Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East (10 page)

After only a few seconds of silence, I heard a high-pitched voice exclaim something from the back of the group. “What is the problem with this?” she asked me with a perplexed look on her face.

She was short, maybe five feet one or two, and wore a black hejab that she tucked in to her white, button-down jacket. She stood there with a stern look on her face and her hands tucked into her pockets. Underneath the jacket, I saw that she wore fashionable blue jeans and white sneakers, with the ends of her jeans slightly torn and resting almost perfectly on her shoelaces. She was clearly the most outspoken of the group, and on several occasions shushed some of the guys when they tried to speak.

This young woman didn’t wait for me to answer. With the same stern look on her face, she made sure that I would not forget her words.

“You know, we have a right to advance too. The energy will be good for Iran and it will help us.” She looked me right in the eyes with every word. She was abrasive but not unfriendly. Even with a large group present, she didn’t give anybody else the chance to speak. She then yielded the floor to me. Her confident silence was as assertive as her words had been; her look said, “I dare you to respond to that.” I told her that I understood the need for nuclear energy and that I, too, viewed such technology as advancement. But I asked her, “You say that nuclear energy will be good for Iran, but what if that energy is used to build nuclear weapons?”

Her hands went deeper into the pockets of her coat as she once again challenged me. “Well, so what? This doesn’t harm anybody.”

I told her that many were worried that the regime would either sell a nuclear weapon to terrorists or use it themselves, most likely on Israel. She dismissed this as hypocritical. “America used nuclear weapons against another state,” she reminded me. I explained to her that the United States government dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the context of an armed global conflict and that many believed more lives would have been lost on both sides if the war was prolonged any further.

This didn’t satisfy her.

“Well, if we want nuclear weapons, why should we not be allowed to have them? America has them, China has them, India and Pakistan have them, Israel has them; so many countries have them. Why can’t we be the best too? Is it fair to say that we can’t?”

I wasn’t getting anywhere with her so I tried another approach. “Well, can I ask you something else?” I said.

She laughed and turned to the girl on her right and said something in Farsi. I think she seemed to like going head-to-head with me in front of her friends. More important, she clearly thought she was winning.

“
Bale
, ask your question,” she said.

“What if I were to tell you that nuclear weapons will continue to keep the mullahs in power? Won’t this worsen the economy and prevent you from getting democracy? Is it really more important than these things?”

I expected another crafty justification for Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons, but she instead looked at her classmates and said a few sentences in Farsi. Everyone burst into laughter.

“What did you just say to all of them?” I asked, eager to know what was so funny.

She caught her breath as she tried to stop laughing herself.

“I said to them: Well, if it is between the nuclear program and the mullahs’ staying in power, we don’t need it that badly.” So even though the youth believe it is their national right to have nuclear weapons, it is not worth the regime staying in power.

A
lthough the regime
wants nuclear weapons for its own self-preservation, Iran’s nuclear aspirations have been propagandized into a symbol of Iranian pride. Newspapers and speeches by the Iranian government refer to a “right to master this technology” and a “need to advance the sciences.” Given the sense of pride that is so deeply embedded in Iranian culture, it is not surprising that when nuclear weapons are presented through the lens of nationalist spirit, most of the youth are sold on the idea.

By galvanizing the Iranian people behind issues of national pride, and the sovereign rights of the country, the nuclear question has become the sole issue around which the regime has successfully mobilized mass support for itself. As a result, that issue has become too valuable an asset for the regime to forfeit on terms other than its own. One wonders if the youth can be made to differentiate between the abstract concept of nuclear energy and the dangerous reality of nuclear weapons. This is a challenge because they view both as part of a greater scheme for advancement. Each young person I spoke to seemed to individualize the idea of a nuclear Iran. For them, it was not about energy or weapons; it was about Iran moving forward and advancing. They become energized talking about this issue, in part because it is one of the rare political issues that they can actually talk about freely.

The architecture students I met in Shiraz represented a common trend among young people: They want the energy; they want the weapons; but they don’t want them so badly that they would support keeping the regime in power in order to see Iran’s nuclear aspirations achieved. In order to get to this final revelation, however, I would have to ask the right questions, and I noticed students rethinking their stance once I suggested that the weapons might keep the regime in power. All of a sudden they would want to know how and why that would happen and where I’d heard such an idea.

The typical security arguments for stopping a nuclear Iran do not resonate at all with the Iranian people. Iranians do not care as much about international issues as they do about their own immediate domestic concerns and their sense of Iranian nationalism. As a result, the suggestion that Iran might sell weapons to terrorists or use weapons on Israel does little to shift opinion away from dreams of a nuclear Iran.

I noticed that few young Iranians were aware of the domestic repercussions of pursuing weapons in addition to energy. They hadn’t thought about the billions of dollars that were being allotted for the nuclear program, money that was desperately needed for other parts of the economy. Many hadn’t given attention to the detrimental consequences this issue has had on Iran’s standing in the world. Most important, few of the youth I met seemed to have entertained the idea that the government’s desire for nuclear weapons was merely a scheme to stay in power. Whenever this last point was disputed, I would always tell my peers that a Kim Jong Il with nuclear weapons is much more likely to stay in power than a North Korean regime without nuclear weapons. Both because the analogy was simple and because Iranian youth are repulsed at the thought of their beloved Iran being compared to a rogue dictatorship like North Korea, I often made use of this comparison.

The economy is the most pressing issue in Iran and I always found it convincing to talk about how the money that was spent on the nuclear program could be used for economic programs. When it became clear that the nuclear program detracted attention—and funds—from rehabilitating the economy, young Iranians frequently shifted their priorities and cast aside their vision of a nuclear Iran.

Since my last trip to Iran, the danger of the nuclear program has been highlighted by the ominous statements of conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His rhetoric surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, coupled with calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, have led many to forecast the danger of a nuclear Iran. Even the United Nations imposed some degree of sanctions. While Iranians for the most part scoff at a president whom they find embarrassing at best, the international community is determining how to react to his antagonistic statements. Even though it is unpredictable what Iran might or might not do with nuclear weapons, one thing is certain: If Iran does acquire them, it is certainly not the president who will have the nuclear launch codes, as is commonly—and incorrectly—believed by many.

IRAN, 2005

I
n June 2005, Iranians went to the polls to vote in the Islamic Republic’s ninth presidential election. As in previous years, thousands of candidates were disqualified by the Guardian Council before the election. Seven men ran for president and not a single one gained enough votes to win outright; the top two vote-getters, former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, would compete in a runoff election.

In the days leading up to the runoff, I received dozens of e-mails from my Iranian friends, all of whom were extremely concerned about the prospect of a victory by the hard-liner Ahmadinejad. One friend wrote, “Most of Iranians are worried and have hesitation about what is going to happen. It was unpredictable for us that he was the second and we have another round of election!!! He has told if he will be the president he wants to establish a real Islam like Taliban and he wants to force all the women to wear chador.” This same friend went on to say, “My friends and I say he is similar to a monkey and if he is going to win, all Iranian should run away from Iran!!!”

Another friend of mine from Shiraz echoed this concern. She wrote, “All here are worry except the religious groups. We don’t like to vote but this time we really have to because if Ahmadinejad wins, this country will be disappeared forever (of course it is now). The election is on Friday and we will see if we still have a country.”

The day before the election my friend Sharzad wrote from Tehran, “Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad are going for a second round of election, but how did that happen? When I asked most of the people, they told me they voted for Moeen or Rafsanjani. I don’t know how Mr. Ahmadinejad, the most ugly man that I’ve seen, could come up????!!!!!” She explained that most people believed they should now vote for Rafsanjani because Ahmadinejad was too religious. Her forecast was that “if he be the president, all of us believe that none of the Iranian should stay in Iran.” After Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, one friend wrote:

 

You can’t believe we are all shocked. I just got a chance that on Thursday my exams got finished and I graduated from university. I am lucky because surely Ahmadinejad will make women wear chador in universities. It is the biggest fraud in the Iran history. Today we couldn’t even talk to each other because what should tell each other? A donkey has become our President. We are hopeless and I don’t think that we can change anything because they react with a gun. Most decide to go out of Iran; so do I. As soon as possible I want to run out of here and I prefer to go to US….

 

This e-mail expressed the sentiments of many Iranian youth I spoke to after the election. Especially upset were my Iranian Kurdish friends, who believed Ahmadinejad had played an active role in terrorism against the Kurds. They claim that in 1989 a young Ahmadinejad traveled to Vienna, where the Kurds and many others have suggested that he was was involved in the assassination of three Kurdish leaders who opposed the regime in Iran.

My young friends suggested that four factors led Ahmadinejad to win the presidential election in Iran. First, the conservatives mobilized the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Basij forces, Ansar-e Hezbollah forces, and all elements of the military apparatus to vote for Ahmadinejad. Many members of the IRGC, Basij, and Ansar-e Hezbollah were bused from town to town, some of them voting as many as twenty-five times. Getting Ahmadinejad in a runoff against Rafsanjani was of the utmost importance for hard-liners. Many Iranians believed the wealthy Rafsanjani was a crook; he was an easy target. In the runoff, then, conservatives cast Rafsanjani as an out-of-touch kleptocrat and painted Ahmadinejad as a populist candidate. Creating this dichotomy was not difficult: Ahmadinejad was relatively unknown and could take on whatever attributes his supporters desired, while Rafsanjani’s lust for wealth was legendary.

Second, while the hard-liners were getting out their base—by any means necessary—many young people in Iran remained on the sidelines. Most believe the 2004
Majles
(parliamentary) election had been hijacked by conservatives; these young people saw no reason why the presidential election would be any different, especially given how many reformist candidates had been disqualified before voting had even begun. Given the low turnout of reform-minded youth, the well-organized military and proregime contingency were able to stage a reasonable showing.

Third, the precedent of the 2004 Majles elections led the conservatives to believe that they could commit widespread election fraud with virtually no consequences or backlash. In 2005, they were not worried about widespread violence, riots, or action by the international community. It has also been suggested that the government scheduled the most important university exams at the time of the election, reasoning that students would be too preoccupied with their studies to go to the streets for demonstrations or riots.

Finally, the conservatives needed to prevent a victory by Rafsanjani. They didn’t want him to get credit either for cutting a deal on Iran’s nuclear program or, conversely, for pushing forward with it in the face of international opposition. Whatever the ultimate course he chose to take, Ayatollah Khamanei, the true leader of the Islamic Republic, needed a president he could control.

D
espite the international concern
and hand-wringing over Ahmadinejad, who has turned out to be just as conservative as the youth feared, the presidency in Iran is a relatively weak office. To ascertain which members of the government speak with the force of the regime, one must first understand the tremendous complexity of Iran’s governance structure. At the top of this chain of command is Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, who is the supreme spiritual guide and has the power to make all final decisions and revoke those of others. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati chairs the Guardian Council, the authority charged with interpreting the Iranian constitution. In this position, Jannati has the power to disqualify presidential and parliamentary candidates. The Guardian Council also has the authority to reject any law passed by the parliament, or
Majles,
as it is called in Persian. Another noteworthy branch of the government is the Expediency Council, tasked with the responsibility of resolving disputes between the Majles and the Guardian Council as well as serving as a consultative body to the supreme spiritual leader. Other notable branches include the Expediency Council, which will choose a new supreme leader upon Khamanei’s death; the Judiciary; Parliament; and the National Security and Intelligence apparatuses.

These branches of government, as well as the advisors and clerics that comprise them, are the movers and shakers of the Islamic Republic. The president is absent from this list, as he is kept in check by each of them. Even the few powers that the president is given are easily checked by the supreme spiritual leader. There are 177 articles of the Iranian constitution, none of which grants the Iranian president any final power or decision-making capability in Iranian policy. The ultimate check on the Iranian president comes in Article 113 of the constitution:

 

After the office of Leadership, the President is the highest official in the country. His is the responsibility for implementing the Constitution and acting as the head of the executive, except in matters directly concerned with the office of the Leadership.

 

So if Ahmadinejad doesn’t have the power in Iran, what is all the fuss about? There is the obvious point that he is part of the regime and therefore his statements reflect at least in part those of his colleagues who do actually exercise power. But Ahmadinejad doesn’t need decision-making power to influence. Even if his message doesn’t necessarily resonate with the majority of young Iranians, he speaks in such a way that it resonates with anti-American populations from Venezuela to Lebanon to Pakistan. His ability to fuel the anti-American fire with words across sects, ethnicities, and nationalities is part of what makes him so dangerous. But his words have also fueled an even larger fire. His rhetoric has taken the nuclear issue to an entirely different level and brought it to the forefront of international security concerns. While the world cautiously determines how to resolve the conflict peacefully, Iranian youth fear the worst. Ahmadinejad is being used by the regime as a scare tactic.

As the world responds to the government’s rhetoric, young Iranians attentively watch the news on their satellite televisions and they read the news on the Internet. They hear rumors about what will happen to their country and they wonder what these rumors will mean for them. Do more Security Council sanctions mean war? Will the United States come into Iran and overthrow the regime?

Young Iranians dream of a change that will bring them opportunity, but they do not want this change to come through violence. As children, they lived through eight years of war with Iraq and don’t want to experience that horror again. Still, they are obsessed with the idea of change. Young Iranians can tell you exactly what they want, but they make assumptions about the relative ease through which such change can be brought about, particularly when it comes to the use of force. In 2002, at the onset of the United States bombing campaign in Afghanistan, there were pockets of Iranian youth holding signs that read “Bomb Us First.” Similarly, I met Iranian students throughout the country who joked that the United States is paying the price in Iraq for jumping the queue; these young people wanted the Iranian government overthrown before the Iraqi government. This is their way of saying that they want a new regime in Iran, although their words are not meant to be taken literally.

These same youths were always careful to remind me that they would never tolerate a foreign boot on their ground or a foreign tank rolling through their streets. They have a tremendous amount of pride and it was amazing how many times students would draw on the historical examples of Mossadeq in 1953 or even Alexander the Great’s burning of Persepolis, as evidence for what happens when foreigners get involved in Iranian affairs.

The day after my trip to Natanz, I arranged to meet a group of students for lunch. I wanted to talk to them about possible responses to the nuclear crisis. The basic consensus among these students was that, if given the choice between violent change or allowing the regime to remain in place, they would rather try their luck with the regime. Most Iranians take a positive view of the United States, but any American involvement in a violent revolution, sure to bring back memories of the Iran-Iraq War, will quickly sour that association. Currently, the admiration young Iranians have for the United States is based more on America’s symbolic position as the antithesis of the Iranian regime than on any specific policy. The wrong specific policy, however, would supersede the general affinity Iranians feel for the United States. As one of the students, a native of Natanz, said to me, “I love George Bush, but if he invades my country I will hate him.”

I
n Esfahan,
I had met a family in the Imam Square, with two daughters who were just a few years younger than I. While they were cordial to me, they showed great support and admiration for Iran’s supreme spiritual guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, and the Islamic Republic; they were also very religious. As soon as I told them that I was American, one of the girls went into a tirade about America’s “criminal support for Israel” and the American “murder of Palestinian people.” Her comments didn’t offend me; if anything, I’d expected to hear such things far more often than I had. In Iran, state-designed history books and massive propaganda campaigns teach young people oversimplified bumper-sticker slogans; if their families reinforce these beliefs, they will likely hold them themselves. These girls were clearly influenced by a very conservative father, who was not shy about sharing with me his own viewpoint, which I would categorize as a more extremist version of what his daughters had expressed.

The conversation continued about the Arab-Israeli conflict for about fifteen minutes and I rarely got a word in. Indoctrination is easy to detect because those who have been most affected by it are the least willing to engage on relevant issues. When discussing contentious issues they want to preach, not discuss. Once she found out I was Jewish she inquired, “Why don’t you want to be a Muslim? I think all people should be Muslim.” And my rebuttals didn’t seem to make much sense to her; I would repeat over and over again, “I think we are all children of God and how we choose to embrace that relationship is the choice of an individual,” but made no headway. This was my standard response to questions about my religion; I had been trained to give it by a few concerned mentors back in the United States. As it turned out, it was usually unnecessary; in this case, it proved more perplexing than effective.

The conversation did not degenerate completely, as a shift from the topics of politics and religion brought us to similar curiosities. The same girl who had given me a state-sponsored history lesson in “America’s oppression of Muslim people” now smiled at me and asked, “Are the buildings in New York really like we see on TV? I think it is not possible and if it is, then it must be with the hand of Allah.” I proceeded to tell her about glass elevators, buildings that were over a hundred stories high, and what it feels like to walk down a city block in downtown New York. She loved hearing this and she grew more curious with each description. I had never thought about it this way before, but in the same way I had always traveled places to see ancient ruins and marvelous achievements of the world’s oldest civilization, young people in the Middle East want to come to America to see modernity at its best.