Iran's Identity Faultlines - Islamic / Aryan

[Agnimitra]

^^^ mahadevbhu ji,

IMHO we have a high number of immigrants because it is seen as a way to create soft power projection in "NAM" type countries of the third world. Another reason is that we happen to be flanked by unstable and violent neighborhoods subjected to invasions and occupations, and so Tibet and Afghanistan produce a high # of refs, as did BD beginning 1971. But I somehow doubt if the full scale of BD immigrants are properly factored into that stat. In any case, why do you think its a good idea? I want to better understand India's immigration policies. Usually I find that people in the know consider it inappropriate to discuss these things in public. I respect that, but I can't understand the willful neglect shown to certain types of immigrant groups.

Accepting Afghan refugees can easily be understood. Tibetan also. India also accepts a lot of Ethiopian, Somali and Rohingya Myanmarese. Many Afghan, Somali and Rohingya are being granted refugee cards promptly. But the same is not the case with Ethiopians, even though they are so similar to Somalis. Same is not the case with Hindu-Sikh refugees from Afghanistan/Pakistan. From Iran, non-political immigrants are treated by due process, but this interesting segment of political asylum seekers is ignored.

Hoping someone can shed some light. Also, if folks could list social and political groups that are actively supporting the cause of Hindu/Sikh refugees from Pak/BD, that would be helpful. I think a properly networked lobby should be created for Indophile refugees fleeing Islamist persecution. Others such as non-Islamist refugees from the Moslem Middle East/C. Asia/Africa can also plug into that network.

[member_20292]

^^^

Immigrants are good. The right kind, that is.

Unfortunately, it does not seem like we are attracting those types at this time. For that, our facilities have to be top notch.

Even the poorer variety can be integrated and made to the useful and the good.

We have to be pro-immigration. Undoubtedly.
We have to compete against America to be the number one destination for migrants

[RajeshA]

India should allow only the following types of Iranians an extended period of stay in the country:

1. Any Iranian student enrolled at university - even though several of these are very active in student and other local Islamist congregations. Especially active cases can be vetted out, or sent back on other charges.

2. Bahai's.

3. Any political refugee seeking asylum.

4. Any Iranian who has liberal views and can transfer a substantial amount of his savings from Iran into India. Background checks as well as other forms of profiling and appraisal necessary to judge "liberal".

India should NOT allow the following types of Iranians an extended stay in the country, limiting them only to one or two 3-month terms of tourist visas:

1. Any Islamist or even very religious Iranian not applying for admission to an Indian university. Students may be allowed but not their families.

In addition, India must care for and cultivate Iranian political refugees, who are usually very educated and of a liberal bent. Once established, their work can be used to further influence other Iranian immigrants into India and gradually organize them - ideologically and politically.

Carl ji,

I agree with your advocation that India needs to give a lot more attention to Iran and its various social, ethnic and religious currents.

I think India should be giving more support to Iranian intellectuals and film makers, especially those write about the following fields

1. Islam's invasion of Iran, siding with Iranians
2. the heroes who fought against Islam in Iran
3. pre-Islamic Iranian nation
4. Iranian languages and linguistics
5. pre-Islamic historical ties between India and Iran
6. Iranian historians, archaeologists, linguists
7. Iranian non-Islamic literature

Also I think giving sanctuary to non-Abrahamic Iranian minorities should be on the cards - Zoroastrians, Baha'is, Yârsânis, Yazidis, etc. Also we should be very forthcoming about giving sanctuary to Kurds and Balochis from Iran, as long as they organize themselves and their networks here without too much of a public presence like public protests against Iran, and remain under the radar.

We need to build an alternate vision of Iran, bereft of Islam, where Iranian culture is considered an outcrop of the Bharatiya Civilization, which may have built its own separate identity over time but which still remains fundamentally tied to India. We need a narrative of Indo-Iranian relations separate from those during Islamic times. And we need Iranian intellectuals who are willing to write outside the Western Universalist framework.

I also think an easier visa for Iranians in general would help the flow.

However if any person wishes to interact with any Islamic religious group in India which may include even anything as "harmless" as entering a mosque or a madrassa should try for a "religious visa" which should have more stricter conditions. Any Iranian who enters on a normal visa, and still tries to interact with some Islamic group in India should go on the black list and not be given any visa in the future. Of course if there is any contact to any group in India which is considered extremist, then not even a "religious visa" would be given and the Iranian would be deported.

[Agnimitra]

One of the top members of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee wants to divide Iran up along its natural ethnic faultlines. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) is pushing forward a proposal (H.Res.183) to beam news broadcasts in Azeri and Baloch languages into Iran and its border regions with Pakistan to promote ethnic tensions. Last year, Rohrabacher introduced similar resolutions urging for Azeri and Baloch ethnic separatism. Rohrabacher has admitted that he supports the group Mujahedin-e Khalq (recently de-listed as a terrorist org) over peaceful opposition groups because of the Mujahedin’s willingness to use violence.

4/25/2013: Full text of proposal H.RES.183.IH to beam news broadcasts in Azeri and Baloch languages into Iran.
Note that Pakistan finds mention in it as well.

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Broadcasting Board of Governors should broadcast and direct Azeri language content into the Islamic Republic of Iran and Baloch language content into the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Whereas the ethnic Azeri and Baloch peoples compose 18 percent of the population of Iran; {probably more - many people who call themselves "Persians" are half Azeri}

Whereas the Azeri and Baloch minorities have maintained proud and distinctive cultures and identities dating back to ancient times;

Whereas the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty currently broadcast to Iran in the Persian language;

Whereas the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty currently operate Azeri language services;

Whereas it is in the national interest of the United States for accurate and credible news to reach all the ethnic groups in Iran and Pakistan;

Whereas it is believed the area inhabited by the Baloch people holds a large reserve of oil, natural gas, gold, and other minerals and comprises 1,000 miles of strategically significant coast line from the Persian Gulf and along the Arabian Sea;

Whereas the Governments of Iran and Pakistan systematically repress human rights, political expression, and civil society activists which has been reported by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International;

Whereas the Government of Pakistan has refused to recognize the legitimate national aspirations of the Balochi people and has carried out a campaign of politically motivated murders and followed a policy known as `Kill and Dump' where Baloch activists are kidnapped and their bodies are later found in public, often mutilated;

Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran found that the `Sistan-Balochistan is arguably the most underdeveloped region in Iran, with the highest poverty, infant and child mortality rates, and lowest life expectancy and literacy rates in the country';

Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran reports that `Baloch activists have reportedly been subject to arbitrary arrests and torture';

Whereas the Government of Iran prevents the Balochi or Azeri languages from being used in formal and public places;

Whereas the Baloch minority in Iran is mostly Sunni Muslim and subject to religious persecution by the ruling Shia theocracy;

Whereas all the people of Iran and Pakistan have the right of self-determination, to choose their form of government, and to elect their leaders; and

Whereas it is the policy of the United States to oppose aggression and the violation of human rights inherent in the subjugation of national groups like the Azeris in Iran and Baloch in Iran and Pakistan: Now, therefore, be it

Also, from last year, mid-2012, Rep. Rohrbacher backed Azeri independence from Iran:

***PRESS RELEASE*** Rep. Rohrabacher Urges Secretary Clinton to Back Freedom From Iran for Azeris

Today, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) sent a letter to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton urging the United States to back freedom for Azeris from Iran. Rohrabacher’s letter was prompted by recent news stories concerning a budding military cooperation between Israel and the Azerbaijan Republic.

“It would be wise for the United States to encourage such cooperation, as the aggressive dictatorship in Tehran is our enemy as well as theirs,” writes Rohrabacher. “The people of Azerbaijan are geographically divided and many are calling for the reunification of their homeland after nearly two centuries of foreign rule.”

Almost twice as many Azeri live in Iran as in the Azerbaijan Republic. Their homeland was divided by Russia and Persia in 1828, without their consent. “The Azerbaijan Republic won its independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed,” continues the letter. “Now it is time for the Azeris in Iran to win their freedom too.”

“Aiding the legitimate aspirations of the Azeri people for independence is a worthy cause in and of itself,” says Rohrabacher. “Yet, it also poses a greater danger to the Iranian tyrants than the threat of bombing its underground nuclear research bunkers.”

Rep. Rohrabacher is Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

The NIAC sent out this, with alarm bells ringing. NIAC is one of those Iranian lobby groups in the West that wants a passive foreign policy w.r.t. Iran, but is virulently anti-Zionist. Like other Iranian "experts" who advise Western governments, they peddle a soft approach of jiziya and hudaibiyya to Iran and Pakistan, while being anti-Israel and sometimes anti-Arab.

[Agnimitra]

Regarding Ahvaz in the SW province of Khuzestan - Iran's Arab provincs on its side of the Persian Gulf. Arabs want the gulf to be re-named the Arab Gulf precisely because ethnic Arabs live on both sides of the gulf.

هرانا؛ احتمال اجرای حکم اعدام پنج زندانی سیاسی عرب در هفته آینده
Likelihood of 5 ethnic Arab political prisoners being executed next week in Khuzestan (Iran's Arab province)

The prisoners are in Karoon prison, Ahvaz. The judicial courts are expected to pass sentence and carry out the summary execution next week.
Convicted on charges of "making war against God and spreading fitnah (sedition to God's divine order) on Earth", as well as propaganda against the order of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and taking steps against national security.

Hashim Sha'ebani-nezhad - poet, blogger, writer of Arab literature and Masters student in Political Sc. at Uty of Chamran, Ahvaz.
Hadi Rashedi - writer of chemistry and Masters student in applied chem
Mohammed Ali Umoor-nezhad - blogger, student activist and former member of the Islamist Students orgs on the campus of the Industrial Uty of Esfahan
Two others by the names of Jaabir and Mokhtar Alboshoukeh.

[Agnimitra]

Fashion police

Armed with carnations and roses, the gashte ershad rewarded those women sporting the best hijab in town.

The apogee of “good hijab” in the Islamic republic is the chador, a long black cloak that reveals only the face. Chador-wearers received the most flowers, but women seen to be sticking to both the letter and the spirit of the country’s strict sartorial laws were also honoured by Iran’s boys in green.

In 2011, Iran’s state-owned Mehr news agency ran an interview with a female assistant to the morality police in which she explained her beat and her motivation for doing the job. “We are guiding people who are defacing society,” she said. “From dawn to dusk we are calling to virtue and banning from vice which is a divine order. A lot of people cry but when we let them go, they come back looking the same. I don’t believe in the tears people with bad hijab shed.” {Total cognitive dissonance}

Yet while women in Iran have long faced punishment for bad hijab, this is the first time that good hijab has been rewarded. Some say that the dynamics of the upcoming presidential election in June have changed the rules of the game. Elections are generally preceded by a softening of resolve by the morality police to encourage women to vote for religious conservatives. This year however, the government has come down hard on those of its female citizens whose fashion falls foul of the state’s dress code, perhaps because there is less pressure on conservatives to ease up given the weakness of the reformist camp.

[RajeshA]

Carl ji,

First Jhujar gave trauma to all his well-wishers and friends here and now you do it!

[Agnimitra]

First Jhujar gave trauma to all his well-wishers and friends here and now you do it!

RajeshA ji are you referring to Jhujar ji's daily poetry?

[RajeshA]

First Jhujar gave trauma to all his well-wishers and friends here and now you do it!

RajeshA ji are you referring to Jhujar ji's daily poetry?

No, I was referring to his change of username from Prem to Jhujar! Earlier in the daily poetry as such I used to see a lot more Prem! Anyway username changes takes time getting used to.

[RamaY]

Agnimitra/RajeshA garu,

Did you come across this book? If not read it, it is fun http://ia700401.us.archive.org/11/items ... fRight.pdf

[Agnimitra]

X-post from WA thread:

There are several non-logistical reasons why Syria has dragged on for so long. The major reason is that the US did not take decisive action - partly due to compulsions and partly due to foolish false hopes.

Recently, Javier Solana the former European chief negotiator with Iran declared during a Brookings Institution conference that the US avoids a more active role in Syria because Iran would respond to US and as a result, a deal on Iranian nuclear issue would probably collapse: "I think the United States has not taken a more active role in Syria from the beginning because they didn’t want to disturb the possibility -- I mean, to give them the space to negotiate with Tehran. They probably knew that getting very engaged on the (inaudible) even militarily could contribute to a break in the potential negotiations with Tehran."

Audio in this link:
Brookings Instt.: Negotiating with Iran: How Best to Reach Success

This is not the first time that the US administration's illusionary hope to reach a deal with Tehran causes policy missteps and capitulation to the Iranian dictates. After the 2010 parliamentary election in Iraq and the victory of secular Ayad Allawi, the US bowed to the Mullahs' demand and supported the Iranian designated candidate Nouri al-Maliki to become prime minister, even though the seculars, Kurds and Sunnis could form a majority coalition in the parliament. At that time, Obama was preparing a smooth withdrawal from Iraq and was counting on Iranian cooperation. In fact, the Iranian Mullahs blackmailed the US government.

Source for the above is IraniansForum, a site aligned with Hasan Daioleslam who is considered an anti-regime hawk (unlike Trita Parsi's NIAC which is pacifist):
Obama policy on Syria set by Iran

Moreover, in a recent defamation court case, large Iranian lobby groups and their connections with Iran's FM were unearthed during the discovery process. In March of this year, there were reports that Iran's FM said they were doubling their contributions to Iranian lobby groups in the US and EU. What these lobbies have so far successfully done is to keep alive the hope in the Obama White House of working things out via diplomacy rather than attack. There was an upsurge in 2008 Presidential Elections, when Iranian-Americans affiliated with such lobby groups were extremely active in support of Obama's campaign, with a slogan playing on his last name "ou ba ma" - in Farsi: "he is with us".

One constant refrain of these lobby groups is that sanctions are hurting the Iranian people. But they never highlight the fact that the Iranian regime itself doesn't care, and in fact diverts resources in support of outside causes at the direct expense of their own people:

Iran criticizes Iraq for inspecting Iranian plane carrying aid to Syrian

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast has criticized Iraq for inspecting an Iranian plane taking humanitarian aid to Syria.

Apparently a big part of these shipments were medicines. Yet, the Iranian public at home is facing the brunt of a shortage of medicines. Western lobby groups are criticizing sanctions, blaming them for such shortages, without ever bringing to light that the Iranian regime plays a very costly power game at the expense of large sections of its own population.

Iran has also gotten itself involved in other theatres:
The Atlantic: How Did Iranian Bullets Wind Up in Africa?

The Iranian bullets that a Conflict Armament Research report found throughout Africa probably weren't of the highest quality the Islamic Republic could offer. They were all made during the same three-year period at the beginning of the last decade -- it's likely they were military surplus or low-quality leftovers, sold at a discount to anyone looking for cheap ammo. But low-quality bullets are still deadly, and the CAR found Iranian munitions all over Africa, in 14 locations across nine countries, and with groups as diverse as a Tutsi militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and terrorists aligned with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. And there's evidence to suggest that Iran's closest African partner played an active role in funneling the ammunition throughout the continent.

Despite some very public internal disagreements, Sudan's nominally-Islamist National Congress Party government has positioned itself as a key ally of Iran, and of the collection of countries and militant groups opposed to American, Israeli and western policies in the Middle East. Ali Karti, Sudan's foreign minister, has publically spoken out against the country's tight military relations with Iran, and American policymakers have long viewed the NCP government as willing to abandon its close relationships with rogue states and terrorist groups if the right combination of incentives and inducements could be reached. But the moderate bloc inside the NCP doesn't seem to be winning out: Iran helps operate the sprawling Yarmouk weapons facility in Khartoum, a plant that stored a group of shipping containers that were targeted and practically vaporized by an airstrike in October, an attack that was likely Israel's doing. According to the Conflict Armament Research report, the Yarmouk is involved in the development of Iranian arms: "Yarmouk Industrial Complex in Khartoum serves as a production/onward shipment facility for Iranian/ Iranian-designed weapons," while plant personnel "visit Tehran for regular technical training on weapons or ammunition production." According to a 2006 Wikileaks cable, Yarmouk was also involved in the production of chemical and biological weapons material for Iran and Syria.

[Agnimitra]

As Iran's elections approach, the guy who is probably the regime's favourite boy - the Kurdish Mayor of Tehran, Qalibaf - is making the right noises:

قالیباف: دولت خاتمی به من دستور تیراندازی داد
Qalibaf: The Khatami regime gave me orders to shoot (at students in the University quarter)

He says Khatami (another likely candidate considered a "moderate" who made a big show of reaching out to the world in a "dialog of civilizations" - probably the kind that Iran's FM routinely has with us Indians, about their contributions in civilizing us) had ordered him to shoot at student protesters but he declined to do so...

[Agnimitra]

This is the level of strategic thinking tactical brilliance India displays w.r.t. Iran. At this rate, it is safe to assume that no civilizational vision exists.

From Wikileaks:
Murli Deora told US Ambassador that congress trying hard to fool muslims on #Iran issue

Indian Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Murli Deora told the Ambassador June 28 that he had informal conversations with Iranian President Ahmedinejad 3-4 times at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, and while Ahmedinejad had been reserved due to India's IAEA votes against Iran, he was forthcoming in summoning his own energy minister when Deora complained about Iran's failure to respect its pricing in a USD 22 billion gas contract. Deora -- an avowedly pro-American Congress insider close to Sonia Gandhi -- was explicit that Indian Muslims care deeply about Iran, every Muslim vote will count in upcoming make-or-break state elections in Uttar Pradesh, and Congress needs, every Muslim vote to win. As a result, Congress -- and, by extension, India -- will continue to walk the fine line between offending the United States and alienating a needed Muslim vote bank. End Summary.

Deora insisted the USG could not imagine the strength of support for Iran and ahmedinejad among Indian Muslims. Muslim groups had put 150,000 on the streets of Mumbai and 100,000 on the streets of Delhi to protest American policy before the President's March 2006 visit. If Congress loses the Muslim vote, it cannot win. Muslims were traditional Congress supporters, explained Deora, and the Congress-led government could not avoid participating in the NAM as a result. Quoting Lincoln, Deora said, "you can't fool all the people all the time," but Congress was trying hard to do so and avoid electoral disaster as Uttar Pradesh polls loom over the horizon.

So clearly, the Congress sultanate sees India's relationship with Iran through the lens of the internal dynamics of its hold on Delhi. Therefore, the Congress dispensation is intrinsically dependent on keeping India's foreign policy w.r.t Iran hostage to the Islamist factor, in order to use that as a lever within India.

therefore, it should be clear that real change within Iran's own society (with its identity faultlines) is civilizationally dependent on real change within India. When Indraprastha isn't calling, who will come? Because without India to act as a rocklike pole and offer strategic depth, Iran cannot change without being run over by more of the same or another predatory ideology from the West.

[Agnimitra]

John Baird reaches out directly to Iranians, encouraging them to end ‘clerical military dictatorship’

Amid signs that Tehran is suppressing opposition ahead of next month’s presidential election, Foreign Minister John Baird reached out directly to Iranians on Friday to encourage them to end the country’s “clerical military dictatorship.”

At a conference in Toronto that is using social media to engage participants within Iran, Mr. Baird said Canada should have done more to support the Green Movement that took protests to the streets following the 2009 “stolen election” that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

But he said this time Canada would stand with democratic voices,

[Agnimitra]

A good read:
Radioactive Regime: Iran and its apologists
Added: Posting the last page of the article:

The Apologists

Those who will excuse the regime are not all intellectually flippant—Flynt and Hillary Leverett and Trita Parsi come to mind. Nor are they Iranian-Americans like the writer and Charlie Rose favorite Hooman Majd and the Rutgers academic-turned-Iranian presidential candidate Hooshang Amirahmadi who play and proselytize among the two countries’ progressive elites, always trying to keep the door open to the beloved Old World. Nor are they in general folks who are profoundly uncomfortable with American power. They aren’t, for the most part, those who reflexively give the moral high ground to third-worlders jousting with the West. Many of this hopeful set are accomplished, even hard-nosed, diplomats, soldiers, scholars, journalists, and pundits who appear to believe that a bargain is still possible between the United States and the Islamic Republic.

The Iranian regime’s love affair with violence—no state, with the possible exception of Syria under the Assads, has so actively promoted terrorism—usually makes small ripples in these folks’ assessments. The theocracy’s penchant for what the military historian David Crist calls “covert war” is regularly depicted by the hopeful as the defensive reaction of an insecure regime, as if the supreme leader and his Revolutionary Guards were in need of psychiatric help. But Tehran embraces terrorism. Not even the former Soviet Union, with its affection for hard-left revolutionary groups and the Palestine Liberation Organization, aided anti-Western terrorist organizations as energetically as the Islamic Republic. This the apologists see as realpolitik. Even Tehran’s flirtation with the Sunni killer elite—the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization of Ayman al Zawahiri and al Qaeda (see the 9/11 Commission Report and more recent Treasury designations)—is seldom brought up. Tehran’s fondness for creating Hezbollahs (“Parties of God”) wherever it has the reach and can find the local talent usually gets misconstrued as bad-boy Shiite solidarity around local grievances rather than a manifestation of Iran’s transnational revolutionary ideology. The regime’s exuberant embrace of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial (that is, Holocaust approval) gets downplayed as an annoying subset of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.

Khamenei’s crackdown on the pro-democracy Green Movement in the summer of 2009 led to thousands jailed and tortured and, according to credible Iranian sources, around 150 killed; it also turned the ruling elite against itself. Yet even this only dented the diplomacy-is-possible mindset, which sees Iran’s internal affairs as largely extraneous to whether the United States and the Islamic Republic can achieve anything like normal relations. The supreme leader damned the millions who hit the streets as agents of America. They weren’t: Even under Ronald Reagan, who used covert action more than his successors, America never had a regime change policy for the mullahs or even soft-power, pro-democracy operations that went beyond nostalgia-tweaking, in-country TV broadcasts and the publishing of Persian editions of liberal books.

Khamenei, obsessed since youth with the insidious, sensual attraction of the West, sincerely believes the gravamen he hurled at the Green Movement. Yet three-and-a-half years later, we still find serious people writing op-eds, policy papers, and books reflecting on “mutual mistrust,” “mutual demonization,” “years of suspicion,” and the “American missteps” that have kept the clerical regime and U.S. presidents from realizing the “obvious” geostrategic interests their countries share.

These apologists don’t persevere for the money, often the reason adults in the West, especially in Washington, say exculpatory things about foreign tyrannies—even if Tehran does bankroll a few think-tankers and university scholars through private “cut-out” philanthropy (the Alavi Foundation in New York, pursued by federal prosecutors in 2009, is a case in point). And the Islamic Republic certainly isn’t Saudi Arabia. There’s not a soul in Washington or New York or London who would defend the sybaritic Saudi royals and their head-and-hand-chopping Wahhabi clergy were it not for cash. Without oil, Saudis would have the same appeal as the Afghan Taliban.

In the past, before the Islamic Republic’s less radical set around former president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) got stuffed, American corporate money could encourage a sympathetic disposition towards Tehran. A prestigious American think tank could organize a major study that supported expanding U.S.-Iranian commerce, and innocently have a principal organizer and drafter of the study make calls from her Exxon office. Former ambassador Pickering, a senior vice president at Boeing from 2001 to 2006, has urged the United States to keep trying to normalize relations with the Islamic Republic. Pickering, however, rarely acknowledges his Boeing link in op-eds and articles, even though the company was, until recently, a big fan of lifting sanctions so as to sell airplanes and parts to an eager Persian clientele. Take away Boeing, and Ambassador Pickering would surely have had the same views toward the Islamic Republic. But the unacknowledged overlap is disconcerting.





The Cultural Apologists

Part of the reason so many Americans and Europeans have been charitably disposed towards the Iranian regime is cultural spillover. The magnificence of the Persian past and the warmth of the Iranian people still attract. Western journalists and scholars who have been given permission to travel in Iran (the list keeps shrinking) are particularly susceptible. The International Herald Tribune and New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who visited the Islamic Republic before the crackdown in the summer of 2009 and wrote pieces extolling the tolerant, hospitable side of the Iranian character, is an eloquent example of this cultural critique among aesthetically sensitive Westerners. Cohen extended his analysis even to Persian Jews, who’ve emigrated and fled in large numbers since the revolution and whose leadership can get hit hard when the regime feels angry (with charges of espionage, for example, or sodomy, a capital offense). Time in Iran led Cohen to write, “The reality of Iranian civility toward the Jews tells us more about Iran—its sophistication and culture—than all the inflammatory rhetoric. This may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran.”

Cohen had a point, which he did not make: Shiite Iranians have been tortured and killed far more frequently than Jewish Iranians since Shiites are expected to embrace fully the Islamic Republic’s mission civilisatrice at home and abroad; religious minorities are not. Jews in Iran, if they keep silent about Israel and show public fidelity to the Islamic order, are “museum pieces,” a part of Persian history that revolutionary mullahs tolerate but rarely esteem.

Cohen’s commendable appreciation of Persian culture and history led him to the British Museum to see Cyrus the Great’s Cylinder, the cuneiform-on-baked-clay legal guide and panegyric, with its timeless message of “tolerance.” The cylinder is coming soon to the Smithsonian, an event, Cohen noted, that “occurs with the United States and Iran still locked in the negative stereotypes the movie Argo has done nothing to assuage. .  .  . But compact and mute, .  .  . [the cylinder] is a powerful antidote to the belligerent certitudes and shrieking ‘truths’—an object packed with ambiguity and now freighted with a 2,500-year-old tale of human vanity and frailty.” One would think that Cyrus’s legendary magnanimity, which led to the Jews’ return to Israel from their Babylonian captivity and the reconstruction of the Temple, would be more usefully displayed in Tehran than in Washington.

A variation of this cultural critique of politics is offered by John Limbert, the former hostage, who is probably the most erudite Persian-speaker ever to pass through Foggy Bottom. Limbert had retired from the State Department to teach at the Naval Academy, but returned to Washington in the service of one he saw as a possible breakthrough president, promising to reset relations with the Muslim world. It was likely Limbert who drafted the Persian language letters from President Obama to Khamenei in 2009. Soft-spoken, considerate, with a deep and wry grasp of Persian literature, Harvard-educated, and married to an Iranian, Limbert was widely welcomed among the cognoscenti in Washington, who shared his hopes. After the pro-democracy Green Movement erupted and was suppressed, catching the White House off guard, Limbert went back to teaching. “The Obama administration has been in office now for over a year and a half, and I think everyone thought we would be in a better place with Iran,” he forlornly remarked. “Not necessarily that we would be friends, but that we would at least be talking to each other on a regular and civil basis.”

Limbert has written and spoken trenchantly about the Islamic Republic’s failures. But his sympathy for the Iranian people and his displeasure at seeing Washington, even under Obama, incapable of the nuanced approach he believes required for such a complicated country reinforces a mindset Limbert has probably had ever since the hostage-takers blindfolded him and the other Americans at the Tehran embassy in 1979: two countries misunderstood, errant, unnecessarily demonizing each other, locked in a Manichean struggle. But for Limbert, as for many cultural apologists, the greater burden rests with America, the superpower, which helped engineer a regrettable coup d’état in Iran in 1953 and later did little to curb the shah’s tyranny.

Other culture-first observers of Iran try to translate personal experience into larger political points. The English journalist Christopher de Bellaigue, whose finely etched portraits of Iranian life often appear in the New York Review of Books, is perhaps the best of these. He conveys the mirth, passions, cynicism, and religious and economic fatigue of contemporary life in an Iran transformed by the revolution. His writings are a counterpoint to those of expatriate Iranians and Westerners who see counterrevolution just around the corner. In Bellaigue’s telling, Persians may live in a theocratic state that is capable of brutality, but its harshness is softened by a still-powerful traditional culture and an open love of modernity. Bellaigue sees an Islamic Republic where the regime has some legitimacy among the faithful (he’s undoubtedly right), but is weakened by pervasive cynicism.

The Shiite love of taqiyya, the deception that believers may legitimately use against nonbelievers or, as was most often the case, more powerful Sunnis, now plays against the mullahs and their security services. The regime constantly lies, especially about corruption among the revolutionary elite; the Iranian people lie right back. Bellaigue, also married to an Iranian, always sees the kaleidoscope of color—the humanity—that exists even within the regime. He unfailingly empathizes, fulfilling the imperative that any foreigner see the natives as they see themselves. Seven years ago, when the Western commentariat feared that George W. Bush might unleash another war, Bellaigue frightfully envisioned an American attack during a languid Iranian summer. “In my heart, I am more like the people about me. ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ As the air warms and my wife lumbers into her final smiling month of pregnancy, it seems too vile to imagine that sometime soon, a nice American boy may press a button or open a chamber and rain destruction down around us.”

The contradictions of the Islamic Republic can have a profound effect on Westerners looking in. The closer you get, the more disorienting they become. In America, as in Western Europe, there is no great disconnect between culture and politics: The morality of the average American is roughly in tune with the mores of his elected representatives. Even in France, where the political elite, refined by Parisian tastes and generations of meritocratic education, is the most distant from the governed, there is still a shared moral compass that defines and limits the actions of the political class. In Iran, as in most authoritarian societies, the goodness of the people seems outlandishly at odds with the distant wickedness of the ruling thugs. Limbert’s admirable little book on the Islamic Republic, written in 1987, captures this disconnect in its title, Iran: At War with History. The constant incongruities—the unrelentingly wry, cynical, playful genius of Iranians versus the harsh Islam of the Khomeinists—is compounded by the long-standing democratic aspirations of so many Persians, which have been advanced by even culturally conservative clerics. One doesn’t have to accept the Iran-centric cultural critique of the Stanford scholar Abbas Milani (Iranians had the cultural building blocks for an open democratic society before most Europeans did) to nonetheless embrace Milani’s enthusiasm for la différence persane. Iranians aren’t Arabs, Uzbeks, Turkomans, or Pakistanis: There is something in Persian culture, something old but effervescent, prideful and curious, that makes the observer immediately conscious of unfulfilled, enormous potential, of unrequited but not unreasonable dreams.

Attentive Western observers cannot fail to notice the powerful oblique criticism of the regime in contemporary Persian literature and film. Though tolerance for these scathing critiques has ebbed and flowed since Khomeini’s death in 1989, the general effect of such colorful dissent is to underscore how different Iran’s religious dictatorship is from lifeless Communist tyrannies, Saddam’s Iraq, or even the more humdrum secular authoritarianism that the Great Arab Revolt has challenged since 2010. Truly wicked regimes—the type that really shouldn’t have nuclear weapons—wouldn’t allow such dissent, the Western commentariat suggests. Occidentals need consistency, and Iranians don’t supply it. If the hypocrisies of Persian society are so omnipresent and impressive—especially at the top of society (clerics indulging in sexual escapades, the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful at play in London, Paris, and Rome)—then nothing in Iran can really be that holy. The regime, nasty as it may be, just isn’t sufficiently hard-core and competent to terrify the West, even if the regime gets a nuclear weapon.

Since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), which finally stopped young Iranian men from martyring themselves, Westerners have not been powerfully exposed to the passion play side of the Iranian character that latched onto Shiism, the martyr’s faith par excellence. The Irano-Semitic taste for myth can make the Persian faithful highly susceptible to idealistic visions and hidden truths. Marry that to Persian hubris and to a nasty modern embitterment that is religious, ethnic, and profoundly Marxist, and one can see why Iran had an Islamic revolution and the pitiless, obsidian-eyed Ruhollah Khomeini became the Imam, a charismatic leader touched by God.

The dark side has always been politically preeminent in the Islamic Republic, even after the war against Saddam Hussein had largely burned jihadism out of the common faithful. Even in the early 1990s, when Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the “pragmatic” major domo of the politicized clergy, was opening Iran to European investment and trying to find ways to attract American capital and technology, Rafsanjani and Khamenei, working amicably in tandem, were blowing up Jews in Argentina and Americans at Khobar Towers and murdering Iranian dissidents across Europe. In 1997, when the always-smiling Mohammad Khatami won nearly 70 percent of the popular vote for president, most Western academics and journalists who covered Iran saw Thermidor coming. They believed their Iranian interlocutors, highly Westernized reformers, proud but dispirited revolutionaries all, who were hopeful that the Islamic Republic would have a soft evolution to popular sovereignty. They badly misjudged Khamenei, who loathed Khatami’s “dialogue among civilizations”; they didn’t know at all the Revolutionary Guards who’d risen to manhood in the war and remained, even after the slaughter, committed to Khomeini’s dreams. The fraternity of combat and their own miraculous survival made these warriors an elite, with a hardened sense of divine destiny and entitlement.

Today, visiting journalists and academics, like Western nuclear negotiators, rarely spend time with the overseers of Evin Prison, who can beat, rape, and torture. Nor do they hang out with the dissident-beating Basij or chat with active-duty intelligence officers who have learned how to crack Iranian families apart through just the intimation of violence. They seldom converse with the hard-core clergy, who still recognize Khamenei’s right to rule, or with the mullahs-in-the-making at the Revolutionary Guard Corps’s new clerical school in Qom. Resident or visiting Westerners have little to no firsthand knowledge of senior guardsmen, especially the Quds Force, responsible for recent lethal strikes on Israeli diplomats and tourists and the targeted killings of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Quds Force has assumed liaison responsibility from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence for foreign radical Islamic groups and terrorist organizations. This assumption of authority mirrors the enormous growth in power of Khamenei’s personal office, which now employs upwards of 5,000 people, and his strong preference for the Revolutionary Guards over other state institutions. The nuclear program is under the corps’s supervision. It is not unreasonable to guess that Khamenei would give the Quds Force, his most trusted praetorians, control of the Islamic Republic’s atomic weapons.

Cultural apologists, who tend to be thoroughly secular, don’t highlight the unbeliever-vs.-God dimension to the Islamic Republic’s internal and external struggles. Modern radical Islamic militancy comes in many shades, but it is often fairly forgiving of believers’ personal faults so long as they have the big vision correct. This derives from traditional Islam, where heresy is an awkward, undigested concept in large part because Islamic theology is so thin (the Holy Law, at least in theory, is what counts) and the “confession of faith,” the shahada, the essential and sufficient acts for a Muslim, are so few. Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists certainly want the believer to follow a code of conduct (no booze, no pork, prayer, sex only with one’s wives or husband), but the real issue for Islamists is the struggle between the West (at home and abroad) and the faith. It is overtly political, yet also, in their minds, explicitly religious.

The omnipresent hypocrisies of the revolutionary elite don’t really touch their faith since religion in the Islamic Republic has become “secularized.” There is the political creed, which is primary, and then there is personal faith, which is between you and the Almighty. The same secularizing process is now happening to the empowered Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Westerners, with their Christian roots, have an extraordinarily hard time digesting the obviously irreligious political maneuvering and corruption of sincere, deadly serious Islamists. Westerners see contradictions and smell pragmatism; radical Muslims see right through the contradictions to the categorical imperative: hatred of the United States, Jews, and Israel (the order may vary, but all three are always there). Whether Rafsanjani’s, Khamenei’s, and senior guard commanders’ children are partying hard in London tells you little about their parents’ conception of Islam or tolerance for Western culture (and little about the children’s commitment to their parents’ creed). It tells you nothing about why the revolutionary elite has so consistently used terrorism as both statecraft and soulcraft. VIP hypocrisies are a digression from the fundamental observation made by the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens: Mullahs who can’t make up their minds whether it’s lawful to bash a woman’s head in for having sex outside wedlock ought not to have access to a nuclear weapon.



The Diplomatic Apologists

The analytical missteps of the cultural apologists set the stage for policy types in Washington who just want to let Tehran have the bomb but are unwilling to say so. Many of the VIP signers of the reports of the Iran Project, which have been hailed and partly paid for by the Ploughshares Fund, would come under this rubric. The Washington foreign-policy establishment always has a zeitgeist, and on the Iranian nuclear question the considered, socially acceptable position is that diplomacy and sanctions still have time to work—but, as the president has it, “all options are still on the table.”

Most foreign-policy cognoscenti have already acquiesced to the idea, if not yet the reality, of nuclear weapons in the hands of Khamenei and his praetorians, but they don’t want to gainsay the president publicly—or let go of the diplomatic option for fear that the president might be obliged to launch a preemptive strike.

Though dimmed in our memories, 9/11 still has a kick. It’s difficult for former senior officials (less so academics) to say openly that it would be better to let terrorists have an atomic bomb than risk war between the United States and the Islamic Republic. So they prevaricate and try to lessen the mullahs’ menace. And some, like former ambassadors Pickering, Frank Wisner, Daniel Kurtzer, and William Luers and the MIT professor Jim Walsh, who have all striven to advance mini-“grand bargains” and nuclear compromises, may well believe what they write about Iran. At a recent McCain Institute debate on the Islamic Republic, Pickering averred that Washington and Tehran are now closer to a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear imbroglio than they have been in years. This would be news to the French, who have the finest diplomatic service in the West and have been doggedly negotiating with Tehran over its nuclear program since 2003 and engaging the regime, at times with great enthusiasm, since 1992.

At the McCain Institute debate, Pickering complimented the president for keeping open the possibility of preemption since it enhances American diplomacy. Yet in late 2012 he called “all options on the table” a “gold-standard trope” of Republican jingoists, and in 2008 in the New York Review of Books he called it “unrealistic” and “dangerous.” The unacknowledged logic is: If preemption is off the table, then any diplomatic track is acceptable since there is ultimately no irreconcilable point of contention. If one could somehow talk the Iranian regime into building only 500 IR-2 centrifuges in six months instead of 1,000, then Western diplomats could claim they’d succeeded. With this crowd, diplomacy is really not about prevention. So why not recognize the regime’s “legitimate” right to 5 percent enriched uranium? With Persian pride thus satisfied, so the hope goes, the Iranians might voluntarily slow their program. Once Washington has sensitively dealt with Iran’s “enduring sense of insecurity” and shown a willingness to rise above 34 years of “mutual ignorance” and “overpowering distrust” and bridge “the vast cavern of psychological space” between it and the mullahs and their guards, then self-interest should lead the Iranian regime, in today’s “increasingly geo-commercial era,” to seek a more prosperous normalcy with America.

It’s probably the most amusing irony to be found within the American foreign-policy establishment: The more merry realists and soft-hearted liberals advocate a friendlier American approach to the Islamic Republic, the more they amplify, if that’s possible, the supreme leader’s hatred of the United States. Anything that brings America closer, that threatens to bring normalcy to U.S.-Iranian relations, is anathema to him. A grand bargain for Khamenei is death. Mini-grand bargains are slow-motion suicide. Barack Obama was the test case. American and European Iran apologists could not have asked for a more promising president to test their theories. In 2009 Obama actually believed that mutual ignorance and, at least on the Iranian side, justified distrust had defined bilateral relations before his coming. He extended his hand. He dreamed of direct, unconditional U.S.-Iranian talks. He kept quiet when the Green Revolution erupted on Tehran’s streets. Obama was certainly prepared in 2009—if Khamenei had only given him an encouraging sign—to waive the then largely ineffective U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic. There was no “missed opportunity” with this president. How did Khamenei respond to Obama’s entreaties? He called America shaytan-e mojassem (“Satan incarnate”).

The increasing number of Iranian centrifuges and extent of plutonium processing at Arak will surely bring much-needed clarity and honesty to Washington’s great Iran debate. The choices before us are preemption, aggressive containment, and retreat. And effective containment, which would strike back militarily against Iranian-directed or -inspired terrorism, could lead to war—with a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic. So we will soon see whether the indomitable late French intellectual and official Thérèse Delpech, who’d closely watched France’s and Europe’s dealings with Islamic Republic, was right. An admirer of the United States, she was nevertheless skeptical that almighty Washington would do any better than the less mighty Europeans had with the Islamic Republic. In her 2007 book Le Grand Perturbateur (The Great Agitator), she reflects on the nature of the clerical regime and the ups and mostly downs of European-Iranian relations. Looking at a bleak future, Delpech wryly closes with this insight: L’expérience est une école où les leçons coûtent cher, mais c’est la seule où même les imbéciles peuvent apprendre quelque chose. (“Experience is a school where the lessons cost dearly, but it’s the only place where even imbeciles can learn something.”)

Even after 9/11, it’s possible that Delpech will prove to have been too optimistic.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Iranian targets officer in the CIA’s clandestine service, is a contributing editor at The Weekly Standard.

[Agnimitra]

X-posting from US-PRC thread:

Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American, is considered the "expert" on Middle Eastern and Islamic affairs in the US. He was personal advisor to Holbrooke for a while. He always advised Holbrooke to keep paying Pak more jiziya and encourage "democracy" there. Similarly, he favoured diplomacy vis a vis Iran. He says this now:

PBS.org:
Is China 'Pivoting' Toward the Middle East? Author Vali Nasr Says Yes

He has lately been throwing a tantrum about the fact that the US seems to be moving towards confrontation with Iran, especially after the Mojahedin e Khalq started getting some traction in lobbying withing the US. It seems that he is now resorting to the China bogeyman, in order to convince the US that if they antagonize Iran and Pakistan any further, they will fall into China's aggressive embrace.

As the United States eases back from involvement in the Middle East, China's influence and economic dependence there grows, author Vali Nasr recently told PBS NewsHour senior correspondent Margaret Warner in a web exclusive interview.

"For China, the Middle East is a rising strategic interest," he said. In fact, he continued to say that the Chinese don't refer to it as the Middle East but as "West Asia."

The U.S. has announced it wants to "pivot to Asia" and focus attention on China and away from the Middle East, Nasr said, but "the problem is just as we are pivoting East, the Chinese are pivoting West."

The Chinese are looking to the region -- from Pakistan to Iran to Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- to help supply their vast need for energy and products, said Nasr, author of "The Dispensable Nation," which critiques the Obama administration's foreign policy. And China considers stability in the Middle East important to its own stability, he said.

The growing relationship might develop further. While the Middle East watches the American role recede, it will look to China for economic, diplomatic and possibly even military purposes, said Nasr. So as the United States leaves the region, it must be cognizant of what it's leaving behind and why China is so interested, he said.

Nasr was a special adviser to Richard Holbrooke, who was envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2009 to 2010. Prior to that, Nasr was an adviser on Hillary Clinton's foreign policy team while she was running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. He is currently dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

[Agnimitra]

The interviewee in the video above, Vali Nasr, has a special assistant called Bilal Baloch, from Pakistan. Recently both have been giving publicity to the fact that a politician called Narendra Modi from India is trying to cultivate an audience in the US via video conference, but that the US has not capitulated like the EU and started granting him a visa, because he is allegedly involved in anti-Muslim violence.

Just another indication of the kind of agenda to be expected from many apparently secular, Westernized Iranians in positions of influence in the US and EU.

[Agnimitra]

Erotic Republic

Iran is in the throes of an unprecedented sexual revolution. Could it eventually topple the regime?

The article claims that the divorce rate in the Islamic Republic of Iran is now 1 in 7 nationwide, and more than 1 in 4 in Tehran.

[Agnimitra]

Iranian Sex and Circuses

Ronald Reagan used to marvel at the tendency of intellectuals and diplomats to get so involved in “understanding” other countries and cultures, no matter how hostile to the USA, that they ended up apologizing for them. It’s an occupational hazard known as “clientitis,” and Reagan once remarked that he’d like to have a Bureau of American Affairs in the State Department so we could have some diplomats who would plead our case to THEM instead of the other way around.

Clientitis afflicts many Iran experts, in part because the country has a fabulously interesting history, and even today produces some impressive art, literature, and cinema. There’s also the endlessly intriguing challenge to try to figure out who’s who and what’s what inside the Islamic Republic. I’ve often said that Iran=Italy squared, in terms of political complexity. You can’t identify the players even if you have the latest scorecard.

Still, there’s no excuse for so many articles and official pronouncements exploring who’s going to “win” the Iranian “elections.” Nor is there any excuse for failing to understand the Obama administration’s latest pretense at getting tough on the regime. And there is certainly no excuse for writing about a presumed sexual revolution that is threatening the regime, of all things. Let’s get it straight.

[Agnimitra]

Female students banned from engineering fields

HRANA News Agency – New criteria defined for graduate programs ban female students from studying in seven different engineering fields at Isfahan University of Technology.

According to a report by Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), Isfahan University of Technology will no longer admit female students into graduate programs to study agricultural engineering with a concentration in irrigation, animal science and machinery. Female students have also been banned from obtaining masters degrees in natural resources engineering with a concentration in watershed and land management as well as desertification. Furthermore, the university has adopted a policy to admit only male students to study water resources engineering.

A group of undergraduate female students have objected to the new policy, expressing their concerns in a letter written to the university officials.

...

“Due to our social norms and restrictions, female students aren’t free to leave home to study out of town,” the students said in their letter. “We have already asked the university board of directors to lift these restrictions. But citing lack of job opportunities for female students, the board of directors has failed to address our concerns.”

“We have been told that our field of study is incompatible with our femininity,” the students complained. “Nonetheless, we believe that we are as qualified as our male counterparts to specialize in any of these areas. A large number of female engineers have already succeeded in the same fields. Female students can have a promising future ahead of them if they are given the same opportunities as men. We can excel in the job market both as engineers and teachers, training future female students.”

[Agnimitra]

Pentagon Report on Iranian Intelligence agents Who Collaborated with NIAC

[Agnimitra]

'In this room there is no Islam': The Shah's 'special relationship' with Iran's Israeli community

Video trailer of docu:

[Agnimitra]

Worth a read:
The Myth of an American Coup - What really happened in Iran in 1953

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of Operation Ajax—the notorious CIA plot that is supposed to have ousted Iranian prime minister Muhammad Mossadeq. In the intervening decades, the events of 1953 have been routinely depicted as a nefarious U.S. conspiracy that overthrew a nationalist politician who enjoyed enormous popular support. This narrative, assiduously cultivated by the Islamic Republic, was so readily endorsed by the American intellectual class that presidents and secretaries of state are now expected to commence any discussion of Iran by apologizing for the behavior of their malevolent predecessors. At this stage, the account has even seeped into American popular culture, featuring most recently in Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning blockbuster Argo. The only problem with this mythologized history is that the CIA’s role in Mossadeq’s demise was largely inconsequential. In the end, the 1953 coup was very much an Iranian affair.

...it is worth underscoring the fact that the clerical estate—despite the Islamic Republic’s current position on the so-called CIA coup—played a critical role in Mossadeq’s downfall.

[Agnimitra]

From Iran's Arab province of Khuzestan -
Water crisis in Al-Ahwaz

The Al-Ahwaz region hosts 90 per cent of Iran's oil production and a third of its surface water, but the majority of its indigenous Ahwazi Arab inhabitants live in absolute poverty. Many struggle to get the basics, such as housing, drinking water, food, education in their native tongue and medicine.

Video:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEZd3h2Ivkw

[Agnimitra]

As Iranian state TV promotes newly elected Rowhani as a moderate and the same youth who were wearing green bands and raging against the regime in 2009 now deliriously party in the streets at this breath of fresh air...it is amazing to see the level of historical amnesia in Iran's younger population and how superficial and childish their concerns and reactions are.

A 2001 article from Time mag about Rowhani's role in Iran assassinations:

The Tehran Connection
Sunday, June 24, 2001

According to Western intelligence and Iranian dissident sources, decisions to assassinate opponents at home or abroad are made at the highest level of the Iranian government: the Supreme National Security Council. The top political decision-making body is chaired by Rafsanjani and includes, among others, Fallahian, Velayati and Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini as the revolution's spiritual guide in 1989. The council's secretary, parliamentary ; vice president Hassan Rouhani, was recently quoted in the Iranian newspaper Ettela'at, vowing that Iran "will not hesitate to destroy the activities of counterrevolutionary groups abroad."

[Agnimitra]

May 27, 2010:
Iranian Ex-Diplomat (defector) Releases Revealing Statement on Regime

Slightly dated article, but gives a good idea of the garrison state that Islamist revolution turns a nation into. This model is being willy nilly replicated across the Islamic world including our Paki neighbours.

Some interesting pointers of the functional direction this takes such states and the world into:

In one of our meetings, one of the Sepah chief officers explained to me that the policy of the Sepah is to transfer crisis from inside Iran to foreign countries

This should confirm to all that the function of Pakistan is itself to generate and thrive on manageable 'crisis' after 'crisis'.

Depending on the levels of education and cultural self-perception of the peoples of any Islamist state, the internal situation will be more or less ugly. E.g., Iranians are well educated and have a cultural self-perception of relaxed refinement - and so a certain level of order and development is seen within the country. In Pakistan, the situation will be very different.

[Agnimitra]

Like many, many Islamic Caliphates, Sultanates and Emirates over the last 14 centuries, the Islamic Republic of Iran is making war on its Sufis (while it promotes Sufi events in non-Moslem societies):

The Gonabadi Dervishes have been charged again

Interesting point to note: The Nematollahi tariqah of Iranian Sufism (being persecuted over the past few years) has been HQ'ed in the UK for some time now.

4 Dervishes from Kovar town have been charged with “forming a terrorist group against the government,” “participating in the gatherings with the aim of overthrowing the regime,” “enmity against the God” and “having illegal weapons” in the revolutionary court of Shiraz yesterday morning.

According to a report by Mahzouban-e-Nour website, Mohesen Esmaili, Seyyed Ebrahim Bahrami, Mohammad Ali Sadeghi and Mohammad Ali Dehghan the 4 Dervishes who are in Adel Abad prison of Shiraz were tried byJaudge Vaezi in the branch 14 of the revolutionary court of Shiraz and charged with “forming a terrorist group against the government,” “participating in the gatherings with the aim of overthrowing the regime,” “enmity against the God” and “having illegal weapons” which were denied by them and their lawyer, Kamran Sadeghi.

These Dervishes had been arrested on April 30, 2013 in Kovar and was integrated in the intelligence of Shiraz for a month under physical torture.

Their family photos were misused to threaten them and the agents have been insulting their beliefs and the legends of the Gonaabadi Nematollahi Tarighat to put them under more pressure.

These pressures have caused back ache and nervous problems for one of them which makes it necessary to send him to the hospital.

In September 2011, the hardliners gathered before the houses of the Dervishes in Kovar insulting them resulted in a contention in which a Dervish was killed by shot and several were wounded. Since then there have been a great amount of arrest and pressure on the Dervishes during which 100 have been arrested, tortured and tried. The arrests are still continuing but despite all complaint of Dervishes there is no arrest and judiciary process on those who caused all these conflicts.

Sufis must always be careful to be on the right side of the Islamic ulema, or risk the Caliph's sword. The Prophet Muhammad called the ulema the heirs to his legacy. They and their shariah and their Islamizing mission must be respected and facilitated by the Sufis, otherwise this marriage will be a turbulent one. Sufis must soften the target non-Muslim society to the mystique of Islam and facilitate their conversion. They must not dilute Islamism from within. Or, they must act as a hospice or a refreshing diversion for discontents within Islamic society, to prevent counter-revolution. That has always been the message, since Ghazali's time.

[Agnimitra]

The new incumbent touted as a 'mulla lite' dove who won the recent election has flapped his wings already: at least 79 executions reported in 3 weeks, and numerous arrests in Ahvaz (Khuzestan province - Iran's Arab possession).

The executions also included some Persian Ne'matollahi Sufi dervishes. Which only re-affirms the much repeated historical pattern of the use of 'Sufism' by Islamism: Imam Ghazali brokered a marriage of convenience between the Sufi and the Ulema. The terms are...

1. Eclectic Sufism is a safety valve to tranquilize a populace that's bristling under the weight of dry Islamic Shariah.

2. Sufism is a trojan export - to soften kafir societies to proselytization and subversion of their own native eclectic culture.

3. Sufism is a plagiarizing medium - to absorb ideas and techniques from Mithraic, Zoro, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish Kabbala & Xian mysticism.

4. If Sufism plays this subservient role to the Ulema, it is tolerated. But upon revolt, the Caliph's sword finds its mark.

The ghoulish grafting of mysticism onto Islamic imperialism is an interesting phenomenon:
Owais and Owaisi: Two halves of Jarasandha

[Agnimitra]

May provide a clue to the cultural Sanskritization/"Aryanization" of that nation (as opposed to some race theory) -

In the Histories of Herodotus, he states that before they were called Persians they were called "Cephenians".

Does anyone have a clue on the etymology or terminology of the term "Cephenians"

-Herodutos, The Persian War Book 7 - POLYMNIA-

This people was known to the Greeks in ancient times by the name of Cephenians; but they called themselves and were called by their neighbours, Artaeans (etymology?). It was not till Perseus, the son of Jove and Danae, visited Cepheus the son of Belus, and, marrying his daughter Andromeda, had by her a son called Perses (whom he left behind him in the country because Cepheus had no male offspring), that the nation supposedly took from this Perses the name of Persians.

[Agnimitra]

The islamic concept of jahilliya and the faith of pre-islamic Zoroastrian sciences and scholarship

Due to the ever-increasing enthusisasm of the iranian youth for their zoroastrian identity and roots; the vicious polemics against the ancient religion of the iranians is becoming louder and more vociferous in semi-official circles in ira…n. One of the often cited charges against Zoroastrianism is that: “the pre-islamic iran had no science or scientists, no real scientific achievement or notable learning; and all learning and wisdom, art and poetry came to iran as a direct result of the arab invasion and islamic subjugation. Accordingly, ancient iranians/zoroastrians lived in the dark ages/jahilliya, and the ancient persian empires were built on superstition, sorcery and oppression. Such statements come from people who officially teach that “the language spoken in paradise is arabic and the language spoken in hell is Persian.”

IMAM “Mohammed e Ghazaali,” reasoned that learning mathematics is wrong. He argued that one who learns mathematics or philosophy will discover a world based on reasoning and logic. Such a person may think that religion’s pillars are placed on the same base. With no logic and reasoning in religion, the pupil becomes infidel. “Gazaali” concluded that mathematics and philosophy should be banned. Gazzali, showed a particular personal haterad toward all things Zoroastrian, pre-islamic and genuinely Iranian.

[Agnimitra]

The Love of Animals and the Holiness of the Dog In Zoroastrianism

...and in the Veda

[Agnimitra]

Razi (Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi) was an Iranian polymath who is often used as a poster boy for "Islamic science". But actually he was never invested in Islam, and often disparaged it. He positively did say that he admired the philosophies of the Egyptian neo-Platonic school of Harran, and the philosophy of the "Brahmins" ("barhaman") of India.

Here is another opinion from Razi, about polygamy, which is considered great and a benediction from Allah in Islam. "If a man is excessively cowardly and extremely inclined to passion and pleasure, then he may have several beloveds rather than one, who is 'indispensable and irreplaceable,' in order to avoid extreme grief over an unfortunate loss of the beloved..."

[Agnimitra]

I think some of the material in this lecture is contrived and incorrect. But just posting it for the record...

Vedic roots of Western religious tradition

[ramana]

WSJ:

Politics and Persian Language
On usefulness of Firdausi's Shahnameh!!!!

[Agnimitra]

WSJ:

Politics and Persian Language
On usefulness of Firdausi's Shahnameh!!!!

I had a chance to speak with Dr. Dick Davis (the person quoted extensively in the article) on several occasions. He also said that JRR Tolkien basically cooked up the Lord of the Rings theme based on the Shahnameh template. Its a valuable pointer to the political and ethnic undertones in the Lord of the Rings.

Added: BTW, the "ring" symbolism and the lord of the ring theme is also Zoroastrian. The ring is central to its most famous symbol, the Fravahar, showing the winged fravashiholding the ring of good fortune.

[Paul]

^^^I thought it is loosely based on the Ottoman invasions of Europe.

[Agnimitra]

^^ Paul, I added some to the post above.
Yes, the LoTR series was about Europe's own experience with what Ferdowsi calls "the Army of Darkness". But Tolkien used Ferdowsi's mythological template.

[ramana]

X-Post....

Just as Chinese took to antiJapanism (is there a good word for this hain ji?) to get over their communist hangover and into the Nationalistic mold...
Similarly Iran is these days using antiamericanism to get over the Islamic revolutionary hangover into the Persianist (aka nationalist) mold.

There is a good measure of social control in Iran, and that is the price of genuine imported Scotch whiskey in Tehran, because it’s a) forbidden, and b) has to be smuggled in for practical purposes from Dubai, and the only way it can come from Dubai is with the cooperation of the Revolutionary Guard. The price of whiskey has been declining for years, and you go to a party in north Tehran now and you get lots of whiskey. And it’s only slightly more expensive than in Northwest Washington.
But on the other hand, the regime is doing something for which they will have my undying gratitude—that is, they have been manufacturing the one and only post-Islamic society. They created a situation in which Iranians in general, worldwide, not only in Iran, are disaffiliated. They are converting Muslim Iranians into post-Muslim Iranians

http://israelamerica.wordpress.com/2011 ... d-luttwak/

The core of Iran is changing , it may not be expressed at its peripheries (as in Hezbollah's or Iraqi Shia or Alawaite haunts) yet. Actually Islamist pretense is important to Iran (more now than ever) as it imparts it with assymetric capability to fight or retaliate against the Sunni axis - many here will agree if i say that Hezbollah is Iranian frontline at this point of time (just as Saudis use their own "peripheral" groups for assymetric mischief) - there is one BIG difference though Sunni populations are still predominantly radically islamist and are on track to become more radical (Saudi funds keep making sure that that is the future trajectory) .
While Shia Iran (especially its population) is stepping into its post Islamist/c phase.

So once Iran gets nukes to defend its Oil and Gas from the evil eye -it won't need Hezbollah to be Islamist and they too will turn Palestenian or will be sacrificed.

Iran has huge reserves of gas and petroleum which are quarantined from markets by the Massa-Saudi petrodollar combo. Now just when massa is dropping Saudi down the chute (peaked oil ?) it now wants a similar deal with Iran to continue to underwrite their Petro dollar economy (as Saudis previously did) -all these war drums are to browbeat Iran into a bad deal for itself whose costs will be ultimately borne by it and its markets (which will be us) .

So India's aim must be to prevent massa transposing itself as an intermediary between India and Iran's energy linkages . So we must make sure Iran makes a good deal with Massa and continues to have leverage to enforce the terms of it in the future and for this Iran should have nukes in its kitty.

re:Saudi Massa relationship , Massa as in any other of its relationships is nobody's bi**h - anglosaxons since the beginning of the 20 th century had house of Saud by their Balls.Future will be the same.

Israel knows that Iranians are playing to the wider islamist gallery when a sane guy like ahmejdenad declares to wipe the "Zionist entity" off the map (Iran needs that posturing to keep its frontline groups(Hezbollah) holding lines) . Israeli intelligence cheifs regularly allude to this in their interviews (which is drowned in the continuous bluster of the Israeli civilian heads of govt)

[Agnimitra]

Came across this:

Ran across an article on Iranian.com linked below regarding the debate about current Persian script based on Arabic script which reminds one of the opinion of the "father of Persian modernist fiction," linguist, and translator of ancient Iranian languages, Sadegh Hedayat, on this matter …

Hedayat notes in his "Zand and Houman Yasn" (1934) that not only is the current alphabet based on Arabic script not suitable for writing Old Persian or Middle Persian (Pahlavi), but various Iranian dialects and native tongues including Modern Persian may not be properly written in this way…Hedayat states if a Czech or French person unfamiliar with Persian writes a Persian sentence in their own scripts, they can at least pronounce the Persian words correctly…however, if something in Czech or French is written down in the current Persian script for an Iranian familiar with those languages, it is impossible for the reader not to make mistakes in pronouncing the words…Hedayat explains that having an inappropriate alphabet taken from Arabic for Persian has caused the language to split into two different forms: a spoken version and a written version… in other words, the inappropriate Arabic-based script has skewed the Persian language…as a linguist, Hedayat believes changing the current script for the Persian language is important and critical…this need has nothing to do with nationalist sentiments because even the ancient scripts used for various stages of Iranian languages were based on foreign influences…Hedayat believes there is no need to invent a new script but that a simple version of sister Indo-European Latin script with accents may be applied to correct the problems with written Persian language…only with this change will the spoken Persian language once again be recorded properly...

Full article: Persian Script Change: Counter Arguments to Arguments Against Change

[ramana]

Would similar comments be made about urdu?