Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

9:10 a.m. IRDT, 15 Shahrivar/September 5 Major General Ghasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' special operations division, has been voicing repeated criticisms of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a dispatch on the Meli Mazhabi website. Soleimani is reported to have declared, "We tell Assad to use the police force in the streets, but he dispatches the army." According to the Meli Mazhabi item, the Assad regime has ignored the advice of the Iranian government on how to confront the opposition, and is interested only in receiving financial, political, and logistical support.

As noted here, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei two weeks ago said that Iran is fighting for its own survival in Syria. More recently, Lieutenant Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Asoudi, a leading figure in the Revolutionary Guards' cultural affairs and propaganda division, referring to the mutual defense pact between Iran and Syria, said, "If America take the stupid action of attacking Syria, the military pact will be invoked." In the event of such attacks, he stated, "Iran and its Syrian ally will fight, and will deal a crushing defeat to the United States."

Majles Speaker Ali Larijani said this week that Iran has undertaken no military operations in Syria and that the crisis there will not be resolved through military intervention, either by countries in the region or the Western powers.

Green Council condemns U.S. Congress and Israel's threats

In a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Dr. Ardeshir Amir Arjomand, spokesman for the Coordination Council for the Green Path of Hope, the temporary Green Movement leadership council while Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi are under house arrest, expressed grave concerns about Israel's repeated threats to attack Iran.

He also condemned the recent "surprising and irresponsible statements in the U.S. Congress," including the letter of Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in which he urged the Obama administration to help the people of Azerbaijan gain their "independence from Iran." In the words of the Rohrabacher epistle, "Now it is time for the Azeris in Iran to win their freedom too. Almost twice as many Azeris live in Iran as in the Azerbaijan Republic. Their homeland was divided by Russia and Persia in 1828, without their consent." The letter generated widespread anger in the Iranian American community.

Arjomand also asked Ban to focus the world's attention on the state of human rights in Iran. Referring to former President Mohammad Khatami, he said, "The architect of the idea of Dialogue of Civilizations, who has always been committed to dialogue, political development at the national level, reducing tension, and peaceful coexistence at the regional and international levels, is experiencing increasing restrictions on his freedom to express his views in his own country." Pointing out that Khatami has been barred from leaving the country to participate in international conferences, Arjomand said, "This treatment clearly demonstrates Iran's current political situation."

Paralympic archer first female Iranian gold medalist

Archer Zahra Nemati became the first Iranian woman to win a gold medal in any Paralympic or Olympic competition. The 27-year-old athlete was a black belt in taekwondo and a member of the national taekwondo team before her legs were paralyzed. She subsequently took up archery and joined the Tarasht Club, where she was coached by Hojatollah Vaezi and Sakineh Ghasempou. Prior to winning gold at the London Paralympics, she broke the world record in the preliminary competition.

Guard commander: Prosecuting Mousavi, Karroubi too "difficult"

In a speech delivered at a Basij academics' seminar in Mashhad on "soft war" (i.e., cultural war), Hamid Reza Moghaddam, deputy Guard chief for cultural affairs, said that "confronting such people as Mousavi and Karroubi, who have a positive track record [in the early postrevolutionary era] and now are acting against the Islamic Revolution, is much more difficult than what was done to Noureddin Kianouri and the Mojahedin-e Khalgh Organixzation." Kianouri (1915-99) was secretary-general of Iran's pro-Soviet Tudeh (Masses) Party. Although Tudeh supported the Revolution, it was banned in 1983, and Kianouri was arrested and forced to "confess" on national television.

Mousavi and Karroubi have been under house arrest for over 550 days, and despite repeated claims by regime officials that they will put the two on trial, they have not dared to carry out their threat. Ali Saeedi, Khamenei's representative to the Revolutionary Guards, acknowledged last year that the government cannot try the two men because "they have support," both among the masses and among high-ranking clerics "whom I cannot name."

State prosecutor: Mousavi "fine"

During his weekly press conference, Prosecutor-General Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei was asked about the health of Mousavi, who was breifly taken from house arrest to hospital two weeks ago for a three-hour surgery in which doctors inserted a coronary stent in a clogged major artery. Ejei answered, "He is fine." The reporter then asked, "Does that mean that we should still pursue the matter with the judiciary?" Ejei said, "You asked and I responded that he is fine."

Meanwhile, singer and social activist Aria Aramnejad, a former political prisoner, reported that he has met with Ahmad Yazdanfar, who was a senior security agent in charge of protecting Mousavi before he was put under house arrest, and Mousavi's nephew. According to Aramnejad, both men said that Mousavi's health is good and he maintains his critical view of the government.

How Ban Ki-moon was prevented from seeing Mousavi

Hossein Naghavi Hosseini, a member of the Majles's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, acknowledged the pressure exerted on U.N. Secretary-General Ban by the Iranian political opposition to request meetings with Mousavi, his wife, Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, and Karroubi while he was in Tehran to attend the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement last week. Hosseini said, "400 counter-revolutionaries wrote a letter to him and asked him to try to meet" with the three leaders of the Green Movement and "families of the political prisoners." This appears to be the first time that an official of the Islamic Republic has explicitly acknowledged that Iran has political prisoners. Naghavi Hosseini said that to "neutralize" opposition efforts, the government sent Ban a long list of people with whom he was welcome to meet; he was told that members of the National Security Commission and the families of martyrs of the "holy defense" (the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s) had priority.

Turkish leaders tell Majles deputies they want to overthrow Assad

Naghavi Hosseini also revealed that he and Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, met privately with three top Turkish officials: President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. By Hosseini's account, Davutoglu told the Iranian legislators that "we must train the Free Syrian Army and supply them with weapons, intervene directly in Syria, and topple the Arab Republic of Syria under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad." Turkish-Iranian relations have become increasingly strained due to the two countries' support for opposite camps in Syria.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told Al-Alam, the Islamic Republic's Arabic-language television channel, that Iran supports a ceasefire in Syria. He also said that relations with Egypt are improving and that "differences between the two countries" over Syria are "natural."

Ghadiani to Morsi: Be like Nelson Mandela

Political prisoner Abolfazl Ghadiani, a senior member of the Organization of Islamic Revolution Mojahedin, a leading outlawed reformist party, has written a letter to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, in which he states, "It would have been good if, during your trip to Tehran [for the Non-Aligned Movement summit], you had asked the Iranian leaders to allow you to meet with the leaders of the Green Movement, a movement that was the inspiration for the anti-dictatorship movement of the great Egyptian nation and perhaps the entire Arab Spring, to personally hear the true goals of the Iranian nation. Although they [the Iranian regime] would not have agreed to your request, at least this would have created the necessary background for bringing up the repressed demands of the Iranian people." As Ghadiani is incarcerated, he did not know that Ban did, in fact, ask to meet the Green leaders but was turned down.

Condemning Khamenei, Ghadiani wrote, "Just to understand the depth of 'honesty' of Iran's current dictator, take a look at the differences between the translation of your speech in Tehran, which was broadcast by the state-controlled radio and television, and your original speech in order to understand what Iran's rulers mean by honesty, justice, righteousness." Ghadiani then said, "I hope that Your Excellency makes Nelson Mandela your model, and will not allow under any condition a life-long leader to emerge in Egypt, and transfer your power to the elected leaders of the Egyptian people, just as the power and authority were transferred to you, the elected leader of the people."

Ghadiani, who, due to his political activities in the opposition, was imprisoned for 4 years before the 1979 Revolution, was arrested in 2009 in the aftermath of the presidential election, and incarcerated for one year. After he served his full sentence, the judiciary "convicted" him for "insulting the Supreme Leader" and sentenced him to three extra years of imprisonment. Although he refused to recognize the legitimacy of his show trial, he declared courageously in court, "We did not revolt [in 1979] so that Mr. Khamenei could become another absolute monarch. My track record indicates that at one point I supported Velaayat-e Faghih [Khamenei's absolute religious rule as Supreme Leader], but that was a mistake. Velaayat-e Faghih has led to dictatorship."

Ahmadinejad: Some officials have never read Constitution

In a national television broadcast on Tuesday night, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected the assertions of those who have criticized him for forming the Council for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution several months ago. He said, "Some of our officials have not read the Constitution even once. Forming the council is the president's right." During his administration, Khatami formed a similar council, for which he was criticized at the time by Ahmadinejad and other hardliners. When Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005, he dissolved thar Council as one of his first acts; but after the deep rift between him and Khamenei became public, he evidently decided that a similar council was necessary.

During his 2005 presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad repeatedly claimed that he had a list of corrupt officials that he would publicize, which never occurred. On Tuesday night's broadcast, he was asked why he had still not released the list with less than a year remaining in his administration. Ahmadinejad responded, "How do you know that only one year remains?" He was implying that one of his allies might be elected to succeed him next June.

Elsewhere in the broadcast, the president referred to the dramatic falll in the open-market value of the rial versus the U.S. dollar as "psychological warfare." He acknowledged that Iran is encountering obstacles in exporting its oil, and said that the government is looking for solutions. He urged people to consume less, saying "we should all help each other."

Oil income since 2005: $531 billion

Akbar Torkan, a former deputy oil minister, said that Iran has earned $531 billion from oil exports during the past seven years, since Ahmadinejad was first elected president. He also said that Iran's total earning from oil exports over the past 103 years has been $1.116 trillion. According to Torkan, of the total oil export earnings during the Ahmadinejad administration, $483 billion has been spent on imports, leaving only a little over $50 billion for infrastructure development.

No new round of subsidy cuts; inflation's pain acknowledged

Vice President for Parliamentary Affairs Lotfollah Forouzabdeh said that the government has no plans to implement a second phase of subsidy cuts for basic food items and energy.

Abdolreza Azizi, head of the Majles commission for social affairs, said that high inflation and prices "have broken people's backs." He also said that only 20 percent of the current economic problems can be attributed to the sanctions, and the rest is due to mismanagement of the country.

Another Majles deputy, Ahmad Bakhshayesh, also acknowledged that Iranians have been made miserable by the country's soaring inflation, which he attributed to the Ahmadinejad administration's failure to effectively execute the subsidy elimination law.

Two journalists put in solitary confinement, released after other prisoners protest

Nationalist-religious journalist Keyvan Samimi and reformist journalist Masoud Bastani, who are incarcerated in Rajaei Shahr Prison near Karaj, were taken to solitary confinement, after photos of the two in prison were leaked to opposition websites. Samimi, managing editor and publisher of the now banned magazine Naameh and a leading member of the Society for the Defense of Freedom of the Press, was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to six years of incarceration. He has been suffering from various illnesses. Bastani worked for important reformist newspapers, such as Shargh, Kargozaran, and Jomhouriat. He was arrested in July 2009 and sentenced to six years of imprisonment. His wife, journalist Mahsa Amrabadi, is currently serving a sentence in Tehran's Evin Prison. After the journalists were taken to solitary confinement, the other prisoners in the general ward reportedly launched a protest that forced the warden to return the two to the general prison population.

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A quiet director's powerful family drama causes distress in high places.

[ dispatch ] Paternal House (Khaneh Pedari) is not the first Iranian film to be shown in a European festival while banned at home, but it will be the first to seriously challenge the new, more stringent laws of the Islamic Republic regarding foreign film festivals. That is, if its director, Kianoush Ayyari, decides to ignore the threats against him and premiere the film this Friday, in Venice.

Ayyari, a veteran filmmaker who has been a calm and resilient presence in Iranian cinema for more than three decades, directed Paternal House almost two years ago. But the film, whose screenplay had been approved by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, was never allowed a public screening. Its appearance on the list of films selected for this year's Venice Film Festival came as a general shock. It must have found its way to Europe in the same way as most underground Iranian films do: as a DVD, tucked away among a traveler's belongings. Until a few days ago, there were speculations that the festival's copy might not even be up to the minimum quality standards for screening.

Paternal House is an episodic film. The story, we know so much, revolves around an honor killing -- an adolescent girl killed by her father and brother and buried in a corner of the house. The girl's sister grows up in that house, knowing the place where her sibling is buried. The few people who have seen and spoken to me about it, all critics and filmmakers, say it is a strong film. They also say Ayyari manages to avoid the kind of moral breast-beating that is the intellectual bane of most films addressing issues of social justice. Ayyari has an impressive resume of pictures that handle shocking subjects with a straight face.

The behind-the-scenes story of the film has shock value of its own. Pulling off a marketing miracle, Ayyari managed to get -- of all state institutions -- the cultural arm of the Iranian State Police, Naji Film, to invest in Paternal House. They now own 50 percent of the film, and the more direct threats of legal action have come from their quarters.

The head of Naji Film had previously said that his institution regretted having invested in Paternal House, which he believed "was not beneficial to either the police or the people." He demanded that Ayyari withdraw from the festival. The Ministry of Islamic Guidance echoed the demand, but in characteristically more self-confident tones: its representative suggested that, as a response to the recent sanctions, Iran was considering boycotting Western festivals altogether. The statement assumed that Ayyari would rejoin the fold to take part in this official protest.

The director took the clamor in stride. "Since I don't have access to the Internet these days," he said in an interview, "I don't keep abreast of what's been happening with the festival.... I intentionally try to keep away from all that, as much as I can."

"The best policy," said Ayyari when asked about the possible repercussions of the film's foreign premiere, "is silence. I don't want to say anything that would cause a misunderstanding. I have no responsibility in regard to these things. I'm sitting in a quiet corner, living my life." He declared that he would not travel to Venice, even in the event that the film wins an award.

Meanwhile, police and ministry officials' rhetoric grew increasingly harsh. Naji Film has threatened to prosecute if the film is publicly screened. The announcement came after brochures for Paternal House had already been distributed in Venice.

The story of films that receive a production permit but are denied a screening permit is an old one. It includes more than 200 films since the 1979 Revolution. More than 80 of these hit the censor's roadblock during Ahmadinejad's tenure in office. What is new, in particular, is that the Ahmadinejad administration has once and for all clarified the state's position on films of which it does not approve. Its list of threats against underground films or films sent abroad without permits have grown dramatically. The perpetrators, says the state, will be banned, for at least a year, from cinematic activity. The ministry has also closed the House of Cinema, the only independent institution protecting the rights of filmmakers.

Jafar Panahi, the embattled Iranian director who faces a six-year prison sentence and a 20-year ban from all "cultural activity," threw down the gauntlet to the regime when he released his homemade feature, This Is Not A Film, to foreign festivals and distribution companies. The government did not react.

Panahi's action, however, came after he was already marked as a pariah and punished with a severity befitting Stalin's Soviet Union. Ayyari, however, is a quiet figure whom state media have always treated with reserved respect. Any action against him will also likely have repercussions for the government. It remains to be seen what cost the state is willing to pay to maintain the stern(er) face it has turned toward cinema.

Anivar Rajabi is a pen name for a Tehran Bureau correspondent.

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As young women's presence in higher education grows, so does ideological backlash.

As a consequence, and in a move highly unusual for what is normally a centralized educational system, the government has 
left it to individual universities to adopt quota systems based on gender, ostensibly to funnel women into more "employable" careers and to bring "balance" to the student population. Critics condemned the new policy as a first step in reversing gains made by women, arguing that the quotas give official cover for 36 universities to bar, at their discretion, female students from taking courses across 77 individual majors, primarily in engineering and the sciences.

Gender gap had given way to gender panic. Yet the quota policy and the timing of its introduction raise a number of vexing questions. Why, after spending decades promoting and fostering female participation in the educational system, would the Islamic Republic reverse course in such an open and hostile manner? If the goal of the quotas is to reduce female participation in the educational system and the public sphere, why would planners focus their efforts on the relatively small number (less than 10 percent) of female students studying engineering, instead of the much larger proportion (approximately 65 percent) of women enrolled at the country's humanities departments, thereby ensuring that the quotas would have a more immediate and lasting effect?

A closer look at the figures suggest a more banal explanation for the announced restrictions, one more likely to evoke the Keystone Cops than angry mullahs hell-bent on sending women back to the kitchen and the bedroom. Restrictions on female participation represent little more than a clumsy attempt to placate local constituencies, specifically male youth and their families. Quotas are a ham-handed and artificial fix to the very real problem of boys being left behind by their female classmates. If implemented, they will provide state planners with the best of all worlds, namely the appearance of a state willing to provide relief to young men and their families, without actually affecting in a significant manner actual enrollment rates.

These latest educational "reforms" are part of the Islamic Republic's continuing drift toward a neopatrimonial state, one that is no longer able to rely on religion and ideology as bases for rule, and whose legitimacy increasingly rests on the government's ability to deliver material rewards and favors -- "goodies," in short.

Few "goodies" are as prized in Iran today as a college degree. Access to university, particularly state university, is a highly valued commodity in Iran, considered indispensable not only for securing a well-paying job, but also for participation in the marriage market.

There is little question that, in the competition for scarce slots in the university system, male students are in dire need of relief. Boys are being left behind, but not, as is so often reported, in overall rates of college acceptance and attendance. Males and females have enrolled in roughly equal proportions since the late 1990s. The enrollment rate for women, who barely constituted one third of the university population at the time of the 1979 Revolution, hovers around 50 percent of all college students (approximately 51 percent of all college students in 2008-09, dipping slightly to 49.5 percent during the 2009-10 academic year).

Differences in academic performance begin to emerge when we disaggregate enrollment figures by state and non-state universities. Some 56 percent of all students attending state universities are female.

"The Canadian government with one statement has changed the lives of many like me."

[ dispatch ] On Friday, while attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Russia, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced to reporters that his government had listed Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. Also citing the Iranian regime's continued support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its failure to comply with U.N. resolutions concerning its nuclear program, Baird announced that Canada was suspending diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic and expelling its diplomats. The Canadian Embassy in Iran has been closed and all Iranians interested in visiting Canada must now contact the embassy in Turkey, while an advisory has been issued warning against all travel by Canadians to Iran.

In his statement, Baird called the Iranian regime "among the world's worst violators of human rights"; Iranian Canadian human rights activists, such as Nazanin Afshin-Jam, wife of Defense Minister Peter MacKay, have previously called for the Islamic Republic's embassy in Ottawa to be closed. In an interview Friday, McGill University law professor Payam Akhavan asserted that the embassy had been responsible for the infiltration of the Iranian diaspora in the country and the harassment of regime opponents and rights activists. At the same time, he questioned the wisdom of entirely severing relations:

I think that at the very least, there should have been a downgrading of diplomatic relations. [But] I'm concerned that the closure of the embassy, both in Tehran and in Ottawa, and the termination of diplomatic relations may be going a bit too far because it will affect a lot of ordinary Iranian Canadians in adverse ways. We still have two Canadian Iranians on death row in Iran. [...]

And we have a context where there's talk of military conflict and increased tensions -- at which time diplomatic relations are very important.

In Tehran, the move came as a surprise to many Iranians with ties to Canada. "This does not make any sense," declares Said, 26, who had been planning to continue his graduate studies in the country. "I feel like an orphan."

Mahsa, a 32-year-old management consultant, had applied for an immigration visa. Her case was pending last summer when news broke that the Canadian Embassy's visa section had been shut down. "I have lost track of my documents; they must be in Ankara, I was told," she says. "After waiting for three years, I feel I am back to square one." She continues, with a mournful tone, "This is our fate as Iranians, I suppose. Anyone can ruin our plans. The Canadian government with one statement has changed the lives of many like me."

From halfway across the world, Babak, a 40-year-old Iranian Canadian, voices his frustration, recalling how TD Canada Trust earlier this year closed Iranian Canadians' bank accounts and cut off all financial services to them, suggesting that government sanctions were one of a "number of reasons." Babak says, "Then they came and apologized but they never told us why they closed those accounts and how they chose those individuals, many with no financial dealings with Iran."

As for Friday's actions, "I do not know why the Canadian government did this," he says. "When the Canadian government closed down the visa section in Tehran, the immigration officers told us that they did not know this would cause ordinary citizens any trouble." Now it seems to Babak that "the Canadian government was set on this course for a long time and hiding its true intentions even from its own citizens."

Asked about the human rights aspect of the decision, Babak responds, "I do not understand how this will improve the human rights situation in Iran. Many Iranians here are true human rights activists and they remain connected to Iran; this decision hurts them most because now they have to travel through third countries and there no direct link." He goes on to describe how the loss of consular services will make it much more difficult for Iranian Canadians to access or arrange for crucial documents such as birth certificates and powers of attorney.

Back in Iran, Mehdi, a journalist who keeps a close eye on the country's international relations, calls the move "a very bad omen." He echoes the point for emphasis. "This is a very bad sign. Things are moving in a very bad direction," he says. "The Canadian government and Canadian diplomacy played a significant role in Iran...a significant role in reducing the authorities' paranoia. Canada was never a colonial power and many here did not fear working with Canada." That will now change, in Mehdi's view. "When Canada, widely known as a peace-loving country, takes such a dramatic, unexpected step, everyone feels justified in worrying about the future."

While Baird told reporters, "Unequivocally, we have no information about a military strike on Iran," Mehdi, like many Iranians, is thinking about the possibility of armed conflict. Ali Reza, a businessman, hopes that the Canadian move prompts "the wise people" in the Iranian regime "to sit together and try to get things under control.... War is the most stupid and the most disastrous thing that might happen now." He vividly remembers the war with Iraq that dragged on through most of the 1980s and prays every night that peace prevails. He fears, however, for the future of Iran. "It seems everywhere there are more stupid people making the decisions."

Ali Chenar is a pen name for a Tehran Bureau correspondent.

by the same author | A Surprising Rehabilitation: The Shah in the Eyes of Young Iranians | Tehranis Talk of the Elections' Stakes and Khatami's Shock Ballot | A Swift End for the Innocent: The Sanctions Hit Home

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[ Q&A ] What does this agreement mean?

On September 1, Iran and North Korea signed a scientific and technological cooperation agreement. According to the Iranian Labour News Agency, the agreement calls for the two countries to

- set up joint laboratories and exchange programs for scientific teams;

- transfer technology in the fields of information technology, engineering, biotechnology, renewable energy and the environment;

- promote sustainable development of agriculture and food

On paper the cooperation between the two countries appears innocuous. In practice these partnerships create an umbrella that could allow them to conduct proliferation-linked activities.

How is Iran important to North Korea today? How is North Korea important to Iran?

The two countries are becoming more important to each other because both face increasing isolation from U.S.-led sanctions related to weapons proliferation activities in Tehran and Pyongyang. The relationship -- and mutual reliance -- is unique in the international community, since they lack any common ideology, religion, geographic space or ethnicity.

On the surface, relations may appear to embody the old proverb that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." But the reality is that each has helped the other cope during national emergencies. For Iran, North Korea was a vital supplier of conventional arms during the Iran-Iraq War. For North Korea, Iran was a long-standing linchpin in its procurement activities in the Middle East and Eastern Europe -- a role that China is increasingly playing now as a result of a growing national economy with more foreign companies setting up production facilities targeting the Chinese market.

At its core, the relationship is one where Iran provides much-needed cash to North Korea in return for missile parts and technology that are difficult to procure elsewhere.

What are the practical implications of the scientific and technological agreement?

With both countries facing tough sanctions, the new agreement appears to be an effort to create a formal mechanism through which they can procure materiel and equipment. Many items are not specifically on sanctions lists, but the expansive financial sanctions have led most foreign institutions and intermediaries to be unwilling to run the risk of doing business with Iran or North Korea. So the agreement can be seen as an attempt by Iran and North Korea to legitimize their activities under the innocuous heading of "civilian scientific and technological cooperation."

What does it mean for the international community?

Private Chinese companies are a critical enabler of key components in this agreement. Procuring, developing and transporting components and equipment will necessitate both Tehran and Pyongyang to make greater use of unique Chinese intermediaries.

Sanctions do have an impact in terms of raising transaction costs. While this initial effect is a negative one for Tehran and Pyongyang, the secondary effect is turning out to be a beneficial one for them. Cognizant of the reduced areas of movement, private Chinese companies command higher commission fees for conducting activities on behalf of Iranian and North Korean state trading companies.

The number of actual Iranian-North Korean deals may be declining, but the sophistication of their transactions appears to be growing, thereby making them less prone to detection. That does not bode well for U.S. and Western efforts to curtail Iran's suspected nuclear program or to counter North Korea's ongoing nuclear weapons development activities.

This article is presented by Tehran Bureau, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as part of the Iran project at iranprimer.usip.org. All opinions are the author's own.

Islamic Republic's increased isolation, vulnerability open door to serious negotiations.

The Arab press has hailed Morsi's visit as marking a new chapter in Egypt's independence. The American insistence that he avoid the summit fits into its wider strategy of isolating Iran. Despite the objections of Egypt's most important ally and the world's sole remaining superpower, he participated in the gathering and met with Iran's top brass. His presence in Tehran, however, does not translate into a foreign policy that is pro-Iranian. Indeed, he spoke in no uncertain terms of Egyptians' support for the uprising in Syria, Iran's most important and long-standing regional ally:

Our solidarity with the plight of the Syrian people against a repressive regime that has lost its legitimacy is not only a moral duty but one of political and strategic necessity.... We should declare our full support for the struggle of those brave men and women seeking freedom and justice in Syria.

When Tunisian citizens ignited the inferno of revolution in North Africa and the Middle East in early 2011, the Iranian government not only welcomed it, but hailed it as an "Islamic Awakening" inspired by Iran's own revolutionary past and ideology. As pro-American dictators fell in Tunisia and Egypt, Iran's government could not have been happier. As the contagion spread to Yemen and Bahrain, Iran was ecstatic.

But Iran's dream of an Arab Spring yielding Middle Eastern regimes that are less inclined to toe the American line has morphed into a nightmare. First, the joint Saudi-UAE military forces shored up the stringently anti-Iranian regime in Bahrain as it cracked down ruthlessly on its own nonviolent struggle. Second, and far worse from the Islamic Republic's perspective, the torch of revolution was passed to Syria.

Under Hafez al-Assad, Syria was the only country in the region that sided with Iran during the ruinous eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s -- a war in which most of the region and the West, including the United States, sided with Saddam Hussein's regime, sending billions in aid and advanced weaponry to Iraq, along with satellite information on Iranian troop movements and other logistical support. Since then, the relationship between Iran and Syria has deepened economically, militarily, and politically. Furthermore, Syria serves as the main conduit by which Iran supports Lebanon's Hezbollah, arguably one of the world's most powerful militant organizations and a central focus of Iranian foreign policy.

Iran's military budget is a fraction of the United States', yet it maximizes its strength through its transnational security network. The Iranian strategy has always been that if there is an American or Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities, they would respond by wreaking havoc on America's and its allies' interests in the region. So vital is Syria to that strategy that Iran has sacrificed its decades-long tailor-made image of defender of revolution in order to back President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Iran hoped that Morsi's visit would serve as a step in the direction of reconciliation between the two governments, which haven't had relations since Iran's 1979 Revolution. This may still be a long-term possibility, but in the short term, Morsi's speech in solidarity with the rebellion in Syria underscores the nightmare of the Arab Spring for Iran.

As the Syrian conflict spirals out of control and Iran's regional clout is increasingly threatened, the United States has an opportunity to break the impasse over Iran's nuclear program through diplomacy. Indeed, there is precedent for seeing such an opportunity while extraordinary events grip the rest of the region.

In 2003, the Iranian leadership was shaken to its core in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Iraq, which achieved in three weeks (granted, after more than a decade of crippling sanctions) what the Iranians couldn't in eight years of war -- the overthrow of Saddam's dictatorship.

The Bush administration, flushed with hubris from what seemed a quick victory, intensified its rhetoric against Iraq's neighbors Syria and Iran. The aggressive U.S. posturing and the threat of war were so alarming that Muammar Qaddafi's Libya threw the doors to its controversial weapons program wide open to inspectors.

Iran too moved into action, sending a secret document to the Bush administration via the Swiss ambassador that laid out terms for what is now referred to as the "Grand Bargain." The Iranians agreed to enter into what amounted to treaty negotiations with the United States and discuss all matters of contention between the two countries. Iran "put everything on the table," ranging from its support for militant groups like Hezbollah to its nuclear program, and required in return security guarantees, an end to sanctions, and a pledge to never pursue "regime change" in Iran. Needless to say, the Bush administration ignored the proposal.

Iran is in a situation reminiscent of the one that provoked such vulnerability in 2003. And although it has a different president since it offered the Grand Bargain, it has the same Supreme Leader at the helm, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who endorsed the proposal and is the country's final voice in matters of foreign policy.

The Egyptian president's statements at the NAM summit highlight how the Arab Spring has changed the political landscape of the Middle East in a way that has left Iran more isolated and vulnerable. These changes afford the Obama administration the opportunity to finally give diplomacy a chance to succeed in solving the nuclear crisis with Iran.

Until now, there has been no real diplomatic effort to engage Iran and end the impasse. According to Vali Nasr, a former senior adviser to the State Department, "I don't believe the Obama administration, contrary to common perception, has ever been serious about negotiations." If Obama has any aspirations to live up to the promise of his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, now is the time to give diplomacy a serious try.

by the same author | Depicting Iran: How Western Portrayals Justify Intervention

related reading | Iraqi, Syrian Developments Threaten Iran's Geopolitical Sway | Iran and the Arab Spring | Iran's Nightmare: Losing Syria

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"Something is different and it doesn't feel very nice."

[ dispatch ] For anyone who might have traversed Tehran on Monday, August 27, it would have been easy to conclude that the government's security forces were arranging to face anti-regime protests similar to those in 2009 and 2011.

The previous week, commanders of Iran's military and elite police units had announced their resolve to impose tight security in Tehran ahead of the conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which had convened on Sunday the 26th. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told the Fars News Agency, "Responsibility for the preservation of safety at the NAM summit has fallen upon the army of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

In the days leading up to the summit, the presence of the military dominated the city's mood. In the mountainous Velenjak neighborhood of northwest Tehran, I met with a 60-year-old man and his 25-year-old daughter. "It is full of police here," she said. "Last night, ten roadblocks were set up, and at the end of every street were positioned four police officers." As far as she was concerned, the government's behavior was "natural."

A friend of the father's joined our conversation. He said he "completely" recalled the autumn of 1997 when, under then President Mohammad Khatami, Tehran played host to the 18th Conference of the Organization of Islamic Countries. I asked him to compare the government's security measures then to those for the NAM summit. "Then, Sadegh Kharazi was tasked with organizing security surrounding the conference," he said. "The first thing he did was to establish dialogue with residents of neighborhoods near where the conference was being held by promising to keep disturbances at a minimum. The positions taken today greatly contrast with those in 1997. Then, none of the soldiers had loaded weapons. Today, they all have a Colt or a Kalashnikov. Then, roadblocks and inspections were conducted in neighborhoods adjacent to the conference. Today, forces are scattered throughout the entire city. "

I chatted with a newspaper stand vendor who was reading the reformist-leaning Shargh newspaper. Was he troubled by the security measures? "I sense that it's an important summit, so safety is necessary," he said. "You see, places like New York City host events sometimes on a monthly basis and so they are prepared." But Tehran, he said, hosts an event the scale of the NAM summit only about once a decade, "and so these measures are more distinguishable."

On Tuesday, as the major influx of foreign heads of state and government attending the conference took place, security garrisons were established around the capital. On Enghelab Avenue, opposite the University of Tehran, I participated in a forthright exchange with a 29-year-old undergraduate studying sociology, Marzieh. "I don't like the military atmosphere of the city," she said. "I live in east Tehran. Our neighborhood is very far from the summit, but is nevertheless swarming with soldiers and police officers." She took a phone call and hurried off after a conclusive observation: "They've intentionally created an atmosphere to flex their muscles." Perhaps she had in mind statements from government officials such as Deputy State Police Commander Ahmad Reza Radan, who told Mehr News Agency that the forces under his control would be "extremely vigilant."

In a tiny studio in west Tehran, I spoke to an opposition activist who wanted to be identified only by a pseudonym, Mehdi. Discussing the security measures, he said, "They really aren't kidding around. Even small merchant stands have been told to close, and enforcement officers are everywhere."

A 17-year-old girl, Atefeh, relaxing in the shade under the trees of Jamshidieh Park, said, "Everywhere is deserted. Something is different and it doesn't feel very nice."

Later, I walk toward south Tehran, whose residents according to stereotype are predominately pro-government enthusiasts. At the Jaberi Mosque on Pirouzi Street, a man with a heavy Tehrani accent who said his name was Jacob, remarked, "Listen up, son. Write in your newspaper that when people don't have bread, Mr. Ahmadinejad has decided to spend millions on his guests. To a poor, old workingman like me, five days without work is a week of lost income." The government had declared a holiday in Tehran for the duration of the summit, Sunday through Friday.

Another man in the neighborhood declared of the NAM conference, "I'm against wasting money on this, but if the summit is hosted well, the Islamic Republic's flag will rise proudly."

On Friday, Tehran was a city of ghosts, void and tranquil. The monthly allocation of subsidized fuel was increased by eight gallons in the week running up to the summit. Analysts widely interpreted this as an effort by the Ahmadinejad administration to sway residents to vacation outside the capital during the summit.

I asked Mehdi, the political activist, if he is unhappy. "We don't mind going on vacation," he said. "I haven't seen any dissatisfaction. But they apparently have difficulty controlling the city, and are afraid of chaos."

Mehdi has posters on his wall depicting luminaries of American and European cinema and literature -- Martin Scorsese, Samuel Beckett. There are also images of political figures from Iranian history such as Prime Ministers Mohammad Mosaddegh and Mehdi Bazargan, and Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani. The most prominent picture of all is one of Mir Hossein Mousavi.

The Green Movement leader has been under house arrest since February of last year with his wife, Zahra Rahnavard; former parliament speaker and reformist presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi is similarly under detention. On August 23, three days before the start of the summit, Mousavi was brought to a Tehran hospital to receive treatment for clogged arteries. News of his condition swiftly spread via social media, and many Iranian Facebook users changed their profile pictures to that of the opposition leader.

I asked Mehdi if it was conceivable for members of the Green Movement to take advantage of the international focus on Tehran and the NAM summit to protest against the political situation and, specifically, the detentions of Mousavi, Rahnavard, and Karroubi. Speaking of the security forces, he said, "When foreign dignitaries are visiting, they will not fire upon the crowd and this is an opportunity to prepare for protests. However, other factors must line up for protests to occur, and these days we just don't have this. It's possible that no blood will be spilt, but they will most likely arrest and jail lots of people. This reduces the people's motivation."

The Green Path of Hope Council released a statement to coincide with the opening of the summit that called on citizens to chant "Allah-o akbar" from their rooftops on Wednesday and Thursday at 10 p.m. This means of expressing popular disapproval with Iran's rulers traces back to the 1979 Revolution, and more recently the 2009 protests. On Wednesday, no chants were reported, but the following night, in various quarters, the voices of the opposition were once again heard.

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Staying true to the moral compass.

The recent summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran at the end of August only compounded the problem, providing an occasion for yet more left-wing confusion. A touch of clarification is in order.

Though largely forgotten of late, the Non-Aligned Movement has played a major role in the political history of the Third World and the global Left. Formed in the early 1960s as an alternative to both Cold War power blocs, it became a vehicle for the newly decolonized states in the global South to chart an independent path on the world stage.

Vijay Prashad recounts this important story in his wonderful book The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. He's also written a brilliant analysis of the complex geopolitical chess board on which the Tehran assemblage was played.

The Islamic Republic saw the NAM summit as an opportunity to show the world that it is not the isolated state that the United States and Israel make it out to be. "Two-thirds of the world's nations are here in Tehran," Iran's ambassador to the United Nations effused. Another regime apparatchik described the gathering as a "political tsunami" against the U.S. and its allies. Iran not only hosted the NAM summit but has taken over the leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement for the next three years.

This kind of stuff can scramble the ideological compasses of many progressives. Iran now heads up a historic Third World alliance. It deploys anti-imperialist rhetoric and takes the U.S. to task for being a global bully. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad enjoys cozy relations with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez (for which Iranian progressives have taken the Venezuelan leader to task). The U.S. and Israel have threatened -- and continue to threaten -- a military strike on Iran, an egregious violation of international law and imperial aggression.

All of this creates bewilderment among many leftists.

Some go so far as to embrace the Iranian government outright. In a toxic screed, veteran Marxist James Petras celebrated the NAM summit as a "Strategic Diplomatic Victory over the Washington-Israeli Axis."

But most progressives are simply flummoxed by the issue.

This is why the essay "Iran and the US Anti-War Movement" by Manijeh Nasrabadi, a member of the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective, is such a breath of fresh air. Voilà:

How do we say we are against imposing the privations of sanctions, against subjecting the Iranian people to the violence of US/Israeli bombs, but are willing to take no position when those same people are subjected to violence by the Iranian government? This would make us an anti-war movement disconnected from social justice and life on the ground for ordinary Iranians; it would mean we have lost our moral compass.

[The Raha Iranian Feminist Collective argues for] the need to free all political prisoners, from Guantanamo to the Iranian prison Evin; to end the death penalty in the US and in Iran and everywhere; in other words, to build solidarity between our movements here and the movements there.

If we don't support Iranians struggling in Iran for the same things we fight for here, such as labor rights, abolition of the death penalty, and freedom for political prisoners, we risk a politically debilitating form of cultural relativism. [...]

[I]t is not only possible, but imperative, to simultaneously stand against all forms of outside intervention in Iran and against all forms of domestic oppression targeting ordinary Iranian people. [...]

[T]his must be an ethical movement that makes no apologies for the torture and imprisonment of dissidents and that expresses solidarity with popular resistance in Iran. Here and everywhere, we must oppose militarism, prisons, censorship, torture, and the death penalty.

This is a nuanced and principled position, yet it's a controversial one in certain quarters of the Left. At its conference in Stamford, Connecticut, in March, the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) overwhelmingly voted down a resolution introduced by the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective and the recently formed (and hugely welcome) Havaar: Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions, and State Repression that read,

We oppose war and sanctions against the Iranian people and stand in solidarity with their struggle against state repression and all forms of outside intervention.

"We cannot say we don't want people to be starved or bombed, but if they are imprisoned and tortured we have no comment," Nasrabadi contends.

I second that emotion.

By spiking the principled Raha/Havaar resolution, UNAC did precisely that: it said "no comment" in the face of repression and torture. Is that the message the U.S. peace movement should be sending to the people of Iran?

All opinions are the author's own. This piece was originally published by Truthout.

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Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

10:20 p.m. IRDT, 21 Shahrivar/September 11 George Jahn of the Associated Press reports that diplomats have told him,

The United Nations [International] Atomic [Energy] Agency [IAEA] has received new and significant intelligence over the past month that Iran has moved further toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon. They say the intelligence shows that Iran has advanced its work on calculating the destructive power of an atomic warhead through a series of computer models that it ran sometime within the past three years. The diplomats say the information comes from Israel, the United States and at least two other Western countries and concludes that the work was done sometime within the past three years.

If this new information was indeed received "over the past month," the question is why the IAEA did not refer to it in its latest report on Iran's nuclear program that was released at the end of August, particularly given the fact that the report did include a letter that Iran submitted to the agency on August 30.

The Associated Press story does not explain how the information was obtained by the anonymous sources, nor does it consider the question of why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama have made no public mention of it. In particular, given that Netanyahu has been threatening Iran with a military strike and looking for evidence to support his argument that the Islamic Republic poses an existential threat to Israel, why has he not aggressively promoted the new information?

In an AP story published this past March concerning the Parchin military site, where Iran has been producing conventional ammunition and explosives for decades, Jahn reported, "Satellite images of an Iranian military facility appear to show trucks and earth-moving vehicles at the site, indicating an attempted cleanup of radioactive traces possibly left by tests of a nuclear-weapon trigger." Aside from the fact that such radioactive traces cannot be removed, the notion that the images suggested the presence of radioactive materials in the first place appears to have been entirely speculative.

In May, Jahn reported that "a drawing based on information from inside an Iranian military site shows an explosives' containment chamber of the type needed for nuclear arms-related tests that U.N. inspectors suspect Tehran has conducted there.... The computer-generated drawing was provided to The Associated Press by an official of a country tracking Iran's nuclear program who said it proves the structure exists." This report was discredited by independent analysts, such as Gareth Porter. See here for Jim White's discussion of what may actually have happened at Parchin.

Netanyahu: No "moral right" to "red light" Israel

Prime Minister Netanyahu, meanwhile, took the Obama administration to task in unusually stern -- if implicit -- terms for its refusal to insist that Iran cease uranium enrichment by a date certain. The Haaretz daily reported that Netanyahu told reporters on Tuesday,

The world tells Israel, "Wait, there's still time." And I say, "Wait for what? Wait until when?" Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.

Now if Iran knows that there is no red line, if Iran knows that there is no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it's doing. It's continuing, without any interference, towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there, nuclear bombs.

Though Netanyahu referred to "international community," it is clear, according to Haaretz, that he meant the United States.

In an interview on Sunday with Bloomberg Radio after she attended an Asia-Pacific forum in Russia, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked if the United States would set clear "red lines" for Iran, or state explicitly the consequences of a failure to negotiate a deal with world powers by a certain date. "We're not setting deadlines," she replied. "We're watching very carefully about what they do, because it's always been more about their actions than their words."

Clinton also explained that there is a difference in the U.S. and Israeli perspectives on the time horizon for talks. Referring to the Netanyahu administration, she said, "They are more anxious about a quick response because they feel that they're right in the bull's-eye, so to speak. But we're convinced that we have more time to focus on these sanctions, to do everything we can to bring Iran to a good-faith negotiation."

The following day, in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that it is "not useful" to set deadlines or red lines, because President Obama has already declared that Iran will not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Panetta: Iran would need a year to make nuclear weapon

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in an appearance on CBS This Morning that if Iran were to decide to make a nuclear weapon, the United States would have approximately a year to intervene and prevent it.

"It's roughly about a year right now. A little more than a year," he said. "We think we will have the opportunity once we know that they've made that decision to take the action necessary to stop [Iran]." He added, "The United States has pretty good intelligence. We know generally what they're up to. And so we keep a close track on them.... We have the forces in place to be able to not only defend ourselves, but to do what we have to do to try to stop them from developing nuclear weapons."

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Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

8:05 p.m. IRDT, 22 Shahrivar/September 12 The Globe and Mail reports that "Canadian diplomats who were on the ground in Tehran supported the move" to close the Canadian Embassy there last Friday, because of fear that in the event of an attack by Israel or the United States, it would be targeted by mobs in the same way that the U.S. Embassy was in 1979 and the British Embassy was last November (on the latter occasion, officials of the Islamic Republic evidently helped orchestrate the assault):

Canadian officials cited a range of reasons for the extraordinary decision to expel all Iranian diplomats from Ottawa and close the mission in Tehran, chief among them the threat to the security of Canadian personnel, particularly if Israel or the United States should launch an attack on Iran in an effort to eliminate Tehran's alleged nuclear-weapons program.

"With no American embassy in Tehran and the British embassy closed, the next most likely target for retaliation would have been the Canadians," said a former government official with experience in Iran.

That is why, these officials say, there was no objection from the Canadian diplomats when the order to evacuate came down, especially since the mission was serving no practical purpose anyway.

In addition, Canada is preparing to officially designate the Islamic Republic as a state sponsor of terrorism. Reuters quoted a Canadian government spokesman as saying that "Canada wants to be able to continue to speak up on the Iranian regime's behavior, and we didn't want our guys in there as hostage." Ironically, the embassy's closure seems to have emboldened supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the Mojahedin-e Khalgh Organization (MKO) in Canada to press their campaign to have the MKO delisted as a foreign terrorist organization.

Weighing the question of how the Islamic Republic might respond to his government's decision to severe relations, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated, "Do I anticipate specific actions? No, not necessarily, but as I say, we should all know by now that this is a regime that does not stop at anything. So that's just the reality of the situation."

Did intelligence on Iran activities in Canada prompt diplomatic cutoff?

While much of the discussion around the Canadian move has revolved around fears of an impending U.S.-Israeli attack, CBC commentator Brian Stewart says he believes that "Harper acted on new intelligence. But the warnings were likely more about the Iranian embassy activities in Canada than they were about the safety of our personnel abroad."

Citing Congressional testimony from James Clapper -- who as director of national intelligence is the titular head of the U.S. intelligence community -- Stewart asserts that the expansion of Iranian "cultural centers" throughout the Americas over the past decade is aimed at inserting Iranian agents into the region for covert operations and either recruiting or harassing Iranian nationals in the hemisphere.

Canadian Iranian opponents of the Islamic Republic's government have cited continual harassment from regime supporters and efforts by Iranian security services to infiltrate spies into the 120,000-strong diaspora community. Such reports of infiltration and intimidation of Iranian nationals in the Americas by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been strenuously denied by Iran. It is not clear if Canada's decision to shutter its immigration bureau in Tehran over the summer was tied to any specific threats against Canadian nationals, but it is likely the closure was a prelude for the departure of the few remaining Canadian diplomats from Iran this month.

Canada's last ambassador to Iran: Rationale for severing relations "not convincing"

For the most part, Canadian commentators, such as Kenneth Taylor, a former diplomat to Iran who worked with U.S. intelligence to spirit Americans out of the country in 1979, and opposition politicians have said they are baffled by the timing of the embassy closures. In an op-ed that appeared in the Globe and Mail, John Mundy, Canada's last ambassador to the Islamic Republic, wrote,

Canada's reasons for acting so suddenly are not convincing. The Prime Minister has listed Iran's terrible human rights record, its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, its provocative nuclear program and its repeated threats against Israel as reasons to leave. These are actually reasons why we should stay. When the going gets rough you really need your diplomats. Canada's tradition is to be one of the last countries to leave in a crisis, not the first.

Mundy was the third Canadian ambassador appointed to Iran in a contentious three-year period following the 2004 death of Canadian Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi in Tehran police custody. Two intelligence officers were charged over her murder -- the Canadian government and Iranian prosecutors found she had been tortured in detention -- but both agents were eventually acquitted by the courts by 2005. Appointed to the post in April 2007, Mundy was expelled from Tehran that December over Ottawa's refusal to accept Iran's ambassadorial nominees due to their suspected involvement in the 1979 U.S. hostage crisis.

Mundy has been critical of the Harper government's policy toward Iran, which he says isolates human rights activists there and increases the odds of military action by the United States and Israel. In an opinion piece published last week, he argued that "Canada can play a bigger role in enhancing the cohesion and unity of the international community at a time when it's essential for Iran to engage in meaningful negotiations to resolve the crisis." Mundy told Canada AM that the embassy closure bodes ill for a negotiated solution to the nuclear question, and for the fate of three Canadian nationals imprisoned in Iran.

The three jailed Canadian nationals are Hossein Derakhshan, Hamid Ghassemi Shall, and Saeed Malekpour. Derakhshan, a controversial weblogger who helped bring the platform blogger.com to Farsi speakers in Iran and the diaspora in the early 2000s was jailed by the Islamic Republic in 2008 for "collaborating with the enemy." Shall was sentenced to death on a spurious charge of espionage following his return to Iran in 2008 to visit his mother. Malekpour is also under a death sentence because a program he designed was found in use by an "adult website." Some of Malekpour's supporters welcomed the embassy closure as a way of sending a message to Tehran that Canada would pursue his release more forcefully.

According to the National Post, Prime Minister Harper told reporters that "Canada will keep trying to aid its citizens in Iran -- including three on death row -- with the help of its partners and allies," though the Post adds that "Mr. Harper did not hold out much hope that anything significant could be accomplished" for the three men. Harper's supporters have dismissed Mundy's remarks as out-of-touch commentary from an ex-diplomat.

Iran: Canada's government "extremist," "racist"

Iranian officials have attempted to play down the embassy closure in Tehran, and the announcement by Harper's government that all of Iran's diplomatic personnel must leave Canada within five days, while also rounding on Canadian officials. That the government of Israel has praised Canada's decision to close the embassies has only produced more strident denunciations from Iranian officials. Majles Speaker Ali Larijani has cancelled a prescheduled visit to Canada, and Iran's state-run media has denounced Canada's "extremist" and "racist" government.

Most commentaries by politicians in Iran have been dismissive of the diplomatic break between the two countries, and Fars News Agency reports that the Foreign Ministry's position is that "the issues they have raised are completely irrelevant and merely endanger their own national interests." According to the Mehr News Agency, however, parliamentarian Hasan Sobhaninia said there is concern "other countries might also now close their offices in Tehran."

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The Islamic Republic's treatment of its Baha'i citizens has a surprising and shameful precedent.

[ opinion ] Later this month, the United Nations will host Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his final annual visit as president of Iran. His ineligibility for reelection next year due to a term limit means that he will not return in September 2013. His government's nuclear ambitions have so dominated recent discussion about his country that it has been possible, at times, to overlook how abysmal its human rights record has been. Having grown up with the indignities of the apartheid system in South Africa, I bristle whenever I hear anyone equate a government's treatment of a portion of its citizenry to apartheid. Usually, the claims are exaggerated. But in Iran today, the government's treatment of the Baha'i community bears striking similarities.

Baha'is are the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran. Although the community's central tenets involve the promotion of peace, the acceptance of the divine origin of all of the great religions of the world, and the unity of humankind, its members are harassed and persecuted by the government and accused of being spies. The Baha'is have suffered persecution since the founding of the religion in Iran in the mid-1800s. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, repression and discrimination intensified. The regime has established a set of restrictions on Baha'is that are surprisingly reminiscent of the apartheid system.

In apartheid South Africa, blacks were prohibited under the Constitution Act, No. 32 of 1961 from being legislators. In Iran, Baha'is are constitutionally excluded from service in the parliament. By contrast, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews hold one or two seats each as part of their status as constitutionally recognized religious minorities.

In apartheid South Africa, Section 32 of the Extension of University Education Act, No. 45 of 1959 prohibited "non-white" students from registering at and attending "white universities." In Iran, a confidential memorandum (the "Golpaygani Memorandum") dated February 25, 1991, from the secretary of the Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council, Seyyed Mohammad Golpaygani, and signed by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, provided that Baha'is "must be expelled from universities, either in the admission process or during the course of their studies, once it becomes known that they are Baha'is."

Since then, Baha'is have relied on their own human and financial resources to create an informal tertiary system of education known as the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE). Unwilling to accept even separate education, the government has several times raided homes where classes are held, most recently in May 2011, confiscating books and computers, arresting educators, and shortly thereafter outlawing BIHE activities. Declaring the provision of education to Baha'is to be illegal is reminiscent of the Bantu Education Act, No. 47 of 1953, which made it a crime to conduct a school or class for blacks without official permission.

In apartheid South Africa, Section 77 of the Industrial Conciliation Act, No. 28 of 1956 empowered the minister of labor to make determinations reserving certain occupations to a particular racial group and 1957's Proclamation No. 329, issued under the Group Areas Act, No. 41 of 1950, prohibited any black person from being employed as an "executive, professional, technical or administrative employee, manager or supervisor" in a business in a white area.

Similar measures exist to subordinate the Baha'i community. A provision in the Golpaygani Memorandum specifies that their livelihoods should be limited to "modest" ones and that their "progress and development" should be "blocked." Evidence of this provision at work is contained in a letter dated April 9, 2007, from the Public Places Supervision Office of the Public Intelligence and Security Force in the province of Tehran. It is addressed to the regional commanders of police and the heads of public intelligence and security forces and instructs them to prevent Baha'is from engaging in a wide range of businesses including "high-earning businesses" and from receiving permits in 25 "sensitive business categories" and trades ranging from the tourist industry to computer sales, publishing, and a wide range of food businesses. In the town of Semnan, for example, the government has shut down at least 17 Baha'i-owned small businesses in the last three years.

Massive confiscations of property and forced removals of black communities took place in South Africa during the apartheid era. In documented cases since 1979, there have been over 2,000 houses, apartments, offices, shops, factories, farms, and pieces of land confiscated from Baha'is. Over 200 Baha'is have been executed since 1979, many of them tortured by the government in attempts to force them to recant their beliefs. Many South African blacks were executed, imprisoned, and tortured for their political activities in pursuit of an end to the apartheid system.

Admittedly, there are areas of difference. Baha'is have generally not been segregated from other Iranians residentially or for primary and secondary education. Also, since they are physically indistinguishable from the rest of the population, they have generally not been subject to the "petty" apartheid -- segregation in public places -- that governed life in South Africa. Nevertheless, they, like black South Africans during the apartheid period, are subject to a series of legal and administrative restrictions designed to subordinate and marginalize them. The Iranian government expects Baha'is, historically among the best educated communities in Iran, to eke out a meager existence as a separate underclass that will eventually disappear.

It is disturbing that the international expression of concern over this situation has not risen to a higher pitch, as the global community, including, hypocritically, the Iranian government, has long agreed that apartheid and comparable systems are a clear outrage on human dignity. Indeed, the Baha'is espouse values that are the direct opposite of the apartheid-like values of the government. Despite the attention drawn to the threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions, we cannot forget what Iran is doing to its own people. At 116, the number of Baha'is currently in prison is the highest in about two decades -- a strong indicator of the condition of human rights in the society at large, which includes the persecution not only of political opponents and religious minorities, but also of trade unionists, artists, journalists, lawyers, and advocates of the rights of women. If left unchecked, the values and practices of the Iranian government could contribute to a global contagion of abuse. They represent a threat not only to the Baha'is and the people of Iran, but also to the dignity of all people. Mr. Ahmadinejad must be confronted with this during his final U.N. visit.

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[ dispatch ] Cross-legged, hands up, eyes closed, and energy flowing freely -- these are the 16 attendees of a meditation class held in Tehran's impoverished Imamzadeh Hassan neighborhood.

The program, which runs for eight terms of nine classes each, promises both physical and mental enlightenment. Classes are held at participants' homes on a rotating basis to evade the attention of the authorities. Such classes are regularly shut down and their organizers arrested throughout Iran.

The Islamist victors of the 1979 Revolution envisioned an Iran rooted in religious tradition. The desecularized state of the Islamic Republic explicitly promotes Islamic values and morals and has abandoned or suppressed much that is characteristically Iranian. This has prompted the cultivation of a counterculture that has become very visible.

Fatima is one of the participants in the meditation class. She leads a difficult life, and meditation provides balance. She was born 53 years ago near Ardabil. Her sweet voice mixes Turkish and Tehrani accents. She tells me her story, starting with her marriage at the age of 13.

"My first husband was cheap, mean, and 15 years older than me. I had no say in our marriage because my parents predetermined everything. Tradition prescribed this. We lived at his parents' home with his two sisters and brother. I acted as the family's cook rather than his bride, obedient to everyone.

"I struggled the first three years. I realized he smuggled drugs, and although I was embarrassed to speak up against this, I did so on religious grounds. As a result, he beat me. Treating me like a child, he expected my enduring obedience and acceptance of immoral income into the family. He even developed an addiction at the same that I was pregnant with our first child."

Upon their daughter's birth, conflict between the Fatima, her husband, and his family intensified. She left him and their child. "I returned to my parents' home in shame," she says.

Fatima's family farms a sliver of land in an impoverished village near Ardabil. She describes their dire living conditions, with a diet restricted to bread, cheese, and potatoes.

After working a few weeks, her father arranged a second marriage to a 55-year-old man. That lasted three months. "I think he felt bad for me because he was older than my father, and his kids were older than me. In three months, we spoke a handful of times. I took the two golden bracelets and ring I was given, sold them, and moved to Tehran," she says.

She stayed with her brother in the capital before moving to another brother's home in Isfahan. When that situation didn't work out, she returned to Tehran to stay at an uncle's. Her cousin enrolled in an hairdressing school, and Fatima sold one of the golden bracelets to join her. "I went to work at a hair salon for six months. I wanted to save up to visit my daughter," she says.

"The Iran-Iraq War changed everything. Tehran was bombarded, and we all returned to our villages. My cousin fought Saddam and came back wounded. He basically needed a companion who would act as a nurse, and my family insisted that we marry."

The newlyweds moved into a room in Tehran where Fatima cared for her husband. "I quit the hair salon, and we lived off of welfare," she says. His health slowly improved and Fatima, after giving birth to a son at the age of 29, returned to work. At 32, she had another child, her second daughter.

Fatima's husband eventually returned to work as well, but Fatima's daily existence did not improve. She worked for her own sustainment. "I sought God's protection. I wanted God to know my struggles, and never leave me," she says. Her life headed down a familiar path as her husband became a drug addict. He spent her money on himself. She turned to antidepressants. She worked a second job at a restaurant, making 9,000 tomans a month, until disputes with the owners led them to fire her on fabricated grounds, she says.

These events weighed heavily upon their children. Their daughter became extremely religious, wearing a black chador and attending Qur'an recital classes; at 16, she unsuccessfully attempted suicide three times. Their son dropped out of college. Everyone blamed the father. "On the one hand, I hate his guts; but on the other, I feel bad for him," Fatima says.

She finally convinced her husband to enter a detoxification program. After sobering up, he began to attend meditation classes and enjoyed them so much that he started to take his daughter and son along. "Meditation classes helped us find ourselves. I stopped taking antidepressants. Tranquility entered our lives and we felt things becoming better," Fatima says.

She says her daughter's own depression lifted, her son returned to academics, and her husband became a positive figure. "They arose from their cold winter's sleep," as Fatima describes it. However, after seven months of sobriety, her husband relapsed.

Fatima opens her eyes, lowers her arms, kneels down, and fixes her gaze on the instructor. She smiles at two of her fellow classmates: her 21-year-old daughter and 24-year-old son.

Before the end of the class, the instructor solicits questions. Fatima asks, "How do we distinguish an injustice?"

Abi Mehregan is a pen name. Abi is on the staff of Iran Labor Report and covers poverty for Tehran Bureau. Photo by Sina T via Flickr.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

11:35 a.m. IRDT, 28 Shahrivar/September 18 In a speech to the 56th Annual Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), accused the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency of indifference to the assassination of Iranian scientists and insinuated that agency inspectors might have had foreknowledge of sabotage he said took place at the Fordow uranium enrichment facility last month.

After repeating Iran's official position that the production and use of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, are against Islamic teachings and that the country has thus foresworn them, he stated,

After the martyrdom of Dariush Rezaeinejad in the aftermath of the first anniversary of the assassination of Professor Majid Shahriari, and one day before the second anniversary of the assassination of Professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi, the agents of Zionism committed another crime and murdered Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan and his driver, Reza Ghashghaei, using a bomb that had been attached to their car. Over this time period, there were plans to assassinate members of our nuclear negotiation team and other scientists that were discovered by the Ministry of Intelligence and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, leading to the arrest of the [would be] assassins, the report on which was made public.

The emergence of nuclear terrorism, and the indifference of the agency to it, coupled with its superficial and cliché responses to the questions about this phenomenon will be dangerous to scientists of other countries in the future. Martyr Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was a key scientist in Iran's nuclear technology and [uranium] enrichment [activities]; after his martyrdom, hundreds of academic and industrial experts volunteered to work with the AEOI.

Abbasi Davani said that after he met with IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano last year, he invited Amano to visit Iran and familiarize himself with the country's nuclear program. He said that he suggested, as well, an appropriate time frame for resolving the issues regarding the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program, but that "one year has passed and no response has been received, [the agency] continues on its path and has been acting so that the negotiations will not yield any agreement." He continued,

One can create a huge impediment in the path of the negotiations at their beginning, and then claim later on that they did not yield any result. But the wise approach is one in which the agency is more patient for what it calls the truthfulness test and careful in what it does in order to respect the rights and security of a member state. It is worth noting that al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein regime were, and have been considered, major threats to the national security of certain countries, but our country has thousands of [miles of] borders with these countries [Afghanistan and Iraq] and [therefore] our national security is far more important than that of those [more distant] countries, particularly those that are beyond the Atlantic. Thus, it is necessary to take into consideration the critical conditions of the region and create trust with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Time can resolve all the unclear aspects. The only thing needed is mutual trust.

Iran's nuclear chief then accused the IAEA of not being neutral and objective, saying,

It is possible that the agency has deviated from its main obligations, namely, being fair and neutral, due to mismanagement and influence peddling by some nations. Thoughtful people of the world should be aware that Iran's nuclear dossier and its alleged lack of transparency that have been brought up are the result of the destruction of the interests of the ruling elites of a few countries and the emergence of the idea of freedom. If we take the same pessimistic approach as the agency's that, unfortunately, is based on stubbornness and [making allegations] without presenting any [credible evidence], we must not continue our negotiations and adopt a different approach.

It is possible that the terrorists [meaning agents of Israel] have penetrated the agency and make decisions [for it] secretly. It is our duty to inform the director-general and warn him. I emphasize that one can look pessimistically at the events and the [agency's] reports and conclude that it is trying to create problems for those nations that want to live in peace and help human civilization bloom under the pillar of belief in God. Some examples may perhaps clarify this.

Abbasi Davani proceeded to discuss hitherto unreported sabotage at Iran's uranium enrichment facilities:

On August 17, 2012, the electric power line from the city of Qom to the Fordow complex was cut off, using explosives. Let me remind you that cutting off electricity is one way of damaging the centrifuges [that enrich uranium]. In the early hours of the next morning, the agency's inspectors suddenly asked to visit Fordow. Are they not related? Who, other than the agency's inspectors, could have access to the Fordow complex after such a short time to record and report the extent of the sabotage? [...]

A similar operation has occurred at the Natanz facility. Given the transparency of our peaceful nuclear program, we have been trying to purchase some of the parts that we need in the international market. The agency does nothing to help us with regards to the sanctions [that prevent many international purchases]. Perhaps, it [feels that] it has no duty [in this regard], or when the Stuxnet virus is used against our program, industrial sabotage is carried out, or explosives are inserted in [imported] machines, but it reports with utmost honesty and care the exact amount of enriched uranium, the degree of uranium enrichment in the uranium hexafluoride that leave the centrifuges, and whatever can be seen [by its inspectors]. Such information is then easily accessed by the terrorists and saboteurs.

On May 20, 2012, we demonstrated this to the director-general and two of his deputies, showing them an instrument in which explosives had been installed, and asked them to include this in their next report, but unfortunately they did not do this.

Those who planned the attacks on Iran's nuclear program have realized that, given the agency's reports, they have not succeeded. To make happy those who enjoy the blossoming of the talents of human beings and praise God for it, I should mention that the Iranian experts have been able to develop methods to counter cyberwarfare, industrial sabotage, and use of explosives, and prevent them in time, and have also developed ways of protecting our nuclear complexes against missile and aerial attacks. But based on the Islamic teaching that people are innocent [unless proven otherwise], we [do not accuse the agency of being involved in the sabotage] and ask them to correct what they are doing and return to fairness.

Abbasi Davani then emphasized that Iran would not enrich uranium above 19.75 percent, and that the enrichment being done at that level is for the Tehran Research Reactor, which annually produces medical radioisotopes for 850,000 Iranian patients.

Khamenei: "I am not Stalin"

The hardline website Tribon-e Mostazafin reported that in a meeting with hardline university students that took place during the fasting month of Ramadan (July 20-August 18), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared, "I am not [Joseph] Stalin, to say something and then have some people theorize what I said." This was reported by Mehdi Amirian, secretary-general of the central council of what the hardliners claim to be the Office for Consolidation of Unity (OCU), the umbrella group for university Muslim Student Associations, and Mohammad Pahlavan, secretary-general of the right-wing Union of Societies of Muslim Students. In fact, the legitimate OCU has been dismantled by the government, and many of its leading members are currently imprisoned. In its place, a fake organization has been established with the same name. Both Amirian and Pahlavan expressed their dismay that what Khamenei said about himself vis-à-vis Stalin had not been reported by the state's television and radio outlets.

Both men also said that Khamenei told the students that attacking the British embassy in Tehran last year "was wrong." That declaration was also not picked up by the state media. Both statements were apparently also censored by Khamenei.ir, the Supreme Leader's official website; the two men attributed the suppression to the office of the Supreme Leader, which has been accused of having a hand in many attacks on the opposition. Amirian asked, "How is it that a student blogger is arrested for the criticisms that he had in his blog, but the culprits behind the crimes at Kahrizak [the detention center where at least four young people were murdered in the wake of the 2009 election protests] are still free? How is it that the case of the vast corruption went to trial within four months, but the Kahrizak case and the case of the attack on the dormitory of the University of Tehran [a few days after the 2009 election] are still pending?"

The timing of Tribon-e Mostazafin's story is interesting. On Sunday, Kaleme, the website close to Mir Hossein Mousavi, reported that a picture of the cabinet of former Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Rajaei included in middle school textbooks of the middle school has been altered to erase Mousavi, who was foreign minister under Rajaei. Kaleme rebuked the government for employing this well-known Stalinist tactic. Very soon after this revelation, Tribon-e Mostazefin posted the interview with Amirian and Pahlavan.

Jafari: Insults to Islam do not justify embassy attacks; Israel will not strike Iran

In a press conference on Sunday, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari spoke about some of the most important issues facing Iran.

On Israel dragging the United States into a war with Iran: "Our evaluation is that Israel cannot do this. The United States realizes that it is vulnerable in the Middle East, and its bases are targets of the Revolutionary Guards' missiles," Jafari said. He added that the reaction of the Islamic world to any attack on Iran is another reason that Israel will not be able to drag the United States into an armed conflict.

On Israel's intentions: "I highly doubt that Israel will attack Iran. Many Zionist experts and military leaders are also opposed to such attacks. Of course, some of their threats are psychological warfare in order to provoke the West into tightening their sanctions against Iran." He continued, "If Israel attacks Iran, nothing will be left of that country."

On preventing Israel from attacking Iran: Jafari warned, "The [protective] power of Iran for its nuclear program is at an acceptable level, and attacks will not be able to hurt the program much. But if the international organizations cannot prevent Israel from attacking Iran, Iran will reconsider its obligations [toward the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty], as the conditions will change. Israel is too weak to attack Iran and because it is concerned about the consequences, Israel will not attack Iran, unless they are mad men; otherwise, a rational calculation does not call for attacks."

On preemptive attacks by Iran: Jafari rejected the notion of a preemptive attack against Israel. "Iran neither needs it, nor considers it as appropriate. It is powerful enough to defend itself," he said.

On attacking Western embassies: Asked by a reporter for AFP whether Muslims' anger about the widely disseminated video clip that mocks the Prophet Muhammad justifies the attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East, Jafari responded, "It cannot, most definitively, be an excuse for attacking the embassies, and it is not the right thing to do, even though the Muslim masses have been hurt emotionally."

On the presence of the Quds Force in Syria: Jafari confirmed previous reports that Quds Force members are in Syria, but that "this does not mean that we are present militarily." He said that Iran is helping the regime of President Bashar al-Assad regime because Syria is a member of the so-called "resistance front" against Israel, and that "we are proud of it." He said that he cannot state with certainty whether Iran would take part in a war in Syria, if that country were attacked. "It depends on the conditions," he said.

On Iran's presidential elections of 2013: "We do not feel there is any threat and, therefore, do not see the need for any special operations. People are alert and informed, and recognize their true servants," Jafari said. He added, "If the reformists do not undertake radical actions, they too can participate in the elections."

Khatami to Khamenei: The ruling power is yours, open up the political system

In a speech to a group of veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, former President Mohammad Khatami took the government to task on a host of issues: the failure to release the political prisoners, Iran's declining international prestige, the rejection of all criticism from the political opposition, rampant corruption and deceit, and the isolation of what he called "the legitimate forces of the Revolution." He also addressed the charge that he did not better use his power during the eight years he served as president to improve the country. Most importantly, he spoke about the political repression in the country, seemingly attributing responsibility for it directly to Khamenei,

We say to you, you Supremes [hazaraat-e moazzam, -- moazzam, or supreme, is used only for Khamenei in Iran], you stay [in power], but let us criticize to reform and improve the approaches [to running the country]. If it is reformed, the political system will survive; if not, it will disappear. Even if we do not criticize, we will have problems in the future. The frustration of legitimate groups and the emigration of our youth and their protests against what is going on are grave threats. The only way out is reform, as I know no other way. [...]

Something is wrong with this system, one in which there is embezzlement of three trillion tomans [$2.6 billion]. What about other cases [of corruption]? If there had been even one case of [embezzlement of] five billion tomans [about $4 million] during my administration, shrouded hardliners would have invaded the streets to protest, and I thank God that even the present judiciary has not been able to convict even a low-level manager of my administration. [...]

We declare, "The government and elections are yours. Open up the political system. We want to critique the reform movement, [but] want to do so with security [without fear of getting arrested], [without] you claiming that we are conspiring [against the nation]. If there is freedom, and if the military/security environment is eliminated, the power and rule will be yours. Of course, the best situation would be to hold free and fair elections, so that the people can freely elect [their representatives].

Hassan Nazih, opponent of Shah and Khomeini, dies

On Friday, Hassan Nazih, who was the first chief executive of the National Iranian Oil Company after the Revolution, but joined the opposition shortly thereafter, passed away in Paris. He was afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. Born in 1921 in Tabriz, Nazih received his law degree from the University of Tehran in 1944, and was an ardent supporter of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh. When Mosaddegh was put on trial after the CIA coup of 1953, Nazih was reportedly one of those who helped prepare his defense in the military court. In 1961, Nazih was one of the founders of the Liberation Movement of Iran, led by former Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, Dr. Yadollah Sahabi, and Ayatollah Seyyed Mahmoud Alaei Taleghani. In the 1970s, he wrote many letters of protest to Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. He was a key figure in the establishment of the first committee for the defense of human rights in Iran in 1977.

Following the Revolution, Nazih was opposed to the Assembly of Experts that drafted the country's new constitution. In a speech in 1979, he declared, "If we believe that we can address all the political, economical, and judicial problems in an Islamic framework...even the grand ayatollahs know that this is neither possible nor useful." In an interview, he said, "As a secular Iranian democrat I was always opposed to Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini and [his] Islamic Republic." When Bazargan suggested a "Democratic Islamic Republic of Iran" to counter Khomeini, Nazih went a step farther and suggested the "Republic of Iran." He left Iran in autumn 1979, after accusations of corruption were made against him. The leftist students who overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran that November accused him of spying for the United States, a charge that was never proven.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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How political paranoia, corruption, and in-fighting hampered relief efforts, while the humanitarian crisis continues.

[ comment ] In the first hours after the two major earthquakes that struck East Azerbaijan province last month, groups of civilians from surrounding areas rushed to the aid of the victims. Soon after, volunteers began to arrive from the rest of the country. The odd response of the government, which provided only late and limited news coverage of the disaster, contributed to concerns that there would be a repeat of the disorganized delivery of aid that followed the earthquake outside the southern city of Bam in 2003. People's growing distrust of the government and their belief that it is rife with corruption at every level further spurred volunteer civilian efforts.

The quake leveled dozens of villages, and scores more sustained serious damage. Few villages in the region between Ahar, Haris, Khadja, and Varzagan are in any shape to sustain normal life. In an earthquake-prone region devoid of any quake-resistant buildings, the scale of the disaster, in fact, was much less than it could have been, in part because the two primary quakes struck around five in the afternoon, while many farmers were still out in the fields.

The government entrusted its disaster response primarily to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and secondarily to the Red Crescent Society. Less than 30 hours after the first quake struck, official search and rescue operations in the rubble were declared complete.

In addition to material donations, many civic groups brought to bear expertise that surpassed the government's, such as knowledge of local customs and traditions, trauma counseling, education about public health hazards, and organizing trash collection and sanitation. The efforts to coordinate aid delivery between various civilian groups and the government were less successful than they could have been due to political interference and mismanagement, which manifested in three primary ways:

(1) The government was fearful of the presence of civilian groups from other regions. It routinely interprets civic organizations' popularity as a political threat. As a result, a tense security climate pervaded the earthquake-stricken region within hours after the initial quakes. In villages, the mood grew more oppressive by the day. Apart from the arrests of civilian volunteers that made the news, many others were detained simply for being on the scene or taking photographs. In many cases, instead of cooperating with civic groups, government officials rejected their offers of assistance and cooperation or buried them in bureaucratic quagmires.

(2) Petty bureaucrats' scrambling for personal gain from the huge volume of donations reflected what had been seen in previous disasters. Today, you still can procure unused tents intended as donations to Bam earthquake victims in 2003. Efforts by local administrators in East Azerbaijan to keep aid depot locations secret must be understood in this light.

(3) Many familiar with local conditions believe that in-fighting between government factions at the highest levels had a dire effect on the management of this disaster. One long-time East Azerbaijani civic activist, who requested anonymity, said that the Center for Disaster Management was effectively shackled and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's message of condolence was not disseminated for several days in order to undermine the Supreme Leader and his camp by fomenting popular discontent in the region.

Civic activists have enumerated critical issues that could lead to serious long-term repercussions of which the government seems oblivious: Civilian aid was so voluminous that survivors often competed for provisions for the future instead of cooperating to alleviate the problems at hand. Damage to livestock stables and ranches has forced owners to liquidate their flocks at fire-sale prices, leaving little available meat in the affected region. The destruction of agricultural support and financial infrastructure will limit farmers' abilities to harvest and store their crops, forcing them to sell their produce at very low prices as well. Many day laborers who live on the fringes of towns in the region have lost their work and incomes since the quake. The lack of safe housing in many villages has forced survivors to view emigration to nearby cities as their only viable alternative. The rural housing shortage also means that the approaching cold season could result in a humanitarian disaster -- East Azerbaijan is one of the coldest regions in Iran.

Despite all these hurdles, there have been some positive outcomes. One of the most important has been the apparent drop in support for Pan-Turkism in the region and new energy behind ideals of national unity among the Azeri ethnic minority. The ongoing development of civic coalitions in parallel to the government for trust building and cooperation suggests that in the future aid to disaster victims could be more swift, focused, and efficient. It can only be hoped that the government has been reminded that half-hearted and mismanaged disaster response yields popular mistrust and weakening of political support.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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My friend Ezra Fox and I are sitting on the roof deck of my apartment in Rome. Fox is a writer, visiting me from Boston. For the last couple of hours, we have been working silently on our laptops. A nice, warm, Saturday afternoon, punctuated with the loud voices of the neighbors and the occasional mosquito bite.

My mobile vibrates on the table, its tiny screen flashing on to show me that I have a text message from an Iranian friend who lives in Italy.

The message is in Farsi, spelled out in English letters. Just a sentence. I read it and give out a chuckle.

"What?" Fox looks up.

"It's a joke," I answer, pocketing the phone. I'm hoping he will let it go.

"Iranian?"

I nod in affirmative, concentrating on my laptop screen. Fox knows about the great, unpaid industry of text-messaged jokes in Iran. I have told him about it. I know he has a feeling for all communal endeavors that lack leadership, sponsorship, and a stated philosophy. He is an American individualist who has a borderline spiritual passion for community.

"Go on then," he says.

"It won't be funny in English, Fox."

"All the better." He leans back, crossing his arms. The rickety chair groans under him.

I want to tell him that the joke requires a lot of background information to make sense. A part of me wants to avoid translating a joke I have to explain. But another part of me is eager to share. That must be why I laughed out loud to begin with. Fox is being curious for his own reasons, but he is also acknowledging his interest in hearing more about something he already knows will be untranslatable. You come across that too rarely to let it go.

So, the joke:

New York is a terrible place: always traffic, always martial law, always Ramazan.

We go on looking at each other after I tell it. Fox pushes up his lower lip. Experience tells him that an explanation will follow. And it does.

The joke is hot off the ethereal press, composed of millions of unknown individuals, that produces and distributes thousands of such jokes every year to fit every political occasion in Iran. A month ago, this joke would have made no sense. A year from now, it will not mean much. But right now, it's the quickest commentary on a certain feeling in Tehran.

Ramazan, the month of fasting, ended almost four weeks ago. Ramazan in Tehran is not the festive stretch of days it is in most Arab countries. It is a somber occasion. No music, no weddings, no public cheer. It's harder and more harshly enforced if it coincides -- as it has for the last few years -- with summer heat.

This year, Ramazan segued into the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. The government shut down the capital for a week. There were roadblocks everywhere. For a week, Tehran was under unofficial martial law.

New York is a terrible place. Not Tehran, but New York. It's a reference to the state television programs about the difficulty of life everywhere other than Iran.

"OK," says Fox. "I get it."

If the joke fell on its face on the first telling, my explanation definitely murdered the poor thing.

"Yes," I say, "but you'd have to be Iranian to enjoy it."

And then, suddenly, I remember an exception. "Or you'd have to be Russian."

By "Russian," I meant ex-Soviet.

I lived the last two of my late teenage years among the ex-Soviet community of Los Angeles. The crowd I was shuffled in with were historians, theater people, and academics -- most in their mid-50s. What brought me into their good graces, other than my early proclivity for Russian literature and vodka, was my willingness to exchange their old Soviet jokes with my new Iranian ones. This required me to learn a lot about Soviet history. Once, my friends raised their cups in unison and drank a toast to the "irrigation of Uzbekistan"; then they all turned to look at me, grinning. When I asked for an explanation, our host Svetlana, a middle-aged, heavy-set woman, walked to her shelves, came back with a book, and slammed it down on the table in front of me. It was titled The Interrelationship between Irrigation, Drainage, and the Environment in the Aral Sea Basin. I took it home with me. On other occasions, I had to give my own share of lectures on Iranian politics.

What was the source of enjoyment in that exchange of jokes? To speak broadly, the Soviet emigrés and I enjoyed recognizing the similarities between our respective situations. The jokes we liked were invariably political. Sometimes we would even discover that our nations told the very same joke, with only the proper nouns changed.

For example, take the joke about the competition between the MI6, the CIA, and the KGB to find a certain white rabbit in a dense forest. The MI6 goes in. They place informants in every nook and cranny, conduct three months of exhaustive research, and decide the rabbit doesn't exist. The CIA then bribes every plant and animal in the forest, builds countless observation posts, and after months of useless activity, burns down half the forest with napalm. The KGB goes in, walks out in an hour with a badly beaten bear who is weeping, "Please! Don't beat me comrade! I'm the rabbit! I'm the rabbit!"

My money's on the Soviets for having made that one up. But it has also been told in Iran, with some differences, for the last 40 years.

Looking for exact similarities, however, can become boring after a while. What really interested us was discovering instances where the other nation had found a new, unexpected way of expressing a problem -- a new sensitive spot in the old, familiar body politic, where you could stick a pin.

Both these terms of enjoyment, I think, have something to do with what separates a political joke from other jokes -- and also with why political jokes are such a lesser part of American social life.

If I have a hard time translating Iranian jokes into English, it's not just a matter of background and vocabulary. It's also a matter of different ideas about what makes a joke funny.

The common American and, coincidentally, Iranian joke employs a moment of surprise for effect. Surprise is a delivery mechanism -- what it delivers is an absurdity. The absurdity is necessary to the joke, the surprise is not. (In Kurdish or British humor, for example, a joke may often be funny for how at home it makes you feel within an absurdity. It does not try to catch you off guard.)

The content of this absurdity changes from package to package. Sometimes it's a universal sort of folly, belonging more or less to everyone's experience:

A man walks into a bar; the barman says...

A thief comes to Mullah Nasruddin's home...

Sometimes the absurdity can be made of materials belonging to another world, one neighboring our own, a world that is risible to begin with:

A horse walks into a bar...

Jokes can also belong to this world, but direct their absurdity at an "other":

A blonde walks into a bar...

A Turkish guy gets a call from home...

All racist jokes belong to this last category. They remove the absurdity from the speaker and listener and place it elsewhere. (In some instances, the absurdity of these jokes is claimed by the larger population as its own, rather than as the by-product of a racial identity.)

The common misconception about political jokes is that they, too, are about an "other" -- that they turn politicians into a separate entity and point out their absurdity. The idea is partially correct, but only from an outsider's perspective. Political jokes reveal the absurdity of a people's own situation. They do take poke at the halo of power, but what they reveal is the insanity of living in a world ruled by such folly.

A person comes to a post office and complains, "These new stamps with Comrade Lenin's picture don't stick..." The clerk answers, "Comrade, you are probably spitting on the wrong side."

I tell Ezra Fox this joke and we both laugh. We laugh mostly because we find the idea of spitting on an untouchable symbol of power satisfying, and because we are touched by the clerk's calm in recognizing this private act of dissent. We are standing outside the situation.

But those who lived under the Soviet regime were within the world of the joke. The Soviet listener is the man who comes into the post office: he is frustrated to the point of insanity, because he can't even send a letter without promoting the regime. At the same time, the Soviet listener is also the post-office clerk. In the joke about the KGB looking for a rabbit in a forest, he is the bear. That is why every time the joke is adopted by a different nation, it changes to fit the new situation. During the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles, for example, it was picked up by the Black community -- only now the competition involved the CIA, the FBI, and the LAPD.

Even a political joke with no characters operates in the same way. Gandhi's reply to British reporters who asked him what were his thoughts regarding Western civilization ("I think it would be a good idea," he said) has a very specific sense for a people beaten over the head, for a century, with the idea of a "superior Western culture." Only this joke has a double audience. It is Fox who suggests it to me in the first place, and the joke addresses him as an insider, too -- as someone who knows the history of colonization and does not buy that Western civilization is all it's advertised to be. Gandhi, so goes the story, said those words just as he was disembarking a ship in England. He placed it between two worlds.

For people living in societies where political tensions are relatively low -- e.g., the United States -- it could seem that constant self-parody would eventually lead to depression. For those within oppressive situations, however, the accumulated impact of jokes is just the opposite. Every time a joke points out the absurdity of one's situation, it is also signaling that one is not alone, that someone else has seen the problem in a similar way. Every political joke, when delivered to its intended audience, is a statement of solidarity. The recipient first laughs, then smiles bitterly, then smiles.

It would seem I am suggesting that only nondemocratic nations have political humor, and that their humor is always the same and they can always relate to each other on this basis. Political humor is universal, because no form of government has managed to eliminate oppression, but it is not uniform. First of all, the intensity of its role is directly proportional to at least two factors: the level of political discontent among the populace, and the strength of a publicly held moral reservoir. Without a moral reservoir, satire has no point of reference -- it cannot make any meaningful contrasts.

But recognition, and not morality, is the ultimate origin of a joke. In looking at what is recognized in jokes, we can understand the similarities and differences between them.

What is absurd is out of place; it is driven from a place, rejected. A joke is delivered to the listener, but it also has a return address -- the space out of which it came. This space is not directly present in the joke, but the joke speaks of it, like a stranger speaking about his home.

A staunch conservative, a moderate, and a liberal walk into a bar. The bartender says: "Hello, Mr. Romney!"

The joke's material is Mitt Romney's political dilly-dallying. Its intended audience is U.S. citizens in 2012. But its return address is a (imaginary?) place in America where politicians have actual ideologies and where ideologies are about real things.

If Iranian and Soviet political humor are similar, it is because they both rise out of postrevolutionary societies. Their return addresses are in abutting neighborhoods. Revolutionary governments use the rhetoric of revolution, no matter where they lead people, to justify power. Lots of talk about ideals, side by side with lots of hard, bitter, and silent reality. When a joke makes fun of this rhetoric, or makes fun of government institutions, it often allows the mind to trace back a path to the real, betrayed promises that birthed the slogans.

"I know where you come from," the joke says both to the powerful and to the powerless. "If you get me, you are no fool."

A political joke is not so much an act of resistance, as has been suggested, as it is a declaration of one's informed innocence. It is a vindication.

It's one of our deeper human endeavors, this recognizing of the return address of a joke. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh used to deliver lectures on spirituality composed of little more than a series of off-color jokes. Later on, he would publish serious, subtle, and meticulous commentaries on those same lectures. "If you can laugh," he used to say, oversimplifying a rather complicated thing, "you are able to love." Therefore all jokes, he would add, bringing in the complexity, "are to me forms of prayer."

Across our table and laptops, our arms crossed, Ezra Fox and I look at each other quite seriously. Neither of us is Russian. In our different ways, we have each "gotten" the same joke. We have both done some of the hard work for it, in our different ways. We are now getting ready to laugh.

Credit: Both cartoons by Ahmad Arabani as featured in Gol Agha magazine. In top cartoon woman says to Gorbachev: "The things you've been saying, a few years ago my son said a hundredth of them, and they executed him; my husband said a thousandth of them, they sent him to Siberia; my son-in-law just thought about them, they sent him to prison for 15 years; now they want to arrest me because I was a member of the Communist Party!"

Bīstoon Chronicles | Iran and Its Visitors | Howl in Farsi | A King Alone

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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[ essay ] When I first started living in Iran, I was a kind of an illiterate, exotic creature who had to learn the alphabet from scratch and could have meaningful conversations only with toddlers. I was tolerated and coddled in equal measures, which made life easier for me. My mistakes were cute and lovable instead of breaches of protocol that could cause catastrophic rifts in the delicate political balance of the family.

It wasn't just language that messed with me. I was a fashion disaster, ill-mannered and coarse. I must have seemed an oaf to people who'd practiced good manners for millennia.

Nothing made me feel more oafish than the women surrounding me. Most wouldn't dream of leaving the house looking less than perfect. Their nails were exactingly manicured, their hair straightened and dyed, their bracelets gold, their eyes carefully outlined. At parties they wore low-cut, form-fitting dresses. They danced with flair as though their hips were unhinged, while my moves had been learned in proto-mosh pits. I could slam with the best of them, but anything more refined required concentration.

On top of that, my eyebrows had never been trimmed and my hair was unruly. I had never quite outgrown my tomboy phase and the longest time I'd spent in heels was about two hours: long enough to dance at a friend's wedding.

In the cafés in North Tehran, women let the obligatory headscarves slip to their shoulders, making a great show of lifting them up over exquisitely coiffed hair. They balanced on heels high enough to make me dizzy, navigating the uneven pavement with grace.

My first trip to a beauty salon in Iran was in the desert city of Ahvaz. At sunset, my niece led me through the streets to a pinkish concrete building whose windows were completely shuttered. No light leaked through to the darkening streets. We rang the buzzer and the door opened onto a heavy black curtain, concealing the salon inside. The owner, a tallish Pakistani woman with hennaed auburn hair cut in a simple bob, peeked through the curtain and then waved us in. She did the cuts, while a short, curvy woman with long black curly hair and oversized, outlined eyes busily shaped eyebrows.

There must have been about ten women quietly sitting on wooden folding chairs. Big-haired blondes with feathered bangs and brightly colored eyes looked sideways at us from the posters on the walls. There was a kind of dentist's waiting room feel to the whole thing. The women sat quietly, anticipating the pain of having their entire faces threaded clean of unwanted hair. It was a powerful reminder of what my sister-in-law Forough told me, "We have a saying here in Iran: Kill me, just make me beautiful."

As we waited, the women warmed to my presence.

"Kharigi?" they asked Elnaz. "Foreigner." I heard this word where ever I went and could pick it out of the most abstruse conversations. Elnaz explained that I was her uncle's wife. An American. "Oh, an American! Amrikaee!" The women bubbled. "We love Americans."

"Is Iran better or America better?"

"Do you like our food?"

"Do Americans have a lot of problems with diabetes?"

"Can you help my father get medication for his heart?"

"Why are your eyebrows so bushy?"

Could I help them decipher lab results? What did I know about the medication they were taking? It was as though the country that made TV series like ER must be filled with people who could diagnose medical conditions.

The Pakistani woman told me how much nicer Iranian men were. "My mother told me to find a nice Iranian man to marry. Pakistani men go crazy with jealousy. Iranian men are gentler."

"Iranian men are spoiled babies," another woman offered. "Why would anyone marry an Iranian man?" She looked at me and laughed as though I were the butt of some kind of joke I didn't quite understand.

The big-eyed hair plucker urged me to let her shape my eyebrows.

I explained my aversion to pain, paraphrasing my favorite Daffy Duck line: "I'm not like you. I can't stand pain; it hurts me."

"The more pain, the more beauty," niece Elnaz told me.

Yeah, yeah. Not without novocaine or nitrous oxide.

My only requirement for the evening was a haircut that didn't make me look like a sheep. I probably should have gotten my eyebrows plucked instead. I'm sure that would have led to more successful results. Looking like a sheep is my birthright. My hair is as curly as one and the wrong cut gives me an uncontrollable urge to start bleating.

At least I knew I could wear a scarf until my hair grew out. I didn't have the skills to wear one with the panache of the women around me. Like many foreign women, I resisted learning how to wear a scarf elegantly or look good in my Islamic dress, operating under the mistaken notion that this displayed my disdain for the regulations.

In fact, it just made me look like some hick cousin who had never ridden an escalator before. My misguided protest simply made people feel sorry for me. It brought out their inner stylist. Sales clerks recommended form-fitting jackets to replace my baggy outerwear. My sisters-in-law patiently showed me how to tell which side of the scarf was the right one to display. Even taxi drivers commented about my slovenly hejab. "Your wife doesn't know how to wear a scarf, does she?" one driver asked after eyeing me in the rearview mirror.

I looked at myself in the same mirror and saw myself the way he did: pink faced, with the tags of the scarf showing, inside out, falling off my head, the knot creeping up to my cheek, my curls pushing out like the tentacles of an unruly squid. The women around me seemed to be born knowing just how to wrap a scarf around their heads so that it looked more like a fashion accessory than an obligation. I, however, looked as though I'd never worn one before or even seen an Audrey Hepburn film.

Hejab, or Islamic dress, is the most obvious manifestation of the regime's Islamic leanings. Every female over the age of nine is required to cover her hair with a scarf. Teens and adult women have to cover arms and ass as well. Hejab has become iconic of Islamic repression and expansionism inside and outside Iran. What says victim more than hejab? What says terrorist more than a woman in chador raising a Kalashnikov above her head?

That scarf, that simple symbol of modesty, has, in Iran, become a symbol of conquest. Close the eyes and there is a bearded man standing on a pile of women with a green flag representing the purity of Islam held high above his head. Look at me! I'm the power. Now the world will be perfect! We will no longer lust! We will no longer lie! Our government will care for us instead of cheating us. Our place in heaven is secured by millions of women in headscarves!

It turned out that hejab did not end corruption. Daily prayers did not end exploitation. Lies continued. The government still ignored the needs of its citizens. Islamic? Royal? Secular? The only difference, many people I met in Iran told me, was whose hand was in your pocket.

It turned out hejab didn't even do much to curb lust. Instead it provided millions with a new fetish. The wrapper of modesty simply created a frame for the face. It meant the eyes had to be perfectly painted, the brows carefully coaxed into arches, the lips outlined and highlighted, the nose fixed.

"It would be more modest if women just walked around naked," my brother-in-law commented. Hejab is the outer layer of an elaborate striptease that begins with Islam and ends who knows where?

Iranian women had co-opted the oppression of the hejab, transforming it into fashion and personal expression.

For the young, hejab was just a fact of life. It was theater, unimportant. For the women who came of age before the Revolution, however, the hejab was a daily reminder of all they'd lost.

"It's humiliating," one woman told me. "At first many of us wore it in solidarity with our observant sisters whose families kept them at home during the time of the Shah because they felt Iran was too secular and immodest. Now those observant women hold every decent job in the country, sometimes two or three jobs at a time. They can't even handle the responsibilities of one job! The rest of us have had to become yoga teachers or aerobics teachers. Our education doesn't matter. Our skills don't matter. That's the only work left for us."

It wasn't just relatively secular women who complained. Many of the observant women I met chafed at the dress restrictions. "Hejab is my choice," my sister-in-law, an observant Muslim, told me, echoing what I heard from others. "What gives some beardless boy the right to tell me that my hair is showing?" She would talk to her friends about her trip to visit us in Amsterdam. "There are plenty of women in hejab there. Is the government forcing them? No. It's their choice, just like it's mine."

To me, the scarf was the manifestation of mistrust and coercion. There was no pact between me and God, no choice. The regulations felt arbitrary and insulting. I could only guess that the morality police riding up and down busy streets on motorbikes harassed women based on some nefarious measure such as how stimulated they got at the sight of an exposed ankle or a lock of hair. A little wiggle and it's "Fix that scarf." A big wiggle and "We are taking you in for reeducation."

"I had to bring my parents to this big auditorium where we listened to lectures and watched films on the benefits of modesty," a young woman I knew told me. She dreamt of being a model even though she was barely five-foot-two and missed her eyeteeth. Despite her run-ins with the morality police, she still wore a tight little manteau and let her scarf rest on the nub of her ponytail. She dyed her hair a light brown and before leaving the house each day painted her lips a shimmering pink. "I will never change," she told me.

In the streets, my sisters-in-law applauded each breach of hejab. The most observant among them, Forough, applauded the loudest. When a woman approached us to reproach me for my slack covering, Forough said to her, "When I go visit her no one asks me to take my scarf off. I'm not asking her to fix hers."

As I acquired a more nuanced reading of the hejab, I understood that pushing the border of what was permissible was my responsibility. I should dare to wear shorter jackets, show more hair, even, God forbid, wear makeup and get my eyebrows done despite the pain. Looking good in hejab was a much more effective way of addressing the coercive laws governing dress than looking like a slob. Reading the hemlines, the sparkle in the scarves, the arch of the eyebrow can yield surprises. In a country where the definition of dissent is so broad it can be accidental, a little lipstick and a fashionable hejab can be as much a political statement as a fashion statement. During the four years I spent in Iran, I was determined to wear the shortest possible hejab, the most colorful scarf, to let it fall to my shoulders instead of pinning it too my head. I even had my eyebrows shaped in order to make my protest even more apparent. If I couldn't be an expert in beauty, I could at least be literate.

by the same author | Too Much Is Never Enough: Making Ghelye Mahi

related reading | Paint it Black: The Hejab Hype and the Force of Fear | Your Veil is a Battleground 1 | Your Veil is a Battleground 2

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Farsi and Arabic press and excerpts where the source is in English. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Any views expressed are the authors' own. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the stories in perspective. You can follow breaking news stories on our Twitter feed.

2:15 a.m. IRST, 31 Shahrivar/September 21 The Toronto Star reports that Fatemeh Derakhshandeh Tosarvandan, an Iranian national living in Canada with her 16-year old son, is set to be returned to the Islamic Republic despite the fact that she faces a charge of adultery there that could lead to her execution. Tosarvandan's husband, whom she describes as abusive, has accused her of adultery, a capital crime in Iran, with the death sentence potentially carried out by stoning.

Tosarvandan, whose claim for asylum was rejected last October, has run afoul of a new Canadian immigration law that bars a rejected refugee claimant for one year from applying for a pre-removal risk assessment (PRRA), a process that determines whether it is safe or not for a claimant to be returned home. "The average Canadian would be horrified to know that we're going to send a woman to Iran to be stoned for adultery," Tosarvandan's lawyer told the Star.

The Star report suggests that if Tosarvandan and her son are forced to return to Tehran, she may be spared execution in light of the Isamic Republic's decision to commute the adultery death sentence of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. However, Ashtiani still faces up to ten years in jail for other charges, and her whereabouts are apparently not known. Due to international censure, the Islamic Republic has also not carried out the executions of two Canadian citizens of Iranian descent sitting on death row in Iran.

Asylum seekers' lawyers and advocates in Canada accuse the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper of sacrificing asylum seekers rather than having to face a judicial rebuke of the immigration law. It is not known if the official break in Canadian-Iranian relations will impact Tosarvandan's likely trial, or see her granted special asylum before the end of the week.

Growing number of Iranian science students denied U.S. visas

Bloomberg Businessweek reports on the hardships Iranian students seeking a graduate education in the sciences face in the United States. The State Department is severely limiting the number of visas available to prospective students on the grounds that they will take their education back to Iran and work in the U.S.-sanctioned "energy industry, nuclear science, nuclear engineering or... related field[s]," such as metallurgy, mechanical engineering, or rocketry. The visa denials follow a ramping-up of sanctions by Congress, even though the Justice Department told Bloomberg that "no Iranian students have been criminally prosecuted in the past five years for exporting restricted U.S. technology or munitions to Iran." According to the report,

The visa denials run counter to the policy of the Obama administration, which has reached out to Iranian students and has said that its sanctions are designed to hurt Iran's regime, not its people. The U.S. eased travel restrictions for some Iranian students in May 2011, and opened a "virtual embassy" in Tehran in December to foster communication. Enrollment of Iranian graduate students at U.S. universities more than tripled to 4,696 in 2010-2011 from 1,475 in 2004-2005, according to the Institute of International Education in New York.

Although the United States has officially changed its visa policy with Iran "for Iranian students whose research isn't sensitive or technical" to allow them to return to America if they travel back to Iran during their time at school for personal reasons, Bloomberg shows that multiple students have been denied reentry after being labelled espionage risks for returning to Iran.

Canadian students in Iran are also increasingly worried over the issue of visa status as a result of the Canadian government's decision last week to close its embassy in Iran. Canada had already closed its immigration desk in Tehran over the summer, and the closure of the Iranian embassy in Ottawa means that students will face difficulty renewing their visas. The CBC reports that "according to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, it is now Iran's responsibility to look after its citizens here in Canada by finding a third country to handle Iranian consular affairs through its own embassy."

Students protest anti-Islamic video outside French, Swiss embassies in Tehran

Students demonstrated outside of two Western European diplomatic compounds in Tehran this past week in protest over the highly publicized, anti-Islamic short video Innocence of Muslims, according to the Fars News Agency.

The video was shot in the United States as as low-budget Arabian Nights knockoff and then dubbed by an anti-Islamic activist (and convicted felon) to insult and provoke Muslims. For unknown reasons, the fraudster originally claimed to be an Israeli director and to have dozens of "Jewish donors" bankrolling the production, comments that were immediately seized on by Iran's state press as proof of a "Zionist conspiracy" against Islam. The Iranian government has demanded that President Barack Obama apologize for the video and announced that it will "prosecute" the director. And the 15 Khordad Foundation called for renewed efforts to carry out Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie.

No violence was reported in the Tehran demonstrations -- the Swiss Embassy was said to be cordoned off by "5 layers of police" and only 100 people are thought to have appeared at the French compound's gates. Still, the Canadian government cited the protests as further justification for its sudden -- but apparently long-planned -- decision last week to close its embassy in Iran and expel the staff of Iran's embassy from Canada.

Iran atom chief claims to have fooled IAEA, West on nuclear program

Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told the Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat that Iran "sometimes...pretended to be weaker than we really were, and sometimes we showed strength that was not really in our hands," adding that "sometimes we leak false information in order to protect our nuclear sites." He bragged that this false information has successfully misled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well as Western intelligence services. He also stated that the Islamic Republic had "taken measures to prevent satellites from photographing military facilities at Parchin" and reiterated the claim he made earlier this week that IAEA inspection teams have been infiltrated by foreign intelligence agents.

Abbasi Davani singled out Great Britain's MI6 in his interview with the London-based daily, accusing the intelligence organization of working with unnamed "Zionist intelligence agencies" -- i.e., Mossad and the CIA -- to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. MI6 has not before been named as having potentially been involved in those killings, of which Mossad and the Mojahedin-e Khalgh Organization are widely regarded as the perpetrators. In July, MI6 director Sir John Sawers claimed that Western intelligence agencies have severely crippled the Iranian nuclear program over the past few years.

IAEA statement roils Iranian officials

The Mehr News Agency reports that Majles Speaker Ali Larijani groused over Iran's signatory status to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in a parliamentary session, posing the rhetorical question to reporters, "What is the benefit of the NPT and membership in the International Atomic Energy Agency for countries?" Larijani blamed "certain tyrannical countries" for an IAEA Board of Governors' statement that criticized Iran for insufficient transparency concerning its uranium enrichment activities. Despite his remarks -- and further critical comments from both Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Mohammad Ali Jafari -- there is nothing to suggest the Islamic Republic will pull out of the NPT, which Iran joined in 1968. Larijani himself told Western media that "there has been no such decision," though he claimed "there is a serious discussion among Iran's intellectuals about" it.

Ironically, despite the Iranian government's condemnation of the IAEA statement, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reports that the Board of Governors' remarks actually may represent a toning down of the dispute between Iran and the organization. According to Mark Hibbs, GOV/48, the agency resolution that has been the target of Larijani and other officials' scorn,

has three messages: Two are for Iran. One of these is, as [U.S. envoy to the IAEA Robert] Wood pointed out: "You are on notice: We will not let this issue go away." The other however is "Let's kick this can down the road until after November 6″ (the IAEA governors will meet on November 29). The resolution's third message is for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu: "Cool it. Diplomacy may resume in earnest in about three months."

Larijani admits holding talks with Syrian rebels

A Financial Times interview with Larijani in Tehran on Tuesday covered the IAEA, the possibility of reaching a "grand bargain" with the United States, and Syria's internal conflict. Larijani, like all Iranian officials, publicly blames the violence in the country on "Western intelligence services," despite the well-documented evidence that the government of Bashar al-Assad has been waging a destructive nationwide counterinsurgency campaign and only some of the promised support from the West and Arab states has actually made it to black-market dependent rebel quartermasters and medics. Though Revolutionary Guard forces and Iranian supplies have been reported in Syria, Larijani denied Iran was involving itself in a "proxy war" there.

Surprisingly, Larijani told his interviewers that Iran has hosted representatives of multiple Syrian rebel groups in Tehran to undertake negotiations regarding the conflict -- including, Larijani said, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (which has little love for the Iranians, or Syria's Alawite rulers). He refused to discuss specifics and dismissed the rebels as lacking unity and strong leadership, but the admission is significant because the Islamic Republic routinely paints every Syrian opposition group as Salafist jihadis backed by Israel, the United States, and Saudi Arabia.

A Tehran Bureau correspondent based in Iran submits the following:

Couple summoned by Internet police for posting family photos online

According to a report from the Islamic Republic of Iran Police News Center, cyber police in Gilan used their "scientific and engineering capacities" to identify and locate a husband and wife who posted racy family photos on a foreign social networking website. Upon seeing the evidence against them, they confessed and their case file was referred to a court for legal action.

Colonel Mohammad Khani, Gilan's cyber police chief, advised citizens to refrain from posting their individual or family photos online and to remember that publishing content that violates public decency is a crime punishable by a fine and jail time.

"There are countless individuals active on social networking websites with special, premeditated objectives who have criminal intent to defame, extort, steal identities or information, and to promote decadent Western culture," said Khani. He warned that any negligence by citizens in this regard could threaten their families and personal lives and inflict serious psychological harm.

Iran bans volleyball federation website

The Islamic Republic has officially banned the website of the International Federation of Volleyball (FIVB). The news comes ahead of international games that require the team members to register via the FIVB website. The Iranian volleyball team recently qualified for the World Volleyball League, the sport's premier international event. Correspondence with the FIVB is mainly done via the website, which clubs also visit to recruit foreign players.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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Production lowest in almost a quarter century; sanctions' true impact may not register for some weeks.

Exports rose to 1.1 million b/d in August after China, Turkey, Japan and other customers restarted liftings or increased volumes. Top customers have arranged for Iranian tankers to deliver oil. And maritime insurance -- retracted by E.U. firms on July 1 -- will be provided either by Iranian firms or the governments of importing countries. Exports should rise slightly in September and then remain steady but still well below the 2011 average. (For background, see my "2012 Iranian Oil Survey," published here in May.)

Official response inconsistent

Oil Ministry officials frequently dismiss sanctions. Mohammad Ali Khatibi is Iran's representative to OPEC and director of international affairs for the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). On September 16, he told Iran's Press TV that independent data showing a decline in exports was wrong and corrupted by "political objectives." In the same interview, Khatibi claimed Iran still ranked second in OPEC, although the organization's latest report suggests Iran now ranks fourth in terms of production, behind Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait.

OPEC publishes independent data and government statistics every month and the gap between these two numbers is revealing. In August, Iran reported that total production stood at 3.75 million b/d -- about one million b/d more than the International Energy Agency's estimate and secondary sources published by OPEC.

Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi was equally defiant when he visited the Majles on September 19. "We have no problem selling our oil," he said according to the Mehr News Agency. "Iran's crude oil exports are increasing. With the increase in exports, the way has been paved for more currency income."

Other officials have acknowledged the challenge posed by sanctions. "There are some problems in selling oil and we are trying to manage it," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told state television on September 4. "The enemy has started an all-out war by initiating a psychological war, blocking the sale of oil and transfer of currency and banks and the Central Bank," he said. Mahmoud Bahmani, the head of the Central Bank of Iran, is now dealing with a currency crisis that has cut the value of the rial in half since the beginning of this year. He speaks often about Iran suffering from a "full-blown economic war."

Most revealing of all was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's address to a group of scientists in late July, which was broadcast by state television. Khamenei argued that Iran must diversify its economy so that it is more resilient. "Generating wealth by selling natural and limited resources, such as oil, is not advancement," he said. "We have fallen into this trap."

Oil revenues usually constitute half of the government's budget and 80 percent of the country's foreign revenue earnings. Iran's crude exports, though abysmal in July, are set to recover slightly in the short term, but volumes will settle well below last year's 2.2 million b/d average.

Top customers import less

China continues to be Iran's most reliable customer. After overcoming a contract dispute in March, which cut Chinese imports of Iranian crude by more than 200,000 b/d for three months, export volumes returned to near normal. Oil is now being shipped on Iranian tankers and Beijing has accepted limited insurance coverage from firms inside Iran now that E.U. insurance is unavailable.

China imported only 456,342 b/d from Iran in July -- when exports flirted with record lows -- but the dip is not indicative of a larger downward trend. In fact, it most likely reflects the time required to transition from the old arrangement to the new, which relies heavily on Iran. Imports should hold around the 510,000 b/d mark in the coming months.

Compared to last year, however, China is on pace to import about 15 percent less oil from Iran. The decline is a direct result of the contract dispute and not Western sanctions. In June, China received a waiver from the United States because it imported significantly less oil in the first quarter of 2012. Come December, when the waiver is up for renewal, President Obama will likely extend Beijing's waiver based on broader "national security" interests instead of further reductions, which sanctions law permits.

Indian imports of Iranian crude are also down and will remain so through next year. India imported 350,000 b/d on average last year. In July, imports fell to 201,860 b/d because of sanctions and a mismatch between Iran's national tanker fleet and the shallower ports used by Mangalore Refining. The government-owned refiner sought alternative supplies throughout the summer, which suggests shipping is still a problem. India's privately owned Essar Oil may have better luck bringing in Iran's larger tankers. But the best-case scenario is still grim. Platts, a respected industry reporting service, says Indian refiners -- both state-owned and private -- expect to import just over 200,000 b/d through this fiscal year, which ends next March.

Asian customers make new arrangements

Japan imported 205,000 b/d from Iran in the first seven months of 2012, which represents a stunning 39 percent decrease from the same period a year before. In July, Japan halted all imports of Iranian crude for the first time since 1981 because of sanctions. Loadings rebounded in August after Tokyo extended a $7.6 billion government-backed insurance policy to tankers carrying Iranian crude; preliminary shipping reports suggest Iran will export about 170,000 b/d to Japan in September. On September 14, Washington extended Japan's sanction waiver along with those for ten other countries with the expectation that imports will remain lower than last year's.

South Korean imports of Iranian crude are also down. In the first six months of 2012, South Korea imported 189,000 b/d from Iran, as opposed to 230,000 b/d during the same period in 2011. Seoul initially claimed that it would have no choice but to halt imports from Iran because of the E.U. ban on tanker reinsurance, and officials say liftings were suspended in August. But South Korea ultimately adopted the riskier Chinese model, which allows Iranian tankers to ship crude insured by unproven Iranian firms. Imports will recover in September but will still be short of last year's volumes.

Other buyers find alternatives

South Africa imported 67,000 b/d from Iran in May but has not imported any crude since. Refiners in South Africa, which include Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron, easily replaced Iranian oil this summer because the volumes were limited. It remains to be seen whether or not Iran will offer appealing discounts to other refiners, like Petronas, which also operates in South Africa but is owned and operated by the Malaysian government.

Turkish imports of Iranian crude are best described as erratic. In March, Turkey imported a remarkable 270,000 b/d from Iran, while as recently as July, Turkey imported only 48,000 b/d. Preliminary data from shipping sources indicates that Iranian crude exports rose again in August to 173,000 b/d, which lines up closely with Turkey's 2011 average. All Turkish imports of Iranian crude are handled by Tupras, the country's sole refiner, and its annual contract with NIOC expired in August. Iran's oil minister planned to visit Turkey early last month, presumably to negotiate a new contract, but his trip was canceled with no explanation.

When Turkey's imports of Iranian oil dropped below 50,000 b/d in July, Tupras purchased oil from Iraq, Russia, Libya, and Saudi Arabia to make up the difference. On September 19, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz told the press that Turkey's imports of Iranian crude would be limited this year and that a new long-term agreement would soon be reached with Saudi Arabia. Turkey received a U.S. sanctions waiver in June and Ankara has committed to a 20 percent reduction in Iranian crude imports this year. U.S. Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen, who is tasked with the Iran sanctions portfolio, visited Turkey earlier this month.

Legal and illegal schemes

Iran has adopted a number of illegal and legal schemes in an effort to avoid sanctions. Speaking on August 23 in a national broadcast, Ayatollah Khamenei reminded officials that it was their duty to dodge the "enemies' plots." "Remember all the time that the enemies will not stop their enmity and they will try to resort to new measures after each failure. Therefore, the officials should find new solutions and measures all the time," he demanded.

Earlier this year, analysts began using Iran's tanker fleet to measure how much crude oil was being stored instead of sold. Because commercial tankers are no longer accepting Iranian cargoes and customers have reduced imports, it was assumed that Iran would have to choose between storing oil on its own tankers or shutting in production because its land-based storage was so modest. (Production in Iran declines naturally every year because the country lacks the necessary technical expertise and equipment for advanced oil recovery. These conditions would make any manager less inclined to shut in production, since restarting it could be tricky, perhaps even impossible without the help of foreign operators.)

To some extent, Iran has sidestepped this dilemma by dumping oil on unused tankers in far-off Asian waters. On September 12, the International Energy Agency reported that Iran's floating storage actually declined by five million barrels in July, confirming that Iran found new outlets for oil the same month that exports fell to near-record lows. These ship-to-ship transfers undermine sanctions in two ways. First, if the oil is blended with other crudes, the ship can mask the original source and potentially sell Iranian crude under a different national brand. And second, it appears that some European firms have unwittingly covered these tankers in spite of the E.U. ban.

It must be noted that this arrangement may not last. According to Reuters, the British government warned insurers about it in August. Trade sources say Iran is "struggling to find ship owners willing to offer vessels for storage" and that investigations are under way. With good reason, many ship owners are reluctant to do business with Iran, not only because they face stiff penalties, but also because their reputation could be damaged.

Earlier this summer, Iran reportedly disguised some tankers by redubbing vessels with English names. The Sima, Honar, and Davar thus became the Blossom, Victory, and Companion. Iran also shut off ship transponders that allowed for independent monitoring. And many tankers were reflagged so that observers might confuse Iran's ships with those from other nations. Industry sources have consistently dismissed these tricks, however. The U.S. Treasury Department now offers comprehensive listings of Iranian vessels that include original names, new names, known flags, and hull numbers, which cannot be forged.

Iran has taken the extraordinary step of accepting payments for oil in foreign currencies as well. In India, for instance, 45 percent of Iran's crude oil sales are paid for in rupees. Proceeds from oil sales are deposited into accounts, the balance of which is used by Iran to pay for Indian goods. Instead of receiving harder currencies in return, Iran imports food, pharmaceuticals, cooking oil, steel, and other items. Similar reports suggest that Iran is now accepting yuan for some exports to China. While this arrangement is perfectly legal, it is not ideal, especially when Iran's currency could be uplifted by the introduction of harder currencies. Most oil is paid for in euros or dollars.

Outlook

July was the worst month for Iran but exports should rise by the end of September now that new shipping arrangements are being smoothed out. Exports will probably settle into the 1.2-1.4 million b/d range for the remainder of 2012, after briefly falling below one million b/d. In today's prices, a loss of one million b/d amounts to $110 million every day -- and more than $3 billion every month. American sanction waivers are up for renewal at the end of this year, meaning Iran's customers will again be asked to reevaluate and reduce crude imports.

Most fortunately for Tehran, dramatic export declines were offset by a surge in prices. Brent crude, which is used as a proxy for world oil prices, sold for $95.16 in June -- but then jumped to $102.62 in July and $113.36 in August. Remember also that the terms of credit extended to Iran's customers allow some to pay up to 60 days later. This means that Iran only began counting diminished revenues this month, since sanctions were locked in July 1. Iran's leaders may not fully understand the impact of sanctions for weeks. It may take several more months for Tehran to seriously reconsider its nuclear posture, which sanctions aim to change.

In the meantime, international pressure or accidents could reduce Iran's oil exports even more. The U.S. Treasury is fully engaged in a global cat-and-mouse game with Iran. In addition, new American and European sanctions are being considered. It is also possible that Iran's many schemes could fall apart. Asian customers are now largely dependent on Iran's tanker fleet, which is insured by the privately owned Kish P&I, an Iran-based firm that offers limited coverage. Kish relies on the state-run Central Insurance of Iran as its reinsurer, however, and its ability to pay in case of disaster is uncertain. Any failure or delay in payment would force customers to reassess the risk of dealing with Iran. Some might even abandon Iranian crude altogether.

In short: Iran has stopped the bleeding but remains vulnerable.

related reading | Industry and Trade Minister: Western Sanctions 'Paralyzing' Iran | A Tale of Two Oil Shocks: 2007-12 | Iran Primer: The Oil and Gas Industry | Iran Primer: Oil and Gas Charts

Photo: Iranian oil minister Rostam Ghasemi and Mohammad Forouzandeh (speaking), head of the Bonyad-e Mostazafen va Janbazan, or Foundation of the Oppressed and Disabled, the second-largest commercial enterprise in Iran, behind the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company.

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The social and political life of the Iranian café.

[ dispatch ] Coffeehouses in Iran are often designed and situated -- on narrow streets, for example -- to maintain a low profile from the outside. Some are windowless and have only an unmarked door as an entrance, an implicit challenge to a system in which most public places are under government control and surveillance. A key difference between modern Western and Iranian coffee shops turns on the issue of visibility; the atmosphere of the Iranian café is characterized by its dark, secretive design, though there are certainly those designed to appeal to young customers who want a social venue where they can see and be seen.

How does drinking a beverage become a political act?

From the ninth century, the coffeehouse was a place that Iranian poets, artists, and dervishes could gather without fear of harassment by officials of the king or local authorities. In "Coffee in Safavid Iran: Commerce and Consumption," the American scholar Rudi Matthee describes the cultural position and the atmosphere of the traditional Iranian coffeehouse, the ghahve khaneh, which, he writes, "struck a happy balance between the mosque, which was a public space but lacked worldly entertainment, and the ubiquitous taverns and gambling houses, which were to be avoided by upstanding citizens as they served alcohol and provided disreputable entertainment for the lower classes. Leisure went hand in hand with liveliness[;] more than one foreign visitor described the spirited atmosphere in the Safavid coffeehouses." He quotes Jean Chardin on the social function of the 17th-century Iranian café:

People engage in conversation, for it is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government in all freedom and without being fearful, since the government does not heed what the people say. Innocent games [...] resembling checkers, hopscotch, and chess, are played. In addition, mollas, dervishes, and poets take turns telling stories in verse or in prose. The narrations by the mollas and the dervishes are moral lessons, like our sermons, but it is not considered scandalous not to pay attention to them. No one is forced to give up his game or his conversation because of it. A molla will stand up, in the middle, or at one end of the qahveh-khaneh, and begin to preach in a loud voice, or a dervish enters all of a sudden, and chastises the assembled on the vanity of the world and its material goods. It often happens that two or three people talk at the same time, one on one side, the other on the opposite, and sometimes one will be a preacher and the other a storyteller.

After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the government started to close coffee shops. The practice is still in effect today. Just two two months ago, officers of the morality police raided 87 cafés and restaurants in a single district of the capital. Why is the current government so concerned about the coffeehouse? "Immoral" and "un-Islamic" behavior is the main reason coffee shops are being closed, but what is going on in these places that is deemed a threat to the Islamic government?

The crowds at coffee shops in Iran tend to be young. Youth culture in Iranian coffee shops is often a Westernized version of the traditional culture of the ghahve khaneh. The essential difference is that the old ghahve khaneh was religious in orientation, while coffee shops in Iran today are predominantly secular. They are the site of many couples' first dates, a place where they can be free of the inhibitions imposed by the morality police or parental supervision. Groups of young people gather as well, for everything from discussions after class at university to birthday celebrations.

Coffee shops serve the youth subculture in other ways, as well. It is not uncommon to find trendy handmade jewelery and other items for sale: colored cotton or woven bracelets in a neo-hippie style or small plaques inscribed with slogans like "No War" or the images of foreign film and music stars.

Other groups such as artists, poets, and political activists tend to gravitate to particular coffee shops, often choosing a regular hangout (patogh). Because of concerns of trust and safety, such café-goers usually steer clear of interactions with strangers. In recent years, the members of many such groups have chosen to organize their meetings in private settings rather than in coffee shops, though poetry and philosophy readings still take place every so often. In contrast with Western coffee shops, single customers are less frequently seen, though their numbers have been growing recently as WiFi access becomes available at more locations.

Despite the often suffocating security atmosphere, some cafés still manage to hold exhibitions of local photographers and painters. Others trade in Western rock and jazz records. Some "intellectual" venues even host jazz performances, though at most, officially sanctioned pop music plays in the background.

In the early 2000s, a new group of bookstore cafés sprang up in Tehran, a bunch of them clustered on and around Karimkhan Street. The authorities seemed to be particularly disturbed by these establishments, several of which quickly became popular cultural haunts: Nashre Roshangaran, run by Shahla Lahiji, among the first female Iranian publishers as founder of the Roshangaran and Motaleat-e Zanan presses, was forced to close, as was Nashre Cheshme in 2004 -- the authorities claimed that the combination of a bookstore and coffee shop was a legal infraction. Two years later, Nashre Sales, Badraghe Javidan, Ketabe Roshan, and Shahre Ketab Vanak were closed on the same grounds of "mixing of trades." Nashre Sales, an especially popular meeting spot for the capital's literati, had also hosted some celebrated foreign writers like Turkey's Nobel Prize-winning Orhan Pamuk. By contrast -- as the reformist newspaper Etemaad Melli, run by Green Movement leader Mehdi Karroubi, pointed out -- Ahl-e Ghalam, a bookstore linked to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, was allowed to keep its café.

The closing of coffee shops demonstrates the government's fear of the burgeoning counterculture they facilitate. As part of an officially sanctioned effort to reappropriate the coffeehouse from its identity as a hive of illicit and morally reprehensible activities, a café was opened in Tehran that for the first time sets aside one day a week exclusively for women. Countering the "Westernized culture" of the standard café, a strict Islamic dress code is enforced at Keraseh. During most of the week, both sexes are permitted, but women are expected to sit on the right side of the establishment at an "appropriate" distance from any male customers. This is yet another example of the ongoing effort to homogenize public space under the highly gendered laws and norms of the Islamic Republic, which manifested soon after the Revolution with the violent enforcement of compulsory hejab.

Farzaneh Pezeshki, Keraseh's manager, points out that her coffee shop has plenty of light, since everything that goes on there is very much in accord with the moral rules laid down by the authorities. Rather than "provocative" photographs or images of "decadent" Western philosophers or poets adorning the walls, as commonly seen in other cafés, religious messages and homilies are visible everywhere. It is the only coffee shop legally allowed to operate during the fasting month of Ramadan.

Offering little opportunity to socialize beside Qur'anic reading groups, religious cafés like Keraseh have been criticized for failing to provide an attractive place for groups of religious young people to gather. Ironically, the demand for a different model of religiously oriented café is indicative of a desire even on the part of devout youth for spaces away from home in which to socialize with likeminded people.

Bahamin Azadi is a pen name for an independent researcher in sociology. Photo credit (top) by Hessam Samavatian. Homepage photo via Flickr by n_shahdi.

by the same author | Painted Politics: The Mural in Modern Iran

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[ feature ] I have some friends who live in an apartment complex in Tehran called Park Prince. Near Vanak Square, it was built in the 1970s -- before the Revolution. It's one of the city's first glitzy residential highrises, consisting of four towers set amongst a well-tended plaza housing chic shops and restaurants. Apparently it was home to TV stars and celebrities back in the day. It has a touch of luxury even now. You can even get a very good iced coffee in the faux Starbucks; there's a Sushi restaurant with a black-interior, and an Italian, as well as a traditional restaurant serving dishes from the North of Iran. There's even an antiques shop, a rare sight in my experience of this city.

But the basement is where the real treasure is -- a surprising array of abandoned cars: Buick Dodges, Chevrolets, BMWs, even a Datsun covered in dust. Who owns them? Some look like they are still driven with up-to-date registration plates. Others are flat-tired, and look undriven for decades. My friend says that their owners left either before or since the Revolution.

I'm sure there must be some good stories attached to these prideful machines. If you know anyone who might own them, do please get in touch via: info [at] tehranbureau [dot] com, subject line: The Cars of Parks Prince.

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