On democracy and Iran

Anthony Itodo

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2001

In several quarters, democracy is perceived as a system of government that enables people to freely choose an effective, honest, transparent and accountable government. It is further considered as an ideal system that “aims to protect and promote the dignity and fundamental rights of individuals; instill social justice and foster economic and social development”, (Jerry Ghana, 2005) .

By facilitating dialogue, debate, and consultations, democracies also contribute to political stability, providing open space for political opposition to express views on national issues. (Jerry Gana, 2005) . Most scholars would agree that there are about five essential ingredients or core values of democracy, namely:

1. The right of the people to freely choose their governments in periodic but free and fair elections.
2. The right to freedom of association, especially in forming political parties;
3. The right to freedom of expression, especially freedom of speech and press freedom.
4. The primacy of the rule of law and independence of the judiciary; and
5. The commitment to transparency and accountability of governments to the people.

Iran is no doubt an emerging democracy and a central challenge for deepening democracy in the republic is how to effectively build the key institutions of democratic governance. A study of the political structure however indicates ample presence of these institutions on paper as depicted by: an independent electoral system, adequate separation of powers that should limit the powers of the President and even the Supreme Leader and an effective civilian control over the military and other security forces. However a thorough study of the political structure of Iran indicates theocratic governance, with the Supreme Leader, who is not elected by popular votes by the way, superseding everything. Another obvious dubiousness in Iran’s ‘democracy’ is the absence of well-functioning political parties (as there have been restrictions over the years to party formations), the absence of a free, vibrant and independent media with strong dedication to professional ethics as media outlets are basically state-owned and regulated and the absence of a vibrant civil society, able to monitor government policies and to provide alternative forms of political participation.

Iran’s political structure: democracy or theocracy?

The schematic below adequately captures Iran’s political structure, indicating an ideal separation of powers. Looking at this alone, one would be tempted to think Iran operates a true democracy. A study of the character of these bodies that govern Iran however proves the contrary. From the above structure, the people only have a say in the election of the President, members of parliament and Assembly of Experts. However, candidates for these elective offices must pass the vetting of the highly theocratic council of Guardians, who are to ensure that anyone who is not ‘Islamic’ enough does not stand for election. This in itself is a huge blow on the concept of democracy. Thus, via the mechanism of the Guardian Council, only those who are confirmed Islamic hard-liners and usually conservatives are allowed to contest in the first place, thus denying any prospect for change from the ballot process.
A further dent on Iran’s democratic credentials is the fact that the Supreme Leader, who is a religious leader, is the most powerful authority. He is responsible for appointing members of the Judicial Council and 6 out of the 12 members of the Guardian Council.

The president is elected for four years and can serve no more than two consecutive terms. He is constitutionally the executive head of the country responsible for enforcing the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is also the second highest ranking official in the country, next to the Supreme Leader. Presidential powers are however, circumscribed by the clerics and conservatives in Iran’s power structure, and by the authority of the Supreme Leader.
The Supreme Leader controls the armed forces and makes decisions on security, defense and major foreign policy issues. He is appointed by an Assembly of 86 Experts who are all Islamic clerics elected by the electorate for 8-year terms and are saddled with the responsibility of monitoring the Supreme Leader and also empowered to remove him if they find him incapable, though such a ‘vulgar’ thing as one commentator put it “has never been discussed in Iran”.
The Guardian Council regarded as the most influential body in Iran consists of six theologians appointed by the Supreme Leader and the other six lay members are appointed by the Judicial Council, which in turn are appointed by the Supreme Leader. The Guardian Council vets all candidates for elected offices. Members of the Guardian Council however must be ratified by the parliament.

290 members make up the Majlis, or parliament. They are elected for four year terms and have the power to introduce and pass laws, as well as to summon and impeach ministers or the president. However, all Majlis bills have to be approved by the conservative Guardian Council.
Iran’s judiciary has always been infiltrated with political influence. The judiciary ensures that the Islamic laws under the Sharia system are enforced and defines legal policy.
The Expediency Council is an advisory body for the Supreme Leader with an ultimate adjudicating power in disputes over legislation between the parliament and the Guardian Council. The Supreme Leader appoints its members, who are prominent religious, social and political figures.
After all has been said and done, the very essence of Iran’s political structure is an impediment to true democracy. In practicality, Iran operates a theocracy. With the machinery of the Guardian Council who vet candidates for elective offices as a major tool to promote the continuance of an Islamic State through a bunch of theocrats (who are saddled with people’s destinies squarely on the grounds of their scholarship in Islamic law), and the concentration of powers in the Supreme Leader who can be likened to the pope in medieval Christian communities, it would be petty to chase the office of the President for democratic change .

Iran 2009 presidential elections and the aftermath

Iran’s last presidential elections took place on 12 June 2009. Participation from the electorate at the elections was high compared to the elections of 2005 (around 80% of the eligible population in 2009 vs. 60% in 2005), indicative of a desire from the electorate that had hitherto been disheartened to see change.
On June 13, 2009, Ahmadinejad the incumbent president from 2005 was announced the winner with a landslide victory of 62.63% of the votes. The announced results seemed to be shocking to both the opposition and the electorate, thus sparking popular consensus of perceived mass rigging and fraud that ultimately resulted in protests.
The official results were rejected by all three opposition candidates, on the grounds of electoral manipulation and rigging, a controversy consistent with past elections, only perceived to have a larger dimension in 2009.
Protests against the election results started in major cities in Iran and around the world on June 13, 2009. To cut news circulation of the events in Iran to the outer world, the regime banned foreign news agencies, with only state-owned agencies allowed to transmit ‘tailored’ news. The internet was choked off, Mousavi’s (the major opposition candidate) newspaper was shut down and his website blocked. Other papers published under censorship from the regime, satellite channels where disrupted with jamming signals, most leaders of the reformist parties were arrested and demonstrations declared illegal . Individuals were however, able to transmit news to the world by uploading images and videos through mobile phones on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, thus exposing Iran to the world in the face of the regime’s clampdown on the press.

As is consistent with emerging democracies and autocratic regimes, the Police and the Basij, a paramilitary group in Iran suppressed both peaceful demonstrations and rioting using batons, pepper spray, sticks and, in some cases, firearms. The protests and the consequent repression through force by the government resulted in the death of scores of Iranians with several others injured and imprisoned.
In spite of public outcry against the results and in the face of a “muted” international community, on 5 August, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for his second term as President of Iran in an official inauguration in Tehran.

Prospect of change for Iran: lessons from the 2009 elections and the political structure

The 2009 elections and the aftermath indicate the growing disillusionment of Iranians with respect to their democracy. Widespread protests against perceived fraud indicate an awakening from indifference to a consciousness that cannot be ignored for too long. I am however not deceived that cracking the nut of attaining true democracy in Iran is no easy task. The political structure effectively shields the prospect of change via the ballot. With the country practically ruled by an ‘unelected’ Supreme Leader under religious rather than secular laws, the chances of a reformist smuggling into the political structure is slim, let alone attaining sensitive positions like the Presidency. A pointer to the difficulty in the task ahead is the Supreme Leader’s endorsement of the president-elect in the face of public protest.
It is also clear, the extent to which the regime will go in maintaining the status quo, as evidenced in the use of force to suppress protests and the banning of all ‘unfavorable’ media outlets. The vetting process used by the Guardian Council for candidates for elective offices require aspirants to the ardent Islamists who will maintain the theocratic nature of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Thus, even if there is a prospect of any change via elections, it would not be in the mold of secularism of the western form of governance that reformists Iranians would want to see.

The best we can thus hope for is another Islamist president that would be less ‘conservative’ and that may be a lesser evil but in the end, will fall short of true democracy. The political system needs an overhaul and I really do not see it starting from within the political structure. I envision a change from outside, a change from the grassroots, from the streets, from the soul of Iran itself. A change emanating from little whispers, little speeches, little tweets, little Facebook posts, little enlightenments, little empowerments, little actions, little reactions; all portent fuels as historical revolutions have shown…a change from an ‘angry’ and active Civil Society.

Instigating democratic change: a civil society perspective

Smith (2009) notes “the justification of state sovereignty cannot rest on its own presumptive legitimacy. Instead it must be derived from the individuals whose rights are to be protected from sovereign oppression or intrusion and from their right to a safe sovereign framework, in which they can enforce their autonomy and pursue their interests” The political and otherwise oppression of Iranians by the present theocracy violates the autonomy and integrity of its subjects and thus forfeit its moral claim to full sovereignty.
Civil societies are often populated by organizations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-based organizations, professional organizations, trade unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups .
The Civil Society, a collection of the above named entities, while not part of the mainstream political structure can itself constitute the soul for democratic change through action. They are organizations in direct touch with the people, owned by the people, shaped by the people and thus can be an effective force in our revolution for a true democratic Iran. The bottom line of seeking change via civil society is predicated on the fact that “no government can lead a people without their consent…at least not for long”.
Civil society however needs to develop political elements to facilitate better awareness and a more informed citizenry, who would in turn make better voting choices, participate in politics and hold government more accountable as a result.

These organizations have often been considered micro-constitutions because they accustom participants to the formalities of democratic decision making. It is worthy to note that Iran seems one of the least likely places to search, for a civil society due to its theocratic regime, but a moral discourse of public sphere and civil society has existed and even intensified in the revolutionary era.

Education and empowerment at the grassroots

The enlightened members of civil society in Iran need to empower the masses through enlightenment. People need to know that disillusionment, which is exactly where the ruling theocracy would want to get the citizenry will only further the absence of democracy in Iran. An advantage that Iran has is that half its population are young people. The youth are an active agent of change and Iran has that. The formation of youth groups like focus groups at the local levels is an effective way to start this revolution. Young people can champion the cause of enlightening other youths and women in local areas. Let the people know there is a need for change, that life could be better than the status quo and that they have a say in forming the kind of democracy they desire.

Then… little noises that matter

Upon enlightenment, people need to express their discontent through whatever means possible. At every turn, show your disapproval for the status quo and sell the desire for a positive change. These are little ‘noises’ that find their way to the ruling class. History has shown time and again that no people can be effectively led without their cooperation and even autocratic leaders know that! In Nigeria until recently the ruling and dominant party operated with practical immunity. They could brag of winning elections even without the people’s mandate. But today the situation is changing. Little noises from several discontented citizens are effectively removing the party from power…they have lost public confidence and even violence cannot buy that back! Iranians can take that approach; soon even this theocracy will begin to doubt itself.

Social networks for change

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter can be an effective tool for change as witnessed during the post-2009 presidential elections in Iran. People were able to self-publish happenings in Iran in the face of the regime’s clampdown on the press. Iranians can form an effective collaboration on the internet. Several youth and focus groups at the grassroots can share progress reports on their activities towards empowerment and sensitization and encourage one another. Social networks and blogs can also be used to express discontent for the status quo. Soon the regime would realize through the internet that they are losing ground. It may sound naïve but even the worst autocrats become scared when they become aware that “people know their rights and are willing to have them enforced”. Iran’s theocracy needs to lose popularity and that loss has to be adequately expressed to the extent that the ruling theocrats know that ‘the people also know and are tired’. With this loss in popularity, holes can begin to emerge in Iran’s political structure for genuine democracy. Let us not forget that in a not so distant past, Iran actually had secular jurists handle its judiciary, prior to the 1979 revolution that formally made Iran an Islamic republic.

Ostracise at the local level

In Nigeria, in the era of the dominant party’s blatant impunity, the security agencies and thugs were used to influence election results and to repress the people during protests. The people took the approach of ostracizing these government ‘allies’ among them. Security agents and their families and political thugs were ostracized and derided at the local levels. Today the security agents are not willing to ‘side the government’. They take a stand with the people, who are their larger community. Iranians can adopt this approach. Show contempt for known members of the security agencies and ostracize them at the local level. With time they would become ‘unwilling’ to take orders that harm the larger community. If the regime loses the solidarity of this group, their stronghold is effectively weakened and they would be forced to the realization that “ultimate supremacy rests with the people”.

Conclusion

The widespread protests that accompanied Iran’s disputed 2009 Presidential elections are an indication of a growing discontent within the populace with Iran’s political status quo. The political structure which is effectively theocratic in nature is a huge impediment to the institutionalization of the genuine democracy that Iranians desire and deserve. The civil society can actively play a role towards facilitating democratic institutionalization by actively educating, enlightening and empowering people from the grassroots level. The people at these local levels can form groups that collaborate as focus groups, express their discontent at every given opportunity and effectively use social networks and the internet to articulate their activities and let the world and their government know ‘the time for Iran’s charade-democracy is up’. It is through this mechanism that Iran’s political structure will have any room for change that will in the end guarantee democratic change. Violent revolution, which is a last resort, can however only be effective through the active coordination of the civil society, using the template highlighted in this essay.

References

1- Gana, J. (2005). Concepts in democracy, good governance and development. Democracy and the Challenges of Development, p.5.
2- ibid
3- How Iran is ruled. BBC Website. Retrieved April 4, 2011 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8051750.stm

4- M. Hadi Sohrabi-Haghighat and Shorne Mansouri (2010). Where is my vote? ICT politics in the aftermath of Iran’s presidential elections. International Journal of Emerging Technology, 8(1), 28 – 29
5- 2009 – 2010 Iranian election protests. Wikipedia. Retrieved on April 5, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009–2010_Iranian_election_protests

6- Michael J. Smith (2009). Humanitarian intervention: an overview of the ethical issues. Ethics and International Affairs, p.79
7- Wikipedia. Civil Society. Retrieved April 5, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society
8- ibid
9- Elham Gheytanchi (2001 December). Civil society in Iran: politics of motherhood and the public sphere. International Sociology, 16(4), 557

Prospect of change in Iran

Kate M.

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2001

I

I remember that it was a very sunny day when I was walking through the streets of Teheran with my friend Parisa. It was December 2009 just a week before the Ashura demonstrations in Iran, not so long after the presidential elections. My friend was very emotional, commenting the political situation in Iran and hoping out loud for the return of the Green Movement together with the upcoming holy day. She was a young law student and an eager supporter of the opposition. I remember an Iranian taxi driver that was taking me to the Africa Expressway from the Friday Bazar who was complaining about his government and the way they deal with the economy. He didn’t care who is keeping the power in the country, he wanted to have a good salary for his job. I remember officials of Iranian institutions making a very mean allusion to their superiors. Demonstrations that followed after the elections were still alive in the Iranian people. They were keeping on discussing the situation in the country and hoping for a change. While listening to the sound of airplanes flying over Teheran during Ashura I wondered what should be done that this passion and will bring about real change that lets civil society to be built.

In 2009, Iran was to me something that I could feel rather than really understand. At that time, I would describe the atmosphere in Teheran as an “emotional mess”. Taking into account that nothing is more important in the process of change than people and their emotions, the word “mess” was not predicting good things. In her work “Concessions, repression, and political protest in the Iranian revolution” Karen Rasler points out: “If the value of the collective good is combined with a high expectation of success, people are likely to participate in mass actions” During election time both of mentioned factors seemed to be present. Two of Iran’s prominent politicians, very often considered as part of the regime, were enough strong to raise their voice against the ways of the power-keepers, on behalf of the collective good – of course. People who were fed up with the existing situation had found a common short-term aim and its representative – Mir Houssein Mousavi. But once election time was over, demonstrators were left with emotions but somehow without a reachable aim. And as time passed the representation was also often described as “well, not the best, but better than nothing”.

The Ashura events of 2009 were to me more about an expression of ‘protest’ against reality than about putting forward strong demands of change. It was clear that people “want” and “feel” something, but they are not sure what, how and who is really representing them. “Death to the dictator” does not solve the Iranian problems; footage of the bleeding body of Neda does not reflect them either. Emotions and the martyr culture take over from efficiency and real problems. My experience of Iran could be painted as I would touch its very sensitive, angry heart. I give this heart all its rights to be angry, of all the historical experience crossing the current period. Nevertheless emotions often blind the important, practical side of the story.
“Do you know that you cannot kill your dictator,” I said to my young Iranian friend Parisa. “Do you know that you have to find a good place for your mullahs in the democratic society that you want to create? Maybe also a place for socialists and maybe even a couple of seats for the monarchists. Do you know that to create positive change you cannot hate?“

“I understand, but it’s difficult,” she responded…

II

To understand the mechanisms of a possible change in Iran, its progress or its lacks the following division into two levels should be made: a) the psychological level and b) the sociological level (collective thinking). We could analyse this division in two dimensions: a) emigrated Iranians and b) Iranians inside the country. Aforementioned division should be approached when taking into account the role of the international community (officially recognized objects of the international law – countries and institutions) as well as the international community’s public sphere (NGOs + the social network community that apparently plays an important role).

The psychological level reveals that everything starts from the individual, specific mind of the single human being. That some limits have to be broken or crossed to bring a perspective of change. Because of their difficult historical background, Iranians carry their mind tied by fear, specious to themselves and quickly distrusting behaviours. Although this mechanism helps individuals to feel secure, it definitely does not help to build an honest exchange of thoughts and openness towards an other person’s way of thinking. This is especially deeply rooted among inhabitants of Iran where this kind of behaviour is just an understandable necessity. Nevertheless, it appears to be crucial to build positive trust and a healthy atmosphere. The language of expression could be changed – from against things into pro things. One can be “against the regime” but it could also be “pro democracy”. From a psychological point of view, this delicate difference in language makes a huge difference in the feeling that it produces. It doesn’t exclude anyone and anyone’s opinion and lets everyone feel safe, whatever they feel and think, because it’s pro, not against. This is just an example. The sun has to brighten the mind-set that got overwhelmed by pressure and ‘constant pretending’. Someone has to show full trust first and somehow pass it forward as in the domino effect.

This problem is extended to the sociological level and it distracts collective thinking. Particular political or social groups that represent different views and opinions are not united, not only in opinions, but also on the need for discussion. Anyhow there is a different situation for insiders and outsiders. Inside of Iran there is no space to have the discussion on political change, but I believe there is space to have a discussion on the economy and culture. From this angel, different groups should start clear and strong participations. A common platform should be launched for monarchists, socialists and supporters of the Green Movement to discuss economy, law and culture (neutral topics). An round table on those issues would already empower the voice of non-power keepers. In good faith, never against but pro things. In the existing circumstances active people should build a new system inside the current system, step by step. There is nothing that unites people more than doing things together. Whatever you do, keep on doing it continuously. The civil discussion groups could also be established on the local level among common people, who are not politically involved or socially active. It would also help to clarify for each group what their economical demands are and who stands on what. There is a need for giving people an example what participation and discussion can bring, that would create a habit of ‘being open’ and would show debate as a positive thing available for everyone. Avoiding sensitive topics could help the sociological exchange to last under pressure, though a habit of openness, clarifying objectives and expressing an opinion would be well-considered and rooted.

For emigrated Iranians this idea would be even more important. A lack of an efficient enough structure between the Iranian communities and good communication channels between different active centres (taking into account countries or areas of activities) weaken civil society building among the Persian society abroad.
Proceeding aforementioned changes could also help the international community to take its responsibility in giving supportive feedback. The international community should have clear documents of the particular representatives to give this feedback. If the opposition in Iran, or just particular groups of interest, are not consistent in their actions and statements and don’t produce regular documents on issues, then the international community has no anchor point for its reaction. Even reading breaking news (CNN, BBC) during particular events in Iran, it can be easily remarked that it is not even clear for the media what the actual opinions of the Iranian opposition leaders are and who is a leader and if it is real leadership. Lack of representative, serious statements, press releases (that are regularly sent to all important bodies), forums, and relatively legal documents and sustainable communication patterns make the international community feel confused.

Continuing on the international community aspect, the globalization process and the rising rule of tools as internet (social media especially) have created another actor of the global political system – international society. Apparently this society is also an audience for all political events, has its voice that is influencing all the levels of reality (psychologically – it can give support or not, it is encouraging individuals to take action and sociologically – it can build a network among groups, influence interactions between groups etc.) The international society can take many actions using its network and tools that influence global politics and traditional media. That’s why taking time to speak to this audience using professional tools and a prepared coherent strategy is an important task for the Iranian community.

At the end all this stages and areas should be structured into channels that can let communication flow efficiently and in sustainable way. In her work “Small Media for a Big Revolution: Iran” Annabelie Sreberny-Mohammadi indicates “the phenomena of the nature of traditional political culture in channels of communication opposed to the formal channels of communication of the state.” In the previous change that Iran made trough the Islamic Revolution (skipping the judgment of its result) this structure was built by mosques and bazarians inside of Iran. That was in fact a real network with a clear hierarchy that was not misunderstood and that’s why it was efficient. It is important for the progress of civil society and for democratic change in Iran now to build that structure. Society is culturally determined more than we often consider. It’s good to realise that and make a change that matches to patterns that feel safe for the majority of people. To give an example, there can be made the conclusion that German leadership in the European Union comes from the same ‘cultural-mind set’ as Nazism. In this case spirit of leadership has to take its place. It’s good if the way is peaceful. Concerning to the culture of Iran, spirit of nation has to be understood, accepted and packed into the modern shape. Communication channels should be built, this time based on other factors than Islamic Revolution’s one and strong enough to let discussion flow through and for its conclusions to be heard and remarked by all the levels and dimensions of reality.

What are the ways to bring about a democratic change in Iran?

Sahand Shahrabani

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2001

What is it that we are striving for? What is it the Persian people, full of bravery and passion for our brothers and sisters are desperately looking for? For years we have looked for political leadership that is capable of making competent decisions. We have already witnessed one revolution asking for a similar change in Persian political discourse. But that result certainly did not live up to our expectations. Certain factors led to the eventual dissatisfaction of the Khomeini regime. Many would concur that religion has led to quite a bit of societal incursions with, some would call it, the moral police. To change society for the betterment of our people, we must recognize our own beliefs and weaknesses first. Secondly, we must attend to the question of; what does it take to create a society which maintains an atmosphere acceptable to a new age of Persian politics. Monetary gains, freedom of the press, and most importantly free elections are what we are willing to risk our lives for. When a common folk risk their lives for something found so commonly in other societies, our political leaders must refresh their way of thinking. In a country where more than half of the population, 72%, is under the age of thirty, there is bound to be a moment where someone stands up and says enough is enough of ancient institutions that permeate unacceptable economic and societal policies. In order for a new page of our history to succeed, a new form of government must be selected. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the US constitution, he was aiming for a republic rather than a democracy. He felt that a democracy would provide too much freedom and in turn would infuse an overwhelming amount of power to the government. This is indeed is coming to fruition today with the mergers of certain intelligence departments.

The international community has placed itself far from clear support the revolutionary acts in Iran. Members of the Green movement have asked for the support of the Obama administration, but with little success. Countries mainly in Europe have announced their support for the revolution. What is stopping President Obama from throwing his full support of Persians attempting to overthrow a dictatorial regime? Some say it would be the United States’ rocky relationship with the Islamic Republic. One theory states that if Obama were to give his full support of the uprisings, then Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics would blame the United States for inciting the protests. In my respective opinion, I believe that the international community is quite smart and would not believe much, if anything at all of what the ruling class states considering statements they have made in the past. It is important to gain the attention of the United Nations so that they can establish a succinct opinion on the matter. With their attention at hand they can help the opposition overthrow the current regime and work to help establish a new, resolute, federal system of transparency that works in tangent with Western beliefs of political and economic freedom. Isn’t that what the United States and other countries holding similar political beliefs want? A working, cooperate relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran? However a social problem would come to the attention of future leaders that could possibly derail this movement. The influence of religion on the lower class and uneducated. In order to create a society in which the polis is living its day to day life living with a common thesis, it is to institute a new way of thinking in terms of political correctness, a way in which helps these people understand what it means to be free from a dictatorial regime. We are the masters of our fate and if we do not take advantage of this fact then we cannot help ourselves. What a new government must take care of is that they, quite clearly, should put the interest of the people first and that interest is economic prosperity and political freedom. To be able to make changes to the Persian political system, one must first understand it.

Iran is heavily influenced by a Shi’a theocracy. The overall political institution is marked by the 1979 constitution along with its 1989 amendment. Only one of its many problems, Iran is also represented by a president, parliament (Majilis), an Assembly of Experts, whom then select the Supreme Leader. With the advent of a new Persian government, there must be a complete overhaul in the way the system works. It must first be focused on the economic prosperity of Persian citizens. Proposed economic committees would take action to survey the ways and means of how to improve the situation, then would report back to the newly instituted interim leaders. Interim status would define the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. It would last for one year until the government can formulate a cohesive unit.

In a democracy, the prosperity of the national economy depends on the cooperation and productivity of all peoples. This means that whether or not you are extremely wealthy or unfortunately poor, each and every person is expected to contribute economic growth. To consider a form of economy that best takes the interest of the Persian people, we must work in conjunction with a multitude of Iran’s diverse community to find a rational economic formula. For instance, should Iran’s economy highlight the laissez-faire method which many countries already practice and work to emphasize the local farmer? Or should the new governement, emphasize the fact that thirty million people live under the poverty line. Certain factors in the current status of Iran’s economy is dominated by oil and gas as well as bonyads, or religious charitable trusts. These trusts have quite an influence in the economy, holding tight twenty percent of Iran’s GDP (Molavi). Issues concerning price modulation in terms of food and energy resources are an everpresent nuesance to the positive input. A secondary issue which does nothing to mitigate Iran’s economic problem, is that of the brain drain theory. This theory states that the respective countries’ educated population, that of obtaining college education, has left their country because of a lack of opportunity. This theory equated into having twenty-five percent of Persians dispersed the country (Finance and Development). The most common form of economic system would be the classical political economy. The classical political economy contains advantages that will help evaporate the negative atmosphere that resulted in the 2009 uprisings. If the Persian people want real change and want it now, we must formulate a decisive plan of attack and present it to the international community. This is the only way we will be successful. To achieve freedom is to achieve freewill, and freewill is the only way to actively live what one dreams of living.

Iranians your salvation is now

Ikujebi Babafemi Metimo Simon

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2001

A State is a self-governing political entity. A state is more than a government, governments change, but states endure. A state is the means of rule over a defined territory. It is comprised of an executive, a bureaucracy, courts and other institutions. But, above all, a state levies taxes and operates a military and police force.

A government is the body within an organization that has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations. Typically, the government refers to a civil government which can be local, national, or international. The concept of government has been around since humanity itself where hunter-gatherers would commonly establish tribes’ high authority and have unique ideals.

Theocracy in relation to this essay is a rule by some religious elite. In this form of government, taking Iran as an example, Allah is considered as the supreme civil ruler of the Nation, and it is the belief that, religious elite called the imams were the representative of Allah. With the entire government under the control of the ultimate supreme leader. The very structure of Iran’s government is built upon a foundation split by a power struggle between reformists and Islamic hard-liners. According to Iran’s constitution, its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, holds the majority of the power. Elected leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and members of parliament, hold much less authority.

After the June 12 presidential elections in Iran, confirmation of re-election of President Ahmedinejad by the Supreme Leader Khamenei and his rejection by the opposition groups and demonstrations by thousands on the streets of Tehran and other major cities, the Media have been spending hours per day presenting their observations and the analysis of the situation by many who are considered expert on the subject. But it does not present how the clerics so confidently exert power in suppressing the people and freedom and why the reformers and an overwhelming majority of Iranians are having so much difficulty in advancing their goal of democratization.

More than that a great majority of Iranians including the younger generation, desire to have a certain kind of open Islamic republic with freedom of speech, press and assembly. They don’t desire the Western style of capitalism but an equalitarian society where the wealth is equitably distributed among people, with full employment even if it may require lesser hours of work per week, free education up to the college level, free health care and old age benefits. They think with the intellectual, scientific and economic resources the country have, these aims are achievable. First of all what does democracy means? Democracy mean elections to choose leaders, and more than that a free press and an independent judiciary and transparent and responsive institutions that are accountable to all citizens and protect their interests and giving everyone a chance to fulfil their potential. Iranians should be free to choose laws and leaders; to share and access information, to speak, criticize, and debate, associate, and to love in the way that they choose. And they ought to be free to pursue the dignity that comes with self-improvement and their minds and their skills, to bring their goods to the marketplace, and participate in the process of innovation. Iranians ought to be free from the oppression of want; want of food, want of health, want of education, and want of equality in law.

In democracies, respecting rights isn’t a choice leaders make day by day; it is the reason they govern. Democracies protect and respect the views of the people. Exploring from the idealistic to the realistic, I will show the ways under the three underlined subheadings through which Iranians could move towards a stable democracy which they deserve.

The role and prospect of the civil society

The current democratic movement in Iran, which began after the rigged presidential election in June 2009, is a non violent movement that aims to rely on itself without asking for foreign help. The people involved in this movement believe that democracy is not a gift that can be received by others, but rather an internal effort of a people to emancipate itself from tyranny and realize its dream of justice, freedom and national sovereignty.

Moving down history lane, different dictatorial regimes exercise varying degrees of coercion on their people, and every society is segregated into different political, ethnic and economic groups. Each group has its particular interests and claims, which, more often than, conflict with those of another. But while these differences will continue to exist, democratic change may get ignited when people, cutting across group loyalties, come together in their belief that the best way to govern themselves and manage these conflicts is within the parameters of democratic formulae. The matter of how this change will happen and what shape it will take will be inevitably planned through vigorous political contention.

This essentially means that while it may not be possible to mark, or predict, or even imagine, the transition to democracy by a set of predetermined paths, nor define a set of conditions which, when met, will trigger the process to democracy, one thing is certain, the common factor in any such upheaval is the collective fight for rights, which can acquire forms ranging from simple petitions to protests to mass uprisings.

In protests and mass uprising, the Iranian movements should be spontaneous, amorphous, and should have no decisive leader or party at their helm, moreover the Iranian protestors should be united in their overriding objective. In the midst of protests, ideological discords and generational splits should be avoided by all means.

In addition, Iranians living abroad should make it a point of duty to support the fight in their home country. Thereby taking advantage of their freedom of speech and represent the Iranian population whose voice has been cut off, this will also serve as a source of motivation for the Iranians at home and will also help curb the suppression of information and the peoples cry. More than that, they can form a powerful and formidable force that fights the theocratic government of Iran from the external while the Iranians back at home fight from the internal and it is very difficult or almost impossible for the government to suppress or destroy the formation of Iranians in the Diaspora.

The influence of the political structure

The clerics understand that in order to avert violence and uprising, they must bring about some changes, but what people want, such as elimination of the social restrictions such as veil, appears to the clerics as going against the Islamic principle. They think, they cannot permit it even if they may want to.

From research, I personally discover that the threat to regional peace and Iranian democracy are the same: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC is not only the main body in charge of the Iranian nuclear program, but also is the most effective means for political suppression in the hands of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader and commander-in-chief. The Islamic Republic is nothing but an economic-religious-military complex that applies its coercive power not through political institutions but through a military and security apparatus under the direct supervision of Ayatollah Khamenei. His religious authority is contested by the clerical establishment. The only power base he has is within the military and security community of the country. Khamenei has lost much of his political and religious legitimacy, and without the military and especially the IRGC, he would have no real power.

Thus, the only way to change the system peacefully seems to be by constitutional amendment. This would help place the military and police under the executive branch with appropriate checks by the parliament, and bringing the judiciary under the justice department, thus curtailing the powers of the Guardian Council, granting the innocent people of Iran freedom of speech, government and privately owned press such news paper press etc. and assembly, eliminating some social Islamic restrictions. However, before any revolutionary intent, the good Iranian people should attempt to materialize the revision of the constitution through peaceful means. Revolution will come only when any progress would be deemed impossible.

The position and responsibility of international community

Jahangir Amuzegar, Finance Minister for the Shah in the pre-1979 government of Iran, once said and I quote: “The United States should refrain from both unsubstantiated accusations and implied threats against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Washington would be best served by letting the currently accelerating process of democratization run its course.” I discovered from my findings that the political activists who were involved in the Green movement do not expect any direct help from the United States or any other foreign power.

But a close look at the Iranian situation reveals that in this specific historical moment the interest of the international community and the democratic interests of Iranians are in confluence. To be sure, the focus of the international community is on the Iranian nuclear program, while the main preoccupation of the Iranian people is securing basic political and human rights and integrating the country into the international community. However, peace in the region and democracy in Iran now seem to be inseparable, because the same forces that threaten the peace are the same powers in Iran who threaten democracy and run the repressive machinery against the Iranian people.

I would think that if it implies allowing the indigenous democracy in Iran take root, the very active democratic movement in Iran take its own course; I think that’s a very wise choice. For me, I personally love Iranians and their country and strongly condemn any foreign invasion or military action; I strongly believe that Iran should be a democratic secular republic.

Furthermore, Iran’s leaders are afraid of any contact between Iranians and the outside world, the international community, including European countries and the United States, should facilitate the visa process for ordinary Iranian citizens so that they can readily travel abroad. Direct contact between Iranians and the rest of the world is an important tool for dismantling the regime’s propaganda against Western liberal democratic values, and is a major antidote to reactionary anti-Americanism and anti-Western sentiments. Khamenei cannot govern in an Iran opened to the world. He prefers to govern a large prison-like Iran in which Iranians are disconnected from the world outside.

Khamenei often expresses his belief that he is in a soft war with the West. For him, all new telecommunication, internet and satellite technology are Western tools to defeat him in this war. All bloggers, human rights and female activists, artists and writers, journalists and students, even clerics who criticize him are unpaid Western soldiers in this war. Even the teaching of humanities is a part of the Western soft-war arsenal, which is why he has suggested closing all university humanities departments. Therefore, another important step the West can take to help the democratic movement is to help Iranians connect with the outside world. Putting cracks in the wall of this prison, opening Iran to the world, would be a great help to the democratic movement in Iran.

The Iranian regime annually spends billions of dollars to jam TV and radio transmissions, filter the internet, censor all Western cultural products, listen in on phone conversations. Therefore the major internet companies in the West should work with activists to find ways to bypass Iran’s internet censors. Companies that provide Iran with the technology of surveillance and suppression, these companies should be named and shamed, consumers should shy away from these companies’ products, and governments of the international communities should urge these companies to reconsider their practices.

Iran should not be able to use modern technology for fundamentalist and totalitarian purposes. It is outrageous that Iranian state television is allowed to transmit on the EUTELSAT Hot bird satellites (run by France) when Iranian jamming of Hot bird satellites has been so powerful that other customers demanded that EUTELSAT kick the BBC and VOA off the satellites — which to its shame EUTELSAT did — before later adding these services back. Iran’s violation of its international commitments about not interfering with satellite transmissions should be vigorously pursued at the International Telecommunications Union. As a customer through its role with the VOA, the U.S. government should demand EUTELSAT throw Iranian state television off hot bird, not VOA. New measures and mechanisms are needed to stop Iran from breaking international law.

I also would advocate the lifting of embargoes. Why? Because I believe if today the hardliners control 80% of Iran’s economy, 80% of Iran’s economy is in the public sector and it’s the source of the power of the hardliners. If the embargo is lifted then Iran’s private sector will expand, I think this will undermine the control of the hardliners.

Democracy and peace can be achieved through weakening the military government in Tehran and pressuring the IRGC. The two parallel tracks; the international community’s effort for peace and the Iranian people’s democratic movement; naturally reinforce each other, because they fight with the same enemy. Therefore, the main mechanism for supporting the democratic movement in Iran is to target the financial and military capabilities of the IRGC. A more powerful IRGC will result in a more militarized government, and a more militarized government is more likely to militarize the nuclear program for dangerous purposes. The real change in Iran is not a formal shift in the facade of the political structure. The change happens when civilians who think of Iran’s national interest rather than ideological ambitions take power and push the fundamentalist military out of the economic and political spheres.

And finally the international community should make a distinction between human rights issues and democracy. The Iranian people need the international community’s support on human rights. Many officials who are involved in human rights abuses are affiliated with the IRGC and close to the team that runs the nuclear program. For example, General Mohammad Reza Naqdi is the commander of the Basij militia and also on the UN blacklist. Twelve years ago, he was convicted in a Tehran court to three months prison for his involvement in torture of prisoners. He was also involved in crackdowns on students during the student movement a decade ago. Human rights are abused mostly by IRGC and security officers involved in the nuclear program. Therefore, supporting human rights in Iran and pressuring its violators is not only a moral cause, but should be a strategic long-term policy for the United States. The Iranian people, under a democratic government, can be a reliable partner for building regional peace in the Middle East.

In conclusion, Iranians can get what they deserve, if they fight their fight to the finish, putting posterity into consideration.” There is never a time in the future to work out our salvation, the best time is now”.

New Persia

Ben B.

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2001

The once so mighty and grand empire of Persia is nowadays an authoritarian theocracy. The Islamic Republic Iran is being ruled by a single supreme ruler and a fraudulently so-called elected president and his cabinet.
With all its respect and splendour, Persia was as beautiful as it was powerful. Now it is controlled by a small group only interested in their own power.

The Iranian presidential election of 2009 has shown again how elections are forged to attempt to let a presidential candidate seem to be a legitimate winner, while in the background, the results of the election were already decided.
With the current revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011, citizens of Iran have rekindled hope for an own revolution. Demonstrations have reoccurred and strikes have been taking part in parts of the country.

Iran is not Tunisia, however. Iran is not Egypt, not Libya and not Yemen or Lebanon. Because of the complex power structure in Iran, Iran cannot have a liberating revolution like the revolutions seen in Tunisia and Egypt. Iran needs its own unique revolution.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is controlled in two ways: indoctrination and repression. A combination of fearlessness by indoctrination on one side and the fear of repression on the other side results in a steady control of pro-regime masses, however strong the opposition forces may be.

This is why I expect demonstrations similar to the demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt will not be as effective in Iran. Tunisia and Egypt lacked the degree of indoctrination a theocracy like the Islamic Republic of Iran has.
In order to start breaking down the Islamic regime in Iran, the indoctrination has to stop. The Islamic propaganda of the regime should be stopped at its core: the Guardian Council.

One thing the Supreme Leader does not want is division in the Guardian Council. As in any autocratic regime, the dictator depends on a small group of loyalists who form a wall to protect the dictator and delegate power in order to be relatively invulnerable to the outsiders. In Iran, the Guardian Council is a group that has control over many parts of the Islamic Republic. Unlike in a democracy, where the centre of the power is with the parliament, the Guardian Council is the most stable element in the structure of the Islamic Republic.

However, reform in Iran should come bottom up. It is important how the clerics and lawyers that enter the Guardian Council are appointed. It should be infiltrated by clerics and lawyers that want reform, but pretend to be loyal to the conservative establishment. An increasing amount of reformist members in the Guardian Council would leave the way open for legislators to introduce progressive laws that are usually vetoed by the Guardian Council.

By controlling the Guardian Council, the indoctrination of the Islamic Republic of Iran should decline. The Supreme Leader depends on the Guardian Council and the entire propaganda apparatus is controlled by its clerics. If indoctrination declines, ideological control over the people who stand with the existing regime should wane.

Next, the repression should end. With a controlled Guardian Council, laws can be passed to decrease resources to security forces. Bills to cut on the weapons budget, bills to decrease the amount of basij and bills to close down offices of security forces on strategic locations in order for opposition forces to be able to have the upper hand in a demonstration should realise that once a coordinated demonstration takes place, security forces are forced to flee and the regime is exposed.

However, this does not take care of the “double dictatorship” Iran has. An illegitimate President and a Supreme Leader that could take over make sure that the chain of command is quite solid.

This is why either Ahmadinejad should deliver on his words that governments should listen to their people and defect from Khamenei when the moment is right, or Ahmadinejad should be at the same place as Khamenei is when the regime is overthrown.

This is a process that could take several years. It would not be easy to have the right officials in the Guardian Council and it would not be easy to have bills passed that would favour change and the weakening of security forces. Nevertheless, demonstrations alone have proved insufficient, unlike in other parts of the region.

Iran needs a new beginning. If the core of the power of the Islamic Republic has been counter-corrupted, the construction of a new system can begin. A system that favours a free, secular and just Iran, without sharia law and without autocracy, but a system that listens to the free people of Iran.

This system should be safeguarded by the checks and balances a modern governmental system usually has. A bicameral system, with a house of the citizens and a house of the regions. Both should be democratically elected, but not at the same time. Any interference by religious institutions should be banned. The President should be Head of State, but has to have a symbolic role. The real power should lie in the house of the Persian citizens.

A new Persian constitution, that is compiled by a council that represents the entire breadth of the Persian population should be approved by referendum.

In fact, the opposition could start writing the first part of it now and show the general population how a New Persia would be. This would give the citizens of Iran a perspective on what they are missing out by being the victims of the terrible oppressive regime.

As mentioned before, it starts with countering indoctrination. An effective way of countering indoctrination is enlightenment. The free philosophy on what a New Persia would be, would wake up the minds that are sleeping. Living oppressed numbs the mind. Having others think for you disables the creativity of the own mind. It should be woken up by creative ideas, thinking about what Iran could be, the imagination that a child has before it grows up.

The Green Movement is well aware that the current situation is unacceptable. What the opposition still needs is an own government. There are several moderate presidential candidates that are the leaders of the opposition in the demonstrations, but this does not guarantee unity. The opposition should form a government within Iran and spread out. In this way, the opposition can be organised and at the same time have influence on the existing regime. It can train clerics and lawyers to infiltrate the Guardian Council, and it can train stronger forces to oppose the security forces of the Islamic Republic.

That is something that Iran could have in common with Libya. The council of the rebels creates an organised structure. The flexibility and unpredictability of demonstrations make it possible to defeat the rigidity of government forces. Once the opposition government is established, a smooth transition can take place when the Guardian Council is taken over, the security forces are weakened and both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are locked in.

The first place where I would imagine the opposition government to manifest would be the Kurdish region of Iran. Because of the Kurdish population, their loyalty to the government in Tehran is less than those of the middle of the country. Election results, as far as they are valid, show that those who voted for Mousavi were also particularly in the Kurdish region of Iran. Moreover, assistance from bordering regions would be possible.

To realise this assistance from bordering regions, not the United Nations but the European Union could have a role. The United Nations is too divided on Iran to be able to take decisive action to support the opposition in Iran. The European Union and its newly created External Action Service can build supplies through Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan including food, water, electricity as well as, if necessary, non-lethal weapons.

Combined with individual sanctions on those who are loyal to the Islamic Republic, the support of an opposition government within Iran would create a bubble for those who want a free Iran, a New Persia, to be secure in. Additionally, a secondary government near Pakistan should create a two-front approach and forces the Islamic Republic to spread its resources.

Only if the people of Iran themselves revolt, there can be hopes for a free New Persia. Direct interference from outside would make those loyal to the Islamic Republic more confident and the resistance by other countries greater. The European Union has to take a leading role in supporting and supplying an ‘alternative’ government in Iran, but not be part of it by itself.

This is a very extensive and far-reached goal, but probably the way to go, as local demonstrations, with the current government structure and forces will not hold long enough to topple the regime. It takes a quiet and organised revolution for a New Persia to emerge. It takes a village, a town, a region and finally a nation to bring freedom to Iran and restore the glory that the Persian people once had.

A Persian Proverb states: “Use your enemy’s hand to catch a snake.” Taking over the Islamic Republic cleric by cleric, lawyer by lawyer and region by region will weaken the regime and expand freedom to create a New Persia.

Evaluating The Danger of a Post-Islamic Dystopia:

An Iranian Secular Democracy Must promise to include all Iranian citizens, not only Persians

Arturo Desimone

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2011

“The sons of Adam are limbs of one another
Having been created of one essence

When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest” Saadiⁱ

Recently an informercial to spread awareness of the Green movement and defuse xenophobic prejudice was broadcast on US television. It featured influential American-Iranians such as celebrity comedian Maz Jobrani. The different personalities addressed the tv-audience, reaching out and deconstructing pre-fixed ideas an uninformed American might have about Iran. For example, different actors said “I am Jewish,” or “I am a Christian,” “I am Bahai,” “I am a Muslim, but all of us are Persians.” “We are the people of Cyrus, Xerxes, Zoroaster, we are an ancient civilization.”ⁱⁱ Shirin Ebadi, upon her acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Peace, announced her pride in descending as a daughter from the lines of Cyrus the Great” and Darius in Farsi “Kourosh” and “Darioush.” ⁱⁱⁱ

These efforts are well intended. They also can succeed somewhat in ameloriating the Western tendency to stereotype all Middle Easterners as identical to reactionary Muslims. Unfortunately the attempt seems to fall short as it is exclusionary. Of the Iranians who live under the Ayatollaist regime, and who often face persecution or oppression, the ethnic Persian population is not the majority. The difference between the names Iran and the sentimentally nostalgic and historically-conscious denomination “Persia” when referring to this geographical area, which is partly circumscribing West Asia (The “Middle East”) and Central Asia (the Khorasan region), is the following: Persia, denotes the Farsi culture. Persians, are the people whose first langauge and ethnic idiom is Persian, and who can identify as pertaining to the blood and soil of kings like Kourosh and Xerxes. It is predominantly this group who also identify with the related historical glorifications of this Persian pre-medieval antiquity.^iv Iran, preferred by the Shiite fundamentalist movement, supposedly is a “politically correct” term as it is meant to be less exclusive :than Persia”even though the word “Iran” explicitly means “land of the Aryans”^v

Aryans refers to those of the ethnic Indo-European culture of Persians, who speak one of the oldest surviving Indo-European languages, Farsi.

What of the budding Azeri population, who are identified as “Turkic” and comprise half the population? What of those non-Azeri falling under the denomination “Turkoman”? What of the Kurdish population—their language resembles Faarsi and they are formerly Zoroastrian like Azeris, yet are Semites whose country is Kurdistan. A sizable Arab minority inhabits West-Iran Iran has massive Armenian population. How are these identities to feel fully included in the struggle for democracy if a democratic movement in its advertising and PR seems as if it will only lend a voice to the victims who descend from the Persian civilization? They have not so far. The problem is multi-sided: Kurds, Turkoman, Arab and Baloch minorities in Iran all seem to express discontent and even have armed groups that clash with the current regime, albeit their guerilla antiquated communism and ethnonationalism is understandably unattractive to highly educated Iranians with liberal values living in political exile.^vi

Many Middle Eastern cultures throughout the world express indifference to the tragedies and struggles befalling the Persians because the former feel discriminated against by a kind of Iranian racism. ^vii

This is not only the situation throughout much of the Middle East, but also throughout immigrant communities in Western Europe and the US where the Green Movement has focused much of its lobbying and activism.

The greatest threat and problem that an Iranian movement for secular democracy might pose in future scenarios, is that the movement will compromise on principles in exchange for fraternal sentimentality. NOThis sentimentality would base itself on a very specific group feeling and experience, of being exiles of the intellectual classes who have a common Muslim oppressor as their enemy and the cause of their exile, and who endure xenophobia and islamophobia in the West which does not discern them from other Muslim immigrants despite that these exiles are often modernized, educated people who reject all Islamic dogmas. An Iranian pro-democracy revolution could let itself be seduced if they began to take pleasure in sentimental group feeling, and by conducting a modern Inquisition to exorcise the internalized stereotype and stigma most Iranians carry in the West of being hardcore Muslims, despite their struggle to affirm a rationalist orientation, modern way of life and non-Islamic Persian culture.^viii Many Iranians, as well as the children of first and second generation Persian refugees in Europe, have consistently encountered the fanatical Muslim stereotype . This hurtful shaming and discrimination has occupied generations who grew up in exile; they nonetheless form a large part of the bulk of the pro-democracy, secular movement. In most revolutions, from Latin America to East Asia, the coordinators are usually intellectual elites of the young who are brave and dedicated.

Exiled activists in the midst of revolutionary energy might make less time for picking apart the facets aspects of oppression that are to be tackled. The new revolutionaries should see their oppressor as more than a theocratic enemy as this analyses presents the problem of a standardized, inflexible response to the abusive Hezbollahi elite they confront.

What if after there were a successful anti-Hezbollahi revolution, and the new generation of revolutionaries then imposed, rather than merely a secular democracy, an anti-Islamic regime? There is arguably a difference between the two. The revolutionaries who were exiled by the Islamists previously in many cases had fought or suffered under the Shah, this memory still lives with most exile communities. Nonetheless the secular population of left-leaning Iranians often tolerantly, sentimentally expressed approval of the Islamic guerilla movement.

This can only be as a profession of critique and dissent against the Shah, whose new civilization embodied Italian-fascist style decadence as opposed to the austerity that idealistic, socialist and religious movements all tend to share as values despite other great differences. The Shah’s Iran was arguably an early neoliberal regime, advocating values of “tolerance,”  policies permitting porn and sex film industries, casinos, fashion runways–the lifestyles of such metropole centers as Miami, Amsterdam, New York, bourgeoisie. Beneath the neoliberal veneer was deliberate discrimination of dissidents and minorities and economic malfeasance.

Both the rabidly atheistic, Leninist-Marxist groups and the different Islamic utopian militias were staunchly puritanical in their outlook, despising licentiousness and civilizational immorality, hedonism, and superficiality which they identified as signals of the US-supported policies oppressing the economy and civil society of their countries. This history signals a historical tendency towards reaction in Iranian dissident politics.

A nightmarish end of the Iranian democratic movement would be a regime that has a new persecutory policy, merely shifting discrimination from one group to another. The Islamic regime emphasizes a lack of racism, because of the proverbial cliches that in Islam the “umma,” which is internationalist, is blind to nation and ethnicity. Both the first and last Supreme Leaders, Khomeini and Khameini, are ethnic Azeri.^ix The current fundamentalist government alleges that it systematically persecutes its victims on purely religious grounds. It emphasizes the need to abuse religious minorities like the Bahai. It broadcasts propaganda about a Zionist threat and Israel being a large military base rather than having normal institutions like schools for children. This creates a difficult situation for Iranian-Jewish communities, many of whom have dual citizenship harboring both Israeli and Iranian passports and basing their lives in the enemy-country of Israel. Israel might soon brutally invade Iran much to the horror of any Iranian be he pro- or anti- Islamist . The regime notoriously mistreats and stereotypes women, in a country where the strength and authority of the mother was traditionally a force to be reckoned with.^x It supposedly does not attack people for other, non-Koranic grounds.

So if an Armenian Christian family is bullied, it “must” be because they are Christians not because they are Armenian. If a Kurd is imprisoned it is for a reason other than Kurdish ethnicity—after all, Salah A Din the Muslim warrior was a Kurd. Unfortunately, it seems the dissident and exile communities have all internalized and imbibed this official propaganda of a regime they know has victimized them; namely that it is a regime of the Umma, the international borderless community of the Muslim Shia faithful.

This creates the danger that a secular democratic movement will busy itself too much with deconstruction of this official ethos or mentality of the Umma-doctrine, and get lost in the indulgences of identity politics.

Whereas the old regime persecuted Bahais and women, a new revolutionary government might concern itself with excluding Iranian Arab and Iranian Turkish populations. The grounds for such a new determination, is not because the only alternative to Islamism is Nationalism, as Islamic activists have steadily maintained.^xi Certain minorities, like Iranian Arabs, refugee communities in Iran, and the Turkish minorities, can be easily associated with the fallen sinister Hezbollahi establishment and then incriminated and stigmatized as having been collaborators, similar to how many Europeans were damaged for being falsely described as having “collaborated” with the German occupation more than other civilians after WW2^xii

Arabs are a vulnerable minority—after all, Arab Muslims must clearly be favored by the Islamic oligarchy in Tehran. Despite the Near Eastern political correctness and orthodoxy that Islam is a universal religion, its holy text is written in Arabic and untranslatable in terms of the validity of the divine message. Historically there have been many movements since Late Antiquity privleging Arab Muslims—usually regimes based in the Arabian peninsula—as closer to the Koran and therefore to God than Muslims of other origins.^xiii The elites in Tehran who are mostly non-Arab, of course, clearly privelege themselves. They now exalt some Arabs such as Palestinian refugees, but officially discriminate many Sunni Iranian Arabs brutally, supposedly not on the grounds of an Arab minority-ethnicity but solely on the grounds that Arabs are Sunni and the reigning oligarchy is Shi’a, the true religion and party of Ali.^xiv Nonetheless Iran’s current ruling elite maintains a sentimental association with Muslim Arabs as a special people of Islam. ^xv

The Islamists do so even if such identifications become stereotypes that are disadvantageous to these Arab minorities ^xvi

Azeris are also potential targets. The Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khameini—the latter who now has the blood of Moussavists on his hands—both share Azeri ethnic origin.^xvii This is of course a worst-case scenario as such policies could lead to a future situation of “Persian Apartheid” or, at worst, ethnic cleansing and civil war.

The more likely danger would be a secular democracy, founded by the exiled “talented tenth” of intellectuals but nonetheless enforcing policies that smack of nationalism or of enforced modernization and imposed secularist values. There are examples from history as to how this kind of emancipation effort can go wrong, such as the Greek revolution and the Jewish and Zionist emancipation movements^xviii as well as the policies implemented by the revolutionaries and often well-intentioned intellectual elites of the Soviet Union. One example from history is the Greek nationalist revolution against the Ottoman empire and its feudal regime.^xix

Many Iranian exiles who are dissident youth supporting the Green efforts are understandably bitter about theologies and are staunchly secular, to the extent that they will express emotional reactions, disguised as sober criticism, too quickly at the suggestion that someone else might believe in an anthropomorphic God. This mentality clearly results from the trauma of encountering an unbearable religious oppressor. Nonetheless a revolutionary has to come to terms with his traumas without a therapeutic problem coloring and distorting the aims and message of the public revolution. If a traumatized mentality is employed to make decisions while designing the new democratic order’s policies this can be disastrous. Too often this has been the case in the history of social struggles worldwide. The revolutionary must remember the lessons from his weighty personal history of private struggle, but he must react responsibly to the needs of his social reality in the present and not to sentiments about his past torments and grievances however important and profound this exodus to survive honorably has been in turning him to activism.

The effects of secular values imposed from above are well known and documented by the Soviet example. The tragic outcome resulted in dissidents like Solzhenitsin advocating for a return to Orthodox church sovereignty, anti-Jewish pogroms and feudalism in post-Perestroika Russia: senile propositions from an otherwise erudite writer. This clearly illustrates that for there to be progress in a situation like Iran, the dissenters have to take responsibility and stop the cycle of reaction.^xx

Appendix

Comparing the scenario of a successful Iranian revolution with the case of Israel and Jewish emancipation struggle

Another example is the collection of Jewish emancipation movements in 19^th century Europe, which sought to radically modernize and secularize the identity of Jews while gaining their civil rights. The courageous Jewish emancipation struggle culminated in the founding of the state of Israel, which claims to be both secular, a self-described “bastion of modernity” yet exclusively Jewish and whose principle of citizenship is Judaism instead of birthplace, a policy enforced at the expense of Palestinian Muslims and Christians. Many Iranians in the European exile community at times express sentimental curiosity for the history of Israel and Zionism. This curiosity and even admiration is a potentially good trait, but if it goes to the point of political simulation, it is dangerous—if not for the mere reason that today the Israeli Labor camp complains regularly that the greatest fear and threat for Israel, is not the Muslim enemy but that Israel will become a “Jewish Iran-style” regime taken over by rabbinates of the religious-nationalist communities.

For example, women of Israel’s left-of-center Meretz party chained themselves to the front steps of the Tel Aviv rabbinate to protest an Israeli rabbinical board’s decision to allow men to marry a second wife without divorcing the first, in accordance with Orthodox views of women. Rabbinical law generally determines and overlaps with civil laws surrounding marriage in Israel. While doing this civil disobedience their slogans were “I don’t want to be a prisoner” and “ Israel won’t be another Iran”^xxi

This futuristic scenario has weighed on the Israeli consciousness for decades, for example Israeli writer Benjamin Tammuz’s science fiction dystopian novel Jeremiah’s Inn, published on 1984, describes a society where the Knesset, the Labor-founded Israeli parliament, is abolished and replaced by a reinstated Sanhedrin who rule the new society with a brutal, totalitarian reinvention of Jewish religious law (in Judaism religious law is called halakha) In 1984 mainstream Israelis might have considered Tammuz an eccentric, but now the work of secular journalists working for mainstream newspapers might declare Jeremiah’s Inn his most socially relevant book. ^xxiiThis vulnerability to take-over by anti-secularist elements within their own citizenry was arguably a foreseeable danger that the policies of previous “Secular Zionist” administrations overlooked.

It is arguable that for a secular state and modernized society to establish itself and remain fucntion, it will often feel the need for a mythology or revert to a kind of politicized, state-mythology reflecting on their identity and emancipation quest, however far-fetched these mythical archetypes might be. In the example of Modern Greek revolution against Ottoman empire, Greek intellectuals revived a cult around the world of ancient Athens, Attic mythology and literature and its language. But the Greek revolution was liberating mostly Orthodox Christian peasants whose version of the Greek language was much closer to medieval Byzantium’s Greek—Byzantium’s capital now being Istanbul, capital of their Ottoman oppressor—and possessed little interest or consciousness in a forlorn ancient past glorified mostly by the Western sympathizers of the Greek revolt. Most nationalist revolutions, whether left-leaning and modernist, or right wing or even fascist, seem to follow the Renaissance stipulated model of skipping over the Middle Ages of their people’s history and instead glorifying a re-imagined antiquity they must exalt and imitate. The Middle Ages for Reinassance and later influenced ideologies like Romantic Nationalism is a “dark ages,” a tabula rasa or blank slate when the nation’s identity did not exist and people lived in static ignorance and oppression.^xxiii

It seems the case of Iran’s revolutionaries are no exception, when they typify all that is Shia and fundamentalistic as barbaric and “dark ages” (i.e. medieval) yet glorify a pagan antiquity and its symbols, like the Ahura Mazda, an ikon of a winged Zoroastrian emperor that youth often wear on amulets. Cyrus, defeated by Alexander the Great is remembered in our history as one of the few worthy opponents to Alexander (whose names in the Muslim world are Iskandar and Dhul Karnain and who appears in the Koran) Zoroaster, romanticized in Occidental literature as the Zarathustra of Nietzsche and other amateur orientalists, was a religious prophet, similar to Moses or Mohammed. Darioush and Kourosh (Darius and Cyrus) were great military generals and aristocratic rulers similar to the West’s Ceasars. Recalling such antique ikonology in order to craft a new mythology for the wave of political, determined and ideologically committed rulers to use once the Islamist State mythology referring to the Shia Party of Ali is finally abolished, can lead to a great confusion among the people who thought they were participating in or supporting a lucid, rational dissident movement.

Reinventing the suppressed antiquity can also imply a re-configuration of the currently championed Islamic symbols that the Iranian Muslim state manipulates to control their population’s minds. The memory of Iran’s medieval, Shia religious past might also undergo schools of revisionism under future secular governance, which might be from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum to the current Islamist biased revisionism but is nonetheless politicized and historically inaccurate.

In the academic field of contemporary religious studies, the growing consensus is that the religious or sectarian wars that overtook Europe after the Reformation were not merely wars motivated by clashing theologies. Arguably, religions became metaphors and symbolic devices for expression of emerging national identities and new socio-economic realities that Europeans living then did not understand, so they channeled these incentives through the language of religion during the infamously bloody post-Reformation years. ^xxiv
It is arguable to extend this view to modern Iran, suggesting the “religious persecution” that ruling elites there endorse, are actually partly motored by socio-economic forces and ethno-national identities who “need” to be suppressed. To say  all these interests and crimes are rooted in theology is a confusion that inadvertently services the Mullahs’ project of domination.^xxv

The factor of lobbying might have also colored the intentions of a noble movement: the Green movement focused its PR on marketing Persian culture in a palatable form to xenophobic Westerners: for this reason the pro-democracy movement spends a great deal of its time explaining that they are “Indo-European,” unlike Arabs who are “Semites,” and the Farsi Indo-European language is closely related to other, “Continental” European languages. Maz Jobrani the comedian, who is no racist and is very sympathetic to Arabs, Jews and other minorities in his literary and eloquent performances, still betrays a problem of Iranian exile PR in one of his famous sketches “Hey, America, the word Iran means Aryan, we speak Indo-European, so we’re white—we’re white, so stop shooting at us!” This aim of garnering white sympathies, though it is for moral causes of survival under oppression, will not work and if it does work the results can likely backfire into new misery for the Iranians.

The Death of Neda Agha-Soltan: Images, Mourning, Politics

Mikki Stelder

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2001

A Challenging Image

On the twentieth of June 2009, Neda Agha-Soltan is walking through the streets of Tehran, Iran. It is a day of protest. She merges into the crowd of people who protest against the elections and demand the removal of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Suddenly, Neda is lying on the ground, her legs are bent and two people kneel next to her to talk to her. Her face is motionless and her eyes are turned sideways. The people around her are putting their hands on her face and later on her chest to try and stop the bleeding. Screams are heard and people gather around her body. Blood flows from her eyes and ears, and the beforehand recognizable face looks mutilated. The person at her feet is filming, making a close-up of her face. The camera movements are uncontrolled and the resolution week.

After its appearance on social networks and international media, the video of the assassination of Neda initiated mass protest and performances of public mourning. It even received an honorable mention for extraordinary news value at the 2010 World Press Awards. The video crossed national borders and different people in different geopolitical locations acted on its behalf. Neda, or what Neda came to stand for, needed to be mourned and this happened in public and cross-culturally. The video inflamed the continuation of the protests, while simultaneously causing the imprisonment and murder of more protesters.

There is an image, a victim, a crime and a response, which focus on an intolerable reality for both the Iranian regime and Iranian citizens. This image crossed borders and in its crossing of borders became a dangerous image for the Iranian regime. This image becomes dangerous and important because it ruptures the distribution of the sensible. I take the distribution of the sensible from Jacques Rancière. He refers to the way modes of participation in society are determined by constructed modes of perception that distribute what can be said, heard, felt, and seen. It concerns the way in which we can relate ourselves to our senses, roles and relations that are policed to render us politically numb. This prevents the recognition of the construction of the social fabric that determines our subjection to the police. The video creates a rupture in how the viewer and protesters can see themselves in relation to the regime that determines what they can see, hear or feel; moving towards a dis-identification from that regime to redefine possibilities of interrelationality and solidarity. I argue that this rupture is established through a politics of aesthetics of the video. At the same time this notion of rupture becomes ambivalent through the reinforcement of a policing regime trying to maintain in power.

I am indebted to Rancière’s development of a politics of aesthetics, in which he situates dissensus as a politics/aesthetics that can rupture the distribution of the sensible. He argues that images can rupture a sensible field when oppositions between viewing and acting become blurred. We can only emancipate ourselves from the oppositional structure where looking implies passivity if “we understand that viewing is also an action that confirms or transforms this distribution of positions” (Rancière 2009a. 13). The idea of dissensus is crucial; it denies the logic of the passive spectator and becomes the place of the political subject. What it means to become a political subject, in this sense, is to challenge the distribution of a consensual sensible regime. This subject resists being situated within a given distribution of the sensible. It is thus a subject coming into being through dissensus. There is a need for dissensus as Rancière puts it:

To challenge the distribution of parts, places and competences by linking a particular wrong done to a specific group with the wrong done to anyone by the police distribution – the police’s denial of the capacity of anyone. This is what political dissensus means. A dissensus puts two worlds – two heterogeneous logics – on the same stage, in the same world. (Rancière 2009b. 11)

I argue that the video of Neda becomes a moment of dissensus and I want to examine the potential of images in rupturing a sensible through dissensus as a possibility for the ethical and political dimension of the image.

Images can re-conceptualize our thinking about the human and the way spectators relate to their sensible worlds, but at the same time disperse and homogenize populations. Images determine which bodies can become visible or are rendered invisible, but can simultaneously create a space for dissent as happened with the global and local responses to the video of Neda. This video will be a starting point to rethink an image that is both troublesome and inviting in relation to the disruption of the sensible through dissensus.

The video fostered the crossing of borders of a political struggle, inviting the spectator to an image of the human that reclaims the humanness of a life or a group of lives previously deprived of their humanity and only seen in relation to the Iranian regime. It is an image that claims a life as grievable and therefore liveable and worthy of protection, even in death. It is an image that is not negotiated in terms of its representational value, but can still, in its singularity become a cry for an ethics reaching beyond the singular and the specific, through association, and not anticipated effect. The case of Neda will be an experiment in trying to frame, but also critique this notion of an image that invites us to an ethical response that situates itself in acts of public mourning.

The question is: what is the specificity of this image in relation to Iran and the protests? An intolerable reality is being addressed that did not cross national borders through images before. It is this image that engaged people in the struggle for a different reality related to the Iranian people and not the regime. An intolerable reality is the oppressing distribution of a visual and physical realm and the constitution of a single spectacle in which there is a “clash between reality and appearance” (Rancière b. 84). In the case of Iran, every attempt to locate or voice the intolerability of this reality is negated by the violent attempt to establish appearance as only reality, maintaining a theocratic and totalitarian regime.

This video in relation to the viewers can be seen as an ethical demand of a body, a dying body and in that dying suddenly becoming human and in this becoming human almost becoming saint-like as an international emblem of resistance. The video ruptures the sensible reality through emphasizing the intolerability of that reality and making this intolerability recognizable.

On the other hand the video is an ambiguous image once we relate it to the responses that it received. Neda’s personal history begins to frame this image. She starts leading parallel lives; as an image and as a person. She becomes the symbol of the innocent victim, one who has never really been political; her only political act perhaps being that she practiced to become a singer in a country where artistic practices not in line with the regime are censored or prohibited. Her a-political status is emphasized and attributed to the argument that she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The video becomes the emblem of the protest movement and situated right in the middle of the struggle against the Iranian regime, but simultaneously an anchor point for the enforcement of that regime. This regime wants to eradicate the death of Neda immediately. The video, at the same time, makes the unrecognizable suddenly grievable; it becomes a political image precisely through the a-political status of the victim; it becomes a dangerous image and any expression of mourning a deed of political dissent; it becomes a body that is not allowed to be mourned, but whose call for mourning is stronger than its prohibition.

A popular explanation as to why this image fosters the responses that it did is the argument, “poor, innocent Neda, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Of course this argument is, in a sense, sustainable, but it is incomplete. This argument remains within what is expected of the viewer to think and anticipates the meaning of this video. It remains contingent to the spectacle that frames innocence and a-politicality as elements that determine what can be human, and therefore what can be grieved. It is a logic that only allows a space for public mourning through the creation of the innocent victim already outside the realm of what can become political. It is a reasoning that only points to the victim and diverts from the larger crime. This logic sustains the idea of a consensus in which innocence is a platform for mourning and bodies enacting political dissent are putting their lives at risk and they are responsible for their own death; as if they were asking for it. These kinds of bodies remain precisely that; bodies not worthy of protection and unlivable. But this argumentation does not suffice for this video. The fact that it inspired crossing border performances of public mourning and the way Neda’s face becomes inseparable from the protests, makes her the emblem of the Green Movement. Her innocence makes her political. The innocent is no longer the victim without a name. The video attests to the idea that its crude aesthetics shows dominant politics it has nothing to say. Or rather; the way Neda’s murder is filmed and the aesthetics of this video move beyond the dominant logic of both state and popular discourse.

The death of Neda has not been accounted for, though there is clearly no lack of visual proof. There is no law that makes sure justice is done or that would consider the injustice suffered. The Iranian regime’s response to this graphic murder is not to frame it as murder at all, trying everything in its power to prevent the death of Neda becoming a death. In the eyes of the regime she has never lived at all.

Although the video is an account of the protests and the violation of human rights, the regime attempts to eradicate any trace of this video by prohibiting any expression of public mourning. The regime tries to eradicate the death of Neda and therefore she has not lived at all (at the same time this video has concealed other deaths of other protesters). On the other hand, this image is a call for an ethical response to this image that situates the call for an ethical responsibility outside the dominant (visual) regime and in mourning. It is this constant tension between the visibility of injustice and the need for public mourning on the one hand, and its forceful eradication and the prohibition of mourning on the other that makes this video a difficult account. This leads to the following question: How can we talk about an image of the 2009 protests, especially a violent one and a rupture of the sensible through dissensus when the response of the regime to this image is to eradicate it and imprison anyone who shows expressions of mourning? In other words: How can we think dissensus as potential when censorship and violence will occur on its unintended behalf?

The video of this dying woman remains within the realm of the bearable, it makes people look and this act of looking becomes an emancipatory act. I understand this moment of emancipation as the “blurring of the boundary between those who act and those who look; between individuals and members of a collective body” (Rancière a. 19). This is where I situate the politics of this video. The becoming human, or becoming grievable fosters emancipation through the video. The unanticipated moment in which this image crosses national borders and sheds light on the harm done by the Iranian regime, creates a sense of interdependency. The becoming human and visible is exactly what makes this video problematic and dangerous in the eyes of the regime. Victims move out of the frame of collateral damage once they become human and grievable in the eyes of the viewer and the framing of the image.

It is important that the face of Neda becomes emblematic of the Green Revolution. Being confronted with this dying body moved people crossing borders without translation, but understanding why this happens with this video in contrast to thousands of other images of the violent protests, we need to move away from simple shock experienced regarding this dying body; divesting from the common presupposition that in encountering the suffering of others I experience anger. These affects, if felt or recognizable at all, do not necessarily motivate me to put my body on the line, or inspire me to mourn the lives that were deemed unrecognizable. We are nonetheless given the impression that we are made active in relation to this daily spectacle of horror, but it is precisely this fantasy that numbs us. Looking at the video of Neda, it is not only affect that motivates me to write about her death today. I put a question mark regarding affect as a point of departure towards a shared vulnerability and ethics. This is because of the concern that we are confronted with highly saturated images of violence everyday and it is not affect that activates me in relation to an image. Affect is often vulnerable and discursively implemented. It is not merely affect that can point to an ethics of images. It is one thing to feel outraged and another to actually reconsider your own position or take responsibility for the suffering of others.

It is because this notion of affect leaves the problem as to why this video motivated people to continue their struggle and inspired public and global mourning unresolved that I return to Rancière’s demand for an active ontology of images. An image should neither be contingent to the system it seeks to critique if it wants to inspire political action, nor should it anticipate meaning or effect. It is not enough to say that because we see an innocent girl dying we are motivated to mourn her life. The ability to even see ourselves in relation to her death is dependent on domination and subjection (Rancière 2009a 13). Why the video of Neda breaks out of this dominant representational regime is, partly, because it points to the intolerable conditions of filming. The bad quality of the mobile phone with which this video is recorded and the unstable recording give us a better understanding of the immensity of the protest and the danger involved in standing up to this intolerable reality.

It is not only Neda who we see dying. The politics of this video make it a difficult, but nonetheless ethical image. The way Neda’s face through association becomes the emblem of the protest movement and gives the protesters a face of their own is the political quality of this image. It is aesthetics trumping dominant politics. This video works through the figure of metonymy. The “political figure par excellence is metonymy” (Rancière b. 97). Neda becomes the part for the whole and in this process makes not only her death grievable, but creates a sense of interdependency. This rupture was noticed by the regime, which tried everything to prevent people to build an alternative sense of community through dissensus.
The video neither represents the events around the protests, nor emerges solely as a spectacle of horror. In the video, Neda is already shot in the chest. She does not move and the only movement we see is caused by the people around her. This motionless body is immediately a victim, framed outside the spectacle of horror seen in the regime’s and media response to the protests. The video displaces intolerability from the intolerable in the image, the dying body, to the intolerability of the reality behind the image. Through association and metonymy this image creates a sense of interdependency, inspiring public mourning. It becomes an emblem instead of remaining just another video. It becomes a metonymy for the suffering of many in its very singularity.

The Call of an Image

The video of Neda attests to the image’s potential of rupturing the sensible regime that imprisones us, revealing an ethical interdependency on one another. Crossing border performances of mourning attest to this. On the other hand, the violent response of the Iranian regime problematizes the notion of rupture through images, affect as the motor for political action and the potential of a notion of an ethical interdependency.
I do not deny the violence in and of this image, partially emerging after the call for public mourning. A call for justice emanating form this image is not a given and highly dependent on who has the power to refuse this call. An image is not immediately proof or testimony. Although the video ruptures the sensible regime, or structure of the social fabric, pointing to the intolerable reality of the Iranian regime, it is because of this image that the regime enforced its grip on citizens. There are multiple levels of association and dissociation at work that make this video such an ambiguous, problematic and challenging object. The video of Neda Agha Soltan unfolds how we can rethink the political value of images and aesthetics in relation to the creation of an ethical and political sense of community.

References

-Rancière, Jacques. 2009a. “The Emancipated Spectator.” The Emancipated Spectator.
London: Verso, 2009. Print.

-Rancière, Jacques. 2009b. “The Intolerable Image.” The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso, 2009. Print.

-Rancière, Jacques. 2009c. “The Aesthetic Dimension: Aesthetics, Politics, Knowledge.” Critical Inquiry. 36.1 (2009): 1-19.

The Political Praxis of Iran’s Green Movement

Mohammadbagher Forough and Ali Honari

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2011

Autors requested not publishing their article online because it is part of the dissertation that thay are each in the process of writing.

Iran: The Democratic Illusion

Why parliamentary democracy will not solve Iran’s problems (and is unlikely to be achieved anyway)

By Carsten Faber

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2011

1. Introduction: In Solidarity with the Iranian Freedom Movement

The felt necessity for a reappraisal of the Iranian freedom movement can itself be understood as the result of the Green Movement’s defeat in the aftermath of the rigged Iranian presidential election of June 2009. After the second half of 2009 had seen a period of massive street protests, the Green Movements did not have any means to oppose the ensuing violent crackdown of the regime against any form of protest or dissent. The recent de-facto imprisonment of the Green Movement’s leaders Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi marks the victory of the regime, at least in the short-term. Without adequate organization, political agenda or any link to social power, the remaining possibilities of the freedom movement possibilities are reduced to isolated street demonstrations of small groups of activists which have no prospect for instigating any regime change.

The defeat of the Iranian freedom movement requires a more fundamental analysis of the movement’s historical situation, its goals and its strategies. Such an analysis is essential not only for formulating the necessary goals of any movement confronting the Islamic Republic’s regime, but also for critically assessing the limits of its strategies. Without putting Iran’s current situation into the global and historical context, any analysis is bound to remain within the limited scope of an endless debate about conflicting strategic recipes for a political practice which itself might not have any perspective at all.

2. The Current Historical Situation: Capitalism’s Global Crisis

The current global situation is defined by the all-embracing crisis of the capitalist world economy. Capitalism, which came to be the prevalent mode of production in the 18th century in Europe, is based not on the production of material goods for specific human needs, but on the accumulation of capital. By carrying out socially productive labor, human laborers increase the abstract economic value of a given product. However, each laborer adds more value to the product than what she/he receives in the form of wages; the difference is the capitalist surplus value, which takes on the different forms of profits, interests, rents, dividends, etc.

In their quest for the production and realization of surplus value, the capitalist enterprises are in competition with each other. In order to increase profit and decrease production cost, they are forced to constantly reduce the working time needed for the production of their commodities to a minimum – i. e., to produce more commodities in a shorter time with less and less human laborers. While this technological progress could be a blessing for a self-conscious humanity, it turns out to be a bitter curse for humankind under capitalism: If capitalism does not find other ways to absorb the labor which became superfluous (e. g. through the development of new labor-intense products or through market expansion), these workers are permanently cast out of the production process, while, on the other hand, the quantity of surplus value, and therefore the quantity of profits, is diminishing, since the production of surplus value rests on human labor. This is exactly why Karl Marx calls capital “the moving contradiction”:

“Capital itself is the moving contradiction, in that it presses to reduce labor time to a minimum, while it posits labor time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labor time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition – question of life or death – for the necessary.” [1]

The current global crisis is a consequence of this dynamic. With the level of productiveness reached through the third industrial revolution – based on microelectronics and computer chips –, capitalism reaches its own historical limits. As Robert Kurz maintains,

“[...] the relationship between the elimination of living productive labor through scientific rationalization on one hand and the absorption of living productive labor through the process of capitalization on the other […] is irrevocably overturned: from now on inexorably more labor will be eliminated as can be absorbed.” [2].

In this context, the most notable characteristic of the 2008/2009 depression was that it showed the current state of the capitalist economy on a truly global scale. As just outlined, the cause cannot be attributed to financial speculation, even less to “irresponsible” financial speculation, but to the inner dynamic of capitalist production itself. This profound capitalist crisis is the general framework in which the situation of Iran must be considered.

3. From the General to the Particular: Iran’s Economic Crisis

Disregarding the Islamic regime’s pathetic propaganda, all analysts agree on the fact that Iran’s economy is highly non-competitive on a global scale: “The economy of Iran is in a deep recession, which has only been exacerbated by the recent round of sanctions.” [3] According to some analysts, “about 90 percent of Iran’s textile industries are on the verge of collapse” [4]. The actual unemployment figures are estimated between 17 and 20 % [5], the inflation rate is at 12.4 % [6] according to the Central Bank, but most likely higher. In many factories workers have not been paid wages for months (see e. g. [7]) and around 50 % of the urban population live under the poverty line [8].

It sounds rather strange that while Western economists have (mostly vainly) tried to understand phenomena like “jobless growth”, and while Western states have increasingly lost control over the economic and social situation, the economic problems in Iran on the other hand are usually understood as being caused only by the false and inefficient economic politics by the Iranian regime, or by its corruption and lack of transparency for investment. The truth is, however, that the current situation in Iran – as well as in the other Arab states which are experiencing social and political revolts – is induced by a global dynamic of the capitalist system in which those regions, which lacked the financial capital of the Western centers, are bound to fall behind as they cannot keep up with the pace of the automation and rationalization of the capitalist production process.

The current political developments in the Islamic Republic are more determined by this dynamic in which the state loses influence on the struggling economy, rather than by a simple reallocation of social wealth to the regime’s followers within an otherwise flourishing economy. The latter is often suggested when it is pointed out that a huge portion of the Iranian economy is transferred to the paramilitary Islamic Republic Guard Corps (IRGC). Kevan Harris maintains that this “pseudo-privatization” is in essence rather a “bureaucratic disintegration” than a “bureaucratic takeover”:

“Despite growing rumors of an impending IRGC monopoly over the economy, the reality of the situation seems to be quite different. The Iranian regime appears to be decentralizing its social and economic responsibilities, resembling a “subcontractor state.” Instead of a bureaucratic takeover, we are witnessing a bureaucratic disintegration. While this may not be the government’s intent, this transformation reveals a breakdown of its administrative capacity, as it becomes more willing to accept ad hoc, temporary solution to the country’s social and economic problems.” [9]

Adding to his critique of the one-dimensional theory of an “IRGC takeover”, Harris also notes that “the IRGC is just one of several significant state-linked players in Iran’s pseudo-privatized economy. Other power players include […] banks, investment conglomerates, and pension and healthcare funds in both the public and private sector.” The implementation of rigid economic politics, as has been demanded by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank from Iran for decades, would invariably lead to even further deterioration of the social situation, since it would first and foremost result in the cut of subsidies and the destruction of the “pseudo-private” welfare funds (the bonyads) described by Harris. Further, the cut of government subsidies to local businesses would lead to a massive devaluation of the Iranian companies, which would over night appear as what they are: inefficient and non-competitive.

Therefore, the proposed liberalization of Iran’s economic policy would bring the Iranian society “out of the frying pan and into the fire”, because it would in the first place result in a massive loss of (non-profitable) jobs. Only by increasing their global market shares, the remaining competitive industries could absorb this “surplus population” back into the production process, since any increase in productivity means that the same amount of goods can be produced by fewer workers. However, such an expansion is itself limited by the massive global industrial overcapacities and would definitely fall short of bringing back the lost jobs. It is highly unlikely that Iran’s industry could expand on a sufficient scale even when, as oftentimes propagated, the oil revenues were used for a more “long-term” modernization of Iran’s businesses.

4. Emancipatory Alternatives to Parliamentary Democracy

Not only the economic, but also other social challenges in Iran are unlikely to be solved by a democratic nation state. As Ali Mostashari has pointed out, a federal nation state in Iran will most likely lead to the disintegration of the Iranian state, given Iran’s multi-ethnic population and huge economic and social differences between its provinces [10, 11]. It should be added, that the social and ecological problems faced by many cities in Iran (poverty, air and water pollution, traffic jams, waste etc.) could indeed best be dealt with “a decentralization of power and direct participatory democracy”, making city governments “directly responsible for the everyday well-being of their citizens” [10]. Also, as the national political sphere in Iran is dominated by male cliques, a reversal to more local forms of government could prove helpful for women voicing their demands and criticizing patriarchal Iranian society. However, as Mostashari strictly ignores the global framework and the economic realities determined by it, the localization of power within the uncontested capitalist world system will turn out to have the opposite effect of what he argues imagines. The “cities as centers for competition” will not, as Mostashari believes, “spur mutual prosperity for the citizens of these cities and result in greater prosperity for the country as a whole” [10], but will almost definitely result in the outpacing and further economic decline of those border regions, in which “under both the Pahlavi regime and the Islamic Republic investment […] has been minimal” [11]. Again, this outpacing of the peripheral regions is a general characteristic of world capitalism since the 1990s, both on a national and global level.

However illuminating Mostashari’s theses thus may be, its complicity with the capitalist compulsion for competition and increase in productivity turns it into just another mode of managing the global crisis (in this case: by effectively cutting off the non-competitive outer regions so they don’t burden the isolated centers). Instead, Mostashari’s remarks about the possibility of “more radical and experimental policies”, which could “be explored in smaller cities and towns” [10], should be taken seriously, in that the first “radical policy” would require nothing less than the abolishment of the capitalist mode of production. This would include the abolishment of the production of commodities for the sake of accumulating abstract capital; the need to sell one’s labor power in order to survive; the separation between (masculine) “wage labor” and (femininely connoted) “housework”; and the differentiation between the sphere of living and the political sphere of representative power.

This abolishment could profit from the experience of an episode in Iranian history which is rarely mentioned: the history of the shoras, the spontaneous workers’ councils which had sprung up in 1979, as part of the movement of strikes and factory occupations which substantially helped for the downfall of the Shah – and were eventually repressed by the new Islamic rulers. One of the main reasons for their downfall, according to Saeed Rahnema, was that “[t]here were no industrial organizations that could connect individual [factory] units together”. [12] The shoras eventually failed to exert social power and limited their perspective to the immediate work place. Nevertheless (as outlined by Guy Debord in 1967), workers’ councils, when “vesting all decision-making and executive powers in themselves and federating with one another through the exchange of delegates, answerable to the base and recallable at any time” [13], could serve as a point of departure for practical strategies on how capitalism with its detrimental competitive logic and its social divisions might be overcome.

5. Why the Green Movement will fail

To be completely clear: It cannot be questioned that the realization of the Green Movement’s agenda – consisting of the call for human rights, women’s rights, personal freedom, labor rights, freedom of the press, etc. – would be of immense emancipatory value and fully justifies the call for a liberal state with a parliamentary democracy. Any movement for such a liberal state is also fully justified by the fact that a democratic state would almost definitely abandon the Islamic Republic’s quest for nuclear weapons (which continues despite the sanctions [14]). However, as the Green Movement is strictly limiting its aspirations to the political sphere, it is at best calling for abstract political rights instead of tangible improvements for women, laborers or minorities (see e. g. Moussavi’s declaration for International Workers’ Day 2010 [15]). For the last two years, numerous strikes and revolts by workers in Iran can be listed (as done, e. g. by Jamshid Assadi [16]), but their distinct feature is that they seemingly have no connection or contact at all with the “political” Green Movement and remain completely separated from it. This fundamental blank is also stressed by Frieda Afary, who in a very interesting article quotes Aresh Zehforus, that

“[t]he discussion of democracy and freedom can only have an impact on social classes and strata when it is directly related to their situation and the production and distribution of wealth in society. Otherwise the discussion of democracy and freedom will turn into an abstract and ineffective discourse and will lead to disillusionment among the masses.” [17]

As should be clear by now, this essential blank spot within the Green Movement’s agenda is itself a result of the false self-constraint to strictly adhere to the capitalism forms of society. As liberation within capitalism is only conceivable in forms of a more democratic representative government, while at the same time the structural roots for the current crisis are beyond the reach of individual states, it is clear that the striving for emancipation in capitalist forms cannot have any concrete demands on its agenda, because it’s prospects of a tangible improvement of the situation are itself meager. It must necessarily be limited to the call for abstract “rights”, “dignity”, “pride”, etc. – slogans which obviously fail to raise the necessary support.

Furthermore, the self-imposed limitation to the abstract political sphere also results in the forsaking of any social power, which is invariably necessary in order to confront the conflicting interests of Iran’s ruling caste. In an interview, Saeed Rahnema correctly points at this fundamental lack in the Green Movement’s strategy:

“[...] there are lots of street protests and confrontations at this stage, but as important as they are, none of these can really threaten the existence of the Islamic regime. […] The regime will not change with street demonstrations alone.” [12]

The struggle of the Green Movement for democratic reform cannot succeed without attaining social power to confront the Islamic regime; at the same time its own goal is to relinquish all power, because it is the very essence of representational democracy that all power is wrestled from the individuals and their communities and concentrated within the elected government. It could therefore be said that the Green Movement is already “too democratic” from its beginning, since it forfeits any possible power it could have – and, thus, any chance for success. (The influence of religious ideas on the movement and its leaders also contributes to this refusal of the movement to constitute itself as social power.) As paradox as it may sound, but it might actually be easier to overcome capitalist society than to supplant the Islamic Republic’s terror regime with any form of parliamentary government.

References

[1] Karl Marx: Grundrisse. Cited after: Moishe Postone: Time, Labor, and Social Domination. Cambridge 1996, p. 34.

[2] Robert Kurz: Die Krise des Tauschwerts (German). Cited after: Claus-Peter Ortlieb: The lost innocence of productivity (2010). http://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/home/ortlieb/LostInnocenceOfProductivity.pdf

[3] Ali Ahmadi Motlagh: The State of Iran’s Economy: An Interview with Professor Kaveh Ehsani. (25.10.2010). http://www.globalconversation.org/2010/10/25/state-irans-economy-interview-professor-kaveh-ehsani

[4] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Iranian Textile Workers Demand Back Wages (04.11.2010). http://www.rferl.org/content/Iranian_Textile_Workers_Demand_Back_Wages/2211122.html

[5] Payvand Iran News: Conflicting Reports on Iran’s Unemployment Rate (07.04.2011) http://www.payvand.com/news/11/apr/1062.html

[6] Payvand Iran News: Inflation rate hits 12.4% (04.04.2011) http://www.payvand.com/news/11/apr/1032.html

[7] Ardalan Sayami: Wave of Labor Strikes in Iran (07.03.2011) http://www.roozonline.com/english/news3/newsitem/article/wave-of-labor-strikes-in-iran.html

[8] Homylafayette: Iran’s Cities a Sea of Poverty (04.03.2011) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/03/irans-cities-a-sea-of-poverty.html

[9] Kevan Harris: Pseudo-Privatization in the Islamic Republic (15.10.2010) http://muftah.org/?p=326

[10] Ali Mostashari: Government from the Ground Up (09.08.2010) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2010/08/government-from-the-ground-up.html

[11] Ali Mostashari: The Strength of the Cities (27.08.2010) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2010/08/the-strength-of-the-city.html

[12] Ian Morrison: Not by Street Demonstrations Alone. An interview with Saheed Rahnema (28.03.2010) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2010/03/not-by-street-demonstrations-alone.html

[13] Guy Debord: The Society of the Spectacle (1995), p. 86

[14] Julian Borger: WikiLeaks cables: Iran has cleared major hurdle to nuclear weapons (20.01.2011) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/20/iran-highly-enriched-uranium-wikileaks

[15] Arash Aramesh: Green Movement Reaches Out for Labor for Support (30.04.2010) http://www.insideiran.org/media-analysis/green-movement-reaches-out-to-labor-for-support/

[16] Mohammad Tahavori: The Green Movement and Labor Movement. An Interview with Jamshid Assadi (23.4.2010) http://www.gozaar.org/english/interview-en/The-Green-Movement-and-Labor-Movement.html

[17] Frieda Afary: Iranians Draw Lessons from Middle Eastern Uprisings (27.03.2011) http://iranianvoicesintranslation.blogspot.com/2011/03/iranians-draw-lessons-from-middle.html

Pathology of the Iranian Change:

How the Global Community Can Help

Hooman Askary

April 2011

IPY Essay Contest 2011

IRANIAN PEOPLE’S post-presidential-election demonstrations of 2009 were by no means a new phenomenon in Iran. They had precedence and they proved to be ongoing. They were a link in the long chain of events that constitute the story of change in the contemporary history of Iran. The main difference between this time and past events was the role of social networking and citizen journalism which had both become available thanks to the internet. This time the world stopped to see, even partly, what happened within the borderlines of the Islamic Republic. Foreign governments and international personalities condemned the brutal attacks of the Basij militia and members of the Islamic Republic Guards Corps (IRGC) on the defenseless people who were leading some of the most peaceful movements of modern times. They sought no vengeance, they bore no grudge and their aspirations were Earthly and “achievable”; that is, had they been backed by the international community. This article addresses one simple question: what can the international community do to help the Iranian people’s cause?

History of Change in Contemporary Iran

To address the aforementioned question, we need to know that the systematic process of introducing change in contemporary history of Iran started not in 2009 but in the 19^th century. During the Qajar dynasty, an Iranian minority emerged who reached a corollary similar to the following by Sparks: they, too believed that “if the problem of under-development was primarily a consequence of the static ways in which people thought about the world, and the traditional knowledge that they brought to their contemporary problems, then […] the road to development [lead] through changing those beliefs and making scientific knowledge available to [people].” So the logical pattern to be incorporated was “The formal education system” which is one of the ways in which people can be encouraged to adopt new ideas and beliefs. (2007:23) hence, the educational campaign to bring Iran out of the “static ways” began and the first contemporary attempt to introduce development and modernity in Iran started. Chancellor Amir Kabir granted Iranian students state scholarships to pursue higher education in European countries and employed professors to teach in a Western-style-college called “Dar-ol-Fonoon”; Ahmad Kasravi mentions Amir’s role in introducing development and points to the political and administrative developments in his era ([1946] 2003: 7) but the initial stage in the process of introducing change and modernizing the country did not last long. Amir’s assassination and removal of later pro-development figures, such as Chancellor Sepahsalar, all turned into constructing bits within the same context. Change was not easy in the fragmented Iranian society then.

The demand for change survived the final stages of the Qajar dynasty giving rise to the constitutional revolution. This democratic movement turned out as a sign for the first trace of a grass-roots-participatory-model for development and transparency while starting to eschew the old traditions intertwined with superstitions. For a period of almost quarter of a century, Iran saw 3 monarchs and the termination of a dynasty before it reached the height of her classic quest for change. It finally materialized during King Reza Pahlavi’s reign over Iran (1925-1941). This was an era of simultaneous pro-development movements by the intelligentsias in the region pioneered by the first Pahlavi Shah and Ataturk of the neighboring Turkey. The intelligentsias, however, had a distinctive characteristic which influenced their preferred approach and the ensuing developments that affected both countries; that common point of convergence was “their search for a rather swift remedy to solve their countries’ escalating problems.” (Atabaki and Zurcher 2004: 3). Both countries had a troubling past with the Tsarist Russia and both groups pushed the swift process with military might in their respective countries. In Iran, Reza Shah introduced industrial and infrastructural reforms that were aimed at catapulting Iran to a modern era and, in line with that, all aspects were to undergo a transformation process: the language had to undergo a major maintenance process and the ministry of war (later named ministry of defense) was appointed to supervise the implementation of the royal decree. Even a new dress code was introduced based on which men had to wear Western style clothes and women were banned from observing the traditional Islamic dress code of Hijab; every opposition would be crushed by the central state’s iron fist. Iran looked like a different country overnight.

Despite Reza Shah’s clout-push, the effect of the forced change was reversal once the King was deposed: the clerics came back to power and women started to observe hijab once again especially in the rural areas. During the next Pahlavi King, Muhammad Reza Shah, which accounts for the last 37 years until the 1979 revolution, a similar approach was taken in different arenas. The flourishing oil revenue enabled the Shah to initiate extensive economic-industrial reforms in the country –with socio-political reforms still far behind in pace and size. Within a span of 53 years of the Pahlavi dynasty Iran was to be transformed from an agrarian country to a modern one in the heart of the Middle East.

Failure of a Model

The abrupt and forced push toward development proved to be too much on the burden of the society. McPhail sees the mentioned pressure as a cut across major life-style practices, and counts those practices as, among others, habits, religion and language. He infers that when indigenous ways are dismissed or marginalized a push-back emerges entailing a wave of criticism.(2009:8-9) This wave of criticism in the Iranian scenario came from the traditional pillars within the country’s old political power system trinity consisting of 1) the mosque, 2) the bazaar and 3) the crown. (Milani 2004: 84) Abbas Milani suggests that the connection between the pillars was so resilient that it is even reflected in the Iranian architecture within Naghsh-e-Jahan square of Isfahan, the Iranian capital of the Safavid Era, where Shah Abbas Saffavid had Isfahan’s mosque, court and bazaar all constructed within a huge square as elements in a single complex (2004: 84).

During the contemporary dialogue between the old agrarian Iran and change; however, especially during the modernizing efforts of the Pahlavi era, the nature of the Crown was so alienated from the other two entities that Milani’s suggested trinity could not function any longer the way it did, traditionally. Perhaps the missing link in contemporary affairs between Iran and change was merely communication between the social elements involved in the process. Whatever the answer to that question may be, a glance at the current situation of the country proves that, the change “forced” unto the fabric of Iran has failed in many respects. This fact is acknowledged by high ranking personalities and players in the pre-revolutionary power arena. Mahnaz Afkhami, Pahlavi era’s minister of Women’s affairs, one of the two female ministers of the pre-revolutionary era, acknowledges that:

It seems to me that our main mistake was not that we did not do other things which we should have done. Our main mistake was that we created conditions in which the contradictions related to modernity, progress, equality, and human rights, especially women’s rights, increased and the reaction to our work put perhaps too much pressure on the country’s social fabric. (2008)

Afkhami’s intended social fabric of a country was still dependent on the afore-stated trinity of power. As the changes were being forced unto the social fabric, the relative marginalization of the Mosque and the Bazaar strengthened a coalition between them against the dominant stratum who, almost half a century into Reza Shah’s imperialistic model of change, was still run by an intelligentsia in the second Pahlavi era. In 1979 the society pushed back. The Mosque-Bazaar coalition successfully mobilized almost all dissident fractions behind the same banner against a common target: The Shah. He had erroneously been equated with everything that stood for deviation from tradition — all development and modernity; thus, by removing the symbol and through the slogan of “Down with the King”, a whole system collapsed and change process was one again averted.

The Reversal in Post-Revolution Iran

What happened afterwards was a caricature of a pro-tradition discourse. This time all signs of modernity had to be eschewed so frantically that wearing shabby rags was translated into a virtue; women lost many of their rights and had to hide under hijab once again and, in short, sharia law was in place once again. Despite all that, there is a legacy of change that has outlived the post-1979 ordeal until today: the literacy corps that was drafted from among the Iranian youth in 1963 has left Iran with one of the highest literacy rates in the region at 85 percent. The program of reform which included extension of the franchise to women according to a Foundation of Iranian Studies (FIS) time-line (Nooshiravani 2009) reared a generation of women who have been the main source of trouble for the Islamic Republic’s hegemony ever since its commencement. The direct relationship between women participation in society and change is not exclusive to Iran; as more than half of the total 8 criteria for development are directly concerning women; issues such as improving maternal health, reducing child mortality, combating HIV, AIDS and other diseases and etc. (2009: 52) are all resolved through improving women’s awareness. Today, the Iranian women — who experienced partial freedoms of the pre-revolution Iran —have, in turn, reared a new generation of Iranians who later called themselves the Burnt Generation and have been the driving force of the Green Movement. Neda and Sohrab are two examples of millions of their living peers.

A Flawed System

A) Free Media and Participatory Infra-structure: When a system fails to yield in the desired results it is flawed in one way or another. In the case of Iran it is the absence of free media and a real participatory infra-structure that has been a big hindrance against the full and efficient implementation of the sustainable development and change. That change could have survived the upheavals of the late 70s and prevented the achievements from eradication by the Islamist fundamentalists. McPhail outlines the prerequisites for that objective as a case when people have sufficient power and tools to step up and speak out against the rulers; he further explains that the grounds for such an outcome needs to be democratic in itself as well; since “unless policy making and the social process are themselves participatory, it is unlikely that the result will be a democratic pattern of communication.” (2009: 31) evidently, the Iranian change pattern has neither been participatory nor communicative — EVER in the nation’s history.

B) Oil Revenue and its Repercussions: There is a mistake usually observed in less-developed-but-rich-in-natural-resources-countries that are privileged to lucrative revenues. It is the incorporation of Western technologies and emulation of their patterns in hope of producing similar results and conditions akin to those of the developed countries. However, the processes through which those models were achieved usually include the necessary provisions for the implementation of the means involved. In other words, just as an affluent individual is not able to obtain culture and education even though he has sufficient funds to purchase the whole British Royal Library, change can neither be imported nor, indeed, exported or forced unto a people.

C) Inter-connectedness of Change Elements: Another aspect that needs to be noted here is the link between the various elements in a sustainable development model. Sparks believes that the communication project needs other substantial social changes as well to function desirably without which, it will likely prove ineffective. McPhail states that “The process of change can rarely be restricted simply to technical change.” (2007: 195) Some hold that transparent communication and information broadcasting might be needed for nations to abandon their old traditional ways of doing things and the hallmark for such a transformation would be national literacy and “the use of technologies and media platforms of all types” (2009: 7)

How the Global Community Can Help

In his book “The Location of Culture”, Homi Bhabha quotes Goethe that: “Nations could not return to their settled and independent life again without noticing that they had learned many foreign ideas and ways, which they had unconsciously adopted, and come to feel here and there previously unrecognized spiritual and intellectual needs.” (1994: 2) This rule applies to the Iranian nation, too. They might not have experienced a full-fledged democracy but they have had historical periods of partial socio-political freedoms. That alone explains a lot of what is going on now in Iran.

In addition to the areas of interest within the context of change in Iran, it must be reminded that Iranians have one of the best (if not the best) democratic potentials among the countries of the region; what they need is a platform to get through to each other and comprehend that they are not alone in their cause.

One of the ways the international community has to support the change process in Iran is to recognize and endorse small communities and groups and defend their members against harassments of the Islamic theocracy. Once the organizations and individuals are granted the publicity and recognition — akin to what Nobel laureates enjoy for instance — the stakes for suppressing them increase almost indefinitely for governments.

Another aspect the global community can help Iranian people with, is the media. A nation with access to free media will reach a peaceful culture as an outcome and Iranians are no exception. The problem is that the Islamic state is also aware of this rule. That is why they have invested heavily in purchasing internet filtering, surveillance and satellite signal jamming equipment. To counter balance, the international community can:

a) Refrain from providing such technologies to the Islamic regime —Nokia and Siemens allegedly sold surveillance equipment to the IRI in the past. The world must make sure they make it very costly for such entities in Europe, China and even Russia to do so again in the future.

b) Help Iranian people with technologies to access the internet and satellite channels freely, with minimum equipment required and in a nationwide scale. Iranian diaspora has far higher potentials than the present number of television and radio programs and publications. Once they receive the funds they usually find their own way to make a connection with the Iranians inside the country. The Iranian diaspora all around the world can work as a mediator between the Iranian nation inside the country and the global community. Here is what the world has to do: use them.

Conclusion

From what was presented, this article tried to have a pathological observation of the history of change and its current enigma within the Iranian society. It highlighted the following aspects as areas of interest for the international community:

1) Education of the people with a cultural priority

2) Free and easy to access communication platform and media

3) Women as the most important social element

4) Small progressive groups and communities

The change process in Iran can be (and should have been) assisted by the global community if they can help Iranians form the necessary networking platform and create the needed media using the potentials with the Iranian diaspora. Equally important, as history shows, change can never be forced unto Iranians or any nation and must commence as a grassroots development. Mahatma Gandhi once said: “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” Having seen the outcomes of the recent wars in our world should leave little doubt for us as to the authenticity of those words and Iran is definitely the most pertinent case here.

References:

1. Afkhami, Mahnaz (2008) the Second Woman Minister in Iran Reform and regression:The fate of the family protection law by Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani Washington DC, (2008) [WWW] http://www.mahnazafkhami.net/2008/the-fate-of-the-family-protection-law-noushin-ahmadi-khorasani%E2%80%99s-interview-with-mahnaz-afkhami-the-second-woman-minister-in-iran/ (Dec.25.2010)

2. Atabaki, Touraj; Zurcher, Erik (2004) Men of order: Authoritarian modernization under Ataturk and Reza Shah London, New York: I.B. Tauris

3. Bhabha, Homi (1994) Location of Culture New York: Routledge

4. McPhail, Thomas (2009). Development Communication. Reframing the Role of the Media Malden,MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

5. Milani, Abbas (2004) Lost Wisdom Rethinking Modernity in Iran Washington DC: Mage Publishers

6. Sparks, Colin (2007) Globalization, Development and the Media London: Sage