IranSmoke and mirrorsMay 29th 2008From The Economist print editionIran makes it hard even for benevolent outsiders to understand it

THROUGHOUT its 29 years, the Islamic Republic has puzzled, even baffled, observers. Its leaders proclaim peace and war in the same breath, and pretend to practise both democracy and theocracy. But lately the symptoms of schizophrenia have grown more pronounced.

Nor is it surprising that Iranians return the favour. America organised the coup against Mossadegh, supported the shah, helped Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war, invaded two of Iran's neighbours and imposes sanctions on Iran. The Iranian regime considers America an implacable foe and routinely denounces it, in political speeches and organised rituals such as those fiery Friday prayers, as the Great Satan or “the Global Arrogance”.

Iran took an American embassy hostage. It may have had a hand in the bombing of the American marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and it stands accused now of helping to kill American soldiers in Iraq. It is not surprising that many Americans consider Iran a bitter foe.

We have a long history with Iran

The Axis of Evil in a succinct package (Kim Jong Il, Khamenei, Saddam and George W.).

Geography

• Most is mountain or desert so uneven demographic distribution (70% of Iranians live in 30% of land in north and nw and in major cities);

• Climate: scarce precipitation and extreme temperature differences

10% of world total oil reserves; 2nd largest exporter of oil in OPEC and 4th largest producer in the world; oil reserves concentrated along Persian gulf in south and Caspian Sea in north

Nov 15 2006 News Conference in Tehran

Shi’a Sunni Split

• Split soon after Islam begins over question of who should be caliph—Shiites think only heirs of prophet.

• messianic belief that a “hidden Imam” will return at the end of time and restore a just order (makes world politics in some ways irrelevant or even . . . anathema. . . To the faith)

• Means they extend only provisional legitimacy to rulers who will let Islamic institutions flourish

•Clergy paly a more central role in Shiism•Clergy stand in collectively for the hidden Imam

•Over centuries play a role like that of the Christian priesthood in pre-modern Europe or the Confucian mandarins in China; sut, compared to Confucian mandarins, Shiite clerics are much more hostile to power holders and held more independence

RELIGIOUS FERVOR: An Iranian Shiite prays for the return of the Mahdi in Jamkaran Mosque.

Shiite tradition shapes Iranian state

• Central principle is: velayat-e faqih, or rule by Islamic jurists developed by __________

• Justified revolution: Whereas a monarchy was a usurpation of God’s rule on earth, a system of government by cle______ trained in Islamic jurisprudence would be a continuation of the political system first established by the Prophet Mohammed.

• Since such a form of government was the only regime consistent with the will of god, s_________forms, such as that of the Shah, should be overthrown.

• As such, the Iranian constitution and political institutions are an attempt to express God’s will rather than instruments of human will –the point of the republic in to guide the people toward Allah, not to serve the individual or mediate between diverse interests

• The idea: Shiite Clergy have a divine right to rule since they interpret god’s will

Shiite Muslims make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population. They were brutally repressed by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government. Their leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is rarely seen in public.

FYI because inquiring minds always want to know

•Authoritarianism•Persian •Shiite•No direct colonization

HEAR OUR PRAYER: Iranian Shiites pray outside the Jamkaran Mosque near Iran's holy city of Qom, where the Mahdi - the Shiite equivalent of the Christian Messiah - is supposed to answer prayers until his return.

Historical traditions

Ayatollahs Aside, Iranians Jump for Joy at Spring NYT 3/20/06

Ayatollahs Aside, Iranians Jump for Joy at Spring NYT 3/20/06After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the ruling ayatollahs sought to stamp out many traditions, like Nowruz, a celebration with some Zoroastrian links that stretches back thousands of years to the pre-Islamic era, to mark the arrival of spring. The celebration is considered by many here the most Iranian of holidays.The ayatollahs tried, and failed.

Now, nearly three decades later, some people say the increasingly enthusiastic embrace of Nowruz and other ancient traditions represents a resistance against the country's more conservative religious rulers. Like most conflicts in a society as complex and layered as this one, the contemporary story of Nowruz is not one-sided or exclusively about resistance. It is also about accommodation. While Iran's religious leaders have followed a policy of confrontation with the West over their nation's nuclear program, they have, however grudgingly, ceded to the public's insistence on retaining, even bolstering, traditions not founded in Shiism.

While it was the reformist government of former President Mohammad Khatami that decided to establish parks to hold the fire-jumping festivities, for example, the practice was continued this year after the election of the ideologically conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

That Iran's religious leaders have accepted Nowruz, and other prerevolution traditions like Chahar Shanbeh Suri, also demonstrates a growing degree of stability, as the country's leadership has tried to reconcile the bookends of Iranian national identity — faith and culture, experts here said

Revelers in Tehran gathering around a small bonfire in a holiday ritual that leads up to the Iranian New Year

Mar 20, 2004 Persian New Year

•Jump over a bonfire for “Chahr-Shanbeh Souri” on Tuesday, March 15, 2011, at Persian Center, 2029 Durant Avenue in Berkeley from 6-10pm to shake off the darkness of winter and welcome the lightness of spring. This is a free, family-friendly, non-alcoholic event held outdoors on Durant Avenue.•Inside the Persian Center, a traditional altar holds green grass, live goldfish, food and other items representative of spring called the “haftseen” or seven ‘s’s as each item on the table begins with the letter ‘s’

•A Persian ritual passed down since ancient Zoroastrian times, the Persian New Year Festival, called Chahar-Shanbeh Souri, literally means ‘Eve of Wednesday” because the festival is always held on the last Tuesday of winter, just before the Vernal Equinox or first moment of spring

CULTURE BLEND Islamic strictures met Persian love of pleasure in a Tehran shop in 2005 when a head scarf was pulled back to show some hair

early 1970's, as the price of oil continued its upward climb, a rising gap forms between the rich and the poor.

Urban poor (esp recent rural urban migrants) wanted the basic Shi'a Islamic lifestyle to return, and oppose Shah's efforts for modernism and progress, which they believed to be western dominated, imperialism. They see the Shah's reforms as self-serving and his promise of providing "progress" to be false

1979 Revolution BackgroundCoalition forms: Urban Poor

1979 Revolution Background Coalition forms: Middle Class

moderate middle class (want political freedoms) Even many of the pro-western middle class became increasingly angered by the regime's cronyism, internal corruption, and repressive nature and use of the secret police.

1979 Revolution Background Coalition forms: leftist opposition

Includes communists Many in West thought would win

bazaar merchants had established networks and could bring economy to a stop

1979 Revolution Background Coalition forms: Bazaar merchants

The bazaar (Persian; Arabic, suq; Turkish, çarşi), traditional marketplace located in the old quarters in a Middle Eastern city, has long been the central marketplace and crafts center, the primary arena, together with the mosque, of extrafamilial sociability, and the embodiment of the traditional Islamic urban lifestyle. Merchants and commercial trade are esteemed in Islamic civilization

They were the moral focus point—They had solid centralized organization, communication networks, good orators, financial independence, mobilizing networks (mosques, Islamic foundations etc), popular slogans, legit from years of opposition to Shah

1979 Revolution Background Coalition forms: Clergy

the “vanguard party”

Massive Street Demonstrations in 1978 and 1979

Ayatollah Khomeni returns from exile and urges mass demonstration

Many cities were placed under martial law. It was too late. People poured to the streets to defy the Shah.

Soldiers were ordered to shoot. They did, and according to the opposition, more than 600 people were killed in Zhaleh Square alone. This day (September 8 1978) became known as the Black Friday and that square's name was changed to the Square of Martyrs. Only incites more to rebel.

Iran occupied a strategic place in U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, acting as an island of stability, and a buffer against Soviet penetration into the region

Offends many in Iran

Shah turns to the US

The Iranian Shah meeting with Alfred Atherton, William Sullivan, Cyrus Vance, President Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1977

Ahmadindjad?

Iran victor 'kidnap role' probehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4636955.stm

February 14 1979 : Marxist students temporarily seized control of the US Embassy in Tehran. Khomeini denounced the takeover, and forced their retreat

November 4 the embassy stormed a second time, taking _____-six hostages—these students were followers of __________and inspired by the belief that the US was preparing a counter-revolution that would restore the monarchy, akin to Operation _______in 1953.

The hostage crisis continue s for 444 days, generating frustration and a deep animosity in the US toward Iran, while serving as a source of revolutionary pride for many Iranians.

In April 1980 President ___________approved a military operation to rescue the hostages, —disaster after an air crash en route to Tehran killed eight servicemen. Only after Carter had been defeated by _________in the 1980 elections did Khomeini agree to allow the hostages to leave. To this day, the US does not have formal diplomatic relations with Iran.

The US Embassy Hostage Crisis

Soon the army refuses to support the shah and he falls

The Iranian Revolution transformed Iran from a pro-western constitutional monarchy, under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to an Islamic, populist theocratic republic under the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

REGIME CHANGE

But . . . The regime change was a process

Importance of the 1979 Revolution

First revolution in which the dominate ideology was r__________and the leadership cadres were cl_____ instead of secular, lay individuals (a revolution led by religion, financed by the bazaar merchants and fought by the urban poor)

Importance of the 1979 Revolution

it is the most popular since China, in terms of the masses

But in contrast, it is the only modern one in which peasants and guerrilla warfare were marginal—by and large it was an urban event

Importance of the 1979 Revolution

first to create a th______—and combine it with de______

most revolutions are directed against church and state-the Iranian rev was directed only against the state

Importance of the Revolution/Anti-Western sentiment continues

NYT Dec 20, 2005: Iranian's Oratory Reflects Devotion to '79 Revolution

Rather than focusing so much attention on the president, the West needs to learn that in Iran, what matters is ideology — Islamic revolutionary ideology, according to politicians and political analysts here.

Nearly 30 years after the shah fell in a popular revolt, Iran’s supreme leader also holds title of guardian of the revolution. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s power stems not from his office per se, but from the refusal of his patron, Ayatollah Khamenei, and some hard-line leaders, to move beyond Iran’s revolutionary identity, which makes full relations with the West impossible

In the heart of "Tehrangeles," as Iranians everywhere call their largest exile community.

Effect: “Brain Drain”

In Comparison to other Revolutions

Khomeini/Mao/Lenin similar all revolutionary organizers, personality cultIran after 79 had the same foreign policy issues as the soviets—“socialism in

one country” or permanent rev.Clerics play a similar role to the vanguard partySimilar to cult rev to purge enemies from the university –red vs. expertLike the French rev –a moderate coalition gives way to more ideological

factions

a period following the 1979 Rev where the academia of Iran was purged of Western and non-Islamic influences to bring it in line with Shia Islam

Directed by the Cultural Revolutionary Headquarters and later by the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, the revolution initially closed universities for three years (1980-1983)

after reopening banned many books and purged thousands of students and lecturers from the schools.

The cultural revolution involved a certain amount of violence in taking over the university campuses since higher education in Iran at the time was dominated by leftists forces opposed to Ayatollah Khomeini's vision of theocracy and they resisted Khomeiniist control at many universities.

The Cultural Revolution (1980-1987) (in Persian: فرهنگی (انقالب

Marjane’s parents to smuggle in an Iron Maiden poster from Turkey into Iran in the early 1980s, when the Iranian “cultural revolution” was in its most virulent stage. Everything Western was banned, including rock music.

TEHRAN, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular professors from Iranian universities, the IRNA news agency reported.

“Today, students have the right to strongly criticize their president for the continued presence of liberal and secular professors in the country’s universities, he told a group of young conservatives on National Youth Day, according to the news agency.

Mr. Ahmadinejad said the work to replace secular professors had started, but “bringing change is very difficult.” “Our educational system has been affected by 150 years of secular thought and has raised thousands of people who hold Ph.D.’s,” he said. “Changing this system is not easy and we have to do it together.”Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments appeared to be part of a continuing crackdown on social and political freedoms that began with his election last year.

As part of the crackdown, about 110,000 illegal satellite dishes have been confiscated in the past five months, one senior official, Ahmad Roozbehani, was quoted in the news media as saying. Opposition channels that broadcast mostly out of the United States have a large audience in Iran.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s call to rid the universities of secular professors is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution of 1980 to 1987, the period after the 1979 Islamic Revolution when many liberal or Western professors were fired or forced to conform to the revolutionary

Iranian Leader Wants Purge of Liberals From UniversitiesSeptember 6, 2006

Set into motion by _______ _____________ its stated goal was to enforce socialism in the country by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society, and to impose ______ist orthodoxy within the Party. The revolution marked the return of _____ ___________to a position of absolute power after the failed Great Leap Forward. The movement politically paralyzed the country and significantly affected the country economically and socially.

Remember China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976

Chinese propaganda poster: "Destroy the old world; Forge the new world." A worker (or possibly Red Guard) crushes the crucifix, Buddha, and classical Chinese texts with his hammer; 1967.

Conservative policies cracking down on civil liberties

Nikahang, a leading cartoonist and blogger, published an interesting cartoon in his blog and in Rooz online about what many call the second Cultural Revolution

2007 Comp question: Explain two similarities in the goals of the Great Proletarian Revolution in China and the Cultural Revolution in Iran

The focus of the question is on goals and not on process or outcomes.The Cultural Revolution in Iran is not the Islamic Revolution; it is the revolution that follows.

Acceptable similarities may include:Cleansing of Western values/anti-capitalism Revising education Purging political enemies Reinforcing political legitimacy Purging educational institutionsAffirming revolutionary ideals/values promoting ideological conformityRepressing dissent Attacking intelligentsia/middle class Discrediting the past/old order elevating the status of the leader/cult of personality

Unacceptable answer include:• Equivalence between Red Guards and student mobilization in Iran; student

radicalization; closing the universities; making countries stronger; taking of U.S. hostages.

• Economics; regime change; describing what a revolution does (change government).

The Ayatollah Khomeini