The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge

by Hooman Majd

  And yet, it still wasn’t quite over—not yet. President Ahmadinejad took a more confrontational approach to the nuclear issue and later toward Israel, but the Supreme Leader, while preferring Ahmadinejad’s style to the mild-mannered Khatami’s, kept his options open. Not only did he continue to meet with Khatami, Kharrazi, and other reformists, but also he sanctioned a 2006 trip by Khatami to the United States, ostensibly a private visit but one that he knew could be a test of what the Bush administration might agree to with respect to Iran’s nuclear program, and even with respect to the possibility of a “grand bargain.” At one gathering at Ambassador Zarif’s residence in New York, in an elaborate dining room with an unnoticed Monet hanging on the wall, Khatami gave a talk over dinner to the Council on Foreign Relations, one that focused on the nuclear issue.

  In his talk, Khatami fiercely defended Iran’s position on enrichment, and even Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy (which was realistically not that different from his), but suggested to the audience, which included Richard Haass, the president of the council, that if the Bush administration agreed to allow Iran a pilot program for uranium enrichment, Iran might be willing to limit it to 164 centrifuges spinning and keep it as a research and development project as long as negotiations continued. In the audience also was George Soros, a member of the council, who came up to me after dinner and asked if he could make Khatami’s suggestion public.

  “No!” exclaimed Khatami, when I asked him.

  “But that’s the only way to embarrass the Bush administration, to show the American public that Iran isn’t so unreasonable after all,” said Soros, and I translated for Khatami.

  “No,” he repeated, shaking his head. “I’m a private citizen and I don’t speak for the government, and these things should be kept private.” His implication was that the Bush administration would know that whatever Khatami said had the blessing of the Supreme Leader, and the Council on Foreign Relations was a good enough conduit to the White House, but Iran wasn’t about to put its cards on the table publicly, only to be embarrassed yet again. Needless to say, nothing ever came of the dinner conversation, and the concept of either lifting preconditions for negotiations with Iran or allowing a pilot enrichment program, a face-saving solution for a proud Iran, never went further, not until an Obama presidency became a real possibility.

  In 2009, after the presidential election in Iran and the unrest that ensued, and while over four thousand Iranian centrifuges were spinning happily away in Natanz, in one of the court proceedings against arrested “agitators,” Kian Tajbakhsh, an Iranian-American who had once worked for Soros’s Open Society Institute, claimed that Khatami and Soros (along with Zarif at his New York residence in 2006) had plotted the overthrow of the Islamic regime. Tajbakhsh knew nothing of Khatami’s brief chance encounter with Soros the night of the dinner party at Zarif’s residence, but the Iranian intelligence services did, for they probably had tapes of the short conversation (which Zarif was not a part of) as well as witnesses, as did, no doubt, the U.S. National Security Agency and the CIA. (The account of Khatami’s trip to the United States in my book The Ayatollah Begs to Differ was also used by the hard-liners in Tehran as evidence of Khatami’s treachery, and I was compelled to issue a forceful denial of any plotting or secret meetings between Soros and Khatami, which was picked up by most of the Iranian media in Tehran, save for the hard-line media that suggested a plot in the first place.) In any event, Supreme Leader Khamenei was intimately aware of what transpired during Khatami’s trip to the United States as a private citizen, which was nothing, at least in terms of relations or negotiations between the Bush administration and the Islamic Republic. In 2007 I asked Khatami, at one of my meetings with him in Tehran, if he still, two years into the Ahmadinejad administration, talked to Ayatollah Khamenei. “Yes, indeed,” he replied. “The difference now, though,” he continued, contrasting the time when he was president and was unable to accomplish much of what he wanted to, “is that he listens.”

  Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei may have started to really listen to Khatami and moderate voices only after they were out of office and therefore unable to execute policy, perhaps one reason why he also tolerated or even encouraged Ahmadinejad’s frequent outreaches, clumsy as they were, to the United States. Perhaps the Supreme Leader agreed all along with Khatami’s notion that rapprochement with the United States was advisable for and beneficial to Iran; it was just that he didn’t want the reformists to take the credit for what would have been a popular initiative if it had come to fruition under their watch. Obama’s election meant the Democrats were back in power, the party Iranians tended not to trust to make deals, but it also meant Iran lost its easy target, an American administration much of the world disliked. Obama’s promises to close the detention center at Guantánamo, to stop CIA extraordinary renditions, to forbid torture, and to treat the world with respect meant a renewed American moral standing, and demonizing the most popular American political figure since John F. Kennedy was not going to be an easy task, particularly if Obama also followed through on his promise to negotiate with Iran without preconditions.

  After the Iranian New Year in 2009, I was once again in Iran, this time after Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American freelance journalist, had been arrested and jailed for spying. (Saberi, a onetime beauty queen from North Dakota with an Iranian father and Japanese mother, had lived in Iran for about six years, learning Farsi, reporting for various U.S. and British media, and doing the occasional translation work. Her arrest as a spy had come as a surprise to everyone, even some in the government with whom she had good relations.) One day I was invited, or really summoned, to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, for “tea” with the head of the Foreign Correspondents Bureau, I was told—“tea” usually being the euphemism for questioning or an interrogation. Well, at least it wasn’t at the Ministry of Intelligence, so it couldn’t be terribly serious, I thought, likely just the government trying to ascertain how friendly or unfriendly to the regime I really was. Mohsen Moghadaszadeh, the gentle bureau chief, spent a good twenty minutes complimenting me, in keeping with true Persian ta’arouf, telling me how invaluable my contribution could be to Iranian journalism but more important to the understanding of Iran in the English-speaking world—“could be,” perhaps a hint that he was giving me a little of that Islamic guidance his ministry was charged with imparting.

  “It doesn’t help the understanding of Iran,” I said, “when someone like Roxana Saberi is arrested and thrown in jail on what appear to be unfounded charges, at least as far as the Western media is concerned.”

  “Let me tell you a story about Ms. Saberi,” said Moghadaszadeh. “Two years ago, I asked her to tea, right here in this office, and she sat exactly where you are sitting.” I was on a long couch at one corner of his expansive office, and he was in an armchair by my side. “I told her that the authorities do not see it fit, salah nemeedoonan, for her to continue as a journalist in Iran, and that I wouldn’t be renewing her press pass.” I took a sip of tea from the small glass in front of me, intrigued by his candid reference to the “authorities,” another euphemism, in this case for the intelligence services, which he either was a part of or had to maintain close ties to because of his work.

  “But why would the authorities not see it fit for her to continue her journalism?’ I asked.

  “What journalism?” said Moghadaszadeh. “She had filed a few reports at one time, but didn’t have any assignments as far as we knew. She said she was writing a book, but how long does it take to write a book?” He looked at me, perhaps hoping I would shed some light on the creative process.

  “A book can take a long time,” I said, “and freelance journalism means assignments can be few and far between.”

  “Well, she was going to parties and doing all sorts of things that weren’t compatible with being a journalist, or even an author.” Moghadaszadeh was admitting that she had been under surveillance. I wondered for a moment if he was implying that I,
too, was not only under surveillance but engaging in activities “incompatible” with being a writer, such as going to parties, which I did often in Tehran, but which I, silly me, thought was essential to my work.

  “Given that President Obama has reached out to Iran,” I said, “I think it can only be harmful to Iran to imprison an American who few people believe could be a spy or the slightest threat to the country’s national security. The Bush era is over, and there’s a real opportunity for both Iran and America now.”

  “She hasn’t been arrested for no reason, I assure you,” said Moghadaszadeh. “There’s plenty of evidence, and it will come to light. I could tell you stories, but we’ll leave it at that.” He paused for a moment, as if weighing whether to continue. “Do you know what her reaction was when I told her the authorities didn’t want her to continue as a journalist?” he said, staring straight into my eyes.

  “No,” I replied. He continued to stare at me for a moment before continuing.

  “Excuse me,” lowering his gaze, “and I’m truly sorry to use this kind of language, but she essentially said, well, she said she didn’t give a fuck.”

  “Really?” I said, surprised.

  “In so many words,” said Moghadaszadeh, and I wondered if he took Saberi’s reaction as a personal affront, a reaction that I’m confident was less rude than he believed.

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean anything,” I said, “she probably felt that Iran’s form of democracy allowed her certain latitudes.” Moghadaszadeh was silent for a moment, probably not wanting to contradict my assertion that Iran was a democracy, and then he changed the subject. He was curious about the American media’s apparent obsession with Obama, and he wanted to emphasize to me that Iran was being as open to change in its foreign policy as could be expected, given that as far as Iran was concerned, it hadn’t actually witnessed a change in American policy yet. It was early, I told him, and as Obama himself had mentioned, the U.S. government was a like a big ship that couldn’t necessarily turn on a dime. He smiled at that analogy, and I was surprised that he hadn’t heard it before.

  “I hope the American media,” he said, and he was referring to me too, “will portray Iran more fairly from now on, and that they won’t automatically believe everything their government says about Iran.”

  A FEW DAYS later, I was at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, attending the Monday-morning weekly press briefing for foreign journalists and Iranian journalists working for the foreign media. The ministry was a sort of ground zero in Iran’s attempts to formulate a response to President Obama’s outreach to Iran, as well as the government’s most visible and constant face to the world, especially since few Iranian officials give interviews or hold press conferences.

  The ministry’s spokesperson at the time, Hassan Qashqavi, was the Iranian official journalists turned to for information during the Roxana Saberi saga, much to his chagrin (he was replaced in November 2009 by Ramin Mehmanparast). “It’s not my job!” he told me afterward in his spacious office over the obligatory tea and biscuits served at every Iranian meeting. “The judiciary has its own spokesman and they are independent,” he continued, frustrated by the incessant questions he would rather not answer (but true to Iranian form he does so nonetheless, even if unsatisfactorily, for the expression “no comment” is virtually unheard in Iran).

  Roxana Saberi’s case continued to be headline news in the West but was mentioned less in the Iranian media, and Qashqavi pointed to it as emblematic of how the Western media covers Iran. “My statement on Roxana Saberi, when it was first reported that she was arrested, mentioned two issues, but the media only quoted the first,” he said. “I said that her press credentials had expired, and that she had been gathering information illegally. The media left out the second part so that it appeared she had been guilty of only a very minor infraction, and when she was later formally charged with espionage, they made it appear as though charges were being made up along the way.” As a onetime journalist himself, Qashqavi proudly told me, he was hoping Saberi’s case would be resolved quickly and that she would be freed soon, but he suggested that double standards are applied to Iran in almost every instance of disagreement or conflict with the West. “No one cares about the Iranian diplomats imprisoned by the Americans in Iraq for over two years without charge,” he said, “while we [ministry officials] are the ones who have to answer to their families when they come here regularly to get, no, insist on, any information about their loved ones.” (The Obama administration freed the Iranian diplomats two months later.) I suggested to him that if Iran did indeed have evidence of illegal activity by Saberi, it should make it public or specify what it is she is accused of doing.

  “Why,” he said indignantly, “should we discuss issues of national security openly? Do the Americans provide evidence to the press when they send someone to Guantánamo, or when they arrest an Iranian in Iraq? Why is it that the media assume Iranians are always guilty and Americans always innocent? And why does Mrs. Clinton assume that Saberi is innocent, without knowing any of the details?”

  “I agree,” I said, “that there might be some double standards sometimes, but you know, with a new administration in Washington there’s a real belief that things are going to change, and Iran can benefit greatly if it takes advantage of the opportunity, which I don’t think will be there forever.”

  “And I agree,” said Qashqavi, uncharacteristically for a politically conservative Iranian official. “In Ms. Saberi’s case, you will see that we are not just making things up, but that there is real cause for her detention and the judicial inquiries. It will come to light later, but in the meantime, we will do everything to secure her quick release.” Clearly, Qashqavi understood that the Saberi case could be a serious obstacle to future negotiations with the United States, especially if Iran hoped to engage on equal footing. When Saberi was released less than a month later, the “evidence” that Iran claimed it had was revealed to be her possession of a document that she had taken from a quasi-governmental think tank, the Institute for Strategic Studies. The institute is run by the powerful Expediency Council and employs scores of former top officials from previous administrations who, unlike in the United States or in Europe, would have had no place to work in the private sector when their administration stepped down. It was scarcely the stuff of espionage, but the Iranian government felt vindicated somewhat that it hadn’t been manufacturing a case against an American just as the new Obama administration had begun its outreach to the Islamic Republic.

  WHILE QASHQAVI and other senior Iranian officials were busy debating the pros and cons of relations with America after the inauguration of President Obama, they must have also thrown the occasional nervous glance at the former U.S. Embassy a few blocks north of the Foreign Ministry as they drove home every day. A vast complex set on acres of prime Tehran real estate, the embassy had been transformed into a barracks for the Revolutionary Guards after the hostage crisis and a small museum testifying to the crimes of the “Great Satan” that oddly seems to be open only very occasionally and never when I have visited. With the United States under President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, there had been no question of improving relations, but with the new Obama administration there actually was much debate in Iran, before the election crisis of 2009, about what the future of Iranian-American relations would look like. Openly discussed was the idea that there might even be an American presence in Iran, after thirty years, at that same embassy.

  One Friday afternoon in late May, less than two weeks before the election, I was driving through downtown Tehran, looking for Ahmadinejad campaign posters with an NBC crew. We stopped at a busy intersection where a huge Mohsen Rezai banner was being affixed to a light pole by workers. Rezai, an eight-year commander of the Revolutionary Guards and a member of the Expediency Council, a governmental body that arbitrates between Parliament and the Guardian Council (and serves as advisory body to the Supreme Leader), was the lone conservative challenger to President A
hmadinejad, and was running far behind in the few polls that were conducted in the weeks leading up to election day. I greeted two campaign officials, former Revolutionary Guards themselves, who were guiding the workers, and I told them that we were from the United States, asking if they knew where we could find an Ahmadinejad poster. “His campaign has given up on Tehran,” one man in a crumpled gray suit said. “But there’s one poster on a side street two blocks up—turn left there,” he gestured up the avenue. His co-worker, a man in his early fifties and with a reconstructed jaw, I presumed due to injuries suffered in the Iran-Iraq War, invited us, me and my American friends with their elaborate camera and lighting equipment, to a Rezai rally that evening. “There’ll be plenty of free food!” he said emphatically. I thanked them, said we would try to swing by, and went back to our car. “Inshallah,” the man in the gray suit shouted after me, “this time next year, the U.S. Embassy will be open.” I turned to see him and his co-worker beaming, and they gave me a friendly wave. What had been unimaginable a year before was being talked about only a few months into Obama’s presidency, and not just by liberals.

  BEFORE THE Iranian presidential elections, every Iranian official I came across was curious about what I, a visiting writer from New York, thought of President Obama’s intentions with regard to Iran, and without exception, everyone, including Qashqavi and Ali Akbar Rezaie, the director general of the North and Central American desk at the Foreign Ministry, and even many mullahs in Qom, were conciliatory in their tone and guardedly optimistic about a future détente. Also without exception, every Iranian government official decried the lack of attention the U.S. media paid to the ongoing sanctions against Iran and the still-belligerent attitude, to them, from the U.S. government. On the one hand, they couldn’t help but applaud Obama’s softer tone and respectful messages, and on the other, they were dismayed by talk of “all options on the table” and threats of further sanctions or military action unless Iran “behaved.” The deputy minister of science, research, and technology, Dr. Seyed Mohammad Hosseini (who became the minister of culture and Islamic guidance in Ahmadinejad’s second term), however, reminded me one day of a passage from the Koran: “If there’s even a small chance of a peaceful overture being genuine,” he said, “one should welcome and accept it.” Although before the June election Iranian officials weren’t yet convinced that Obama’s overtures were entirely peaceful, they were willing, or felt obliged, to give the United States the benefit of doubt. Islam, after all, told them to.