A brief history from the views of an outsider regarding Iran, nukes and human rights.
June 20th, 2009I wrote this paper recently and I thought I might post it for some discussion. All errors and conclusions are my own.
The Iranian government is a unique organization among the club of nations. It has a complicated flow chart of authority in its chain of command and its ultimate arbiter is a religious figure (Keddie 2006). Since its inception in 1979, it has experimented and tried several ways of improving itself. While having a president, a prime minister, a supreme ruler and several other powerful figures of authority may seem confusing to the outside world, it is particularly frustrating for those who must interact with such a bureaucracy (Ganji 2008).
International organizations, other governments, domestic bodies and individuals all have reported strange and contradictory accounts of the Islamic Republic and their dealings with it. This discussion will focus on how this body has dealt with the nuclear issue and human rights.
We will examine the security apparatus that enforces the will of the clerics, and ultimately compare and contrast the options available both to the Iranians, and to the outside world concerning its future role on the international stage (Nasr 2006).
The Iranian revolution was a reaction to decades of perceived interference and meddling in Iranian affairs on the part of the US government and other countries (Keddie 2006). The Shah of Iran was a strong ally of the US and exercised much of his authority pursuing mutual and not so mutual interests. The poor and uneducated suffered due to some of his economic policies and the religious class routinely lambasted him, deepening a divide between western influenced intellectuals who were in charge at the time, and the middle and lower classes (Chubin and Zabih 1974).
Powerful figures emerged that acted as the prime voice of the opposition and despite the Shah’s attempt to silence them, they gradually gained momentum and unyielding popular support. SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police trained by the CIA and the Mossad, was notorious in their work (Keddie 2006). Torture, crushing dissent, propaganda and a host of other black operations began in their office. In the run up to the revolution, they were very busy. When the Shah finally left the country, the organization’s headquarters was ransacked and gutted. The lead individuals were executed and the people who worked in the organization on a day-to-day basis had a choice to make–switch sides or flee (Parsi 2008).
In the wake of the Islamic revolution, fledgling cleric administrators recognized the need to have a security organization that was able to collect intelligence and track down opponents of the regime (Kairouz 2007). Around 1980 up until 1982, various organizations were gather intelligence and their semi-official status frustrated centralized efforts to organize and carry out serious operations. The Basij, a militia style volunteer force, the Revolutionary Guard, the re-organized Army, and various institutional bodies gave up certain roles and reestablished the VEVAK—a successor to SAVAK (Wehrey and al 2009).
The acronym translates from vazirat etelat va aminat keshvar to the Ministry of Information and State Security. The security role is not confined to this particular organization. As with all things in the Islamic Republic, redundancy is the only constant. The Revolutionary Guard is designed and controlled specifically to enforce the will of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It has its own Army, Air Force, Navy, and Special Force. On top of this organization are the actual armed forces, controlled by a joint command (Wehrey and al 2009).
The organizational logic eludes the conventional views of authority, the system that has emerged is inherently flawed, and not a representation of the peoples will (Chubin, Hoffman, and Rosenau 2004).
The entire system is based on the valiat-faqi, or rule by jurists, principle. Essentially it means the clerics, also known as mullahs, control the real power in Iran. This was the defining principle of the Islamic revolution and the one that Ayatollah Khomeni, the father of the revolution built his philosophy on (Nasr 2006). The reasoning behind this political preference is that it takes the traditional clergy of the Shia Muslims, and makes them the government.
Islamic law, the Shia form of it, has theoretically ‘adapted’ to modern days and its practitioners, the clergy, have institutionalized the religious laws over the entire population, Muslim or not. The inevitable outcome is that the law is often incompatible and ill-suited for day to day grievances and normal people are now caught in the quagmire of protesting a ‘divine’ system, or simply taking the injustice that filters out in the form of family, inheritance, and criminal law (Keddie 2006).
Indeed, Islam is the religion of over ninety percent of the people however, strong and united minorities exist in Iran that have a cultured history (Sanasarian 2000). To name a few, the Sunni Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sufis, Baha’is, Zoroastrians make up the religious minorities; Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis and other ethnic groups comprise an interesting mix of cultural diversity. The Islamic system thought up by the mullahs has little room for anything but Shia Islam.
Although the constitution of Iran recognizes some groups, it does not recognize all. These people live in limbo and cannot rely on the system that has governed their country for the last thirty years. Despite international pressure and Iran’s lip service to the UN resolutions on human rights, the Islamic republic is one of the most habitual violators among the general assembly (Chubin 2006).
Domestically and among the ruling clerics, this is of little consequence as their reasoning puts them above the laws of men. God is the ultimate authority, the clerics determine how, and what laws should be enforced (Nasr 2006). What has developed is a religious theocracy with little in the form of checks and balances, wielding an enormous amount of power and force over a population that is growing increasingly uneasy with the constant micromanagement of day-to-day living (Keddie 1995).
Freedom is a western ruse. Piety and devotion to Islam are the characteristics that the system rewards, and even then, it has to be the correct form of Islam. In the courts, ‘spreading corruption on earth’, ‘insulting Islamic institutions’, ‘deviation’ and ‘acting as a tempter’ all are common charges against people who voice their concerns against the government (Sanasarian 2000).
The intelligence apparatus, once tasked with quelling the dissenters against the Shah, has been reorganized to deal with those who would threaten the Islamic system (Wehrey and al 2009).
Most of the same people still worked in the organizations after the revolution and now it is manned by groomed protégés. Methods and techniques have only evolved but the mentality is sadly very dangerous (Parsi 2008).
Expatriate Iranians who fled the country in the wake of the revolution report harassment and intimidation when visiting friends and family, even thirty years later. Reports of hotel room tossing, being followed in cars, masked men abducting and then releasing people are common for those who make it known that the government of Iran is dangerous or who come under the slightest suspicion.
With all regimes that come to power through revolution, the modern world has made their actions headline news in real-time. This reality has changed the dynamic of the revolutionary game. On a more practical level, the government is not as bad as regimes in different parts of the World. The Iranian theocracy is truly in a category of its own.
While not as repressive as North Korea or as fanatic as Saudi Arabia, their own people increasingly portray its officials as incompetent and corrupt (Nasr 2009). The image of a high-ranking cleric caught on camera entering a house of a colleague and having intercourse with his wife does not help the image the mullahs have been trying to keep down.
Bearded men in robes preaching about morality who are then seen drinking and fondling boys has become a flash point not just in Iran, but across the World.
In all fairness, the Iranian government is not entirely bent on fundamentalism. It has progressive streaks that deserve attention. It has the highest female literacy rate in the Middle East. It has interesting social welfare programs such as subsidizing sex change operations and needle exchanges for addicts (Keddie 2006).
Its nuclear program has come a long way since the Shah of Iran began developing the expertise back in the sixties. This last point about the nuclear issue deserves more attention.
On the surface most people have heard about the Iranian governments desire to master the centrifuge process in order to pursue peaceful nuclear development. The facts are interesting. Iran is the world’s 5th largest exporter of oil. Its nuclear ambitions have been declared peaceful and the Supreme Leader has declared having nuclear weapons to be a sin (Chubin 2006). Iranian VEVAK has been caught and documented trafficking nuclear supplies from China and India and most notably Pakistan with the help of AQ Khan, a renowned nuclear scientist with expertise in weapons. Intelligence has indicated that there have been efforts to specifically develop nuclear weapons. Iran has used chemical weapons and its enemies, the US and Israel, both have nuclear and chemical weapons (Nasr).
Iran says it needs to develop nuclear technology in order to satisfy its power demands and it would like to move away from fossil fuels. Each of these tidbits can be argued by books of evidence, for or against the case that Iran sincerely desires a nuclear weapon (Keddie 2006).
Briefly, a devil’s advocate approach may let us see this in a different light. Intelligence can be fabricated, as was the case in Iraq. For the Supreme Leader to declare nuclear weapons a sin is a strong statement in a theocracy. Iran has been forced to work in the black markets due to sanctions. Nuclear energy is cleaner, cheaper and a smart move in today’s greener and more ecologically minded international community. AQ Khan did not give Iran a weapon, simply directions on general enrichment. The supplies that have been traced back to smugglers have been things that could go as much toward a civilian pursuit as a weapons one.
The will to have an open and frank dialog has been present for the last few years and round after round of security council resolution and IAEA inspection has produced mixed results (Kairouz 2007).
The Iranian public has invested deeply into the concept that it is their inalienable right to pursue civilian nuclear projects. It has become a point of great pride for many Iranians that their country has developed such technology. The Middle East has been the one place where many people have tried to keep anything nuclear from showing its face (Chubin 2006). With all the oil, who needs nuclear power—so goes the reasoning.
The reality of the situation is not about nukes. For the Iranians it is about pride and a country trying to find itself on the world stage. In the region, Iran has become a strong player and its influence reaches to every corner of the Middle East. It has strong trading relations with Germany and France. Its partners to the East include China and Russia. It is diametrically opposed to most things that the US pursues diplomatically and it has a strong group of nations that it negotiates with to follow suit (Nasr 2009).
The Iranian representation at the UN boasts of its status as one of the founding signatories of the convening treaty. It has sat on the Human Rights council and chaired various international organizations that promote dialog and understand among different religions. These various positions appear to be the legitimate position of a country that wants to be taken seriously in front of the International community (Ganji 2008).
Herein lays the crux of the Iranian dilemma. How does a country that goes about participating in various international organizations and demands respect to the point of belligerence simultaneously carry on with overt disdain for Israel, minorities, the US, most of the western world and all it stands for? The distance and disconnect between the ruling elite in Iran and the people on the street is very visible. As much as the regime tries to contain dissent and ‘deviation’, the world is no longer the 12th century and people will do what they want.
With Iran’s large Jewish population and over 300,000 Baha’is, a minority that is not recognized and routinely persecuted, the international community should focus on the things that the government cannot hide—it’s obvious intolerance of ideas other than its own (Dominic Parviz Brookshaw , and Seena B. Fazel 2007).
In 2007, Mahmud Ahmadinejad held a conference entitled the World without Zionism. He is known to publicly discount the holocaust and has a great fanatical outlook on messianic figures within Shia Islam. For example, he regularly attributes world events to the Mehdi, the Hidden Imam of the twelver Shia belief system (Wehrey and al 2009). With so much public outrage both domestically and internationally, those in the position to negotiate should twist the proverbial arm of the Iranian government not by threatening a point of pride, the nuclear development, but an embarrassing blemish and insult to a country’s sense of intelligence and class.
Human rights and sane policy have enough merit within and of themselves that the position could speak for itself. One would have to appear completely evil and cold to deny and do away with evidence presented in regards to a pogrom of truly deviant, institutionalized behavior on the part of a supposedly pious regime grounded in religion.
What makes this proposal difficult to swallow for those involved in negotiations with Iran is that there is little precedent for change when a country is confronted with human rights abuse evidence. China, Cuba, Russia, North Korea, and dozens of African nations all routinely and systematically oppress their people in order for a political agenda to be achieved.
However, in the case of Iran, the nuclear issue becomes a main headline in the struggle to manage the Middle East. If Iran is building a nuclear bomb, it would be the second Islamic country, after Pakistan to do so. It would also act a great catalyst to an arms race with rival countries surrounding Iran, most of which are Sunni Arab. Israel would be in a very difficult position and it would be inclined to take preemptive action as it has done in the past (Kairouz 2007).
As fate would have it, as this paper is being written Iranians are flooding the streets of Iran with a shocking sense of solidarity in the face of the ruling regime. The intelligence apparatus is vainly trying to stop news from getting out and is blaming ‘foreigners’, a favorite scapegoat in Iran, for the upheaval. No political demonstration of this magnitude has taken place on this large of a scale since the Iranian revolution itself. The prospects of a number of very interesting outcomes has dramatically increased within the last six days.
While the demonstrations are the result of a political election and apparent vote rigging, the debate has quickly shifted to broader issues that have been simmering for quite some time. Human rights, the right to assemble and protest, the accountability of the leaders and the legitimacy of the establishment itself have all come under recent limelight.
Historically speaking, crushing dissent has a mixed record among countries who are totalitarian and dictatorial in nature. In the short term in may fuel tensions and unrest. This is often met with more brutality. In the broader view, the world has come to be a place where people and their countries are growing tired of war and the people on the street want more to do with government. Although many countries still practice repressiveness, their doing so only deepens there inevitable fall from power. The USSR is a good example.
Undoubtedly, the world 2.0 is become a game of diplomacy and talks. A place where twisted agendas and unfair governments are being called out and their activities made known. The age of secret police appears to be coming to an end and while intelligence activity will always be needed, the role of the Gestapo-like groups is quickly fading.
Normal people and sympathetic politicians are having the will and desire to stand up to the established elite and challenge them. The prospect of bloodshed and civil war is still very real in a handful of countries around the World, and the citizens and peoples appear to be readying on a sub conscious level to do away with tyranny for the last time.
While these conclusions may be naïve, the evidence for these statements is apparent on the nightly news. Grassroots movements in Iran for example are trampling government efforts at containment and the peaceful nonviolent marches are a clear signal to the clergy that the people will no longer tolerate such abuse of power.
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