Now for the best reads of the week – all Iran-related:
Iran’s Social Bargain. Mark LeVine for Al Jazeera describes “Iran on the Brink” – with a “?” His piece offered insights none of the mountains of commentary seemed to have touched on. As an added bonus, he comments on questions of how a state legitimizes itself and how China’s response to its democracy movement in 1989 is not open to Iran today:
Cultural liberalisation became the safety valve that allowed the emerging generation of Chinese citizens to accept the continued power of the Communist party.
Needless to say, no such safety valve exists in the Islamic Republic, where a cultural perestroika is precisely what Ahmadinejad and his supporters in the leadership and among the people want to prevent…
In China the government struck a bargain with the people, telling them: “You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t challenge the power of the state.”
The Iranian government has over the last two decades negotiated a very different and more narrow bargain with its citizens: “You can do what you want behind closed doors, as long as you keep the music down. But we own the street and the public sphere. So put your headscarf on before you leave the house, and don’t think about challenging cultural or political limits publicly.”
That bargain has now collapsed as hundreds of thousands of Iranians have, at least for the moment, reclaimed the streets…
Iran long ago lost the singular, collective will that enabled the revolution; the protesters are no longer imbued with the idea of bi-kodi, or self-annihilation, martyrdom and complete self-sacrifice that toppled the Shah and helped the country withstand eight years of brutal war with Iraq.
A maximally uncertain future. David Brooks’s column this morning tries to look at the past week’s events in Iran from an historical perspective:
At these moments — like the one in Iran right now — change is not generated incrementally from the top. Instead, power is radically dispersed. The real action is out on the streets. The future course of events is maximally uncertain.
The fate of nations is determined by glances and chance encounters: by the looks policemen give one another as a protesting crowd approaches down a boulevard; by the presence of a spontaneous leader who sets off a chant or a song and with it an emotional contagion; by a captain who either decides to kill his countrymen or not; by a shy woman who emerges from a throng to throw herself on the thugs who are pummeling a kid prone on the sidewalk.
Brooks quotes on of Obama’s advisers commenting years ago:
In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible.
Keeping Up To Date on Iran. Andrew Sullivan, the Tehran Bureau, and the Times’ The Lede have made themselves indispensable sources for breaking news and insights on what’s going on in Iran.
[digg-reddit-me]The stories in the Times and elsewhere turn today to the question of how this stand-off in Iran will end. None of the three most likely scenarios have unfolded in the past week – as the protests have not petered out – and in fact seem to be growing in strength; the government has not tried to put down the protests with violence (on a large scale); and Mir-Houssein Mousavi has not backed down – as Robert F. Worth in the Times quoted a relative of Mousavi’s:
Mr. Moussavi says he has taken a path that has no return and he is ready to make sacrifices.
This last comment – and the growing strength of the crowds – suggest that no resolution is in the immediate offing. Despite this, it’s hard to see how long the type of drama overwhelming day-to-day concerns can last. Eventually, one needs to get back to the business of living. It is this prospect most of all that seems to undercut the ferment for change. I’ve seen 5 basic scenarios outlined for how this could end, listed in order of descending likelihood:
Violent government crackdown. This is what everyone is preparing for – and what the Revolutionary Guard is warning about.
Power-sharing. Mousavi seems to have ruled this out, and this compromise seems unlikely to satisfy many of those protesting, but enormous pressure is being put on Mousavi to accept some sort of arrangement, and he has always been a man of the status quo. The prospect of a President Ahmadinejad and a Foreign Minister Mousavi, for example, has been speculated.
Protestors stop showing up. Eventually, the movement just dies out – as people get on with their lives. It’s hard to imagine now, but it’s hard to imagine any ending to these protests. This seems to have been the initial hope of Khamenei – and the reason for his superficial attempts to appease the protestors by allowing a review of a small percentage of the votes.
A new election. This is the demand of the protesters and Mousavi. But to allow a new election because of massive voter fraud would call into question the leadership of Iran – and probably implicate leaders from Khamenei to Ahmadinejad to the Interior Department to the Revolutionary Guard. The storyline supporting this demand calls last Friday’s election a coup d’etat – and thus demands a new, more fair election. After this controversy, it seems necessary that Iran allow some transparency in their vote-counting process – rather than having it all centrally controlled and secret.
A revolution. The protesters could overthrow the current regime – but the tenor of the current protests has deliberately stayed away from this idea. Mousavi has been encouraging his supporting to chant generic Islamic slogans – rather than more charged ones.
There are a few wild cards at work in all of this however.
Neither Mousavi nor Khamenei nor Ahmadinejad are completely in control of the forces supporting them. Both Mousavi and Khamenei are considered uncharismatic power brokers (with Mousavi even being compared to an “Iranian Michael Dukakis“) – and both have achieved what they have by positioning themselves cleverly rather than by articulating a vision, winning over the people, or the other traditional measures of leadership. Ahmadinejad is charismatic – and has many supporters – but he is generally seen as, not a true leader, but a front-man for the second-generation revolutionaries who are seeking to purge all of the first-generation revolutionaries from power (except Khamenei). It’s unclear what would happen if Khamenei were to push for a new election – would the more radical elements overthrow him? It’s also unclear what would happen if Mousavi were to tell the crowds to go home – he seems to have gained their confidence, but he freely admits this movement is not about him. Mousavi’s external spokesperson admitted to Foreign Policy yesterday:
[T]he young people in the streets are more modern [than the 1979 Iranian revolutionaries]: They use SMS; they use the Internet. And they are not being actually led by anyone, but they are connected to each other.
The power struggle among the Iranian elites has finally come into partial view. There seem to be three basic factions: the Reformers – including former President Khatami, former Prime Minister Rafsanjani, and Mousavi; conservatives led by Ayatollah Khamenei; and the far right-wing religious cultists fronted by Ahmadinejad.
Rafsanjani is generally considered to be the second most powerful person in Iran as he leads the council which can remove the Supreme Leader, has thrown his support behind Mousavi. In the run-up to the election, he was providing logistical support to Mousavi – and was accused of corruption in a public debate by Ahmadinejad. It is widely rumored that Rafsanjani is now trying to round up clerics to support Mousavi in Qom.
At the same time, the Hojjatiyeh now led by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi (who seem to have a set of beliefs similar to the Christian millenialists who are trying to create the conditions for the end of the world) have been gradually infiltrating the government and the Revolutionary Guard, and at this point have many of leadership positions, including the presidency held by Ahmadinejad. Yazdi rejects the idea of elections – and wrote a fatwa two weeks before this election condoning fraud and cheating in an election to achieve the proper ends. Ahmadinejad himself apparently does not refer to Iran as the “Islamic Republic” as it is officially called – but as the “Islamic Government.” The Hojjatiyeh’s views are in many ways antithetical to some of the founding ideals behind the 1979 revolution – which is why the Hojjatiyeh did not join the revolution and did not assume positions of power until recently.
Khamenei has generally opposed the reformers – and has historical bad blood with Mousavi from when they both were in positions of power in the 1980s. But he is of a different generation and background than the Hojjatiyeh. He has tended to support them, but also has sought to check their power. It’s unclear at this point whether Khamenei is simply accepting their position of power or actively promoting their interests.
How this ends is still unclear. Khamenei’s remarks this morning have been described as “ominous.” That seems to point to a forthcoming government crackdown – but is far from clear that this crackdown will be successful – and it could possibly destabilize the regime, forcing many clerics who are suspicious of the Hojjatiyeh and who think the election was fraudulent to come off the fence and back Mousavi. The social bargain that underlied the Iranian government’s rule though seems to have come undone – as the people, in anger at hypocrisy and being robbed of their votes, have braved the wrath of the government, defying clear orders not to assemble. What they have demonstrated, with their massive, non-violent civil disobedience so far has been exceptional – and whether they succeed or not is an example for the world.
[Image by Hamed Saber licensed under Creative Commons.]
David Rothkopf makes a good point, reflecting on BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China):
I don’t think we should see the rise of a counterbalancing bloc as a terrible thing either for the world or even for America. While having enemies is to be avoided wherever possible, having rivals is essential. It promotes reevaluation and growth. Imagine what computing would be like if we lived in an all Microsoft, Apple-less world. They make each other better. (Which in that case means Microsoft forces the smaller Apple to be innovative and Apple forces the Microsoft behemoth to be less awful.)
When asked about protests and complaints, Ahmadinejad said that it was important to ask the opinions of “true Iranians” on the election. “Like the people you meet at my rallies,” he said. He described the protesters as soccer hooligans who were disappointed that their team lost the match. “This is not important,” he said. “We have full freedom in Iran.” [my emphasis]
I’ve already heard Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described as the Sarah Palin of Iran – and this invocation of the “true Iranians” only seems to make the analogy more apt – reminding me at least of Sarah Palin’s invocation of the “pro-American” parts of America.
“He ran a red light, and he got a traffic ticket,” Mr. Ahmadinejad quipped when asked about his rival.
—
The moment I heard that Ahmadinejad was announced as the winner, my mind flashed to an Andrew Sullivan post about a texted joke making the rounds in Tehran:
The Election Commission has announced in its last statement regarding the election that writing names such as monkey, traitor, fascist, silly, and [expletive] on the ballots will be considered a vote for Ahmadinejad.
—
Pepe Escobar in the Asia Times points out a rather odd statistical nugget about the election results for the other reformer in the race:
Karroubi not only didn’t win in his home province of Lorestan, he had less votes than volunteers helping in his campaign.
Escobar also explains the odd sequence of events that led to the announcement of Ahmadinejad’s “election”:
The polls closed at 10pm on Friday, Tehran time. Most main streets then were fully decked out in green. In an absolutely crucial development, the great Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf told Radio Farda how Mousavi’s main campaign office in Tehran received a phone call on Saturday at 1am; the Interior Ministry was saying “Don’t announce Mr Mousavi’s victory yet … We will gradually prepare the public and then you can proceed.” Iranian bloggers broke down the vote at the time as 19.7 million for Mousavi, between 7 and 8 million for Ahmadinejad, 7 million for Karroubi, and 3 million for Rezai.
Then all hell seemed to break loose. Phones, SMS, text messaging, YouTube, political blogs, opposition websites, foreign media websites, all communication networks, in a cascade, were shutting down fast. Military and police forces started to take over Tehran’s streets. The Ahmadinejad-controlled Ministry of Interior – doubling as election headquarters – was isolated by concrete barriers. Iranian TV switched to old Iron Curtain-style “messages of national unity”. And the mind-boggling semi-final numbers of Ahmadinejad’s landslide were announced (Ahmadinejad 64%, Mousavi 32%, Rezai 2% and Karroubi less than 1%).
The fact that the electoral commission had less than three hours to hand-count 81% of 39 million votes is positively a “divine assessment”.
Some Iranians believe that the unruly democratic energies unleashed over the past few weeks could affect this country’s politics no matter who wins…But hope has often outpaced reality in Iran…
[digg-reddit-me]I’m struck by the similarities between the spirit of the Iranian election – and the subsequent protests – and the Lawyers Movement in Pakistan this March. In both cases, the government promised to honor certain principles and then went back on its word – in Iran, by holding an election; in Pakistan, as President Zardari promised to reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to the Supreme Court.
Then both went back on their word – and the people, to their credit protested. They were cynical about the motives of these leaders – but they refused to react with world-weary cynicism. They knew hope – and in their hope, they gained strength.
The elite power brokers in both nations believed they could get away with whatever they wanted – apparently believing that elections and campaigns and laws were merely a cover for their power politics. But the people took these ideas seriously.
In Pakistan, President Zardari made a campaign promise to reinstate the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court known for his independence. Justice Chaudhry had been removed from his post when he appeared to be preparing to declare President Musharaff’s declaration of martial law illegal – and this act by Musharaff was considered the final straw by many in Pakistan frustrated by how the Rule of Law was constantly subverted by the elites in their power games, thus holding their entire nation back. So began the Lawyers Movement which fought to restore the Rule of Law, to remove Musharaff from power, and to reinstate the Chief Justice. After achieving some measure of the first two objectives, forcing Musharaff to resign and electing a new president, Zardari, having promised to uphold the Rule of Law and reinstate Chaudhry – the movement seemed to have won. But after months of stalling, it began to seem as if Zardari had no intention of restoring Chaudhry. Rallies continued – led by different groups across the country – building in intensity – and in a dramatic series of events, a key opposition leader broke out of house arrest to participate in a massive protest to force the reinstatement of Chaudhry. As a final show of determination, a series of rallies was supposed to culminate in a march to the Pakistani capital from all directions as the people took back their capital. In the midst of this chaos, the police and military for the first time in Pakistani history refused to control the demonstrators and stood aside. On the verge of this demonstration, Zardari gave in – reinstating the Chief Justice this March.
In Iran, the extemist mullahs panicked as the people rejected their hardline, isolationist views in favor of the offer of rapprochement with the West offered by Obama. Despite the fact that only candidates hand-picked by the Guardian Council were running – and that the reformers were led by a candidate described as an Iranian Michael Dukakis – and despite the fact that state organs and the Supreme Leader clearly favored Ahmadinejad – a grass roots movement took root on Twitter, on Facebook, in text messages, in blogs, in enormous rallies held by Mousavi in the weeks leading up to the election, and in shouts from the rooftops after the election when all other methods of communication had been cut off. And in all liklihood, according to polls by the Iranian government before the election, and leaked results after it, Mousavi won a resounding victory. And so far, the people have not backed down – as they continue to rally and agitate. After declaring the results of the election “divine,” the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene has begun to show signs of relenting as he has ordered an investigation into vote fraud. Couple this with the rash of resignations and unprecedented public protests by top Iranian leaders and clerics, and there is the potential for real change.
It seems hard not to connect these two demonstrations for political rights in Pakistan and Iran. And to note that leading them is the exact young generation of Muslims whom we were so afraid of after September 11. One of the recurring themes of Osama Bin Laden’s rhetoric – and one of the key sources of his legitimacy – is his outrage at the corrupt dictatorships ruling the Middle East – which makes these demonstrations of the people on the edges of the Middle East reminding their leaders that they cannot tread lightly over the consent of the governed all the more significant.
And perhaps, Obama saw this before most – as he called in his Cairo speech for “a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals” that “government [should be] of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power.” Obama explained that legitimacy is gained “through consent, not coercion.”
It remains to be seen if the Iranian protests will be successful – though the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered an investigation into vote fraud is a slight sign to be hopeful. A stronger sign is what forced him to call for the investigation – as over this weekend in the streets of Tehran we saw a largely peaceful and determined insistence by the Iranian people on a government by consent, not coercion.
[digg-reddit-me]As Barack Obama and Dick Cheney prepared their dueling speeches last month, Reihan Salam observed:
National security has become part of the culture wars, only with Dick Cheney as the new Jerry Falwell. It doesn’t matter that Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan or that he’s embraced rendition. To Cheney, Obama’s anti-torture stance represents the moral vanity of a naïve one-worlder.
We’ll be hearing much more about this new culture clash. During the hearings on Obama’s first Supreme Court appointment, Republicans will spend more time hammering the Democratic nominee on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush than about Roe v. Wade. At the moment, Obama looks untouchable. But the politics of national security could prove his undoing.
This observation is seeming more and more apt as the months go by. And yesterday morning’s appearance by Mitt Romney on This Week With George Stephanopoulos suggested that if Romney has anything to do with it, the Culture War will extend to foreign policy as well.
Foreign policy and national security have always been matters of contention between the political parties – but Culture War issues functioned a certain distinct way.
In some sense, the Culture War can be traced back to the “psychodrama of the baby boom generation” as they fought over Vietnam and then social issues. By the 1990s, the Baby Boom generation dominated most institutions in the country and a large number of Americans had divided into two warring camps along a familiar lineup of issues: abortion, homosexuality, guns, censorship, separation of church and state, etcetera. Each party became dominated by those with the most extreme positions on these issues. There were only two ways for savvy politicians to position themselves – to triangulate and try to find some reasonable accommodation; or alternately to find a reasonable position and make sure that they were wrong – but on the right side of the issue. During this time, issues of national security and foreign policy didn’t break down in the same partisan way. Republicans opposed Clinton’s proposed anti-terrorism measures; Democrats were more hawkish than Republicans in Bosnia – and in both cases, neither side was completely aligned. These issues weren’t litmus tests – but matters upon which reasonable people could and did disagree.
Then came September 11 and George W. Bush’s and Karl Rove’s explicit decision to use the War on Terror as a political weapon. There were no mainstream Democrats opposed to most aspects of Bush’s emergency measures, so Rove tried to make any slight suggestion of disagreement tantamount to treason. Though this worked well enough as a political tactic, it still hadn’t moved national security issues into the Culture War entirely.
The turning point came when allegations of torture began to surfare – and the photos of the abuse at Abu Ghraib came to light. Everyone was shocked – Republican and Democrat. Everyone condemned it. Except the far-right partisans. I remember reading The Corner and other blogs around this time – and an extraordinary thing happened. For weeks, these men and women had been insisting that America did not torture – only, maybe some bad apples – and that to suggest we did torture was a form of America-hating. Then, almost overnight, all of these same men and women began to talk about ticking time bombs and demanding to know why we shouldn’t torture a terrorist who hated America!
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that it was an election year – and with everything viewed through this prism, it’s easier to justify something awful. But regardless of the reason, in that moment, national security became part of the culture war. Karl Rove accomplished what he had been trying to do. He polarized the electorate so that it became necessary for any savvy politician on the right to be wrong on the right side of these issues.
By 2008, this was evident – as the sensible position that there had been overreach in Bush’s War on Terror – and that for example, Guantanamo should be closed down – gave way to Mitt Romney declaring that he would “double Guantanamo” to cheers. It’s a nonsense phrase – but the Culture War isn’t about policy – but about position.
Now, Romney is continuing this – and pushing it into foreign policy.
Yesterday morning, Romney, adopting the freedom of expression and lack of accountability typical of party out of power, launched a critique of Obama’s response to the Iranian elections – and to the Middle East in general:
Romney criticises Obama’s use of “sweet words” (sounding eerily similar to Zawahiri who denigrated Obama’s “elegant words“) – yet his only suggestion for how to react differently to the Iranian elections would be to use Romney’s own words – which admittedly aren’t as “sweet” or “elegant.” And of course while Romney denigrates Obama for relying on words without action – Romney’s only response to the Iranian election is to use his own words.
(This brings up an interesting difference: Obama uses the power of words to affect what is going on, as in his Cairo speech, his race speech, his speech on national security – while Romney insists we must use our words to express ourselves and to show what side we are on. This difference in the use of language is precisely what makes Obama an effective speaker – but this is a topic for a different day.)
The time may come for the president to stand with the majority of Iranians – to voice his support – but Romney’s demand for instant moral clarity demonstrates a Culture War view of foreign policy – of a need to be wrong on the right side of the issue. As a candidate, this Culture War take on national security and foreign policy can be effective – but as a governing tactic, it is disastrous.
I thought Biden made this point particularly well:
[T]alks with Iran are not a reward for good behavior. They’re only a consequence if the president makes the judgment it’s in the best interest of the United States of America, our national security interests, to talk with the Iranian regime. Our interests are the same before the election as after the election, and that is we want them to cease and desist from seeking a nuclear weapon and having one in its possession, and secondly to stop supporting terror.
The Obama administration’s approach to these elections has been – in my opinion as an informed amateur – nearly flawless. They have made clear that they are prepared to talk with Iran – regardless of how the elections went, rather than giving the Iranian people or leadership an ultimatum; they have declined to endorse a side in the election, letting the Iranian people decide themselves; they have been clear about their principles, but circumspect in their goals; and they have extended a clear hand in friendship – which most reports suggest the Iranian people desperately want to grasp. By refusing to give our rhetorical support to the opposition, the Obama administration is frustrating the Iranian regime’s desire to paint this uprising as an American creation – as Ayotollah Khamenei preemptively sought to blame unrest after the election on “the enemies [of Iran who] may want to spoil the sweetness of this event … with some kind of ill-intentioned provocations.”
The Obama administration’s approach to the election — keeping its comments low-key and not signaling support for any candidate — was exactly the right approach. While tempting, empty and self-serving rhetorical support for Iranians struggling for more freedoms serves only to aid their opponents. History has made Iran wary of foreign meddling, and American policymakers in particular must be sensitive to giving hardliners any pretense to call reform-minded Iranians foreign agents. That’s why Iran’s most prominent reformers, including Nobel-laureate Shirin Ebadi, have said the best thing the U.S. can do is step back and let Iran’s indigenous human rights movement progress on its own, without overt involvement from the U.S-however well intentioned.
This is not about us. It’s about them. And any interference would only backfire to the regime’s advantage.
The Obama administration realizes what Bush never did – that democracy cannot be imposed by force or ultimatum; that it must be taken by the people; that fine words extolling democracy are not enough – but a hand extended in friendship can destabilize a regime propped up by its demonization of us.
And so, the outreach to Iran and its people goes on.
On this morning’s <em>Meet the Press</em>, Joe Biden said that the Obama administration has made the decision to go forward with talks – despite <a href=”http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/31353317#31353317″>the administration’s clear doubts about the fairness of the election</a>.
I thought Biden made this point particularly well:
<blockquote>[T]alks with Iran are not a reward for good behavior. They’re only a consequence if the president makes the judgment it’s in the best interest of the United States of America, our national security interests, to talk with the Iranian regime. Our interests are the same before the election as after the election, and that is we want them to cease and desist from seeking a nuclear weapon and having one in its possession, and secondly to stop supporting terror.</blockquote>
2. Iran’s Fissures. Roger Cohen has been prominently writing about Iran for the past year or so – predicting and pushing for a thaw in relations. Now, on the cusp of an important election, Roger Cohen discusses Iran:
Iran, its internal fissures exposed as never before, is teetering again on the brink of change. For months now, I’ve been urging another look at Iran, beyond dangerous demonization of it as a totalitarian state. Seldom has the country looked less like one than in these giddy June days.
3. Yglesian insights. Matt Yglesias’s blog has long been on my must-read list – but he’s offered some especially insightful observations in various contexts about the free market in recent weeks. Here Yglesias speculates about the advantages of non-profit-maximizing corporations in a free market:
After all, profit-maximization is not a natural form of human behavior. I think it’s best understood as a very idiosyncratic kind of pursuit. It happens to be one that’s economically rewarded because with money to invest tend to want to invest it with would-be profit-maximizers. Thus, in fields of endeavor where the ability to raise large sums of capital on reasonable terms is a huge advantage, a profit-maximization impulse winds up being a huge advantage.
In a later post about health care, Yglesias makes a related point:
[P]art of what’s wrong with the world is that the very same people who spend a lot of time cheerleading for free markets and donating money to institutions that cheerlead for free markets—businessmen, in other words—are the very people who have the most to gain from markets being totally dysfunctional. The absolute worst place on earth you can find yourself as a businessman is in the kind of free market you find in an Economics 101 textbook. As a market approaches textbook conditions—perfect competition, perfect information, etc.—real profits trend toward zero. You make your money by ensuring that textbook conditions don’t apply; that there are huge barriers to entry, massive problems with inattention, monopolistic corners to exploit, etc.
We have an income tax that is riddled with deductions that undermine its purported progressivity, and we rely on increasingly steep progressivity to justify every additional change to said code. A 1986-style reform that eliminated many deductions and lowered rates would not only be a likely booster of the economy, but would probably raise revenue – certainly on the corporate side.
5. China’s Great Game. And of course, the Financial Times reported that China has almost cornered the world market in rare minerals needed for most high tech products. I’m looking forward to some analyst really following up on this and explaining what implications – if any – this has.
Still, I’m not quite sure what to make of Iran’s election tomorrow. International newspapers seem to be hyping Mir Hossein Mousavi as Iran’s answer to Barack Obama. He is – it seems – an individual who has come to personify “change” and engagement with the world at large standing against a radical, polarizing, religious right-winger. At the same time Mousavi has close relations with the establishment of Iran – which allowed him to run. But he, like Obama, is not comfortable being a populist. His main opponent, Ahmadinejad, is. As Cameron Abadi described Mousavi’s defects in the Foreign Policy:
He talks only in generalities about his plans, his emphasis on competence and “scientific management.” He’s made promises to loosen restriction on personal freedom, but his ire is more drawn by Ahmadinejad’s “dictatorial” flouting of the checks and balances of the Islamic Republic’s constitution. Mousavi promises change, but no one would mistake him for Barack Obama. He might not even qualify as a Michael Dukakis.
But somehow this establishment technocrat continues to routinely elicit rock-star receptions across the country. In the run-up to the election, much of grayish Tehran has been draped in green, the official color of the Mousavi campaign. The police and khaki-clad national guards have been forced to watch every day as Tehran’s youth — Iran’s baby boom generation of the 1980s — assemble in giddy pandemonium, distributing green bracelets and banners of protest against Ahmadinejad’s presidency, proselytizing to undecided pedestrians and whenever in doubt shouting taunting cries of “Ahmadi, bye-bye!” At night, the chorus of chants and laughter and hastily written campaign songs mingle with the din of car horns…
“We’ve never seen this before,” she said with a tremble. “This is our revolution.” [my emphasis]
Other reports have focused on Ahmadinejad’s large and boisterous crowds – and the excitment propelling him. Some have likened Ahmadinejad’s place in Iranian politics to Sarah Palin’s.
One recurrent theme in the reports on the Iranian election is that economic rather than foreign policy issues will determine the result. The downturn in Iran’s economic fortunes has brought to the forefront festering social issues such as the “marriage crisis” in which many Iranian men are being “priced out” of the marriage market and the ambiguous role of women in Iranian society (as they are more educated – 60% of university students are women – yet much more likely to be umemployed – as only 15% of the workforce is female.)
It’s not clear which way this election will go – and even if Mousavi wins in a landslide, it will not change the power structure in Iran significantly – as the power is concentrated in Khamenei’s hands.
But a hopeful sign is not something to be dismissed – and the desire for change moderately expressed can bring about a better world than most revolutions.
[Image by Shahram Sharif licensed under Creative Commons.]
Here – for the first time in two weeks thanks to a hosting problem on the blog and a week off – is the list of best reading material for the weekend:
How Khamenei Took and Asserts Power. Mehdi Khalaji writes in Real Clear World about an aspect of Khamenei I have not previously seen – about how he was able to take such significant power in Iran. As Khalaji writes:
During his twenty years in power, Khamenei has managed to overcome his initial obstacles and transform the conventional house of religious authority into a bureaucratic powerhouse. As a result, Iranian decision-making is no longer shared, as it was in the last years of Khomeini’s life, especially with regard to war. The house of the leader makes the main decisions today, whether political or military, domestic or foreign policy related, and Khamenei is the principal decisionmaker.
Young Palestinians Take to Western Classical Music. Daniel J. Wakin had a fascinating piece in the New York Times this past Sunday about how the younger generation of Palestinians seems to have a strong interest in classical music. Wakin focuses on anecdotes – so I’m not sure if there is a discernible movement of young Palestinians becoming interested in classical music, but there is something beautiful about the idea:
The flute, [Dalia Moukarker, 16] said later, “takes me to another world that is far away from here, a more beautiful world. Because it is not a beautiful place here. It is an ugly place.”
Dalia is one of a new generation of Palestinians who have been swept up in a rising tide of interest in Western classical music in the last several years here in the Palestinian territories, but especially the West Bank. The sounds of trills and arpeggios, Bach minuets and Beethoven sonatas, are rising up amid the economic malaise and restrictions of the Israeli occupation.
Waterboarding Pro-Life Terrorists. Hypocrisy is not confined to any political movement (or even to politics.) But Conor Friedersdorf asks a basic question of those he terms the “War on Terror hawks”:
Would these predominantly conservative officials, commentators and writers be comfortable if President Obama declared two or three extremist pro-lifers as “enemy combatants”? Should Pres. Obama have the prerogative to order the waterboarding of these uncharged, untried detainees? Should he be able to listen in on phone conversations originating from evangelical churches where suspected abortion extremists hang out? The answer is probably that different “War on Terror hawks” — anyone have a better term for this? — would react differently, but as a matter of law, it seems to me that if they’d gotten their way during the Bush Administration, President Obama would have the power to take all those steps and more, a prospect that is terrifying to me, not because I think our Commander in Chief is looking for a pretext to round up innocent pro-lifers, but because it doesn’t take many violent attacks before Americans start clamoring for a strong executive response, a dynamic that tends to erode liberties in previously unthinkable ways and spawn mistakes whereby innocents are made to suffer.
Michelle Malkin tried to make similar charges of hypocrisy against those to her left in a column about the Tiller murder. I almost included her on this reading list – as her claims seemed plausible – that islamist domestic terrorists were identified as “lone shooters” while christianist domestic terrorists were identified with the larger christianist movement – and that in general, the attention paid by the media and politicians to the attacks on military recruiters has been undercover while this Tiller case has been explosive. But after investigating some of the claims she made, I don’t think I can recommend her article be read – except as a representative right-wing propaganda piece. For example, Malkin writes:
Politically and religiously motivated violence, it seems, is only worth lamenting when it demonizes opponents. Which also helps explain why the phrase “lone shooter” is ubiquitous in media coverage of jihadi shooters gone wild…but not in cases involving rare acts of anti-abortion violence.
She lists three specific people: Mohammed Taheri-Azar, Naveed Haq, and Hesham Hedayet. My brief Google searches for all three along with the term “lone shooter” turn up ZERO (0) news results (except for various conservative sites citing Malkin) – which is somewhat less than ubiquitous. Malkin also tries to say that the term “hate fuck” means to rape – which it does not. Urban Dictionary lists 10 definitions of the term – none of which imply it is rape. If the two easiest facts to check in her article are more than misleading – and are actually outright false – it’s hard to trust any of the harder to to fact check statements such as the comparisons between the degrees of media coverage of the events and the degress of administration response.
The Renegade Boy Guru. The Dalai Lama chose Osel Hita Torres “as a reincarnation of a spiritual leader” named Lama Thubten Yeshe when Osel was a baby. He lived his entire life isolated – but now has quite the monastic life. The Guardian story by Dale Fuchs is short and interesting. Here’s one nugget:
At six, he was allowed to socialise only with other reincarnated souls – though for a time he said he lived next to the actor Richard Gere’s cabin.
