by Hooman Majd
AYATOLLAH Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, widely recognized as the second most powerful man in Iran, had presided, only a few days before, over Friday prayers at Tehran University, the venue for the capital’s weekly Sabbath ceremonies (which needn’t be held in an actual mosque, for anywhere a sermon is delivered and communal prayers are said is by definition a mosque). I had been present, in the press box only a few feet away from his stage, and had watched him repeat the mantra on his posters, tightly holding on to his Kalashnikov rifle. He and Ali Larijani, who, unarmed, had delivered a speech before Rafsanjani’s sermon, encouraged the crowd and the millions listening on radio or watching on television to participate in the election, both of them Ahmadinejad antagonists who knew the larger the turnout, the more likely the president’s defeat. But Rafsanjani and Larijani also recognized that democracy, even as narrowly defined as in conservative circles, required the people to believe that their vote meant something. Conservatives, who dominate the Friday crowds, and listeners elsewhere needed no persuasion; they are far less skeptical of the democratic process as defined in the Islamic Republic. But a large population of young, and apathetic citizens most certainly did. For many of them this is because the Guardian Council, Shora-ye Negahban’e Ghanoon’e Assasi, the governmental body made up of six clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader and six jurists appointed by Parliament from a list approved by the head of the judiciary (another Supreme Leader appointee), approves candidates running for high office, thereby eliminating any possibility of someone radically different or less than strictly Islamic, or Islamist, from ever assuming office, a fact that every opponent of the Islamic system raises when it comes to discussion of Islamic democracy. It is also the unsaid part of the equation when someone, like my apathetic minibus driver, declares that voting is irrelevant and that it makes no difference who the candidates are. But there were still, in 2009, millions of Iranians who came to believe that despite the Guardian Council’s reluctance to countenance divergent political views, certain candidates within the system could overcome the obstacle and, if not present radical change, present enough of a change to alter their lives and the future of the country.
Just like in America, where most candidates for political office, despite their personal views, must present themselves as mainstream to survive the nominating process, so it is in Iran. Although there is no prohibition on radicalism in American politics, reality trumps theory, and no American candidate for high office could, for example, run as an atheist or a communist, let alone socialist or a Muslim—that is, not if he or she wanted to be taken seriously by the mainstream media, which, as Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader effectively complain every four years, is the genteel and subtler American version of Iran’s Guardian Council. Sure, Iranians may have been disappointed by Khatami’s failure to deliver a far more democratic society in his eight years as president, or by the conservatives’ blocking of much of his agenda, but in May 2009 many Iranians were convinced that the differences between a Khatami-like presidency, which both Mousavi and Karroubi were promising, and even to some extent the conservative Rezai, and an Ahmadinejad presidency, which they had experienced for four years, were real and significant.
AS ELECTION DAY approached, excitement continued to build. The previous presidential election, in 2005, had a turnout of approximately 60 percent, which was low by Iran’s standards (and high by American) and was considered a contributing cause to Rafsanjani’s defeat against the relatively unknown Ahmadinejad. Perhaps the low turnout was also a reason why Rafsanjani felt compelled not to openly endorse a candidate in the 2009 race, but to spend his energies and money to encourage greater voter participation. In 2005 Rafsanjani had failed to energize the youth and the liberals who should have been turned off by Ahmadinejad’s conservative values and tired revolutionary rhetoric, but this time it seemed different. For many Iranians, less was at stake in the last election, with the relatively prosperous, peaceful, and stable Khatami years just ending—socially liberal years marked by increased cooperation and trade with the West. In 2005 many voters deemed it unlikely that what seemed to be the beginnings of a post-revolutionary era would be affected too much by a change in administration, even with a conservative candidate promising to bring back the revolution of 1979. Street parties, which appeared forced back then (pretty young girls on roller blades, holding up posters of the septuagenarian Rafsanjani), this time, four years later, erupted spontaneously every night, especially in the northern and wealthier parts of Tehran, and a tailgate atmosphere, minus the drunkenness, invaded major intersections and some of the boulevards, not just of Tehran, but even in more conservative cities like Esfahan and Yazd. Mousavi was also nearing seventy, but he looked younger, his image in silhouette on campaign posters even stronger (and evocative of the iconic Obama poster), and of course there was his wife, Zahra, who many young women could readily identify with. But even Ahmadinejad supporters, or those paid to adorn their cars with Ahmadinejad posters, joined in the carnival atmosphere; heavily outnumbered, they nonetheless smiled and waved—their gelled hair, pushed-back scarves, and hip clothes incongruously clashing with the photos of their candidate—as they drove slowly past a sea of green, at least on the occasions I was caught in street-party traffic jams.
On one hot evening, the driver of my car shook his head as we passed a particularly noisy party. “This is bad,” he said, looking out the open window at boys and girls, adorned in green and dancing, a few on the hoods of their double-parked cars.
“Why?” I asked, wondering what could be bad about a vibrant civil society being excited about the prospects for effecting democratic change.
“They’re not going to like this,” he said.
Masoud again, I thought to myself; Iranian paranoia of a security apparatus that watches everything, and everyone. Yes, the government was aware of the raucous atmosphere on the streets of Tehran and other major cities, but government agents couldn’t be watching and listening like the SAVAK of the old days, ready to pounce when they felt they might lose control. Iranians didn’t even have the vote back in the Shah’s days, or at least not any kind of vote that really mattered. A whole generation had grown up with the vote in the Islamic Republic, and electioneering had never been an issue in the past, so what could be “bad” about this campaign? And who were “they”? Ahmadinejad could be voted out, so it couldn’t be his campaign that mattered. The security services, or the Revolutionary Guards? They had not interfered in past elections, at least not on a scale that would make a huge difference, although, yes, they had tried—dirty tactics, even some ballot tampering. But Khatami had won, twice, against the Supreme Leader’s favorite candidate, and everyone had accepted the outcomes. The Supreme Leader himself had been, back then, if not completely gracious in accepting Khatami’s wins, then not quite churlish either. What were “they” going to do? Were they photographing the kids partying? Were they going to arrest some of them, now or maybe later? Of course not, I thought. Nemeesheh. My driver was paranoid, I concluded, one of those older Iranians who could never accept things as they were and had to ascribe a hidden hand to every political situation. It wasn’t just the Twelfth Imam of Shia Islam who was hidden from the faithful for centuries since his occultation; it was also always some powerful force, the British, the Americans, or members of their own leadership, which prevented Iranians from controlling their own destiny. “They.” And nothing could be done about it: nemeesheh.
A HIDDEN HAND. Posht-e-pardeh, or behind the curtain. Iranians for at least two centuries had very little faith in their ability to decide anything for themselves, a notion that grew out of inordinate foreign influence in Persia when it was at its weakest, and subsequent dictatorial governments that countenanced no political debate whatsoever. There are Iranians, supporters of or sympathizers with the Pahlavi monarchy, who believe that it was President Jimmy Carter’s decisions first to insist that the Shah pay more attention to human rights and second to abandon the Shah in the face of a people’s re
volt that led to the revolution and all the woes of life under a theocracy. And then there are Iranians, onetime revolutionaries and supporters of the Islamic regime, who insist that it was Jimmy Carter who tried his utmost to save the Shah and, once the revolution succeeded, to restore him or his dynasty to the throne. Others will say it was the British, the British who at one time held great sway over Persia but who had lost influence in the wake of American ascendancy after World War II, who engineered the fall of the Shah, the U.S. Embassy takeover, and the subsequent breaking of relations between the United States and Iran, all so that they could once again be the influential and dominant power in Persia (they never could quite bring themselves to call it “Iran”).
Otherwise sophisticated, well-traveled, and highly educated Iranians will repeat these theories over tea, at dinner parties, over a vafour, or opium pipe, and whenever the favorite topic of conversation for most Iranians, politics, comes up. The revolution of 1979 was supposed to put an end to foreign or hidden hands; it was supposed to create a system, a third and uniquely Iranian, Shia system to counter the communism of the East and the liberal democracy of the West. Many Iranians believe that the revolution was successful—not only the many die-hard supporters of the velayat-e-faqih, those who enthusiastically shout “Death to America!” on command, but also those who believe, like Khatami, Mousavi, and Karroubi, that the experiment isn’t over, that Islamic democracy hasn’t matured quite yet, and that reform is needed in order to reach the utopia of a new political order in the Islamic world.
Nemeesheh? There have been lots of nemeeshehs in Iranian history, as many since the revolution of 1979 as before. An Islamic revolution? Nemeesheh. Storm the U.S. Embassy and take American diplomats hostage, against every international convention? Nemeesheh! “America cannot do a damn thing,” Khomeini said, once he endorsed hostage taking as statecraft. Nemeesheh! Uneducated and unsophisticated mullahs eliminate their technocrat, intellectual leftist allies in a struggle for power? Nemeesheh. Fight a war against an invading Saddam Hussein, armed and financed by all the Arabs and by the West, at Iran’s weakest moment, and force him to sue for peace? Nemeesheh! Elect a president, Khatami, against the wishes of the Supreme Leader? Nemeesheh. Not even Khatami thought that was possible, not until it actually happened. Elect a president, the unknown Ahmadinejad, running against Rafsanjani, the second most powerful man in Iran? Nemeesheh! A long-forgotten sixty-seven-year-old politician successfully challenge the incumbent Ahmadinejad for the presidency four years later? Nemeesheh! Prevent that politician from winning, at all costs? Nemeesheh! Oh yeah? Kardeem va shod.
THAT IS A friend’s favored expression when it comes to anything to do with Iran, an expression that I can’t help but think of almost daily when I’m in Iran. Someone educated in the West but who has lived in Iran for most of the post-revolutionary years, my friend has seen everything that there is to be seen (and much of what is not). He has witnessed countless instances of nemeesheh but, more important, countless instances of kardeem va shod. Explaining Iran’s post-revolutionary zeitgeist, he once said to me, “Meegan madar-zan’o nemeesheh kard. Ma kardeem va shod”—“They say you can’t screw your mother-in-law. Oh yeah? I did, and it was possible.”
WHERE I SAT IN BABYLON
We’re prepared to give our precious lives for four reasons: God, our nation, family, and our friends.
—Iranian rapper Hichkas, in his song “Bunch of Soldiers”
During the Arab League summit in early 2008, when Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi’s turn came at the lectern, he launched into a fiery criticism—a rant, really—of his fellow Arabs, specifically on the issue of Palestine and Israel. “Whatever happened to the [Palestinian] cause we had before 1967?” he asked. “Were we lying to ourselves or to the world?” he continued. “How can you say that Israel must return to the pre-1967 borders? Does Palestine consist only of the West Bank and Gaza? If so,” he said with an air of disgust, “it means that the Israelis did not occupy it in 1948. They left it to you for twenty years, so why didn’t you establish a Palestinian state? Wasn’t Gaza part of Egypt, and the West Bank part of Jordan?” Qaddafi seemed particularly angry at Arab acquiescence to a two-state solution to the long-running Middle East crisis, a solution that would give Palestinians a state, yes, but the exact one, he pointed out, they could have easily had all the way back in 1967 if only the Arabs had given them the land they then controlled. The heads of state and sheikhs in the room all smiled, or in some cases laughed, uncomfortably. All except Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister of Iran, whose country had been invited—very unusually—that year as an observer, and who remained stone-faced while he listened through headphones (for very few Iranians speak or understand Arabic). The smiles of the Arab leaders for the cameras betrayed their view of Qaddafi, known as well in the Arab world as in the West (at least among the ruling elites) for a certain, shall we say, wackiness, as well as their discomfort with the truth of what their wacky, often clownish cousin was saying, words that were being broadcast to millions of their citizens. Citizens who, according to polls in 2006 and 2007, were far more enamored of the leaders Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, perversely both Shias, than of their own smiling, Sunni, pro-Western, and well-fed, if not corpulent, leaders.
As in years past, the Arab League summit was convened partly to address the single most important issue facing the Arab (and Muslim) world over the past sixty years, namely, what was once the Arab-Israeli and is now the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The two nations Qaddafi mentioned by name as having held Palestinian territory, Jordan and Egypt, are also the two Arab countries that have made peace with Israel and have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, a point not lost on the television audience. Jordan, for one, having a large Palestinian population, is particularly wary of that audience—and is at best ambivalent about Arab overtures to Israel—so much so that Israelis driving into Jordan by car are given Jordanian license plates by Jordanian officials right at the border to affix over their Israeli ones—you know, just in case.
In 2008, though, the country most vehemently supporting the Palestinian cause and the only nation still vociferously denouncing Israel, Persian but not Arab Iran, had pointedly been invited to the summit, and Al Jazeera television cameras often slyly panned upward to Mottaki’s face in the gallery—serious, frowning, head cocked at times, his expression one of intent listening. Iran was present not because the Arab states both fear her and revile her, which they do, but because there is a recognition that today, unlike any time in the past, there will never be peace between the Arabs and the Israelis without the Persians, and that Persia, or Iran, once an empire that ruled over every inch of territory that each head of state represented, was, alarmingly to most, a resurgent and potentially dangerous power.
Qaddafi’s point that the Arabs have essentially abandoned the greater Palestinian cause (even Syria, who most recognize would be willing to make a deal with Israel as long as it would guarantee a return of the Golan Heights to its sovereignty) was both an approving nod to Iran and a seamless introduction to the next topic in his fractured harangue of a speech: Iran itself. Qaddafi quickly warmed to the subject, both in recognition of the country’s uncommon presence at an Arab meeting and as a warning to his fellow Arabs of the futility and dangers in confronting it. “By no means,” he admonished the audience, “is it in our interest to turn Iran against us.” He continued on the subject, moving on to address the issue of the Persian Gulf and disputes between Iran and the United Arab Emirates over two strategic islands. “Eighty percent of the people of the Gulf are Iranians,” he said, painting a broader stroke than necessary, but to the undoubted delight of the stern Mottaki, who, however, continued to show no emotion. “The ruling families are Arab, but the rest are Iranian. The entire people are Iranian,” he said, an exaggeration to be sure, but a point not lost on the Iranians and some of the Arab audience back home. The sheikhs no longer smiled, but looked away glumly. “Ir
an cannot be avoided,” Qaddafi carried on unambiguously, perhaps even shockingly taking Iran’s side against his fellow Arabs. “Iran is a Muslim neighbor and it is not in our interest to become enemies.” Reminiscent of a speech a year earlier, when he stated bizarrely that “we are all Shias,” in his first major tilt toward Iran, it was also almost an admission of defeat by an Arab nationalist leader not known for his meekness, and the men in the room knew it. Qaddafi’s speech, as easy as it may be to dismiss as the ranting of a now older revolutionary, highlighted what many in the Muslim Middle East feel and already recognize: the Persians are ascendant as the region’s predominant power and the Arab leaders no longer represent pan-Muslim or even pan-Arab interests. In early May 2008, Iranian-backed Hezbollah of Lebanon stunned America, Saudi Arabia, and the beleaguered and hapless U.S.-supported government of Lebanon by taking over Beirut in a matter of hours. It was a counter-coup that caused the Saudi ambassador to flee Lebanon, a flight Tehran publicly mocked, and the Iranian daily Kayhan (the mouthpiece for Iran’s Supreme Leader) trumpeted: “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the United States.” Indeed.
IT’S NOT a very well-known fact that Lebanese Hezbollah leader Nasrallah holds the official title “Representative of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Lebanon,” that Leader being none other than Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Despite the Iranian penchant for mangling English translations of Iranian words and expressions, it was not an error of omission that the name of the country was left off both the Supreme Leader’s title and the name of the country’s elite military force, the Revolutionary Guards. The Supreme Leader is the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, and the ideological military force is the Corps of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, not “Republic,” known and sometimes feared in the West simply as the “Revolutionary Guards.” The Islamic Revolution, started, controlled, and maintained by Iranians, knows no national boundaries, as the late Ayatollah Khomeini once said.)