The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran (33 page)

I would sometimes daydream at these political conferences, lulled
into a virtual unconsciousness by the stream of facts and statistics that so many of the speakers liked to spew, trying to impress one another and validate their own importance, as Iran’s elite are wont to do. I would also stare—again, not considered impolite in Persian society—at the attendees around the big conference table and in the surrounding seats. There sat Ali Jannati, the son of the octogenarian Ayatollah Jannati, that fiercely antireform mullah, one of Khamenei’s closest and most loyal advisers, who seemingly hasn’t aged a day since well before the revolution—an Iranian Dorian Gray of sorts, and the butt of Iranian jokes. His son looked fit but not young, and I wondered if he was there to report back to his father or the Supreme Leader, and also if, thirty years later, he would look the same as he did on this day. The father was a staunch opponent of Khatami and of any liberal views even before the Green Movement, while the son served in the administration as an ambassador, which only made me realize how different Iran was prior to Ahmadinejad, when the concept of bipartisanship actually existed. Under Khatami, probably for the first time in recent Iranian history, the regime could reasonably argue, despite the human rights abuses that existed, that there was some modicum of democracy in the republic.

In the audience were reporters, too, furiously scribbling notes while they also taped the sessions with their phones or with mp3 recorders. Every newspaper would send one, usually an earnest cub reporter, a far cry from the idle and rich young men and women we saw in the uptown cafés. A fair share of university students were present too; they and the reporters both sometimes approached me at the end of the session to see if they could interview me. I was in their eyes an interesting person: someone who lived abroad and had been critical of the regime, yet still ventured to Iran and even to Iranian Diplomacy conferences. I always had to decline, saying I was not permitted to engage in any journalism, including giving interviews where I might express my views.

One woman reporter, her hijab properly covering every strand
of hair but her stylish manteau a sign of less-than-strict piousness, asked me repeatedly, at every conference, when I might be willing to talk to her. When I finally said, “After I return to New York,” she said, “Then can you leave soon, please?” She laughed and apologized for her inhospitable statement. But I didn’t flatter myself that I was so much in demand: few Iranian American writers, other than the handful strongly supportive of the regime, are willing to talk to the Iranian media or are even accessible to it. Scarcity breeds demand, particularly in the fearful Iran of today.

Standing-room-only gatherings at Iranian Diplomacy and other forums point to Iranians’ popular preoccupation with foreign policy, since, as is not the case in the United States and to some extent in Europe, it has a direct impact on ordinary people’s lives, even in the absence of conflict or war. Their perceptions are colored not just by the conspiracy theories Iranians are so fond of, but also, in a few cases, by willful ignorance. To my astonishment, nothing of importance—the killing of Osama bin Laden, the nuclear crisis, the Arab Spring, and especially what was going on in Syria, not even the Murdoch hacking scandal—was immune from a grand conspiracy theory or, on occasion, just ignorant appraisal. At a roundtable discussion at
KhabarOnline
, the Larijanis’ media outlet, I had difficulty persuading the attendees (university graduates and professors all, and otherwise very bright) that Rupert Murdoch was not Jewish, and I struggled to understand why it would even be relevant to the hacking scandal going on in Britain. Nor could I convince some that the United States and Israel might not have planned the Syrian uprising, or that there might not be a whole lot more to bin Laden’s death than met the eye. And yes, I did believe that Osama was indeed dead as a doornail and not hidden in some prison somewhere by team Obama, as some Iranians suspected without being able to give one really good reason why.

But conspiracy, and the concept that there is always something hidden in any news we hear, is not just an obsession of ordinary Iranians;
it’s part of Iran’s political culture. Understandably so, since for Iranians conspiracy theories have often proven, years later, to be true, as most famously with the 1953 coup, which Iranians always believed was a Western conspiracy but which the United States did not fully admit to until well after the fall of the shah.

That most Iranians, and even those in the leadership (of any political persuasion), remain forever suspicious of foreigners and the Western media, and on guard for plots against Iran, has contributed to a paralysis of sorts when it comes to repairing relations not just with America but with perceived rivals and enemies everywhere. The stream of Wikileaks releases while we were in Tehran that revealed the antipathy of Sunni Arab leaders toward Shia Persia were fodder for the political elite, and for many ordinary citizens, too; the revelations were simply confirmation for those who had never believed that Iran could trust even its fellow Muslim states, rather than a sign that perhaps their own mistrust and sense of superiority might be fueling the antipathy.

Later in the year, though, I found myself agreeing with most Iranians, regardless of where they stood politically, that the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States at a Washington, D.C., restaurant was not based on reality. Everyone was incredulous. It was not that Iranians didn’t believe their regime was capable of assassination or that it would hesitate to kill a perceived enemy; rather, they didn’t believe the regime was that stupid. Most thought it yet another case of there being more to the story than met the eye. Persian nationalism, which is loath to admit incompetence in the nation’s military and security complexes, was at the forefront of the reaction; and nationalism, even extreme nationalism bordering on jingoism, is very much a part of the culture, political and otherwise.

Many journalists in the United States agreed that the plot appeared to be outlandish, and their doubts about the Obama administration’s account of it made the rounds in the Iranian media
as well as in private conversations. Western governments assigned blame to the Qods Force, the foreign expeditionary division of the Revolutionary Guards headed by General Qassem Soleimani, a shadowy figure dubbed by some (including a senior U.S. official in Iraq) the real-life Keyser Söze, the villain in the 1995 film
The Usual Suspects;
but Iranians, even those who despised the Guards for their role in the 2009 crackdown, defended Soleimani, who was considered one of the brightest and most accomplished men in the leadership. “I’d give my blood for him,” Sadegh Kharrazi told me, after speaking to him on the phone about the plot. “He is as incredulous as we are about this, and tells me the Guards don’t even have anyone by the name the Americans claim.” And Mohammad Khatami, who Soleimani served under, told me he was the most knowledgeable and professional official he had come across during his presidency, while his brother Ali told me that Khatami’s administration relied more on Soleimani for expertise on the region than on the Foreign Ministry, or the ambassadors based in Afghanistan or Iraq, where Iran’s national interests were critical, regardless of domestic politics. That he would be behind the farcical plot described by Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney general, beggared belief.

It was perhaps a little odd, though, and not a question of “going native,” that Karri, an American from the Midwest, would decry the political situation in Iran but defend the country against American and Western accusations. She was initially distressed at the news of the plot, telling me that it concerned her that things between the United States and Iran were getting worse by the day, and that she was feeling less and less confident that the animosity between the two countries wouldn’t lead to armed conflict and that we, or more precisely I, mightn’t get caught in the middle. She agreed with Iranians, and many Americans back home, who thought the accusation simply an attempt to paint Iran as evil in preparation for a potential war. But this, I realized, was one of the strengths of the regime: as long as it defended Iranian interests, as long as it defined its relationship with
the outside world as nationalistic, as one where it was defending the people’s interests and not just its own, it would enjoy some measure of support even among those who hated it and even as so many internal factions fought over the urgent questions of what it meant to be an Islamic Republic, and whether Islam should play much of a role in the governing of the country.

Throughout our stay, I vacillated between deep pessimism over the future of Iran, despairing that peaceful change could ever come to my country, and hope. Hope that perhaps I was too old, or too removed from Iran, even as I lived there, to recognize Iranians’ determination to bring about a change that would finally realize the hundred-year-old dream of a truly representative government, even if that government or regime would not be to my specific liking. I’d be pessimistic when I saw youth who seemed more preoccupied with leaving Iran than with staying and working to effect change. I’d be optimistic when I spoke to reformers, or to young friends, like the one who had been warned to be a “good boy,” who believed they would outlast any dark period in Iranian politics. For personal reasons, I was saddened that Khatami might not be a significant agent of change, and that he might not outlast the ayatollahs who had turned on him; and in a strange way I admired his nemesis, President Ahmadinejad, not for his views or his policies, but for his courage and his determination to be a part of whatever changes would come to Iran.

Ahmadinejad was indeed determined to be a participant in the cultural evolution, political and otherwise. To the delight of the media and conversationalists all over Iran, he continued to battle other conservatives who were less socially liberal than he (whatever his motives), like a boxer almost down for the count who nevertheless always seems to have the energy to get back up, bloodied perhaps but still sure on his feet, for one more round. Neither Ahmadinejad nor even the Persian annus horribilis were going to go away quietly for the leadership of the republic, not if he had anything to do with it. At one meeting between the Supreme Leader and the “three powers”—
the executive, the judiciary, and the legislative—Ahmadinejad showed up with a file under his arm, according to someone who was present. He was under continual fierce attack, his aides were threatened with arrest (some were subsequently imprisoned), and his political capital had sunk to an all-time low; he had already pronounced, obliquely, that he had his own “red lines” that the regime must not cross, including going after his cabinet members and closest allies.

And now he told the Larijani brothers, who represented the other branches of government, that should he or his top aides find themselves out of a job or in prison, then the files he was holding, containing information about foreign bank accounts, details of children living in the West, real estate holdings inside and outside Iran, and the like, would be made public. The first file, he said, looking straight at Ali Larijani, the speaker of Parliament, who had the power to impeach him, is
yours
. Yes, to understand political Iran, you have to understand the culture: the traditional culture—unquestioning of authority, distrustful of strangers and foreigners, unwavering in loyalty to the state’s interests—that determines the elite’s behavior, and the culture of the Tehran street, which Ahmadinejad so perfectly represented. And street culture, more of a constant in Iran than any other, is always going to be a part of Persian culture, no matter how it evolves.

Shaban Jaafari, known as Shaban Beemokh or Shaban “the Brainless,” was a street tough, a
laat
, who had been instrumental in gathering other
laats
to demonstrate in the streets, with clubs and other weapons, for the return of the shah after his flight to Italy in 1953, when Mossadeq was at the height of his democratically elected power. As much as the generals and politicians who conspired with the CIA and MI6—which provided the cash needed to pay the
laats
—he was responsible for the success of the coup that brought the shah back to his Peacock Throne. Later, after the Islamic Revolution forced Jaafari into exile to California, he is said to have remarked, “We
laats
made a coup and handed power over to the intellectuals, while you intellectuals
made a revolution and handed power to the
laats
.” He wasn’t entirely wrong, if one considers the political culture surrounding the presidency of the street tough named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the
laats
of 1979 are today really the elite
apart
from Ahmadinejad, the ruling class who seem to have bought into the unquestioning political culture that Khatami insists must change. It is ironic, then, if not yet another paradox, that Ahmadinejad, the figure who sparked a searing conflict within the regime, may one day be also thought of as the person who sparked the change, when it properly comes, in the political culture of the Islamic Republic.

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