On July 22, Jason Rezaian, an American-Iranian Washington Post reporter, was detained in Tehran by Iranian authorities along with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, and two other people whose names have been kept private.
The reason for the arrests was never publicly announced, and today, more than four months later, everyone but Rezaian has been released.
Salehi was released on bail in October, but any hope that Rezaian would soon join his wife was dashed on Dec. 3 when Human Rights Watch reported that Rezaian has been officially charged (the Post has since corroborated the report). We still don’t know the nature of the charges—only that his detention has been extended until mid-January while the investigation against him continues.
Rezaian’s arrest, which reportedly involved a raid on his home, came as a shock to everyone who knew him. He is a friend to many (including myself) in the press, and the general public. He is the kind of person who will set aside time to talk to anyone who reaches out to him.
A native of California who was born to an Iranian father and American mother, Rezaian’s interest in Iran from an early age ultimately grew into a love affair with the country. He ended up moving there, and even though Iran has long been criticized for its record on press freedom, became the Post’s Bureau Chief in 2012. He has since covered various aspects of the Islamic Republic, from its nuclear program to the effects of the sanctions regime on average Iranians to the growing popularity of American-style burger joints.
Since he was arrested, Rezaian’s family has reserved its calls for his release to only a few outlets, including the Washington Post, and CNN, which featured Rezaian and Salehi in the Iran-focused episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown show. Rezaian and his wife were detained shortly after the show was filmed, and Bourdain has since joined Rezaian’s family in calling for his release. A Facebook page and petition have also been setup for Rezaian.
The appeals for Rezaian’s release by his family (and Bourdain) have been extremely respectful of the Iranian authorities (just watch this video-message by Rezaian’s mother, Mary). This has been the case even though his family says the lawyer they hired to represent Rezaian has not been allowed to see his client (Salehi has visited her husband since she was released) and Jason has at least one health condition that requires consistent care.
Now Rezaian’s family has issued a public statement, which I am publishing in full below. The tone of this statement is considerably stronger than his family’s previous appeals, a likely testament to their growing state of distress.
FAMILY OF WASHINGTON POST REPORTER JASON REZAIAN RESPONDS TO CHARGES AGAINST HIM BY IRANIAN GOVERNMENT
December 7, 2014
Our family is deeply saddened to confirm that, after being held in solitary
confinement without charge for 137 days, Jason Rezaian was charged with
unknown crimes by the government of Iran.In its ongoing disregard of Iran’s own laws, the Iranian judiciary has
continued to deny Jason access to legal representation, denied his request
for bail, and prevented access to review of his case file.This continued disrespect for Iran’s judicial system should be a concern not
only to the international community who are eagerly awaiting normalization
of relations with Iran, but also to all those Iranians who claim that Iran
is a country of laws which should be recognized as such by major world
powers.We urge Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to show the international
community that Iran is indeed a country that respects its laws, and order
the immediate and unconditional release of Jason and Yeganeh and end what
Iran’s own Head of the Judiciary’s Human Rights Council Mohammad Javad
Larijani, recently described as a “fiasco”.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Mo Davari
]]>On Sunday a Reuters report quoting unnamed “senior Iranian officials” suggested Tehran was trying to use the crisis posed by the group that calls itself the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) in Iraq to increase Iran’s leverage in negotiations over its nuclear program.
But a senior Iranian official directly involved in the talks denied the claim that Iran was trying to mix the two issues, insisting in an email to me that “We have enough on our plate with the nuclear issue.”
The French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius supported the Iranian official’s comments in remarks made at the Council of Foreign Relations on Sept. 22, which I included in my piece. (France has been a challenging negotiating partner for Iran and has even been accused of impeding the interim nuclear deal reached in Geneva last November during the second to last session of talks.)
But in a strange update of its story, Reuters argued that the White House’s insistence today that the issues are being kept separate confirmed Reuter’s initial premise.
“While not surprising, the U.S. response suggests the White House feels a need to tell Iran publicly that it wants other issues kept away from the nuclear talks,” said the Reuters report.
When I heard the full quote by White Press Secretary Josh Earnest, it sounded like he was actually denying the premise of Reuter’s initial report.
Here’s the full response by Earnest with the one quote Reuters used in bold. (I wasn’t at the briefing so I won’t know the question that preceded Earnest’s response until the transcript becomes available.)
The conversations related to the P5+1 talks have to do with resolving the international community’s concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. Those conversations to try to resolve those concerns are entirely separate from any of the overlapping interests that Iran may have with the international community as it relates to ISIL. As you’ve heard me discuss on at least a couple of other occasions, it is not in the interest of the Iranian regime for this extremist organization to be wreaking havoc on its doorstep. So, like the international community, the Iranians are understandably concerned about the gains that ISIL has made in Iraq and they have indicated that they are ready to fight ISIL. But the United States will not coordinate any of our military activities with the Iranians, the United States will not be involved in sharing intelligence with the Iranians and the United States will not be in the position of trading aspects of Iran’s nuclear program to secure commitments to take on ISIL. These two issues are entirely separate.
Considering the strained state of the negotiations, it’s certainly possible that both sides are keeping the talks solely focused on Iran’s nuclear program to prevent further complications.
Read more about this story and where the talks stand in my piece today for IPS News.
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
Mary Rezaian, the mother of Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter who was detained in Iran last week with his wife Yeganeh Salehi without charge or access to a lawyer, makes a heartfelt plea to Iranian authorities in this video to release her two loved ones.
Reza Marashi does [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
Mary Rezaian, the mother of Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter who was detained in Iran last week with his wife Yeganeh Salehi without charge or access to a lawyer, makes a heartfelt plea to Iranian authorities in this video to release her two loved ones.
Reza Marashi does a beautiful job of describing Jason, a friend and former IPS contributor, in this piece, and many, myself included, share the helplessness Reza conveys about the situation.
Jason’s American mother displays incredible grace in this clip, despite the agony she must be feeling, wearing a head scarf, speaking partially in Farsi, and asking rather than accusing or commanding. That’s Jason’s way, too.
“From an early age Jason noticed how Iran was negatively portrayed in the US and world media. He became a journalist to help build bridges of understanding and to share Iran’s rich cultural heritage with the West,” said Rezaian last week.
“His work was not controversial, but an honest record of his encounters with the people and the soul of Iran.”
Exactly.
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
The talks in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program will likely continue past the July 20 deadline for reaching a final deal. President Barack Obama noted “real progress” but hinted at an extension yesterday after being briefed by Secretary of State John [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
The talks in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program will likely continue past the July 20 deadline for reaching a final deal. President Barack Obama noted “real progress” but hinted at an extension yesterday after being briefed by Secretary of State John Kerry, who held several meetings with the Iranians this week.
On Wednesday, an Iranian diplomat told the Japanese Kyodo News that the talks could be extended by two months, but there’s still no official word. The editorial boards of the New York Times and the Washington Post have meanwhile come out on the side of continued negotiations.
Presently there’s not a lot of buzz around the question of whether Congress will push for more sanctions on Iran. Indeed, senior Senate aides told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that they do not see the same level of tension over a possible extension compared with the beginning of the year.
Still, as Jim wrote earlier this week, key lawmakers here in Washington are trying to make sanctions relief to Iran conditional on Congressional approval.
While the prospects of reaching a comprehensive deal any time soon are far from certain, one thing is for sure: important actors, from all sides of the political spectrum inside Iran, support the diplomatic process. Indeed, just this week the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) released a study showing leading Iranian activists’ support for the negotiations.
The report, Voices from Iran: Strong Support for the Nuclear Negotiations, shows that support for a successful deal are equally forthcoming not only among human rights victims and former political prisoners, but also among those who believe that the negotiations themselves would have no effect on the human rights situation in Iran.
“Opponents of the nuclear talks cannot use human rights concerns as a tool to undermine the negotiations,” said Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director of the Campaign. “The very individuals who have suffered the most from the human rights crisis in Iran remain fully committed to the negotiations.”
More than two-thirds of the 22 key human and civil rights defenders interviewed said they felt an agreement resulting in the lifting of sanctions would improve the economic conditions of ordinary people, who would then be enabled to focus on improving civil liberties.
“Every single human rights advocate — along with journalists, editors, private business owners and so on — I have met in Iran hopes for the resolution of the nuclear conflict and eventual ending of sanctions for two basic reasons: one is economic and one is political,” said independent scholar and LobeLog contributor Farideh Farhi.
“As one prominent human rights advocate told me, the right to economic livelihood is also a human rights issue. Given the comprehensive nature of US-led sanctions, these folk see them as major violations of the Iranian peoples’ rights and want them removed,” said Farhi, who is currently in Tehran.
“Politically, while the lifting of sanctions is not presumed to automatically lead to better treatment of dissidents and critics by the state, there is hope that the reduced threat perception and reduced fear of regime change will eventually lead to the further loosening of the political environment,” she added.
“Conversely, there is fear that a breakdown in the nuclear negotiations may lead to the intensification of domestic factional and institutional conflicts, which have historically harmed the more vulnerable political and civil rights activists as well as members of the press,” she said.
This should be important news for US, Canadian (also see here) and EU politicians who appear worried that seriously engaging Iran on its nuclear program will lead to worsened human rights violations and/or believe further punitive measures at this time will improve the situation.
As Jim noted:
While [House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif and ranking member Eliot Engel, D-NY] were releasing their letter, on one side of the Capitol, Sen. Mark Kirk, by far the biggest Congressional recipient of AIPAC-related funding in his 2010 re-election campaign, teamed up with Marco Rubio, the keynoter at last year’s Republican Jewish Coalition convention, to introduce The Iran Human Rights Accountability Act on the other. Among other provisions, it would impose visa bans and asset freezes against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. It’s just the kind of thing that generates a lot of goodwill in Tehran. Indeed, one of the Act’s chapters could only be interpreted as “regime change:” it declares the “policy of the United States” to be laying “the foundation for the emergence of a freely elected, open and democratic political system in Iran that is not a threat to its neighbors or to the United States and to work with all citizens of Iran who seek to establish such a political system.” Another gift to the hard-liners in Tehran who are as eager to undermine their negotiators in Vienna as the hawks here are to blow up the negotiations.
“The study makes clear that anyone concerned about human rights in Iran should not use human rights to undermine a nuclear deal,” Mike Amitay, a senior policy analyst at the Open Society Policy Center, told LobeLog. “Human rights issues should be addressed in tandem with support for the negotiations and in a way that does not undermine the success of the negotiations.”
“In this regard, recently introduced rights legislation is counterproductive and offered now as an attempt to scuttle a deal,” he said.
By the way, here’s Josh Fattal, who spent 2 years as an American hostage in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, urging Congress to support the nuclear talks with Iran:
The most important point I’d like to impress on our negotiators and members of Congress is that this is a historic opportunity. Additionally, the human toll from decades of confrontation is immeasurable. My suffering as a political hostage in Evin Prison from 2009 to 2011 was a result of decades of mutual hostility between the U.S. and Iran. But, taken in context, I got off relatively easy with only 26 months behind bars. A resolution to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear capacity will finally lead us down a different path that no longer punishes the Iranian people for the actions of their leaders.
Photo Credit: The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
The only certainty now about the talks between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program is that the negotiators have their work cut out for them. Other than occasional runaway comments to the press from France, and now China, the parties have remained tight-lipped about their [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
The only certainty now about the talks between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program is that the negotiators have their work cut out for them. Other than occasional runaway comments to the press from France, and now China, the parties have remained tight-lipped about their closed-door dealings. However, judging by the tone of the briefings by the US and Iran coming out of the 5-day session that ended in Vienna last Friday, the pressure has increased as the self-imposed deadline looms. The negotiations can certainly be extended, but as a senior US official noted in a background briefing to the press:
We are all focused on reaching July 20th. As I’ve said before, if we get close and we need a few more days, I don’t think anyone will mind. But we are very focused on getting it done now. We have all agreed that time is not in anyone’s interest; it won’t help get there. And if indeed by the time we get to July 20th we are still very far apart, then I think we will all have to evaluate what that means and what is possible or not.
What are the odds of the now formally titled “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” being signed by Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) at the end of July? Independent scholar and LobeLog contributor Farideh Farhi offered her take during a June 21 interview with Iran Review:
Two factors work in favor of the eventual resolution of the nuclear dossier and transformation of US-Iran relations from a constant state of hostility and non-communication to interaction, even if not necessarily in constructive ways at all times. One is the seriousness of the negotiations and the political will on the part of the current administrations in both countries to prevent the nuclear dossier from becoming a pretext for war or spiraling into something uncontrollable. And the second is the high cost of failure now that both sides have invested so heavily in the talks.
But there are also factors that inhibit confidence in assuming a point of no return to status quo ante. First, in both countries there are political forces that oppose any type of interaction and lessening of tensions, although at this point my take is that opponents, encouraged by regional players, have more significant institutional power in the United States than Iran. In other words, along with political power, they have extensive policy instruments – the most important of which are legally embedded in the sanctions regime – that can be relied upon to undermine or prevent political accord between the two countries.
The second factor is the unequal power relationship between the two countries, which has consistently led various US administrations to be tempted by the argument that economic, political muscle, and military threats will eventually pay off and force various administrations in Iran to give in irrespective of domestic political equations and the stances they have taken within their own political environment. Currently, this second factor is part and parcel of broader indecision or uncertainty in the US’ strategic calculus regarding whether to come to terms with Iran as a prominent regional player or continue its three decade policy of containing it and alternatively Iran’s commitment to being an independent and powerful regional actor irrespective of fears in the neighborhood.
This dynamic of one side always wanting more than the other can give and/or alternatively being unwilling or incapable of matching concessions with what the other side deems as comparable concessions has been the source of impasse in negotiations. This is not to suggest that inflexibility or lack of realism only comes from one side. During the previous administration, Iran also miscalculated in its assessment of the leverage the United States could build through its ferocious sanctions regime in the same way the United States miscalculated in its assessment of the extent to which Iran could expand its nuclear program in the face of sanctions. As such, Iran’s expectation for the sanctions regime that took years to build to be lifted quickly and permanently is as unrealistic as the US expectation for Iran’s enrichment program to be significantly scaled back.
As to the impact of Iran-US direct talks, it is still possible for the unprecedented high profile direct engagement between the two countries in and of itself to lead to some sort of transformation in the relationship irrespective of the results of nuclear talks. If indeed the two countries’ foreign ministers or even presidents can continue to pick up the phone and talk to each other over matters of common concern or for the sake of de-escalating tensions, that by itself is an important achievement of nuclear talks and its significance should not be under-estimated. But this also depends on how the potential failure of nuclear talks is managed by both sides.
Read more here.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
Photo: The Iranian nuclear negotiating team headed by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (center) and Deputy Foreign Ministers Abbas Araghchi (to Zarif’s right) and Majid Takht-Ravanchi.
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
“He may be the only person in the world who can telephone both Senator Dianne Feinsten and the Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah,” writes the veteran U.S. foreign affairs journalist Robin Wright about Iran’s famous foreign minister.
Her New Yorker profile is a fascinating read for anyone [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
“He may be the only person in the world who can telephone both Senator Dianne Feinsten and the Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah,” writes the veteran U.S. foreign affairs journalist Robin Wright about Iran’s famous foreign minister.
Her New Yorker profile is a fascinating read for anyone interested in Javad Zarif, whose mere smile so frightens the Israeli government and for those want to understand why Iran, faults and all, has been recently covered in American mainstream media as much more than — and perhaps not at all — a charter member of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.”
We recently published an important piece by France’s former ambassador to Tehran, François Nicoullaud, who is probably more familiar with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani than with Zarif (Rouhani was Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator when Ambassador Nicoullaud was in Tehran). Nicoullaud’s post nonetheless made an important point related to Wright’s article:
One of [Rouhani's] first acts as president was transferring Iran’s nuclear negotiating file from the Supreme National Security Council to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That enabled him to build a “dream team” of seasoned negotiators, perfectly comfortable with the codes and practices of their Western counterparts. Iran’s new and refined team has stood out in stark contrast to the collective clumsiness of the P5+1 negotiators, as in the early November 2013 episode, when four Wester foreign ministers rushed prematurely to Geneva, spurring the media to believe, mistakenly, that a deal would be signed. (It was signed 10 days late.)
The Iranian government hasn’t been completely remade since the June 2013 surprise election of Rouhani; it still contains hard-line and questionable cabinet picks by the president, such as Mostafa Pourmohammadi. But it’s hard to make a convincing argument today that Iran isn’t trying to change under Rouhani, who will mark his first anniversary as president in August.
That’s right, it hasn’t even been a year since that historic phone call between Rouhani and U.S. President Barack Obama last September in New York as the Iranian leader was being driven to JFK airport from the United Nations General Assembly where, in a furious series of meetings and speeches, he spelled out Iran’s new approach to the world.
Of course, Iran, which gives off a “striking impression” of “strategic loneliness” according to Wright, still has a long way to go on all fronts, and expectations are higher than ever.
Indeed, there has been considerable speculation about why the last round of nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers ended in Vienna last Friday without the customary plenary. Al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen pointed to the “wide gaps” cited by a U.S. official, while the Guardian’s Julian Borger saw the parties hitting a wall. For his part, Zarif seemed as cool and collected as ever in his brief post-talks remarks. “Back from Vienna after tough discussions. Agreement is possible.But illusions need to go.Opportunity shouldn’t be missed again like in 2005,” he tweeted on May 17.
Whatever the reality of the situation (the negotiators have been remarkably disciplined about keeping the details of the talks under wraps), Rouhani needs a nuclear resolution. And as Wright’s profile shows, there may be no one in Iran better equipped or as determined as Zarif to achieve that goal. So can Zarif pull through? Stay tuned.
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
Another Israeli expert has contradicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program.
“The Iranian nuclear program will only be operational in another 10 years,” said Uzi Eilam, the former head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, during an interview with Ronen Bergman published today in the Israeli [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
Another Israeli expert has contradicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program.
“The Iranian nuclear program will only be operational in another 10 years,” said Uzi Eilam, the former head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, during an interview with Ronen Bergman published today in the Israeli daily, Ynet.
“The main issues are still ahead of us, but it is definitely possible to be optimistic. I think we should give the diplomatic process a serious chance, alongside ongoing sanctions,” said Eilam, who has held senior roles in the Israeli defense establishment.
“And I’m not even sure that Iran would want the bomb — it could be enough for them to be a nuclear threshold state — so that it could become a regional power and intimidate its neighbors,” he added.
Netanyahu has implored the international community to set a “red line” on Iran’s nuclear program, which he says is aimed at a nuclear weapon. The Israeli PM used a “cartoon bomb” prop to make this argument during his Sept. 27, 2012 UN General Assembly speech. Two weeks earlier, Netanyahu had said that Iran was 6-7 months from being 90% of the way to building a bomb during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.
The next year, during his Oct. 1 2013 address to the UNGA, Netanyahu admitted that Iran had not crossed the line he had drawn on his diagram, but said Tehran was still positioning itself to be able to create a bomb and that this “vast and feverish effort has continued unabated” under Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Netanyahu has also called the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program that was reached on Nov. 24, 2012 between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) a “historic mistake.”
The Israeli PM, who has been warning about an impending Iranian nuclear bomb for almost 20 years, has been relatively quiet during this year’s round of talks toward a comprehensive deal with Iran, which are set to resume on May 13 in Vienna Austria.
US officials have also detected a shift in Tel Aviv’s position toward a somewhat more reasonable stance, according to a report in Al-Monitor.
Several current and former Israeli defense and intelligence officials have cast doubt on Netanyahu’s statements on Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, insists is peaceful.
“[Israel's leadership] presents a false view to the public on the Iranian bomb, as though acting against Iran would prevent a nuclear bomb. But attacking Iran will encourage them to develop a bomb all the faster,” said Israel’s former Internal Security Chief, Yuval Diskin, at an Israeli forum on Apr. 26, 2012.
“[Iran] is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t decided to go the extra mile,” noted the head of the Israeli military, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, during an interview with Haaretz on Apr. 25, 2012.
“I don’t think [Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei] will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people,” he said.
“[Attacking Iran is] the stupidest thing I have ever heard…It will be followed by a war with Iran,” said Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, during a May 2011 Hebrew University conference.
“It is the kind of thing where we know how it starts, but not how it will end.” he added.
]]>I’m supposed to be editing right now, but I’ve discovered something wonderful enough to put aside my responsibilities for a moment and write about it here.
The short film posted above is part of videographer Patrik Wallner’s skate documentary, the Visualtraveling series, which features countries that people wouldn’t normally associate with skateboarding. In “The [...]]]>
I’m supposed to be editing right now, but I’ve discovered something wonderful enough to put aside my responsibilities for a moment and write about it here.
The short film posted above is part of videographer Patrik Wallner’s skate documentary, the Visualtraveling series, which features countries that people wouldn’t normally associate with skateboarding. In “The Persian Version,” an international group of professional skateboarders offer a truly unique way to see Iran, where I was born.
The two Americans, Kenny Reed and Walker Ryan, were granted tourist visas to Iran, but they were prohibited from skating, except for once, when they visited a skatepark. So, while their colleagues glided through one of the oldest and restrictive countries in the world, the Americans had to travel with a 67-year-old tour-guide.
“Just being told what you can and cannot do, 24-hours a day. I mean, we had a babysitter the whole time,” said Ryan, who is shown smiling throughout the film, featured this week on GlobalPost.
French skater Michael Mackrodt saw the Iranians as engaging in tit-for tat behavior, “They want to show the Americans that you give Iranians a hard time when they come to America, so we do the same…”
While Iranians who are lucky enough to get visas to the US are able to travel there freely, Tehran has a list of historical grievances against Washington, which its sees as responsible for the strangulating international sanctions regime Iranians have been enduring for years.
Washington claims that Iran’s nuclear program is not purely peaceful, something which Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), adamantly denies. Negotiations on a comprehensive solution to this issue are in process.
It’s not clear exactly what Mackrodt had in mind before expressing his observation. Regardless, the film allows viewers to arrive at their own conclusions about whether the limitation imposed on the American skateboarders was fair, unjust, or completely expected from Iran, a country filled with contradictions.
It also demonstrates how some of Iran’s contradictions are beautiful.
Here’s what M.J. Rahimi, a pioneering Iranian skateboard manufacturer, had to say after hanging with the professionals:
This is the best ten days of my life…I’m really excited about your trip and to see professional skateboarders here. My biggest dream is one day, I can make a skateboard for a professional skateboarder. Made signatured for them, especially for Walker.
Skateboarding, rooted in rebellion, is an American sport that has spread around the world. Despite decades of hostility between the governments of Iran and the US, this film shows that skateboarding is also now an Iranian sport, and the stuff of some Iranians’ dreams. Who could overlook the beauty in that?
]]>The Iran experts at the Rand Corporation, including Alireza Nader, who has written for LobeLog, are always worth reading. That’s why Iran-watchers like me can willfully spend part of a slow-news Friday reading a Rand report on what regional responses to a final deal with Iran over [...]]]>
The Iran experts at the Rand Corporation, including Alireza Nader, who has written for LobeLog, are always worth reading. That’s why Iran-watchers like me can willfully spend part of a slow-news Friday reading a Rand report on what regional responses to a final deal with Iran over its nuclear program might look like. The video I’ve included above includes discussion on some of the report’s main points and you can read the entire report below or download it on Rand’s website. I was particularly interested in the part on how Israel may react.
[gview file="http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE122/RAND_PE122.pdf"]
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
The title of this post is a quote from Shaul Bakhash, a George Mason University professor who moderated a panel discussion, “Iran, the Next Five Years: Change or More of the Same?“ at the Wilson Center today. “In a way, we’ve been here before,” said the esteemed scholar, referring [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
The title of this post is a quote from Shaul Bakhash, a George Mason University professor who moderated a panel discussion, “Iran, the Next Five Years: Change or More of the Same?“ at the Wilson Center today. “In a way, we’ve been here before,” said the esteemed scholar, referring to the presidencies of centrist leader Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, when the country was perceived as moving towards openness at home and abroad. But while Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s administration includes individuals with past ties to those movements, Bakhash says the conservatives “remain the strongest political body in Iran”.
While nothing can stay the same forever, many people worried (some still do) that the Islamic Republic would continue down a path of conservatism verging on radicalism before the surprise presidential election of Rouhani in June 2013. Since Rouhani took over from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — whose former conservative allies couldn’t effectively unite in time to support another conservative into the presidency — those worries have changed. Now the question on everyone’s mind is: can Rouhani successfully navigate Iran’s contested political waters in his quest to implement foreign, economic and social policy reforms?
A lot depends on Iran’s 2016 parliamentary elections, according to panelist Bernard Hourcade, an expert on Iran’s social and political geography. “Elections matter In Iran”, said Hourcade, echoing Farideh Farhi. What happened in 2009 (when large groups of Iranians protested the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and were violently repressed) proved that “elections have become a major political and social item in [Iranian] political life.”
Hourcade uses official data to back up that point. Most interestingly, he shows that due to population migration patterns, the most important political divisions no longer exist between Iranian cities and villages, but between city centers and suburbs. Consider, for example, the typology of presidential votes for Rouhani in Tehran province. Hourcade’s diagram shows that while Rouhani had strong support in the northern part of Shemiran, he didn’t get a majority in central Tehran. Why that occurred is more difficult to answer, according to Hourcade, due to limited data resources.
How political divisions play out in Iran’s upcoming parliamentary elections, which could give Iran’s currently sidelined conservatives more power, will also impact the Majles’ (parliament’s) reaction to the potential comprehensive deal with world powers over Iran’s nuclear program.
In other words, even if Iran’s rock star Foreign Minister can negotiate a final deal with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei approves, Iran’s parliament still has to ratify it, and if conservatives who oppose Rouhani dominate the majles, we may have another problem on our hands.
There were many other important points offered by Hourcade and his co-panelists, including Roberto Toscano, Italy’s former ambassador to Iran. He noted that former President Mohammad Khatami didn’t have the same chances as Rouhani because he was “too much out of the mainstream”. Rouhani, a centrist cleric and former advisor to Ayatollah Khamenei, wouldn’t have won the presidency without pivotal backing by both Khatami and Rafsanjani. So, as Toscano argues, Rouhani is in the mainstream (for now). But whether he and his allies will be able to maintain support from these important players moving forward, especially in 2016, will seriously influence whether he, like Khatami and Rafsanjani will be ultimately sidelined, or achieve a presidential legacy in Iran like nothing we’ve seen before.
Photo: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani walks by former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani following his June 2013 presidential vicotry. Credit: Mehdi Ghasemi/ISNA
]]>