Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East (9 page)

Fereshteh Street was more than a forum for fashionable displays. It reminded me of a late-night traffic jam on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Within the traffic jam, of which we were now part, I found boys hanging out the windows of their cars, numerous girls not wearing their hejab, and even boys and girls dancing on the street and on the hoods of cars. It resembled a spontaneous block party.

Amid the horn honking and hip-hop music, young boys and girls engaged in paper exchanges across cars. Mariam and Nassim explained that the paper transfers I saw were the latest way for boys and girls to give their phone numbers. The girls insisted that I try my luck at this. Never shying away from a chance to live in the moment, I wrote my number on the back of a receipt, crumpled it up, and threw it at the car next to me. Much to my disappointment, the number hit the window and fell to the ground. It was a shame, too, because the girls in the car next to me were very attractive. Crumpled notes of paper are not the only method for number exchanges. In the same traffic jam, boys and girls used their mobile phones to send anonymous Bluetooth text messages to one another, electronically flirting and courting. I was amazed by how much young Iranians did on their mobile phones. Parties, meetings, gatherings, protests, are all organized anonymously by Bluetooth messaging. The cell phone is both a way out and a way in for Iranian youth as they seek to express themselves, while at the same time circumventing the state intelligence apparatus.

F
ereshteh Street
is not the only place in Tehran where younger Iranians, rambunctious in spirit, exercise their right to be youth. Jordan Street and Iran Zamin are two other youth hot spots. While each of these places has its own character—Jordan Street, for instance, is known for its drag racing—the general character and symbolic importance of these forums remains the same. This was the closest young Iranians could get to feeling normal, as if they were living in democratic societies where they didn’t have to worry about the morals police or the intelligence services. They feel free on these streets and despite the fact that the morals police are just a few blocks away waiting to confiscate cars and arrest young socialites, they forget about the society they are living in so long as the music blasts, the fashion is displayed, and the interactions are flirtatious. The wild evening streets of Tehran offer a democratic lifestyle that Iranian youth can only enjoy after dark.

T
he parties,
gatherings, and social indulgences that the Iranian youth showed me could themselves fill the pages of this book. They showed me a face of Iran that I hadn’t known existed and the shared social activity that we experienced was an instant force that unified us. If one focuses on the parties and the social resistance it is easy to see the Iranian people as a tremendous asset for change in the Islamic Republic. But even if this passive resistance is the dominant characteristic of Iranian society, it does not tell the full story. There are those who chant “Death to America” and there are those who believe in the ideology of the Islamic Republic. While youth supportive of the regime are few and far between, there is one issue that seems to unify almost all Iranian people: the validity of Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

IRAN, 2005

I
was freezing. Using my sweatshirt as a blanket, I curled up in the back of the old, unheated Russian Skoda. When I’d made the hasty decision to drive from southern Iran back to Tehran, I hadn’t anticipated a huge blizzard causing the trip to take at least three times as long as I’d thought it would. The blizzard led to massive congestion on the roads, and I struggled not to breathe in the thick black smoke from the line of cars and trucks in front of me.

After what had to have been at least thirteen hours in traffic, my driver and I emerged from the blizzard. The snow had disappeared and I now found myself in the barren desert of central Iran; it seemed we were now the only car on the road. Out the right side of the car, I could see an endless horizon of sand, and on the left, a snowcapped mountain range. I had thought that from Esfahan it would be a drive with no stops until we reached the holy Shi’ite city of Qom. Instead, we made an unexpected stop in Natanz.

I had nearly fallen asleep when my driver alerted me to an unusual attraction out the left window of the car. The car came to a brief stop as he pointed out his window: “Do you see this?” he asked me.

I saw what looked like a power plant or some kind of factory. There were clusters of large buildings, smoke coming out of cylindrical structures, and a serious fence encircling the compound. The fence was lined with machine gun towers, each separated from the next by only a few dozen yards. In what seemed to be yet another layer of defense, I could see small bunkers with antiaircraft weapons pointed upward.

The driver gave a small laugh.

“This is what causes all of these problems,” he told me. To my left was the Natanz nuclear facility, the notorious site that had been exposed as a uranium enrichment plant capable of producing nuclear weapons.

D
espite all of the current controversy
surrounding Iran’s nuclear aspirations, the actual nuclear program is relatively old. The Iranian nuclear program is often talked about as if it were a new phenomenon, but it began as an American-supported project in the late 1950s and early 1960s. At the time, Iran was America’s principal ally in the region, aside from Israel. Throughout the early part of the Cold War, the United States had enjoyed a strong alliance with the Pahlavi monarchy in Iran and the Nuri al-Said monarchy in Iraq. When the Iraqi monarchy fell to a revolution in 1958, Iran was the last reliable ally among the predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East.

When the United States worked with the shah to create the beginnings of the Iranian nuclear program, it was a task undertaken for a very different purpose from what is presumed to be the intention of today’s very different regime. In 1959, the shah established the Tehran Nuclear Research Center at the University of Tehran. Run by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the facility became the country’s first and achieved operational capacity by 1967. The facility is built around its five-megawatt nuclear research reactor provided by the United States in 1967 as part of bilateral talks between the two countries.

The following year, Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which Iran, along with other signatories, agreed to a wide range of issues ranging from disarmament and nonproliferation to the peaceful pursuit of nuclear energy. Under the auspices of the treaty, Iran has always been permitted to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, but the treaty forbids the pursuit of nuclear energy for military purposes.

With America as his ally, the shah initially had no reason to pursue a militarily oriented nuclear program. Additionally, during the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union also undertook policies based on détente, in which both parties at least appeared committed to nuclear arms reductions and some form of rapprochement. Despite détente, however, the shah still enjoyed the support of the United States for his nuclear aspirations. During the Nixon administration, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger envisioned an economically fruitful scheme that would use the allure of nuclear cooperation from private companies and the U.S. government to entice Iran to increase substantially its oil output. As a result, the shah began an ambitious plan to construct several nuclear facilities, using the current high oil prices and soliciting the help of willing American companies. In the late 1970s, President Carter called on the shah to relax his authoritarian grip on Iran and liberalize the economy, but this desire was viewed by many in the American government as separate from security interests in Iran.

Iran negotiated a number of contracts with private companies and American universities for supplies, personnel, and training for its nuclear program. It was during this period that Iran signed a cooperation treaty with newly nuclear India. Development moved quickly as the shah solicited French and Chinese support for the construction of nuclear facilities in Esfahan and Bushehr. In the years leading up to the Islamic Revolution, the United States and Iran had been involved in negotiations that would provide Iran with facilities for uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing, two capacities that are needed to produce nuclear weapons.

Despite a change in the regime, a prolonged hostage crisis, and a war with Iraq, Iran continued development of its nuclear program under the auspices of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not surprisingly, Iran under a new regime and led by Ayatollah Khomeini hardly had the sway with Western countries that the shah had enjoyed. In fact, Iran lost a number of its previous nuclear contracts with foreign governments and companies as a result of the Islamic Revolution.

During its eight-year war with Iraq, Iran experienced major setbacks to its nuclear program. Iraqi air strikes throughout the war caused substantial damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities and made further progress impossible until they were repaired. While this was a setback, the government in Iran learned an important lesson about the distribution of its nuclear capabilities and drew on the Iran-Iraq War as its reason for constructing more clandestine and dispersed facilities.

The Iranian nuclear program resumed in the mid-1990s with an agreement between Russia and Iran for development of the Bushehr facility and an agreement with China for a conversion plant. Iran’s specific nuclear activities were largely unknown throughout the latter part of the 1990s and it was not until a prominent Iranian dissident group blew the regime’s cover in August 2002 that the issue returned to the forefront of the news. Led by Alireza Jafarzadeh, the dissident group announced that Iran had two clandestine nuclear facilities, including a heavy water reactor in the town of Arak and a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.

In the time between the August 2002 announcement and my trip to Iran a few years later, the discussions and negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program had degenerated into a game of cat and mouse. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom joined forces in what became known as the EU-3 to try and find a peaceful solution to the crisis. But as negotiations proceeded, new facilities were revealed in Iran and allegations of cheating and lying came from the United States.

I entered Iran in the midst of a worsening nuclear crisis. Just three months before my arrival in Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency—the principal international nuclear watchdog—had ordered Iran to halt preparations for large-scale uranium enrichment. Only months before I left for Iran, then–U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell had publicly declared Iran a growing danger and called for the United Nations to demonstrate resolve by sanctioning the Islamic Republic. Tensions were high.

Now, as I sat in the back of the car, engine still running, staring at one of the centerpieces of the conflict, I was surprised by how visible it was. The Natanz nuclear facility is enormous, resting at the base of a small mountain range in the middle of the desert. Its dozens of buildings are a short walk by foot from the main road, and its perimeter is demarcated by what I estimated as upwards of one hundred machine-gun and antiaircraft towers. They’re not trying to hide it, that’s for sure.

B
ack in Tehran,
I couldn’t get the Natanz facility out of my mind. Why hadn’t I stayed longer to get a better look? Why hadn’t I asked my driver to take me to the city center of Natanz to talk to some of the young people there about the nuclear program? Why hadn’t I taken a picture to capture the memory? The answers to all these questions were stupidly obvious. I had no interest in starting off the New Year in an Iranian prison.

The concerns were real, but they seemed to be slowly overtaken by my disbelief that in just a matter of hours I could get from Tehran to Natanz. I didn’t even know what I would do there, but I was certain that the small glimpse I had gotten on my way back from Esfahan would not suffice and I wondered if one of the many taxi drivers who had spurted out antiregime rhetoric to me would be willing to drive me back?

It had been an intense couple of weeks already. I had been hassled by the Iranian intelligence services for conducting interviews, meeting with members of the opposition, and violating the protocol that they had tried to lay out for me. I was on their radar screen, but that didn’t stop me from pushing my luck. I had spent the early part of my trip to Iran running from intelligence officials, avoiding arrest, and attending wild underground parties. My attendance at these and in the festivities of the late-night street parties in Tehran was undoubtedly risky. After all, these young Iranians were breaking the law and I was right there with them. But the penalty for these escapades would be nothing compared to the potential consequences for the far greater risk that I was now entertaining.

I
needed to be discreet
because I was still stuck with my intelligence guide on most days, who certainly would have reported me should he become aware of any desire I had to return to the nuclear facility. This was different than talking to youth; if he had any idea where I was going and what I was doing, I would have been in serious trouble. One day, I contrived a story about how I was feeling ill and intended to spend the morning and afternoon strolling through the Park Laleh.

When the time came to depart, I felt kind of like I was back in high school, cutting class. All I could do was hope that the random taxi driver I’d selected hated the regime as much as the other couple dozen taxi drivers I had met. I was paranoid that everybody over the age of thirty worked with the intelligence services. I could just imagine what an intelligence report would look like that evening:

 

THE AMERICAN HAS STOPPED TO TAKE PICTURES OF THE NUCLEAR FACILITY AND IS ASKING THE PEOPLE IF THEY WANT NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

 

This was not a comforting feeling and when I got to Natanz, I was so paranoid that I barely spent any time there before turning around and heading back to Tehran.

T
he nuclear issue
had been on my mind since the day I arrived in Iran. The first newspapers I read in Iran had headlines like “U.S. Produces Fake Nuclear Documents on Iran.” Other headlines referred to “Iran’s right to advance” and the “necessity of nuclear power.” The regime was not shy about using government propaganda to promote their nuclear ambitions.

On the surface, the public perception of Iran’s nuclear pursuits baffled me. I consistently saw Iranians adopting an intellectual posture of loving anything their government hated, and hating anything their government loved. I concluded that it was in this way that the majority of Iranian youth derived their political persuasions, but the nuclear issue didn’t seem to fit my formula. The regime supported Iran’s nuclear aspirations, and so did almost everyone else in Iran—including young people.

I wasn’t shy about discussing various political topics, but I was always apprehensive about bringing up the nuclear issue. My hesitancy was bolstered by the first group of Iranian students that I had met at the University of Tehran, who assured me that at Iranian universities, there are students who are on the payroll of the intelligence services; I needed to be aware that these students might try to instigate the type of conversation that could really get me in trouble. Even people who I thought were helping me could very well be intelligence officials, and I was told to be mindful that I was being followed and only to talk about sensitive issues in a safe environment.

The nuclear issue first came up with a group of architecture students that I met in Shiraz. The group was spread out in an old historical mosque, doing what appeared to be a drawing exercise. They looked busy but not unapproachable. In what was the usual sequence of events, I approached two of the students and within seconds had a crowd of fifteen to twenty students surrounding me.

We began the conversation with small talk about my travels in Iran, but it did not take long for the conversation to turn to politics. The students and I spoke about the lack of freedom in Iran and concerns about the bad economy, and several of the students expressed worries that after they finished their architecture degrees, they would not be able to find jobs. Their concerns extended beyond job prospects as a number of others expressed their horror at a growing drug culture in Iran. I was reminded that the long border Iran shares with Afghanistan has led illicit entrepreneurs to capitalize on the turbulent environment that first prevailed under the Taliban and ceased to subside under President Hamid Karzai. Opium, heroin, and cocaine are tearing away at the social fabric of Iran by seeping into wealthy communities and trickling down into the most impoverished. Having seen their willingness to speak candidly with me, I asked the group of students what they thought of Iran’s nuclear aspirations.