Says negotiations won't be "constrained by diplomatic niceties or protocols," but talks not imminent.

[ transcript ] In President Barack Obama's Wednesday afternoon press conference, his first in eight months, he addressed the issue of negotiations over the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear program. In the following passage, he responds to questions posed by Christi Parsons of the Chicago Tribune and Tribune Company newspaper chain.

[O]n Iran, are you preparing a final diplomatic push here to resolve the -- the nuclear program issue? And are we headed toward one-on-one talks?

[...] With respect to Iran, I very much want to see a diplomatic resolution to the problem. I was very clear before the campaign, I was clear during the campaign and I'm now clear after the campaign -- we're not going to let Iran get a nuclear weapon. But I think there is still a window of time for us to resolve this diplomatically. We've imposed the toughest sanctions in history. It is having an impact on Iran's economy.

There should be a way in which they can enjoy peaceful nuclear power while still meeting their international obligations and providing clear assurances to the international community that they're not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And so yes, I will try to make a push in the coming months to see if we can open up a dialogue between Iran and not just us but the international community, to see if we can get this thing resolved. I can't promise that Iran will walk through the door that they need to walk though, but that would be very much the preferable option.

And the -- [inaudible] -- conversation picked up?

I won't talk about the details of negotiations, but I think it's fair to say that we want to get this resolved and we're not going to be constrained by diplomatic niceties or protocols. If Iran is serious about wanting to resolve this, they'll be in a position to resolve it.

At one point just prior to the election, there was talk that talks might be imminent --

That was -- that was not true, and it's not -- it's not true as -- as of today, OK?

Copyright © 2012

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"There should be zero tolerance for torture."

[ in focus ] The director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and a group of four U.N. special human rights rapporteurs made matching calls Thursday for an investigation into the prison death of Iranian blogger Sattar Beheshti. On Sunday, Deputy Majles Speaker Mohammad Hasan Abutorabifard had pledged that the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission would undertake such an inquiry. There have also been unconfirmed reports that persons allegedly involved in Beheshti's death have been arrested.

The 35-year-old Beheshti, a laborer in the Tehran suburb of Robat Karim, maintained a blog, Magalh 91, in which he criticized the government of the Islamic Republic, its handling of the economy, and its detention of scores of political prisoners. Arrested at his home by Iran's cyber police on October 30, he was incarcerated in Evin Prison where he died on November 3, reportedly after being subjected to severe beatings and other forms of torture while under interrogation. His body was turned over to his family at the Kahrizak coroner's facility, where a witness reported to a Tehran Bureau contributor that much of the corpse was covered in blood that looked as if it had gushed out of multiple spots. According to his family, authorities originally claimed that he had died due to preexisting "heart problems"; his relatives said that he was entirely healthy at the time of his arrest.

Seemingly conflicting accounts of the condition of Beheshti's body emerged from the Iranian state on Monday. Majles deputy Alaeddin Borujerdi, head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told the Islamic Students News Agency, "According to a preliminary report, no traces of beating were seen on his body." By contrast, an item from the semiofficial Mehr News Agency stated, "The coroner's office has provided a detailed report saying that signs of wounds were found in five places on this person's body, including foot, hand, back and one of his thighs, but no broken bones."

In the statement released by her office Thursday, UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said, "I am deeply concerned about the death in prison of Sattar Beheshti. I urge the authorities to investigate Mr. Beheshti's case and the exact circumstances of his death.

"It is essential to respect the right of citizen and professional journalists to speak and write without fearing for their lives. Freedom of expression is a basic human right and essential component of democracy, good governance and rule of law."

Meanwhile, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights announced that four high-ranking U.N. rights investigators -- Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran Ahmed Shaheed; Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions Christof Heyns; Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Juan E. Méndez; and Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank La Rue -- were collectively making a similar call for an investigation, "particularly [into] the allegations of torture, and to make the result of such an investigation public."

Shaheed, who has been blocked since his June 2011 appointment as rapporteur from entering Iran and conducting his investigations first-hand, said, "There should be zero tolerance for torture. It is imperative that people who are potentially involved in committing such gruesome crimes are investigated and brought to justice, as failure to do so promotes a culture of impunity."

"Harsh prison sentences handed down to journalists and bloggers, following trials in which defendants' rights to due process and a fair trial are not guaranteed, exemplify broader conditions of severe restrictions on freedom of expression and opinion," observed La Rue.

According to a report in the Guardian, bloggers allied with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have declared that Beheshti's death vindicates the president's recent criticism of the Iranian judiciary. Sadegh Larijani, the judiciary chief, has denied Ahmadinejad access to Evin, where his head press adviser and state news agency director Ali Akbar Javanfekr has been incarcerated since September. On Thursday, Larijani described those bloggers' remarks as "hideous" and echoed the pledge that there would be an investigation into the death of Beheshti.

Noting that reports on the treatment of prisoners of conscience in the Islamic Republic indicate that the Beheshti case is not an isolated one, Méndez urged the Iranian government "to ensure that an inquiry is opened in each case of alleged torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in detention facilities and perpetrators are held accountable for their acts."

"When an individual dies as a consequence of injuries sustained while in state custody, there is a presumption of state responsibility," said Heyns.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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"Do you want your man to say sweet things to you?"

[ close-up ] Family planning is out in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and procreation is officially in. Perhaps this is why the cleric in the video presented here is advocating more love making.

Over the summer, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that if the state's population control policy continued, Iran would succumb to a demographic disaster -- a population too old and eventually too small to sustain itself. Since then, the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology has ordered all universities to drop family planning from their curricula. Henceforth, "marriage, family, and increasing the population are on the agenda of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution and universities," stated council member Mohammad Hossein Yadegari.

The following video was shot between late July and mid-August during the Family Education Convention held at the Noor Cultural Complex in the holy city of Qom. The video, and accompanying translation, are excerpted from a longer presentation made by Hojatoleslam Hossein Dehnavi. As noted here, Dehnavi -- characterized as an "expert on family issues" -- held forth to Raja News earlier this month on the many problems with gender relations in the "Western lifestyle." He opined, for instance, that in the West, "their social classification is women, offspring, dog, and then men."

Do you want your man to say sweet things to you? A man must be aroused so that he can express love. A woman needs to have love expressed to her so she can become aroused and a man needs to be aroused to express love. This means his needs to have relations with him, satisfy his sexual needs and after he has relations with his wife and is at the peak of sexual pleasure he will say sweet thing to his wife and express love to her. But unfortunately our women don't know this. They say, "Huh, he is saying sweet things to me now that he needs me. Why doesn't he always say sweet things?" Well, this is the nature of a man. This is how a man is. I implore you to pay attention to this point; do not misunderstand, if you want your man to say sweet things to you, satisfy his sexual needs. Many people say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but it appears that they have made the mistake of going ten centimeters too high. No! A man's heart is somewhere else, my esteemed sisters. Satisfy his sexual needs and you will win his heart and he will show you love and he will say, "I love you, woman."

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.

[ update ] Ahmad Shojai, the Islamic Republic of Iran's chief state coroner, announced that his office's preliminary finding was that blogger Sattar Beheshti "died from natural causes" while incarcerated in Evin Prison. Amsterdam-based Radio Zamaneh reports that the announcement was carried by Iran's semiofficial Mehr News Agency on Monday.

According to Shojai's statement, "There are no signs of asphyxiation or poisoning in Sattar Beheshti's remains." The coroner suggested that the online activist, who he claimed was using heart medication, may have succumbed to the "stress" of his arrest on October 30, four days before his death. Beheshti's family members have stated that he was not suffering from any heart or other health problems and was taking no medication at the time of his arrest.

Reports from sources at both Evin Prison and the Kharizak coroner's facility, where his corpse was handed over to relatives, indicate that Beheshti suffered severe beatings and other forms of torture during his brief incarceration. According to Monday's report, "Shojai confirmed that the body of the deceased bore signs of beatings but he insisted that they were not the cause of the victim's death." He said that his office would release its final report on the case on Tuesday.

United Nations officials, including UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova and Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran Ahmed Shaheed, have called for a full government investigation of the circumstances surrounding Beheshti's death. Iranian judiciary chief Sadegh Larijani and Deputy Majles Speaker Mohammad Hasan Abutorabifard have each declared that such an inquiry will be undertaken.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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From conspiracy theory to political reality, the IRI has multiple motivations to sever signals from the world outside.

[ briefing ] All television broadcasting in Iran is officially under state control, though Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) is generous enough to provide a semblance of choice with eight national television channels, in addition to 30 provincial ones. Still, many Iranians evidently want more. While satellite television is legally prohibited, over a quarter of all Iranians have home access to a satellite dish and more than 32 percent watch satellite television in the average week, according to data compiled by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors. The deputy chief of IRIB itself has said that as many as 40 percent of Iranians watch forbidden satellite programming.

The Iranian government pushes back with the occasional dish raid and, increasingly often, by jamming satellite signals. On Tuesday evening, the London-based nongovernmental organization Small Media will be presenting its new report on this censorious campaign, "Satellite Jamming in Iran: A War Over Airwaves," at the British Houses of Parliament. Small Media describes itself as "an action lab helping the free flow of information and creative expression in closed societies, with training, technology and research initiatives that focus on Iran."

The following passages are excerpted from the report's executive summary, introduction, and chapters that consider the questions "What Is the Importance of Satellite Television in the Islamic Republic of Iran?" and "How Disruptive Is Satellite Jamming For Broadcasters and Audience?" The report elsewhere provides a historical overview of jamming; analyses of the technical, financial, and legal issues involved; jamming's potential health risks; and what the international community and satellite providers have done and can do in response. The complete report, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, is available for download here. -- The Editors

There are at least 120 Persian-language satellite TV channels broadcasting into Iran from the diaspora, incomparable with the use of satellite TV in any other diasporic community in the world. For the Iranian government, these channels are "proof" of the West's engagement in a soft war against their rule. Satellite jamming is a key point of contention, not only between Iran and international broadcasting authorities, but also within Iran's ruling establishment. Although Iranian officials have not assumed responsibility for satellite jamming, this report provides evidence showing that they are, at the very least, complicit in such actions. [...]

Satellite jamming is a form of censorship akin to Internet censorship, whereby the Iranian government prohibits access to and inhibits the free flow of information. Referred to as "intentional interference" in technical literature, satellite jamming is a violation of Article 15 of the Radio Regulations of the International Telecommunications Union.

The jamming of Persian-language satellite channels has been ongoing since 2003. Infrequent bouts of pressure from the international community have achieved limited success. Alongside international organizations like the International Union (ITU), the governments of the United Kingdom, United States, France, and the European Union have condemned the Iranian government for not acting on the issue of satellite jamming. Despite these condemnations, the jamming of satellite TV channels has continued. At the time of publishing, the sudden devaluation of the Iranian rial in October 2012 had spurred another intense period of jamming, with the broadcasts of both BBC and the VOA being disrupted.

As a result of increasing pressure from the international sanctions imposed on Iran, Eutelsat dropped 19 state-owned Iranian channels from its Hotbird satellite in October 2012. Intelsat has reportedly followed suit. These decisions will have a significant impact on the ability of the Iranian government to broadcast its channels internationally. However, it is highly unlikely that these moves will result in the reduction of incidences of jamming; such moves could provoke an increase of jamming in retaliation, which would further isolate the Iranian people.

In a closed society like Iran, where the government maintains a tight grip over the media and all modes of communication, satellite television broadcasts from outside the country carry particular significance for both the authorities and the Iranian public. The Iranian government sees satellite channels as a Western front in the "soft war" being waged against their rule, a "weapon" intent on undermining the country's religious and cultural beliefs. Steven Barraclough writes,

As described by Ayatollah Khamenei, the country's constitutional leader, Iranian broadcasting...is "the mouthpiece of the Islamic system." Its duty is to stand at the 'forefront' against "a well-organized and obvious offensive [which] has been launched by [the] enemies of Islam against divine principles with an aim of promoting secularism, undisciplined behavior and corruption among the people."

In an interview with the conservative news agency Alef News in 2011, the head of Iran's National Security Forces, Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghadam, reinforced this point with specific reference to Voice of America and the BBC:

VOA and the BBC are the intelligence arms of America and the CIA...collaborating with these channels is not just cooperating with a media organization, it is working in cooperation with the intelligence services of the enemy and any cooperation with them will be monitored by the Ministry of Intelligence and the National Security Forces of Iran.

Conversely, many Iranians see these channels as means of entertainment, a place to acquire new information and keep up to date with the world. In a sociopolitical context where all officially sanctioned television is produced by the government and thus keeps in lockstep with their worldview, many Iranian viewers are eager for variety.

In an article for the online magazine The Power of Culture, photojournalist and blogger Kamran Ashtari argued,

People want contact with the outside world, want to hear world news, want to watch films. Not only America's latest hits and French classics, but also uncensored Iranian films. Not only because they are fed up with censorship and propaganda: the state television is really very boring!

This is why, despite tough talk and legislation, satellite dishes continue to proliferate across Iranian cities, urban areas, and villages. Although Iranian officials claim to have attracted the majority of the country's viewers to state TV and radio programs, they also admit that Persian channels broadcasting from abroad have become challenging competition. A recent poll, undertaken by Iran's state media, revealed that 50 percent of the population own satellite dishes and the average household spends 125 minutes a day watching satellite broadcasts. Farid Haerinejad, Radio Zamaneh's editor-in-chief at the time of interview, advised Small Media,

Satellite broadcasting is very important in the Iranian context. The general Iranian audience is still more comfortable receiving information distributed through classic mediums such as TV and radio. The World Wide Web, because of heavy filtering, is largely inaccessible to those who cannot or do not know how to bypass the filtering. Those who can't circumvent the government's censorship are typically middle-aged and elderly Iranians...TV and radio are still very popular and people can access broadcast signals even in remote areas via a satellite dish. When the Iranian government attacks and jams satellite signals, this crucial medium of connection is lost.

[...] Conservative media also regularly deride satellite channels in their reporting, and the police and security forces routinely confiscate satellite dishes from private residences. However, while the situation is notably severe, it is important to keep in mind that the restrictions placed on people in Iran are constantly in flux depending on the political situation. In May 2010, less than a year after the disputed presidential elections and the resultant establishment of the Green Movement, Mohammad Esmaeil Kowsari, a member of the parliament's National Security Commission, publicly praised the act of satellite jamming, as he considered it a representation of the power and capability of the Iranian state:

Satellite [technology], by its very nature, is a great tool for communication, but only if it is utilized with an appropriate aim and for collecting information. If the "master of all satellite channels" uses satellite to destroy other nations, promote immorality in societies, and feed the youth of a nation with information that makes them forget their identity and roots, I have to confess that satellite's disadvantages are more than its advantages.... We should not look at satellite jamming as a negative phenomenon. In my belief, jamming is a power in our hands.... We do not have any problem with the scientific shows, but if a satellite channel increases insecurity within Iran, then we will use all our power, including the use of satellite jamming, to stop such channels from making our youngsters immoral.

In contrast, at the Expediency Discernment Council's conference "Reviewing and Revealing the Hidden Targets of Persian Satellite Channels," on May 24, 2010, Sadegh Ziba Kalam posited that the governmental problem with Persian-language satellite channels is a semantic one:

The problem originates from the word "enemy," which is what we call satellite channels such as BBC and VOA. This mentality comes from a historical, ideological and political opinion rooted in conspiracy theory. We have to ask ourselves, are the BBC or VOA really affecting events or are they actually reporting the real happenings in Iran.... Looking only at the political effects of these satellite channels stops us from seeing their social and cultural importance. This is why Seda va Sima [IRIB] is less successful in attracting viewers than these satellite channels.

Entertainment network Manoto agreed to post a specific question about jamming to their Internet forum, which has more than 130,000 registered users, in order to help us gauge how viewers feel when it occurs. Fifty-four forum users responded via their website. In addition, on May 3, 2011, BBC Persian published a brief comment about the banning of satellite dishes in Iran, asking for feedback. Below is a selection of comments from these two forums, which illustrate the frustrations caused by satellite jamming and show the large amount of speculation about why, how and at the hands of whom jamming is occurring.

One Manoto viewer, based in central Tehran and going by the handle Arian 1984, hypothesized as to why some channels get jammed and others remain untouched:

I don't think it's important whether the channel is showing a political show. What matters is whether or not these satellite channels talk about the Supreme Leader. This is the red line. When debates about the Supreme Leader are shown on a satellite channel, that is when the jamming begins. This is the consequence of our own mistakes, and, apparently, the price we must pay for attaining democracy.

Viewer Irani -- from Saari, the largest city in Mazandaran province -- thought Manoto was being jammed because of the Ninth Majles election (March 2012), and hoped that a "normal" service would resume afterwards:

We experienced jamming a few days before the parliamentary election on all three satellites, and thought that this was due to the election and would end afterwards. However, we are still experiencing satellite jamming even though the election is over. It is now during prime time TV (10pm onwards) when the jamming occurs, and it is worse in central Saari than in the suburbs.

In response to a question about specific shows it was thought triggered jamming, Fable God Father replied, "These days, I experience jamming mostly when news or political shows are on. I think whoever is doing this jamming is afraid of people freely obtaining information and knowledge. I have no feelings anymore; I am numb."

Some viewers expressed feelings of desperation, and posited ways that broadcasters could avoid being jammed, going so far as to recommend that broadcasters air pro-government shows. For example, K1.gh said, "If you show 2 or 3 programmes in favour of the regime during the day, then the problem of jamming will be solved."

With regards to private ownership of satellite dishes, viewer Azadey, who claimed to be a satellite installer, highlighted the hypocrisy of confiscating satellite equipment:

Whatever they [the government] say is harmful to the society appears to not be harmful for them and their families. They all have satellite dishes in their houses, yet they think it is not appropriate for people to have this equipment...without satellite dishes, the situation would be disastrous for the people of Iran.

Other viewers expressed anger towards the government, and thought that the continuation of these practices was only fueling this anger amongst the Iranian people. Soheila T stated, "All these attempts by the authorities to restrict broadcasting will only add to the hatred people have towards the regime; it will actually contribute to their overthrow."

[...] Shervin.mm, for example, said, "It is not believable that the IR will let information circulate freely and openly. If they did so, then a lot of information about their corruption would be unearthed." Yaar Dabestani agreed with Shervin.mm, echoing the sentiments of Soheila T:

There are many international regulations upon which the Iranian government is obliged to act, but, in reality, they do not act according [to their international obligations]. All of this censoring and jamming is because the regime is afraid. There is no way the Islamic Republic will allow any small opportunity for freedom of information in Iran! The regime's only supporters are those who are fanatical and praise the dictatorship. The regime knows that if they allow society to open up, it will eventually lead to their overthrow.

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A seasoned traveler on the road to love's door.

[ poetry ] A poem in translation is a linguistic-cultural unit uprooted from its land of origin and replanted in unaccustomed terrain. The most drastic loss consequent to this transfer is perhaps most frequently the poem's original cadence, its rhyme and meter. The poem's web of imagery and allusions, various registers, and idiomatic edifice may also all become "domesticated" in the process, its aesthetic force defanged, its voice dehistoricized, its social power dissipated. To what extent can the translator "foreignize" the target language, perhaps beyond its linguistic comfort zone, to accommodate poetics? How high can the ziggurat of footnotes be erected? (The concepts of "domesticating" and "foreignizing" in translation have been developed by Lawrence Venuti.) Writers are unsurprisingly more skeptical than translators. Adunis, the distinguished Syrian poet, deems translation a "betrayal." The Cuban poet Gustavo Pérez Firmat addresses the issue in ironic fashion:

The fact that I

am writing to you

in English

already falsifies what I

wanted to tell you.

My subject:

how to explain to you that I

don't belong to English

though I belong nowhere else [...]

The Art of Stepping Through Time (Buffalo, N.Y.: White Pine, 2011), a selection of work by the Persian-language poet H. E. Sayeh, is a welcome addition to the slim body of modern Persian literature in translation. Sayeh is the pen name of Houshang Ebtehaj, born in Rasht in 1927. A highly regarded figure on the Iranian literary landscape, a dozen volumes of his poetry were published between 1946 and 1999. A selection edited by M. R. Shafei Kadkani, Ayineh dar Ayineh (Tehran: Nashr-e Chashmeh), was first published in 1990 and is now in its tenth edition. The Art of Stepping Through Time, the first collection of Sayeh's verse to appear in English, is the result of a collaboration between native English speaker Chad Sweeney, an author of four books of poetry who lives in Redlands, California, and native Persian speaker Mojdeh Marashi, an artist, writer, and translator based in northern California's Bay Area.

Youth is a shimmering image

The heart eventually lets it go

Startled from sweet morning sleep

Come, my heart, it's late

Sayeh's verse profoundly engages aspects of Iranian political history without compromising poetic independence. His love poems, recited with Hafezian lyricism, are among the most treasured works of contemporary Persian poetry. The Art of Stepping Through Time captures the variety of his verse in bright and engaging English. While the original rhyme and meter schemes of Sayeh's ghazals are lost, the simplicity of these translations, in form and verbiage, create their own music in English. "Musical congruence rather than musical equality" -- this is what Marashi and Sweeney have opted for.

They have collaborated on this project for several years, during which their translations appeared in various peer-reviewed literary journals such as Poetry International, Washington Square Journal, and Indiana Review. With more than 50 poems from 12 books, the selection spans half a century of Sayeh's verse and offers a thorough picture of his literary development through various poetic forms (rubai, ghazal, and sher-e sepid) and modalities (love poems, elegies, politically charged verse).

Love is the heat that multiplies itself

The birth of a birthing cosmos

The translators have not shied away from footnoting mythological and intertextual allusions, providing guidance to curious readers who wish to explore the literary tradition to which Sayeh belongs. For instance, in the poem "Shabikhoon," translated as "Night Raid," the literal meaning of the term (night blood) has been footnoted, which brings the alterity of the source language into English, revealing some of Persian's semantic peculiarities. Though in the same poem, the translators have opted for a more domesticating translation of saghi, rendering it as "wine maid" -- close to the conventional translation for the Arabic saqi, "wine server" -- which flattens the deeper connotations of the term in Persian literary tradition. (The saghi pours the wholesome wine of life into the empty bowl of the poet. At times he inspires the poet and at other times he serves as a spiritual teacher, the symbol of the existence of the beloved on earth.) Though this collection is not bilingual, each translation is accompanied by the Persian title, which makes locating the original poems easier.

My bed

is the empty shell of loneliness.

You are the pearl

strung from other men's necks

Sayeh, in his verse and life, has been politically engaged. Active in the communist Tudeh Party, he was imprisoned following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However, viewing his literary life exclusively through the lens of political historicity is a reductionist endeavor. Through his short introduction, Sweeney alludes to Sayeh's multilayered identity, namely the literary humanism that emerges from his love poems. He references Hafez be Say-e Sayeh (Tehran: Chashm-e Cheragh, 1994), a colossal undertaking of a comparative, verse-by-verse study of existing versions of Hafez that took Sayeh around the Persian-speaking world. And he highlights some of the challenging aspects of translating Sayeh and provides useful background information on the aesthetic force and social power of his verse. Marashi and Sweeney must be commended for vigorously and critically engaging with Sayeh's variegated poetics in translation. Sayeh begins a North American tour in San Diego on December 2. He will appear in Berkeley on December 7, and then travel to the East Coast.

The world does not begin or end today

Sad and happy hide behind one curtain

Arrival is the art of stepping through time

Your blood leaves its mark on every step

But the river rolling grows into a sea

So many arrows have flown from this old bow

That's why these tears are tinted with blood

Plays the human heart as a toy

Was crushed under hoof by the riders of autumn

Will birth flowers and grasses from shore to shore

The ache in this chest was born with the world

God, how many miles from tongue to hand?

The patience I practice is squeezing my life

A jewel is buried beneath every step

Listen to H. E. Sayeh recite the poem here.

also by Aria Fani | 'Ancient Eve': The Ghazals of Simin Behbahani (with Adeeba Talukder) | One Tongue, No Tongue: 'Return' and Afghan-Iranian Dialogue | Daughters of Afghanistan: Literary Voices of Change

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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Marital bonds designed to melt into air.

[ dispatch ] Along the western edge of Tehran, skyscrapers and slums stand side by side. Here, in the district of Punak, Maryam lives with her younger sister, Zahra, in a tiny house.

Past a windowless foyer, there is a kitchen with a single gas burner and a sink held up by a knot of rusty pipes, plates piled beneath it. It is separated from a doorless lavatory by nothing but a thin curtain. Beyond lies a spartan bedroom. A sheetless bunk bed stands across from a makeshift free-standing closet. A rug-weaving beam sits in a corner, surrounded by mounds of wool in an array of colors. A half-completed rug hangs on the beam. The roof has caved in and a large chunk of it is missing -- the hole to the sky is shaped like Asia.

Maryam is 36 years old. She speaks softly, with a tired demeanor. Her skin is pale over a bony frame. Wearing thick, black-framed glasses, she works away at the rug on the beam during our conversation. Zahra, a 17-year-old high school senior, has gone to her aunt's house in Qom for the weekend.

"All of my troubles began with the death of my mother. Before her death, I was a happy and carefree young girl, and didn't know what hardship was like. I was a student of Persian literature at a public university in Arak [southwest of Tehran]. In college, I met a man named Ahmad. He was studying civil engineering. We quickly became a couple and after three months we were engaged." In fact, they registered as a husband and wife with the local government office so as not to run afoul of the morality police. Maryam was then 19.

She explains that they planned to have a formal, more fully binding marriage ceremony "six months after graduation, but my mother died from a heart attack. I was 21 years old, and my mother had been the rock of our family. My father was a construction worker; he worked one day and relaxed for ten. He was always out and about with his friends. My mother paid all of my university tuition. She took care of the house, and also worked at a sewing shop nearby. I remember my mother's last words. She told me to take care of my sister, Zahra, and make sure that she is never without a mother figure."

As tears fall down her cheeks, Maryam continues in a sad monotone.

"When my mother died, my sister was only two years old. My father remarried 40 days after my mother passed away. Initially, my father's new bride took care of my younger sister, but after three months she sent her to my aunt's house. I also didn't have money to pay for tuition for my last semester of school. My father was completely ignoring the two of us. He was only interested in his new life. He had forgotten that my wedding was approaching. He didn't give me any money for my tuition. He could care less about what could happen to my sister or me.

"I returned home and brought my sister with me. Not having a mother was the source of our problems, and so my father insisted that my sister and I move in with my mother's sister, but I didn't want to make my sister move from house to house all the time. I asked my fiancé, Ahmad, if we could move into our own house more quickly, and told him that I had decided to raise my sister. He never complained, but never gave any suggestions either, and slowly started drifting away, disagreeing with me often. He stopped showing any interest in us moving into our own home. In the Iranian culture, when a woman marries, her family must give her a dowry [jahizieh] in the form of kitchen appliances or furniture to take with her to her new home. But in my situation at the time, I didn't have enough money to even buy a cup."

We're interrupted by the ringing of Maryam's phone. As soon as she puts the receiver to her ear, her dismal mood transforms. On the other end of the line, the voice of a man can be heard. All of a sudden, Maryam bursts into laughter. She walks around the room, speaking loudly on the phone, then disappears into the kitchen with it. Thirty minutes later, after saying goodbye multiple times to the man on the phone, she returns to the bedroom. She resumes her story, once again morose.

Maryam eventually became frustrated by the fact that her father would not pay her tuition or help her buy supplies for her new home. They constantly fought over money. Ahmad no longer wanted to go through with the formal marriage ceremony, and his family was opposed to it as well. The idea of being responsible for Zahra made him uneasy. He began discussing the possibility of a divorce, picking on Maryam due to the fact that she had no dowry. She, in turn, was pushing for Ahmad to rent a house for her and her sister to live in. Ahmad suggested that he would give Maryam her mehrieh -- the bridal surety from the groom that becomes the women's property in the event of the marriage's dissolution. But instead of giving her the equivalent of 350 gold coins, as had been agreed when they registered their marriage two years earlier, he wanted to give only five million tomans, roughly equivalent to the value of five gold coins. Maryam was shocked, but accepted the offer.

And now, Maryam begins to recount her first experience as a "bride" in a sigheh, or muta, relationship -- "temporary marriage," as permitted in the Shia tradition.

"Two days after I divorced, I went looking for a home. They don't rent homes to single women in Iran easily, so I had to convince my dad and loan him two million tomans to help me rent a house. But he never returned the money. I eventually rented an apartment in a suburb of Tehran and took my sister with me. After I moved in, nobody, not even my father, visited me, and as a result I was sad and couldn't work.

"My neighborhood was full of drug addicts, and as a single women I was afraid all the time. The money that I had saved was slowly being spent. I reached the point that I couldn't even buy food. I was able to find a few jobs, such as selling flowers and dolls. Both jobs required long hours, but the pay was bad. Eventually, I saw an ad in a newspaper for a rug-weaving class that guaranteed a paying position after the class. The class cost 200,000 tomans.

"Three months after our divorce, Ahmad decided to reconsider our separation and wanted to get back together, but not as a formal marriage. According to the Islamic teachings, a husband can come back to a marriage within three months of the divorce [a period called oddeh] to be with his wife by declaring that he wants the divorce to be nullified. Some clerics say that the man does not even need legal documents to do so, and can do so by simply stating verbally that he wants to return to her, in which case the divorce is reversed, and the wife has no say. Therefore, when Ahmad wanted to come back to me, I accepted. Our relationship was purely physical, and nothing else. He would also give me an allowance after every time we saw each other. Even though he treated me disrespectfully, I still liked him, and missed him when we weren't together."

Without telling her husband, Maryam opened a bank account and saved some of the money he was giving her. She paid for her rug-weaving class in installments. Soon, she bought a rug-weaving stand. Legally, Maryam at this point was still Ahmad's wife, but they did not have a valid marriage certificate. Again, to avoid trouble with the morality police and have a sexual relationship, Ahmad and Maryam had to be able to demonstrate that their union was religiously sanctioned. She thus became his "temporary wife." In Shiism, the sigheh relationship is not recorded in the same way that a permanent marriage is, but on a special document, a sigheh nameh. This allowed them, for instance, to get a shared hotel room when they traveled.

After the 1979 Revolution, Janet Afary writes in Sexual Politics in Modern Iran,

the state encouraged polygamy (multiple aqdi [permanent] wives) and temporary marriage, as well as the return of repudiation [talagh, a man's prerogative under sharia law to divorce his wife by simple repudiation]. While these measures weakened conjugal bonds of affection, they also served to compensate men who had acquiesced to the rules of the new theocratic state. In the name of morality and the preservation of women's honor, men of all social classes gained easier, cheaper access to sex, both inside and outside of marriage.

The age of aqdi marriage for girls was lowered from 18 to nine (it has since been raised to 15), and the state poured resources into the promotion of child-bearing and large families, even as it restricted or eliminated many career opportunities for women. Decades of creative struggle by the women of Iran have gradually expanded their opportunities again, though many obstacles remain. And while permanent polygamy is rare, many men -- both single and married -- take advantage of sigheh.

Maryam continues, "From early morning, I would sit by the rug-weaving stand to work as much as I could. I would stop working only for food and prayer. I would see Ahmad a few times a week. My sister would go to my dad's house the day before Ahmad would visit. Ahmad would always come with a brand new car to pick me up. In order to avoid our neighbors' whispers, we would always meet outside of the house. He would wear cologne that cost as much as a few months of the rent for my house.

"After I while, I realized I was pregnant. I asked Ahmad to keep the baby, but he made me get an abortion. He didn't want his family to know anything about our relationship. Even though the doctor asked him to stay with me after the operation, he left me and didn't come back for two weeks. After a while, I realized that he had gone to Thailand.

"I suffered from depression for two years."

Maryam tried to convince her husband to leave her. As he was satisfied with their physical relationship, he would not agree. Maryam stopped accepting his "allowances" and other gifts. Slowly, she began to hate him. "The last time I saw him, he accused me of sleeping with his friend. I got so upset that my blood began boiling, and I attacked him and his car. I broke his radio and windshield. I threw as many things as I could out of the car. I screamed and screamed and was filled with rage. All the bad memories I had with him went through my thoughts like a video clip: him leaving me, abusing me, my baby that he didn't let me have. He eventually agreed to leave me. "

Maryam started to sell her rugs, very cheaply. Meanwhile, her father had a baby, remortgaged the family's assets, and went to stay with his wife's family in Qom. Maryam, finding it increasingly difficult to put together the money to care for her sister, became a nanny for a wealthy family. The man of the house soon expressed his affection for her and made various promises. Because she didn't want to enter into an irreligious relationship, she was fired and never paid for the work that she had done.

"When you are a divorced woman, everyone looks at you differently, from the baker to intellectuals. You practically cannot have a conversation with anyone. Women think that you are always trying to steal their husband. Mothers think that you are always trying to take their sons. Every man you speak to judges you differently when they find out you are divorced. Every move of yours is always under the watchful eyes of the neighbors and society. Although I was not interested in marriage, in order to put an end to my situation as a single divorced woman, I started looking to marry."

But who would want to marry a divorced woman who lives with a younger sister?

Maryam found work as a secretary at a private company. After five months, she entered into another sigheh relationship. This one was with the company's 31-year-old owner, Khosro, who claimed he was single.

"I was 26, and he wanted us to be friends. Considering that he was well spoken, well dressed, and good looking, I didn't mind him. For some time, though, I was uncertain. He suggested that we go on a trip together. I agreed to do so only if we were religiously permitted to be together. He was disgruntled. But once he realized that I was not willing to change my mind, he agreed.

"In the beginning of our relationship, things were going well. It felt good to be with someone, and I was happy. My sister was seven years old, and I could spend more time with her now. I bought her new clothes, and took her on trips. I made some changes as well. First, at the request of Khosro, I started working at his friend's company part time. Later on, Khosro started experiencing financial troubles, to the point where we barely saw each other.

"Most of the time that we did spend together he was worried. Every time we wanted to be together we would go to a hotel. Both of us had kept our relationship hidden from our families. One day when we were together, Khosro went to buy a pack of cigarettes. His phone rang, and went to voicemail. The voice of a young woman could be heard. I was curious to figure out who that lady was. The woman said, 'My dear, I just wanted to tell you that the meeting that you had was postponed. So you can take care of your business.'"

It turned out that, in addition to Maryam, Khosro had a wife, two small children, and another sigheh bride. Neither of the women knew about the others. After she figured out the truth of the situation, Maryam said she ended her relationship with Khosro. She becomes very emotional as she talks about this period of her life.

"One time my former husband called me and wanted to get back with me, but I told him I was with someone else. He yelled at me, 'You idiot, they only want you for sex.' I yelled back, 'Just like you.' And then I slammed the phone against the wall."

For a minute or two, Maryam sits silently and stares at the colorful yarn she has assembled for her rugs.

"When I was alone, I felt severe emptiness. I would take my sister to school in the morning and then come back home. I didn't have any appliances. I would sit at the rug-weaving stand until my sister would be released from school, and then I would go to pick her up. The only issue was that I lacked good skills in rug weaving. I couldn't speak the language of the bazaar merchants to make deals with them, so they would buy my rugs very cheaply. I would help my sister with her homework at night. No one would visit us, and we wouldn't visit anyone either. Once a month, my father would take my sister to his home in Qom for the weekend. And once a year, my sister would go to my aunt's house. Row after row, I would make more rugs."

Zahra, her sister, started to weave as well, but the economy was worsening and they were making even less money for their rugs. So Maryam took a part-time job.

"Two years ago, I started working at a manufacturer of dental equipment. I took orders from offices around Iran. I wasn't very happy then. One of the customers had done something wrong in his job, and I was forced to tell his boss. This was the start of my relationship with Amir.

"For two months we spoke on the phone. He was worried about what people would think about his relationship with a girl from Tehran, and frequently tried to end our relationship. After a while, I felt as though I was starting to like him. I just asked him if we could speak on the phone, until one day he came to Tehran and we met each other. We wanted to become intimate. We were both lonely and understood each other. I didn't even let him touch my hand. The next time we met, we went to a registry and started a sigheh relationship."

Amir, 34 years old, lives in Ahvaz in the southwestern province of Khuzestan. He has black hair, light skin, and broad shoulders. Never married, he began going to prostitutes when he was 17. Maryam is his first sigheh relationship, and it was formalized even to that extent only at her insistence. Initially, Amir visited Maryam once a month in Tehran. However, as inflation rose and the cost of travel mounted, they started to see each other only every other month.

Maryam hopes that she can take care of the man whom she says she now loves. She likes the fact that Amir does not live in Tehran with her. He does not have to worry about her work, and he can continue living his life. She wishes that Amir would ask her hand in marriage. However, she worries that their relationship could end at any moment. In Maryam's opinion, even if Amir is interested, his mother will not agree to their marrying, because of her history of divorce.

Maryam doesn't let anyone get close to her and Zahra because she doesn't want her own life to affect how people view her sister. She doesn't allow Zahra to have a boyfriend because she strongly believes men will take advantage of her, both emotionally and physically, and she wants to protect her from that. In Maryam's opinion, the troubles that she has experienced can be attributed to not having a stable and healthy family. In Iran, the status and history of your family are crucial considerations for a marriage. Maryam can plan a better future for her sister only if she can start a family of her own. She wants for her sister something other than the doomed life of a sigheh.

Abi Mehregan is a pen name. The author is on the staff of Iran Labor Report and covers poverty for Tehran Bureau. Photo credit: Amin Nazari via akkasee.com.

by the same author | Ali's Mobile Motorbike Repair and His Dreams of Sheep | Searching for Serenity: Fatima's Story | Zafora, Born in Iran: The Life of an Ethnic Afghan Widow and Mother

related reading | 'Temporary Marriage' and the Economy of Pleasure | 'Temporary Wife' Shahla Jahed Hanged

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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"It is not possible to drive away Israelis from there and not possible to tell Palestinians that they can't have a homeland."

[ dispatch ] The recent fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has been a hot topic of conversation among Iranians.

I visit 35-year-old Manouchehr, who considers himself a nationalist, near Tehran's Felestin Circle. "Honestly, in a way I think we and Palestinians are alike," he says.

In what way?

"We are both ensnarled in unique but different situations that others probably can't appreciate," he replies. "We are trapped in a religious dictatorship and they by an occupation. Our dictatorship has similarities to an occupation, and their occupation has similarities to a theocracy."

He says that he believes that the rest of the world can't understand the situation of Iranians or Palestinians to any significant extent. I ask him if Israelis are not facing a similar situation that is not properly appreciated.
 He raises his eyebrows and his voice becomes agitated. "That's a lie. They have come and pushed a people out of their homeland on the basis of some religious mumbo jumbo."

I remind him that the United Nations recognizes Israel within its 1967 borders. He answers in a calmer tone, "Alas, it is so. The United Nations has transferred Europe's recompense for its sin of mistreating the Jews to a different place. And of course, today, Israel's existence is an indisputable reality. Even the Palestinians have had no choice but to accept that."

Mona, 27, works in a travel agency. Her job is to find ways of getting visas for Iranians who want to travel to the United States. Her view is very different from Manouchehr's. "See, the Palestinians were [a] people who went and seized those lands," she asserts. "Now, the Israelis are saying, 'Get out and get lost.'"

I ask her if she means that the land historically belonged to Israel. "Yes," she says, "but they have to sit down and come to an agreement. Why are they killing people? I oppose wars because their consequences fall on helpless people."

Although Mona believes that the Holy Land belong to Israel, she says that she doesn't have much sympathy for Jews. "I am not a racist or any such thing...but my basic thoughts are that they are more hot-tempered than Muslims, and history doesn't recount nice things about Judaism or the tribe of 'sons of Israel' either."

I remind her that we Iranians have changed often throughout history. An Iranian today doesn't resemble one from a century or two ago. Doesn't a statute of limitations apply to any people's historical misdeeds? "Yes," she agrees. "Regardless, I respect nations with histories that have lead them into the First World, because they have not stagnated."

She adds, "What is interesting to me about Israel is that there is no mention of it in any history or geography book I've seen, since childhood. Even the GPS in Iran doesn't show it exactly."

Mona turns to explain to a visitor how to fill out a form. When she's done, I ask her what she thinks Iran's position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict should be. She answers, "Us, or the government?" After a loud chuckle, she says, "In my view, war is not justifiable in any situation. Governments must choose by themselves. I am pro-people -- Palestinian or Israeli, it makes no difference. When I said I don't like Jews, it was something from my unconscious."

Unlike Mona, the right-wing Kayhan daily is not anti-war. In a front-page editorial earlier this week, Mohammad Immani expressed great joy at the launch of Fajr-5 rockets into the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv. These missiles are the same kind used by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's forces during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War. In a news conference on Wednesday, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said, "Because the Gaza Strip has been surrounded, we can no longer send them rockets, but we have provided them our experience in building Fajr-5 short-range rockets, and today a mass of these rockets are being produced."

The same day, Majles Speaker Ali Larijani told reporters, "We proudly announce that we support the people of Palestine and Hamas and we proudly announce that we will be by the Palestinian people's side in the most difficult conditions." He continued, "We are proud that our help to the Palestinian people has included economic and military aspects."

On condition of anonymity, a prominent Green Movement activist agrees to talk with me about the situation in Gaza. "This crisis was the first difficult test for [President] Barack Obama [since his reelection]. A test that Obama did not pass. He was too much on Israel's side," he says. "I didn't expect this from Obama, and hoped that he would defend both sides."

Which side does he think is guilty of starting the war?

"In my view, Israel is guilty," he replies. "An Israeli daily said, '[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is warming up for war with Iran.' While claiming he had not started any wars, now he wants to enter two wars at once." The activist believes that if Iran becomes deeply entangled in a Gaza conflict, then it will be easier for Israel to justify attacking the Islamic Republic.

While many Iranians have been fixated by media coverage of the Gaza crisis, they have showed little interest in the recent sectarian violence in Burma that resulted in the deaths of dozens of Muslims. I ask the Green Movement activist where the popular concern with Palestinian human rights stems from.

"It arises from history," he says. "The Palestinian issue has always been of interest to the Iranian elite, but not so with Burma. The Palestinian people represent a symbol of oppression to all Iranians, who wish that they would be helped. Israel symbolizes evil and Palestinians the oppressed. [But] I am not discussing the right or wrong of this."

I ask him why the Green Movement doesn't try to change this black-and-white view of the situation.

"Cultural development is not a political task," he says. "It is the job of intellectual groups and educational activists. All political organizations can do is to create an open environment in which the experts and the people can discuss such issues and criticize one another's values, question them and reduce intensities. [We] must deal with what already exists.

"If you don't speak about Burma, no one is surprised. If you don't talk about Palestine, those who have a hankering for Palestine don't see it as a similar stance. If Burma's conflicts were also intertwined with Iranian culture...then the Green Movement had better pay attention to Burma too."

In the lower-middle-class Narmak district, Mehrdad, a 40-year-old elevator installer, is reviewing some architectural drawings. I ask him if he finds Iranians' special sensitivity toward the Palestinian situation rational. "Lord, for me, getting involved in any conflict is stupid," he says. "Like the United States, which sees itself as everyone's representative and solicitor."

Mehrdad says that the Arab-Israeli discord is nothing new and that the two sides share responsibility. He adds, however, that he is opposed to the Israeli "government's actions on humanitarian grounds." He continues, "I think Israelis' approval of their government's violent actions stems from their common hatred for the Arabs."

Mehrad's younger colleague, Ali, joins the discussion. "People in Gaza are being killed and Israel says, 'We are defending ourselves,' and the United States calls this just. How is this right that Israel kills kids and other civilians? Israel targets them without justification.

"Look, sir, fundamentally I don't like my views to coincide with the Islamic Republic's. I am talking from a humanitarian point of view."

After Iran's 1979 Revolution, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became one of the leading foreign policy concerns for the new Islamic Republic.
 Since then, Iran has given crucial support to Palestinian paramilitary groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has referred to Israel as a "cancerous tumor." On Wednesday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking to hundreds of Basij militia, endorsed the use of force against Israel. He declared, "The Gaza adventure shows that there are no other means against conspiracies, subjugations, and deceitful and cowardly acts than a powerful stance."

Ali says, "I would participate in a demonstration in support of the people of Gaza if it was not under the Islamic Republic's banner, [and] without religious chants and slogans for God and Khamenei."

When he expresses his belief that a radical faction like Hamas is very beneficial for Gaza, Mehrdad disagrees. "What are you saying? This is war. It isn't new either. They've been entangled for 60-70 years. The more powerful has the first and final word. Hamas is a terrorist group and it causes friction and instability in the region. When it can't match Israel's power, it has to stand down." He adds, "Aren't Israeli kids killed? Haven't houses and schools in Israel been bombed? Haven't you seen that? This is a bilateral war and power will determine the outcome."

Ali Reza, 22, a high-tech student, says that though he strongly believes in Islam, he can't take Hamas's side. We're sitting in his school cafeteria, surrounded by students drinking tea and smoking. Ali Reza offers me a fresh glass of tea and says, "Sadly, [Hamas Prime Minister] Ismail Haniyeh and Ahmad Jabari, the military commander of Hamas [assassinated by an Israeli airstrike on November 14], don't have any regard for peace and tolerance toward the Zionists. For this reason, they seek conflict with Israel based on vacuous reasons so that, according to them, they can defend their interests. I don't follow this issue closely, but that is based on what I've heard."

I ask if Israel's response to Hamas's rocket launches has not been excessive. "Israel is not a nation that will yield easily," he answers. "They have demonstrated that over the last 50, 60 years, and they will not yield now either. Perhaps it will even act more heavily and resolutely this time."

Ali Reza, like Mehrdad, does not want to see Iran enter the conflict. "A war in a country that doesn't share a border with us and doesn't benefit us much economically through export or import? Our involvement would be just a huge expense with no returns. We would not get anything out of it."

So why is the Gaza conflict so important to the Islamic Republic?

"It's just the policy they have chosen in this regard. This is a policy that a group of high-ranking authorities in Iran are following to get a foothold in that country." He finishes his tea and says, "Interesting -- how Iran's government is clearly left outside the court." He means that the civilian government has been sidelined from a game being played by the military elite.

Abolfazl works for an international transport company whose Tehran headquarters are in one of the high-end commercial towers that line Mirdamad Avenue. He says that few in Israel outside Netanyahu's inner circle have much appetite for war. "At a conference in London, I met an Iranian who lives in Israel. He was quite zealous. He had fled to Israel before the Iran-Iraq War. He had been working in the customs at the port of Abadan before that. He believed all the [Holy Land] belongs to them [Jews]. I told him that Iran was once ruled by the Mongols. Or, for example, during Cyrus II's reign [550-530 BCE], Konia was part of Iran. We can't just take ancient history to devise today's policies."

He says that although the recent fighting was quite bloody, Israel has acted more responsibly than in the past. "Israel doesn't attack civilians, as it knows that if a Palestinian child is killed, it will cause a lot of noise. But such things don't matter to Hamas. Even if they kill a whole Israeli family, there will not be so much noise because it is a terrorist group. There are no consequences for it."

The BBC Persian Service reported that at least 34 Palestinian children were killed in the fighting.

Abolfazl believes that Iran has lost a good deal of its influence over Hamas. He points out that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are providing the group with major financial support. The emir of Qatar, he says, "gave close to 400 million dollars to Ismail Haniyeh."

Iran has been a primary backer of Hamas since its founding in 1987. Over the past year, however, a serious rift has developed between Hamas's political office in Damascus and the Islamic Republic regarding the bloody suppression of Syrians by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The relationship turned so sour that some state media outlets in Iran have referred to Hamas as a "tool of the oppressors." Nonetheless, Abolfazl says that the extent of their common interests won't allow the Islamic Republic and Hamas to split.

I meet Aynaz, a marketer with the state-owned Central Insurance Company, at a gathering with mutual friends. "I have problems with Israel," she says. "With the principle that they want to have a country based on race. This is a retarded belief. It is quite racist."

Raising her voice, she adds, "A few days ago an Israeli politician said that Israeli blood is more valuable to him than the Palestinians'. That is truly moronic."

Aynaz sips her drink. I ask her what she sees as the solution to the fight between Israel and Palestine. In a calmer tone, she replies, "Well, obviously, the solution lies in patience, in recognition of the rights of both sides. It is not possible to drive away Israelis from there and not possible to tell Palestinians that they can't have a homeland."

I ask her if she condones Hamas's launching of rockets into Israel after the assassination of Jabari, its military leader. She says, "This is a political act. No group in the political arena would stand its leader being assassinated, or sit still and send flowers. Whether we like it or not, Hamas has been elected by the people's votes."

"Well, some in Israel may say that because Hamas is the democratic representative of the Gazans, they have to pay the price of electing such a belligerent group," I suggest.

"It's democracy's chalice," she acknowledges. "Election by a simple majority is not always good. Go look at the people's condition in Gaza. In such conditions, the only thing left for the people is hatred. Their children grow up with hatred, discrimination, poverty, and isolated from the world, and all this helps zealous governments like Hamas to come to power."

How is her support for the Palestinians different from that of the Islamic Republic's regime?

"Well, it is obvious. The government beats the drums of war and resistance. But I want peace, want life and tranquility, want education for Palestinians."

Thursday, as news of a ceasefire breaks, I ask for an opinion from Reza, who works unlocking iPhones and who claims to check the news around the clock. "A ceasefire was predictable," he asserts. "I think Israel's goal was to halt the Hamas rockets."

Will it last?

"Just like before. Before this war. It may last, but will be fragile. Probably it will last for some time."

While Reza dresses and does his hair in a Westernized style, he has no problem with the Islamic Republic's general position on this issue. "I agree with strengthening Hamas," he says. On the other hand, he adds, "I disagree with the regime considering itself Hamas's founder, or real parent. Ayatollah Khamenei's pronouncements are in that vein. Not very pleasant."

What does he think of those who advocate giving even more financial support to Hamas, even as Iran's own economy is very troubled?

He reflects a bit.

"If there was no excess in the aid and if the Islamic Republic authorities managed the country's internal affairs with the same strategic views. That'd be very good."

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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[ Bīstoon ] The painting is titled The Hall of Mirrors. It was painted in Iran in 1896. The man sitting on the chair, in the lower third of the frame, is King Naser al-Din, who ruled Iran for nearly half a century. Here, at about the age of 64, he is not far from the bloody final act of his tumultuous reign. His life would come to an end at the point of a lonely cleric's pistol. The painter has not exaggerated Naser al-Din's self-confidence, which was ample. And although mirrors in Iranian culture do not connote vanity as they do in Europe, the image nonetheless is an exhibition of kingly wealth: the grand carpet, the furniture (made in France), the chandeliers, the great garden beyond the lofty windows.

At the same time, the painting is more than a conventional portrayal of grandeur. How often was a living king portrayed this way? He is almost dwarfed by the room -- which in reality is much smaller than it seems here. The strange perspective that has achieved the illusion of size also places the king away from the main focal point (the lines merge at a nondescript place on the left). Our gaze rushes to this point, led away from the man. His own gaze, in turn, is directed away from us -- it's not meant to capture our attention. He is unaccompanied by subjects or servants. Of the many mirrors, none reflect his image. He is quite alone.

There is no reason why a Westerner should recognize the name of the painter, though nearly every Iranian would. He is known by his title, Kamal al-Molk ("the Perfect One of the Kingdom"), which was given to him by Naser al-Din slightly prior to the completion of The Hall of Mirrors. It was the king himself who discovered the painter. During a visit to the major artistic workshop of the day, Naser al-Din came upon a small portrait of a recently deceased courtier. He asked for the painter, who turned out to be a young apprentice, and consequently brought him to his court as part of his personal entourage. In a few years, Kamal al-Molk became the king's painting teacher as well. He more or less taught himself -- having access only to the limited repertoire of Western paintings available in Iran -- the rules of perspective and the subtle tricks of oil painting. His style moved entirely away from the dominant local tradition of the time and accepted the European norms. His paintings, for the most part unremarkable if seen without the context of his time and training, belong to the European academic style. The Hall of Mirrors, which took him seven years to complete, is the seminal "modern," naturalistic Iranian painting. It constitutes the first recognized we-can-too moment in the development of visual art in the country.

To consider the piece, it's important to understand that at the moment of its painting every aspect of life in Iran, for the first time, was experiencing the gravitational force generated by the West. The neighboring Ottoman Empire had begun to modernize. In the North, the Russians -- in the grip of their own rapid modernization process -- were reducing the Iranian borders in rapid, walloping blows. In the East, the might of the British Raj, consuming India, had also managed to separate Harat from Iran. Intellectuals had begun to visit Europe, and one of the first independent Iranian newspapers had recently appeared in London.

What the contact with the West made palpable was the fact that somewhere along the line of history Iran had fallen behind. A wealth of documents from the period record the evidence of this feeling. There is a translation of Haj Sayyah's travelogue in English. It's astounding to see through his eyes as he enters each new city in the West. Invariably, he notes the state of the roads, schools, hospitals, and police stations, comparing them with conditions back home. His obsession nearly overwhelms him. Eventually, he is jailed upon one of his returns to Iran. Naser al-Din was not happy to have his subjects discuss the advances of Europe in such detail.

In retrospect, it might be hard to imagine the intensity of the hope that the reformist Iranian elite had initially placed in Naser al-Din's rule. His most enduring legacies (the first modern Iranian academy, military and administrative reform, maintenance of the roads) all belong to the first three years of his reign, and they were all the initiative of his first mentor and prime minister, Amir Kabir. Eventually he would sack the prime minister, who had earned the anger and fear of the corrupt courtiers. Later, in a bathhouse in Kashan and according to Naser's drunkenly signed order, a servant would cut open Amir Kabir's veins.

In The Hall of Mirrors something of that hope has managed to survive the chain of disappointments that constituted Naser's rule. We should not look for it in the carpet or the chandeliers, or in the sword that lies impotently on Naser's lap. It seems to me that hope is somewhere outside, beyond the windows. It shines in and falls on the carpet in sunlit patches, none of which touch the king, who is looking toward its source. At the same time, Kamal al-Molk, who by all accounts was one of the keenest men of his time, could not have helped knowing that this man had not achieved what was expected of him. Thus the king's isolation and immobility. He will never walk out of his chair toward that window -- no such will is painted into his figure. The painting displays a strange mix of loyalty and despondency -- both directed toward the same man.

As he was finishing The Hall of Mirrors, the now middle-aged painter began to paint in an entirely different genre than his earlier courtly works. Slowly and hesitantly at first, he began painting the social types of his time. These were people from the street: peddlers, craftsmen, fortunetellers, housewives, servants. Over the years he would return to this genre, each time with fresh curiosity. Though The Hall of Mirrors might be his most famous work, it was the social genre paintings that had the most lasting influence on Iranian art. Though they constitute only 15 percent of his surviving oeuvre, they exemplify what has become known as his school of painting. In them he seems to be casting a questioning look at the populace of his time. The people in these works are for the most part illiterate. Their clothes are threadbare, their hands calloused, their faces lined with many small cares. Some are haggling over knickknacks, some are cheats and charlatans. Their virtues are not the grand and mysterious virtues of the high-born, but the practical virtues that manage to emerge alongside hard labor and limited means: cunning, good humor, endurance, resolve, sometimes innocence from power. If hope for change cannot be placed in the aristocracy, these paintings ask, then what sort of hope should be placed in ordinary people? What sort of future can depend on them?

Soon after Naser al-Din's death, Kamal al-Molk would leave the royal court. He would show strong support and sympathy for the Constitutionalist Movement. Once the movement transformed into a revolution, around 1905, despite tremendous costs to his finances and career, he severed all ties with the palace -- feigning a stroke so as to avoid any commission from those quarters. After the revolution, he would establish the first modern academy of fine arts in the country. Beside painting and sculpture, the academy would encourage serious participation in the traditional arts, for which he had gained a growing respect. Within its walls, where for a few years he was an absolute ruler, his sense of independence would become fierce, a matter of legends. He refused to curry favor with Reza Shah, each earned the other's disdain, and the matter ended with the old painter retreating embittered into voluntary or semivoluntary exile. He died, at the age of 80, in an isolated village in the East.

Critics have written of the reactionary role of Kamal al-Molk's students in Iranian painting, claiming that their avid naturalism barricaded the path of a local, more relevant style. Even if it's an unfair criticism -- the avant-garde should have enough energy to break through such barriers -- it nonetheless hints at how Kamal al-Molk was the wrong leader for Iranian painting at the time. During his brief stay in Europe he saw the rise of Impressionism, and it left him unimpressed. He was, by training and temperament, a traditionalist; at the same time, he awoke too late to the value of traditional Iranian forms.

Nonetheless, I imagine a space within which the cultural products of a past era, no matter how obsolete, can be reclaimed for the present. Such a place is open to The Hall of Mirrors (closed now to all Kamal al-Molk's other courtly portraits), because it so clearly contains the worldview of its creator, and because this worldview is yet to become entirely irrelevant to our times.

The light of opportunity that falls on the king, to which he cannot respond, is not specific to this particular man. Missing from this image are the representation of the king's shortcomings as a ruler and the presence of a solid group of people who can carry out a real reform agenda. Both are missing because the painter was not yet ready to see them, enamored as he was with the man, and uncertain as he was about the role of the elite and the populace.

More than a century has passed since this painting was completed. Revolutions, riots, and coups have shaken Tehran repeatedly since then. And yet almost any Iranian intellectual who has at some point placed his or her political hope in a single man seems to harbor an image of that man that resembles this painting. The room could be different, and the man could be the Shah, Reza Khan, Arani, or one of a host of others. As a younger man, I had such an image of Mosaddegh, alone and abandoned in his office. Probably he was looking out his window, too, immobilized -- the old aristocrat, the lonely lion.

The type of hope that is placed in one man will always arrive at The Hall of Mirrors. There, bouncing from wall to wall, it will surround the man as he sits alone.

"The Hall of Mirrors" (1896), by Mohammad Ghaffari, Kamal al-Molk (1859-1940), at the Golestan Palace Museum, Tehran.

Bīstoon Chronicles | You'd Have to Be Russian | Iran and Its Visitors | Howl in Farsi

This essay was first published here on January 20.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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People should not be shocked, surprised, disappointed or discouraged by Tehran's close relationship with Baghdad. Iran has actually played a significant role in Iraq since 2003. Iran has had considerable influence among the various Shiites political parties in Iraq. Most of them have their headquarters or leadership based in Iran. That's true of the Supreme Council, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's Dawa party and Muqtada al Sadr.

Iran has significant economic and religious ties to Iraq. It is one of Iraq's top trade partners after Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. It also has a very strong and understandable national security concern in ensuring that Iraq never invades it again. The United States understand that.

The problem is that Iran uses its influence with both the Shiites and the Kurds, to some degree, to try to win Iraq over to its side on various issues like Syria. Syria has changed the nature of Iran's relationship with Iraq more than the U.S. drawdown.

The United States also did not set out to recreate Iraq as an American colony. Iraq lives in the neighborhood and has to deal with issues like Syria. Iran is an important neighbor with extraordinary ties to Iraq, particularly to the Shiites and Kurds who combined make up 80 percent of the population. Iraq is under pressure from both Iran and the United States. That is normal.

U.S. combat troops were not necessarily keeping Iranian influence under control. U.S. troops [who fought alongside Iraqi forces] were effective in helping the Iraqis defeat Iranian-backed militias in 2008.

How has the Syrian crisis affected Iran's relationship with Iraq?

Syria has complicated the relationship to an extraordinary degree. Iraq, with its majority-Shiite population and significant Kurdish and Sunni Arab minorities, is caught in the middle of the wider Shiite-Sunni clash.

There is a huge concern throughout the region that the conflict will turn into an ethnic-religious one. Elements in the Sunni-Arab camp and the Syrian Alawis associated with Bashar Assad, and to some degree the Iranians, want to divert attention from the oppression of the Syrian people. They want to start a sectarian conflict similar to Lebanon's civil war from 1975 to 1990. Many Iraqi Shiites feel that a Sunni victory in Syria will lead to an upsurge of al Qaeda and Salafi influence in Iraq. This could pull the country back into civil war.

Iran is also particularly concerned with losing its ability to project influence into the Mediterranean region. It would be more difficult to support Hezbollah if Assad falls.

There is also tension between Baghdad and Tehran on Iranian flights over Iraq. The planes are believed to be carrying weapons to the Syrian government. This would be a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The United States has been pressuring Iraq, sometimes successfully, to ground those flights and inspect them. The effectiveness of inspections is disputed.

What influence does Iran have on Prime Minister Maliki?

Maliki is in the middle of a tug-of-war between the United States and Iran. The Iraqi prime minister can tell the Iranians that he cannot make concessions because of U.S. interests. Then he can say to the Americans that his hands are tied by Tehran.

But this is how the United States is going to have to make foreign policy in the new Middle East. The situation with the Egyptians is similar and I dealt with this in Turkey too. The leaders of these countries are representative of their populations, which have diverse world views and are generally not enthused about the United States. The governments act professionally and recognize that they have to deal the world as it is. But even when the United States objectively is helpful to these governments, leaders use a great deal of rhetoric and avoid dealing with their population's problems. There is a lot of dancing and bobbing and weaving.

Iran signed a defense agreement with Iraq in October 2012. What does this mean?

The two countries have had close contacts at the security level before, although that visit by Iran's defense minister was troubling. It is too early to tell if anything significant will come out of the agreement. They almost certainly discussed Syria, which is Iran's main concern.

What are the key issues on which Iraq and Iran agree and disagree?

There is actually very little common ground between Iraq and Iran on major issues, despite having significant trade with each other. Tehran would prefer Baghdad to export less oil. Iraq surpassed Iran in oil production in July 2012. Iraqi exports are allowing the international oil market to absorb the dramatic cut in Iranian exports due to U.S. and E.U. sanctions. So Iraq is a major factor in squeezing Iran right now on the nuclear issue. But the Iranians know that selling oil is an important Iraqi national interest.

On Syria, Iran and Iraq have differing interests. But Iran may be able to garner more sympathy from Iraqis [than on other issues].

The two major Shiite religious centers, Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran, are also competitors. Qom's institutions promote the principle of velayat-e faqih, or guardianship of the jurist, which is unique to Iranian theology.

Has Iran increased its activities in Iraq since 2010 -- or sought to take over roles previously played by the United States? In Afghanistan, for example, Iran supports large infrastructure projects, which are very popular among Afghans.

Iran has not taken over any previous U.S. roles. U.S. technical expertise in counterterrorism, intelligence and capacity building are vastly different than Iran's. But Tehran has funded a fair amount of projects in southern Iraq. Iran has a lot of economic, commercial and trade influence there. It is providing some 15 percent of Iraq's electricity and funding some infrastructure construction projects.

Despite these projects, Iran's image in Iraq has never been particularly good. Iraqis, including the Shiites, are somewhat skeptical of Iran's intentions. But they generally want to maintain a good relationship with Tehran.

Just a few years ago, there were militias that were armed, supported, equipped, trained and, to some degree, guided by Iran. Nobody wants to see that again. So there is a certain threat that Iran exercises through the potential to use these groups. Iraqis do not want Tehran to unleash these groups again.

What interests do Iran and the United States share in Iraq? On what issues do they differ?

Both want to see a unified and stable Iraq, and they want to ensure that it cannot threaten its neighbors.

But Iran does not have an interest in Iraq pumping additional oil. It does not want Iraq to have a close relationship with the United States, the Arab states or with Turkey. Iran also does not want Iraq to develop a significant defensive military capability. Ideally, Iran would like to have Iraq under its thumb, yet retain its independence and sovereignty.

This article is presented by Tehran Bureau, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Schola rs as part of the Iran project at iranprimer.usip.org.

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[ in focus ] The legislator heading the investigation by the Majles's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission into the prison death of blogger Sattar Beheshti has called for the resignation of Iran's cyber police chief. The national police chief meanwhile acknowledged that police and prison officers committed multiple acts that "can be regarded as a kind of negligence" in the case.

Majles deputy Mehdi Davatgari, who heads the special subcommittee established by the National Security Commission to look into Beheshti's November 3 death in Evin Prison, told the Fars News Agency that Beheshti had been detained without a proper court order and in "completely illegal" circumstances. Referring to Brigadier General Kamal Hadianfar (pictured here at far right and on homepage), Davatgari declared, "Only the resignation of the head of the cyber police can redeem this institution from the errors that took place in this case at such a heavy cost to the system." Hadianfar has commanded Iran's cyber police force since it was launched in January 2011.

Beheshti lived in the Tehran suburb of Robat Karim, where he was arrested at his home by officers of the cyber police force on October 30. The 35-year-old had been operating a blog, Magalh 91, in which he was critical of his country's government and what he described as its profligate violation of Iranians' human rights. In his final blog post, dated one day before his arrest, he addressed the Islamic Republic's highest authorities:

For you, sirs, intend to silence everyone, one by one, even in privacy, anyone who intends to raise his or her voice. Don't threaten us anymore, for fear has no place in our hearts anymore. Neither the whip nor torture can frighten us or prevent us from informing others.

Reports from both Evin Prison and the Kahrizak coroner's facility, where his body was turned over to family members, indicate that Beheshti was subjected to severe beatings and torture before his death. The state coroner has asserted that, while Beheshti's body indeed "bore signs of beating," he "died from natural causes."

At a press conference held to address the case on Tuesday, Brigadier General Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam, the Islamic Republic's top police commander (pictured above at far left), stated, "Investigations are being carried out by the judicial apparatus. The point that a [Majles] representative has recently stated is that the conditions at the detention center in Robat Karim were not favorable, and this issue can be investigated. It has been asked, 'Why was this person transferred from Evin Prison during a holy day?"... This can be regarded as a kind of negligence." Beheshti was evidently transferred from the detention facility in his hometown on November 2 -- a Friday, the Muslim holy day -- to Evin in Tehran, where he died the following day.

Ahmadi Moghaddam pointed to other instances of arguable "negligence" in the circumstances of Beheshti's detention: The blogger was prescribed sedatives at one of the facilities where he was detained -- most likely in Robat Karim -- but was subsequently denied access to the drugs, according to the account of the press conference that appeared in the semiofficial Tehran Times, "because the necessary prescription and the permit to take them were not available." Apparently describing the circumstances of Beheshti's detention in Evin, Ahmadi Moghaddam also noted that he was held in an "administrative section" rather than in one of the official detention areas, which are monitored by camera.

The police chief concluded that there was "no motivation" to kill Beheshti and that he had probably died of "shock." Iranian authorities have previously suggested that the blogger's death was related to preexisting "heart problems." His relatives have stated that Beheshti was neither suffering from any health problems nor taking any medication before his arrest.

Over the past two weeks, state-controlled and -aligned media outlets have reported that several people have been arrested in connection with Beheshti's death, but no details on the identities of those people or the nature of their alleged involvement in the case have been forthcoming.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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[ comment ] In the wake of President Obama's re-election, Iran has been signaling its readiness for direct talks with the United States over Iran's nuclear program. A spate of statements in early November by officials close to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, speak of the possibility of direct talks without condemning or dismissing the idea.

A Ministry of Intelligence analysis that was made public describes as an "unforgiveable sin" any inclination to dismiss the possibility of military action against Iran's nuclear facilities and stresses the preference for diplomacy to resolve the nuclear issue. President Ahmadinejad has come out openly for direct talks. The explanation for this apparent shift in posture -- Khamenei has remained defiant on the nuclear issue -- is almost certainly the pressure of sanctions, which have caused severe dislocations in the Iranian economy, and also the prospect that Iran will have to continue dealing with Obama over the next four years. Yet it remains unclear whether Khamenei is ready for the compromises and concessions any agreement with the United States would entail.

The signs of a shift in posture are on the one hand undeniable. As recently as September, Khamenei's chief adviser on foreign policy, Ali Velayati, was quick to shoot down suggestions by President Ahmadinejad (when in New York in September to attend the opening of the UN General Assembly) that Iran was open to negotiations with the United States. Over the last few months, commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards threatened Israel with virtual destruction if it attacked Iran. In early November, the commander of the Basij paramilitary forces, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, described the United States as "the most criminal regime on earth," and said relations with America would be possible only if the United States dissolved the CIA, withdrew its warships from the Persian Gulf, and dismantled its 50 military bases around the world -- in other words, never. Naqdi was not articulating official policy; but his remarks reflect the hurdles in the military command that would have to be overcome before an agreement with the United States can be reached.

Yet Mohammad Javad Larijani (pictured), the head of a government human rights commission, said recently that negotiations with America are not taboo and that if the interests of the country require it, "we will negotiate with America even in the depths of hell." Earlier, on his website, Larijani wrote a positive assessment of Obama's performance as president. (Khamenei has in the past repeatedly described Obama as continuing the hostile policy toward Iran of his predecessors.) Larijani's remarks carry some weight. One of his brothers, Ali Larijani, is speaker of the Iranian Majlis, or parliament, and a close confidant of Khamenei; another, Sadeq, is the powerful head of the judiciary.

Larijani's judiciary brother, in the meantime, sounded a more cautionary note, remarking that contacts between Iran and the United States could not come about "overnight" and that "Americans should not think they can secure ransom from the Iranian people" when Iran comes to the negotiating table. But it was significant that he spoke of negotiations at all and also that he did not rule them out. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has said publicly that direct talks between Iran and the United States are the only way to resolve the outstanding issues between the two countries.

Perhaps more striking was an analysis that appeared on the website of the Ministry of Intelligence under the title of "The Reasons for and Obstacles to a Military Strike by the Zionist Regime against Iran." The analysis describes an Israeli attack on Iran as unlikely given Iran's military readiness, the damage Iran can inflict on Israel, and the serious consequences of an Israeli military strike for the stability of the whole region. But the analysis also differentiates between Israel's and America's attitude toward Iran's nuclear program. Israel, according to the article, sees any Iranian nuclear capability (presumably even for peaceful purposes) as a threat to its own survival and seeks the total destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities.

America has "a totally different" view, for which the Ministry of Intelligence analysis offers various explanations. America does not feel threatened by Iran's access to nuclear technology and is even ready to discuss with Iran in-country fuel enrichment at low levels. The Obama administration seeks to prevent Israel from launching a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear installations, confident that its intelligence and "eyes" will detect in plenty of time if Iran decides to weaponize. The United States hopes to resolve this issue through diplomacy and negotiation -- and through harsh sanctions.

While stressing Iran's military capabilities and ability to defend itself, the article concludes by emphasizing the importance of avoiding war through "diplomatic and political means and making use of the capabilities of international organizations." It describes such a path as "essential -- and low-cost." Iran in the past has expressed little confidence in the UN and has accused the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of bias in its evaluation of Iran's nuclear intentions.

The preference for negotiation rather than confrontation must be understood largely against the background of the severe economic problems the country has been experiencing -- difficulties due both to sanctions and President Ahmadinejad's reckless mismanagement of the economy. U.S. and EU sanctions ban the purchase of Iranian oil and gas, target specified Iranian companies and individuals, and severely restrict the ability of Iranian banks to engage in normal international financial transactions. These sanctions have crippled parts of the Iranian economy. Iranian oil exports have been cut by almost half, costing the country upwards of $35 billion in revenues a year. Banking sanctions and restrictions on the transfer of oil dollars to Tehran has meant Iran is often unable to access payments for the oil it does sell. In China and India, Iran has had to accept payment for oil in local currencies, which tie its oil sales to the purchase of local goods and commodities. To sell oil in Asian markets, Iran is reportedly offering crude at discount prices. Factories have been experiencing difficulty in importing raw materials and spare parts; production lines have had to be shut down; and workers have been laid off. Inflation is rising steeply, and the Central Bank is clearly concerned over the slow but steady depletion of its once substantial foreign exchange reserves.

The government tried to hold the exchange rate at the official rate of 11,400 rials to the dollar even as it began to restrict the heretofore easy availability of foreign exchange. But the rial experienced a steep decline on the open, or free, market, falling by almost 50 percent between June 2011 and August 2012. In late September, public panic set in, as Iranians fled the rial for foreign currencies. The rial fell 40 percent in one week in relation to the American currency and was at one point in early October trading at over 35,000 rials to the dollar on the open market. The government responded with a series of measures. It restricted open market foreign exchange trading; devalued the official rate of the rial by almost 50 percent, limited the availability of foreign exchange at the official rate to imports of essential foods and pharmaceuticals and set multiple rates for other imports; banned the import of a long list of luxury goods; required exporters to sell their foreign exchange to importers at official rather than free market rates; and restricted the export of over 50 items, including wheat, grains, sugar, vegetable oil, automobile tires, paper, and a variety of metals and petrochemical building blocks.

These new foreign exchange and import-export controls have generated their own set of problems, fueled partly by the higher cost of imports and partly by market dislocation. Due to the new export controls, goods slated for export and already loaded on trucks have been turned back at Iranian borders. The Minister of Health has reported that medication for serious illnesses, such as cancer treatment and chemotherapy, are unavailable or have become prohibitively expensive. Hospitals say they are not receiving the already budgeted funds from the government for the purchase of equipment and medication. Consumers report steeply rising prices for everything from meat and fish to milk, dairy products, and rice. IranAir raised the price of tickets for foreign travel by 90 percent. A leading member of the Majlis said in early November that due to inflation, "in Iranian society today, people are either poor or rich. We no longer have a middle class of salary earners."

These difficulties have strengthened the voice of those calling for foreign policy moderation. Former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been most prominent in quietly (and not very forcefully) calling for a course correction and for an end to a policy of confrontation. President Ahmadinejad tends to underestimate the difficulty of reaching an Iran-U.S. understanding, but he has long favored negotiations between the two countries. When in New York in September, Ahmadinejad observed that any direct talks would have to await the results of the American elections; but now that President Obama will be in office for a second term, it is clear that it is with his administration that Tehran will have to negotiate. Direct talks about the nuclear issue may also be prompted by the limited progress achieved in negotiations between Iran and the so-called 5+1 group, the five members of the UN Security Council and Germany. This group is currently considering renewed talks with Iran, but some members privately believe resolution of the nuclear issue requires direct Iran-U.S. talks.

In Iran, the Ministry of Intelligence and the Larijani brothers would be unlikely to broach the possibility of direct negotiations without the Supreme Leader's approval; but the fact remains that Khamenei has yet to declare himself in favor of direct talks. On the contrary, he remains defiant in the face of sanctions and continues to depict America as Iran's inveterate enemy. His objections to and fears of negotiations with the United States are numerous.

Khamenei has turned the nuclear issue and Iran's right to nuclear technology and fuel enrichment into a matter of national pride. Accepting U.S. and EU demands -- that Iran end enrichment above a minimum level, send abroad fuel enriched to a 20 percent level, shut down the heavily-fortified Fordow enrichment facility, and allow intrusive inspections -- will appear to him, and the Iranian public, as giving away the store. The example of Iraq's Saddam Hussein is ever on Khamenei's mind. He fears that if Iran yields to one set of American demands, more demands will follow, with no end in sight.

Besides, he does not trust the United States. "They are lying," he said recently in what may have been an indirect response to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remark that sanctions will be eased if Iran is forthcoming on the nuclear issue. And he believes America's ultimate aim is regime change. Iran's nuclear program, he said in a recent speech, is merely an excuse; what America cannot tolerate is the very existence of the Islamic Republic. He seems to underestimate the damaging effect of sanctions and to believe Iran can survive them. He had already declared this to be the year of the "economy of resistance." During a provincial tour in October, he described the sanctions regime imposed on Iran as "illogical and barbaric," but he also dismissed it as ineffective. Iran, he said, "will navigate this mountain pass too," as it has overcome sanctions in the past. This is not the language of a leader who was about to meet America and the EU halfway.

There are clearly men in Khamenei's inner circle who are urging him to at least test the waters with the United States; and he may have allowed them to publicly discuss the possibility, even the desirability, of direct talks. It is also conceivable that Khamenei will find acceptable a deal which gives the United States most of what it wants but which he can present to Iranians as a great victory for Iran. But in the same way that the United States is demanding from Iran what Khamenei is not ready to give, Khamenei will need from the United States what it is unrealistic for him to expect -- a rapid lifting of sanctions, acknowledgment of Iran's right to enrich (even if Iran does not choose to exercise this right), and recognition of Iran as a major player in the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East, with a seat at the table when regional issues are discussed.

The winds are shifting in Iran; but, so far, only slightly.

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.

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"They want to rob us of everything in order to be able to participate in the election."

[ media watch ] Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, one of Iran's most prominent leftist clerics, has declared that it is not possible to have free elections in the Islamic Republic given present circumstances. According to Kaleme, a news website closely associated with the reformist camp, Khoeiniha, 71, told a gathering of the university students' wing of the Islamic Iran Participation Front that he opposed the notion that "one must participate in the election at any cost." The vote that is supposed to determine Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's successor as Iranian president will be held next June.

Now a senior member of the reformist Association of Combatant Clerics, Khoeiniha was appointed as state prosecutor-general by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the 1979 Revolution, and he was the spiritual leader of the students who took over the U.S. Embassy in November 1979. The Islamic Iran Participation Front, one of the country's two largest reformist parties, has been officially banned since the protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election.

In his speech to the students, Khoeiniha addressed the rhetorical use of the term "sedition," the epithet widely used by Iranian conservatives to refer to the Green Movement and the massive demonstrations against what many saw as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rigged reelection. "They say that if you want to participate in the elections, you have to declare your detestation of 'sedition,'" said the ayatollah. "What does 'detestation' mean? Does it mean that we have to dissociate ourselves from Mr. [Mir Hossein] Mousavi and Hojatoleslam [Mehdi] Karroubi?" The two Green Movement leaders and former presidential candidates have been extralegally detained under house arrest since February 2011.

He continued, "We proposed Mr. Mousavi as a presidential candidate ourselves, and he claims that his votes were expropriated. That issue has not been settled yet because they [authorities] have sat one of the claimants on the throne and imprisoned the other in his own home. Now we are supposed to dissociate ourselves from him just to participate in the election? So that they can replay the same scenario again? What kind of political move is that? Even religion doesn't permit one [to carry out] such an act.

On November 9, the Mardom-Saalaary Party organized a meeting of a group of reformists to assess next year's election and what role they should play in it. During the meeting, Mohammad Khatami, the former president, was invited to run. Khatami, who shocked many in the reformist camp by voting in this spring's parliamentary elections after calling for a boycott, offered no response.

Khoeiniha observed, "They say dissociate yourself from Khatami as well. Even then, they still won't let up. After you have declared your dissociation from the three [Mousavi, Karroubi, and Khatami], you must then declare your dissociation from all others too, from those [opposition members] still incarcerated, and then they will demand you 'declare regret for yourself and your past.' In short, one must declare dissociation from all of this to be allowed [to participate in the election]. The hell with that." Islamic Iran Participation Front leader Mohsen Mirdamadi and well-known party member Saeed Hajjarian are among the many political prisoners held by the Islamic Republic.

The senior cleric continued, "They want to rob us of everything in order to be able to participate in the election. What election? I disagree with the idea that one must participate in the election at any cost.

"Free elections will not take place when an important movement in the nation is not allowed to have a publication; when any website it sets up is filtered and hacked at will; when it is denied a permit to assemble -- not in the thousands, not even in the hundreds. You can't call it free elections when one side sits on the presidential seat and the other side goes to jail."

Government accused of rampant deception

Khoeiniha turned to the issue of what he described as a sweeping campaign of deception perpetrated by the government and the many media outlets it controls, directly or indirectly. "It astounds me that they think that one can better manage the country with lies," he stated.

"Perhaps they have discovered some verses and precedents which say that you keep people occupied with lies.... Lies will not solve the daily problems of the people or improve their purchasing power. Lies will not eradicate corruption, and multibillion[-dollar] embezzlement will not be abolished with lies. You can't move toward God or lead people to God's path with lies. To offer people false statistics and deny things that they see with their own eyes won't fix difficulties. How do they reckon that they must lie?"

He also castigated those principlists -- conservatives who proclaim fervent support for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- who once strongly backed Ahmadinejad. "They delivered that gentleman with such pomp and ceremony, and now they say, 'He has nothing to do with us!' Now that he has wrecked the country, they say, 'We didn't know him, we weren't familiar with him.' Any normal person knew that with such management the nation would end up here. Actually it was clear from day one....

"The nation's affairs weren't as difficult in 1388 [2009] as today, just as it wasn't as hard in 1384 [when Khatami was succeeded by Ahmadinejad] as it was in 1388. Thank God they can't pin the current situation on the shoulder of reformists and blame reformists' hands for the last four years, because they have directed things down to this place all by themselves. Managing the country has become difficult, so they are clawing each others' faces, and so it becomes more difficult day by day."

In conclusion, he said, "In other places, when a difficulty arises, they choose to return to the people. I have said repeatedly, as have other senior [people], that the solution to the difficulty of running the country is free elections. If the authorities decide today to conduct the upcoming election freely and do so earnestly, many difficulties will vanish immediately, and so will half of the international pressure."

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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"The recession is here! Are they kidding?"

[ business analysis ] On Monday, November 26, the Iranian Customs Administration announced that it would not permit the release of cargo with imported goods financed through the currency free market as of November 20. That may look a like a typographical error; in fact, it was a retroactive edict with severe consequences for Iranian business owners if it were carried out. Importers who paid for their goods with hard currency acquired outside the authorized banking system would not be permitted to clear customs -- even if the payments had been made up to six days before the rule was announced. Asadollah Asgaroladi, chair of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce, called the decision "illegal" and predicted that it would cause significant damage.

The following day, Customs Administration chief Abbas Memarnejad told reporters that the clearing process would continue, but that merchants must announce the sources of their hard currency. In an apologetic tone, he said that the edict had been drafted by the Ministry of Commerce rather than by his own agency. As of publication time, the Ministry of Commerce has yet to issue a statement on the matter.

This episode is but the latest example of government meddling in the economy that has exacerbated uncertainty throughout the country's business community, already deeply unsettled by the international sanctions regimen and the collapse of the rial's open-market exchange value. Another recent example of government intervention has had much greater impact: in an effort both to increase the domestic supply of essential goods and to prevent the reexport of imported items in ways that exploit state-subsidized currency exchanges, the Iranian government created a black list of commodities not to be exported. The list was drawn up too slowly to stop manipulators who had already reaped huge profits via reexportation. However, it has caused great hardship among domestic producers who were hoping to earn much needed hard currency through legitimate export activities.

Businessman like Ali Reza, who works in the information technology industry, find it impossible to make any sort of plans under these circumstances. "To me, it seems the government officials wake up every morning with a new idea and that idea affects my dealing right away," he says.

Seemingly uncoordinated government interventions, coupled with the existing international sanctions and the threats of even stricter ones, have created a new economic environment in Iran. This week, the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) released its latest data on foreign trade and government accounts. The CBI reports that Iranian oil exports are down by 40 percent compared to last year -- set off, but only marginally, by a 12 percent rise in other exports. (Other sources state that oil exports are down as much as 50 percent.) Of particular note, Iran is increasingly importing natural gas and petroleum products -- such imports this spring were 101 percent higher than during the comparable period last year. The CBI report also reveals that Iranian government debt to the banking sector has increased by 54 percent.

In an editorial published Wednesday by the Tejarat News website, economist Mohammad Mehdi Behkish warns that the Iranian economy may be on the verge of falling into a deep recession -- a word heard often these days around Tehran. After reviewing the political decisions made by the government that affect Iran's standing in the international arena, he concludes, "The economic consequences of these actions were neither calculated nor taken into account." He asks government officials and members of the business community to come together and devise a strategy to avoid sweeping economic reversals that could last a decade.

To Ali Reza, Behkish's dire observations constitute not a warning but an acknowledgement. "The recession is here! Are they kidding?" He continues, angrily, "The factories have been shutting down for some time now, unemployment is higher than ever."

In his view, the question is not whether a recession can be avoided, but "if there is enough time to save the economy" from total collapse. Ali Reza does not think so. With an air of resignation, even doom, he concludes, "It is too late. We will never come back from this one."

related reading | Sanctions Bite, Iran Scrambles | Iran's Economy: A Ball Rolling Downhill | Iran's Wizard of Oz Economics

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

@TehranBureau | TB on Facebook

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.

Deadline of the Day

U.S. gives Iran four months to come clean on nuclear program

In a statement Thursday addressed to the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), senior State Department officer Robert Wood repeated U.S. assertions that the Iranian government has been far from open with the U.N. watchdog agency about the full scope of its nuclear program. Calling on agency Director-General Yukiya Amano to issue a determination in his next quarterly report on Iran over whether it has taken "substantive steps" to address those transparency concerns, Wood declared, "If by March Iran has not begun substantive cooperation with the IAEA, the United States will work with other board members to pursue appropriate board action, and would urge the board to consider reporting this lack of progress to the U.N. Security Council."

At a press conference two weeks ago, following his reelection, President Barack Obama stated that he would "try to make a push in the coming months to see if we can open up a dialogue between Iran and not just us but the international community" to resolve the dispute over the Islamic Republic's nuclear activities. A series of talks held over the past year between representatives of Iran and the P5+1 -- the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany -- yielded no material progress. A report last month that Iran and the United States were moving toward direct bilateral negotiations was denied by both sides. Iranian and IAEA representatives are scheduled to meet for talks on December 13.

The IAEA board first reported Iran's nuclear dossier to the Security Council in February 2006 -- a move the Iranian government contends was illegal. Security Council Resolution 1696, adopted that July, called on Iran to entirely suspend its uranium enrichment activities and take steps laid out by the IAEA board "to build confidence in the exclusively peaceful purpose of its nuclear programme." The Security Council subsequently imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic in an attempt to make it comply with those demands in Resolutions 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835, and 1929.

Wood, the interim chargé d'affaires and acting permanent representative to the international organizations in Vienna -- an ambassador-level position -- stated to the IAEA board, "Iran cannot be allowed to indefinitely ignore its obligations.... Iran must act now, in substance." Speaking later with reporters, he expressed hope that the Iran-IAEA talks next month would prove productive, but added, "I have my doubts about the sincerity of Iran." Amano, meanwhile, suggested to reporters that the agency's inspectors in Iran were facing increased pressure, the nature of which he did not define.

Video of the Day

Lecture delivered by Matthew Machowski of the School of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary, University of London on issues related to the Iranian nuclear program, including an introduction to the nuclear fuel cycle and the process of uranium enrichment, Iran's obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its relationship with the IAEA, "what we actually know about Iran's nuclearization as opposed to all the international accusations," the potential for a U.S. or Israeli preemptive strike, and the hypothetical of "what happens the day after Iran becomes a nuclearized-weapon state."

Headline of the Day

"Without Iran's Support, Assad Regime Will Collapse: Report"

-- From the Saudi-owned, Dubai-based Al Arabiya website. The accompanying story describes an "Iranian report...obtained by an embassy of a Western country in Tehran." According to Al Arabiya's description, the report details Iranian frustration over the diversion of funds it has provided to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the private bank accounts of Syrian military officers. The Islamic Republic has been Assad's most important ally in the civil war that has been waged in Syria over the past 20 months. The report indicates that Tehran will continue to back Assad until the Iranian presidential election next June, but that it is already planning for the eventual fall of his regime. No details were provided on what agency or individual drafted the report.

Photos of the Day

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.

Human Rights Story of the Day

Sakharov Prize winner Nasrin Sotoudeh critically ill as prison hunger strike nears 50th day

Lawyer, author, and women's and children's rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is serving a six-year prison sentence on charges of spreading "propaganda," "acting against national security," and "not observing Islamic dress code," is reportedly in critical condition as she enters the 48th day of a hunger strike. Sotoudeh undertook the hunger strike -- her fourth since her incarceration began in September 2010 -- to protest the obstruction and denial of her rights to visits from and telephone calls with her husband, Reza Khandan; 12-year-old daughter, Mehraveh; and four-year-old son, Nima. A case has also been filed against Mehraveh that bars the girl from traveling abroad. According to Khandan, who was able to see his wife on Sunday, her weight has dropped below 94 pounds and fellow prisoners said that she is no longer physically capable of accepting fluids.

Sotoudeh, 49, ran afoul of the Islamic Republic's ruling system through her extensive work as a human rights attorney and leading role in the Campaign for One Million Signatures, which seeks the abolition of laws that discriminate against Iranian women. Following the completion of her prison term, she will be banned from employment in the legal field and from international travel for ten years. Her original sentence, handed down in January 2011, of 11 years of imprisonment followed by 20-year bans on employment in the legal field and international travel bans was later reduced by an appeals court. She has been serving her sentence in Tehran's Evin Prison, specifically in Ward 209, which is directly supervised by the Islamic Republic's Intelligence Ministry.

In October, shortly after she began her latest hunger strike, Sotoudeh was honored with the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, awarded by the European Parliament; the prize also went to Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who has also been sentenced to six years of incarceration (he has yet to be summoned to prison to begin his sentence) and 20-year employment and travel bans, to which he is already subject. Images of Sotoudeh and Panahi are currently displayed over the main entrance to the European Parliament in Brussels.

On Sunday, dozens of women's rights activists demonstrated in front of the office of Tehran Prosecutor-General Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, demanding Sotoudeh's immediate transfer to a hospital. Meanwhile, Majles deputy Mohammad Hassan Asfari told the Iranian Labor News Agency that a group of legislators was preparing to visit Evin to examine the conditions of her detention. "If the stories regarding Ms. Sotoudeh are true, we will request an explanation from," Asfari said, adding that they would not intervene if they determined that her hunger strike was motivated solely by the desire to
"create a controversy."

In an email he sent to Reuters on Monday, Khandan said that he welcomed news of the Majles deputies' planned visit to Evin. "In this situation of silence and ignorance and indifference on the part of those involved, this is good news," he wrote. "My wife has a clear condition for stopping her hunger strike, and that is the suspension of the judiciary's case against our daughter.... [T]his is a legal request."

Audio of the Week

Brooke Gladstone of National Public Radio's On the Media interviews Neda Soltani, whose Facebook picture was disseminated internationally as an image of Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death in the street protests that followed the Iranian presidential election in June 2009 was captured on a cellphone video seen around the world. Soltani describes how several major news organizations refused to acknowledge or correct the error even after repeated pleas and explanations. She was forced to flee Iran when she refused to cooperate with Islamic Republic officials who wanted her to claim that Agha-Soltan's death was itself a hoax. Soltani, author of My Stolen Face, also recently gave an account of what happened to BBC News.

Quote of the Day

"We don't think everyone should have the unconditional right to leave the country because it will have consequences, and neither do we think that everyone must be stopped from leaving the country. We believe that permission to leave the country should be granted after maturity is established."

-- Majles deputy Laleh Eftekhari tells the Islamic Students News Agency (ISNA) that the women's bloc in parliament has proposed that women under 40 be permitted to leave the country if they are found to be "mature." The legislature's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission drafted a bill last month that would prohibit the issuance of passports to single women under the age of 40 without the permission of their father or a religious judge. The proposal from the women's bloc would presumably create an additional avenue for a woman wishing to travel abroad to attain permission. According to ISNA's account, Eftekhari said that a "mature woman is defined as a girl who can tell right from wrong and what is in her interest, a girl who can manage her affairs and there is no fear that she will be manipulated. By another definition, a mature girl is one who can for example make important deals and...who will not act based on her emotions."

Video Grab of the Day

"To claim that we should live exactly the way it was so many years ago is inconceivable."

After the victory of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini oversaw the creation of a new system of governance based on a traditional reading of Islam and Islamic law -- sharia. From the institution of compulsory hejab to the absolute prohibition of alcoholic beverages, from crackdowns on pop music and dancing to severe restrictions on the conduct of unmarried couples, Iranians lost many of the personal freedoms that are taken for granted in the West.

Although the wave of political reforms in the wake of Mohammad Khatami's successful presidential campaign in 1997 left many strict religious edicts woven into the fabric of social interactions, many Iranians, especially among the younger generations, were encouraged to pursue greater freedoms, at least in the private realm. That movement enraged the conservatives who have dominated the country's ruling system since shortly after the Revolution. They still claim that the eight years of Khatami's presidency lead to the "Westoxication" and religious aversion of the youth. On the other hand, critics of the ruling system claim that its strict imposition of theocracy is what has lead to young Iranians' hatred of religion.

As a result, more than three decades later, religion has largely eroded in the lives of young educated Iranians. But certain aspects of faith continue to hold sway.

"I was never deeply religious, although in my adolescence I held traditional religious tendencies," says Morteza, a 29-year-old student at the Science and Research Branch of Tehran's Islamic Azad University. "During high school and college, I delved into enlightened religious thoughts, slowly broke with traditional religion, and ended with a reading of religion in accord with modernity."

Religious interpretations harmonious with modernity were popularized by intellectuals who, for the most part, staunchly supported incorporating religion into politics after the Revolution -- men such as Abdolkarim Soroush, Saeed Hajjarian, Mohsen Kadivar, and Mohammad Mojtahedeh Shabestari. Most were forced out of positions of influence following Khomeini's death in 1989.

Morteza says that enlightened religious thought left a positive impression on him. "Perhaps my disagreement with theocracy pushed me toward finding new interpretations of Islam during that period. Interpretations that didn't corroborate the regime's ideology."

But the role of "religion in my life melted away day by day," he says. And this process affected his psyche. "I was always worried by this awareness, and still am. I am frightened of finding a world devoid of a sacred dominion, frightened by a world devoid of meaning. Perhaps all that is left for me of religion is this fear that there is no sacred dominion there, and the wish that indeed there existed a hand behind the world.

"Once in a while, I converse with something that's in my being, which sometimes I address as God. Often I interrogate it and admonish it, and often curse it."

Among other religious responsibilities, every Muslim must pray five times each day and fast from dawn to sunset during the sacred month of Ramadan. Morteza, who works for his father's meat importing company, says that he hardly carries out his religious duties anymore. "Sometimes I perform some of the rituals in fear of my connection fading even further."

Near the heart of Tehran, next to a gas station, a coffee house offers a warm enclave for young people to sit on wood benches, order a coffee, and converse for hours. Sassan, a very tall young man, says, "I'm religious just by my own definitions, not the regime's. For example, I find mourning ceremonies great for purging the mind, but in reality, they're not that different from typical [rave] concerts."

During Muharram -- one of the four sacred months of the Islamic calendar, extending in 2012 from November 15 to December 13 -- Shiites take to mosques and streets to mourn the death of Hossein, the third Shia Imam, along with 72 of his comrades in a battle against the army of the seventh-century caliph Yazid. The major mourning events take place on the Day of Ashura, which fell on November 25 this year.

Sassan confesses that for many, participation in the Ashura ceremonies is not due to religious tendencies. "It's rumored that these days Imam Hossein has garnered many alcoholic mourners too. If alcoholics mourn for Imam Hossein, it is not a sign of their attachment to the Imam, it's a sign that our people still haven't figured out their relationships with themselves!"

Under Iranian law, drinking alcohol is haram (religiously prohibited) with a mandatory punishment of 80 lashes for any violation. During Muharram, alcohol bootleggers, called saghis, tend to restrict their sales or even halt them entirely, either from fear of the government or perhaps out of religious respect.

Sassan says, "We have a saying that if you shed tears the weight of a fly's wing [for Hossein], all your sins will be forgiven. Well, what does that tell you? It says that you can get back to sinning after a few tears with no fears."

He continues, "Some things from religion penetrates people's flesh and bones. I've seen many who have no religious tendencies, but religious beliefs have very clearly affected them. For example, unaware to themselves, they follow religious edicts with regards to sexual relationships with the opposite gender."

Yet he says, "Religion has a number of attractive aspects which are not necessarily related to religion itself."

For example?

"Like mass worship, it's pleasurable. But that's because anything done together is pleasurable."

For young people, one of religion's most challenging aspects is the way it complicates sexual relationships. That's certainly how Niloofar, a 24-year-old law student, sees it. She wears a full length hejab and considers herself religious, but acknowledges having a boyfriend.

"With respect to me, my ideas don't connect with religion's," she says, trying to explain the contradiction. "My reasons for accepting 'having a boyfriend' is unrelated to religion. See, I am not a Hezbollahi [a derogatory label denoting someone mindlessly religious]. But I am not without religious tendencies either. But before anything else, ethics is foremost for me.

"See, I have my own ideas about having a relationship with one of the opposite sex, and being 'legitimate' or 'illegitimate' to each other," she continues. "I have my own idea as to what is meant by two people being 'legitimate' to each other."

Unrelated males and females are considered "illegitimate" companions. Looking at someone of the opposite sex with lust, or the intent to incite it, is seen as sinful; establishing a sexual relationship is a crime. According to the law, unrelated men and women are allowed to touch each other only when a religious agreement binds them.

But, says Niloofar, "No one can prove that anything special takes place when a binding agreement is executed."

Then what's the purpose of the agreement?

"What occurs has more to do with the maintenance of general social order.... As they say, it is to keep rocks staying atop one another" -- in other words, to avoid a collapse.

She says that Mohammad Mohaghegh Damad, her professor of law at Beheshti University, stated in his lectures that when a man and a woman consent to sleep together then they are "legitimate" to one another.

According to that view, I observe, it would seem that all love affairs are legitimate from the Islamic perspective. Smiling, she says, "Exactly, that was his point."

Solmaz, in her mid-20s, also dresses in a relatively conservative fashion. I ask her if she prays. "Not regularly, but yes, I believe in it," she says. "In reality, laziness causes me not to pray on time. I do pray, but sometimes, well, it ends up missed then."

A prayer is "missed" if one is not performed during any of the five prescribed periods: between dawn and sunrise, noon and late afternoon, late afternoon and sunset, sunset to end of dusk, and nightfall to midnight. Prayers can be performed after the set periods, but they do not bring as much heavenly forgiveness and largess.

I ask Solmaz to address the effect of religion at a more personal level. Has she ever felt that it has saved her from some emotional crisis, or brought her a special calmness?

"I have had some religious experiences, quite delightful, perhaps numbering fewer than the fingers on one hand. But they enthralled me. My mind's stuck on them. I can't deny them, or ignore them," she replies.

How about her feelings during worship?

"See, there are experiences of some presence that you feel at some instances during worship. You feel the being of your heart. You don't expect me to say that one day I prayed during worship that God would cure my paralyzed grandmother and suddenly she got up and walked? No!

"There are instances in which you get connected. A relationship forms. You pray for months or years, or you're reciting your thanks, but you get a connection only once in a while." She echoes her earlier statement, "Such a feeling is not forgettable."

I ask her if there's ever been a time when she had lost her religious belief. "No," she replies. Then adds, "Maybe there was a period that I was not engaged with it. Or I had fundamental questions, but losing it? No."

Solmaz say that religion has never hindered her. "The Islam I know is not demanding."

But is this the view that the Islamic Republic demands?

"Khomeini divided Islam into two types, 'pure Mohammedan Islam' and 'American Islam.' This division speaks to the notion that hagh [truth, justice, equality] is constant. Renaming 'pure Islam' as 'pure Mohammedan Islam' is meant to emphasize hagh. The masks of 'pure Islam' and 'inauthentic Islam' have changed often to take advantage of the spirit of the time and to trick the simpletons."

Solmaz says that she doesn't believe in such classifications. "I don't accept these notions at all. No way. None of them. They're bogus."

Why?

"What does 'pure Mohammedan Islam' basically mean? Really, what does it mean? A notion gets its meaning in a specific locale and the moment's social and cultural weave, plus a thousand and one other things. It doesn't take shape in a vacuum. So humanity's take on Islam was frozen for all times and it is has now passed into our hands and yours, fixed."

So what exactly is her view of "pure Mohammedan Islam," as espoused by the father of the Islamic Revolution?

"You know what it means to have pure Mohammedan Islam? It means to also accept savagery at that level. As you can see, the political leaders of Iran embrace such savagery, for example, by allowing stoning."

Death by stoning is the punishment mandated for adultery in the Islamic Republic. Solmaz asks, "Who can acquiesce to carry out such a decree today? It is a mismatched patch on our times. It's not justifiable.

"Everything gets defined by the weave of its time, place, and context, and those change. To claim that we should live exactly the way it was so many years ago is inconceivable.

"Political rulers choose their views, but they are laying waste to the whole religion for the sake of their politics," she says in conclusion.

Photo credit: Amin Nazari via akkasee.com.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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Human rights champion halts perilous seven-week protest after primary demand is met.

[ in focus ] Jailed human rights lawyer and journalist Nasrin Sotoudeh ended a hunger strike of 49 days after Iranian authorities acceded to her demand that they no longer bar her 12-year-old daughter, Mehraveh, from traveling abroad. Sotoudeh is incarcerated in Tehran's Evin Prison, along with many other political prisoners; she has served 27 months of a six-year sentence on charges of disseminating "propaganda," violating mandatory hejab, and "acting against national security." Her blood pressure had reportedly fallen dangerously low toward the end of her hunger strike, in which she consumed only salted and sugared water.

According to the Kaleme website -- associated with Green Movement leader and former presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has been under extralegal house arrest since February 2011 -- the authorities' concession came after Sotoudeh's husband, Reza Khandan, and a number of women's rights activists met with a group of Majles deputies who were about to undertake an investigation into the circumstances surrounding her detention. The legislators subsequently pursued the issue with Speaker Ali Larijani and his brother, judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani. On Tuesday evening, Khandan reported on his Facebook page that his wife had ended her hunger strike and that he had just returned from an "extraordinary meeting" with her.

Sotoudeh was protesting not only the travel ban placed on her daughter, but also repeated interference with her own family visitation and telephone call rights. In addition to Mehraveh, Sotoudeh and Khandan have a four-year-old son, Nima. This was the fourth hunger strike she has undertaken since she was imprisoned in September 2010. After her release, she will face decade-long bans on performing legal work and traveling outside the country.

Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, noted in his latest report -- presented to U.N. officials in September and publicly released the following month -- the many accounts that Iranian

human rights defenders in general are subjected to unfair trials and issued severe sentences, including flogging, long-term activity and travel bans, long-term exile, and prison terms ranging from six months to 20 years. Interviewees also reported the arrest, detention and interrogation of family members and friends, and maintained that family and friends were threatened, insulted and tortured for the purpose of placing pressure on detainees, or to discourage them from public discussions about the situation of their loved ones.

Reacting to news of the end of Sotoudeh's hunger strike, Peter Godwin, president of PEN American Center, which awarded her the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award last year, declared,

Nasrin Sotoudeh embodies the bravery of the Iranian people's struggle for the rule of law and a vibrant civil society. That she was imprisoned at all is appalling. That she was forced to risk her own health to end the vindictive persecution of family members has shocked consciences in Iran and around the world. 
Now is the time for everyone who shares Nasrin's unbending commitment to protecting the rights of the Iranian people to stand with her and call for her freedom.

Sotoudeh defended a variety of clients as a member of the Center for the Defense of Human Rights -- her work for the group was the rationale for the "acting against national security" charge -- and the Society for the Protection of the Rights of Children. They included Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi, opposition party leader Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, journalists such as Isa Saharkhiz, and student activists such as Atefeh Nabavi. Another client, Arash Rahmanipour, supposedly committed "anti-state" offenses as a minor; he was convicted and eventually killed by the state in violation of international law. A member of the Campaign for One Million Signatures, which fights for an end to laws that discriminate against Iranian women, Sotoudeh also defended several of her fellow members who faced prosecution, including Nahid Keshavarz and Nasim Khosravi.

First arrested in June 2008 while preparing to attend a national women's solidarity event, she faced trial the next February for disturbing the peace but was not sentenced. In August 2010, her home and office were raided and assets frozen. Summoned to Evin the following month, she was denied bail, effective legal representation, and family visitation. In response to her treatment, on October 6, 2010, she began her first hunger strike. Two more followed through January 2011. Each of the three lasted at least three weeks. Her most recent hunger strike is believed to have been her longest.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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'A frank dialogue to address contentious issues and break longstanding taboos.'

[ opinion ] On November 17 and 18, a delegation from our party, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, participated in an Iranian opposition meeting in the capital of the Czech Republic. Our party believes it is imperative to contribute to the formation of a democratic and united opposition to the Islamic Republic. The importance of the Iranian opposition to our party is twofold.

First, the various opposition groups need to engage each other in order to create a unified front in pursuit of ending dictatorship in Iran. A frank dialogue to address contentious issues and break longstanding taboos is a fundamental step to that end.

We believe the following issues need to be addressed in a climate unencumbered by emotions and in a rational manner: Is Iran a mononational or multinational country? Should there be only one official language or several official languages in the country? Should power be concentrated in Tehran or devolved to other regions of the country? Should the political and administrative structure of the state be preserved in its centralist form or reorganized on the basis of federalist principles?

Needless to say, these issues, which are the concerns of the non-Persian nations in Iran, cannot be raised publicly under the authoritarian rule of the sectarian theocracy in Tehran. The current regime, which has created an oversized and brutal surveillance and repressive structure, responds to any public or even private manifestation of such legitimate questions with violent means.

Unfortunately, some Persian-dominated opposition groups outside of the country are also reluctant to address these issues. There are groups who deny the multinational character of Iran, but they find it difficult to explain the fact that Arabs and Azeris in Iran, for example, are part of recognized nations in neighboring countries such as the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and the Republic of Azerbaijan. Since 1958, the Iraqi constitution recognizes the binational character of that country and that it consists of Arabs and Kurds as two constituent nations. Denying the existence of these nations inside the borders of Iran while recognizing their status as nations in neighboring countries is a deliberate distortion of reality. We in the Kurdish opposition are appalled by the fact that some Persian-dominated opposition groups, who describe themselves as being committed to democracy, are adopting a policy of denial.

Insofar as other Persian-dominated groups are willing to address and respond to the demands of the Kurdish, Arab, Azeri, and Baluchi nations, their response is accompanied by charges of separatism. Very often, whenever the opposition groups find an opportunity to convene, some groups create an emotionally charged atmosphere, which a priori entails a political closure that inhibits an open, frank, and rational debate. This, in turn, inhibits cooperation between the Persian and non-Persian opposition groups. As long as the Iranian opposition groups do not overcome such obstacles, there will be no progress toward recognition of the most fundamental problems, confidence building, reaching political consensus and, ultimately, achieving unity.

Nevertheless, we believe that the very fact that the opposition groups are willing to take part in such meetings with each other is a sign of progress. In spite of the obstacles toward rational dialogue, there is growing awareness on the part of all groups that contentious issues need to be addressed.

Second, working with the opposition to facilitate a democratic transition and, more important, consolidate such a system of government once it is in place is a strategic objective for our party and other significant organizations within the Kurdish opposition. The regime in Iran might implode. As the Arab Spring demonstrated, regimes that seem solid and unshakable can suddenly be overthrown. Iran's historical experience with the 1979 Revolution and social movements demanding change is instructive as well. To avoid the repetition of past mistakes, we need to reach a consensus on democracy, devolution of powers, and the constitutional recognition and protection of the national and religious diversity of the country.

We believe that more than three decades of sectarian theocracy has discredited theocracy as a system of government among the overpowering majority of the Iranian populace. In this regard, we always remind our friends and political opponents alike that the Kurdish people rejected the Islamic Republic in 1979. We believe that if the different nations in Iran were to be given the opportunity to freely choose the form and nature of government in this country, a majority of them would vote for democracy, federalism, and secularism.

The non-Persian nations have been subject to systematic and institutionalized oppression by the previous regime as well as the current one. Naturally, they yearn for freedom and demand their national rights. A federal and secular democracy would accommodate their demands. The political, moral, and economic failures of the sectarian theocracy in Tehran for the past three decades have also strengthened the universal quest for liberty and human dignity in Iran at large.

Unlike other countries in the region, where democratic elections have favored Islamic parties with illiberal agendas, we believe that the age of Islamic revival has come to an end in Iran. Therefore, we believe that the current regime contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. However, dictatorship in a different guise and shape is likely to reemerge once this regime collapses.

Therefore, we believe in undertaking proactive efforts to promote a consensus on democracy, devolution of powers, and federalism as the best way to avoid the emergence of new forms of authoritarianism, dictatorship, and continued oppression of the country's diverse national, ethnic and religious communities once the current sectarian theocracy is gone.

In fact, we believe that recognizing the multinational character of the country and accommodating the national rights of the non-Persian nations in the form of a federal system will be critical to democratize Iran. In such a scenario, there would be no trade-off between preserving the status quo and embracing democracy.

A federal democracy would create more, not less, solidarity between the various nations and religious communities in Iran. Millions of Iranians, who are constantly offended by being treated as second-class citizens and whose languages are under the threat of extinction and whose cultures are stigmatized as backward, would have a stake in the country and contribute to its development and success. A federal democracy would not only create equality and mutual respect between the different nations of Iran; it would also transform the Iranian state from a security threat to the non-Persian nations to an entity that protects their interests.

Similarly, these nations and the political organizations representing their interests would no longer be perceived as threats by future democratic governments in Tehran. In this vision, all nations in Iran would be stakeholders in the state's internal and external affairs on equal terms.

Iran would be able to realize its potential as a stable and prosperous country only if it is at peace with itself and plays a constructive role within the international community. Indeed, a future Iran thus envisaged may serve as a model to be emulated in a region tormented by dictatorship, aggressive and pathological forms of nationalism, linguistic and cultural discrimination, constant instability, and wars.

This is the message we are trying to convey to other opposition groups whenever we take part in meetings with them, including the most recent one in Prague. We will continue to do so because we believe such a message is based on a careful reading of historical and contemporary realities in Iran and it is the expression of a strategic outlook that serves the interests of all nations in Iran.

At the same time, we are realistic and acknowledge that recent meetings between the various opposition groups have encountered problems and that we have a long way to go. For example, in spite of devoting one panel to the legitimate concerns of the non-Persian nations in Iran, later some of the organizers of the meeting in Prague issued a statement describing Iran as a mononational country. The delegation from our party, for their part, issued a statement in which they rejected this notion and emphasized the strategic importance of acknowledging the multinational character of Iran in order to make progress toward achieving genuine liberty and democracy.

Ultimately, we see only two scenarios for the future of Iran. Either we come together and coordinate our efforts to bring about a democratic system of government that reflects and protects the rights and interests of all nations in Iran. Or some opposition groups continue to justify the status quo and strive to preserve current relations of domination and subordination between the Persian and non-Persian nations once the current sectarian theocracy is gone and is replaced by another regime. Such relations of domination and subordination, history teaches us, can only be maintained at the expense of liberty and democracy -- which, by necessity, will involve violations of the rights of the majority of the Persian nation -- since it will require the systematic use of coercive and violent means. We hope that an opposition that claims to be committed to genuine democracy chooses a different path.

All opinions are the author's own. Photo via Flickr.

Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau

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Despite the impression often given by the Western media, conservative opinion in Iran is far from monolithic. There is, in fact, an immense diversity of opinion among pro-government Iranians. This is the latest in a series of reports that analyze the disparity between conservative opinion blogs in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

[ media watch ] There was a wave of reactions to the death in prison of Sattar Beheshti, a blogger critical of the Iranian government, from across the political spectrum; actors from both the Iranian establishment and the international community have called for an investigation into the causes of Beheshti's death. Less well documented, however, was the reaction of conservative bloggers to this incident. Along with critics of the Iranian government, conservative bloggers objected to what they called its "silence" about the death of Sattar Beheshti and have also called for an investigation.

For example, in a post entitled "Someone Please Speak!" Omid Hosseini wrote,

It is apparent that Sattar Beheshti died either by natural causes or accidentally during the arrest. These are the only two possibilities. If he passed away due to natural causes, prove it; if torture is the reason for his death, take responsibility! Why the silence? This silence will result in the police and related authorities palming off responsibility to the regime.

Meysam Ramezanali also criticized the authorities' silence on the death of Beheshti in a post entitled "Does ignoring and not reacting [to Beheshti's death] benefit the Islamic Republic?" Ramezanali posits here that the authorities' silence will "destroy the public's trust in the national media" and "diminish trust in the regime."

However, it would be incorrect to conclude that this criticism arises out of a concern for freedom of speech and human rights; rather, it comes more out of a desire to protect the image of the Islamic Republic. For example, Seyyed Ali Pour Tabatabi expressed concern about Iran's image after such a death: "Instead of the individual who has committed this crime, the whole country is being held responsible.... Iran's image should not be ruined by the actions of one criminal."

Ali Hassanzadeh was also concerned about Iran's image internationally in light of the news about Behesti's death. He asked,

With such mistakes (assuming this news is true), will other countries imitate Iran?! To what extent was [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's speech at the United Nations accepted by others?! Once the Supreme Leader gives his speech, will it have an impact on the people?! Who will benefit from the destruction of the image of the only Shia country in the world?!

Some bloggers even considered Beheshti's death to be a conspiracy against the Islamic Republic. Abuzar Montazer Ghaem, for example, compared the blogger's death to the civil war in Syria and ongoing troubles in Lebanon: "These kinds of actions remind me of Syria: constant killing in order to create a bad image of the Syrian state. In Lebanon, in order to destroy the image of the frontline resistance group (Hezbollah of Lebanon), [the enemies] bomb and terrorize repeatedly [and blame Hezbollah]."

Certainly, not all conservative bloggers have as radical a view as Montazer Ghaem. Omid Hosseini, for instance, believes that writing a blog against the government does not pose a threat to the Iranian authorities. It is also interesting to note that the conservative bloggers halted their discussion on Beheshti after Iranian officials "explained" that the police had violated Beheshti's file and he had been detained illegally.

The second term of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency has been a costly and troubled period for the Islamic Republic, from the protests after the election in 2009 to the contentious disagreements over the economy between the Majles and Ahmadinejad's administration. The conflict between the legislative and executive branches reached a new peak last month, when some members of the Iranian parliament sought to question the president in front of the Majles for what would have been the second time this year. However, this summons was cancelled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

During the height of the recent controversy over Ahmadinejad's potential questioning, many conservative bloggers, as well as those from across the political spectrum, reacted to the plan. Meysam Ramezanali, author of the Habil blog, considered Ahmadinejad's possible questioning to be nothing but a political game in which people are jostling for position in the presidential election that will be held next June: "Questioning the president is similar to the game of 'taking part in a fight in order to be recognized.'"

Contrary to the views expressed on the Habil blog, Seyyed Hesam al din Zandavi stated his belief that questioning the president is a standard affair. What he focused on, by contrast, is how unpredictable the president is when giving speeches: "He has such a particular and unpredictable behavior, and his ability to conjure up unconventional answers is such that everyone will be anxious that the results [of his questioning] will have social implications."

The majority of conservative bloggers appeared to welcome the idea of questioning Ahmadinejad. However, as Hesam al din Zandavi suggests, in reality most would perhaps prefer for it not to happen.

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Copyright © 2012

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