Iran - The Country

The country where the United States is still referred to as the "Global Arrogance" or the "Great Satan." Better than being the "Little Satan," I guess (that privilege is reserved for the Brits). Yes, 20 years after the Islamic Revolution, the official vocab list hasn't changed a whole lot. In some respects, though, it's hard to blame them if they're a tad xenophobic. There's more than one example of spooky Yanks and crafty Brits plotting to remove Iranian governments they didn't find suitable to their tastes. In 1953 the Iranian Prime Minister, Mosaddeq, was removed in a coup when he tried to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. He was ousted after Britain's MI6 and the CIA financed military officers to overthrow him. In Iran, by the way, if you're a bit too clever, you're called a Winston, after the last great British imperial leader, Winston Churchill. Churchill is widely regarded as a brilliant example of the archetypal cunning imperialist. Very devious and just as dangerous. In fact the Brits may be the Little Satan, but in Iran they are regarded as far more dangerous and devious critters (this will probably upset the boys at Langley) than the Yanks, who are seen as having all the muscle and the cash, but are rank amateurs at Middle Eastern skulduggery. Anyway, I digress. Back to the coup. Well, there ain't really anything more to say except that the Big and Little Satan had their own ideas about who should do what in Iran. And it wasn't Iranians. To the outside world, Iran is a country on fire. Fire and brimstone preached from the mosques and political pulpits. When most people think of Iran they think of U.S. flags being burned, the Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, suicide bombings, international terrorism (it's a long and nasty list) and lots of very dead U.S. Marines in Lebanon.

Despite Iran's desperate need to wipe us off the face of the earth (after Israel, that is), it still is a pretty nice place to visit, as long as you don't mind the "Death to America" posters as you talk with a local about his relatives in Pacoima or Beverly Hills. For the most part the Iranians are actually a pretty decent bunch. That's not to say that they don't like the odd anti-U.S demo from time to time. On February 11, 1999, Iranians celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Tehran's Freedom Square and burned U.S flags as an effigy of Uncle Sam while chanting that melodius and well-known song, "Death to America." This, after all, is still a country where you will find Morals Police cruising around the place. Morals Police! I ask you? Of course, the wisecracks are saying they should be patrolling the White House these days. Bill would sure think twice about slipping into the Oval Office to have intercourse with some intern if he knew a few lashings were coming his way.

In case you're planning a trip, here are a few identification tips for the Morals Kids. First, they're probably bearded, but what gives them away is their tendency to beat people up (not hard to miss then, are they?), especially women who don't dress properly (like wear the full-length chador) or who do subversive things like hold hands or kiss in public. As you can probably guess they're not the most popular bunch in town. In fact, people are getting a bit pissed off with them. In April 1999, some less than happy person even chucked a grenade at a Morals Police car. Kinda hard to blame them, really. The official rhetoric, though, belies a country deeply divided. Old-style mullahs may still be trying to make sure that no one sees the latest episode of Baywatch, but lipstick and stockings are making a discreet comeback.

Not everyone is a happy bunny, though. The overwhelming mandate given to the reformist (by Iranian standards) President Khatami has left some of the more hard-line clerics a bit pissed off, to say the least. For much of 1998, beneath the veil of unity, a vicious power struggle took place between moderates and hard-liners who miss the good old days of Ayatollah Khomeini, fatwas, death sentences and war against Iraq. That's not to say there hasn't been the odd open squabble between the ayatollahs. Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, once tipped to succeed Khomeini, found himself under house arrest for opening his gob in public. Well, less for opening his gob than actually criticizing (tut tut) the Supreme Thunderbolt Thrower (Khameini, to you) in public. Another cleric who has managed to "confuse public opinion" is Mohammed-Ali Nejad al-Hosseini, an ally of the above. That got him jailed by the Special Court for Clergy. Nice to know they have one, a court that is. So, who's this new kid on the block in Iran? Well, he's a cleric (no surprise), he wears a suit (that's new) and he wants to reform Iran (that's even newer). President Khatami, though, has a bit of an uphill slog in front of him. Never mind that he won the 1997 elections with a massive 70 percent of the vote (from a turnout of 90 percent). If it was that easy the girls would be in miniskirts by now. Basically he wants better relations with the West, without Burger King and Coca-Cola running the country. But there are a whole load of kids with long beards in robes who would still like to see Israel nuked. In addition, Khatami wants a bit more consensus in how Iran is run, rather than a series of fatwas. Not a too popular line with the old guard, I'm afraid.

Towards the end of 1998 things got a bit vicious. Iran had its own version of murder mystery whodunnits, all for real. A number of prominent writers and liberals fell victim to a string of gruesome murders. It started with the stabbing to death, in November, of Dariush and Parvaneh Frouhar, a husband and wife team who were a bit too critical of the Supreme Thunderbolt Thrower. There quickly followed the disappearance of three other prominent writers (who, coincidently, just happened to be critics of the hard-liners), before they reappeared a while later-dead. You didn't really have to be Agatha Christie to figure this one out. And . . . lo and behold a couple of months later, it was admitted that the killings had been the work of secret police death squads, with links to the intelligence services (Iranian intelligence services, that is). No big surprise when you consider that Iran's intelligence services are not under the control of the moderate President Khatami, but dear old Ayatollah Khameini. The conservatives huffed and puffed, but didn't blow anyone's house down. Instead they went for the all-time Iranian favorite of blaming "outside forces" for the killings. Not really very original. Most people, for some obscure reason, were under the impression that it had been distinctly inside forces that were responsible. The Iranian intelligence chief was given a wide-ranging choice of being fired or resigning. An investigation was launched. Alas, it never got very far. The man who was accused of responsibility for the killings, Saeed Emami, the deputy minister of intelligence, committed suicide in prison. Oh dear, suddenly all the leads had kinda just, er, vanished. "What a pity," many of the hard-liners were muttering, sotto voce.

Murders aside, Iran's hard-liners have had to try a few other, more discreet tacks to undermine president Khatami. What better than the tourist industry to keep the image of fire and brimstone going? Tourist industry? What tourist industry? Well, actually, yes, there's now a bustling little tourist industry going in Iran. Which is probably why the odd busload of tourists have been stoned (i.e., had stones thrown at them), a German businessman was shot dead and three Italians kidnapped, amongst other little incidents. Someone spooky doesn't like westerners. Or reformers who cozy up to Westerners.

But as the reformers in question happen to hold rather a lot of the political cards, including the presidency and an overwhelming democratic(ish) mandate, the Koran Thumpers have gone for the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) attack by proxy. Take the case of Golamhussein Karbaschi (who's he?). He is, or was, the popular mayor of Tehran . . . and a reformist. Need one say more? Well, okay, then. Someone fixed him up on corruption charges and he was sentenced to 20 years in the slammer, 20 lashes (someone's obviously into S&M here) and banishment from public office for life. It says a lot about Iran's power struggle that he wasn't actually sent straight to the slammer. Karbaschi did a bit of traditional haggling with the judges on appeal and got the sentence down to 2 years in the clink (no lashes . . . someone will be disappointed), a fine and a 10-year ban from public office.

Then, of course, there have been the not so subtle attempts to undermine moderates. Like spraying the HQ of a moderate party with machine gun fire. A hell of a way to make your point. But then there really are some people you can't expect moderation from. In this case it was operatives from the intelligence ministry-er, sorry, I'll take that back. It was a group who no one had really ever heard of before calling themselves the Fedayeen-e-Iran. They're pretty active kids actually. It's a complete coincidence (of course) that quite a few of them also happen to work for the hard-line intelligence services, answerable only to the Great Thunder Bolt Thrower.

Then, as we at DP tend to say rather a lot, things got out of hand. In July 1999 a small and peaceful student demonstration in Tehran was broken up by religious vigilantes and police. Using their usual kid gloves tactics one student was killed and several injured. The raid sparked the largest wave of unrest Iran has seen since the 1979 revolution. Things just kinda boiled over, I guess. Tens of thousands of Iranians, pissed off with hard-line mullahs, took to the streets in protest, eventually engaging in running battles with the police. It looked like the whole place was about to go a bit wobbly. And it did. For a while everything teetered on the brink. The students carried banners of Khatami, and cussed Khameini something chronic. The police and Islamic vigilantes got heavy. Extra orders were put in for tear gas, but no one bothered with rubber bullets. Altogether about seven people were killed and hundreds were injured. A bit of a clampdown ensued. About 1,400 people were arrested. Reinforcements were whistled up to quell the rioters. They arrived in the form of the Islamic Basij militia who roared around the streets chanting the hardly original lines of "death to America" and clubbed anyone in sight. Just so that no one else got any ideas about demonstrating against the government, four people were secretly (well, it can't be that secret if DP knows) sentenced to death for leading the riots. In reformist circles people got a bit wound up as to whether the riots would give the hard-liners the excuse to crackdown and reassert their foundering control. But the slippery new Prezzy wasn't having that. A pro-government demo was organized, and with a bit of management the 100,000 demonstrators chanted all the right slogans, which were pro-Islam, pro-government (death to America, of course) and pro-students. Do what? Pro-students? The rioting rabble?

As said, it was a bit slippery of the Prez; but by having a demo pro the students as well as everybody else it marginalized the hard-liners. Since then, things have cooled a bit, leaving everyone free to continue with their daily behind-the-scenes power struggle.

So where does all this leave Iran and the outside world? Well, the Little Satan (the Brits) and the Iranians have sorta kissed and made up. Both countries now have ambassadors from the other. Salman Rushdie has been quietly swept under the carpet by both sides, who are probably both hoping that the guy will have a convenient heart attack and save everyone lots of bother. You know, like the general embarrassment there would be if some fruitcake actually did slice him up in the name of Islam. Awfully inconvenient these hand-wringing liberal writers can be sometimes. That really just leaves Uncle Sam, still unable to get over the humiliation of having his embassy stormed all those years ago. At the same time, though, the United States wants desperately to reestablish relations with Iran before the bloody Europeans get all the lucrative oil contracts. Probably just to piss the United States off, France signed a large oil agreement with Iran in April 1999. The United States was not happy. They weren't getting the cash. And there's a whole US$300 million of it. No wonder the U.S isn't chuffed. So big Bill made a few of the right noises, saying something like he understood Iran or some such rubbish, intended to placate the mullahs and give a bit of support to nice President Khatami. The "little peace offering" met with "the little stick" from Iran, when Iranian officials made the usual derogatory comments about the United States, the slight difference being the tone was a little lower than the habitual all-out "death to America" stuff. You never know, there may be a U.S embassy in the Islamic Republic yet! DP thinks the Iranians should give a little here. After all, they did beat the Great Satan in the 1998 World Cup.

Leaving aside the international scene for a minute, Iran also has a minor problem of "terrorism." It just wouldn't be a fun place if there weren't any subversives rocking around the shopping centers, would it? For "terrorism" in Iran, you can read the Mujahadeen-e-Khalk Organization (MKO), or the People's Mujahadeen. They're based in Pyrotechnic City (Baghdad) in neighboring Iraq. They're a kinda lefty Islamist sorta group who got squeezed out of things by the mullahs at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. And they're bad losers. They keep the place lively with the odd bomb attack and assassination. In August 1998, the MKO whacked the former head of the prisons. In fact DP gives the MKO a pretty high mark for their apparent ability to carry out assassinations with a degree of competence. In April 1999 the MKO topped one of Iran's top generals. Lieutenant General Ali Sayyad Shirazi, the Iranian deputy chief of staff, was shot outside his home by men dressed as street cleaners. The Tehran God Botherers were not impressed. They threatened to launch missile attacks on Iraq (which DP guesses would make them technical allies of the U.S.?). The Iraqis wriggled and squirmed and then sent a letter to the United Nations saying there were no MKO bases in Iraq. After all, we all know that Iraq's one of the most peace loving nations on earth. Bit silly, really, when a few days later the MKO issue a statement (dateline: Baghdad) saying that the bombs that went off were nowhere near its HQ. Iran declined to comment on the bomb attacks, but you won't get a free membership in Mensa if you figure out the who the culprits might have been.

You Got the Wrong

One Baby, Uh-huh

In January 1995, the Ayatollah Ali Khameini issued a religious decree apparently banning the consumption of both Coca-Cola and Pepsi, American soft drinks that had recently been reintroduced into Iran. Khameini was asked by a local paper, "Assuming drinking Coca-Cola and Pepsi politically strengthens world arrogance and financially helps Zionist circles, what would the Islamic decree on the issue be?" Khamenei replied, "Anything that strengthens world arrogance and Zionist circles in itself is forbidden." Only time will tell which real thing Iranians consume, Islamic dogma or the right one, baby. You probably won't be surprised to learn that satellite dishes are also banned.