Iran: Empire of the Mind (46 page)

The murders of writers and dissidents in November and December 1998, that became known afterwards as the serial murders, were widely seen as an attempt by hardliners within the MOIS to confront and discredit President Khatami. The victims included Dariush Foruhar, his wife Parvaneh and other veterans of the initial phase of the revolution. One version of events says that Khatami was brought a tape that recorded a telephone call in which the killers—with Parvaneh audible in the background—had asked their bosses what they should do about her, because her husband was already dead. When Khatami successfully faced down that confrontation and secured the arrest of Saeed Emami and some of the other perpetrators, following up with a purge of the MOIS, many judged that he had strengthened both his own position and the reform process. But the arrests were followed by the detention of thirteen Jews in Shiraz on espionage charges, and again it seemed that disgruntled MOIS officials had arrested innocent people in order to portray the organisation as bravely resisting some kind of Zionist plot. The arrests also had the effect of embarrassing further Khatami’s efforts at international rapprochement.
MOIS claimed at the time that a number of Muslims (nine, eight, three or two according to different statements) had been arrested in connection with the same case, but details were hazy and it seems this was a screen to disguise the anti-Semitic aspect of the action. Eventually all the Jews were released, but some had been convicted of spying for Israel in the interim (for which the penalty can be death), and some of the releases were only on a provisional basis, so the men might be liable to rearrest should the MOIS find that convenient.

The question of the detainees and their uncertain future attracted renewed criticism of Iran and Iran’s human rights record internationally. It also threw into harsh relief the situation of Jews in the Islamic Republic. There are still more Jews in Iran than anywhere else in the Middle East apart from Israel, but it has been estimated that at the time Israel was established in 1948, there were at least 100,000 Jews living in Iran. By 1979, there were 80,000 and today estimates vary between 25,000 and 35,000.
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This decline is mainly explained by the emigration of Iranian Jews, especially to Israel and the United States. Plainly there were both pull and push factors involved in that emigration, but the rate of emigration accelerated rapidly after 1979 (there was another surge after the Shiraz episode). After the revolution, in accordance with the Islamic injunction to protect the People of the Book, Khomeini had meetings with Jewish representatives and decreed that Jews should be protected. The constitution gave the Jewish community a fixed representation of one deputy in the Majles (the Armenian Christians and Zoroastrians are treated in a similar way, except that the Armenians have two deputies). Some of the stipulations in traditional shari‘a law about the inferior status of Jews and other non-Muslims at law have been changed to make their treatment more equal. But many unequal distinctions remain, including the rule that says that a convert to Islam inherits everything when a relative dies, and that other claimants who do not convert get nothing. Under the Islamic Republic the old anti-Semitism of some has simply dressed itself in anti-Zionist clothes (notwithstanding that many ordinary Iranians feel genuine indignation at Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians). Many Jews feel that the political anti-Zionism of the regime has made anti-Semitism
respectable, in the newspapers and in petty acts of persecution—for example, demands that Jews donate to anti-Zionist causes. The Jewish community generally survive, as at other times in the past, by making themselves unobtrusive and avoiding trouble. Given the ancient history of the Jews in Iran, and their rich and unique Iranian Jewish culture, this is a sad situation. In the US and Israel, many Iranian Jewish families still uphold Iranian traditions (celebration of Noruz for example) and still speak Persian.

The position of the Baha’is has been worse, and many Baha’is have been imprisoned and executed since 1979 (one of the accusations levelled at them, aside from the usual one of apostasy, has been that they have Zionist connections). Baha’is have been subject to intimidation and arrest, and to forced conversion. Having banned them from attending university as Baha’is, agents of the regime subsequently attacked those that had set up and participated in Baha’i study circles.

Although some in the west were disillusioned when President Khatami sided with the hardline leadership in the summer of 1999 and let them break up student protests, it seemed that many Iranians agreed with him that evolutionary change was better than runaway violence. There was good reason to think he was right: after the experience of one revolution, it was understandable that Khatami and many other Iranians were unwilling to risk their hopes for change on the outcome of street violence.
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Through all this period, the vigour of the free press in Iran, which expanded on a scale that appeared unstoppable, and became more and more bold in its criticisms of the regime and its demands for change, encouraged the belief that reform would prevail.

With the election of the strongly reformist sixth Majles in May 2000 (reform-oriented candidates secured 190 seats out of 290), many observers thought the reformists were at last in the driving seat. There was speculation that Iran might now move in the direction of a moderated form of religious supremacy, with the clerical element in the system guiding occasionally from the background, rather than taking a direct, foreground role as it had since 1979. But in retrospect, it seems that the attacks on former President Rafsanjani in that election campaign were a decisive error by
the reformist press, in which they overreached themselves and drove an embittered Rafsanjani (who had previously tried rather ineffectually to arbitrate between the two camps) over to the hardline side. From the summer of 2000, hardline resistance to the reformist programme stiffened and became more competent, perhaps reflecting Rafsanjani’s advice. A sustained and targeted series of arrests and closures brought the flowering of the free press to an end.
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Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei intervened personally to prevent the new Majles from overturning the press law that facilitated this crackdown (passed by the previous Majles in the last months of its term), and the Majles generally found themselves blocked by hardline elements in the Iranian system from making any significant progress with the reform programme. If ever Khatami missed the chance to confront the hardline leadership (a confrontation that was probably unavoidable if the reform project was to succeed), to follow through his popular mandate for reform, and to secure the future of his policy of international rapprochement along with it, this was surely the time. But the moment passed, the free press faded, and the hardline party regained confidence. The testing of the Shahab III medium-range missile in July 2000 also marked a new phase, of sharpened international concern over Iranian weapons programmes and nuclear ambitions.

9

FROM KHATAMI TO AHMADINEJAD, AND THE
IRANIAN PREDICAMENT

‘The empires of the future are the empires of the mind’

Winston Churchill (Speech at Harvard University, 6 September 1943)

Since 1979 Iran has followed a lonely path of resistance to the global influence of Western values and particularly, that of the United States. One could see this as a reflection, to some extent, of the Iranians’ continuing sense of their uniqueness and cultural significance. The Iranian revolution in 1979 was the harbinger of Islamic revival more widely, showing that previous assumptions about the inevitability of development on a Western model in the Middle East and elsewhere had been misguided. As often before, others followed (for better or worse) where Iran had led. Some hoped in the late ’90s that the Khatami reform movement might in turn show the way out of Islamic extremism at the other end, but although there is good evidence that Iranians are today more sceptical of religious leadership and more inclined to secularism than most other nationalities in the Middle East,
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that hope appears, at least for the moment, to have been premature.

The failure of the West fully to take advantage of the opportunity offered by a reformist President in Iran already looks like a bad mistake. One such opportunity came after the attacks in the US on 9/11, when members of the Iranian leadership (not just Khatami, but also Khamenei) condemned
the terrorist action in forthright terms, and ordinary Iranians showed their sympathies with candlelit vigils in the streets of Tehran—again showing a marked difference of attitude between Iranians and other Middle Eastern peoples. Another opportunity came after Iran gave significant help to the coalition forces against the Taliban later in 2001, helping in particular to persuade the Northern Alliance to accept democratic arrangements for post-Taliban Afghanistan.
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In 2002 they were rewarded with the ‘Axis of Evil’ speech that lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea. Finally, the Bush administration ignored an Iranian offer in the spring of 2003 (shortly after the fall of Baghdad), via the Swiss, for bilateral talks toward a Grand Bargain that appeared to promise a possible resolution of the nuclear issue and de facto Iranian recognition of Israel.

The purpose of all this is not to reinforce the cringing sense of guilt that bedevils many Western observers looking at the Middle East. It is not All Our Fault, and no doubt if the Iranians had been in the position of strength that the Britain was in between 1815 and 1950, or that the US has been in since then, they would have behaved as badly, and quite possibly worse. The Iranians also missed opportunities for rapprochement in the Khatami years. But too often we have got things wrong, and that has had a cost. It is important to see things from an Iranian perspective, to see how we got things wrong, and to see what needs to be done in order to get them right. The most important thing is, if we make commitments and assert certain principles, to be more careful that we mean what we say and that we uphold those principles in our own behaviour.

The Iranian reaction after 9/11 shows in high relief the apparent paradox in Iranian attitudes to the West in general, and to the US in particular. Iranians, as we have seen, have real historical grounds for resentment that are unique to Iran and go beyond the usual postures of nationalism and anti-Americanism. But alongside this there is also a liking and a respect for Europeans and Americans among many ordinary people, that goes well beyond what one finds elsewhere in the Middle East (and to some extent is again a function of the Iranians’ sense of their special status among other Middle Eastern nations). Plainly, different Iranians combine these attitudes in different ways, but the best way to explain this paradox
is perhaps to say that many Iranians (irrespective of their attitude to their own government, which they may blame for the situation to a greater or lesser extent) feel snubbed, abused, misunderstood and let down by the Westerners they think should have been their friends. This emerges in different ways, including in the rhetoric of politics, as is illustrated by a passage from a televised speech by Supreme Leader Khamenei on 30 June 2007:

Why, you may ask, should we adopt an offensive stance? Are we at war with the world? No, this is not the meaning. We believe that the world owes us something. Over the issue of the colonial policies of the colonial world, we are owed something. As far as our discussions with the rest of the world about the status of women are concerned, the world is indebted to us. Over the issue of provoking internal conflicts in Iran and arming with various types of weapons, the world is answerable to us. Over the issue of proliferation of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons, the world owes us something.
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Since June 2005 the troubled course of the relationship between Iran and the West has entered a new and more confrontational phase under President Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad’s election campaign was successful in June 2005 because (with the organisational backing of the Pasdaran) he articulated the discontent of the poor and the urban unemployed, manipulating yet again Shi‘a indignation at the arrogance of power. His opponent in the final stage of the election was former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who for many Iranians represented the worst of the corrupt cronyism of the regime. But many voted for Ahmadinejad simply because for once they had a chance to vote for someone who was not a mullah. Most foreign observers, often unduly influenced by their contacts in prosperous, reform-inclined north Tehran, were taken completely by surprise by the result. Prior to his election Ahmadinejad, who had visited poorer parts of the country that had not seen a politician for years, emphasised economic and social issues; his religious enthusiasm and his urge to cut a figure in international relations has blossomed only since then. The election was far from fair or free—many reformists openly boycotted it, in protest at the exclusion of their candidates by the Guardian Council. In the second round Ahmadinejad received at most 60 per cent of the vote
in a 60 per cent turnout: less than 40 per cent of the total number of electors. In the first round of the elections, with a wider field of candidates, he was the first choice of only 6 per cent of the voters.

In the summer of 2005 Niall Ferguson warned that Ahmadinejad could be the Stalin of the Iranian revolution. Ahmadinejad may have the instincts and aspirations of a Stalin, but the political position in Iran is not so open to his ambitions, and he seems unlikely to prove a figure of the same fierce, sinister intelligence. For months (and in the end, successfully) the Majles blocked his appointment of favourites and hangers-on to his cabinet. It seemed unlikely then, and seems even more so now, that Ahmadinejad could deliver on his promises to the poor. His economic management has been heavily criticised within Iran and his introduction of petrol rationing in the summer of 2007 seems likely to undercut his populism further. After the introduction of petrol rationing, a poll appeared to show that 62.5 per cent of the people who voted for Ahmadinejad in 2005 would not do so again.
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Inflation has become a serious problem as the extra revenue from higher oil prices has pumped into an economy artificially constrained by UN sanctions. But sanctions could give Ahmadinejad and the regime an alibi for their failure yet again to deliver on the economy and unemployment.