We are all Iranians

We are all Iranians

Iran's endogenous civil-rights movement needs international solidarity, not political meddling. Academics, universities and non-governmental organizations can help.

"Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb-bomb, Iran," sang John McCain to the tune of The Beach Boys' Barbara Ann at a US presidential campaign event in 2007. McCain, a Republican senator for Arizona, later insisted he was joking. Yet the spur-of-the-moment instinct behind the 'joke' sums up aptly the tendency of some politicians both in the West and in Iran to demonize each other's peoples as a faceless enemy.

But that kind of demonization has become passé over the past few weeks, as images of mass protests against Iran's allegedly fraudulent presidential election on 12 June have allowed many in the West to see faces of ordinary Iranians who are far from the crude stereotype. And many Iranians, although suspicious of the reactions of foreign governments, have been struck by the worldwide outpouring of empathy for their quest for fundamental civil liberties and self-determination.

In the past, unfortunately, Western governments and research organizations have bought into former US president George W. Bush's 'axis of evil' rhetoric by discriminating against Iranian researchers, denying or delaying visa applications, subjecting them to disproportionate vetting and showing lacklustre interest in collaborating. Moreover, the international scientific community has been laggard and passive in responding to the current situation. But Iranian scientists say that the solidarity of the international academic and scientific community is needed now more than ever.

The research community should do everything possible to promote continued contacts with colleagues in Iran.

They are quick to caution that the last thing the civil-rights movement needs is overt or covert support from Western governments. That would simply play into the Iranian regime's portrayal of the home-grown uprising as a foreign-inspired velvet revolution. The consensus among Iranian researchers is that the only steps that foreign governments should take are to refuse to recognize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, and to condemn human-rights violations such as denying Iranians their constitutional right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Much more useful, they say, is broader pressure from Western academics, their institutions and other non-governmental organizations, which can impartially yet forcefully endorse Iranians' human rights, and condemn attacks on Iran's universities and the detention of Iranian academics (see Nature doi:10.1038/news.2009.597; 2009).
Non-governmental assistance

Research bodies and universities — and perhaps a few Nobel laureates — need to speak out louder. They should encourage, rather than discourage, collaboration, and replace past discrimination by welcoming Iranian researchers and students.

With the continuing Iranian crackdown on academics, for example, an exodus of young researchers can be expected. They will need the kind of assistance being provided by organizations such as the Scholars at Risk Network based in New York, an international network of universities and colleges that helps to find work for researchers seeking political asylum anywhere in the world. The international research community should find ways to support and expand such efforts. Likewise, with Iran's decision on Monday to confirm the re-election — albeit under a cloud of illegitimacy — of Ahmadinejad, who is backed by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who controls nuclear policy, hopes for intergovernmental progress on curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions have been dealt a severe setback. The research community should thus do everything possible to promote continued contacts with colleagues in Iran, if only to promote détente between Iran and the West when relations are bellicose.

Meanwhile, the diaspora of Iranian academics is playing a key part in helping to get across the complexity of the situation in Iran. In informal public meetings, newspaper opinion pieces and discussions with governments and reporters, they say that, in contrast to what is often reported by Western media, the uprising has little to do with any desire to topple the regime. It is above all a broad civil-rights movement that extends far beyond the 'Twittering' classes. It is led by young people — 70% of Iranians are under 30 — who are not ideologically motivated, but instead are hungry for the greater freedoms that were one of the main, but unrealized, goals of the 1979 Iranian revolution. The majority of Iranian scientists are behind the movement.
The green wave

Iranian émigré scientists also point out that Mir-Hossein Mousavi — who ran against Ahmadinejad in this year's elections — is an unlikely leader of the protest movement. As prime minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989 he presided over a cultural revolution in which Iranian universities were violently purged of influences other than Islam, and many scientists fled the country to avoid death or imprisonment. But Mousavi, although a conservative, is now part of a broad coalition of political and ethnic forces — ethnic Iranians make up just half of the population of Iran — who want greater democracy and openness to the world. The protests surpass the issues of the contested election, and the green colour of Mousavi's presidential campaign has now become the symbol of this broader civil-rights movement.

Ahmadinejad is another matter entirely. Iranian expatriate academics explain that, after stalling immediately after the 1979 revolution, science gained momentum under reformist governments starting in the late 1990s. Ahmadinejad has maintained government support for science since his election as president in 2005. However, his regime has systematically savaged academic freedom in general, by purging universities of reformists and social scientists, and appointing government stooges to many senior university positions. His term in office has also been marked by the arrests of Iranian and foreign academics on trumped up charges of fomenting a revolution — having a damaging effect on international collaboration (see Nature 457, 511; 2009, and Nature 447, 890–891; 2007). In the short term, academic freedom and the isolation of Iran's scientists are likely to worsen under a regime desperate to cling onto power by crushing reformist elements, and targeting thousands of students, academics and other intellectuals for arrest. Seventy academics were arrested on 24 June after meeting Mousavi to give their analysis of current Iranian society, and other academics are reported to have been detained since, although reliable information is scarce. Academics are now in the front line, says one Iranian researcher who returned from Iran just days ago.

In the face of this bleak news, however, Iranian academics are surprisingly optimistic. They tend to buy into the argument that, despite the current crackdown, greater democracy is inevitable in Iran, which will provide an open society that is more conducive to science and critical thinking. They point out that Iran and Turkey are the two Muslim countries with the strongest democratic and secular traditions — and that academics have played a major part in helping the society resist religious obscurantism. Iran is not the only country in the region where human rights and democracy are violated; and the West has hypocritically been relatively silent on similar abuses by several of its allies in the Middle East. But in Iran at least, the country's long traditions of democracy, education and free thinking — suppressed for decades by the regime, and in particular the current hard-line leadership — are now out in the open.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7251/full/460011a.html

Grading democracy on a curve

Grading democracy on a curve

By Will Durst/Syndicated Columnist

Published: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 1:09 PM CDT

Want to take this time to congratulate the Iranian people for upgrading to a participatory government where they feel empowered enough to take to the streets to complain. For those of you who have been too busy digging under bushes for returnable bottle deposits, there is major rioting going on in the country formerly known as Persia, due to their sneaking suspicion of rampant voter fraud. Hundreds of thousands are risking arrest, death and worse demonstrating their shock at the corruption of their leaders. Of course, here in the U.S., we've learned to take that sort of thing in stride, and grade on a curve.

The election results in dispute find Members Only aficionado Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning the presidency with 63 percent of the vote. Well, there's your problem right there. Mahmoud, Baby. You want to rig an election, you don't claim 63 percent. You squeak by with 51 percent. Didn't you guys learn anything from Karl Rove? At least let the other guy appear to win his home district. After all, he's not Al Gore.

In that knee-jerk manner as peculiar to totalitarian regimes as bikini waxing is to cast members of "Gossip Girl," Iranian authorities blamed America for the unrest. That's right. We're responsible for their amateurish rigging of a phony election. They may have a point. In a way, it IS our fault. Re-repressing a populace after they've Twittered and Facebooked and Tranny Shacked is like trying to stuff the subjugation toothpaste back into the tube. Best way is to razor the nozzle off, cram the domination back in with a rubber spatula then staple the nozzle back onto the tube. Which is a bit unwieldy. But much easier when not exposed to the sun guns of the Western media.

Of course, our excitement over this burgeoning democracy may be a bit premature. It's not like the dissident challenger, former prime minister, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is a raging capitalist. We keep referring to him as a moderate, but in Iran, a moderate is any Shi'ite who's run out of bullets. Another inconvenient truth.

Even if the election is overturned, (about as likely as the eventual victory celebration being held at an Irish pub), you might want to hold off on sending that Constitutional Starter Kit. Don't think they're quite ready for a string of NRA chapters, is all I'm saying. Just to get on the ballot over there you need the okay of the Supreme Leader. And there's another problem. How free and open is your election, really, when you have to clear your candidacy with somebody called Supreme Leader? Sounds like the adversary of Moose and Squirrel.

The Supreme Leader in question is Ayatollah Khamenei, a totally different despot than the Ayatollah Khomeini, but they do share the same barber. In response to the massive officially banned protests, Khamenei recanted his initial rubber stamp of the election and called upon the 12 member Council of Guardians to investigate the vote. Uh-huh. Oh yeah. That's going to help. Kind of like putting the 2000 Florida election into the impartial hands of one of the candidate's brothers.

Of course, one big difference is, in Iran, when they talk about hanging chads, they're not referring to cardboard punchouts, but foreign journalists named Chad. Pretty sure they have hanging Jeremys and hanging Rogers as well. Not to mention a soon-to-be veritable rash of hanging Mir Hosseins.

Just a heads up. Taking the month of July off to write my little, one-man show, "The Lieutenant Governor From the State of Confusion," so you'll get nothing until August. Have a great summer. Stay cool and dry and vertical. Or hot and wet and horizontal. Whichever works.

Will Durst is a political comedian who has performed around the world. He is a familiar pundit on television and radio. E-mail Will at durst@caglecartoons.com.

http://www.dailydem.com/articles/2009/07/01/opinion/opinion2.txt

Clash of the Clerics

Clash of the Clerics

Iran's ayatollahs fight over the future of the Islamic republic.

By Henry Newman

Posted Wednesday, June 24, 2009, at 5:25 PM ET

The demonstrations that broke out across Iran after the disputed election of June 12 seem to have eased off for the moment. The deep grievances that triggered their outbreak remain and have been compounded by anger at the ferocity of the state's repression. At the root of the troubles is the very question of the future of the Islamic republic. For pious Muslims, there is no single vision of an Islamic state nor of how to achieve it. Equally, there is no agreement in Iran, even among the believers, as to how their republic should change. However, there does seem to be consensus that change is necessary, a fact highlighted by the enormous outpourings of public support for both reformist and conservative electoral candidates in the week before June 12 and by the exuberance of televised debates between presidential hopefuls.

The options for change in Iran should not be understood as a choice between democratic Western-style secularism on one hand and a military dictatorship in the name of Islam on the other. There are many options on the table, and most Iranians seek evolutionary rather than revolutionary change, to paraphrase journalist Roxana Saberi. The ultimate realization of this evolutionary change will, of course, depend on the ability of the proponents of differing visions to triumph over their opponents. It should be recognized that the ideological vision of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and its implementation through the corrupt election of June 12 does not represent a continuation of the status quo but is itself a new trajectory. Ahmadinejad's supporters have labeled his power grab as revolutionary, describing his election as Iran's third revolution. (They consider the first to be that of 1979 and the hostage crisis the second.)

Ahmadinejad's vision owes a large debt to his spiritual "guide," Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, who has been satirically caricatured as a crocodile in the Iranian press. The cleric is a hard-line conservative committed to a literal interpretation of the Quran and is a fierce opponent of Iran's reform movement, so much so that he allegedly issued a fatwa sanctioning cheating in the recent elections. Mesbah-Yazdi and his Haghani Circle of followers reject even the limited elements of popular sovereignty, such as presidential elections, of today's republic and demand more Islamic government. Despite the influence of the Haghani Circle on the president and within elements of the Revolutionary Guard, Mesbah-Yazdi lacks widespread accreditation from other mullahs. Senior clerics have not yet recognized him as a grand ayatollah, or marja.

An alternative vision comes from the Association of Combatant Clerics. This group, populated by many of the founding fathers of the Islamic republic and some "veterans" of the hostage crisis, now advocates a reformist vision. Mohammad Khatami, president from 1997 to 2005, is its most famous member. After Khatami withdrew from the election campaign in March, he endorsed Mir Hossein Mousavi. The association has expressed concern at the "massive engineering of votes" in the recent election and has openly called for pro-Mousavi rallies.

Other important voices have joined Ahmadinejad's critics: Grand Ayatollahs Yousef Sanei and Lotfollah Safi-Golpaygani have both cast doubt on the election results, as has Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri. Montazeri, once Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's chosen successor, has been the republic's bête noire since he openly questioned Iran's human rights record in 1989 and then challenged Ali Khamenei's credentials to replace Khomeini as supreme leader. All three grand ayatollahs and their supporters have questioned the election results, and in doing so they have challenged the authority of the supreme leader.

This is not the first time clerical opinion has been divided. In a series of lectures on Islamic government given in exile back in 1970, Khomeini outlined his vision of political Shiism. He extended a traditional concept of guardianship and from it built a political model that would place the most qualified theologian—conveniently, himself—as head of state. Many religious figures, including the hugely influential Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qassim Khoei in Iraq, opposed Khomeini's vision, and some theologians continue to question Iran's model of government, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, again from the relative safety of Iraq.

Clerical dissent has played a determinant role in many decisive events in Iran's modern history, not least in the 1953 coup that ousted Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani, previously a supporter of Mossadegh's, drummed up popular opposition to the prime minister and sought the return of the shah. Iranian popular memory largely blames pernicious Western imperialism for these events, paralleling the official revolutionary historical narrative that demonizes Britain, the United States, and Israel. Both readings deny agency to Iranians as actors able to control their own destiny.

At present, much hope is vested in the abilities of plutocrat ex-President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to break the current deadlock. Rafsanjani is chair of the assembly of experts, a body of 86 clerics constitutionally empowered to dismiss the supreme leader. Rumors are circulating that Rafsanjani is in Qom—home to many of Iran's clerical elite—and is negotiating on behalf of Mousavi. But Rafsanjani is a pragmatist and a self-server: His silence since the election may well reflect a desire to hedge his bets so as to protect his influence and power over whoever remains in control.

The divisions in clerical opinion reflect multiple alternate visions of Islam. Given the absence of a unified hierarchical clergy in Shiism, supporters are free to follow any senior theologian they choose. This ideological plurality is matched by a surprising amount of political openness in revolutionary Iran. Although direct questioning of the Khomeinist system or the supreme leader is generally not tolerated, political debate does exist. Many educated Iranians, including the religious, are also receptive to Western philosophical ideas: Reformist ex-President Khatami has a degree in Western philosophy; and translations of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies are widely available in Tehran's many bookstores.

Ahmadinejad has attempted to constrict debate—back in 2005, he spoke of a cultural revolution. His coup d'état represents an attempt to dominate Iran's political system, backed by the force of the Revolutionary Guard. His actions have already attracted widespread clerical opposition from senior religious figures. This opposition may not succeed in the short term, because these clerical opponents are not major political players, despite their senior religious authority, and also because Ahmadinejad seems willing to suppress opposition with violence. Nonetheless, the clerics' vocal opposition has radically undermined the already tenuous legitimacy of a state claiming to be Islamic.

Henry Newman is a Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics. A resident of Connecticut, he has lived and studied in Tehran.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2221256/


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