The Latest from Iran (30 March): Strategies

2000 GMT: Politics, Religion, and Culture. Reihaneh Mazaheri in Mianeh offers a detailed article setting out how President Ahmadinejad has tried to use financial support of religious and cultural centres, often supervised by his close allies, to reinforce his political base. An extract:

The administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using state funds to spread its political and religious ideology and at the same time maintain powerful allies during times of turmoil, critics say.

The authorities have set aside 4.5 billion of the 347 billion US dollar, 2010-11 budget, which took effect on March 21, for cultural matters - but much of it is spent on religious and culturally hardline institutions sympathetic to the administration.

Ever since first becoming president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has made a clear effort to defend religious groups and organisations to a degree previously unknown in the country.

He set out his thinking in a speech to clergy in southern Fars province in 2007, saying, “In the budget of previous administrations, no room was found for religious centres and religious matters. However, we have taken them into consideration in the budget.”

The budget for “mosque centres”, one of the government’s main sources of popular support, has increased to 25 million dollars from 1.6 million in 2005 at the end of the term of reformist president Mohammad Khatami, according to Mohammad Hosseini, the minister of culture and Islamic guidance.

NEW Iran: Preventing Tehran from “Going Nuclear” (Ramazani)
NEW Iran Politics and Music: Sasi Mankan’s “Karroubi”
NEW Iran: The Green Movement’s Next Steps (Shahryar)
Iran: A View from the Labour Front (Rahnema)
Iran’s Nukes: False Alarm Journalism (Sick)
The Latest from Iran (29 March): Questionable Authority

1545 GMT: A Media Note. To the Charlie Rose Show on the US Public Broadcasting Service: I've now viewed what amounted to a half-hour propaganda special for the Iranian regime, aired in the US last night. Given the substitution of polemic, distortions, and misrepresentations posing as "analysis", I'm not even posting a link.


I'm hoping that this unfortunate interview disappears quickly. However, if it receives any attention as supposed "insight" into post-election Iran, I will be back with a fury.

In the meantime, this should suffice: this programme is a disservice and, indeed, a disgrace given the thousands detained, abused, and denied rights and freedoms. Speak to them, not the two "experts" to whom you turned over airtime last evening.

1540 GMT: Today's Propaganda Drama. After the reported rescue of Iranian diplomat Heshmatollah Attarzadeh Niaki from abductors in Pakistan, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence has declared, “The Islamic Republic did not capitulate to any of this armed group’s demands which is supported by the US and Mossad.”

1535 GMT: Grounding Iran's Airliine. The European Commission has imposed a ban on flights by Iran Air within Europe.

1530 GMT: The "Other" Khamenei Visits Freed Reformist. Hadi Khamenei, the brother of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, joined others in visiting Mostafa Tajzadeh, the former Deputy Minister of Interior who is on temporary release for Nowruz, at his house last night.

1520 GMT: Revival of the Photograph. Pedestrian reports that Amir Sadeqi of the photo blog Tehran Live is out of prison and again taking and posting his photographs.

1500 GMT: Another Death Sentence. Back from an academic break and an appearance on Al Jazeera English's Inside Story (airing 1730 GMT) about the latest in Iraq's power politics, I find confirmation on websites of the news --- reported yesterday --- that 42-year-old schoolteacher Abdolreza Ghanbari has been sentenced to death for  "Mohareb (war against God) through contacts with dissident groups". This broad charge covers "suspicious emails and having contacts with television media outside the country".

1110 GMT: Joke of the Day. An EA correspondent has pointed out the feature from the blog Persian Letters on post-election humour in Iran but, in my opinion, the best joke came from a reader in the comments:

Q. How Many Basijis Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb?
A. None. The Basijis will sit in the dark and blame Israel and the USA.

0810 GMT: Latest on the battle over subsidy reform comes from "principlist" member of Parliament Mohammad Hossein Farhangi, who says the Government is obliged to act according to the vote of the Majlis.

0800 GMT: Rule of Law. Rah-e-Sabz tries to interpret what a meeting between the Supreme Leader and the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, means for Iran's judicial procedure and sentencing.

Rah-e-Sabz also claims information on a strategy by the Revolutionary Guards to avoid exposure of human rights violations, including the effort to crack down on human rights organisations in Iran.

0655 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Children's rights activist Maryam Zia Mohaved has reportedly been released from Evin Prison after a 13-day hunger strike.

0645 GMT: We begin today with three Iran specials. Josh Shahryar thinks about the next steps for the Green Movement. R.K. Ramazani evaluates the best US strategy to deal with Iran's nuclear programme. And, after the arrest of underground rap artist Sasi Mankan, we post his April 2009 single "Karroubi".

Comments

[Rev. Magdalen]

It's true that nobody should ever print lies about another person or group. If anyone has been printing lies about the Regime's atrocities, that could definitely harm the Green Movement. However, even just the atrocities the Regime has openly admitted to, such as holding people in solitary confinement for extended times (a form of torture), using lashing, stoning, and amputation as legal punishments, and executing people for their sexual identity, religion, or political views, already make the IRI a regime that commits crimes against humanity. If it is also true that guards in Iranian jails forcibly "marry" virgins in order to make them eligible for the death penalty, I don't think there is any amount of Leverett spin that could ever balance something like that out. Free potatoes can't make up for even one sanctioned prison rape.

Further, the IRI is not a normal government that should be analyzed using the regular tools of political analysis. Velayat-e faqih is a new system that has never been tried by any other nation, so the normal guidelines and benchmarks we would judge a government by don't even fit the IRI. Officials in the IRI are not chosen for their competency or by winning a public vote, they are chosen for loyalty and willingness to enforce the ruling elite's dictates, no matter what they are. The ability to commit or cover up atrocities without flinching, and to funnel public money to private accounts, is more valued than the ability to balance a budget.

This explains the lack of progress in Iran over the past 31 years: progress is not the goal of this group. Consolidation of power into their own hands is. The elite's brutal tactics, not any great popularity among citizens, explains their continued hold on power.

When we talk of balancing, there is definitely some that needs to take place. For 31 years, the Western media has portrayed the Iranian people as HAPPY slaves, solemnly black-clad people who are glad to be ruled by the iron will of a bearded old man, because their religion told them that was best. Even though the "brain drain" has gone on all these years, so that many Westerners have Iranian friends, it was easy to pass off Iranians in the West as a few freethinking oddballs who left because they didn't fit in with the majority in their country.

Since this summer, that stereotype of Iran has been balanced with a vengeance! We now know that MOST Iranians are like the friendly, funny folks we've come to know and love as newcomers to the West. Our Western-Iranian friends are not oddballs in a sea of mindless religious fanatics, it's just that only a few people are able to make it through all the hoops necessary to physically get out of Iran and come study or work in the West. Iranians are NOT happy with things as they are, just as nobody else would be satisfied with this brutality and corruption either. I would think ESPECIALLY if you were very pious you would be disgusted by this Regime, which plainly cares far more about money and power than Allah.

The Leveretts are very dangerous in this respect because they seek to reinforce the old stereotype that Iranians are, and always have been, highly satisfied with the IRI regime. It is very difficult for Westerners to tell whether or not that is true. If it wasn't for the internet, and all the videos that show up on a continuous basis showing protests and the brutal repression used by the Regime to suppress them and create the image of widespread citizen loyalty, the Leveretts' "analysis" would probably have been accepted without question.

Reinforcing this dehumanizing stereotype is very, very dangerous. If Iranians are so different from everyone else on the planet that they really and truly love having their newspapers shut down and their children arrested, because they're just THAT religious, then they are truly "not like us" and thus the Iranian People are easily transformed into "the enemy". Dehumanizing the foe is an important psychological preparation before any war, and that is what I see the Leveretts engaging in constantly, whether they know it or not. They are NOT Iran's friends; their way leads to war even if they're too foolish to realize it.

Treating the current criminal coup ruling Iran as if it were a regular government, stable and productive, destined for a long future, would mean ignoring the pleas for justice of its victims. It would also be a really shortsighted idea, because this regime is NOT stable and is bound to be brought down by its people sooner or later. Nobody can live under this type of brutality forever, especially not a people who have had so much experience at revolution! For the Leveretts to suggest that the Iranians are happy with this regime, so the West ought to do business with it freely like any other partner, is not only morally wrong because of the Regime's brutality, it's also bad business because any investment made in Iran right now is likely to be severely disrupted when the inevitable removal of the current regime takes place.