Letter From Iran – by ROBERT DREYFUSS
This article appeared in the May 19, 2008 edition of The Nation.

Across the street from the sprawling shrine to Fatima al-Masumeh,
the revered sister of Imam Reza, the eighth Shiite imam, a group of
campaign workers on a rooftop are busy unfurling wall-sized election
posters for a conservative candidate in Iran’s March parliamentary
election. We’re in downtown Qom, a city of 1 million about 100 miles
southwest of Tehran. Qom is Iran’s religious capital, the wellspring
for a host of fundamentalist clerics who’ve ruled Iran since 1979,
and it is an eerie place. Unlike some other cities in Iran, where
urban professionals, merchants and the middle class try to push back
against onerous restrictions on freedom of expression and women’s
dress, there’s little evidence of that in Qom. Women are cloaked
head to toe in black garments, and turbaned mullahs on motorbikes
are a common sight.

Under a brilliant blue sky, mourners are lining up to enter the
shrine and pay their respects to Fatima, whose remains are entombed
inside an Oz-like green-mirrored vault. Among the mourners, in
formation behind a green banner, are a phalanx of grim-faced,
muscled militiamen, members of the Basij corps, wearing black T-
shirts and black headbands. The Basij is an estimated million-strong
volunteer paramilitary force that serves as an adjunct to the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and in 2005 the Basijis voted en
bloc to help elect hard-line Mahmoud Ahmadinejad president.

I’m standing in the inner courtyard of the shrine, a vast public
space surrounded by vaulted enclaves, towering minarets and
spectacular entrance halls bedecked in blue, green and gold tiles.
With me is Muhammad Legenhausen, 55, a New York-born, ex-Catholic
professor of philosophy who converted to Shiism, changed his name
from Gary and moved to Iran in the 1980s. Legenhausen tells me he
teaches philosophy at four universities and institutions in Qom. At
the powerful Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, he also
serves as an aide to Ayatollah M.T. Mesbah-Yazdi, who is widely seen
as the chief backer of President Ahmadinejad and who has even been
mentioned as a possible successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as
Iran’s next Supreme Leader.

It’s true, says Legenhausen, that Mesbah-Yazdi was the power behind
Ahmadinejad’s 2005 candidacy. “He was concerned that the reformers
had opened things up too far,” Legenhausen says, with an odd twinkle
in his eye, in his distinct New York-accented English. “On that, he
agrees with Ahmadinejad 100 percent.” But how, I ask, can you work
for someone who supports a conference to deny the Jewish Holocaust?
“Oh, that!” he says. “When we heard about that, Mesbah-Yazdi and I
just rolled our eyes. That was all Ahmadinejad’s doing. We said to
each other, ‘What can you do?’” He shrugs, as if to imply that this
was just Ahmadinejad being Ahmadinejad.

To understand where the power in Iran lies–and where the money goes-
- it’s enough to glance at the gleaming new headquarters of the Dar
al-Hadith Research Institute in Qom. Astride one of the main
approaches to the city, the Dar al-Hadith, which translates roughly
into “house of Islamic traditions,” is an imposing orange-yellow
edifice with blue and green decorative tiles under a yellow tiled
dome. It stands in sharp contrast to the dilapidated buildings that
crowd the downtowns of many Iranian cities. Inside the Dar, a
bustling staff of clerics and researchers, working in modernistic
surroundings and aided by computers and a vast library, spend their
time assembling and reassembling the medieval opinions of Muslim
scholars, compiling them into compendiums that are published in
Farsi, Urdu and Arabic.It’s a labor of love.

In a large, well-appointed conference room, the head of Dar al-
Hadith holds forth for visitors. He’s an impressive man,
nicknamed “the scary ayatollah.” Slim and balding, with a gray-
flecked beard, Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri wears rimless
glasses with thick lenses under a white turban. In the early ’80s he
was one of Iran’s first ministers of intelligence, a post in which
he developed a reputation for brutal acts of repression and summary
executions. Today he is the head of a major shrine foundation in
Tehran and a member of the Assembly of Experts, which selects the
Supreme Leader. Surrounded by a dozen staffers, including six
mullahs, he says without irony, “Islam is the religion of logic,
ethics and justice.”

One of his jobs in Iran is to oversee the hajj, the pilgrimage to
Mecca that is the duty of all devout Muslims. Under his supervision
Iranians visit not only Mecca but Najaf and Karbala, the Shiite holy
cities in Iraq. He is frank about Iranian support for the Baghdad
regime. “You must be aware that the government in Iraq is a
government supported by us,” he says. Given that tens of thousands
of Iranian pilgrims visit Iraq each month, in a migration overseen
by a former intelligence minister, it’s not unlikely that some of
them, at least, are on official business.

Reyshahri makes his exit, but later, over a lunch of kabobs, yogurt
and rice, I find myself engaged in a vigorous political discussion
with one of his aides, a mullah named Mohammad Mahdavi. Portly and
grandfatherly, with a white turban, Mahdavi is a well-connected
senior cleric, a hojatolislam (a rank below ayatollah), who not long
ago turned down a job as deputy foreign minister. How, I ask, can
Reyshahri talk about justice when the regime sends the Guard onto
the campus of Tehran University to throw protesting students out of
the dormitory windows to their death? When assassins are sent to
hack liberal politicians like Darioush Forouhar and his wife to
death in their beds? “There are conspiracies,” he says,
unfazed. “There are spies. So, of course, sometimes we have to take
strong measures against the protesters.” He justifies such actions
by citing reports that the United States is trying to break up Iran,
to provoke separatist movements in Kurdistan, Baluchistan and the
oil-rich Arab province of Khuzestan in southwest Iran, though the
evidence of such covert US activity is mixed at best.

I ask Mahdavi why the regime doesn’t allow reformists, secular
parties or the left to organize and run for office freely. “People
who go into Parliament must swear allegiance to the Constitution,
and that requires that they support Islam. They do not. If they say
they do, they are lying. Should we send liars to Parliament?” We
send liars to Congress all the time, I reply, and he laughs,
adding, “For myself, I would allow all of them to run. Why not? If
they ran, well–” He wipes his palms together. You mean they
wouldn’t get any votes? “Exactly,” he replies. “But you must
understand. Our people are very religious. If we did that, there
would be big protests by the people. They would ask, ‘Why are you
letting these people run?’”

Ahmadinejad’<wbr>s election was the first step by Iran’s hard-line clergy
to uproot the reform movement in Iran. The other shoe dropped on
March 14, when hard-liners consolidated their control in
parliamentary elections, ensuring the ultraconservatives near-total
control of all three branches of government: the presidency, the
judiciary (which is controlled directly by the Supreme Leader) and
the Parliament. From the start, the election was rigged in favor of
the right. Two thousand candidates were disqualified from running.
Liberal and secular parties, and those who don’t accept the premise
of a clergy-run Islamic Republic, have been banned outright for
years. Harsh restrictions were placed on those who did run. And
candidates who managed to get approval got the nod so late that they
were unable to gain any traction.

Not surprisingly, under such conditions many Iranians are not
enthusiastic about voting. Although in 2008 overall turnout was 60
percent, in Tehran it was far lower, just 30 percent, and in runoff
elections only 26 percent showed up. Many who did go to the polls
went only because the regime stamps Iranians’ ID cards when they
vote, and those who fail to vote can find it impossible to be hired
as, say, teachers or other state employees. From dozens of
discussions with ordinary Iranians–in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and
Kashan–it is clear that most Iranians are disenchanted with the
clerical regime.

First, though, a word about talking with Iranians. I’ve come to Iran
as a journalist, part of a small delegation from the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, an interfaith peace organization founded in 1914.
The delegation is hosted by the Center for Interreligious Dialogue,
an Iranian government organization whose staff says that it
is “linked to the office of the Supreme Leader.” When I engage
Iranians by myself, whether through random encounters or in
prearranged meetings, people want to talk. When they find out I’m an
American, they tell their stories with enthusiasm. But whenever I’m
accompanied by a minder, in the form of an official from the Center
for Interreligious Dialogue, an oppressive chill descends and people
clam up.

In almost every conversation, Iranians’ attitudes toward the regime
of the mullahs range from sullen tolerance to bitter hostility. In
the Tehran bazaar, two young men who sell carpets want to talk
politics. “Do you know the mullahs?” one asks. “We hate them. They
are stupid.” And they both laugh. In Shiraz, the historic and
beautiful city of poets in the south, I have dinner with four women
and three men, ranging in age from 20 to 40. Mehri, one of the
women, is a dentist in her late 30s. Earlier that day, we’d met at
Persepolis, where the breathtaking ruins of the palaces of Darius,
Xerxes and Cyrus the Great lie sparkling in the intense sunlight,
and I’d invited her and her friends for dinner. “We had such hopes
for [the previous reformist president, Mohammad] Khatami,” says
Mehri. “But you see what happened. The regime killed everything. Now
we don’t know what is better to do: do we vote for the reformers,
even though we know they can’t do anything? Or do we stay home and
not vote at all?”

On a hiking trail in the snow-covered mountains north of Tehran,
Hirad, a young notary public, complains about how hard it is to get
a job and–in a complaint I hear repeatedly–how hard it is to meet
women in the face of severe harassment by the morality olice. “This
regime is terrible,” he says. Suddenly he notices the bearded man in
a blue blazer who’s been assigned to accompany our group this
morning. The two men shake hands and exchange greetings, and then
Hirad and I walk quickly away. He glances over his shoulder. With
contempt, he spits on the ground. “Fucking beard!” he says, lashing
out at the symbol of loyalty to the Islamic Republic.

A few days later I have a chance to ask a top Iranian official about
public disenchantment with the regime. M. Hossein Saffar-Haramdi,
minister of culture and Islamic guidance, has an easy manner and a
ready grin, and looks like a carbon copy of Ahmadinejad: wiry, with
a short, neatly trimmed beard. It’s his job to enforce Islamic
discipline on the media, the arts and other forms of public
expression. “The solution to the problems of the world,” he says
earnestly, “is to move closer to religion.” A layman and former
deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Saffar-Haramdi served
for ten years as chief of the guard’s political bureau. Asked why he
forcibly closes newspapers, he is defiant. “Any press activity that
would disturb the fabric of society or create some sort of
disruption, the law must be applied,” he says. “The press is free,
as long as it does not start insulting political personalities and
religious beliefs.”

Unlike the frown-faced, fire-and-brimstone mullahs cast in the mold
of the scowling Ayatollah Khomeini, Mohammad Khatami seems gentle
and avuncular, and when he was elected president in 1997 he embodied
the hopes of Iranians who longed for a thaw in Iran’s frozen
politics. But he ran afoul of the hard-liners, including Khamenei,
the Guardian Council and the courts, and his efforts at reform were
stymied. Conservatives like Mesbah-Yazdi, along with the
Revolutionary Guard and the Basij, mobilized against him, and in
three successive elections–parliamentary elections in 2004, the
presidential election in 2005 (won by Ahmadinejad) and the March
parliamentary election–the Islamic rightists won big.

Today, sitting in a high-ceilinged room at the International Center
for Dialogue Among Civilizations, which he founded in 1999, Khatami
appears relaxed and confident. He’s sitting cross-legged in a black
turban and black robe, sporting penny loafers, wearing a turquoise
ring. I ask him to reflect on his eight years as president, about
what went wrong and where to go from here, and he laughs. “That
answer calls for a two- or three-hour meeting!” he says. He makes it
clear that despite everything, he is either unwilling or unable to
challenge the regime directly. “We are reformists,” he ays. “Reform
takes place within the system, not against the system. Once you go
outside the system, then it is a revolution you seek.” He is willing
to work for incremental gains. “The path we have chosen is the right
path,” he says. “I am not pessimistic.”

Khatami hopes for better relations with the United States, but he
leaves no doubt that the Bush Administration destroyed any
possibility of rapprochement. “During my tenure, many steps were
taken to eradicate misunderstandings. I believe the Clinton
Administration did not object to these efforts. But I am sorry to
say that certain forces were opposed. When Bush came into power,
everything was turned upside down. When the Iran of the Khatami era
is branded as the axis of evil, despite the fact that Iran’s
cooperation was the most important factor in America’s success in
Afghanistan [in 2001], these misunderstandings become more powerful.”
A few seats away, nodding in agreement, is Sadegh Kharazi, the
former deputy foreign minister who is now an aide to Khatami. Five
years ago, Kharazi helped write a secret offer to cooperate with the
Bush Administration on a broad range of issues, from Israel and
terrorism to Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, but the offer was
rebuffed.

The campus of Iran’s foreign ministry, stately and tree-lined, is an
oasis amid the noisy, traffic-clogged streets of Tehran. Inside, I
meet Ali Akbar Rezaie, the director of the section of the ministry
that deals with the United States. “We don’t have relations with
your government, but ironically we are the busiest department in the
ministry,” he says. Rezaie oversees a staff of ten people, including
six who specialize in American affairs, and he works closely with
the ministry’s in-house think tank, the Institute for Political and
International Studies. I ask Rezaie about Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei’s recent comment that he could envision a time when Iran
and the United States renew ties. Rezaie says that among Iran’s
political elite, a debate is raging about whether and how to seek
better relations with the United States. “The significance of
[Khamenei's] statement is that at a high level the debate is a live
one, and it’s very important. It’s not ideological, and it’s not
based on imperatives from the top.”

But the United States is sending conflicting and contradictory
signals, he says, combining bellicose rhetoric and a push for
sanctions against Iran with less hostile actions, such as the
December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which said Iran had
halted its nuclear weapons program nearly five years ago. “It’s
confusing for many of us here,” he says. “We don’t see honesty from
the US side. They are just looking to diminish our power, our role,
our influence in the region.” Whether the United States seeks a
rapprochement with Iran or continues to be hostile, America’s goal
of hegemony in the Persian Gulf will not alter. “It doesn’t matter
if you have cooperation or confrontation. In both ways they are
trying to diminish us. Confront us or embrace us, it’s the same
goal.”

Over at the think tank, Dr. Sayed Kazem Sajjadpour is worried.
They’re watching the US election campaign carefully, he says, and
they’re worried that the White House might escalate tensions with
Iran in order to create a climate of confrontation that could
benefit John McCain. “We’re concerned that the United States will be
harsh against Iran in order to facilitate votes for the Republican
candidate, who will seek to profit over tension with Iran,” he
says. “The Republicans are likely to use the issue of Iran to divert
attention from other problems.”

Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is the author of
Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist
Islam (Metropolitan).

At least 400 dissidents, activists and intellectuals--a number far larger than previously reported–were murdered in Iran during a wave of officially sanctioned, government death-squad activity that ended in 1999, according to Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Prize-winning human rights lawyer who is currently on a speaking tour in the United States. But Ebadi insists that US threats against Iran and rhetoric about regime change could make things worse, giving Iran’s leaders an excuse to intensify repression.

In an interview with The Nation, Ebadi said that she has documentation for one-third of those killings, and that information about the rest comes from the personal testimony of a man who admitted his role in the November 1998 murders of Darioush and Parvaneh Forouhar, who were hacked to pieces in their Tehran home. The Forouhars, critics of the Iranian regime, were part of the coalition that supported Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, the nationalist leader who was toppled by a CIA-backed coup d’état in 1953.

Ebadi, a Tehran-based attorney and former judge who has battled the government over human-rights abuses for years, says that what she calls the pattern of “chain murders” has halted since then. But she warns that the human-rights situation in Iran remains grave. On April 2, Ebadi herself received an anonymous threat in a letter delivered to her office that read: “Your death is near.”

Chillingly, she said that Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, the minister of intelligence under whose authority the hundreds of murders were carried out, was never punished–merely shifted to another top position. Today, Dorri-Najafabadi is the head of Iran’s Supreme Administrative Court. “For years I’ve been receiving threats, either on the phone or in written form,” she says. “Those who write me these letters oppose my opinions and my mentality, and they want to threaten and intimidate me.”

Ebadi is not intimidated, and she continues to represent dissidents and others caught up in the labyrinthine Iranian court system. But she warns that threats and bellicose rhetoric from American leaders and politicians is not helping matters. “The most important thing is not to militarily attack Iran, or to threaten to attack Iran militarily,” she says. “Even the language of some of the candidates in the United States threatens Iran.”

In addition, Ebadi is highly critical of the Bush Administration’s efforts to promote democracy in Iran, particularly the creation of a multimillion-dollar fund to assist Iranian activists. “When the United States says that it has allocated $70 million for democracy in Iran, whoever speaks about democracy in Iran will be accused of having accepted part of that money, and of being on the US side,” she says. “It gives Iran an excuse for what it does.” All credible Iranian activists have refused to accept American funding, and most of the money has been funneled into radio broadcasts and other US propaganda.

Ebadi also dismisses the notion that economic sanctions will affect Iran’s behavior. “Sanctions damage the interests of the people, and they’re not going to topple the government of Iran, because the government has a lot of income from the price of oil because the price is so high.” The only sort of sanctions she is willing to support are direct, political sanctions that target Iran’s leaders, from those involved in the Iranian nuclear program to the country’s highest officials. Such sanctions, she suggests, could restrict these officials’ travel abroad and could order the seizure of privately held assets. In addition, Ebadi believes, the world’s countries could collectively shun the Iranian state. “What I mean is that all the countries of the world should reduce or lower the level of their political relations with Iran, so that they convince Iran to improve the situation of human rights. This was you can isolate the government of Iran without really damaging the people,” she says.

But the best course is one of dialogue. “The political sanctions should be used as a last resort,” she says. “Dialogue has to take place at three levels: at the level of people and civil society, among members of parliament of both countries, and by heads of government of both countries. And negotiations have to be direct and public.”

Within Iran, support for the regime is sagging, says Ebadi. Though opinion polls can be unreliable, she cites recent election numbers to tell the story. “When [reformist President] Khatami was elected to the presidency, he got 22 million votes. But when Ahmadinejad was elected…he only got 14 million votes. Do these numbers speak to you?” In fact, millions of Iranians boycotted the elections, which were widely seen as fraudulent.

The 2005 election of Ahmadinejad and the March, 2008, parliamentary elections gave near-total control to hardliners in Iran, and Ebadi is not hopeful that the pendulum will swing back quickly, especially without concerted international efforts. “When we speak about reform, we are speaking about the gradual improvement of society,” she says. “If something changes overnight, then that is called revolution, it is not called reform. And I think that the time for revolution has passed. So we need to speak about gradual change.” Originally published in www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/dreyfuss

Lynda Howland of Pittsford traveled to Iran recently as part of the Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation along with singer/songwriter Ed Hale of the rock group Transcendence, Larry Beinhart of the Wag the Dog movie and Fog Facts book, and foreign affairs journalist Robert Dreyfuss.

The roots of distrust between the US and Iran were sown by several twentieth-century events. In 1953, the US overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, putting an end to their fledgling democracy. The US installed the Shah, supporting his brutal regime for 25 more years. In 1979, the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah, and students took hostages in the US Embassy. In 1980 Iraq invaded Iran, and the US sold chemical materials to Iraq, which were used to kill tens of thousands of Iranians. In 1998, the US shot down an Iran Air commercial flight, killing 290. Deep resentments and suspicions remain on both sides.

In 2003, Iran presented an offer (through the Swiss Embassy) to President Bush for comprehensive negotiations on all issues, including recognition of Israel, support of Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iran’s nuclear program. Bush did not give Iran the courtesy of a reply, and reprimanded the Swiss for delivering the offer. Bush continues to rebuff other Iranian offers for negotiations. Even after acknowledging the significance of Iran’s help in overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush made his Axis of Evil speech.

We negotiated with Libya and North Korea. Why not Iran? Because Iran is the last stumbling block to US control of the Middle East. As US economic power wanes and its “moral” leadership is severely compromised, it is relying on military power to “protect American interests” around the world. Control of Middle East resources is essential to this goal. What means are we willing to use to achieve this goal? As we “conveniently” blame Iran for Iraqi resistance to US occupation a US fleet is stationed in the Persian Gulf, prepared to unleash the terror of nuclear weapons on Iran, a non-nuclear nation that has no history of invading other countries. US special-operations teams are waging a covert war within Iran to destabilize it. Would we tolerate such actions against us?

I recently traveled to Iran with a Fellowship of Reconciliation peace delegation. We met with religious and governmental leaders, including ex-president Khatami. Their messages were similar: “If there are to be constructive negotiations, the “demonizing” on both sides must end, and the US must treat Iran as an equal partner and respect its sovereignty. Sanctions, threats of attack and regime change, and intimidation are the tools the US has used in its dealings with Iran. These do not constitute “negotiations.” They are condescending, and meant to humiliate and bring Iran to its knees.”

The hostile rhetoric of the US has a very negative impact on the reform movement within Iran, alienating even Iranians who oppose their government, and hardening the position of conservatives. The arrogance shown by the US administration can only incite more violence and extremism throughout the Middle East. Iran views nuclear power as a symbol of independence and progress. Their present peaceful nuclear program is legal, and neither the National Intelligence Estimate nor the United Nation’s IAEA has found evidence that Iran intends to begin a nuclear weapons program. Still, the world is justified in being concerned about Iran and other nations developing nuclear weapons. Likewise, we should be concerned about the existing nuclear weapons of nine other countries, including Israel and the US (the only country to use nuclear weapons). Five additional countries are enriching uranium. As we passed the Natanz nuclear power plant, guarded by a few anti-aircraft guns, I thought about the carpet maker, the geology teacher, the seven insightful young Iranian professionals with whom we shared a vibrant conversation, the smiling school children who surrounded us wherever we went in nearby Esfahan. If the US bombs Natanz, they could all die.

Their lives depend on Americans opposing an attack on Iran and supporting a peaceful negotiated solution to our differences. Iran is no match for a nation that spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. As our government attempts to increase our fear of Iran with misleading rhetoric, and make it into our next enemy, we must protest the buildup to the destruction of yet another country.