Iran Analysis: The "Opposition Within" and the Regime

Our running analysis at EA has been of a political conflict in Iran which is far more than just Green Movement v. Regime. One aspect of this has been the disputes and tensions between members of the Iranian establishment. Writing for InsideIran.org, Arash Aramesh develops this theme:

Recent statements made by high-ranking conservatives in Iran and the reaction of ultra conservatives to those statements have lead many Iran watchers to believe that the rift within the conservative establishment s is widening. The most recent instance was the war of words between Ali Motahhari, a conservative member of parliament, and Hossein Shariatmadari, the ultra conservative editor-in-chief of Kayhan and a staunch supporter of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There are other instances of such clashes. For example, the radical Ansar News published an article by Fatemeh Rajabi, the wife of Gholam-Hossein Elham who is now a member of the Guardian Council, accusing Ali Larijani, the speaker of parliament, of aiding the opposition.

Latest Iran News (16 January): Ripples

The resignation of Ruhollah Hosseinian, a pro-Ahmadinejad deputy in parliament, was another episode highlighting the widening cleavage among conservatives. In his letter of resignation sent to Larijani, Hosseinian accused some conservatives, including the leadership of the parliament, of assisting the reformists and isolating true conservatives like himself. [Editor's Note: Hosseinian, in a direct letter to the Supreme Leader, rescinded his resignation this week.]

There are two theories about this apparent rift. A number of observers and political activists, who spoke to InsideIRAN.org on the condition of anonymity, believe that the ruling establishment is trying to trade in the reformists and the Green Movement for a moderate conservative alternative. These moderate conservatives include senior Iranian officials such as Larijani, Mohammad-Reza Bahonar, the deputy speaker of parliament, and Mohsen Rezaei, the former commander of the IRGC and candidate in the June 12 presidential election, and others.

All of those mentioned above come from a conservative political line with close ties to the bazaar and traditional clerics. They are more moderate in their criticism of the opposition and at times voiced their dissatisfaction about the government’s treatment of protestors and the handling of events following the June 12 election. Some even called for national unity suggesting that the elders of the tribe meet to discuss the current crisis. Two weeks ago, Rezaei wrote a letter supporting a statement issued by Mir Hossein Moussavi and asked the Supreme Leader to lead the country in the direction of unity and closure. Rezaei’s letter, which was written with ultimate respect to the Supreme Leader, received an angry response from the radical wing of the Islamic Republic.

According to these observers, the Islamic Republic is waging an orchestrated effort to introduce viable anti-Ahmadinejad alternatives to the public in order to diminish the influence of figures such as Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Arab governments have taken similar steps to boost the popularity of Islamists they support who then become rivals to more established Islamic groups opposed to the state.

The second theory advanced by a number of political commentators revolves around the notion of “regime survival.” Members of this group believe that some conservatives, who do not approve of Ahmadinejad’s radicalism, are genuinely worried about the survival of the Islamic Republic. Moderate conservatives also fear that their fate might soon mirror that of the reformists, who have been tortured and imprisoned.

The Ahmadinejad wing and the IRGC have dramatically expanded their sphere of influence in all three branches of government. The executive branch is now entirely in their hands, while many members of parliament have close ties to the IRGC and belong to the pro-Ahmadinejad faction. In the judiciary, the appointment of IRGC Brig Gen. Zolghadr to the post of Advisor to Chief Justice was an unprecedented move. Zolghadr, who has no legal experience, is one of IRGC’s most radical generals with close ties to Supreme Leader Khamenei.

Moderate conservatives in Iran are concerned. Their ideological differences with the reformists bars them from forming a viable coalition with them. At the same time, they fear the policies of the radicals can gravely jeopardize their political survival, and the survival of the Islamic Republic.

Israel: Foreign Ministry Divided after Ayalon's Apology

Israel's Foreign Ministry was divided into two camps over the apology of Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon for his treatment of Turkey's ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol. Some officials say, "Israel will benefit from the way in which Ayalon managed the crisis. The result is that today Turkey will be much more careful in its statements [about Israel]," but others claim:

(Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip) Erdogan will only change his rhetoric if he sees that it costs him something. But blasting Israel does not cost him anything, and actually gains him points both at home and in the Arab world.

Israel: Another Attempt at an Arrest Warrant for Barak

Following the issuance of an arrest warrant by a British court against Israel's former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Istanbul-based Mazlum-Der, an Islamic human rights group, petitioned a prosecutor on Friday to start legal proceedings against Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The warrant is sought for alleged crimes committed against Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.

So far, Turkey's Justice Ministry has rejected similar moves. Barak is expected to arrive Ankara on Sunday.

Israel: Foreign Ministry Divided after Ayalon’s Apology

From the Archives: Iraq on the US Big Screen (November 2007)

One of our goals, since we launched EA's ancestor, Libertas, in 2007, has been to link study of US foreign policy to areas like culture and media. Soon after Libertas' launch, my colleague Melani McAlister wrote this piece, which viewed the 2003 American invasion of Iraq and its aftermath through the prism of American cinema.

The opening of Brian De Palma’s Redacted this weekend marked a new moment in the debates about the Iraq war in the United States . The widely admired director of Scarface, Dressed to Kill and Casualties of War has created an important film – at once fascinating and deeply flawed, compelling and utterly infuriating. Based on the true-life story of the rape of an Iraqi girl and the murder of her and her family by a squad of American soldiers, the film created a sensation at the Venice Film Festival last summer, where it got a five-minute standing ovation, and De Palma won the award for Best Director.

Redacted is a turning point in large part because it speaks about the Iraq war in ways that, up until now, have been the provenance of documentaries.

For several years, remarkable films like Dreams of Sparrows or Gunner Palace have been exposing the horrors of the war, the suffering of Iraqi civilians, and the nightmarish quagmire faced by US soldiers. De Palma undoubtedly knows this: Redaction wears its longing for documentary status on its sleeve. One character tells us at the beginning of the film that we won’t be offered a straightforward chronological Hollywood story, and indeed the most compelling aspect of Redacted is the self-conscious way it is structured, supposedly stitched together from a variety of sources. One large part is supposedly the video diary made by one of the soldiers; some action is viewed as if through a security camera; and sometimes we see a fake French documentary that is delicious parody. There is also a beheading, which we see as if it were on a web site, and some scenes are shown as news reports by an al-Jazeera-like station.

De Palma’s self-consciousness about form invites the audience to see how much our knowledge of the war is based on our ownstitching together of such partial and problematic sources. De Palma is certainly not the first director to engage and question the power of the image; the compromised role of news, entertainment, and surveillance, has been taken up in movies from The Siege (1998) to Syrianna (2006). But Redacted does it very well, and De Palma goes well beyond simply criticizing the news media. He shows us ourselves, caught between so many ways of seeing that we somehow refuse to see at all.

At this level, Redacted is superior to most of the flurry of films about the Iraq war or the so-called war on terror that have come out this fall. The Kingdom, for example, starring Jamie Foxx, is a showy fantasy about a group of FBI agents who go to Saudi Arabia to hunt down the Muslim bad guys who have bombed a US outpost. The film features buddy bonding, Jennifer Garner in tight T-shirts, and plenty of action, plus a few good Saudis amongst all the terrorists to prove that the film isn’t anti-Arab. Though there are a few moments of minor critique in the film, The Kingdom generally says that --diplomacy be damned -- fighting the war on terror is a tough job, and if we want it done right, then Americans have to do it, wherever and whenever they please.

There have been other more critical films, of course, such as the Valley of Elah and Lions for Lambs, though both were flawed by their own earnestness, and hamstrung by the necessity of waving a “support our troops” banner behind almost every statement of criticism of the war.

At first, it seems like Redacted feels no such necessity, that it is a tough-minded and thoroughgoing critique. Granted, it is in many ways an old-fashioned platoon film with a multicultural American cast. The center of the story is McCoy, a ruggedly handsome and rather idealistic solider who is ultimately complicit in the cruelty. The group also includes a hard-nosed African American sergeant, who dies early and needlessly; a white but vaguely ethnic intellectual of the group; a Latino video diarist, whose home-movies are supposed to be his ticket to film school; and two white goons who initiate the violence. Unlike many platoon films, however, Redacted insists that the soldiers are not just victims of the nightmare of war. Yes, the Iraq war should never have happened, but the attacks on civilians are also born from the racism and arrogance of these particular men, and the aggressive, woman-hating masculinity of the military culture around them.

I was compelled by this edginess, by the anti-earnestness of the film’s anger. But DePalma lost me when he decided to place the primary impetus for the rape and murders almost entirely in the hands of two characters who are little better than parody. Flake and Rush are irredeemably stupid, Southern racists who love porn and decorate their bunks with confederate flags. The two goons are working-class stiffs to the core. In case their “ain’ts” aren’t enough to tell us that back home these guys are likely to be driving pickups to factory jobs, we get the picture when one of the two, Flake, tells a long and chilling story of his brother, a pool-playing Teamster who, like Flake, delights in senseless murder. These two soldiers hate Arabs, of course, and, in the end, everybody else in the unit is pulled, with varying degrees of protest, into their murderous sexually charged rage.

The Southern racist bad guy is certainly not a new character in American movies, but what’s striking is how De Palma uses commentary about the domestic politics of race and racism to comment on America ’s role in the world. In fact, De Palma is far from alone in this. Race matters a great deal when Hollywood sends Americans abroad – often in unexpected ways. These days, when Hollywood want to show that a particular use of global power is good, it often signals the justice of military might by placing African Americans characters in a leading role. Thus The Kingdom signaled the fundamental moral uprightness of the Americans’ mission in Saudi Arabia by casting Jamie Foxx as the FBI agent leading the team. You could see something similar with Denzel Washington holding up American justice in The Siege or Courage Under Fire, or Samuel Jackson as the officer who makes hard decisions in Rules of Engagement, or just about  any movie with Morgan Freeman as president. Even zombiemovies take the cue: in the best B movie of this year, 28 Weeks Later, US troops occupy Britain after an outbreak of zombie-ism, and when a U.S. general takes the horrible step of ordering massive killing of civilians, we know that this is repugnant butnecessary – and we know that in part because the General is played by the sexy and righteous Idris Elba (who in recent years also played a sexy and very unrighteous drug dealer on HBO’s The Wire).

I’m not saying it’s the case that Hollywood generally treats African American men as moral exemplars, of course -- far from it. But that’s what makes the association of black men with the justification of US military or police actions so striking. Hollywood , which all but ignores the daily lives of African Americans, draws on a perverse kind of racial liberalism to authorize its use of force abroad -- the black general as righteousness insurance. (Which is what I guess Colin Powell was for the Republicans, before he got caught lying at the United Nations about the justifications for the Iraq War.)

De Palma uses race differently, but to a similar effect: Other members of the Redacted platoon, like the square-jawed McCoy, are implicated, but the truly guilty are the ignorant, racist southerners who insist that they are going to kill some “sand niggers.”They are the hicks who show up to war wrapped in a Confederate flag, and who take otherwise decent men down with them.

At one point in the film, one character makes an anxious comparison to Abu Ghraib. The reference is supposed to highlight the bravery of our somewhat-hero McCoy for telling the truth, even in the face of embarrassing the military. But there is another layer here, as De Palma also evokes, without self-consciousness, the moral complexities of that real life nightmare: as we all know, the lower-level military police at Abu Ghraib have been convinced for their crimes, while most of those who set the policies that authorized torture are still wandering the halls of power.

It was obviously useful for the architects of the Iraq war to posit, as our president did after Abu Ghraib, that we can solve the problem of such horrors by getting rid of the few “bad apples” – those who sully an otherwise righteous democratizing project. But De Palma, who imagines himself challenging such hubris and delusion, offers up exactly the same sacrifice to the gods of war: Don’t blame us, we’re very upset about the war! Take them, the ones who are really to blame: they’re right over there, somewhere near the Walmart parking lot. We’ll wait here, in the theater; and meanwhile, we promise to feel really bad about what they are doing in Iraq .

The Latest from Iran (15 January): Refreshing?

2200 GMT: Your Late-Night Cyber-Treat. On Google, type "Ahmadinejad President of Iran". Hit "I'm Feeling Lucky".

2140 GMT: We started this morning (see 0715 GMT) by noting the possible significance of the "reformist" criticisms of Dr Javad Etaat making their way onto Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. We end today by posting the video of the first part of the interview and an English translation.

2030 GMT: Cyber-Warfare Strike. Hacking the website of Iran's Hezbollah (Party of God) is one thing. Doing it with the slogan "The End is F***ing Near" is another. And accomplishing it with a diversion to the domain http://www.getasexpartner.com/hiz-bol.htm, well... Let's just say that Iran's police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam (see 1220 GMT) may want to get a bigger Internet manual if he is serious about taking on the opposition in a Web slugfest.

NEW Latest Iran Video & Translation: Dr Etaat’s Opposition On State Media (14 January)
NEW Iran: Anger, Pain, & Fear — The Funeral of Professor Ali-Mohammadi
NEW Latest Iran Video: Green Protest and the Iran-Belgium Football Match (14 January)
NEW Iran: The Regime Censors the 1979 Revolution
NEW Latest Iran Audio: The Last Lecture of Professor Ali-Mohammadi
Latest Iran Video: Al Jazeera’s Debate Over The Death of Ali-Mohammadi (13 January)
Latest Iran Video: The Life, Death, and Funeral of Professor Ali-Mohammadi (14 January)
Latest Iran Video: “A Message to Armed Forces of Iran” (13 January)
Iran Analysis: Political Manoeuvring Around the Professor’s Death
The Latest from Iran (14 January): The Professor’s Funeral

1935 GMT: Quality Analysis of Day. Well done, Asadollah Badamchian, member of Parliament: “The assassination [of Professor Ali-Mohammadi] and terrorist operation was a previously planned step in the Green Velvet Revolution." The movement, Badamchian said, consists of five sub-groups, “each of which are gradually eroding”.

1825 GMT: That Supreme Leader Message of Condolence (Again). So sorry that Professor Ali-Mohammadi is dead, building up to "the criminal hand that brought this disaster has revealed the motive of the enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran to deal a blow to the scientific movement of the country".

1624 GMT: A Bit of US Pressure? From an Indian news agency: "The United States has asked Pakistan to dump its plan of receiving natural gas from Iran through a pipeline. According to sources, US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, during his meeting with Petroleum Minister Syed Naveed Qamar, said Islamabad would have to abandon its pipeline accord with Tehran in order to qualify for extensive American energy assistance especially for importing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and electricity."

1618 GMT: Your Tehran Friday Prayers Summary. Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani gets the nod today, and he comes up with the stunning declaration, "The enemy uses every possible means to harm the establishment and the country so we should, in a very real sense, remain vigilant."

OK, not so stunning. In fact, repetitive. But we had to say something.

Oh, yes. Emami-Kashani also "called for televised debates to clear ambiguities about the country's current political affairs".

1615 GMT: We've posted an account of yesterday's funeral of Professor Ali-Mohammadi and its effects on academics and students.

1445 GMT: Supreme Leader's Message of Condolence to Family of Professor Ali-Mohammadi. Here's a summary: Ayatollah Khamenei expresses his sorrow, to Ali-Mohammadi's mother, wife, friends, colleagues, and students, and --- by the way --- this is a terror act that "reveals enemies' motive to harm Iran's scientific movement and jihad".

1245 GMT: Divine Declaration of Day. Hossein Taeb, head of the Intelligence Bureau of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps and former head of the Basiji militia sets it out: the Supreme Leader is unjust are in error, those who follow him will go to Paradise. An Iranian activist offers this translation of Taeb's words:

Even though [the Supreme Leader] was suffering under [Grand Ayatollah] Montazeri during Imam Khomeini's time and despite all insults he had to endure, he did issue a beautifuland  gentle message upon Montazeri's passing and advised that he can be buried anywhere the family wanted. Those who say the Supreme Leader has left the [path of] justice, don't understand the meaning of it. They think that Supreme Leader is chosen by the Assembly of Experts. Supreme Leader is rather discovered by Experts and that is why they can't grant capabilities. It is God who does.

1220 GMT: We Will Find You. Is this a declaration of strength or nervousness? Iran's police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam has warned against Internet and text messages to spread news of demonstrations:

These people should know where they are sending the SMS and email as these systems are under control. They should not think using proxies will prevent their identification. If these people continue, their records will be examined and those who organise or issue appeals have committed a worse crime than those who come to the streets.

1145 GMT: The Resigning Diplomat. Confirmation comes in a Norwegian television interview that Mohammad Reza Heidari, an Iranian diplomat in Norway, is quitting his post. Heydari's intention to resign was initally reported days ago on radio. He claims that an Iranian official came to Oslo to assure him he would not be hurt if he retracted the resignation: "I refused to agree to that. They suggested I'd do an interview in which I denied my defection in order to return to Tehran. But I know I made the right choice and that my conscience is clean."

1140 GMT: We've posted the latest video in our running series on football and protest, opposition chants at the Iran-Belgium indoor football match.

1010 GMT: Iran "Analysis" of Day. Islamic Republic News Agency presents the findings of an "Office of Research and Studies" that there was a "deep intrigue", courtesy of the US Government, for disorder and sedition after the Presidential election.

For those of you who aren't convinced about this exposure of "soft war", there are footnotes. And it's great to see Bush Administration has-been John Bolton and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times in the same "research" paper.

0840 GMT: One Less Death Sentence. Kalemeh reports that Hamid Ruhidnejad, arrested before the elections but condemned to death this summer, will now serve 10 years in jail. Ruhidnejad's father contends that, as his son suffers from multiple sclerosis and is half-blind, he is unlikely to survive the punishment.

0735 GMT: We've posted a separate entry, courtesy of Pedestrian, on how the regime is censoring videos and images of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in the run-up to its 31st anniversary on 22 Bahman (11 February)

0715 GMT: The Opposition Emerges on Iran's State Media. Dr. Javad Etaat, appearing on the Ru Be Farda programme of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, IRIB ("Ru be farda" magazine), criticised the "failed" economic plans of the Government, pointing to Iran's high rate of inflation. He also got political, denouncing the prohibition of demonstrations and the banning of newspapers. Perhaps most pointedly, he refers to Imam Ali, the first Imam of Shi'a Islam, to challenge any prohibition of dissent.

Etaat is a professor of political science at Shahad Behesti University and a former member of the Parliament's Cultural Commission. Unsurprisingly, the video of his comments is now racing around YouTube.

0705 GMT: The Scholars Protest (cont.). An EA reader writes us with a clarification, "That 300+ scholars lettter (see 0630 GMT) started a very long time ago! Deutsche Welle covered it on July 10th."

0645 GMT: The Battle With Rafsanjani. Hamid Rohani, a fervent supporter of President Ahmadinejad, has continued his attack on former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Asked about his recent claim that Imam Khomeini had warned Rafsanjani could be "deceived" (noted in our updates earlier this week), Rohani insisted --- despite the lack of this claim in Khomeini's published letters --- that the incident was in 1973, when the Friday Prayers leader of the city of Rafsanjan wrote Khomeini. What is more: Rohani claims the exchange arose from Rafsanjani's request for religious funds for the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI), which the regime now considers a "terrorist" movement.

0635 GMT: Mousavi's Reference to Government "Enemies"? We noted last night that Mir Hossein Mousavi had sent condolences to the family of the murdered physicist, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi. This phrase, however, deserves attention: Ali-Mohammadi was assassinated by "enemies of the people". Who is that "enemy"?

0630 GMT: The Scholars Protest. Iranian academics working and studying abroad are circulating an open letter to the "Honourable People of Iran": "Preparing the grounds for the free exchange of information, opinions and beliefs, and most importantly the security of university students, academics, and thinkers, are the responsibilities of the government and are the most basic conditions for scientific and social growth of a nation."

More than 300 scholars have already signed the letter.

0625 GMT: It's the weekend in Iran, and we're expecting a bit of a lull after the furour over the killing of Professor Ali-Mohammadi. We have posted the full audio of the physicist's last lecture.

That said, there have been so many fissures in the "establishment" this week that there may not be a pause this Friday. And there's a sign that the Green movement has even gotten a foothold in the broadcasts of Islamic Republic Iran Broadcasting --- we're working on the video and story.