent of eligible voters in Teheran would turn out.
Another appeared in the Washington Times by Nir Boms, vice president of the new Centre for Freedom in the Middle East and previously vice president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and Elliott Chodoff entitled ”Facing the Iranian Elections,” and a third in the New York Times by AEI vice president Danielle Pletka, entitled ”Not Our Man in Iran,” a reference to the front-runner, former President Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose presumed victory, she wrote, was due to the ”machinations of the mullahs.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Sam Brownback, a Christian Right leader close to both hard-line neoconservatives and Iranian-American followers of Reza Pahlevi, the ambitious, U.S.-based son of the former Shah, charged in a floor speech that the elections were ”bogus,” while at AEI headquarters across town, a discussion on the elections featured a presentation by founder of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohsen Sazegara of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who predicted, ”No matter who wins the presidential elections, there will be no real changes in Iran's domestic or foreign policy.”
Despite the certainty with which these views were expressed, many U.S.-based Iran specialists, while agreeing that powers of Khameini and the Guardian's Council clearly circumscribed what an elected president could do, said that the depiction of the election as a sham was simplistic at best, a deliberate distortion at worst.
Contrary to Pletka's assertion that Rafsanjani was chosen by the mullahs, said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University, ”Those who are closest to the actual election process have stated repeatedly that Rafsanjani was seen as dividing the mullahs and was not-so-subtly opposed in his candidacy by Khamenei.”
That view was echoed by Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul, directors of the Project on Iranian Democracy at the conservative Hoover Institution in California, in an article in Friday's International Herald Tribune. Rafsanjani and Khamenei, they wrote, ”now àare at each other's political throats,” signaling ”clear division within the ruling elite” of the kind that could well presage ”the beginning of political liberalisation.”
What's more, according to Milani and McFaul, Rafsanjani and Mostafa Moin, a reformist who is tipped to be Rafsanjani's likely rival in a run-off Jul. 1, have both gone further than Khatami ”in challenging the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic and its current leadership” and in advocating improved relations with the United States.
A close reading of the hawks themselves also disclosed serious inconsistencies. While insisting, for example, that ”millions of 'officially cast' ballots (were) manufactured weeks ago, to ensure the right guy wins and that enough votes will have been cast,” Ledeen confessed that even he didn't know who would win.
Like Pletka, Ledeen had assumed ”that Rafsanjani would walk away with it.” But since Khameini overruled the Guardian Council so that Moin (”a nasty pseudo-reformer”) could join the field, he was no longer so sure. Moin ”might be more convincing as he plays that most difficult role,” Ledeen went on: ”the moderate face of islamofascism.”
To some Iran specialists, such speculation serves only to demonstrate that, as in the run-up to the war in Iraq, some hard-liners are trying to fit the facts into their preferred policy.
”Michael Ledeen has never been to Iran; he speaks no Persian,” said Brown University Professor William Beeman, who observed the campaign in Teheran during the past week. ”He has minimal credibility in assessing the Iranian elections, or evaluating the political situation there.
”It is clear that the neo-cons are desperate to deny any credibility to the Iranian people in this election àby continuing to promulgate the image of helpless Iranians cowering under tyrannical rule -- the better to justify some kind of attack leading to 'regime change,”' Said Brown, author of a forthcoming book, ”The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs:' How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.' (END/2005)
Friday, June 17, 2005
Q&A: William Beeman on Iran's Election - New York Times
Q&A: William Beeman on Iran's Election - New York Times
Iran's electorate, Beeman says, is largely united on the need for social reform in the country and the desirability of a peaceful nuclear-energy program. But they have divided their support between three leading candidates, and a Rafansanji victory is not assured. Despite the role of the conservative Council of Guardians in selecting the presidential candidates, "there's no question that this is a real election and it really is happening," he says. "And this is not an election that is controlled and it's not an election where we know the outcome."
Beeman, whose latest book, "The 'Great Satan' vs. The 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other," will be published soon, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on June 15, 2005.
You've just come back from a visit to Iran where you got a flavor of the presidential election campaign that just wrapped up. Can you give us a brief description of what you saw?
What's fascinating about this campaign is that it is, for all intents and purposes, a very Western-style campaign. The candidates, even the frontrunner, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, have lucid [campaigning] techniques that we would think of as being essentially Western for the election. Obviously, they're all taking the election quite seriously. Hashemi Rafsanjani has also put in his platform--in fact, all of the candidates have put in their platforms--measures that we associate with the reformist movement.
Like what?
Well, for instance, for Rafsanjani, one of the more important points of his campaign is increased rights for women and attention to the needs of young people. It's very interesting. Among his campaigners, he actually has some very powerful spokeswomen, who are out on the stump with him and are, I'd say, doing a fantastic job in representing him as a can-do candidate who can really mediate between the demands of the public--which is increasingly requiring or demanding that the government liberalize in important ways--and the traditional mullahs, who still hold significant power in the country. He also has recruited, it seems, hundreds of very young people to run the streets and hand out flyers and buttonhole people. It's amazing to see the impression that this gives--that it is women and youth for Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is 70.
Why do you think these young people, who might normally be supporting the reformist candidate, Mustafa Moin, are supporting him?
Well, he actually trucked in [to Tehran] hundreds of folks from his native province in Iran. He comes from the area around Yazd. And it seems a lot of his relatives, and a lot of his relatives' friends, and people who would like to see him elected from his local area have made the trip to Tehran and are doing this work. I think that it would be wrong to characterize them entirely as coming from that area, but that's certainly where a bunch of them came from.
Have there been any reliable political polls?
Well, we've seen political polls. Now, it's hard to tell whether they are reliable or not, because they've varied tremendously from day-to-day. Earlier, around the 8th of June, the polls suggested the second-place runner was Mohammed Baqur Qalibaf, who used to be chief of police in Tehran. And his campaign has been the slickest thing I've ever seen. I am astonishingly impressed with the print and media images he has been able to generate. He has been turned into an absolute glamour boy.
He also has a pilot's license and a PhD in geography. He's not a person without accomplishments. He was also an early member of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran, so it's very interesting. He led a crackdown on the student population in 1999, but he also has this very, very modern image.
He's in his early 40s, and I actually have a collection of posters of him that were really impressive. In one, he is in a pilot's uniform next to an Iranian jet, looking like a glamorous aviator. There's another one that's a poster in a very untraditional format. It's in a long, horizontal strip that simply has the upper part of his face kind of staring out at you, and it's all black and white, except they have enhanced his blue eyes. So you see this black and white poster with these electric blue eyes staring out at you, and in Iran, of course, most people have brown eyes. There are people who do have blue eyes--they're thought to be the descendants of Alexander the Great--it's one of the myths people have. The poster projects an extraordinarily arresting image, and he's attracted a lot of young people, who believe him to be, again, a person who has a kind of can-do attitude and is very powerful.
What about the great bugaboo, the "Great Satan"? Have any of the candidates talked much about the United States?
Rafsanjani has, of course, and in fact--in very coded terms--he has come out and said he is the one who can actually deliver on creating a rapprochement with what he calls "the world community," or "nations outside of Iran." He doesn't say the United States directly, but I think everybody who hears his campaign material knows that's what he's talking about. After all, he has an extraordinary advantage in Iranian politics, in my opinion, and that is that he was involved with the Iran-Contra affair directly [in which elements in the Reagan administration secretly sold missiles to Iran and used the proceeds to fund illegal covert actions in Nicaragua]. Despite being up close and friendly with the United States at that time, he has not suffered politically at all. The great danger in Iran has always been that the person who would try to achieve some kind rapprochement with the United States would immediately be tainted politically by his enemies in such a way that would make him ineffective. In this particular case, Rafsanjani has been completely, seemingly unscathed. So he has already, in important ways, addressed particular problems politicians have had. I think he feels he can go forward.
How does this election work? Does there have to be a run-off if no candidate wins a majority?
Yes. I think everyone feels that Rafsanjani will be the frontrunner, and probably will win between 30 percent and 40 percent of the vote.
And who will be second?
Up until last week, Qalibaf was running second. But just before I left, a new poll came out, which actually put Moin, the reform candidate, in second place. So that was a big surprise and we don't know exactly what it all means. I had a chance to chat with Moin's chief spokesperson, who's also a woman, and she's a formidable lady who is quite confident he will do extremely well in the election.
And what is Moin's background?
He's held a number of government posts, including minister of culture, I believe. But he's been continually involved with the government, and I think that's one of the reasons why he was allowed into the election. The important thing is people did see him as a serious challenge. He was originally excluded from the list of candidates by the Guardian Council. When people essentially expressed dismay about this--and there was a very widespread feeling that this was too heavy-handed on the part of the Guardian Council--[Supreme Leader] Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei personally requested that he and another candidate be included again.
During the last parliamentary election, two years ago, there was a boycott of the election. Why was that?
The reason people were trying to boycott the elections was because the Guardian Council had excluded nearly 2,300 candidates.
Is there another boycott going on?
There has been an attempt to boycott this election, but not a very well-organized one. In talking to people around Tehran, lots of folks expressed real dismay at the election, and said they were really unhappy that the candidates they feel would be strong reformists were excluded again from the candidate list by the Guardian Council. So there are a number of people who plan not to vote. Actually, though, when you talk to them--you can't do a huge sample just talking to people informally--but I was struck by the fact that not everybody who plans not to vote was doing so out of political protest. A lot of them were just unexcited by the list of candidates. No one really seemed to fire them up. Moin, as thoughtful and important a candidate he is in terms of representing the reformers, is extremely dull.
I heard he's a terrible speaker.
He's quite a bad speaker. Also, what the public is expressing, as is reflected in candidates' statements designed to attract votes, is an insistence that the reform movement go forward. And they want any candidate that will move the reform movement forward, even incrementally. A lot of people are saying, "You know, we don't really like Mr. Hashemi [Rafsanjani]. He's kind of a very clever, old-style politician and all that. But he is the one that is likely to be able to actually deliver on some of the points of the reform movement that we insist on. And Moin, as much as we like his philosophy--he's not going to be able to deal with the clerics and the clerical establishment.'' Qalibaf, also, is favored largely because he's seen as a very strong figure. So the strength in these candidates actually turns out to be a very important point.
It's interesting that all the conservatives couldn't coalesce behind one candidate.
There's a fourth candidate, cleric Mehdi Karrubi, who is a very interesting person. He was a speaker in parliament who ran afoul of the other clerics and he has been a rather important protest figure from within the clerical establishment. He has tried to circumvent them by wrapping himself in the mantel of the late Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini [the Islamic Republic's founder] in his campaigning. His campaign pieces that appear on TV--again, very slick pieces of work--start out with a big picture of Ayatollah Khomeini, and the camera pans out, and you see Khomeini speaking to a crowd, and there's Karrubi right there next to him. So people who might be uncomfortable voting for a completely secular candidate, or who feel the flames of the revolution are still alive, might be more comfortable voting for Karrubi, even though right now the current clerical establishment is not very happy with him.
Does the clerical establishment back Rafsanjani?
Actually, they don't. They're backing Qalibaf. Rafsanjani has been a real political survivor. I mean, not only did he serve as president twice already, but he also headed up a body called the Expediency Council. This is an unelected post that, more or less, he created himself, and it was a council designed to mediate between the parliament [the Majlis] and the clerical establishment. It was created because, during the reform presidencies of [Mohammed] Khatami in his two terms [1997-2005], the Majlis was continually coming up with laws that were vetoed by the Guardian Council, and it really made the public furious. So there was a need for somebody to step in and try and resolve this.
There are two major international issues for Iran: the nuclear issue--which has involved the European Union and the United States--and Iraq. Do these issues come up in the campaign?
The nuclear issue does come up, but I think there is no question that the public, all the candidates, and the current establishment are completely unified on this point: Iran should be developing its nuclear industry.
Here's one point that utterly escapes us in the United States, and I really wish people in power could understand: The discourse on the nuclear question between the United States and Iran is almost a complete disconnect. The United States, not to put too fine a point on it, thinks Iran is going after nuclear weapons in order to do some damage to the United States and its allies. To put it really crudely, as one adviser connected to the White House told me, "Look, we know Iran wants to develop a nuclear bomb to drop on Tel Aviv." This kind of statement just utterly and completely floors me.
The Iranian side of the discourse is that they want to be known and seen as a modern, developing state with a modern, developing industrial base. The history of relations between Iran and the West for the last hundred years has included Iran's developing various kinds of industrial and technological advances to prove to themselves--and to attempt to prove to the world--that they are, in fact, that kind of country.
The nuclear-power issue is exactly that. When Iranians talk about it, and talk about the United States, they say, "The United States is trying to repress us; they're trying to keep us down and keep us backward, make us a second-class nation. And we have the ability to develop a nuclear industry, and we're being told we're not good enough, or we can't." And this makes people furious--not just the clerical establishment, but this makes the person on the street, even 16- and 17-year-olds, absolutely boil with anger. It is such an emotional issue that absolutely no politician could ever back down on this question. But again, the public, when you ask them about nuclear weapons, they just sort of look at you like you are crazy. Because that's not even close to what it means to them.
Shifting gears, do you think there is any possibility the young people of Iran might attempt to spearhead a revolution against the government?
In the last 15 years, the youth of the country have now come to the fore in massive numbers. Right now, of course, we know that something like 70 percent of the population is under the age of 25. But what is really important is that, although the population as a whole is very youthful, it will be within the next five years that the majority of the voting population will have no knowledge of the revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini or anything that went on in 1978 and 1979. My prediction is that, within five to ten years, there's going to be such a change in Iran that it will make our heads spin.
The young people are absolutely hell-bent on reform. But they're willing to wait. The students, the really kind of intrepid students at the University of Tehran, are not interested in violence and they're quite articulate about it. They certainly don't want a foreign-installed government of any sort, and they said, "We're engaged in a quiet revolution."
And what are the main reforms they want?
First of all, they're concerned with personal liberty. The simple fact is that, at least in Tehran, I would say everybody does just about anything they want in private. The government has absolutely stopped going into people's houses and, in fact, private behavior is now, I would say, virtually completely free. The government has repressed people who've been expressing opposition opinions in very prominent places. They've arrested some bloggers and one student at the University of Tehran who wrote a letter to [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan that got a lot of attention, and he was put in jail for a few months. But it was the government itself that released him eventually, which is quite interesting. So the young people would like the de facto personal liberties, which people have just sort of seized for themselves, to be essentially acknowledged by the government as a whole.
The women in particular, who staged a demonstration while we were there for women's rights, want important reforms within the legal system to reach an accommodation between Islamic law and what they would consider to be a modern stance for family law, in particular. The question of whether women can participate in public life has been absolutely resolved. There is just no question. Women are there and in every way, in every area of public life, and they're not going to go away. They are actually one of the strongest forces for reform in the country. And anybody in the United States who still believes women in Iran are somehow helpless victims of male hegemony is expressing an incredibly inaccurate and outmoded view.
They're still required to wear head coverings. But beyond that, you see everything in the world. What it is, is modest dress. And modest dress is, by the way, incumbent upon both men and women. But what the women have done is to develop all sorts of very stylish ways to achieve that. So they'll have a head covering that may expose a lot more hair, which is considered erotic in Iran, and maybe a very light coat that they'll be wearing with pants. We see, for young girls, it's evolved into kind of a head covering, a jacket over a blouse, and maybe even jeans. The whole thing has become extraordinarily fashionable.
After the election, should the United States say anything?
I think that the United States should certainly not undercut the election, whatever happens. The Bush administration has the most unfortunate habit of saying negative things just when things are starting to get better. We had an enormously important possibility of an opening to Iran after the Bam earthquake [December 2003] only to have President Bush, on New Year's Day, come out and again make hugely negative remarks about Iran. If the administration can't say anything nice, then they really should say nothing. Whether one likes the fact that candidates were vetted before the election or not, there's no question that this is a real election and it really is happening. And this is not an election that is controlled and it's not an election where we know the outcome. And if it does go into a run-off, even though Rafsanjani is now a favored candidate, it's not clear that he would win, because the other candidates, and there are several, might throw their support to his opponent.
Iran's electorate, Beeman says, is largely united on the need for social reform in the country and the desirability of a peaceful nuclear-energy program. But they have divided their support between three leading candidates, and a Rafansanji victory is not assured. Despite the role of the conservative Council of Guardians in selecting the presidential candidates, "there's no question that this is a real election and it really is happening," he says. "And this is not an election that is controlled and it's not an election where we know the outcome."
Beeman, whose latest book, "The 'Great Satan' vs. The 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other," will be published soon, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on June 15, 2005.
You've just come back from a visit to Iran where you got a flavor of the presidential election campaign that just wrapped up. Can you give us a brief description of what you saw?
What's fascinating about this campaign is that it is, for all intents and purposes, a very Western-style campaign. The candidates, even the frontrunner, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, have lucid [campaigning] techniques that we would think of as being essentially Western for the election. Obviously, they're all taking the election quite seriously. Hashemi Rafsanjani has also put in his platform--in fact, all of the candidates have put in their platforms--measures that we associate with the reformist movement.
Like what?
Well, for instance, for Rafsanjani, one of the more important points of his campaign is increased rights for women and attention to the needs of young people. It's very interesting. Among his campaigners, he actually has some very powerful spokeswomen, who are out on the stump with him and are, I'd say, doing a fantastic job in representing him as a can-do candidate who can really mediate between the demands of the public--which is increasingly requiring or demanding that the government liberalize in important ways--and the traditional mullahs, who still hold significant power in the country. He also has recruited, it seems, hundreds of very young people to run the streets and hand out flyers and buttonhole people. It's amazing to see the impression that this gives--that it is women and youth for Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is 70.
Why do you think these young people, who might normally be supporting the reformist candidate, Mustafa Moin, are supporting him?
Well, he actually trucked in [to Tehran] hundreds of folks from his native province in Iran. He comes from the area around Yazd. And it seems a lot of his relatives, and a lot of his relatives' friends, and people who would like to see him elected from his local area have made the trip to Tehran and are doing this work. I think that it would be wrong to characterize them entirely as coming from that area, but that's certainly where a bunch of them came from.
Have there been any reliable political polls?
Well, we've seen political polls. Now, it's hard to tell whether they are reliable or not, because they've varied tremendously from day-to-day. Earlier, around the 8th of June, the polls suggested the second-place runner was Mohammed Baqur Qalibaf, who used to be chief of police in Tehran. And his campaign has been the slickest thing I've ever seen. I am astonishingly impressed with the print and media images he has been able to generate. He has been turned into an absolute glamour boy.
He also has a pilot's license and a PhD in geography. He's not a person without accomplishments. He was also an early member of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran, so it's very interesting. He led a crackdown on the student population in 1999, but he also has this very, very modern image.
He's in his early 40s, and I actually have a collection of posters of him that were really impressive. In one, he is in a pilot's uniform next to an Iranian jet, looking like a glamorous aviator. There's another one that's a poster in a very untraditional format. It's in a long, horizontal strip that simply has the upper part of his face kind of staring out at you, and it's all black and white, except they have enhanced his blue eyes. So you see this black and white poster with these electric blue eyes staring out at you, and in Iran, of course, most people have brown eyes. There are people who do have blue eyes--they're thought to be the descendants of Alexander the Great--it's one of the myths people have. The poster projects an extraordinarily arresting image, and he's attracted a lot of young people, who believe him to be, again, a person who has a kind of can-do attitude and is very powerful.
What about the great bugaboo, the "Great Satan"? Have any of the candidates talked much about the United States?
Rafsanjani has, of course, and in fact--in very coded terms--he has come out and said he is the one who can actually deliver on creating a rapprochement with what he calls "the world community," or "nations outside of Iran." He doesn't say the United States directly, but I think everybody who hears his campaign material knows that's what he's talking about. After all, he has an extraordinary advantage in Iranian politics, in my opinion, and that is that he was involved with the Iran-Contra affair directly [in which elements in the Reagan administration secretly sold missiles to Iran and used the proceeds to fund illegal covert actions in Nicaragua]. Despite being up close and friendly with the United States at that time, he has not suffered politically at all. The great danger in Iran has always been that the person who would try to achieve some kind rapprochement with the United States would immediately be tainted politically by his enemies in such a way that would make him ineffective. In this particular case, Rafsanjani has been completely, seemingly unscathed. So he has already, in important ways, addressed particular problems politicians have had. I think he feels he can go forward.
How does this election work? Does there have to be a run-off if no candidate wins a majority?
Yes. I think everyone feels that Rafsanjani will be the frontrunner, and probably will win between 30 percent and 40 percent of the vote.
And who will be second?
Up until last week, Qalibaf was running second. But just before I left, a new poll came out, which actually put Moin, the reform candidate, in second place. So that was a big surprise and we don't know exactly what it all means. I had a chance to chat with Moin's chief spokesperson, who's also a woman, and she's a formidable lady who is quite confident he will do extremely well in the election.
And what is Moin's background?
He's held a number of government posts, including minister of culture, I believe. But he's been continually involved with the government, and I think that's one of the reasons why he was allowed into the election. The important thing is people did see him as a serious challenge. He was originally excluded from the list of candidates by the Guardian Council. When people essentially expressed dismay about this--and there was a very widespread feeling that this was too heavy-handed on the part of the Guardian Council--[Supreme Leader] Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei personally requested that he and another candidate be included again.
During the last parliamentary election, two years ago, there was a boycott of the election. Why was that?
The reason people were trying to boycott the elections was because the Guardian Council had excluded nearly 2,300 candidates.
Is there another boycott going on?
There has been an attempt to boycott this election, but not a very well-organized one. In talking to people around Tehran, lots of folks expressed real dismay at the election, and said they were really unhappy that the candidates they feel would be strong reformists were excluded again from the candidate list by the Guardian Council. So there are a number of people who plan not to vote. Actually, though, when you talk to them--you can't do a huge sample just talking to people informally--but I was struck by the fact that not everybody who plans not to vote was doing so out of political protest. A lot of them were just unexcited by the list of candidates. No one really seemed to fire them up. Moin, as thoughtful and important a candidate he is in terms of representing the reformers, is extremely dull.
I heard he's a terrible speaker.
He's quite a bad speaker. Also, what the public is expressing, as is reflected in candidates' statements designed to attract votes, is an insistence that the reform movement go forward. And they want any candidate that will move the reform movement forward, even incrementally. A lot of people are saying, "You know, we don't really like Mr. Hashemi [Rafsanjani]. He's kind of a very clever, old-style politician and all that. But he is the one that is likely to be able to actually deliver on some of the points of the reform movement that we insist on. And Moin, as much as we like his philosophy--he's not going to be able to deal with the clerics and the clerical establishment.'' Qalibaf, also, is favored largely because he's seen as a very strong figure. So the strength in these candidates actually turns out to be a very important point.
It's interesting that all the conservatives couldn't coalesce behind one candidate.
There's a fourth candidate, cleric Mehdi Karrubi, who is a very interesting person. He was a speaker in parliament who ran afoul of the other clerics and he has been a rather important protest figure from within the clerical establishment. He has tried to circumvent them by wrapping himself in the mantel of the late Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini [the Islamic Republic's founder] in his campaigning. His campaign pieces that appear on TV--again, very slick pieces of work--start out with a big picture of Ayatollah Khomeini, and the camera pans out, and you see Khomeini speaking to a crowd, and there's Karrubi right there next to him. So people who might be uncomfortable voting for a completely secular candidate, or who feel the flames of the revolution are still alive, might be more comfortable voting for Karrubi, even though right now the current clerical establishment is not very happy with him.
Does the clerical establishment back Rafsanjani?
Actually, they don't. They're backing Qalibaf. Rafsanjani has been a real political survivor. I mean, not only did he serve as president twice already, but he also headed up a body called the Expediency Council. This is an unelected post that, more or less, he created himself, and it was a council designed to mediate between the parliament [the Majlis] and the clerical establishment. It was created because, during the reform presidencies of [Mohammed] Khatami in his two terms [1997-2005], the Majlis was continually coming up with laws that were vetoed by the Guardian Council, and it really made the public furious. So there was a need for somebody to step in and try and resolve this.
There are two major international issues for Iran: the nuclear issue--which has involved the European Union and the United States--and Iraq. Do these issues come up in the campaign?
The nuclear issue does come up, but I think there is no question that the public, all the candidates, and the current establishment are completely unified on this point: Iran should be developing its nuclear industry.
Here's one point that utterly escapes us in the United States, and I really wish people in power could understand: The discourse on the nuclear question between the United States and Iran is almost a complete disconnect. The United States, not to put too fine a point on it, thinks Iran is going after nuclear weapons in order to do some damage to the United States and its allies. To put it really crudely, as one adviser connected to the White House told me, "Look, we know Iran wants to develop a nuclear bomb to drop on Tel Aviv." This kind of statement just utterly and completely floors me.
The Iranian side of the discourse is that they want to be known and seen as a modern, developing state with a modern, developing industrial base. The history of relations between Iran and the West for the last hundred years has included Iran's developing various kinds of industrial and technological advances to prove to themselves--and to attempt to prove to the world--that they are, in fact, that kind of country.
The nuclear-power issue is exactly that. When Iranians talk about it, and talk about the United States, they say, "The United States is trying to repress us; they're trying to keep us down and keep us backward, make us a second-class nation. And we have the ability to develop a nuclear industry, and we're being told we're not good enough, or we can't." And this makes people furious--not just the clerical establishment, but this makes the person on the street, even 16- and 17-year-olds, absolutely boil with anger. It is such an emotional issue that absolutely no politician could ever back down on this question. But again, the public, when you ask them about nuclear weapons, they just sort of look at you like you are crazy. Because that's not even close to what it means to them.
Shifting gears, do you think there is any possibility the young people of Iran might attempt to spearhead a revolution against the government?
In the last 15 years, the youth of the country have now come to the fore in massive numbers. Right now, of course, we know that something like 70 percent of the population is under the age of 25. But what is really important is that, although the population as a whole is very youthful, it will be within the next five years that the majority of the voting population will have no knowledge of the revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini or anything that went on in 1978 and 1979. My prediction is that, within five to ten years, there's going to be such a change in Iran that it will make our heads spin.
The young people are absolutely hell-bent on reform. But they're willing to wait. The students, the really kind of intrepid students at the University of Tehran, are not interested in violence and they're quite articulate about it. They certainly don't want a foreign-installed government of any sort, and they said, "We're engaged in a quiet revolution."
And what are the main reforms they want?
First of all, they're concerned with personal liberty. The simple fact is that, at least in Tehran, I would say everybody does just about anything they want in private. The government has absolutely stopped going into people's houses and, in fact, private behavior is now, I would say, virtually completely free. The government has repressed people who've been expressing opposition opinions in very prominent places. They've arrested some bloggers and one student at the University of Tehran who wrote a letter to [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan that got a lot of attention, and he was put in jail for a few months. But it was the government itself that released him eventually, which is quite interesting. So the young people would like the de facto personal liberties, which people have just sort of seized for themselves, to be essentially acknowledged by the government as a whole.
The women in particular, who staged a demonstration while we were there for women's rights, want important reforms within the legal system to reach an accommodation between Islamic law and what they would consider to be a modern stance for family law, in particular. The question of whether women can participate in public life has been absolutely resolved. There is just no question. Women are there and in every way, in every area of public life, and they're not going to go away. They are actually one of the strongest forces for reform in the country. And anybody in the United States who still believes women in Iran are somehow helpless victims of male hegemony is expressing an incredibly inaccurate and outmoded view.
They're still required to wear head coverings. But beyond that, you see everything in the world. What it is, is modest dress. And modest dress is, by the way, incumbent upon both men and women. But what the women have done is to develop all sorts of very stylish ways to achieve that. So they'll have a head covering that may expose a lot more hair, which is considered erotic in Iran, and maybe a very light coat that they'll be wearing with pants. We see, for young girls, it's evolved into kind of a head covering, a jacket over a blouse, and maybe even jeans. The whole thing has become extraordinarily fashionable.
After the election, should the United States say anything?
I think that the United States should certainly not undercut the election, whatever happens. The Bush administration has the most unfortunate habit of saying negative things just when things are starting to get better. We had an enormously important possibility of an opening to Iran after the Bam earthquake [December 2003] only to have President Bush, on New Year's Day, come out and again make hugely negative remarks about Iran. If the administration can't say anything nice, then they really should say nothing. Whether one likes the fact that candidates were vetted before the election or not, there's no question that this is a real election and it really is happening. And this is not an election that is controlled and it's not an election where we know the outcome. And if it does go into a run-off, even though Rafsanjani is now a favored candidate, it's not clear that he would win, because the other candidates, and there are several, might throw their support to his opponent.
Providence Journal: Election in Iran is Lovely, Real (Beeman)
projo.com | Providence, R.I. | Opinion: Contributors: "TO THOSE in Washington who doubt that today's presidential election in Iran is a real election: They should have seen the excitement during the campaign.
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20050617_17ctbeex.1eae680.html
TO THOSE in Washington who doubt that today's presidential election in Iran is a real election: They should have seen the excitement during the campaign.
This week was kicked off by a an dramatic, unexpected win by the Iranian soccer team over Bahrain -- a feat that qualified the Iranians for a spot in the World Cup championship. The soccer match became inextricably linked with the presidential campaign when women defied the ban on their presence in the soccer stadium (a longstanding provision to prevent mixing of the sexes), forcing their way into the game with chants and political slogans.
These women are viewed as heroic by almost everyone.
And once the game was won, the women began removing their head scarves -- a definite move of protest. They were then amazed, again, when nothing happened to them.
As always, there are a variety of explanations: too many people, too dangerous a situation for the police, no one wanting the police beating up women on the eve of a national election. Still, the acts of these women -- intrepid by Iranian standards -- set a new standard for public behavior in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
After removing their head scarves, the women began mixing with their male friends in massive demonstrations of exuberance. The mixing of young men and women in the post-game festivities was notable, as well as the extensive dancing in the streets, where men and women danced together.
It was the women dancing in public with no head scarves and no restriction by the police or others that astonished the public -- even the Westernized folks who are now living a pretty unfettered life in Tehran, with all the accoutrements of the United States. Excerpts of the soccer game are being rebroadcast continually.
On June 12, another organized demonstration for women's rights, with both male and female participants, was held at the University of Tehran, further cementing the power of women's political opinion. The public is now asking whether this all means a thaw in personal-behavior restrictions -- or the calm before a storm that will make landfall after the election.
The campaign itself has been a festival of advertising media, making everyone conclude that some high-powered consultants were involved. Some of the campaign material is amazingly effective, pushing all the cultural buttons. The most wonderful posters are of Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who has been given the glam treatment. This 40ish guy, a former member of the Islamic Guard, now looks like a movie star: In most of the representations he has been given electric-blue eyes, a cultural turn-on in mostly brown-eyed Iran. As icing on the cake, he has turned his name into a stylish calligraphic logo.
Ex-Majlis (Parliament) Speaker Mehdi Karroubi uses images of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni with himself in the background, as a young cleric. Not to put too fine a point on it, the TV ads all circle his face in the background. He appears benign and avuncular. This is very interesting, since he showed himself to be quite a firebrand in the past.
The TV ads have surely attracted a number of folks who are religiously oriented. What was wonderful about one of them was that long, boring images of Karroubi campaigning were surrounded with a frame of beautiful calligraphic poetry and tasteful music. This provided an amazing double message for Iran, where everyone is a poet.
Former President Akbar Hashemi (Rafsanjani) is running on a platform that features rapprochement with "the world" (read "the United States"), empowerment of youth, and increased rights for women. He has phalanxes of young people handing out fliers all over Tehran, presumably capturing the youth vote.
He also has an astonishing female spokesperson, Soheila Jelodarzadeh, a former labor organizer. She is one of the greatest political speakers I have ever seen or heard. She is Rafsanjani's Karen Hughes.
The "reformist" candidate, Dr. (as he bills himself) Mostafa Mo'in, seems to have fewer resources, but he, too, has some arresting graphic posters. He was weakened by exclusion from the original presidential list by Iran's Guardian Council, then let back on it only after Iran's Spiritual Leader and Head of State Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i intervened.
The biggest push is actually just to get people to vote. A lot of folks in Tehran are refusing to do so, for various reasons. They sound like Americans non-voters when they say, "It won't matter"; "X is going to be elected, anyway"; "They're all the same"; "I don't know enough."
Of course, there are the protest non-voters, as well. It should also be pointed out that although most people think that Hashemi (Rafsanjani) will win, the election is by no means a foregone conclusion. There are many supporters of other candidates, who are optimistic that their candidate will win.
A puzzling series of bomb blasts -- killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens more on June 11 and 12 in the cities of Ahwaz and Tehran -- may also dampen participation in today's election, especially if such blasts continue. Although the Iranian government has blamed Arab irredentist groups, their apparent purpose is unclear.
The bets on the street are that the election will be a runoff between Hashemi and Qalibaf, with the further results difficult to predict.
In a race between Hashemi and Qalibaf, the conservative candidates who don't enter the runoff may throw their support to Qalibaf -- giving Iran a whole new political ballgame. However, the polls change daily. On June 12, Mo'in was said to be in second place after Hashemi.
Whatever the outcome, the Iranian people are the winners in this campaign. They have shown that they know what an election is, and they are shaping their nation's future.
William O. Beeman, an occasional contributor, is a professor of anthropology and the director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. His forthcoming book is "The Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20050617_17ctbeex.1eae680.html
TO THOSE in Washington who doubt that today's presidential election in Iran is a real election: They should have seen the excitement during the campaign.
This week was kicked off by a an dramatic, unexpected win by the Iranian soccer team over Bahrain -- a feat that qualified the Iranians for a spot in the World Cup championship. The soccer match became inextricably linked with the presidential campaign when women defied the ban on their presence in the soccer stadium (a longstanding provision to prevent mixing of the sexes), forcing their way into the game with chants and political slogans.
These women are viewed as heroic by almost everyone.
And once the game was won, the women began removing their head scarves -- a definite move of protest. They were then amazed, again, when nothing happened to them.
As always, there are a variety of explanations: too many people, too dangerous a situation for the police, no one wanting the police beating up women on the eve of a national election. Still, the acts of these women -- intrepid by Iranian standards -- set a new standard for public behavior in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
After removing their head scarves, the women began mixing with their male friends in massive demonstrations of exuberance. The mixing of young men and women in the post-game festivities was notable, as well as the extensive dancing in the streets, where men and women danced together.
It was the women dancing in public with no head scarves and no restriction by the police or others that astonished the public -- even the Westernized folks who are now living a pretty unfettered life in Tehran, with all the accoutrements of the United States. Excerpts of the soccer game are being rebroadcast continually.
On June 12, another organized demonstration for women's rights, with both male and female participants, was held at the University of Tehran, further cementing the power of women's political opinion. The public is now asking whether this all means a thaw in personal-behavior restrictions -- or the calm before a storm that will make landfall after the election.
The campaign itself has been a festival of advertising media, making everyone conclude that some high-powered consultants were involved. Some of the campaign material is amazingly effective, pushing all the cultural buttons. The most wonderful posters are of Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who has been given the glam treatment. This 40ish guy, a former member of the Islamic Guard, now looks like a movie star: In most of the representations he has been given electric-blue eyes, a cultural turn-on in mostly brown-eyed Iran. As icing on the cake, he has turned his name into a stylish calligraphic logo.
Ex-Majlis (Parliament) Speaker Mehdi Karroubi uses images of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni with himself in the background, as a young cleric. Not to put too fine a point on it, the TV ads all circle his face in the background. He appears benign and avuncular. This is very interesting, since he showed himself to be quite a firebrand in the past.
The TV ads have surely attracted a number of folks who are religiously oriented. What was wonderful about one of them was that long, boring images of Karroubi campaigning were surrounded with a frame of beautiful calligraphic poetry and tasteful music. This provided an amazing double message for Iran, where everyone is a poet.
Former President Akbar Hashemi (Rafsanjani) is running on a platform that features rapprochement with "the world" (read "the United States"), empowerment of youth, and increased rights for women. He has phalanxes of young people handing out fliers all over Tehran, presumably capturing the youth vote.
He also has an astonishing female spokesperson, Soheila Jelodarzadeh, a former labor organizer. She is one of the greatest political speakers I have ever seen or heard. She is Rafsanjani's Karen Hughes.
The "reformist" candidate, Dr. (as he bills himself) Mostafa Mo'in, seems to have fewer resources, but he, too, has some arresting graphic posters. He was weakened by exclusion from the original presidential list by Iran's Guardian Council, then let back on it only after Iran's Spiritual Leader and Head of State Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i intervened.
The biggest push is actually just to get people to vote. A lot of folks in Tehran are refusing to do so, for various reasons. They sound like Americans non-voters when they say, "It won't matter"; "X is going to be elected, anyway"; "They're all the same"; "I don't know enough."
Of course, there are the protest non-voters, as well. It should also be pointed out that although most people think that Hashemi (Rafsanjani) will win, the election is by no means a foregone conclusion. There are many supporters of other candidates, who are optimistic that their candidate will win.
A puzzling series of bomb blasts -- killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens more on June 11 and 12 in the cities of Ahwaz and Tehran -- may also dampen participation in today's election, especially if such blasts continue. Although the Iranian government has blamed Arab irredentist groups, their apparent purpose is unclear.
The bets on the street are that the election will be a runoff between Hashemi and Qalibaf, with the further results difficult to predict.
In a race between Hashemi and Qalibaf, the conservative candidates who don't enter the runoff may throw their support to Qalibaf -- giving Iran a whole new political ballgame. However, the polls change daily. On June 12, Mo'in was said to be in second place after Hashemi.
Whatever the outcome, the Iranian people are the winners in this campaign. They have shown that they know what an election is, and they are shaping their nation's future.
William O. Beeman, an occasional contributor, is a professor of anthropology and the director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. His forthcoming book is "The Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.
Friday, June 10, 2005
From Tehran--Election Update
I'm writing from Tehran where the football match against Bahrain is still a cultural and media phenomenon, tied inextricably with the campaign. The accounts of some of the incidents surrounding the football game are true, but it would be wrong to overlook the overwhelmingly positive feelings that emanated from this event. The women who chanted their way into the game are viewed as heroic by almost everyone. The women removing their headscarves were definitely doing so out of protest, but they were amazed that nothing happened to them, and there are a variety of explanations--as there always are--too many people, too dangerous for the police (so that is why the incidents in the far eastern suburbs rather than in the center of the city). The mixing of young men and women in the post-game festivities was notable, as well as the extensive dancing in the streets where men and women danced together. It was the women dancing in public with no head scarves and without any prohibition from the police or others that astonished the public--even the Westernized folks who are now living a pretty unfettered life in Tehran with all the acoutrements of the US. Cuts from the football game are being rebroadcast continually.
I do wish that members could be here for the campaign. There must be media consultants involved. Some of the campaign material is amazing. It pushes all the cultural buttons. The most wonderful posters are of Qalibaf, who has been given the glam treatment. This 40ish guy looks like a movie star, and he has been given electric blue eyes in most of the representations. He has turned his name into a stylish caligraphic logo. Some real talent went into his campaign.
Ex-Majlis speaker Karroubi uses images of Khomeni with himself in the background as a young cleric. Not to put too fine a point on it, the TV ads all circle his face in the background. He appears benign and avuncular--very interesting since he showed himself to be quite a firebrand in the past. The TV ads are effective, and will surely attract a number of folks who are religiously oriented. What was wonderful about one of them was that long, boring images of Karroubi campaigning were surrounded with a frame of beautiful caligraphic poetry and tasteful music. A very amazing double message.
Hashemi (Rafsanjani) is running on a platform that features rapprochement with the "world"--read US--and increased rights for women. He has a female spokesperson, whose name I have yet to discover--perhaps some of the correspondents here in Tehran know it--who is astonishing. She is one of the greatest political speakers I have ever heard. Some people called her "Rafsanjani's Zeinab" but I think of her as Rafsanjani's Karen Hughes.
Dr. Mo'in--as he bills himself--seems to have fewer resources, but he also has some arresting graphic posters.
Whatever one may think about Iranian governement, this is a real campaign. The biggest push is actually just to get people to vote. A lot of folks in Tehran are refusing--but their reasons appear to be varied--and they sound for all the world like voters in the US--"it won't matter," "X is going to be elected anyway." "They're all the same" "I don't know enough." Of course, there are the protest non-voters as well. It should also be pointed out that although most people I have talked to think Hashemi (Rafsanjani) will win, the election is by no means a foregone conclusion, and there are many sincere folks supporting other candidates, who are optimistic that their candidate will win.
In any case, it is a very interesting time to be in Tehran.
Best,
Bill
I do wish that members could be here for the campaign. There must be media consultants involved. Some of the campaign material is amazing. It pushes all the cultural buttons. The most wonderful posters are of Qalibaf, who has been given the glam treatment. This 40ish guy looks like a movie star, and he has been given electric blue eyes in most of the representations. He has turned his name into a stylish caligraphic logo. Some real talent went into his campaign.
Ex-Majlis speaker Karroubi uses images of Khomeni with himself in the background as a young cleric. Not to put too fine a point on it, the TV ads all circle his face in the background. He appears benign and avuncular--very interesting since he showed himself to be quite a firebrand in the past. The TV ads are effective, and will surely attract a number of folks who are religiously oriented. What was wonderful about one of them was that long, boring images of Karroubi campaigning were surrounded with a frame of beautiful caligraphic poetry and tasteful music. A very amazing double message.
Hashemi (Rafsanjani) is running on a platform that features rapprochement with the "world"--read US--and increased rights for women. He has a female spokesperson, whose name I have yet to discover--perhaps some of the correspondents here in Tehran know it--who is astonishing. She is one of the greatest political speakers I have ever heard. Some people called her "Rafsanjani's Zeinab" but I think of her as Rafsanjani's Karen Hughes.
Dr. Mo'in--as he bills himself--seems to have fewer resources, but he also has some arresting graphic posters.
Whatever one may think about Iranian governement, this is a real campaign. The biggest push is actually just to get people to vote. A lot of folks in Tehran are refusing--but their reasons appear to be varied--and they sound for all the world like voters in the US--"it won't matter," "X is going to be elected anyway." "They're all the same" "I don't know enough." Of course, there are the protest non-voters as well. It should also be pointed out that although most people I have talked to think Hashemi (Rafsanjani) will win, the election is by no means a foregone conclusion, and there are many sincere folks supporting other candidates, who are optimistic that their candidate will win.
In any case, it is a very interesting time to be in Tehran.
Best,
Bill
Saturday, June 04, 2005
More Abu Ghraib images ordered - The Boston Globe - Boston.com - Washington - News
More Abu Ghraib images ordered - The Boston Globe - Boston.com - Washington - News: "
More Abu Ghraib images ordered
Hide detainee IDs, judge tells Army
By Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Correspondent | June 4, 2005
WASHINGTON -- A federal judge in New York has ordered the Army to prepare more photographs that allegedly depict the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, an order which a civil liberties group says is the first step to making the potentially explosive images public.
In his ruling Wednesday, US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein gave the military until June 30 to prepare the 144 pictures and four videotapes by hiding or obscuring the faces of the detainees. The images were obtained by an Army soldier who helped uncover the abuse scandal.
The Army has argued that the images violate Geneva Conventions privacy codes and should be private. The ACLU convinced Hellerstein that the detainees' faces could be redacted or blurred to protect their privacy before they are made public.
Hellerstein did not directly order the Pentagon to hand over the photos. The ACLU lawyer involved in the case said the group expects to get the images soon after the deadline. The lawyer, Amrit Singh, said she does not know what the images show.
''All we know is that these are photographs of abuse of detainees held in Abu Ghraib," she said. ''From our perspective, the public has an undeniable right to receive all these documents, which reveal the torture of detainees and underscore the need for an independent investigation."
But Jim Turner, a Defense Department spokesman, said the judge has only ordered the military to conceal the identities of the detainees in the photos, not make them public.
''This is a matter still in litigation," Turner said. ''The court order that we have only instructs us to 'reprocess and redact' the photos. Final dispossession of the images has not been decided at this time."
The possible release of more pictures that could show prisoners being humiliated or abused follows violent protests in Afghanistan over allegations that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station desecrated the Koran while questioning Muslim detainees.
Hellerstein's ruling is bad timing for the United States, said Nikolas Gvosdev, a senior fellow for strategic studies at the Nixon Center in Washington. ''The photos may or may not be worse than what's already been released, but it will simply put this back on the front burner," said Gvosdev.
Because the photos and other documents related to Abu Ghraib have not been released all at once, ''it's just a constant dripping, and it makes it hard for the US to have a clean break," Gvosdev said. ''We just haven't been able to put Abu Ghraib behind us."
Several of the military guards identified in the first batch of Abu Ghraib photos made public in the spring of 2004 have been convicted and punished for their roles in the abuse, which included intimidation with guard dogs, mock torture, public humiliation, and forced nudity, a Muslim taboo. Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr., whom military authorities identified as the ringleader, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, demoted and dishonorably discharged from the Army.
At his court-martial in January, Graner said he was following orders, but top military officials, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and President Bush maintain that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was the work of a few rogue soldiers, not the result of Pentagon policy.
The pictures released last year and those at issue in Hellerstein's ruling were obtained by Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who gave them to military investigators. When they became public, the pictures sparked international outrage and intense anger in the Muslim world.
In undisclosed testimony obtained last year by The New York Times, Darby described how he collected the pictures from Graner in late 2003 before handing them over to military investigators in January 2004. Darby said he gave two CD-ROMS with the photos to investigators because he ''felt the pictures were morally wrong" and that Graner ''would abuse more prisoners" if he did not alert authorities.
Darby, who got death threats and was placed in protective custody, received the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award in Boston last month.
The Army's investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal concluded that a small group of soldiers at the facility was responsible for most of the abuse, including arranging detainees in sexually explicit positions to be photographed, forcing male inmates to wear women's underwear, and at least one instance of a male guard having sex with a female detainee. Some groups are demanding a full, independent investigation -- which they say could reveal culpability farther up the chain of command.
William O. Beeman, a professor of anthropology and director of Middle East Studies at Brown, said that pictures of such humiliation could provide more fuel for Muslim anger. ''By stripping people naked and putting them in compromising situations, you are practically defining the most extreme immodesty that could possibly be seen," he said.
The ongoing ACLU freedom-of-information lawsuit, filed with the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Center of Constitutional Rights, has so far forced the government to provide more than 35,000 pages of documents pertaining to the treatment of US detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. It has documented allegations of abuse at several US facilities, including as many as 28 deaths of prisoners in US custody.
Beeman said the slow pace of the abuse investigation and the widespread perception that the US was not acting to bring higher-ranking officials to justice had damaged credibility in the region. ''At this point the rest of the world is prepared to believe almost anything," he said.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
More Abu Ghraib images ordered
Hide detainee IDs, judge tells Army
By Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Correspondent | June 4, 2005
WASHINGTON -- A federal judge in New York has ordered the Army to prepare more photographs that allegedly depict the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, an order which a civil liberties group says is the first step to making the potentially explosive images public.
In his ruling Wednesday, US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein gave the military until June 30 to prepare the 144 pictures and four videotapes by hiding or obscuring the faces of the detainees. The images were obtained by an Army soldier who helped uncover the abuse scandal.
The Army has argued that the images violate Geneva Conventions privacy codes and should be private. The ACLU convinced Hellerstein that the detainees' faces could be redacted or blurred to protect their privacy before they are made public.
Hellerstein did not directly order the Pentagon to hand over the photos. The ACLU lawyer involved in the case said the group expects to get the images soon after the deadline. The lawyer, Amrit Singh, said she does not know what the images show.
''All we know is that these are photographs of abuse of detainees held in Abu Ghraib," she said. ''From our perspective, the public has an undeniable right to receive all these documents, which reveal the torture of detainees and underscore the need for an independent investigation."
But Jim Turner, a Defense Department spokesman, said the judge has only ordered the military to conceal the identities of the detainees in the photos, not make them public.
''This is a matter still in litigation," Turner said. ''The court order that we have only instructs us to 'reprocess and redact' the photos. Final dispossession of the images has not been decided at this time."
The possible release of more pictures that could show prisoners being humiliated or abused follows violent protests in Afghanistan over allegations that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station desecrated the Koran while questioning Muslim detainees.
Hellerstein's ruling is bad timing for the United States, said Nikolas Gvosdev, a senior fellow for strategic studies at the Nixon Center in Washington. ''The photos may or may not be worse than what's already been released, but it will simply put this back on the front burner," said Gvosdev.
Because the photos and other documents related to Abu Ghraib have not been released all at once, ''it's just a constant dripping, and it makes it hard for the US to have a clean break," Gvosdev said. ''We just haven't been able to put Abu Ghraib behind us."
Several of the military guards identified in the first batch of Abu Ghraib photos made public in the spring of 2004 have been convicted and punished for their roles in the abuse, which included intimidation with guard dogs, mock torture, public humiliation, and forced nudity, a Muslim taboo. Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr., whom military authorities identified as the ringleader, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, demoted and dishonorably discharged from the Army.
At his court-martial in January, Graner said he was following orders, but top military officials, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and President Bush maintain that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was the work of a few rogue soldiers, not the result of Pentagon policy.
The pictures released last year and those at issue in Hellerstein's ruling were obtained by Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who gave them to military investigators. When they became public, the pictures sparked international outrage and intense anger in the Muslim world.
In undisclosed testimony obtained last year by The New York Times, Darby described how he collected the pictures from Graner in late 2003 before handing them over to military investigators in January 2004. Darby said he gave two CD-ROMS with the photos to investigators because he ''felt the pictures were morally wrong" and that Graner ''would abuse more prisoners" if he did not alert authorities.
Darby, who got death threats and was placed in protective custody, received the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award in Boston last month.
The Army's investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal concluded that a small group of soldiers at the facility was responsible for most of the abuse, including arranging detainees in sexually explicit positions to be photographed, forcing male inmates to wear women's underwear, and at least one instance of a male guard having sex with a female detainee. Some groups are demanding a full, independent investigation -- which they say could reveal culpability farther up the chain of command.
William O. Beeman, a professor of anthropology and director of Middle East Studies at Brown, said that pictures of such humiliation could provide more fuel for Muslim anger. ''By stripping people naked and putting them in compromising situations, you are practically defining the most extreme immodesty that could possibly be seen," he said.
The ongoing ACLU freedom-of-information lawsuit, filed with the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Center of Constitutional Rights, has so far forced the government to provide more than 35,000 pages of documents pertaining to the treatment of US detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. It has documented allegations of abuse at several US facilities, including as many as 28 deaths of prisoners in US custody.
Beeman said the slow pace of the abuse investigation and the widespread perception that the US was not acting to bring higher-ranking officials to justice had damaged credibility in the region. ''At this point the rest of the world is prepared to believe almost anything," he said.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Monday, May 30, 2005
Learning to Talk to Iran--Beeman
Agence Global - Article: "Learning to Talk to Iran
by William O. BeemanReleased: 26 May 2005
Learning to Talk to Iran
by William O. Beeman Released: 26 May 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
American officials can't get their substantive concerns through to Iranian ears because they don't know how to talk to Iran.
Yet another example of this dysfunctional communication was seen when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on May 19 entitled "Iran: Weapons Proliferation, Terrorism and Democracy," which featured a group of individuals who are largely hostile to Iran. These hearings were predominantly an orgy of Iran bashing that will get the United States no closer to entente with the Islamic Republic.
When viewing counter-productive events such as this hearing, it becomes clear that all branches of American government need a different strategy if they are at all serious in their intention of changing minds in Tehran about anything. This requires some schooling in Iranian communication dynamics, going beyond the particular substantive merits of either side's arguments.
It is a general principle of communication dynamics in Iran that only parties who are in an active pre-existing relationship have the ability to make demands on each other. To enter a relationship, there needs to be a clear understanding about roles -- how the parties are to be mutually supportive. In interpersonal interaction, an individual who tries to make demands on another from a "superior" position without having this understanding is practicing "power mongering" (ghodrat-talabi). This is one of the most despised actions in all of Iranian conduct, and is resisted with every fiber of one's being. Even if a party is forced into acquiescence, there are consequences down the road, since the party forced to their knees, so to speak, will harbor eternal resentment, and will look for a way to strike back at some time in the future.
The United States and Iran currently have no active relationship. Therefore American demands on Iran will be met with greater and greater resistance the more they are promulgated, either directly through shouting and invective, or through trying to use the European negotiating team to do Washington's work. The Europeans, who do have a functioning relationship with Iran, have a chance to succeed in their negotiations, if only they are not perceived as American tools. The only way for the United States to press its interests successfully with Iran is to bite the bullet and get back into direct communication with the Islamic Republic. As distasteful as this might be to some parties in the current administration -- and indeed to many in Iran -- it can be done with sufficient political will.
Given American ineptitude in this communication quagmire, it may be up to some intrepid Iranians to step up and seize the day. The presidential election next month will be an important watershed. Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, now running for president again, is no longer a novice in dealing with the United States. He was involved in the Iran-Contra affair, and has emerged from that encounter with his political powers intact. He has stated his confidence that he can deal with the U.S. and not pay a political price at home -- a rare and precious claim. He is not well liked, and his ethics are regularly questioned in private, but pragmatists in Iran feel that he might be able to be the key to rapprochement with the United States -- something that they recognize must happen eventually. Washington will be hard pressed to identify another such actor among Iranian political elites. However, Rafsanjani is a man of formidable political skills. Karl Rove couldn't hold a candle to him -- though they are cut from the same cloth.
Mr. Rafsanjani s election is by no means a foregone conclusion. Moreover, if he wins, dealing with him will still be a delicate challenge. Nevertheless, as he has hinted, his election could be an opening to better relations. Mr. Rafsanjani would definitely be his own person; he could probably not survive anything that would make him seem to be an American puppet. Washington, however, should be prepared to respond quickly and positively to any overtures he makes. This might occasion the diplomatic breakthrough that Madeline Albright, among others, pursued unsuccessfully in the past.
The United States and Iran now need someone like Mr. Rafsanjani. Without some serious face-to-face work, Iran and the United States are doomed to a death-spiral of deteriorating communication, and the American public may once again be treated to a disastrous violent international action framed by those fateful, sad and ultimately disingenuous words: "We did all we could."
William O. Beeman is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. His books include Language, Status and Power in Iran, and the forthcoming The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.
Copyright 2005 William O. Beeman
by William O. BeemanReleased: 26 May 2005
Learning to Talk to Iran
by William O. Beeman Released: 26 May 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
American officials can't get their substantive concerns through to Iranian ears because they don't know how to talk to Iran.
Yet another example of this dysfunctional communication was seen when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on May 19 entitled "Iran: Weapons Proliferation, Terrorism and Democracy," which featured a group of individuals who are largely hostile to Iran. These hearings were predominantly an orgy of Iran bashing that will get the United States no closer to entente with the Islamic Republic.
When viewing counter-productive events such as this hearing, it becomes clear that all branches of American government need a different strategy if they are at all serious in their intention of changing minds in Tehran about anything. This requires some schooling in Iranian communication dynamics, going beyond the particular substantive merits of either side's arguments.
It is a general principle of communication dynamics in Iran that only parties who are in an active pre-existing relationship have the ability to make demands on each other. To enter a relationship, there needs to be a clear understanding about roles -- how the parties are to be mutually supportive. In interpersonal interaction, an individual who tries to make demands on another from a "superior" position without having this understanding is practicing "power mongering" (ghodrat-talabi). This is one of the most despised actions in all of Iranian conduct, and is resisted with every fiber of one's being. Even if a party is forced into acquiescence, there are consequences down the road, since the party forced to their knees, so to speak, will harbor eternal resentment, and will look for a way to strike back at some time in the future.
The United States and Iran currently have no active relationship. Therefore American demands on Iran will be met with greater and greater resistance the more they are promulgated, either directly through shouting and invective, or through trying to use the European negotiating team to do Washington's work. The Europeans, who do have a functioning relationship with Iran, have a chance to succeed in their negotiations, if only they are not perceived as American tools. The only way for the United States to press its interests successfully with Iran is to bite the bullet and get back into direct communication with the Islamic Republic. As distasteful as this might be to some parties in the current administration -- and indeed to many in Iran -- it can be done with sufficient political will.
Given American ineptitude in this communication quagmire, it may be up to some intrepid Iranians to step up and seize the day. The presidential election next month will be an important watershed. Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, now running for president again, is no longer a novice in dealing with the United States. He was involved in the Iran-Contra affair, and has emerged from that encounter with his political powers intact. He has stated his confidence that he can deal with the U.S. and not pay a political price at home -- a rare and precious claim. He is not well liked, and his ethics are regularly questioned in private, but pragmatists in Iran feel that he might be able to be the key to rapprochement with the United States -- something that they recognize must happen eventually. Washington will be hard pressed to identify another such actor among Iranian political elites. However, Rafsanjani is a man of formidable political skills. Karl Rove couldn't hold a candle to him -- though they are cut from the same cloth.
Mr. Rafsanjani s election is by no means a foregone conclusion. Moreover, if he wins, dealing with him will still be a delicate challenge. Nevertheless, as he has hinted, his election could be an opening to better relations. Mr. Rafsanjani would definitely be his own person; he could probably not survive anything that would make him seem to be an American puppet. Washington, however, should be prepared to respond quickly and positively to any overtures he makes. This might occasion the diplomatic breakthrough that Madeline Albright, among others, pursued unsuccessfully in the past.
The United States and Iran now need someone like Mr. Rafsanjani. Without some serious face-to-face work, Iran and the United States are doomed to a death-spiral of deteriorating communication, and the American public may once again be treated to a disastrous violent international action framed by those fateful, sad and ultimately disingenuous words: "We did all we could."
William O. Beeman is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. His books include Language, Status and Power in Iran, and the forthcoming The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.
Copyright 2005 William O. Beeman
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Bush Administration Lies to Besmirch Iran--Beeman--Pacific News Service May 6, 2005
Pacific News Service > News > Bush Administration Lies to Besmirch Iran
Bush Administration Lies to Besmirch Iran
Commentary, William O. Beeman,
Pacific News Service, May 06, 2005
Editor's Note: U.S. officials are telling falsehoods about Iran and its nuclear program, most recently on PBS's NewsHour program, the writer says.
SAN FRANCISCO--The frustration of the Bush administration with Iran regarding its nuclear program is obviously boiling over when an administration official issues an outright lie about Iran in a public venue, as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns did on television on May 5.
Burns made the following statement on PBS's NewsHour program to interviewer Margaret Warner.
WARNER: But as you know, I mean, Iran says that under the (Nuclear Non-
Proliferation) treaty, it has an inalienable right to continue pursuing this technology for civilian purposes.
BURNS: But the agreement that Iran entered into November of last year in Paris with Britain, France and Germany, is that it will not just suspend its nuclear fuel cycle activities. It will actually lead to cessation and dismantling. That means that Iran would not be able to have the possibility to enrich or produce fissile material which, as you know, is the essential ingredient in the capacity to build a nuclear device.
Burns' statement is untrue. The Nov. 15 treaty, a public document, does not stipulate any agreement on Iran's part to dismantle any part of its peaceful nuclear development program. Moreover, Iran's cessation of enrichment activity was specified as voluntary in the treaty.
Burns' remark is designed to show that Iran is in violation of a treaty subsequent to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), thus perpetuating the Bush administration portrait of Iran as an outlaw nation and "treaty violator." What Burns failed to point out is that Iran also subscribed to the following unambiguous statement in the November treaty:
"Iran reaffirms that, in accordance with Article II of the NPT, it does not and will not seek to acquire nuclear weapons. It commits itself to full cooperation and transparency with the IAEA. Iran will continue implanting voluntarily the Additional Protocol [for enhanced inspections] pending ratification."
Iranian officials have dug in their heels on this issue because they correctly feel that they have been unfairly singled out for attack. They know full well that Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea are not signatories to the NPT; that they have nuclear weapons; and that the United States is doing nothing to target them. They also know that Brazil has a developing nuclear program, and that Taiwan supplies nuclear technology support to all and sundry, and these nations are likewise not the targets of American rhetoric.
Iran is deeply proud of its technological advances. It is now manufacturing commercial passenger aircraft for export, and has the largest automobile manufacturing plant in the Middle East. It is diversifying its oil economy and has growing non-oil export trade. Nuclear energy technology is both a demonstration of its advancing skills in high-level engineering and a practical economic measure to free petroleum and natural gas for export to China, India and other nearby Asian markets. Iran's clerical leaders are not loved by its youthful population, but their support for nuclear energy development is almost universally supported by the populace.
Since there has been no diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran for nearly 30 years, the only way for either nation to get the attention of the other is through invective and excessive rhetoric. The Bush administration has decided that the nuclear issue is the one that will play best with the American public, and on the world scene, and so it seems ready to tolerate, and perhaps even orchestrate, stunts like the Burns prevarication. However, in the long run the United States is losing the battle. European powers are not willing to go along with U.S. strong-arm tactics, and even if the United States is able to haul Iran in to the United Nations to face sanctions, it is likely that China, Russia and France will veto the measure, causing embarrassment in Washington.
Far better for Washington would be to do what Britain, France and Germany have been urging the Bush administration to do, and actually press to open direct talks with Tehran. This is the honest, the correct and the effective way to deal with the very proud nation of Iran.
PNS contributor William O. Beeman is professor of anthropology and director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He is currently visiting professor of cultural and social anthropology at Stanford University. His forthcoming book is "The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other."
Comments
Ehsan on May 06, 2005 22:12:33, said:
This article is one of the rare, fair reports about the atomic crisis and Iran.
nima on May 06, 2005 18:39:00, said:
Brilliant article. I wish I could see such honest and independent reporting in other sectors of the press.
Bahram on May 06, 2005 18:13:15, said:
Good work. After many years as an Iranian living in U.S. finally I found an honest, wise article. I and almost all of my many young educated friends in U.S. and Iran are no fan of current government in Iran. However, we believe Iran is treated unfairly not only in this issue but also in any other commercial and economical issues such as oil investment.
The Bush administration does not understand that they are unifying Iranians and the government by these sanctions and pressures. Remember the golden years of hope for democracy in Iran was when Clinton administration showed its interest to open a relationship with Iran. Unfortunately people like you have no voice in mainstream media and administration. God bless you.
Henning on May 06, 2005 17:19:25, said:
The Bush admnistration is based on crime, lies, mass murder and terror. Then how do you think he can deal in a correct and effective way?
Bush Administration Lies to Besmirch Iran
Commentary, William O. Beeman,
Pacific News Service, May 06, 2005
Editor's Note: U.S. officials are telling falsehoods about Iran and its nuclear program, most recently on PBS's NewsHour program, the writer says.
SAN FRANCISCO--The frustration of the Bush administration with Iran regarding its nuclear program is obviously boiling over when an administration official issues an outright lie about Iran in a public venue, as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns did on television on May 5.
Burns made the following statement on PBS's NewsHour program to interviewer Margaret Warner.
WARNER: But as you know, I mean, Iran says that under the (Nuclear Non-
Proliferation) treaty, it has an inalienable right to continue pursuing this technology for civilian purposes.
BURNS: But the agreement that Iran entered into November of last year in Paris with Britain, France and Germany, is that it will not just suspend its nuclear fuel cycle activities. It will actually lead to cessation and dismantling. That means that Iran would not be able to have the possibility to enrich or produce fissile material which, as you know, is the essential ingredient in the capacity to build a nuclear device.
Burns' statement is untrue. The Nov. 15 treaty, a public document, does not stipulate any agreement on Iran's part to dismantle any part of its peaceful nuclear development program. Moreover, Iran's cessation of enrichment activity was specified as voluntary in the treaty.
Burns' remark is designed to show that Iran is in violation of a treaty subsequent to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), thus perpetuating the Bush administration portrait of Iran as an outlaw nation and "treaty violator." What Burns failed to point out is that Iran also subscribed to the following unambiguous statement in the November treaty:
"Iran reaffirms that, in accordance with Article II of the NPT, it does not and will not seek to acquire nuclear weapons. It commits itself to full cooperation and transparency with the IAEA. Iran will continue implanting voluntarily the Additional Protocol [for enhanced inspections] pending ratification."
Iranian officials have dug in their heels on this issue because they correctly feel that they have been unfairly singled out for attack. They know full well that Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea are not signatories to the NPT; that they have nuclear weapons; and that the United States is doing nothing to target them. They also know that Brazil has a developing nuclear program, and that Taiwan supplies nuclear technology support to all and sundry, and these nations are likewise not the targets of American rhetoric.
Iran is deeply proud of its technological advances. It is now manufacturing commercial passenger aircraft for export, and has the largest automobile manufacturing plant in the Middle East. It is diversifying its oil economy and has growing non-oil export trade. Nuclear energy technology is both a demonstration of its advancing skills in high-level engineering and a practical economic measure to free petroleum and natural gas for export to China, India and other nearby Asian markets. Iran's clerical leaders are not loved by its youthful population, but their support for nuclear energy development is almost universally supported by the populace.
Since there has been no diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran for nearly 30 years, the only way for either nation to get the attention of the other is through invective and excessive rhetoric. The Bush administration has decided that the nuclear issue is the one that will play best with the American public, and on the world scene, and so it seems ready to tolerate, and perhaps even orchestrate, stunts like the Burns prevarication. However, in the long run the United States is losing the battle. European powers are not willing to go along with U.S. strong-arm tactics, and even if the United States is able to haul Iran in to the United Nations to face sanctions, it is likely that China, Russia and France will veto the measure, causing embarrassment in Washington.
Far better for Washington would be to do what Britain, France and Germany have been urging the Bush administration to do, and actually press to open direct talks with Tehran. This is the honest, the correct and the effective way to deal with the very proud nation of Iran.
PNS contributor William O. Beeman is professor of anthropology and director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He is currently visiting professor of cultural and social anthropology at Stanford University. His forthcoming book is "The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other."
Comments
Ehsan on May 06, 2005 22:12:33, said:
This article is one of the rare, fair reports about the atomic crisis and Iran.
nima on May 06, 2005 18:39:00, said:
Brilliant article. I wish I could see such honest and independent reporting in other sectors of the press.
Bahram on May 06, 2005 18:13:15, said:
Good work. After many years as an Iranian living in U.S. finally I found an honest, wise article. I and almost all of my many young educated friends in U.S. and Iran are no fan of current government in Iran. However, we believe Iran is treated unfairly not only in this issue but also in any other commercial and economical issues such as oil investment.
The Bush administration does not understand that they are unifying Iranians and the government by these sanctions and pressures. Remember the golden years of hope for democracy in Iran was when Clinton administration showed its interest to open a relationship with Iran. Unfortunately people like you have no voice in mainstream media and administration. God bless you.
Henning on May 06, 2005 17:19:25, said:
The Bush admnistration is based on crime, lies, mass murder and terror. Then how do you think he can deal in a correct and effective way?
Monday, May 02, 2005
Iran is Cleaning Up its Act--Why won't the United States Respond? Agence Global May 2, 2005
Agence Global - Article: "Iran is Cleaning Up its Act � Why Won�t the United States Respond?
by William O. BeemanReleased: 2 May 2005
Iran is Cleaning Up its Act — Why Won’t the United States Respond?
by William O. Beeman Released: 2 May 2005
Agence Global
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The big news on Iran in the United States for months is that Iran “threatens” to resume uranium enrichment.
However, there is much bigger news regarding Iran that is being systematically ignored by the United States government and the press. Slowly but surely, Iran is quietly cleaning up its act. It is, in fact, addressing nearly every other complaint leveled against it by American politicians for more than two decades.
The principal critiques against Iran by the United States have encompassed three areas besides the continuing development of nuclear power resources: support of terrorism, treatment of women, and oppression of minorities. All of these accusations may have had some substance 25 years ago, but in 2005, they have all paled.
Iran today is transforming as rapidly as its youthful population is moving into adulthood. Its previously moribund economy is revitalizing, with new construction, manufacturing and sophisticated exports, such as passenger cars and light aircraft. If the world will wait just a few years until the post-Revolutionary generation becomes the majority voting population, all of the hopes of the United States for Iran becoming an emerging, productive economic partner for the developed world will be realized.
However, patience is not a strong commodity in Washington with regard to Iran. Hotheaded Bush-era officials like Douglas Feith and John Bolton act out their raw prejudices against the Islamic Republic with virtually no reflection on reality. Egged on by their colleagues at right-wing think tanks, they have done little more than hurl invective any time Iran’s name is mentioned. The Iran haters clearly believe that slogans such as “Axis of Evil” verify themselves. Yellow journalism, such as the recent work of Jerome R. Corsi -- co-author of Unfit for Command, the “Swift Boat” attack on John Kerry -- Atomic Iran, which accuses Iran’s government officials of stealing children to stay in power, and plotting to kill even more children by dropping bombs on Central Park, do little to encourage civil discourse between Tehran and Washington.
Examining the hoary old accusations against Iran in light of today’s world may help clear the air.
The United States has regularly accused Iran of being the “greatest State supporter of terrorism in the world.” This accusation is based on only one concretely verifiable action on Iran’s part—its support of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Other attempts to link Iran to Hamas, to Al-Qaeda, to the Taliban and other groups have proved utterly specious, and indeed completely improbable given the antipathy between these other groups and Iran’s Shi’a leaders both on doctrinal and on political grounds.
Iran was instrumental in founding Hezbullah in the early 1980’s, and continued support of that organization for some time. However, Hezbollah has matured. Its political agenda is now utterly different from that of Iran. It is the most organized, and potentially the most powerful political force in Lebanon, with 14 members in parliament, and a broad set of institutions, including schools, orphanages and hospitals. All experts on Hezbollah agree that it no longer needs Iran for its continued existence.
Now Iran has taken the hint. It has withdrawn virtually all of its support troops from Lebanon and Hezbollah. Moreover, it has been doing so quietly for the last five years.
This was reported quietly by Robin Wright for the Washington Post on April 14 of this year. Some minimal contact will likely continue, since Hezbollah members revere the Iranian revolution and are “Twelver” Shi’ites, as their Iranian counterparts. However, the idea that Hezbollah depends on Iran for its existence at this point is patently false.
Iran’s treatment of women has long been ritually invoked as proof of its unworthiness as a state. It is certainly true that Iran’s clerical leaders would like to enforce more modest behavior for women, but the intrepid women of Iran have had different ideas, and have moved to liberate themselves from the unreasonable restrictions imposed nearly 30 years ago. Fearless and outspoken 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, is a prime example of this powerful New Iranian Woman.
Westerners tend to fetishize “the veil” -- the all-encompassing black chador -- as a sign of female oppression. Today the chador is reserved for the most conservative families, and for religious rites. Modest street and office dress has evolved into high fashion. Head coverings are both minimal and colorful, and the chador has become a light, tailored frock worn frequently over jeans with embroidered bottoms.
But fashion does not tell the whole story. Seventy percent of successful university entrants are now women -- even in fields like engineering and medicine. Women are everywhere, and their power is making itself felt. On April 12, 2005, the Iranian parliament with the acquiescence of conservative mullahs ratified a bill allowing abortion in the first trimester when the fetus is non-viable or the mother’s life is in danger. This law was the direct result of lobbying by women, horrified at the death rate from illegal back-street abortions throughout the nation.
Finally, although immediately after the revolution, ethnic and religious minorities were mistreated by revolutionary zealots, today the situation has almost completely reversed. Except for the Baha’i community, who are considered heretics in Shi’ism, other religious minorities live in peace and without any restriction regarding trade, education or government service. The Jewish, Armenian and Assyrian communities all have designated parliamentary representatives.
Ethnic groups are likewise enjoying more freedoms than under the Pahlavi regime. School instruction and publication is now undertaken in long-repressed Kurdish, Azerbaijani, Baluchi and Arabic languages in addition to Persian. Other local languages may follow.
It should be noted that Iran’s human rights record for political dissidents is far from admirable, but interestingly, this has not been a point on which the United States has ever pressed Tehran. The reasons for Washington’s relative silence on this matter are unclear, but it is clearly difficult to complain credibly about Iran’s failings in human rights in the light of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the American practice of shipping its own political prisoners to Yemen or Uzbekistan to be tortured.
This leaves Iran’s nuclear development efforts as the sole remaining complaint against Iran. Since there is no proof at all that Iran has nuclear weapons, or a nuclear weapons’ development program, these complaints also remain specious. Moreover, when one listens carefully to Iranian politicians, one hears that their principal concern is not anxiety about restrictions on nuclear weapons development -- it is anger and resentment that they are being singled out as an exception to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which they are signatories. They correctly point out that the treaty grants them the unambiguous right to peaceful development of nuclear energy, including the development of a full fuel cycle.
One might concede that American verbal pressure on Iran has been the source of movement away from support of the Hezbollah, and toward better treatment of women and minorities. If so, then Washington should be delighted. However, it seems that the farther Iran retreats from giving substance to American complaints, the more eager the Bush administration is to elevate the harsh invective, drawing line after line in the sand, however pale and undefined they may become. If these complaints are merely a pretext for violent action against the Islamic Republic, as many in Tehran believe, Iran will never succeed in placating the Washington hawks no matter how well they behave.
William O. Beeman is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, and Visiting Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University. His forthcoming book is The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How The United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.
Copyright 2005 William O. Beeman
This article may be reproduced for any non-commercial purpose. For commercial use, please contact Agence Global or the author.
by William O. BeemanReleased: 2 May 2005
Iran is Cleaning Up its Act — Why Won’t the United States Respond?
by William O. Beeman Released: 2 May 2005
Agence Global
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The big news on Iran in the United States for months is that Iran “threatens” to resume uranium enrichment.
However, there is much bigger news regarding Iran that is being systematically ignored by the United States government and the press. Slowly but surely, Iran is quietly cleaning up its act. It is, in fact, addressing nearly every other complaint leveled against it by American politicians for more than two decades.
The principal critiques against Iran by the United States have encompassed three areas besides the continuing development of nuclear power resources: support of terrorism, treatment of women, and oppression of minorities. All of these accusations may have had some substance 25 years ago, but in 2005, they have all paled.
Iran today is transforming as rapidly as its youthful population is moving into adulthood. Its previously moribund economy is revitalizing, with new construction, manufacturing and sophisticated exports, such as passenger cars and light aircraft. If the world will wait just a few years until the post-Revolutionary generation becomes the majority voting population, all of the hopes of the United States for Iran becoming an emerging, productive economic partner for the developed world will be realized.
However, patience is not a strong commodity in Washington with regard to Iran. Hotheaded Bush-era officials like Douglas Feith and John Bolton act out their raw prejudices against the Islamic Republic with virtually no reflection on reality. Egged on by their colleagues at right-wing think tanks, they have done little more than hurl invective any time Iran’s name is mentioned. The Iran haters clearly believe that slogans such as “Axis of Evil” verify themselves. Yellow journalism, such as the recent work of Jerome R. Corsi -- co-author of Unfit for Command, the “Swift Boat” attack on John Kerry -- Atomic Iran, which accuses Iran’s government officials of stealing children to stay in power, and plotting to kill even more children by dropping bombs on Central Park, do little to encourage civil discourse between Tehran and Washington.
Examining the hoary old accusations against Iran in light of today’s world may help clear the air.
The United States has regularly accused Iran of being the “greatest State supporter of terrorism in the world.” This accusation is based on only one concretely verifiable action on Iran’s part—its support of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Other attempts to link Iran to Hamas, to Al-Qaeda, to the Taliban and other groups have proved utterly specious, and indeed completely improbable given the antipathy between these other groups and Iran’s Shi’a leaders both on doctrinal and on political grounds.
Iran was instrumental in founding Hezbullah in the early 1980’s, and continued support of that organization for some time. However, Hezbollah has matured. Its political agenda is now utterly different from that of Iran. It is the most organized, and potentially the most powerful political force in Lebanon, with 14 members in parliament, and a broad set of institutions, including schools, orphanages and hospitals. All experts on Hezbollah agree that it no longer needs Iran for its continued existence.
Now Iran has taken the hint. It has withdrawn virtually all of its support troops from Lebanon and Hezbollah. Moreover, it has been doing so quietly for the last five years.
This was reported quietly by Robin Wright for the Washington Post on April 14 of this year. Some minimal contact will likely continue, since Hezbollah members revere the Iranian revolution and are “Twelver” Shi’ites, as their Iranian counterparts. However, the idea that Hezbollah depends on Iran for its existence at this point is patently false.
Iran’s treatment of women has long been ritually invoked as proof of its unworthiness as a state. It is certainly true that Iran’s clerical leaders would like to enforce more modest behavior for women, but the intrepid women of Iran have had different ideas, and have moved to liberate themselves from the unreasonable restrictions imposed nearly 30 years ago. Fearless and outspoken 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, is a prime example of this powerful New Iranian Woman.
Westerners tend to fetishize “the veil” -- the all-encompassing black chador -- as a sign of female oppression. Today the chador is reserved for the most conservative families, and for religious rites. Modest street and office dress has evolved into high fashion. Head coverings are both minimal and colorful, and the chador has become a light, tailored frock worn frequently over jeans with embroidered bottoms.
But fashion does not tell the whole story. Seventy percent of successful university entrants are now women -- even in fields like engineering and medicine. Women are everywhere, and their power is making itself felt. On April 12, 2005, the Iranian parliament with the acquiescence of conservative mullahs ratified a bill allowing abortion in the first trimester when the fetus is non-viable or the mother’s life is in danger. This law was the direct result of lobbying by women, horrified at the death rate from illegal back-street abortions throughout the nation.
Finally, although immediately after the revolution, ethnic and religious minorities were mistreated by revolutionary zealots, today the situation has almost completely reversed. Except for the Baha’i community, who are considered heretics in Shi’ism, other religious minorities live in peace and without any restriction regarding trade, education or government service. The Jewish, Armenian and Assyrian communities all have designated parliamentary representatives.
Ethnic groups are likewise enjoying more freedoms than under the Pahlavi regime. School instruction and publication is now undertaken in long-repressed Kurdish, Azerbaijani, Baluchi and Arabic languages in addition to Persian. Other local languages may follow.
It should be noted that Iran’s human rights record for political dissidents is far from admirable, but interestingly, this has not been a point on which the United States has ever pressed Tehran. The reasons for Washington’s relative silence on this matter are unclear, but it is clearly difficult to complain credibly about Iran’s failings in human rights in the light of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the American practice of shipping its own political prisoners to Yemen or Uzbekistan to be tortured.
This leaves Iran’s nuclear development efforts as the sole remaining complaint against Iran. Since there is no proof at all that Iran has nuclear weapons, or a nuclear weapons’ development program, these complaints also remain specious. Moreover, when one listens carefully to Iranian politicians, one hears that their principal concern is not anxiety about restrictions on nuclear weapons development -- it is anger and resentment that they are being singled out as an exception to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which they are signatories. They correctly point out that the treaty grants them the unambiguous right to peaceful development of nuclear energy, including the development of a full fuel cycle.
One might concede that American verbal pressure on Iran has been the source of movement away from support of the Hezbollah, and toward better treatment of women and minorities. If so, then Washington should be delighted. However, it seems that the farther Iran retreats from giving substance to American complaints, the more eager the Bush administration is to elevate the harsh invective, drawing line after line in the sand, however pale and undefined they may become. If these complaints are merely a pretext for violent action against the Islamic Republic, as many in Tehran believe, Iran will never succeed in placating the Washington hawks no matter how well they behave.
William O. Beeman is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, and Visiting Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University. His forthcoming book is The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How The United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.
Copyright 2005 William O. Beeman
This article may be reproduced for any non-commercial purpose. For commercial use, please contact Agence Global or the author.
Friday, April 08, 2005
WASHINGTON MIGHT HAVE PICKED IRAN�S FUTURE KING AND PREMIER--Reporting conclusions from William O. Beeman (June, 2003)
WASHINGTON MIGHT HAVE PICKED IRAN�S FUTURE KING AND PREMIER: "
WASHINGTON MIGHT HAVE PICKED IRAN’S FUTURE KING AND PREMIER
PARIS, 3 June (IPS) Continuing his series of articles aimed at exposing Washington’s "foolhardy" policy regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran, American scholar and writer
William O. Beeman says in its quest for regime change in Iran, the United Sates might have "already picked the new rulers of that country".
"The form of government would be a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Head of State being Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed in the 1978-79 Islamic revolution, and Sohrab Sobhani as his Prime Minister", Mr. Beeman wrote.
"The Bush Administration apparently has a handpicked American "plumber" ready to go in Iran, much like Ahmed Chalabi (the leader of the Defence Department-backed Iraqi National Congress) in Iraq. This is Sohrab "Rob" Sobhani, an Iranian-American associated with the neoconservatives in Washington. With Reza Pahlavi as Shah, the 40-ish Sobhani would presumably be prime minister or president", he prognosticated.
As in his previous article published by the Beirut-based "The Daily Star", (see IPS’s "America’s Case Against Iran Is Full Of Holes"), the scholar names Mr. Michael Ledeen, a tough-tongue historian and journalist as the "promoter" of the "Restore Monarchy" project.
"The promoter of the Administration policy is American Enterprise Institute Freedom Chair Holder Michael Ledeen, who has written and lectured obsessively about regime change in Iran. Ledeen was reported by "The Washington Post" to be one of four advisers in regular consultation with White House strategist, Karl Rove", Mr. Beeman said, adding that Ledeen and Sobhani recently established the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI) to promote this regime change.
Reza Pahlavi had been living quietly in Maryland until 11 September, when he began to address the Iranian community via the internet and satellite television. This prompted the Iranian community to dub him the "Internet Prince."
Rob Sobhani, who has known Reza Pahlavi since childhood, was actually born in Kansas. His doctorate, completed in 1987, dealt with Iranian-Israeli relations from 1948-88. He became a specialist in energy policy. He has had his finger in many pies in Washington, including consultation on the construction of an oil and gas pipeline across Afghanistan.
Well-connected politically, he ran twice for the US Senate from Maryland as a Republican. Although his heritage is Iranian, he is far from being an expert on Iranian society, politics or economics. His move to the Washington area put him in close contact with his old friend, Reza Pahlavi.
Sobhani’s interests in regime change are very clear and very consonant with American desires. They are largely commercial. Following his graduation from Georgetown, he became head of a Caspian Energy Consulting, a firm dealing with the transport and sale of Caspian oil.
On March 5, 2001 in an article written with Pennsylvania State business professor Fariborz Ghadar, he advocated a number of the policies that have since been carried out by the US, including containing the Taleban and Saddam Hoseyn. He also notes that supporting a secularisation of Iran would lead to easier transport of Caspian oil through Iranian territory.
Of equal importance, Sobhani also sees secularisation of Iran as beneficial for Israel. This is not surprising, since Israel and Iran had excellent ties before the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution. The Iranian Jewish community is the oldest continuous Jewish community in the world. The community is as prominent in Diaspora as in Iran, with members in powerful positions in the Israeli government and in American life, particularly in California. Elimination of the clerical regime in Iran would eliminate support for (the Iran-backed Lebanese) Hezbollah. It might even lead to renewed trade between Tehran and Tel Aviv.
Ledeen, Sobhani and Morris Amitay, former director of the principal Israeli lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) joined forces at the American Enterprise Institute in a seminar entitled The Future of Iran, in which they called for regime change. AIPAC has indicated support for the restoration of Reza Pahlavi to the throne, although they wish to remain in the background, as reported by Mark Perelman on 16 May in "The New York Jewish Daily Forward".
Sobhani has pursued a ploy in order to give himself academic billing for television and the lecture circuit. He teaches one course at his alma mater, Georgetown University on Iran and Caspian Oil politics. On this basis he has claimed to be a "professor" at Georgetown. He is in fact an adjunct faculty member at the college, but here it is hard to know what kind of "adjunct" he is, since he never seems to be on campus. The chair of the department of government has tried in vain to get him to cease and desist in claiming this affiliation.
Both Sobhani and Michael Ledeen are remarkably cagey about claims for the restoration of the Monarchy. Their ambitions are clearly to restore the Pahlavi dynasty, but they are both exceptionally careful about making this pronunciation openly or in print. They are frequently photographed with Reza Pahlavi and in some circles Sobhani is derisively referred to as "The Pretender’s Prime Minister". Sobhani, when he refers to Reza, frequently calls him an "activist" rather than a future Monarch.
All three have connections with the media agency, Benador Associates, who manages both their op-ed placements and television appearances. Eleana Benador represents Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Charles Krauthammer, Martin Kramer and other conservatives connected to the Bush Administration. Pictures of Eleana Benador and Reza Pahlavi with Israeli supporter and AIPAC member Bob Guzzardi, and Middle East Forum head Daniel Pipes appear on Bob Guzzardi’s website, www.bobguzzardi.com.
Sobhani and Ledeen clearly feel that the United States can produce an internal coup in Iran. Ledeen has said as much in (his recent book) "The War Against the Terror Masters" and many articles for the "National Review Online", "The Wall Street Journal" and other media outlets.
Ledeen and Sobhani expect to have the coup first, and then present Reza Pahlavi as the emergent ruler. Ledeen said as much in a rally in Los Angeles for Iranian monarchists, saying in effect: Let’s have the revolution first, then worry about who will rule Iran.
He put a price tag on the operation saying; "I think you can buy yourself free Iran today for $20 million". What Ledeen, who has never traveled to Iran, and Sobhani don’t understand is that Iranians are deeply skeptical about American motives in the Middle East. They remember that the CIA engineered a counter-coup in 1953 that deposed a popular revolution against the Pahlavi regime*.
The counter-coup created an American puppet regime in Iran, which only came to an end in 1978-79 with the Islamic revolution. For such an operation to work, it cannot be tied to an overt embracing of a restoration of the Monarchy.
Moreover, it cannot specifically espouse use of the Mojahedeen Khalq Organisation (MKO), the guerrilla movement opposing the Iranian government from Iraq. Both the Pahlavi regime and the Mojahedeen are widely opposed in Iran, even from people who would like to see clerical rule eliminated.
Astonishing for Americans is the fact that many Iranians feel that the United States engineered the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power. The theory is that the American government felt that containment of the Soviet Union would best be effected by the establishment of a "Green Belt" (green is a sacred color in Islam) to confront the "godless Communists".
When the Shah became sick and unreliable, according to this theory, the United States traded the "crown for the turban". The resulting new regime was seen to be just as repressive as the old one. However, it did prevent Communists from coming to the fore. Thus, for a large body of Iranians, Americans have always controlled the Iranian government. To have Reza Pahlavi return to power with American blessing would, for many Iranians, be a continuation of American interference in Iranian affairs.
Added to this are the insults and damages that the United States has inflicted on Iran over the past two-and-a-half decades. Iranians will never forget that the United States tilted toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. By all accounts, Iran would have won the war if the United States had not interfered. Moreover, it is widely known that the United States provided poison gas and other chemical weapons to Iraq during that conflict.
Also regarded with bitterness are incidents like a downing of an Iranian plane by the United States during the Gulf War, an incident for which Washington never apologised. Economic sanctions against Iran are not debilitating, but they are a significant annoyance, and the continual insulting treatment of visa applicants and arrivals on American shores is humiliating for the well-educated, sophisticated Iranian citizenry, like world-famous Iranian film-makers receiving major international rewards being denied visas to come to the United States, or have been strip-searched at Kennedy Airport.
Could a restored Monarchy succeed in Iran? The answer is a qualified "yes," with the very large caveat that America cannot be involved in any way. If Reza Pahlavi, or any leader is to succeed in leading Iran, he or she must do so without overt US help. Once Iran is established on its own, not under an American thumb, the two nations may re-establish their relationship with some profit.
The best model for reforming Iran is the carrot, not the stick. An example of this process is seen in the European Union, which has lured states into its fold with the promise of economic prosperity. The new states entering the EU have bent over backwards to reform criminal practice, economic practice, and human rights attitudes to gain membership.
The best thing the United States could do is to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran, get involved with commercial dealings, and give the Iranians some reason to undertake reforms a better life in partnership with the West. In time, the younger generation, which makes up more than 75 percent of the population, will take over. Having democratic models close at hand, and some incentive; they will make the necessary changes themselves, without the CIA, or machinations from Washington. ENDS US MONARCHISTS 3606
Editor’s note: Mr. William O. Beeman (William_beeman@brown.edu) teaches anthropology and is Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University.
The Daily Star published this article on its 2 June issue
Some editing, phonetisation of names, brackets and highlights are from IPS
The article does not represent IPS’s view or policy.
* In 1953, the CIA, with cooperation with Intelligence Service, triggered a coup that deposed the popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, who had nationalised Iran’s oil industry, monopolised by the British.
WASHINGTON MIGHT HAVE PICKED IRAN’S FUTURE KING AND PREMIER
PARIS, 3 June (IPS) Continuing his series of articles aimed at exposing Washington’s "foolhardy" policy regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran, American scholar and writer
William O. Beeman says in its quest for regime change in Iran, the United Sates might have "already picked the new rulers of that country".
"The form of government would be a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Head of State being Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed in the 1978-79 Islamic revolution, and Sohrab Sobhani as his Prime Minister", Mr. Beeman wrote.
"The Bush Administration apparently has a handpicked American "plumber" ready to go in Iran, much like Ahmed Chalabi (the leader of the Defence Department-backed Iraqi National Congress) in Iraq. This is Sohrab "Rob" Sobhani, an Iranian-American associated with the neoconservatives in Washington. With Reza Pahlavi as Shah, the 40-ish Sobhani would presumably be prime minister or president", he prognosticated.
As in his previous article published by the Beirut-based "The Daily Star", (see IPS’s "America’s Case Against Iran Is Full Of Holes"), the scholar names Mr. Michael Ledeen, a tough-tongue historian and journalist as the "promoter" of the "Restore Monarchy" project.
"The promoter of the Administration policy is American Enterprise Institute Freedom Chair Holder Michael Ledeen, who has written and lectured obsessively about regime change in Iran. Ledeen was reported by "The Washington Post" to be one of four advisers in regular consultation with White House strategist, Karl Rove", Mr. Beeman said, adding that Ledeen and Sobhani recently established the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI) to promote this regime change.
Reza Pahlavi had been living quietly in Maryland until 11 September, when he began to address the Iranian community via the internet and satellite television. This prompted the Iranian community to dub him the "Internet Prince."
Rob Sobhani, who has known Reza Pahlavi since childhood, was actually born in Kansas. His doctorate, completed in 1987, dealt with Iranian-Israeli relations from 1948-88. He became a specialist in energy policy. He has had his finger in many pies in Washington, including consultation on the construction of an oil and gas pipeline across Afghanistan.
Well-connected politically, he ran twice for the US Senate from Maryland as a Republican. Although his heritage is Iranian, he is far from being an expert on Iranian society, politics or economics. His move to the Washington area put him in close contact with his old friend, Reza Pahlavi.
Sobhani’s interests in regime change are very clear and very consonant with American desires. They are largely commercial. Following his graduation from Georgetown, he became head of a Caspian Energy Consulting, a firm dealing with the transport and sale of Caspian oil.
On March 5, 2001 in an article written with Pennsylvania State business professor Fariborz Ghadar, he advocated a number of the policies that have since been carried out by the US, including containing the Taleban and Saddam Hoseyn. He also notes that supporting a secularisation of Iran would lead to easier transport of Caspian oil through Iranian territory.
Of equal importance, Sobhani also sees secularisation of Iran as beneficial for Israel. This is not surprising, since Israel and Iran had excellent ties before the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution. The Iranian Jewish community is the oldest continuous Jewish community in the world. The community is as prominent in Diaspora as in Iran, with members in powerful positions in the Israeli government and in American life, particularly in California. Elimination of the clerical regime in Iran would eliminate support for (the Iran-backed Lebanese) Hezbollah. It might even lead to renewed trade between Tehran and Tel Aviv.
Ledeen, Sobhani and Morris Amitay, former director of the principal Israeli lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) joined forces at the American Enterprise Institute in a seminar entitled The Future of Iran, in which they called for regime change. AIPAC has indicated support for the restoration of Reza Pahlavi to the throne, although they wish to remain in the background, as reported by Mark Perelman on 16 May in "The New York Jewish Daily Forward".
Sobhani has pursued a ploy in order to give himself academic billing for television and the lecture circuit. He teaches one course at his alma mater, Georgetown University on Iran and Caspian Oil politics. On this basis he has claimed to be a "professor" at Georgetown. He is in fact an adjunct faculty member at the college, but here it is hard to know what kind of "adjunct" he is, since he never seems to be on campus. The chair of the department of government has tried in vain to get him to cease and desist in claiming this affiliation.
Both Sobhani and Michael Ledeen are remarkably cagey about claims for the restoration of the Monarchy. Their ambitions are clearly to restore the Pahlavi dynasty, but they are both exceptionally careful about making this pronunciation openly or in print. They are frequently photographed with Reza Pahlavi and in some circles Sobhani is derisively referred to as "The Pretender’s Prime Minister". Sobhani, when he refers to Reza, frequently calls him an "activist" rather than a future Monarch.
All three have connections with the media agency, Benador Associates, who manages both their op-ed placements and television appearances. Eleana Benador represents Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Charles Krauthammer, Martin Kramer and other conservatives connected to the Bush Administration. Pictures of Eleana Benador and Reza Pahlavi with Israeli supporter and AIPAC member Bob Guzzardi, and Middle East Forum head Daniel Pipes appear on Bob Guzzardi’s website, www.bobguzzardi.com.
Sobhani and Ledeen clearly feel that the United States can produce an internal coup in Iran. Ledeen has said as much in (his recent book) "The War Against the Terror Masters" and many articles for the "National Review Online", "The Wall Street Journal" and other media outlets.
Ledeen and Sobhani expect to have the coup first, and then present Reza Pahlavi as the emergent ruler. Ledeen said as much in a rally in Los Angeles for Iranian monarchists, saying in effect: Let’s have the revolution first, then worry about who will rule Iran.
He put a price tag on the operation saying; "I think you can buy yourself free Iran today for $20 million". What Ledeen, who has never traveled to Iran, and Sobhani don’t understand is that Iranians are deeply skeptical about American motives in the Middle East. They remember that the CIA engineered a counter-coup in 1953 that deposed a popular revolution against the Pahlavi regime*.
The counter-coup created an American puppet regime in Iran, which only came to an end in 1978-79 with the Islamic revolution. For such an operation to work, it cannot be tied to an overt embracing of a restoration of the Monarchy.
Moreover, it cannot specifically espouse use of the Mojahedeen Khalq Organisation (MKO), the guerrilla movement opposing the Iranian government from Iraq. Both the Pahlavi regime and the Mojahedeen are widely opposed in Iran, even from people who would like to see clerical rule eliminated.
Astonishing for Americans is the fact that many Iranians feel that the United States engineered the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power. The theory is that the American government felt that containment of the Soviet Union would best be effected by the establishment of a "Green Belt" (green is a sacred color in Islam) to confront the "godless Communists".
When the Shah became sick and unreliable, according to this theory, the United States traded the "crown for the turban". The resulting new regime was seen to be just as repressive as the old one. However, it did prevent Communists from coming to the fore. Thus, for a large body of Iranians, Americans have always controlled the Iranian government. To have Reza Pahlavi return to power with American blessing would, for many Iranians, be a continuation of American interference in Iranian affairs.
Added to this are the insults and damages that the United States has inflicted on Iran over the past two-and-a-half decades. Iranians will never forget that the United States tilted toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. By all accounts, Iran would have won the war if the United States had not interfered. Moreover, it is widely known that the United States provided poison gas and other chemical weapons to Iraq during that conflict.
Also regarded with bitterness are incidents like a downing of an Iranian plane by the United States during the Gulf War, an incident for which Washington never apologised. Economic sanctions against Iran are not debilitating, but they are a significant annoyance, and the continual insulting treatment of visa applicants and arrivals on American shores is humiliating for the well-educated, sophisticated Iranian citizenry, like world-famous Iranian film-makers receiving major international rewards being denied visas to come to the United States, or have been strip-searched at Kennedy Airport.
Could a restored Monarchy succeed in Iran? The answer is a qualified "yes," with the very large caveat that America cannot be involved in any way. If Reza Pahlavi, or any leader is to succeed in leading Iran, he or she must do so without overt US help. Once Iran is established on its own, not under an American thumb, the two nations may re-establish their relationship with some profit.
The best model for reforming Iran is the carrot, not the stick. An example of this process is seen in the European Union, which has lured states into its fold with the promise of economic prosperity. The new states entering the EU have bent over backwards to reform criminal practice, economic practice, and human rights attitudes to gain membership.
The best thing the United States could do is to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran, get involved with commercial dealings, and give the Iranians some reason to undertake reforms a better life in partnership with the West. In time, the younger generation, which makes up more than 75 percent of the population, will take over. Having democratic models close at hand, and some incentive; they will make the necessary changes themselves, without the CIA, or machinations from Washington. ENDS US MONARCHISTS 3606
Editor’s note: Mr. William O. Beeman (William_beeman@brown.edu) teaches anthropology and is Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University.
The Daily Star published this article on its 2 June issue
Some editing, phonetisation of names, brackets and highlights are from IPS
The article does not represent IPS’s view or policy.
* In 1953, the CIA, with cooperation with Intelligence Service, triggered a coup that deposed the popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, who had nationalised Iran’s oil industry, monopolised by the British.
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