Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East

by Jared Cohen

  Once I decided to go to the Middle East, I wanted my first trip to be big. I wanted to go to Iran.

  CHAPTER 1

  DESTINATION IRAN

  IRAN, 2004

  It still baffles me that I was ever let into Iran. I was a graduate student at Oxford University, and while I was an innocent student of international relations, I hardly had a background that was conducive to the type of visitors the government of Iran hoped to attract. The flexibility of the Oxford academic schedule, along with the stipend I had from my Rhodes scholarship, made me more interested in using Oxford as a base for travel than a place to study. Iran became my first destination in two years of sporadic travel throughout the Islamic world. Getting there, however, was not without its headaches.

  The traditional position of the government of Iran, a rigorous police state, is based largely on the regime’s desire to undermine an American government viewed as too friendly to the State of Israel, which Iran hopes to see, in the words of its current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “wiped off the face of the map.” So it didn’t seem likely that the Iranian government would grant a young American Jew a visa. Historically, relations between the United States and Iran have not always been so poor. For much of the Cold War, Iran was one of America’s principal allies.

  For the regime in Iran, those years—the period during which the monarchical shah ruled Iran—represent something entirely different. Having ascended to the throne in 1941 at the young age of twenty-two, the shah had neither the experience nor the discipline to manage a country of such vast wealth. Most Iranians believed that the shah was essentially handing Iran’s wealth to foreign companies, which benefited the royal family and the upper class but had detrimental effects on the majority of the population. Discontent brewed and manifested itself in leftist movements that ultimately resulted in the popular election of the socialist Muhammad Mossadeq as prime minister. Mossadeq’s socialist platform called for nationalization of Iranian oil and expulsion of foreign influence from Iran.

  Fearful of the potential loss of political influence in the Middle East, the American government looked for ways to reverse the socialist tide in Iran. In August 1953, the CIA, in a joint effort with British intelligence, staged a coup to oust Mossadeq. While the coup led to the return of the shah to power and a negotiated settlement on Iranian oil that was favorable to Britain and the United States, in the long-term the coup had planted the seeds for the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Twenty-six years of corruption and poor leadership by the shah led Iranians to scapegoat the United States for their troubles and label the coup as the precipitating factor for the calamitous socioeconomic and political situation in Iran. The allocation of blame on the United States accumulated almost exponentially during the 1960s and 1970s and ultimately manifested itself as a crucial aspect of the revolutionary platform, which led to the establishment of an Islamic republic in 1979 and the seizure of the American Embassy, with revolutionaries holding fifty-two Americans hostage for 444 days.

  The hostage crisis, which came after the United States admitted the exiled and ailing shah for medical treatment rather than return him to Iran for trial, led the American government to sever diplomatic ties with Iran. Since then, the relationship between the United States and the Iranian government has only grown worse and the Iranian government only less willing to grant visas to Americans.

  Even though almost everyone I knew—experts and otherwise—told me I was wasting my time applying for a visa, I was determined. I applied four months earlier than I needed to, but after sixteen trips to the Iranian Embassy in London, it seemed that the net result of my diligent efforts would be little more than the further depletion of my rapidly dwindling scholarship stipend and unhealthy consumption of venti caramel macchiatos from Starbucks that I relied on as fuel to repeatedly make the two-hour trip.

  As it turned out, however, the repeated obstinacy of the Iranian government—and my willingness to be repeatedly rejected—ultimately worked to my advantage. Over the course of my many visits to the embassy, I had the opportunity to befriend one overworked official. After a few months of wooing him in broken Farsi, I was able to make him sympathetic to my situation. In December 2004, twelve hours before my flight to Iran, I was granted a visa to travel to the country that President Bush had less than two years earlier labeled as one of the three members of the “axis of evil.”

  When the plane took off for Tehran, the men on the plane were drinking alcohol and only one or two women were covered. I asked the man next to me if alcohol was legal in Iran. He looked at me, gave a small chuckle, and drank his Heineken. I slept through the rest of the flight, and when I woke up on the runway in Tehran, I felt like I was on a completely different plane. The alcohol was totally gone and every woman on the plane had covered her head with a hejab, as is the law in Iran. What struck me most was the total change in mood. The vibrant and jubilant crowd who had taken off in London now seemed subdued and regimented.

  As I walked off the plane and through customs, I was nervous. This was not the first time I had had border anxiety. But, unlike when I’d crossed the Congolese or Burundian borders, I wasn’t afraid of bodily harm. What terrified me was the uncertainty. The media had shaped my impression of Iran as a deeply religious, anti-American, and extremist society, and now I was prepared for the worst, and I had heard that foreign nationals with valid visas were sometimes turned away at immigration for no apparent reason.

  Tonight, however, there would be no such surprises. The woman behind the immigration counter was dressed in full chador and hejab and, in a stoic but friendly voice, welcomed me to Iran and stamped my passport. My first five minutes at Tehran Airport would turn out to be the only truly simple experience I had in Iran.

  I breezed through customs and collected my bags and exited the airport to get a taxi, but was greeted by a short and stocky elderly man holding a sign with my name on it. It wasn’t likely that there were many other Cohens passing through Tehran Airport at three in the morning, so I knew that the man was there for me. I was naturally a little bit suspicious, but at three A.M. and after a long flight from London, I was happy for a ride to my hotel and my escort seemed pleasant enough. I hopped in his car and we headed on our way. I would soon learn the “escort” was actually my minder.

  As we drove from the airport to the hotel, I could see the expected images of notorious ayatollahs glaring from prominent billboards. The roundabouts that organized the intersections in Iran’s busy streets were ornate with bizarre sculptures that looked like a cross between metallic folk art and something you would buy in a party store. As we got closer to the city center, I could see the chador-wearing women wandering the streets as we passed the Iran Freedom Tower, a large tripod structure strangely placed in the middle of traffic and resembling something one would expect to see in Star Wars. The initial glimpse at all of these images triggered few, if any, emotions beyond the usual excitement of being in a new place. There was, however, one exception to this: images of Ayatollah Khomeini and billboards reading “Down with USA” sent chills down my spine and reminded me that I was in a truly terrifying place. I had seen this kind of graffiti in other countries, but this was my first time in a country where such phrases were actually the party line.

  In what would turn out to be a very poor decision on my part—one that would make my time in Iran extremely trying—I shared my plans for my time in Iran with my “escort.”

  I didn’t know it then, but all Americans in Iran are required to travel with a government-assigned escort, or, as they euphemistically call it, “tour guide.” These escorts, however, are tour guides in name only. The regime in Iran assumes that any American entering the country is a potential spy and therefore links him or her with these guides. These friendly tourism officers work overtime to make sure that American tourists have virtually no personal interactions with Iranian people.

  I wasn’t a tourist, but I wasn’t savvy enough to know to keep that information to myself. As we drove,
I explained to my escort that I hoped to conduct several interviews with top government officials while in the country. I had planned to do some of these interviews for my dissertation at Oxford on the history of U.S.-Iran relations, but more than anything, I wanted to give myself an excuse to research something in this closed society. This information made him visibly uncomfortable, but his uneasiness didn’t fully register with me. Instead, I just went on. I told him that I had a list of Iranian leaders whom I would try to interview. The list included a number of notorious opponents of the regime, many of whom were either under house arrest or in prison.

  My enthusiasm and excitement trumped my reason and I spilled virtually everything to my minder. My naïve candor about my intentions had set off alarm bells with my escort, who was responsible for keeping me and visitors like me from doing precisely what I had told him I was in Iran to do. Though I was eventually able to remove at least the overt shackles the intelligence apparatus would soon place on me—largely due to my comments that night—my trip was never comfortable. I was constantly followed by intelligence agents, some of whom identified themselves to me as such and others who operated covertly. My room and possessions were randomly searched and I was personally intimidated on countless occasions.

  On my first morning in Iran, I woke up, eager to get out, meet people, and wander around Tehran. Academic contacts in the United States had arranged for a translator who would also serve as a guide and interview scheduler. Her name was Marwa and I had come to know her only through e-mail correspondences, but she seemed optimistic about helping me.

  I walked over to the hotel reception and gave Marwa a call. I was anxious to meet her and excited to begin my research. No sooner had I hung up the hotel reception phone after telling Marwa to come to the hotel than I saw the same escort who had picked me up from the airport walk through the door.

  Still not knowing exactly what his role was, I told him I didn’t need anything and that my guide was on her way.

  “Who is your guide? I am here, I am responsible for you,” he told me.

  I told him that was not necessary.

  He grew stern and he insisted on waiting to talk to my translator. We waited for about twenty minutes before she walked in the front door of the hotel. She wore a red hejab, was slightly heavyset, and must have been in her late thirties. She had a big smile and spoke with a soft but high-pitched voice.

  Marwa and the escort had an intense conversation in Farsi. I don’t know what they talked about, but the outcome was Marwa telling me that she would make some phone calls and get back in touch with me. I didn’t understand what had happened.

  My nameless escort acted as if nothing dramatic had taken place. I once again explained to him that sightseeing in Iran was of secondary importance and that I had come to interview officials, but I soon found myself in the back of a taxi with this complete stranger, who had just had some kind of an ominous interaction with the person who was supposed to be guiding me. It was still far from clear to me what was going on, but I had figured out one thing: This guy had no interest in helping me.

  The drive wasn’t long and we soon arrived at the offices of a state-sponsored tour company. The room was relatively clean, with counters along the walls. There were three fully covered women who worked at the counter closest to the entrance, and after having spent almost all of my waking time in Iran with a cranky old man, I was delighted to be greeted by several very nice ladies. I enthusiastically practiced my Farsi with them, which seemed to at least spark some smiles. But I think this was mostly because my opening line was “Doktar hayay Irani kheyli khoshghelan, vali kheyli hasudan,” which in Farsi means “Iranian girls are very beautiful, but they get very jealous.” They asked me how I found Iran so far and I joked that all I had seen was the airport and my hotel. One of the women reassured me, “Don’t worry, you will see many nice things in Iran.”

  But each man who worked at the company was ruder than the next. They were bossy, demanding, and abrasive. This wasn’t like my travels in Africa, where a smile, attempt at the language, and friendliness went a long way. Every friendly gesture on my part was rebuffed and met with icy looks and sharp words. My frustration rapidly grew into irritation.

  They rushed me into the office of Mr. Sorush, the manager. Imposing at six feet four and sporting a large mustache, Mr. Sorush was not what I would describe as an approachable character. He wore his pants unusually high up and despite the belt being above his belly, he still looked overweight. I told him that I appreciated the offer, but that I didn’t need a tour company while I was in Iran.

  I explained that I was a student at Oxford and here to do research, but Mr. Sorush didn’t even wait for me to finish and abruptly stormed out of his own office and left me there explaining myself to nobody but the photo he had of Ayatollah Khomeini on the wall. I waited for a while and the door finally creaked back open and Mr. Sorush came back in with my unnamed escort. He scolded me as if I had done something grossly illegal and promised he could make my stay in Iran very uncomfortable.

  The escort had sold me out. I knew it. Or rather, I should have known it. He kept chiming in with tidbits of detail about what I had told him. Each time he did this, I turned with a look of disgust. I had been in the country for less than twenty-four hours and already I was being threatened with prison and a report to the Ministry of Intelligence. I had expected things to be difficult in Iran, but I’d thought trouble would at least wait for me to get over my jet lag. I quietly acquiesced and I think he felt as though his final point had struck a nerve. It was at that moment that he stood up, extended his hand, and said, “Well, Mr. Cohen, we are very happy to have you in Iran and I really hope you enjoy your stay. Please let me know if you need anything.” I politely shook his hand and thought up every curse word imaginable in my head at the same time.

  It was at this moment that I really began to feel that I was in a police state. The sense of adventure that I used to feel in Africa when I would put myself in dangerous situations was absent. This wasn’t fun; it was frustrating and emotionally draining. It was as if Mr. Sorush, with his two-faced offer, was rubbing the discomfort I felt. Cursing under my breath, saying it would all be OK, naïvely trying to assume nothing would happen—none of this worked. My lack of familiarity with a police-state society made my imagination run wild—not with pleasant and blissful thoughts, but instead with visions of ominous possible outcomes.

  That second night in Iran was difficult. I felt alone and uncertain about the direction of my trip. I had not yet seen the friendly face of Iran, my time up until this point clouded by the set of unsavory characters I had encountered. Not a single person had made me feel welcome. I spoke to my mother that evening, but because I guessed that my phone was tapped, I couldn’t explain that I had been threatened with arrest. So when she asked me how I found the country, I responded sunnily.

  “The people are so friendly, the sights are beautiful, and I am being well taken care of,” I lied.

  I woke up the next morning to the sound of the phone. It was Marwa, explaining to me that I just needed to sit tight for a few days. She didn’t want to interfere with Mr. Sorush’s company, but she would try to arrange interviews for me and meet with me in the afternoon. I wasn’t surprised to find an escort waiting for me in the lobby and as he approached me, he extended his hand and said, “Mr. Cohen, don’t worry, we will take care of all your needs while you are here. I am Mr. Shapour and I am at your service.”

  It was total bullshit, but I was trying to think positively and was willing to play along.

  Shapour said he had a plan to take me to see what he described as “one of Tehran’s most beautiful and exciting spots.” We flagged down a taxi together and within thirty minutes we had arrived at our first destination, a subway station. We took the Tehran subway a few stops and we were there. It was the shrine to Ayatollah Khomeini, the late supreme spiritual leader of Iran and founder of the Islamic Republic. The shrine looked like a palace, with a large
gold dome in the center and four towering gold minarets surrounding it. Like so many other monuments in Iran, this one was under construction. Everything always seemed to be under construction, yet I rarely saw anyone working. The weekend is Thursday and Friday in Iran, and because Wednesday is right before the weekend and Saturday is the beginning of the new week, the work ethic tends to be a bit lackadaisical on those days. When you combine this with the fact that in the summer it is dreadfully hot, in the winter it is terribly cold, and people take time to pray three times a day, it becomes obvious that very little time is left for work. The Khomeini shrine had separate entrances for men and women and a whole pile of shoes outside the entrance. Inside the shrine, there were not only visitors, but also at least half a dozen or so Iranians who had fallen asleep on the elaborate Persian carpets, while wrapping themselves in these intricately woven treasures as if they were blankets. I wasn’t sure if they were homeless, tired, or trying to feel close to the late ayatollah. Located to one side of the shrine, the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s body rested inside a coffin. It was protected by a room-size box, elaborately decorated with verses from the Quran and elaborately designed gold metal. Hordes of people flocked to his tomb to pay homage and embrace their dead spiritual leader, but recalling this man’s history with my country, I had no interest in joining them.

  Most of the hundreds of daily visitors are people who are either deeply religious, or still revere Ayatollah Khomeini and the principles of the Islamic Revolution. Others treat this as a minihadj, or spiritual journey. The women that I saw at the shrine were all covered, the children that I saw were all with very conservatively dressed parents, and the youth hanging around the shrine seemed to show great affection toward the site. This seemed like the norm in Iran, that this was a place where youth often came to pay their respects to their former leader.