No War on Iran!

An Open Letter to the organizers of the Iran Freedom Concert

2006-03-16T06:12:00.000-08:00

*After much thought, I have realized that my stand on this concert was expressed in such a way to somewhat obscure my committment to human rights. So as of 3/17/06, I have edited and reposted the letter.

Dear Organizers of the
Iran Freedom concert,

Based on the information provided in your website, I am writing to make you aware of two things: 1) Your website is riddled factual errors about the types of human rights abuses in Iran and, 2) What an unsustainable claim you make to "not take a stance on policy issues like foreign intervention."

Firstly, you have grossly misrepresented the civil rights abuses that do take place in Iran. A couple quick corrections off the top of my head: there are many Kurdish books in Iran. There are also Kurdish government officials; one of the most high-ranking was former government speaker Abdollah Ramazanzadeh. People are not executed for their religion in the sense of being rounded up and shot. But, Bahais are considered legally as apostates and face discrimination, arbitrary seizure, and at worst, the death penalty for publicly practicing their religion. But their case is different from other minorities and if you conflate all of them, then you are glossing over the precarious nature of their position in Iran. Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians have official representation in parliament and are free to practice their religion, but not to proselytize (of course many do this anyway, Christianity is the fastest growing religion in Iran). Christian Bibles are available for sale at many bookstores, with official approval. Your section on discrimination against homosexuals is also highly misleading. Homosexuals are in considerable danger in Iran, but the photograph that you have posted is of two young men who were hanged in Mashhad on charges of homosexual rape of a minor. The punitive laws for co-ed partying and for adultery apply to both sexes, not just to women. I also find the way in which you bring attention to the Iranian legal system to be more about how barbaric you consider the Iranian government, not any sort of principled stance. You repeatedly emphasize that executions are hanging in public. Is it more humane to execute people via poisonous injections in private, as takes place in the United States? More in keeping with human rights would be a universal repudiation of the death penalty where ever it may be legally sanctioned.

The discrimination and repression in Iran are highly deplorable, but I wonder, does the Christian Fellowship and the Harvard Republicans support full anti-discrimination of homosexuals in this country? Also, isn’t a successful strategy of protest against repression one that assesses the situation accurately and pursues a course most likely to have a constructive effect? I think this takes into account the various destructive ways over the last 150 years for which better minority rights have been pursued. These include those who have allowed themselves to be appropriated by their imperialist governments whose policies have sought to use minority rights as a leverage point to politically and economically exploit the country. This actually has resulted in more danger for minorities, marking them, however unfairly, as foreign and as imperial agents. In this sense, your condemnation of US violence against Iran is imperative.

Secondly, can you please explain to me how you think that a concert that "raises awareness of the Iranian government's human rights abuses and expresses solidarity with Iranian students seeking to end these violations" does not take a stand on the possible U.S. economic sanctions, U.S. supported Israeli attacks, or a direct U.S. military attack? It seems to me that such a position is unsustainable because you are raising the awareness in the US, at a time when the government is trying to convince the public that Iran must be denied rights to nuclear technology (contra to its legal rights in the same treaty by which the US is also legally bound). The US case for attacking Iran hinges on creating a consensus on evil intent on the part of the Iranian government. This is imperative because the US has no legal case and no proof of Iranian intent to build nuclear weapons, and, it was shown to have misrepresented unconfirmed (at best) intelligence on Iraq's intent and weapons capability. Thus, the US government needs to build consensus among the public of general evil intent that will serve to discredit explicit Iran denials of going beyond legal nuclear energy technology and deny Iran its legal treaty rights to that technology.

By no stretch of the imagination am I a fan of the current regime, however, I also think that the situation needs to be approached through constructive means, not through (inadvertent or not) support of the US military bludgeon. This is where your event comes in. Even if you do not make an intentionally explicit claim to weigh in on foreign policy, your organization's event, because of the inescapable fact that it takes place here and now in the US, becomes part of the US government's case for sanctioned violence on Iran. You don't need to make an explicit claim. The event itself, assigned meaning by its context, is itself an explicit endorsement of war on Iran. UNLESS, you condemn the use of violence and endorse the utter exhaustion of all peaceful means of negotiation. This is a principle enshrined in the UN Charter for the very good reason that it is an integral principle of the Just War doctrine from which the Charter is derived.

I urge you to ask yourself, why Iran, why now? Why not Zimbabwe? Why not Egypt? You want a repressive government? Why not Myanmar?

I have two questions: 1) Where does your organization receive its funding? Is any of it, directly or indirectly, from the US government, more specifically, the 75 million recently earmarked by Congress to support "democracy" in Iran? 2) Do you have any actual contact with the student groups in Iran? Which ones? Where do they stand on US military attacks on Iran? And if not, why do you think you know their aims and can speak for them? Have you given a voice or any consideration to the student groups or bloggers that vehemently reject any and all US based activism on the ground that it a) can be appropriated by a jingoistic US government delivering “democracy” from the barrel of hundreds of thousands of guns and bombs that has proven quite bleak in Afghanistan and Iraq; and b) that because of the overwhelming likelihood of that appropriation, such activism will be read as collusion with an imperialist power with a strong and proven will to destruction, domination and exploitation.

Finally, I ask you, what happens to the principles of democracy and a free society when they are implemented through means which undermine their legitimacy? Do you end up with something that isn’t democracy at all?

I eagerly await your response to my questions and comments. If you choose to completely ignore me, I will have to conclude that I am correct in thinking that your claim to non-partisan neutrality on policy issues is fallacious. Furthermore, I will be convinced that you know what you are doing and thus you activities are dishonest and insidious to boot. I intend to make our dialogue public in the blogsphere, a public that crisscrosses activist, diasporic, and academic networks across world regions.

Best,

Mana Kia

Here is the response I received:

Dear Mana,

I wanted to thank you again for your email. We have been getting a
range of feedback, so we decided to put together an FAQ to address such
questions.

Please check it out here.

We are sorry to hear that you disagree with our event, but we respect
your right to do so. Thanks for your interest in promoting dialogue
about these issues.

Best,

Nick

In response I wrote back:

Dear Organizers,

This page provides some answers, but ultimately fails to answer the most pressing questions I present in my letter. Not taking a stand on intervention while condemning (a creative version) of human rights abuses in Iran, is allowing the wider official drum beating for war to incorporate you into their stand. Were you perhaps too young to remember what happened in 2002 in the lead up to the war in Iraq? Because it is eerily reminiscent.

Also, some of the spurious information I have pointed out about human rights abuses, you have left on your website. For instance, getting busted at a co-ed party with booze is not a form of gender discrimination. I am well aware of abuses against minorities, and yet, as an Iranian woman from a minority family, who likes to party (since you've included that in some assumptions about student group priorities) I don't feel like you are showing solidarity toward my counterparts in Iran. I feel like you are being hugely irresponsible politically in ignoring the context in which you are organizing such an event.

Here is the link to a translation of a student group leader and his response to US based human rights activism in Iran. I hope you will read it and reflect on what you are doing and who exactly it will ultimately serve.

Best,

Mana Kia

2006-03-10T15:06:00.000-08:00

The text below is my quick translation of a piece by Saeed Ebrahim Habibi, a member of the same student organization through which Afshari once carried out his political activities. The post is a reflection on and objection to the speech of Afshari and Atri to the U.S. Congress.

The translation consists of all of the links of the original post, along with the photos that were included therein. Please be warned that the pictures are very graphic.

In peace,
Niki Akhavan

The Ends Do Not Justify the Means
There are certain fragments from history, which though they may have depths that are yet to be discovered, are nonetheless instructive. The relationship between Iran and the U.S. constitutes one such fragment. I do not intend to be longwinded because I think the issue is so clear that it does not need much elaboration. In brief, the subject at hand concerns the trip of two hardworking friends to D.C. where they asked Republican (!) and Democratic (!) senators for their help with Human Rights issues in Iran. We can defer for now the discussion of the tragic Human Rights situation in Iran, since we all know it very well and we all suffer from it. However, what I am moved to write about now is motivated by a serious objection to two aspects of the form and content of these speeches.

First, this conference began with the speech of Senator Rick Santorum, the leader (sic) of the Republican party. He is behind the “Iran Freedom and Support Act of 2005” which offers a referendum as a solution to Iran’s problems and which allocates 10 million dollars towards this and related activities. The presence of two of the architects of the referendum plan alongside this person, especially in the U.S. congress, is to me not only unjustifiable but also taints them. Besides, the two gentlemen introduced themselves as leaders and representatives of the student movement, and this is an obvious error since they neither consulted any relevant groups in this regard nor do they in any case hold such a rank among them. And if they went simply as two activists who represent a social movement, then they have made an even bigger error because then their presence in the Congress can only be interpreted as an appeal to and dependence upon a foreign power. While it is evident that internal changes impact external ones, but in order to have influence on what happens outside one must either have power or be rooted in a social movement. It would have been useful if the two gentlemen told us in all honesty about their motivations.

Secondly, if we assume that this was an opportunity to ask the Republicans for help in protecting Human Rights, it must first be proven that the U.S. in general pursues the adherence to Human Rights—which I do not think it does—or at least one should point to their previous violations of Human Rights so that we can somewhat (and only somewhat!) decrease the chances that they would recur.

I wont for now get into a discussion of exploitation and imperialism, but I will say this much: for capitalists human rights comes down to protection of their capital and nothing else.

Sometimes images can have a deeper and more penetrating impact than words. I believe that U.S. intervention in international affairs has been accompanied with much bitterness. I doubt that history will ever forget the fact that the U.S. has been the only nation to use the nuclear bomb.

Democracy was the excuse behind the Vietnam war as well. Four million people paid with their lives for the U.S pursuit of democracy.

Mr. Afshari and Mr. Atri, it would have been good if you had said something about Iraq as well. Merely stating your opposition to a military invasion is not enough. Being silent about Iraq or asking for help from the enemy can bear no justification. Children are sacrificed in the pursuit of this type of democracy.

On the anniversary of Mossadeq, it is very bitter to thank “all those who have given us the opportunity to speech to Congress and its respected members”. What would have been the harm in making but the slightest reference to the Coup d’etat of 1953? What about the coup d’etat of 9/11 against the people of Chile? And is human rights anything but the rights of those people who gathered around Mossadeq and the Allende?

Those who know and those who do not know me will know that my condemnations of U.S. international policy is in no way sanctions more than 25 years of human rights violations in Iran. Nor does it dismiss Ali’s [Afshari] hard work in Iran and the heavy price he paid in prison. My worry is only about the future that may come about if indecent means are justified in pursuit of our goals.

Is Ahmadinejad dressing up as Bush for Halloween?

2005-10-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

I thought Ahmadinejad was suppose to be curbing corruption in Iran! So why is running around banning foreign movies and talking about wiping Israel from the face of the earth when doing business in Iran is still like trying to walk down a street waist deep in mud?

This confirms my deepest fears – in Ahmadinejad Iran has found its very own GW Bush! Not only does his religious zealotry blind him to any sort of practical political action, but he is clearly frothing too much at the mouth to see the ironies of his own rhetoric.

First of all, the heat is on Iran. At this point it is at a distinct disadvantage with regard to the IAEA after the recent vote allowing for future referral to the Security Council. I personally think this action is discriminatory since Iran is being expected to fulfill obligations far beyond ones in the treaty and there is a long list of nuclear rogue states that have not even signed the treaty (with Israel topping the list).

But fair or unfair, Iran must assert it claims to peaceful intentions of its nuclear program because rule of law is not the preferred method of the neo-imperialist war-mongering cabal headed by the US government. But when you have threatened the existence of another country, it is pretty easy to make a case that you do not have peaceful intentions.

Like Bush’s empty mouthings about easing the yoke of authoritarian government from peoples abroad, Ahmadinejad talks big about helping the Palestinian people. But what has he done for them lately? I really don’t see how burning an Israeli flag helps a woman dying in childbirth because proper medical care is not available. It does make him look big and bad manly, although I am almost certain Palestinians don’t care a whit about his ego. Has the Iranian government done anything but maybe provide weapons for a small faction of fundamentalist militants who will probably put the general population at un-consented-to risks as they continue their struggle? Can he not see that he is probably putting a whole bunch of other Palestinian groups in an awkward position and making them look bad? It’s just like when the US voices platitudes in support of the Iranian opposition in the country and gives the Iranian government a great excuse to crack down on them because their project is lauded by the largest threat to world peace today (the US government).

Ahmadinejad is also like Bush in that he can only think in monolithic constructs. For instance, in what seem like budding delusions of grandeur, he claimed that "My words were the Iranian nation's words. Westerners are free to comment, but their reactions are invalid.” Well, last time I checked he was elected president of the Iranian STATE, the Iranian nation is another matter. Imagine the audacity of claiming to speak for the Iranian nation. I personally disavow his attempt to speak for me based on several things:

I have always disliked the unsophisticated conflagration of Judaism, Israel and Zionism. But Ahmadinejad, like so many American Zionists (Christians and Jews alike) and right wing Likudniks want Israel (a state), Zionism (a political ideology) and Judaism (a religion) to all mean the same thing. If Ahmadinejad wants to traverse the same tired logic of Zionists in his unoriginal critique, then he can. But do it in private, man! Personally I prefer to critique Zionism in a way that does not subscribe to the logic of that selfsame ideology?!

Ahmadinejad is pandering to his Basiji constituency and participating in a testosterone filled, ego trip ceremony. Add white hoods and burning crosses and you have the Klan. Add white baseball caps, date rape and beer and you have a frat party. Is he really so immature that he doesn’t realize that such strategically impractical displays have no place in the President of a country under a great deal of international pressure and scrutiny. One almost wonders if he wants to bring down a war on Iran so that he can attempt to galvanize Iranian society in support of his reactionary program. If not, he is a dangerously stupid and inept because he all but drew a big target on Iran. He is free to draw a large target on his own forehead and I will pray that his wish is fulfilled, but who does he think he is putting the country at risk of the miseries of attack “for their own good” ?! Or is he trying to distract young people from the rising unemployment that makes their degrees mean next to nothing? Can he please get his head out of the past that never was and start acting like a responsible head of state?

After such repulsive and gross statements, Ahmadinejad is no better than the racist Knesset members who liken Palestinians to roaches and talk about sweeping their filth away (comments which receive nothing close to the criticism they should, as if Israelis have any right to such genocidal speech ESPECIALLY because of their past). He is just taking the opposite position and reinforcing the logic of Zionism. Isn’t the view from the Pharaoh’s seat always better? Perhaps a real critique would be to attack the exclusionary nature of Zionism that disenfranchises millions of people under Israeli political domination. It is a selective democracy, which provides full citizenship only for Jews. I propose equal rights for all. But then, if Ahmadinejad were to take an ethical stand for the rights of Palestinians, he would be undermining theocratic government. Maybe that’s what a world without Zionism would look like…

*Mana Kia is a PhD student in History and Middle East Studies at Harvard University.

Where is Farshid Faraji?

2005-06-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

Farshid Faraji, an independent Iranian cameraman, who was arrested by the American military forces in Iraq, is missing. Faraji, who entered Iraq on May 2nd 2005 with a valid visa and proper documents to complete the filming of the documentary, "In Search of Cyrus the Great," does not appear on the Red Cross list. While the Red Cross has registered the arrest of Koroush Kar, the producer of the film, there is no information available about Farshid Faraji’s whereabouts.

After shooting scenes in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Turkey, Faraji and Kar entered Iraq, in order to film the historical site of Babylon, but lost contact with their families after the first week of entering Iraq. Koroush Kar contacted his family and notified them that the he and Faraji were arrested on May 19th, 2005. Farshid Faraji's family, who are gravely concerned about his safety, have not been able to find any information about Farshid from the Red Cross and the Iranian authorities.

Iranian filmmakers and advocacy groups are putting pressure on the Iranian government to take appropriate steps to find Farshid Faraji. We need the help of human rights groups and international advocacy organizations in asking the United States government to provide Fashid's family with information about their son's arrest. We believe that while Farshid is being interrogated, his family has the right to know about his status and his whereabouts.

Thank you,

People who are concerned about Farshid Faraji and his family.

Elections in Iran

2005-06-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

What is happening in Iran?! I keep wanting to write a post about it, but feel like I don’t have a proper grasp on it. So I keep reading news stories and scratching my head.

Last Friday I woke up and went over the Radisson hotel in Cambridge, MA to cast my vote. I even called my mother before hand to make sure I had the correct spelling (in Persian) of Mostafa. At the polling place there was an AP reporter who asked me questions afterward such as, “Do you feel that these elections are free and fair?”; “Do you think the candidates you have to choose from are representative of political spectrum?”; “How do you feel about the call to boycott elections?”

I answered these questions the best I could, warning the reporter that a great deal of my views are informed by my studies, rather than from my Iranian heritage. First of all, no, these elections are not free and fair, but I don’t think I’ve participated in free and fair elections since we elected class presidents in high school. In Iran you have to “have proper respect for Islam” (a la the Guardian Council) and in the US you have to be able to please enough rich people for them to give you the money needed to run an election campaign. So it’s either Islam, or the religion of this country, the creed of the holy Prophet Greenback. So no, they are not free and fair, but as imperfect as it is, I prefer to cast my vote, rather than abstain in protest. 60% of the electorate has been staying home in the US for election after election in this country and it hasn’t made a lick of difference.

Furthermore, with Iran under so much pressure internally and externally, I feel like although I think the Iranian political system needs to be overhauled and restructured, at this point I’d rather let my vote be partially appropriated by hardline conservatives to extol the legitimacy of the system, than have an extremely low voter turnout exacerbate internal tensions and give aggressive external forces an excuse to “liberate” Iran. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but something tells me that most Iranians would prefer these flawed elections and their potential for gradual reform to the kind of democracy the US is dishing out – in the form of unelected 2 ton bombs and freedom to stare into the barrel of a gun.

And, of course these candidates are not representative! But, again, the last time I voted in an election where everyone who wanted to run was on the ballot was in high school. How many times have I stared at a US presidential ballot forced to pick between the lesser of the two evils, rather than a favored candidate…

I think it is the right of people to boycott elections if they want – everyone should be free to show their disapproval or support for the system in the way they deem best. After all, is that not the point of democracy, to think for yourself? Boycott is just not the way I have chosen.

This Friday it is time for yet another choice and I dread the idea of voting for Rafsanjani. I am still unclear how this man suddenly has become a moderate and a pragmatist. Has he moved over to the left or has the relative pool of candidates moved over to the right? Is he referred to as such in the English language press because he supports free-market capitalism? Wasn’t he just on the Expediency Council, the notoriously conservative group that resolves legislative disputes between the parliament and the Guardian Council? What was he doing during the four years the reformist dominated parliament was trying to pass laws to make the system more democratic?

And while Ahmadinejad is extremely conservative, he does look better to some in contrast to a fabulously wealthy Rafsanjani. Not once have I seen an English news story ask how he acquired all this wealth. If they did, their pragmatic candidate might start stinking of nepotism and corruption. Is there an economic layer to this election we are not getting access to? The mainstream press glosses this over because it embraces free market capitalism as an absolute Go(o)d. The left leaning press is usually (not always) unable to soak up economic nuances in any situation that smacks of religion. So what is the deal with Ahmadinejad’s popularity and why are we told that he appeals to the poor? Why doesn’t Moin appeal to the poor? And I don’t accept the artificial connection that poor people are stupid and uneducated and thus mindlessly follow the most conservative religious candidate. That sort of dehumanization of the poor and/or religious is unproductive if we are to try to figure out what is going on and take steps from there. The Pahlavis thrived on that sort of dehumanization as the backbone of their political legitimation and look where it got them.

These are not rhetorical questions, I really would like to know what the deal is… Should I stay home this Friday, or should I do my duty and vote the only possible way to keep Ahmadinejad out of office?

And with all these claims of ballot tampering, was I wrong in telling the reporter that while I thought the Guardian Council’s vetting of candidates was reprehensible, once underway, the elections were real elections (contra the claims of Bush)?

I am posing this post mostly in the way of questions to encourage a dialogue…

*Mana Kia is a PhD student in History and Middle East Studies at Harvard University.

Petition Against U.S. Military and Monetary Intervention in Iran

2005-06-05T18:07:00.000-07:00

The office of Senator Brownback, the author of the Iran Democracy Act, and Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, has confirmed that on June 9th, the Commission will hold a hearing on Iran "to discuss the deteriorating human rights situation in Iran and the prospect for a joint US Europe response." This hearing is scheduled between 1:30 P.M. – 3:30 P.M. at 192 Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington D.C. It is now confirmed that Goli Ameri, the Co-Founder of Iran Democracy Project at the Conservative think tank, Hoover Institute, and Larry Diamond, a Senior Fellow at Hoover, will be among the panelists.

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Government agency, which consists of nine members from the United States Senate, nine from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce. Goli Ameri was appointed by President George W. Bush as one of three public delegates to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Ameri was the Republican candidate for Congress in Oregon’s first district during the 2004 election cycle. Last year, during her campaign, Ameri wrote an open letter to Secretary of State Colin Powel, encouraging him to take a harder stand on Iran, which stirred much reaction among Iranians. To our knowledge, Ameri has now contacted a selected number of her supporters to attend this hearing. Diamond, who is introduced on Hoover’s webpage as "a specialist on democratic development and regime change, and on U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad," served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad in 2004. In his Iran Democracy Act, Senator Brownback, the author of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, suggested the establishment of an "Iran Democracy Fund," according to the model that allocated money for Iraqi opposition groups in exile in 1998.

Considering the political background of the organizers and participants in this hearing, we are worried that the plight of human rights in Iran may be abused for geo-political agendas that will only harm the development of any viable democratic movement, by the imposition of economic sanctions or military intervention. We believe that the voices of the Iranian diaspora should not be limited to the selected few that claim to represent the will of the Iranian people. Despite our objection to the arrest of Iranian journalists and bloggers in Iran, we strongly oppose military intervention or monetary support for "dissident groups" in Iran or in its diaspora, and ask the U.S. representatives to represent our voices, which are often suppressed in such hearings.

If you are against U.S. military and/or monetary intervention in Iran, please sign this petition. We plan to send this petition to the members of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe by June 7th. Please help us circulate this petition by sending it to others in the community.

Some Questions on Minorities and Majorities

2005-04-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

This article is truly amazing. Referring to the events in southwest Iran over the last few days, the White House “accused Iran on Tuesday of violating the rights of Arabs and other minority groups and urged restraint in dealing with them.”

Um. Is this the pot calling the kettle black or what! And pointing out that the Bush administration possesses an astounding level of hypocrisy uttering these statements, in lieu of the widespread mistreatment of Arabs (or people perceived to be Arab) in this country, does not mean that I think just because the US discriminates against minorities that Iran can go ahead.

The article further notes: “The United States calls upon Iranian authorities to exercise restraint in dealing with the Arab minority and to "respect the peaceful exercise by the Iranian people of their democratic rights," Ereli said.” Might I quote this to a police officer the next time I am at a demonstration against US government policy and am getting pepper-sprayed and shoved to the ground in hand cuffs? Also, I recall some demonstrations in Iraq last week against US occupation that seemed to have produced little effect… what does it mean to respect democratic rights? Allow the demonstration and then refrain from too violent a reaction while completely ignoring any demands? Does the fact of simply allowing a demonstration to take place constitute a respect of democratic rights? (Perhaps I am too jaded, but talk is cheap and I have yet to see this administration respecting my democratic rights. I wonder what lessons it has – besides the bid for full spectrum domination - to teach other governments.)

What does strike me as weird is this concept of ethnic minority. What does this mean?

Does this mean people who speak Arabic? (Presumably they speak Persian as well). Is ethnicity in Iran understood on the basis of language? If so, most of the country can speak Persian, even if it is a secondary language. If Persian has to be a native language, then I must regretfully inform all of my cousins that most of us are not “Persians.” They will, let me tell you, be shocked, especially after all those years of Persian lessons after elementary school. Furthermore, in Safavid times, there were seven times more Persian speakers in India than in Iran. Majority rules! India then, must have been the core of “Persian.” This notion of the Persian language as the bastion of Persian identity becomes even more complicated once we consider the fact that standard modern Persian is something that, before the twentieth century, existed largely in the world of literature and was largely the preserve of the literate. And the literate were usually bilingual, learning to read and write Arabic alongside Persian. If these people are disqualified from being Persian, we should certainly strike from the list of Persians traitorous bilinguals like Hafez, Rumi, Firdowsi, ibn Sina, Sa’adi, and Suhravardi, - anyone who ever wrote anything that enjoys wide circulation today as “Persian.”

If ethnicity is not based on language alone, then is it based on race? If this is the case, most Persian speakers are disqualified from being Persian because they or their families hail from parts of the geographic political entity of Iran that has been identified as non-Persian. This assumes that people in “Persian” villages and areas have always lived there and have never had any other people pass through. Common occurrences like migration, invasion and reconfiguration are absent from such assumptions that “Persians” have, since arriving in Iran and being forged into a shining people through the glories of ancient empires, never moved since or married any of the people who arrived later or lived there before.

The idea of a racial basis for “Persian” identity is pure fantasy, one that is further bolstered by patriarchal systems that try to erase all traces of maternal connections through name and larger community affiliations. This is currently enshrined in Iran’s citizenship laws, where Iranian citizenship is passed down from a child’s father. Thus, my brother, who has never set foot in Iran can assume Iranian citizenship for his children, while I, who was born there, will have to wade through a mountain of petitions and paperwork to have such status for my children considered – since my husband is American.) So according to patriarchal systems of assigning identity, my brother’s children are Iranian and mine are American. Unfortunately, naming cannot erase the fact that they will probably still look like one another and their playing in the sandbox will not be an youthful enactment of multi-racial/multi-cultural diplomacy!

So if we are all a little mixed up from the word go, then what is this Persian identity? Some could say it is a set of ethics, a way of being in the world that is upright, honest and honorable. After all, ethical texts from pre-Islamic times heavily resonate in Islamic Iran from the Qabusnama up through Safavid and Constitutionalist times. But these ethical texts are prescriptive, meant to urge the practice of particular behaviors – which means that these are not the ethics that all people live by, at all times. They are an ideal, and an ideal is something hardly anyone lives up to. So do you stop being Persian when you are behaving badly? Do something ethically suspect? Make a mistake?

My own (paternal) family hails from the mountainous area of Mazandaran that was notoriously rebellious in the hundred years after the Arab invasion. The region kept revolting, the Arab troops kept coming back, putting down the revolt, and the people would pledge their allegiance to get the troops to leave and then revolt as soon as they were out of sight. Finally, sick of this, the Arabs placed a permanent garrison there and settled. (Shah Abbas also forcibly converted thousands of Georgians and Armenians to Islam and settled them in Mazandaran). So my glorious ancestors are racially suspect AND ethically dubious (as oath breakers). Furthermore, up until my grandparents generation, most of them were learned, and therefore bilingual speakers of Persian and Arabic. Imagine that, Nur and Kujur, a hotbed of non-Persians linguistically, ethically, and racially. So why are they not considered a minority? What erases some aspects of the past and not others? Could it be that political, social, and economic expediencies of particular historical moments demand particular interpretations of the place of self and community?

So what is this concept of Arab minority or any other minority in Iran? What sort of myths and constructs does it uphold about the Iranian nation-state? That it’s core is “Persian” and everyone else is a minority? Rather than squabbling about what happened to cause the protests and crackdowns (which is entirely unclear) I wanted to ponder over why no one who criticized the IRI’s actions questions the basis of the argument, that there is an Arab minority and a Persian majority and that naturally the state is constituted by the majority nation and room must graciously be made for the minority. What is the Iran nation but the latest permutation of a fantasy of belonging? Is it not an idea that sustains a form of political rule, where cultural forms (and other similarities) may or may not overlap? There is no way to have a majority without excluding others. Maybe we need to think of belonging in more flexible ways.

A final note on the article: the caption of the generic militant picture (which always accompanies articles on Iran) reads “Iranian special forces soldiers march during the annual Army Day parade in south Tehran April 18, 2005. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said on Monday Iran had the military might to deter attacks against the Islamic state, which is under Western pressure over its nuclear program.”

Why does this accompany an article about US criticism of the Iranian government’s military behavior in Khuzestan? Does this hint that this criticism is an attack on Iran? What does this have to do with the nuclear program? Or is it just another statement of “proof” that the Iranian government is Evil and Violent in such absolute terms that specification, clarity and relevance of proof are unnecessary. Or is Reuters also colluding in underlining and reinforcing the peripheral nature of the Arab minority to the Iranian nation-state by implying that such protests constitute an attack on the state. As always, the picture to text logic of articles on Iran tell their own mystifying, insidious story.

*Mana Kia is a PhD student in History and Middle East Studies at Harvard University

March 19th: Hands off Iran!

2005-03-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

From Over our dead bodies!, Reza Nasri's blog:

We are [two] days away from March 19th. (The day we stood against the whole world to nationalize our oil industry!).
I had previously suggested that we all change the titles of our weblogs on the anniversary of this day to a slogan that would show the world that we (iranians) still stand by our sovereignty and are still committed to the same noble principles that made us fight for our rights 54 years ago.

Many people have come up with great suggestions for the slogan. My favorite one is "Hands off Iran". I think it is simple and has a good connotation to it.

Of course, everyone is free to add other words to this slogan if they wish to, but I suggest that we keep "Hands off Iran" as the common denominator.

We just have [two] days left, so I encourage everyone to promote the campaign on their weblogs and invite others to join.

Gendered War

2005-03-12T18:01:00.000-08:00

We have written about different issues pertaining to war on this blog. But, one issue that has not been tackled here is the way gender is implicated in the rhetoric of war. There are many questions that one can ask in relation to militarism and its relationship with notions of masculinity and femininity. How do different discourses and practices, including nationalism, militarism, and neo-liberalism, which are present in these times marked by the "war on terror" create subject positions for men and women? What kinds of gendered and sexed subjectivities are produced through performances of nationalism in different locations? How does war effect gender relations in both national and transnational contexts? These are some issues that I hope to bring to this blog through paying attention to politics of representation in different media, from paper print to television, and of course, by looking at my favorite medium, weblogistan.

But for the purposes of this post and in order to lay out a theoretical positioning, I would like to post a piece that was written by a group of feminist scholars, shortly after Sepetember 11, 2001. This piece, in my opinion, is one of the most thought-provoking responses that came out after 9/11. Obviously, it is important to see whether or not the points raised in this article apply to the current situation. Hopefully, that will be a part of the on-going discussion about gender and sexuality on this weblog.

This piece was circulated on-line in October 2001 and was later published in Meridian 2.2 (2002).

Transnational Feminist Practices Against War

A Statement by Paola Bacchetta, Tina Campt, Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, Minoo Moallem, and Jennifer Terry (October 2001)

As feminist theorists of transnational and postmodern cultural formations, we believe that it is crucial to seek non-violent solutions to conflicts at every level of society, from the global, regional, and national arenas to the ordinary locales of everyday life. We offer the following response to the events of September 11 and its aftermath:

First and foremost, we need to analyze the thoroughly gendered and racialized effects of nationalism, and to identify what kinds of inclusions and exclusions are being enacted in the name of patriotism. Recalling the histories of various nationalisms helps us to identify tacit assumptions about gender, race, nation, and class that once again play a central role in mobilization for war. We see that instead of a necessary historical, material, and geopolitical analysis of 9-11, the emerging nationalist discourses consist of misleading and highly sentimentalized narratives that, among other things, reinscribe compulsory heterosexuality and the rigidly dichotomized gender roles upon which it is based. A number of icons constitute the ideal types in the drama of nationalist domesticity that we see displayed in the mainstream media. These include the masculine citizen-soldier, the patriotic wife and mother, the breadwinning father who is head of household, and the properly reproductive family. We also observe how this drama is racialized. Most media representations in the US have focused exclusively on losses suffered by white, middle-class heterosexual families even though those who died or were injured include many people of different races, classes, sexualities, and religions and of at least 90 different nationalities. Thus, an analysis that elucidates the repressive effects of nationalist discourses is necessary for building a world that fosters peace as well as social and economic justice.

Second, a transnational feminist response views the impact of war and internal repression in a larger context of global histories of displacement, forced migrations, and expulsions. We oppose the US and European sponsorship of regimes responsible for coerced displacements and we note how patterns of immigration, exile, and forced flight are closely linked to gender oppression and to the legacies of colonialism and structured economic dependency. Indeed, history shows us that women, as primary caretakers of families, suffer enormously under circumstances of colonization, civil unrest, and coerced migration. Taking this history into account, we critique solutions to the contemporary crisis that rely on a colonial, Manichean model whereby "advanced capitalist freedom and liberty" is venerated over "backward extremist Islamic barbarism." Furthermore, we draw upon insights from post-colonial studies and critical political economy to trace the dynamics of European and US neocolonialism during the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. Thus questions about the gendered distribution of wealth and resources are key to our analytical approach. Neo-liberal economic development schemes create problems that impact women in profound and devastating ways in both the "developing regions" as well as the "developed world." So while middle-class Euro-American women in the United States are held up as the most liberated on earth even while they are being encouraged to stand dutifully by their husbands, fathers, and children, women in developing regions of the world are depicted as abject, backward, and oppressed by their men. One of the important elements missing from this picture is the fact that many women in Afghanistan are starving and faced with violence and harm on a daily basis not only due to the Taliban regime but also due in large part to a long history of European colonialism and conflict in the region. The Bush administration?s decision to drop bombs at one moment and, in the next, care packages of food that are in every way inadequate to the needs of the population offers a grim image of how pathetic this discourse of "civilization" and "rescue" is within the violence of war. We see here a token and uncaring response to a situation to which the US has contributed for at least 20 years, a situation that is about gaining strategic influence in the region and about the extraction of natural resources, not the least of which is oil.

Third, we want to comment on the extent to which domestic civil repression is intrinsically linked to the violence of war. Thus the effects of the current conflict will be played out in the US and its borderzones through the augmentation of border patrolling and policing, as well as in the use of military and defense technologies and other practices that will further subordinate communities (especially non-white groups) in the US. Such state violence has many gendered implications. These include the emergence of patriarchal/masculinst cultural nationalisms whereby women?s perspectives are degraded or wholly excluded to create new version of cultural "traditions." And, for many immigrant women, other devastating effects of state repression include increased incidents of unreported domestic violence, public hostility, and social isolation. In practical terms, policing authorities charged with guaranteeing national security are likely to have little sympathy for the undocumented immigrant woman who is fleeing a violent intimate relationship, unless her assailant fits the profile of an "Islamic fundamentalist." Thus we need an analysis and strategy against the "domestication" of the violence of war that has emerged in these last few weeks and whose effects will be felt in disparate and dispersed ways.

Fourth, we call for an analysis of the stereotypes and tropes that are being mobilized in the current crisis. These tropes support, sustain, and are enabled by a modernist logic of warfare that seeks to consolidate the sovereign (and often unilateral) power of the First World nation-state. When President Bush proclaims that "terrorist" networks must be destroyed, we ask what this term means to people and how it is being used to legitimate a large-scale military offensive. The term is being used to demonize practices that go against US national interests and it permits a kind of "drag-net" effect at home and abroad which legitimates the suppression of dissent. We also want to inquire into constructions of "terrorism" that continue to target non-native or "foreign" opposition movements while cloaking its own practices of terror in euphemisms such as "foreign aid." Deconstructing the trope of "terrorism" must include a sustained critique of the immense resources spent by the US in training "counter-terrorists" and "anti-Communist" forces who then, under other historical circumstances, become enemies rather than allies, as in the now famous case of Osama bin Laden. We are concerned about the ways in which the "war against terrorism" can be used to silence and repress insurgent movements across the globe. We also emphasize how racism operates in the naming of "terrorism." When the "terrorists" are people of color, all other people of color are vulnerable to a scapegoating backlash. Yet when white supremacist Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 men, women, and children, no one declared open season to hunt down white men, or even white militia members. The production of a new racial category, "anyone who looks like a Muslim" in which targets of racism include Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, and any other people with olive or brown skin, exposes the arbitrary and politically constructed character of new and old racial categories in the US. It also reveals the inadequacy of US multiculturalism to resist the hegemonic relationship between being "white" and "American." Finally, the short memory of the media suppresses any mention of the Euro-American anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist "terrorist" groups of the 1970s and 1980s. A critical attention to the idioms of the present war mobilization compels us to deconstruct other politically loaded tropes, including security, liberty, freedom, truth, civil rights, Islamic fundamentalism, women under the Taliban, the flag, and "America."

Fifth, we recognize the gendered and ethnocentric history of sentimentality, grief, and melancholy that have been mobilized in the new war effort. We do not intend to disparage or dismiss the sadness and deep emotions raised by the events of 9-11 and its aftermath. But we do think it is important to point out that there has been a massive deployment of therapeutic discourses that ask people to understand the impact of the events of September 11 and their aftermath solely as "trauma." Such discourses leave other analytical, historical, and critical frameworks unexplored. Focusing only on the personal or narrowly defined psychological dimension of the attacks and the ensuing war obscures the complex nexus of history and geopolitics that has brought about these events. We are not suggesting that specific forms of therapy are not useful. But the culture industry of "trauma" leads to a mystification of history, politics and cultural critique. Furthermore, therapeutic discourse tends to reinforce individualist interpretations of globally significant events and it does so in an ethnocentric manner. Seeking relief through a psychotherapeutic apparatus may be a common practice among Euro-American upper- and middle-class people in the United States, but it should not be assumed to be universally appealing or an effective way to counter experiences of civil repression and war among people of other classes, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds. Signs of the current trauma discourse?s ethnocentricity come through in media depictions staged within the therapeutic framework that tend to afford great meaning, significance, and sympathy to those who lost friends and family members in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. By contrast, people who have lost loved ones as a consequence of US foreign policy elsewhere are not depicted as sufferers of trauma or injustice. In fact, they are seldom seen on camera at all. Similarly, makeshift centers in universities around the US were set up in the immediate wake of 9-11 to help college students cope with the psychological effects of the attacks. They tended to assume that 9-11 marked the first time Americans experienced vulnerability, overlooking not only the recent events of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, but moreover erasing the personal experiences of many immigrants and US people of color for whom "America" has been a site of potential or realized violence for all of their lives.

Sixth, our transnational feminist response involves a detailed critical analysis of the role of the media especially in depictions that include colonial tropes and binary oppositions in which the Islam/Muslim/non-West is represented as "uncivilized" or "barbaric." We note the absence or co-optation of Muslim women as "victims" of violence or of "Islamic barbarism." We note as well the use of those groups of women seen as "white" or "western" both as "rescuers" of non-western women but also as evidence of the so-called "civilizing" efforts of Europe and North America. We see these discursive formations as a result not only of colonialism?s discursive and knowledge-producing legacies, but also of the technologies and industrial practices that produce contemporary global media, and transnational financing of culture industries. We seek especially to analyze the participation of women in these industries as well as the co-optation of feminist approaches and interests in the attack on a broad range of Islamic cultural and religious institutions, not just "Islamicist/extremist" groups. Thus we point out as a caution that any counter or resistance media would need to have a firm grasp of these histories and repertoires of practice or risk reproducing them anew.

Seventh, we call for a deeper understanding of the nature of capitalism and globalization as it generates transnational movements of all kinds. Thus, we seek to counter oppressive transnational movements, both from the "West" as well as the "Non-West," with alternative movements that counter war and the continued production of global inequalities. We note in particular that religious and ethnic fundamentalisms have emerged across the world within which the repression of women and establishment of rigidly dichotomized gender roles are used both as a form of power and to establish a collectivity. Such fundamentalisms have been a cause of concern for feminist groups not only in the Islamic world but also in the U.S.. Feminist and other scholars have noted that these movements have become transnational, through the work of nation-state and non-governmental organizations, with dire consequences for all those who question rigid gender dichotomies. Since these movements are transnational, we question the notion of isolated and autonomous nation-states in the face of numerous examples of transnational and global practices and formations. The recent displays of national coherence and international solidarity (based on 19th and 20th century constructions of international relations), cannot mask the strains and contradictions that give rise to the current crisis. Thus, we need an analysis of the numerous ways in which transnational networks and entities both limit and at the same time enable resistance and oppression. That is, the complex political terrain traversed by transnational networks as diverse as al-Qaida and the Red Cross must be understood as productive of new identities and practices as well as of new kinds of political repression. Transnational media has roots in pernicious corporate practices yet it also enables diverse and contradictory modes of information, entertainment, and communication. Feminist analysis of these complex and often contradictory transnational phenomena is called for.

In closing, we want to make it very clear that we oppose the US and British military mobilization and bombing that is underway in Afghanistan and that may very well expand further into the West, Central, and South Asian regions. We are responding to a crisis in which war, as described by the George W. Bush administration, will be a covert, diversified, and protracted process. At this moment we call for a resistance to nationalist terms and we argue against the further intensification of US military intervention abroad. We refuse to utilize the binaries of civilization vs. barbarism, modernity vs. tradition, and West vs. East. We also call for an end to the racist scapegoating and "profiling" that accompanies the stepped up violations of civil liberties within the territorial boundaries of the US. We urge feminists to refuse the call to war in the name of vanquishing a so-called "traditional patriarchal fundamentalism," since we understand that such fundamentalisms are supported by many nation-states. We are also aware of the failures of nation-states and the global economic powers such as the IMF and the World Bank to address the poverty and misery across the world and the role of such failures in the emergence of fundamentalisms everywhere. Nationalist and international mobilization for war cannot go forward in our name or under the sign of "concern for women." In fact, terror roams the world in many guises and is perpetrated under the sign of many different nations and agents. It is our contention that violence and terror are ubiquitous and need to be addressed through multiple strategies as much within the "domestic" politics of the US as elsewhere. It is only through developing new strategies and approaches based on some of these suggestions that we can bring an end to the violence of the current moment.

*Sima Shakhsari is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University.

"People Power" in Lebanon

2005-03-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

White House Spokesman Scott McClellan at a White House press conference yesterday:

We want to see the complete and immediate withdrawal of all Syrian military forces and all intelligence services in Lebanon. This [the Syrian decision to redeploy troops along the border] is a half-measure that simply does not achieve that objective. We stand with the Lebanese people. The Lebanese people are the ones who want a country that is sovereign and independent and free from outside interference. And that's who we stand with.

Below are some photos of various protests in Beirut, some from last week, some from today. Some of the protesters are calling for Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon. Others are calling for them to stay. The numbers are apparently quite comparable (if not tilting more toward the pro-Syrian side, which has particularly strong support among the Shi'a community, which now comprises 40 percent of Lebanon's population).

Will the real Lebanese "people" please raise their hands?

Update: Juan Cole has some interesting comments about the pro-Syrian demonstrations.

*Alireza Doostdar is a Ph.D. Student in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.

Much Ado Over Nothing?

2005-02-27T17:57:00.000-08:00

A peculiar thing has been happening, both on the comment sections of this blog and other sites where Iranians have been speaking out against an attack on Iran: we have been chided for it, and not just for the predictable reason that anyone against a war on Iran is labeled as pro-Islamic Republic or Pro-terrorism. In keeping colonial tradition of condescending paternalism, we are also told that we are "paranoid" and "crazy", that no such war is in the making, and that our time is better spent elsewhere.

Never mind the spy drones flying over Iran , the updating of war plans, and the parallels between the U.S. pronouncements on Iran and what happened in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan. We are to listen to Bush when he says that the notion of "attacking Iran is simply ridiculous", and forget that he announced in the same breath: " Having said that, all options are on the table".

Indeed they are, and several recent developments give us more reason to fear that a confrontation with Iran is in fact on the agenda. Let me turn to these events now, and iterate once again why we must keep speaking up against war on Iran.

Yesterday's delay of the Russia-Iran Nuclear Deal , announced after the apparently cordial contact between Putin and Bush may have led some to wonder about a causal connection between the two. Perhaps, but the nuclear deal between Iran and Russia was sealed anyway .

Despite the signing of an additional protocol between the two states requiring that Iran return spent fuel that could be used for weaponry, the deal is sure to keep the U.S. on the offensive and Iran defensive on the issue of WMD. But just as the WMD claims were not enough in making the case for an attack on Iraq, they wont do for the Iranians either. For one, the U.S. needs to articulate its wars so that they can be justified under the umbrella of the "War on Terrorism". Additionally, ever the champion of humanity and human rights, the U.S. administration must put a compassionate face on the entire endeavor.

In order to achieve the latter, Bush periodically asserts solidarity with the Iranian people, and I've talked about the duplicity and dangers behind such claims in my first post on this blog . Just the other day, the State Department made a humanitarian gesture of offering aid after the recent earthquake in Kerman, but the Iranians are said to have (I think wisely) refused it.

The issue of linking Iran to terrorism is a bit trickier, this despite numerous unfounded assertions that Iran is linked with Al-Qae'da (the sworn enemy of the IRI) and by extension to the resistance in Iraq. The assassination of Rafiq Harriri and Friday night's bombing in Tel Aviv are being deployed to fill in the gap. Although Hizbollah has denied responsibility for the bombings, the U.S. press has repeatedly implied, if not explicitly claimed, that the group was behind both acts. Bringing Hizbollah in to the picture, however, allows for implicating both Syria and Iran , two birds with one stone.

As long as this triad?accusations about the acquisition of WMD, the sponsorship of terrorism, and the crocodile tears for Iranian human rights?appear in the press and on the lips of various U.S. officials, then anti-war Iranians must remain alert and active. Those who will continue to reproach us for doing so can always rely on Orientalist tropes about "Easterners' penchant for conspiracy theories" to dismiss away our concerns.

*Niki Akhavan

Hypocrisy and Philanthropy

2005-02-24T17:56:00.000-08:00

What are the real objectives behind the campaign against war on Iran? What makes some people think that it has to be in support of the Iranian government? I have come across these questions very often and have been explicitly told that instead of denouncing war against Iran, we had better put all the pressure of propaganda on the Iranian government to give up its nuclear ambitions. This might make sense if we assess things in a simplistic manner. This kind of attitude is clearly based on the assumption that the US is the world supreme and super power and therefore is very well capable of making war. Thus the only way to stop war is to convince the weak part to avoid any situation which would give the powerful side any reason to start this war.

It is my conviction that this way of looking at the issue is based on a number of fallacies. First of all, if we believe that the US is a superpower which would even ignore the decisions and agreements of the international community and the UN and is always prepared to start a war wherever it wishes pre-emptively, then there is absolutely no point in convincing Iran to give up its ambitions. This idea is obviously based on the assumption that a war is inevitable and what we must do is to minimize the casualties. Personally, I do not think this is why and how I should be against war. I have, from the very beginning of the issue, had some theoretical perspectives which encompass a wide range of issues, namely the future of democracy all around the world.

What is at stake today is not simply the sovereignty of Iran and its territorial rights. Nor is it merely an increasing threat of terrorism around the world. We have to be first of all alerted that the media and propaganda are shaping our minds the way they wish, with their stereotype terrorism, Islam and Iran. These patterns are at best useful for simplistic minds. This attitude fails to notice the little differences which can have massive impacts. Democracy itself is crumbling from within in a country which represents the most powerful bonds of democracy and civil society. I believe we have a unique opportunity in targeting the debasement of all civil patterns of life and all democratic values that mankind has achieved so far. It is by no means a dispute where you would say it should be either against the US or against the Iranian government. It is true that there may be many Americans and many Iranians who are in favour of war, but being against war from this perspective neither means that we are allies of the Iranian government or in favour of continuation of suppression and infringement of individual liberties, nor does it mean that we have a specific hostility with the Americans. It is true that in the minds of many Iranians, American interventions have left very painful memories. Yet, it does not mean that one should forget realistic and critical approaches to serious issues such as war which can have a global impact on the lives of all people in Iran. This problem cannot be solved unless there is a unanimous will on both sides. Let us not forget that it was never Iran who threatened that it would invade the US or Israel. They have always responded to the threats that they have received from them. Suppose somebody threatens to invade the UK for any reason. What do you expect the British reaction to be? A peaceful and apologetic one? Or suppose the Iranians had already threatened that they would invade the US (suppose they had the power to do so), how would the Americans respond?

In any event, one of the immediate results that I wish to see out of this media campaign is to undermine the legitimacy of per-emptive war started by any country in the world for any reason. This seems to me to be well founded in humanistic and philanthropist values that I know. After all, we do not have any hidden agenda to serve either the American or Iranian politicians. We are first of all human beings and then Iranians. This war is an infringement of human values first. Let us stick to our common roots of humanity first, although there are thousands of their reasons to denounce this war.

*Daryoush Mohammad Poor

Insurance Brokers

2005-02-20T17:52:00.000-08:00

Many people have argued that in the current talks about U.S. policy towards Iran, Europe and the U.S. have been playing the ?good cop/bad cop? game (you guess who the bad cop is!) This makes some sense, but the ?game? is actually more complex than involving two big action heroes (the good old Europe and the rebellious cowboy) who police the evil villain (Iranian Mullahs). Of course, one can argue that not all decision-makers in Iran are ?Mullahs,? and not all Iranian Islamic clergies think the same. A detailed attention to different factions and their political power in different levels of authority reveals that the state in Iran is not a coherent body of authority spatialized ?vertically? above the ?society,? even as it is often imagined as such. Despite what one thinks about the role of religion in the state, as Alireza has pointed out in his last post, flattening the Iranian state and the government as ?theocracy? and opposing it to American ?democracy? is too simplistic.

But, that is a different discussion than what I want to address here: a modality of government that plays an important role in managing both foreign and domestic policies in the U.S., but is not limited to the state apparatus. This is a more refined ?game? within the U.S. government that goes beyond limited understandings of a unified state. The U.S./Europe/Iran scenario trio and the ?gaming? logic, which characterize many discussions about a possible war on Iran, hinder many nuances. Such an approach to the state ignores- to borrow from Foucault- the ?multiple regime of governmentality? that brings together private and public forms of expertise and agencies- in this case in a transnational context.

Foucault?s definition of governmentality is instructive in understanding the situation at hand. Governmentality for Foucault, is ?the ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, as its principle form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatus of security? (Governmentality, 1978). It is the governmentalization of the state rather than the etatisation of society (state control) that is an important element of our times.

Why do I think Foucault?s concept of governmentality is relevant to what we are currently witnessing in the case of U.S. policy towards Iran? Let me explain. Yesterday, I got an email from the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) with the subject line that read, ?Experts Testify on Iran Policy at Congressional Hearings.? In the body of the of the email message, I read, ?Iranian People Are Our Allies, Pressure on Regime Needed, Experts Testify at House Hearing.? Wanting to know what was meant by this headline, and curious to learn who these ?experts? were, I clicked on the link and read NIAC?s report. Sure enough, I learned about these ?experts? in the second paragraph: ?Sick, who testified via video-teleconference, was joined by former US Ambassador Mark Palmer with the Committee on the Present Danger, and Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center about next steps on US policy toward Iran. The hearing follows statements made by President Bush earlier this week that the United States is conducting a ?policy review? of Iran.?

Experts

Who is Sick, you ask? He is a Senior Research Scholar and the acting director of School of International and Public Affairs? Middle East Institute at Columbia University. He served on the National Security Council under Ford, Carter and Reagan, and was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick acted as the Executive Director of Gulf/2000, an Alton Jones and Rockefeller research project at Columbia University which studied political, economic and security developments in the Persian Gulf. Sick was the Deputy Director for International Affairs at the Ford Foundation from 1982 to 1987, where he was responsible for programs relating to U.S. foreign policy. He is also a member of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and the Chairman of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East. All of the above have qualified him as an ?expert? to appear in front of the Congress (well, via communication technologies) and testify that ?the West must keep its spotlight on Iran and encourage true voices of democracy.? A lot of Sick?s qualifications and affiliations are seemingly ?non-governmental? (human rights, academia, private foundations), but as an ?expert? with all of the interests I have listed, he is a part of the governmentality that I will address in this post.

Like Sick, Sokolski, the next ?expert? who testified is involved with both education and ?non-governmental? agencies. He is the executive director of The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), ?a project of the Institute for International Studies (IIS), [which] is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, educational organization founded in 1994 to promote a better understanding of strategic weapons proliferation issues. NPEC educates policymakers, journalists, and university professors about proliferation threats and possible new policies and measures to meet them.? (Notice, again, the non-profit, non-partisan, educational, and not-a-part-of-the-state, but a part of the government).

Now what is this ?Committee on Present Danger? (CPD) on behalf of which Palmer (the third ?expert?) testified in the House hearing a couple of days ago? CPD was founded in 1950 ?as a bipartisan education and advocacy organization dedicated to building a national consensus for a strong defense against Soviet expansionism.? Apparently, in 1976 it reemerged ?with leadership from the labor movement, bipartisan representatives of the foreign policy community and academia, all of whom were concerned about strategic drift in U.S. security policy.? While with the end of the Cold war, CPD was inactive, it is very much active now. CPD claims: ?today, radical Islamists threaten the safety of the American people and millions of others who prize liberty. The threat is global. They operate from cells in a number of countries. Rogue regimes seek power by making common cause with terrorist groups. The prospect that this deadly collusion may include weapons of mass murder is at hand. Like the Cold War, securing our freedom against organized terrorism is a long-term struggle. The road to victory begins with clear identification of the shifting threat and vigorous pursuit of policies to contain and defeat it.? (Notice again, that CPD is a non-profit/ ?non-governmental? organization with members who are academics, labor movement activists--well, at least in the 1950s- and ?independent citizens,? who are concerned about a ?threat.?)

Here is an excerpt from CPD?s mission statement (I have underlined what I consider to be key elements to my discussion):

?Our mission is to educate free people everywhere about the threat posed by global radical Islamist and fascist terrorist movements; to counsel against appeasement of terrorists; and build support for a strategy of victory against this menace to freedom? We are incorporated as a not-for-profit (501(c)(4)) organization. Our membership is limited to those in private life and does not include elected or appointed full-time federal or state officials or candidates for public office. All members serve in their individual capacities and not as official representatives of any other group or organization. We are all independent citizens. As a Committee, we recognize no ties or obligations to any Administration or political party.

? Our principal activity will be educational and the advocacy of positions based upon a full, fair and objective factual foundation. The Committee will use a variety of means to carry out its mission, such as articles in magazines and newspapers, speeches, interviews, commissioned studies, issue conferences and symposia, position papers and pamphlets, news conferences, public opinion polls and Congressional testimony. The Committee will concern itself with broad principles and policy objectives. Our concern is with strategies and goals, with the broad thrust and direction of policy, not with the details of its day-to-day implementation.?

The last sentence highlights the modalities of governmentality (policies, opinion polls, testimonies) that cannot be reduced and collapsed into the work of the state (implementation). Based on the affiliations and interests of the three "expert" witnesses, I want to suggest that these ?experts? are agents whose testimonies embody insurance technologies- which in Francois Ewald?s words is a technology of risk. I see these experts as insurance brokers who guarantee not just American democracy and ?our way of life,? but the interests of the market economy. As Ewald argues ("Insurance and Risk", 1991), insurance as a historical process and a practice of a certain type of rationality, is connected to ?geometry of hazard? and risk. Risk in insurance terms does not refer to an event happening in reality, but the probable occurrence of events that may or may not happen to capitals and values of a population. So, the risk doesn?t exist in reality, but everything can be at risk according to the art of analyzing the danger, or ?the threat? if you will. Let me examine this ?threat? and the values and capitals of the population that it puts at risk.

The Threat

According to Ewald, the insurer is not a passive agent registering the risks and offering guarantees against them. The insurer ?produces risks.? This argument fits very well with the testimonies of our insurance agents (I meant to say Middle East experts!) While the experts tell us that ?there is a very good chance that a U.S. attack on Iran would end [the] internal opposition [to the Iranian regime by ?pro-Western? Iranian people],? they do not rule out the presence of a risk. In fact, the non-military solutions suggested by these experts do not take away from the fact that they actively produce the risk: ?When asked by Lantos if they believed Iran was developing their nuclear program for peaceful reasons, all three witnesses answered no.? We have already seen the element of ?threat? in the mission statement of both NPEC and CPD. Let me give some more examples of this production of risk by our ?expert? insurance agents at NPEC in their recent testimony.

Three days ago ( February 16, 2005), the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center released the Report of the Iran Competitive Strategies Working Group. In this report, which is conveniently called ?Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran,? we read:

?these workshops [of the working group] identified three threats that are likely to increase following Iran?s acquisition of a nuclear weapons option:

? Even More Nuclear Proliferation?
? Dramatically Higher Oil Prices?
? Increased Terrorism Geared to Diminish U.S. Influence?

All of these threats are serious?.?

Thus, definition of threat in this report does not limit it to nuclear proliferation, but includes geopolitical and economic losses to the U.S. as possible risks.

The report further tells us, ?the truth is that Iran soon can and will get a bomb option. All Iranian engineers need is a bit more time -- one to four years at most. No other major gaps remain: Iran has the requisite equipment to make the weapons fuel, the know-how to assemble the bombs; and the missile and naval systems necessary to deliver them beyond its borders. As noted in the working group?s earlier report (see Checking Iran?s Nuclear Ambitions) no scheme, including ?just in time? delivery fresh fuel and removal of spent fuel from Bushehr, will provide much protection against Iran diverting its peaceful nuclear program to compliment its covert efforts to make bombs.? So while NPEC does not suggest a military solution, it actively produces a risk for which insurance measures should be taken. We are told in this report that without a regime change or a drastic change of attitude by Iranian statesmen, the risk remains probable.

Let me give you some more examples, this time from the Committee for Present Danger, in order to point to what I see as subtly different terminology used by the two organizations. As the name of the Committee for Present Danger suggests, the members of this organization seem to be concerned with more than a probable threat. They suggest that a form of danger is ?present.? This ?presence? connotes a materiality (it is here) and a temporal urgency (it is here now). Thus as we will see in the statements of the members of the CPD, they advocate for the eradication of this danger: ?this generation?s war must be won!? This organization?s website has a section called ?the threat? and the subtitle of the site is: ?dedicated to winning the war on terrorism.? But how does one reconcile this imminent threat suggested by CPD and the suggestion by NPEC that a military action on Iran will worsen the situation for the U.S.?

One explanation may be the fine line between ?danger? and ?risk? (or threat, in NPEC?s language). Danger, as Robert Castel ("From Dangerousness to Risk", 1991) has argued in the case of preventative social administration techniques in France and the United states, is a paradoxical notion. It both affirms the quality of immanent to a subject, and a mere probability, for the proof of danger could only be provided after the fact. It is this unpredictability that gives the idea that even if a person appears calm and harmless, s/he may become dangerous. On CPD?s page we read, ?murderous ideology being nothing new, the question becomes how does this threat from radical Islamic terrorists compare to previous threats? The principal difference between this ideology and the expansionist fascist and communist regimes that preceded it in the last century is that Islamist terrorism is not a regime at all. It is the perversion of a major religion (approximately 1.5 billion members worldwide) through delusions of Muslim victimhood.?

Thus while 1.5 billion Muslims may appear calm, there is always the chance of deviation: ?The ideology of Islamist terror by itself poses a dangerous threat, capable of evil committed in the name of God. Fueled by the accelerant of state support, the threat of Islamist terror increases dramatically?. But, in this case, what is proliferating are not weapons but self-anointed holy warriors. The blinding hatred that drives them is all-consuming. It leaves no room for doubting whether, given the chance, they would use any weapon of mass destruction ? nuclear, chemical or biological ? at any time against any people.? So, CPD identifies and locates the potentially dangerous by describing the ?breeding grounds? of danger in Africa, Asia- and yes- in North America, where ?Islamic terrorists? have formed ?sleeper cells?!

But how does one confine the 1.5 billion individuals who may become ?dangerous?? Immigration policies are one way of locating and controlling this danger, but in a time when Muslim diasporas are spread across the world, the confinement may not be quite practical. So, rather than a certain danger, the deployment of a probable threat becomes necessary for the development of multiple insurance strategies that promise to save the ?free world? from the harms of this internal and general risk. It is, as Castel argues, when ?the notion of risk is made autonomous than that of danger? that a systematic pre-detection becomes possible. Everyone becomes subjected to modalities of intervention that does not locate the danger in a subject, but is concerned with risk factors and statistics (work of universities, foundations, and think tanks; i.e. the ?experts?) in order to prevent the threat in any way possible. Thus, NPEC tells us that the probability of ?Iran going nuclear? is less if there is a regime change. This implicitly means the correction of the ?risk population? not through disciplinary methods (such as war), but by ?teaching? democracy through entities such as ?Radio Farda? (I wonder if this forward-looking name for the Voice of America is accidental!)

For insurance to be effective, risk has to be calculable and predictable. It is perhaps no accident that George Shultz (a Stanford professor and a fellow at the conservative think tank, Hoover; a member of the board of directors of Bechtel Group, Fremont Group, Gilead Sciences, and Charles Schwab & Co.; chairman of the International Council of J. P. Morgan Chase and chairman of the Accenture Energy Advisory Board; chairman of Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board) writes on the CPD website: "We face a clear and present danger, so we must identify the danger accurately and realistically, with no punches pulled, and support the necessary actions to deal with the danger decisively.? It is no accident that think tanks such as Hoover have started specific programs on developing policies to envision the ?future of Iran,? where predication seems to work both based on techniques of quantifying danger in these centers, and as a promise for a utopian future. One dimension of techniques of insurance in Ewald?s theory of risk is the principle that to calculate a risk is to master time and to discipline the future. This may translate into ?reviewing policy?, may culminate in the use of ?preemptive war? as a strategy of protecting the ?free world? from the harms of ?the dangerous,? or it could mean securing a system of training subjects into docility (another slip! I meant to say American democracy!).

With this idea of a general risk, the American population also needs to become increasingly calculable, manageable, and observed. Thus, the Patriot act, the increased general surveillance, the opinion polls about war, all become parts of these technologies of risk that pretend to eradicate risk by deploying notions of security and through creating a constant fear of the probable. Furthermore, unlike an accident, a risk concerns a population, and as Ewald argues, ?the work of the insurer is, precisely, to constitute that population by selecting and dividing risks. Insurance brings solidarity under the rhetoric of mutual interests. CPD?s mission statement is a good example of the way insurance against the ?threat of terrorism? constructs solidarity around shared national interests: ?In times of great challenge to the security of the United States, Republicans, Democrats and Independents have traditionally joined to make an assertive defense of American interests.?

Insurance in this sense is a technique of administering justice where the damage to one is borne by all. Regardless of the nature of insurance measures, one thing is clear: If you don?t buy insurance, you are responsible for the losses not just to yourself, but to all Americans, or to the whole ?free world.? That is perhaps why Midge Decter, the Former Director of the Committee for the Free World and a member of CPD tells us that "the United States is the leading ? indeed at the moment the only ? major world power. It continues, as it always has done, to play this role reluctantly. Thus each international crisis is made to seem an entirely new and separate ? and surprising ? issue to deal with. Yet whether we take up the burden of our power willingly or reluctantly, it will remain our inescapable burden still. If we fail to act, that too will be an action. It is time for Americans to understand this and to be grateful that it is they, and not some monstrous regime, who have been chosen by Providence to play this role.?

But in this ?hyper-rational? prevention, there seems to be little concern for the social and human costs of this pre-detection. There seems to be no concern for soldiers who die, no concern for civil liberties, and certainly no concern whatsoever for people who are marked as ?potential risks? and are killed in preemptive wars. But, what is ironic about the politics of insurance is that it functions through the rhetoric of rights. Ewald points out that the insurance companies have pioneered both, techniques of probabilistic calculation and disciplining the future, and the juridical form of the insurance contract (in particular the beginning of labor law). It is perhaps not a coincidence that the labor movement of the 1950s was a part of the CPD. Insurance makes security to be contractualized and legalized, where the state guarantees the stability of insurance institutions. Along the same lines, one can argue that buying into insurance measures that promise to control the threat of terrorism is represented as a way to practice and protect one?s rights. But insurance is also a guarantee for state stability. Ewald argues that insurance moves the concept of time from the life of individual to the life of society: ?In guaranteeing security, the state is equally guaranteeing itself its own existence, maintenance, permanence.? Thus as insurance brokers, the experts who have testified about the "Iranian threat" are the guarantors of state stability (reading the testimonies makes it clear that it is the stability of the United States and the state of Israel which are issues of concern).

Let me bring some more telling examples of the way the ?threat? has been described and qualified by CPD members (I call these the insurance brokers of American democracy and market economy), who are as they say ?independent citizens,? but have affiliations to state and supra-state entities. What is striking in many of these statements is the repeatability of the threat, which is another characteristic of risk. A risk is only a risk if it can be expected to happen regularly. If it is not the threat of fascism or communism, Islamism in these CPD members? rhetoric is capable of repeating September 11:

Joseph Liberman, Senator and the honorary Co-Chairman of CPD: ?The war against terrorism is not just a war of arms, but also a war of values. The threat from Islamist terrorism is the challenge of our generation, just as fascism and communism were the challenges past generations of Americans faced. We defeated those enemies, and we will defeat this one, if we stay steadfast in our purpose and true to our values. The values we cherish ? life, liberty and happiness for all ? will carry us to victory.?

John Agresto, (Former Senior Advisor for Higher Education and Scientific Research, Coalition Provisional Authority, Iraq Former President, St. John's College): "In fighting terrorism we should not be deluded. We are not fighting poverty or a political movement. It's an enemy that wants nothing less than our values and way of life to be removed permanently from the world scene."

Ali Al-Ahmed, (Director of The Saudi Institute): ?The war on terrorism must be waged as a total war with guns and ideas simultaneously. The war of ideas is most important."

Peter Brookes, (Director of Asian Studies Center, The Heritage Foundation): "The scourge of terrorism is a unprecedented challenge to international peace and stability that must be defeated through a proactive strategy of resolve and international cooperation."

Rachel Ehrenfeld, ( Director, American Center for Democracy): "Losing the War on Terrorism is not an option for the U.S.; It is time for Americans to recognize that the War on Terrorism is a war to defend the lives of each and every one of us, as well as our Western civilization."

Newt Gingrich (Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1995?99): "Imagine the morning after an attack even more devastating than 9/11. What is it worth for us to avoid the attack if possible and to survive it if it happens despite our best efforts?"

Lawrence J. Haas (Former Communications Director, White House Office of Management and Budget): "We praise the 'Greatest Generation' for defeating Germany and Japan. We applaud post-World War II generations for winning the Cold War. But, too often, we forget that today's War on Terrorism raises the same stakes, and requires the same commitment, as our earlier struggles. The sooner we fully recognize the danger at hand, the sooner we can address it with the energy that's needed to prevail, as we must. I expect the Committee to play a major role in this effort."

Jerome M. Hauer (Former Director, Response to Emergencies and Disasters Institute, George Washington University; Former Acting Assistant Secretary, Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Department of Health and Human Services): "The threat of terrorism has grown and the tactics of terrorists have broadened. We must find ways to defeat those who would try to change the fabric of this great nation. The Committee on the Present Danger will work to better educate our policy makers and the public in ways to reduce this rising threat."

Robert P. Kogod (Business Executive President, Hartman Institute, Jerusalem; Advisor to the Secretary, The Smithsonian Institution): "As in the past, the Committee has correctly identified a clear and present danger to our nation. Radical fundamentalism and terrorism must be confronted and destroyed as soon as possible. It is a threat similar to Fascism and Communism."

Charles M. Kupperman, (Vice President, Strategic Integration and Operations, Missile Defense Systems, The Boeing Company): "Winning the war against global terrorism is fundamental to international security in the 21st Century and we must be relentless in rooting out the terrorist network."

Hedieh Mirahmadi, (Executive Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education): "Ultimately, our long-term success in the war against terror will be determined by how effectively free people everywhere wage the ideological battle, which cannot be fought with military might or law enforcement. As Americans, we cherish the universal human rights of freedom and we need to help others who struggle every day to enjoy those same rights."

Robert L. Pfaltzgraff (Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University): "Unlike Pearl Harbor, which led the United States to enter World War II and to achieve definably decisive victory within less than four years, the war against terror requires a long-term strategy and necessary capabilities all within a new mindset. We need unconventional responses to unconventional threats ? terrorist challenges unlike anything we have faced before 9/11."

Danielle Pletka (Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute): "Enemies of the United States are engaged in an existential war against the very principles underlying our republic. Neither jail nor courts will contain them; rather we must take the fight to them, and recognize that peace will come only though victory."

Nina Rosenwald (Council on Foreign Relations; Chairman, Board of Directors, Middle East Media and Research Institute): "If terrorism is not defeated now, it will only be more difficult and more costly to defeat it later. It would have been so much easier to stop Hitler before he crossed The Rhine."

Kenneth R. Timmerman (Executive Director, Foundation for Democracy in Iran): "Just as the Reagan administration rolled back Communist tyranny, today we can roll back the tyranny of radical Islam and the terrorist regimes it has spawned. But the first battle will be here at home, where we must defeat the blame-America-first pundits of political correction."

William Van Cleave, (Professor, Southwest Missouri State University; Director, Center for Defense and Strategic Studies; Senior Defense Advisor, 1979?81): "Islamic terrorism is an unconditional and existential threat not only to America and Israel, but also to Judeo-Christian culture. We have no choice but to recognize that war has been thrust upon us, and that principles of warfare apply. Only by denying success to this threat ? by a combination of anticipatory defensive and offensive measures ? can we defeat it."

Governmentality and Political economy

So far I have focused on the notion of threat/security and the population. As Foucault suggests, there is a third element to governmentality: that of political economy. How is the art of governing through insurance relate to political economy? Ewald argues that what is insured is not the injury suffered by a person, but ?a capital against whose loss the insurer offers a guarantee.? Insurance provides the principle for the objectification of people and their relations. Ewald?s argument may not quite address forms of governmentality that extend beyond the limits of the nation-state. However, I believe that it is this ?solidarity through things? that brings the neo-liberal economy to the forefront of discussions about policies towards Iran. The report produced based on the study conducted for NPEC by energy researchers at Rice University reveals that the insurance against the ?threat? of terrorism is closely tied to neo-liberal economy:

?Historically, after a major terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, markets worry, the price of oil increases, and Iran?s own oil revenues, in turn, surge upward?.Given that one-fifth of the world?s entire oil demand flows through the Straits (as well as roughly a quarter of America?s supply of oil) and no other nation that has fortified its shores near Hormuz, an Iranian threat to disrupt commerce there would have to be taken seriously by commercial concerns (e.g., insurers and commodity markets) and other nations.?

The fact that the markets are the main concern for these "experts" reveals that it is not just "our values" and rights, nor democracy that is being insured here (although that seems to be the claim); what is being insured is the market in neo-liberal economy.

As the claims about ?exporting democracy? in the "war on terror" have proven, neo-liberalism is not limited to economic policies, but involves the dissemination of market values to all social action. Unlike classical liberalism, neo-liberalism does not conceive the rational economic behavior as natural, but as organized by law and in need of political intervention. Thus, the discourse on the project of ?rationalization? of Iranian economy, more often than not, is coupled with advocacy for social norms such as freedom and democracy- which in an arbitrary manner is supposed to facilitate competition and free trade. Too often, causal links are drawn between democracy and market economy. It seems as if it is a given fact that democracy and free market go hand-in hand together.

While market, and not the state, becomes the regulative principle of society, rational action on behalf of every member of society, and legal protection become necessities to a successful economic mechanism within the neo-liberal language that privileges economic growth. State legitimacy becomes contingent upon the extent and speed of implementation of this economic rationality. Hence, the call for a regime change is only one suggested strategy by NPEC. A drastic change in Iranian state?s economic policies is their other alternative.

Unlike classical liberalism, neo-liberalism extends the economic domain to every sphere of life and constructs individuals as entrepreneurial actors. As such, the free rational individual becomes responsible for her/his actions, even if her/his actions are limited by unemployment and limited state-subsidized welfare. The ideal neo-liberal individual becomes one who chooses between the economic options, rather than seeking to change these options. Thus, any critique of global capitalism is suspended as an obstacle to the flow of ?progress? in the world economy.

What we are witnessing in the case of Iran shows that the only two available options are either the one suggested by the ?experts? who I have discussed here, or a military attack. This makes this ?game? a catastrophic living reality for people who live in Iran. Unfortunately, despite the celebrations of some Iranians who prefer neo-liberal insurance brokers? suggestions as a healthy alternative to war, neo-liberal economic policies have proven to increase the gap in poverty in both national and international levels. More often than not, neo-liberal policies support authoritarian and corrupt states.

Reading the NPEC report and Sokolski?s testimony leave no doubt in my mind that the objective of these testimonies is to secure the global market, to give geopolitical privileges to Israel and the U.S., to allow further activity of multi-national corporations in the region, and to restrict immigration. Their non-military solution is only a profitable insurance technology that can easily change to preemptive war if the conditions of the "game" change. Because of the contingency of the political environment in the Middle East, terms of security and notions of risk will be deployed differently to guarantee the interests of the market and U.S. imperialism. This may very well mean that preemptive war can be suggested by the same ?experts? as an insurance strategy. We have seen such drastic changes in the case of Iraq, haven?t we? Think Hoover. Think Larry Diamond. Think the Progressive Report! These policy-making think tanks that are embedded in U.S. educational institutions can cause devastating material effects on many people's lives. The neo-liberal discourses of these ?experts? may not immediately subject the Iranian people to the violence of war. But the other option does not look very promising either.

*Sima Shakhsari is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University.

The Politics of Ambivalence and Appropriation

2005-02-13T17:50:00.000-08:00

A couple years ago, as I was preparing to leave my house to attend the annual Bahman 22 (February 10) rally marking the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Tehran, I learned, to my great astonishment and amusement, that a formerly Communist relative of mine (I will call him an "uncle") would be driving us to the demonstration. My uncle, a respected doctor and editor of several popular magazines, had not suddenly discovered some kind of new love for the Islamic Republic, whose very ideological foundations he was, and still is, fiercely at odds with. Even so, he was probably the most enthusiastic among our little group of relatives at the rally, making repeated excited remarks about how many people had shown up, and at least once, running up a pedestrian overpass overlooking Azadi (freedom) street near Sharif University to get a better view of the massive turnout of Tehranis. That day was a particularly cold and snowy Bahman 22, much like the anniversary this year. There were many more umbrellas than there were banners, and people bought little plastic cups of roasted lima beans and lentil soup to keep warm. My uncle, whose presence at the rally on that day I consider to be the perfect reflection of a political "ambivalence" that I mean to talk about in this post, articulated the reason for his presence as support for the "sayyid" (Mohammad Khatami, at the time already president for two years) who was to speak at the end of the demonstration (although even his use of the term "sayyid" had inflections of irony and parody, but I won't get into that issue here). His knowledge of the fact that he would be among the hundreds of thousands of people from across Iran that the right-wing-controlled state television would show (I would say "appropriate") again and again and again and again for the next two weeks with triumphant declarations that the people had "renewed their allegiance" with the Islamic Revolution did not deter him the least bit from his decision to show his support for the reformist president in this way.

Most politicians and political analysts (from journalists to pundits to even political scientists) do not seem to like the concept of "ambivalence" very much. In their analyses, people are always neatly bunched into groups "for" or "against" something (often an entire system of governance), and judgments are often made about how close each of these groups are to "us" or to "them" based on the "criteria" (often serving only the heuristic interests of the analyst in question) that unite or divide them. There is not a lot of room in these interpretations for nuance or uncertainty in people's relationship toward ideas, individuals, political parties, historical events, etc. and this leads, in my opinion, to serious errors in judgment, sometimes with dire consequences.

Herein lies, I believe, the quandary that many observers of Iran, both within the country and without, are faced with in explaining the often "paradoxical" political behaviors of Iranian society: sit in most any taxicab or gathering of friends and relatives and you are bound to hear angry complaints about the crimes du-jour of the "akhoonds" and their most recent destructive policies; and yet there is a good chance that you might see the same people from the taxicabs and family dinners taking part in a "pro-government" demonstration (like Bahman 22) or participating in an election that friends and foes of the government alike would interpret as an endorsement of the "Revolution."

The solution to the resulting confusion (ever so apparent in the writings of most influential opinion-makers in the west - Friedman and Ledeen come to mind for some reason), lies, I believe, in avoiding reductive and homogenizing categorizations of people as either "regime loyalists" or as outright opponents of the state, and instead being mindful of nuances in political positionings and ambivalent relationships toward a multitude of ideologies, histories, political personalities and groups (with their respective histories and ideologies), within the context of shifting local, national, and international politics. Even the Iranian "state" and its semantic equivalents in western journalistic parlance (from the highly imprecise "mullahs" to the equally ill-defined "Islamic regime") are extremely amorphous and elude homogeneous characterizations, and the feelings that "the people" harbor toward this amorphous mass need to be interpreted with close attention to nuance and specificity.

Of course, one might argue that there is political purpose behind the neglect of "ambivalence" and the wholesale appropriation of a heterogeneity of beliefs and attitudes for bolstering narrowly specific political interests. State television in Iran uses the mass turnout at every demonstration or nationwide election to trumpet the "people's" approval of conservative or right-wing elements in the state. Western media likewise exploit every "anti-government" protest or confrontation between the different political forces in Iran to trumpet the decline of the "people's" interest in the "Revolution" and the imminent downfall of the "regime." But the cracks in these pictures of perfection (whether utopic or dystopic) often become apparent in ways that are both compelling and ironic: The massive turnout of people to vote in the 1997 presidential election, for example, ended up endorsing the underdog (Khatami) whom the ruling right wing had consistently bashed for his "anti-Islamic" and "counter-revolutionary" policies. The large turnout of people at the Bahman 22 protest last week presents an inverse picture, in my opinion, that confounds the expectations of the likes of Friedman and Ledeen who want us to believe that Iranians are "hungering" for the Bushniks to "liberate" them from their oppressors. In both cases, I believe it is wrong to lump together "the people" using generalizations that would have them at one instance as "loyalists" and at the other as "opponents" of the government. Any analysis would have to take into account the multitude of forces that are at play in any individual's decision to take part in such high-visibility collective actions as a national election or rally (whether pro- or anti-government); from feelings of nationalism and religious conviction to anti-imperialist sentiment to specific feelings about particular political groups and personalities or even particular issues of national interest (in this case for example, the issue of nuclear energy), and to balance these, once again with attention to specificity, with feelings about the economy, the suppression of dissident voices, government mismanagement, and so on.

Ambivalent positionings can bring seemingly opposing feelings together: one can vehemently criticize the government's suppression of dissent while supporting the nuclear program; one can oppose the totalitarianism of the right wing while also opposing the subversion of the government through foreign military intervention; and one can cry foul at the dismantling of democratic process (for example at the most recent parliamentary elections) while simultaneously taking part in the same flawed process with hopes of bolstering democracy in general. The same can of course be said of the American context (as Niki pointed out eloquently in the previous post). It is possible to be "for freedom" while opposing U.S. military expansionism. We need to be able to recognize ambivalence in such complex relationships as those between "people" and "state" if we are to avoid being misled by those whose political interests lead them to make grand generalizations about the state of entire nations.

*Alireza Doostdar is a Ph.D. student in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.

With "Us" or with "Them"

2005-02-11T17:47:00.000-08:00

The foundations being set for a potential attack on Iran?claims about the possession or acquisition of WMDs, the threat to U.S. national security, the marching in of international inspectors and mediators, the foregrounding of dubious claims by "exiled" agitators--are predictably parallel to the case of Iraq, the details of which should be exposed, and probably will be on the pages of this very blog.

These steps towards war are being taken as I am writing now (claims of "routine" updates notwithstanding), and many Iranians living inside and outside of their country are already speaking out loudly in resistance. But we have also become the target of the familiar accusations, the same ones that continue to be hurled against Iraqis who object to the occupation of their country: to be against war is to be for nuclear proliferation, to be against the war is to condone the current regime, to be against the war is to be "Anti-American".

These accusations, though shallow and reductive, nonetheless have a surprising power in silencing and intimidating. After all, which Iranian in post 9/11 U.S.A is not on some level afraid of appearing sympathetic to "terrorists". We who have seen the special registrations and sweeps of Iranians, the surveillance and harassment of West Asian students and activists across U.S. campuses, and numerous daily pressures that go un-named, know that these accusations can stick with heavy penalties.

It is a similar predicament for those Iranians?whether residing in Iran or in diaspora?who reject the current Iranian regime, and may have risked their lives in opposition to it. They find themselves pigeon-holed as defenders of the regime, if not as agents ensuring its survival.

The fact of the matter is that one cannot infer a person's position vis-୶is the U.S. or Iranian governments based solely on their opposition to a war on Iran and to the devastating cost in human life, destruction, and political turmoil that will surely ensue from it.

These either/or options that are continually forced upon discussions about a war on Iran (e.g. "you are either with the U.S. occupation or with the Iranian regime", "you are either for the war on Iran or against "freedom", etc.), foreclose opportunities for considered political stances: people end up censoring themselves, or worse yet, adopt progressively extremist positions in desperate attempts to be heard.

This blog and many others like it attempt to create the space denied to those of us who refuse the imposed binaries that stifle imaginations and impede the potentials for action. The more of us step outside the boundaries, the less we will find ourselves marginalized.

*Niki Akhavan

War Games

2005-02-10T17:45:00.000-08:00

The comments in response to Niki's post incited me to write this entry. I am troubled by some of the underlying assumptions in these responses. Let me start with Nur's comment. Nur writes, "On the other hand Iran could simply abandon its nuclear ambitions. That would be nice. If I am not mistaken they feel that nuclear weapons would be a deterrent. This reasoning is badly flawed and needs to be reconsidered immediately. The ball is in Iran's court. Let us hope they choose wisely."

To me there is no doubt that nuclear weapons should be abandoned, not only by Iran (assuming that Iran has such weapons), but also by the U.S. and Israel, where nuclear development programs are proliferating un-problematically as we speak. I don't think nuclear weapons are the means by which peace can be achieved anywhere. But the silence around the development of nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Israel reveal the naturalized assumption that these states have the capability of handling these deadly weapons rationally, where others do not. Such reasoning is troublesome as it falls back on the Eurocentric ideas of the rationality in the "West" in opposition to the "savagery" and "barbarity" of the rest.

Unlike Nur, I don't think that "the ball is in the Iranian court." It is an all American game... a deadly one that uses nuclear weapons to conquer. It seems to me that the U.S. is on a world tour... The losers? Ordinary Iranian people and those who die on both sides.
The winners? Corporations that profit from the development of nuclear weapons, military machines, "reconstruction projects," and oil. In fact for those who are afraid of losing their homes and their lives, it is not a game at all. A game connotes the consensual play of both sides. Just like a video-game, this war is a one-sided game. Perhaps it is this Game Boy mentality that leads Tim to write, "NUKE IRAN BEFORE THEY NUKE U.S.A!"

The comments in response to Niki's post incited me to write this entry. I am troubled by some of the underlying assumptions in these responses. Let me start with Nur's comment. Nur writes, "On the other hand Iran could simply abandon its nuclear ambitions. That would be nice. If I am not mistaken they feel that nuclear weapons would be a deterrent. This reasoning is badly flawed and needs to be reconsidered immediately. The ball is in Iran's court. Let us hope they choose wisely."

To me there is no doubt that nuclear weapons should be abandoned, not only by Iran (assuming that Iran has such weapons), but also by the U.S. and Israel, where nuclear development programs are proliferating un-problematically as we speak. I don't think nuclear weapons are the means by which peace can be achieved anywhere. But the silence around the development of nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Israel reveal the naturalized assumption that these states have the capability of handling these deadly weapons rationally, where others do not. Such reasoning is troublesome as it falls back on the Eurocentric ideas of the rationality in the "West" in opposition to the "savagery" and "barbarity" of the rest.

Unlike Nur, I don't think that "the ball is in the Iranian court." It is an all American game... a deadly one that uses nuclear weapons to conquer. It seems to me that the U.S. is on a world tour... The losers? Ordinary Iranian people and those who die on both sides.
The winners? Corporations that profit from the development of nuclear weapons, military machines, "reconstruction projects," and oil. In fact for those who are afraid of losing their homes and their lives, it is not a game at all. A game connotes the consensual play of both sides. Just like a video-game, this war is a one-sided game. Perhaps it is this Game Boy mentality that leads Tim to write, "NUKE IRAN BEFORE THEY NUKE U.S.A!"

I am not surprised by the comment by the "Iranian guy" where he asks Bush to "attack Iran as soon as possible." To this man, Bush is "our only hope in Iran for freedom and democracy." There is no question that the state repression in Iran has pushed certain segments of the society to accept war as the only option to rid Iran from the rule of the current regime. The generic and all-encompassing name "Iranian guy" notwithstanding, by no means does this approach represent the "will of the people.? Unfortunately, however, these voices are the ones that are appropriated by the Bush administration to legitimize war. Sites such as Iranians for Peace reflect the opposition to war by young Iranians who have worked hard towards change in Iran. Some of the most vocal people against a possible war on Iran are those who have at one point or another been arrested by the Iranian government. The politics of Iran cannot be reduced to ?mullahs vs. Bush? that the ?viva Bush- down with mullah? slogan of the ?Iranian guy? suggests.

Obviously, it is difficult to say what percentage of people in Iran opposes war. However, eight years of experiencing war has proven that besides death and destruction, war only halts dissent. As patriotic sentiments in times of crisis mobilize people to defend territorial boundaries, any form of dissent is deferred and any progress towards political change is halted. If a segment of the Iranian youth desires a military attack, it is perhaps because they have no memory of the years of war, and perhaps because they only get their news from satellite television programs that are industriously working to sketch a rosy image of American democracy. I doubt that these youth ever hear about the attacks on abortion clinics, the demise of education, the inherent racism that criminalizes people of color in the U.S., the homophobia that constantly denies queers rights of citizenship, the gang violence, and the list goes on?

Frankly, I am not convinced that a military attack on Iran will even remove the current regime. The case of Iraq (and I am referring to the bombing of Iraq during Bush Senior?s presidency) has shown that "precision bombing" and supporting ?pro-democracy? groups cannot bring regime-change. It will only make conditions of living harsher for many Iranians who live in Iran.

*Sima Shakhsari is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University.

How Long is "Now"

2005-02-09T17:44:00.000-08:00

A squirming Donald Rumsfeld made the rounds on the Sunday talk-shows a few days ago, broadcasting familiar platitudes about the situation in Iraq and West Asia in general. But he refused to answer questions about whether Iran represented the biggest threat to the U.S. and to the region, despite the fact that Thomas Friedman was killing himself to put words in Rumsfeld's mouth to that effect. But Rumsfeld dodged the issue even when pressed by the other co-host that he was avoiding the question, deferring instead to Bush and Rice and claiming that the U.S. was on a diplomatic path with Iran.

What explains Rumsfeld's reticence on the issue? Has he acquired a sense of tact? Lost his characteristic belligerence? Gained a new found respect for diplomacy?

Doubtful.

More likely is that he is simply on pause mode as Rice makes overtures to NATO and "old Europe" and pushes for a united front against Iran. In the meantime, the rest of the Bush administration has to maintain a fa硤e of awaiting the co-operation of their allies.

The nauseating spectacularization and fetishization of the recent Iraqi elections seems to have hoodwinked many into casting away any doubts they may have had about the U.S. project in Iraq (and I am not speaking here of the U.S. public alone, the majority of the Euro press shared in the uncritical praise of the elections). Rice has to act quick to get support for the next U.S. invasion before the Iraqi election results are announced and its disastrous consequences unleashed.

The latest negotiations between Iran and the Europeans begin this week. The Results of the Iraqi elections are due out in the same period.. On February fourth, Rice proclaimed that an U.S. attack on Iran was not "on the agenda now".

In a handful of days, we will find out how long "now" lasts.

*Niki Akhavan

A realistic contrast

2005-02-08T17:42:00.000-08:00

Freedom of speech can possibly end up in freedom of action, except probably in Iran and the United States. It may sound a little bit incongruous with the idealistic picture we have of the US in mind, but it is true. Yet, it may be very much troubling for many people to acknowledge that despite all despotism in Iran, there are certain freedoms and within that same ?obscurantism? dictated by the state, the people of Iran have a much broader political knowledge (and with some caution, responsibility) than the American people.

Why do I suggest this comparison? Because I strongly believe that, as I have said in the past, there is a very striking resemblance between the American politicians and their Iranian opponents. They feed on this apparent opposition. However, at a deeper level, they both seek their own survival.

Perhaps, it does not seem so irrelevant if we focus on launching a campaign against the promotion of nuclear power by the Iranian government. It seems fine so far. No wise person would advocate the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the notorious ?Weapons of Mass Destruction? in any part of the world. However, the major concern behind this opposition is peace and preservation of life for everyone (and making ALL nations accountable including the US and Israel). Let us suppose, for one minute, that instead of sounding the alarm against a war triggered by the Americans, we concentrate on denouncing the so called anti-democratic policies of Iran. What happens next? Iran may possibly become a modern colony of the United States. Is this what we are seeking? If we go ahead by legitimising the modern, so called liberating ?state sponsor of terror?, which is in my opinion the United States, when do you imagine we will be able to combat this consolidated power and institutionalized ignorance already developed and promoted by force of gun and our credulous ignorance?

I do not think that the central issue is whether we should oppose an American led war against Iran or not, even if it is in terms of mere hollow threats used as a trial balloon. There are more important things at stake. Freedom, liberalism and democracy are the targets of this modern war on human liberties. I do not see much difference on the levels of governments between Iranian governors and the Americans. There are more or less the same ideas for a virtual propaganda on war. We have to be concerned about people and how power is to be shared and made accountable in the world. The US politics does not show such promising signs. This is what we have to be worried about.

*Daryoush Mohammad Poor

Mission Statement

2005-02-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

The escalated public discourse about a possible military attack on Iran has alarmed many Iranians in Iran and its diaspora. As Iranians who are concerned about the implications of a war on our country, we have created this weblog to build a platform for preemptive dissent. In addition to our concerns about the fatalities of war, we are also troubled by the suppression of dissent in the U.S. and in Iran, and believe that war profoundly perpetuates civil repression.

Recent history has shown that the U.S. ratification of international laws does not prevent it from pursuing its expansionist project. For this reason, we do not rule out the possibility of a military attack on Iran. We recognize that transnational networks of power, including the media, corporations, fundamentalist movements, and non-governmental organizations, reveal the inadequacy of the "international" model. Therefore, we suggest an analysis that is attentive to the global phenomena that characterize the so called "war on terror."

It is clear to us that the post 9/11 crusade of the United States relies on a Manichean and colonial logic that situates "Western freedom and democracy" in opposition to "Islamic backwardness and tyranny." We resist such discursive binary constructions that reproduce colonial legacies, and instead locate these forms of knowledge-production within the gendered and raced global capitalist relations. We question the taken-for-granted notions of terror, freedom, democracy, and fundamentalism, by pointing to the contradictions that mark hegemonic usage of such tropes.

The current contributors of No War on Iran come from different disciplines and backgrounds. However, we are committed to the analytical approaches that we have highlighted above and strongly refuse to become complicit with discourses that legitimize war in the name of "liberty" and "democracy."

More on Conflating Iran's "Government" with its "People"

2005-02-04T17:38:00.000-08:00

In the last post, Niki pointed out that it was both disingenuous and dangerous to radically de-couple "the people" from "the government" in the current climate of threats being made against Iran: "We may be able to tell the difference," between government and people, she said, but "bombs cannot."

I would like to add a point to this argument: Even "we," the observers of the current standoff on the Iranian nuclear program, no matter where we stand politically on this issue, need to be very careful about being able to make the distinction between government and people correctly. This is important, I believe, because at least on the surface of things, these two entities seem to view the nuclear issue somewhat differently, and it is important to carefully consider this difference.

The Iranian government has always adamantly insisted that its nuclear program is strictly for energy purposes, that it cannot rely on oil alone to satisfy its growing energy needs (Iran actually imports billions of liters of gasoline each year), and that mastering the technology for nuclear energy production is a key objective in ensuring national "self-sufficiency." To allay concerns that the energy program might be a front for a nuclear weapons program, the Iranian government recently signed on to the additional protocol of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which has been signed by less than half of NPT member-states so far, and which allows for snap inspections of nuclear facilities by experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The U.S. and Israel claim that none of this is satisfactory, and that they still believe Iran is secretly developing a nuclear weapons capability. Of course, there is really no way to determine the truth of this accusation. Recent experience tells us however, that the U.S. is usually not to be trusted when making statements about the WMD programs of other countries. And Israel is not qualified the least bit to make such accusations, as it has consistently refused to even sign on to the "basic" NPT treaty, much less renounce its large and ambitious nuclear weapons program and its massive stockpile of nuclear warheads.

But even if no one may be able to objectively determine the "true" nuclear intentions of the Iranian government, the nuclear intentions of the "people" seem to be relatively clear and consistent: Most Iranians support not only a nuclear energy program, but indeed, a full-fledged nuclear weapons program (also see here and here). In this sense, the people may be more radical than the government. The question that just begs to be asked here is this: when Bush condemns Iran for its nuclear program but says "America" stands by the "Iranian people," is he willing to acknowledge that one of the very few issues that can perhaps unite "the people" against America is support for the "government's" nuclear program, and perhaps even a program more radical than what the government itself is pursuing?

*Alireza Doostdar is a Ph.D. Student in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.

2005-02-04T17:36:00.000-08:00

George Bush's 2005 State of the Union address contained a familiar (de)coupling, one which he been known to espouse elsewhere: a threat to the Iranian regime, "the world's primary state sponsor of terror" , and a gesture of assurance to the Iranian people that "America" stands with them in their pursuit of liberty.

I will be the last person who would argue that the ruling regime in Iran?or any other place for that matter?can be conflated with the people of the country. But to radically de-link the people of Iran from their government in contexts such as the above is both disingenuous and dangerous. No matter how many photos we are shown of Iraqis under occupation stuffing ballot boxes with checks next to un-named candidates, or how often we see the stylish Karzai playing the role of the sovereign statesman, Bush's forays into Iraq and Afghanistan have reminded us of the obvious: though we may be able to tell the differences between people and states, bombs cannot.

Iranians, no matter what their political persuasions or stance towards the current regime, must adamantly reject any claims of so-called support which go hand-in-hand with calls to war.

And with this entry, my first contribution to the new anti-war co-blog, I will take my own advice and register my objection to any act of solidarity with the Iranian people which is based on violence against us.

*Niki Akhavan

Democratic Illusions

2005-02-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I received an email from someone who asked why I was so worked up about a possible war on Iran. "It is unlikely that the U.S. would attack Iran," the author of the email said, "because Iran is not Iraq or Afghanistan." It is true. The situation in Iran is quite different than that of Iraq or Afghanistan, and we need to keep that in mind in our analyses of a possible war on Iran. But I am not convinced that my worries are unfounded, nor do I believe that Iran's case is separate from the expansionist project of the U.S. in the Middle East.
As a matter of fact, I have been concerned for a while now about what kind of future is awaiting Iran. There have been many reasons to worry, all of which are too close to home.

To start with, shortly after Bush announced his “war on terror,” the conservative think tank, Hoover- which is located on the campus where I am pursuing my education, started a program to develop policies towards Iran. Interestingly, it was people from this very program who wrote the 2003 "Progressive Internationalism Report: A 'Democratic' National Security Strategy." The authors of this report (some of whom are good old liberals!)endorsed the invasion of Iraq, claiming that containment was no longer an option. Knowing this, I have wondered about what is being decided for the Iranian people in the name of “the people” in places such as Hoover and in a coalition between certain segments of Iranian diaspora and the U.S. law makers.

I was also concerned when Sam Brownback, Kansas Senator and the author of the "Iran Democracy Act," in his 2003 Keynote speech at the American Enterprise Institute forum on “The Future of Iran,” declared that Iran was “the most significant source of terrorism in the world as well as the single biggest opportunity for a peaceful democratic revolution in our age.” What does this statement mean, especially when it was iterated in the midst of a so called "war on terror?"

You see, as much as I want to believe that the neoconservatives in the U.S. cannot legitimize an attack on Iran, the very recent history of events has shown that liberals, neoconservatives, and conservatives can put their differences aside and happily endorse the rhetoric of "war on terrorism." Whether one supports a military attack on Iran, or promotes democracy through “peaceful solutions,” the common assumption seems to rely on the dichotomy of “success” of democracy in the U.S., against its lack elsewhere. There is nothing new about this logic. It has its history in colonial discourses in Europe and the U.S. The new part, perhaps, is the way that forms of neo-liberal governmentality couple economic agendas of global capitalism with tropes of “freedom” and “democracy.” And these forms of governmentality go beyond ideological and regulatory state apparatus (Hence my concern about the role of corporations, communication technologies, and “non-governmental” Iranian diasporic organizations in projects of "envisioning the future of Iran").

My other reason to write preemptively against a war on Iran is the racist backlash against the Iranian communities in the U.S. After September 11, 2001, when Bush declared a “war on terrorism,” the question that came to mind was “who are these terrorists and who defines acts of terrorism?”
After all, it was only a few years back when Timothy McVeigh, a white supremacist, had bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, and causing immense terror. Was Bush to hunt down “white men”? No. The criminaliztion of men of color in the U.S., who were arrested for “looking like terrorists,” made it clear that terrorists have a “particular look.” Bush’s “axis of evil” talk made it clear that they live in particular parts of the world, but have been “creeping” into our home through the cracks in the immigration system. Immigration and Naturalization Services became a part of the Department of “Homeland Security.” Policing and surveillance became an everyday part of “American way of life,” as they increasingly revealed the failures of American multiculturalism.

Bush’s military crusade has made it clear that we are to expect a long war with no fixed target and no bounded geographical designation. What is distinct about this “new war” is that no clear offense needs to be committed before the U.S. launches a military attack: “Terrorists” could be anywhere and preemption is needed to destroy them! If Taliban were trained by the CIA to create terror in Afghanistan for many years, so be it; now they are “against us.” If Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, so be it. We, in the “land of freedom” are fighting “terrorism!” If we cannot prove that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iran, no problem! They “foster terrorism!”

It seems to me that the trope of “terrorism” has become necessary for the legitimization of U.S. expansionist projects and for the suppression of dissent here at home. But we cannot be quiet about any form of U.S. intervention in Iran. After all, the case of Iraq has shown that “diplomacy” can easily turn into bombs and military occupation. Too many lives have been lost in this bogus "war on terror." Our voices of dissent are needed to stop the violence of war in Iraq and Afganistan, and to prevent the occurance of a war in Iran. Bush's claims of "exporting democracy" notwithstanding, U.S. intervention does not bring democracy; it often creates and supports undemocratic regimes. As they say, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!”

*Sima Shakhsari is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University.

What is tyranny, after all?

2005-02-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

I think the new emphasis of Bush on his plans, in his State of the Union, reveals that we are facing someone with daft policies who is determined to change the world as he wishes. The empty promises of freedom and end of tyranny may seem very much appealing to those who have always been deprived of their civil liberties. But is that all? What is this tyranny that Bush is talking about? To what extent have the Americans themselves contributed to the continuation of these tyrannies around the world? We have a dilemma and double problem here.

On the one hand, we do not wish the neo-cons with their aggressive and arrogant attitudes to govern the fates of the peoples of the world. Anyone who has some knowledge about the process of the development of democracy and its principles would realize that this attitude is a threat to civil society everywhere, including the United States. Bush is apparently calling himself committed to advancing freedom in the world. But, first of all, what gives him this right to consider himself the representative of the people of the world? Was the American democracy set up by force of military intervention of another country? What makes him think that he is ethically and legally authorized to do this, else than the fact that he has power? Unlimited and unbridled power has blinded the eyes of wisdom in the Unites States. Moreover, this corruption of power is overcoming all the ideals of that democracy. It is a cancer developing right under our nose.

On the other hand, when it comes to Iran, we have multiple problems. It is true that we do not have the kind of freedom we expect from a democratic civil society and the people of Iran have shown that they are more than willing to witness a non-violent power sharing democracy governing in Iran. However, the hardliners cherish the idea of war (after so many years, Bush and the Iranian hardliners have found something in common!). It will, no doubt, make a hero of all of them as people who are defending the nation and its territories. I think it is really futile to speak of the illegitimacy of either Bush?s claims or the hardliners? propaganda. Invasion of a territorial state is clearly a violation of international laws. The American arrogance and intoxication of power does not seem to allow them to think wisely and realize that they can never ever eradicate tyranny like this. It would merely give way to the birth of a new tyranny under a different guise. The nature of that tyranny never changes. Instead of challenging faces and forms, the real debate and the gravest combat lies in transforming a system from within and this is what the American people have failed to do: for more than four years they have failed to convince the neo-cons that their policies is a threat to world peace. Strikingly, what happens in Iran is no more threatening than what happens in the US. We have a silent majority who do not speak up and allow their rulers to wage war in their name. Yet, the situation of Iranian people is far better than that of the Americans. Iranian people, those who are indeed concerned about their freedom, neither appreciate the hollow conceited remarks of Bush, nor do they consent to terrorism of any sort, be it American or fundamentalist approaches to Islam.

Let the people of Iran decide and speak for themselves. Do not speak on our behalf. We have tongues ourselves and we do have all the means to express what we think, even in Iran. And this goes for both sides: the Bush administration and the Iranian hardliners who have hijacked political power. Let democracy and freedom flourish the way they should. The ethos of democracy is alien to the rule of a monolithic, dogmatic and ambitious pursuit of power.

Let us just for a few minutes consider, in horror, that the American invade Iran to change the regime (the same regime that they know very little about). What happens next? Have we ever thought about that? Let us even forget, that in best calculations, a lot of civilian people will be murdered (not killed, murdered) and a lot of our infrastructures will be destroyed. Let us forget about all the damages. Let us all the same assume that the Americans will, with their own money, rebuild what they have destroyed for changing the regime (everyone knows that they will never do so; they will never rebuild my demolished house). Who will be their alternative for ruling Iran? Suppose they allow us to choose whoever we wish. How can we find those people? Would it be too difficult to envisage that they will only consent of the election of those they wish themselves? Does it seem too hazy in the future horizon that they will set up a different Council of Guardians who will, nonetheless, be ignoring our wish? Can somebody answer these questions before they think of simply getting rid of the present regime?

Even if we put aside all our sympathies, as Iranians, for our nation and even for the revolution, what are the alternatives? Any alternative would turn out to be gruesome and daunting. There is no future in a democracy at gunpoint. Beware! O Americans and Iranians! The hawk of a devastating war can be flying above your heads. You rulers! Prove to the world that you are worth having. Don?t fail your own families at least!

Related materials:
Bush's second-term 'call to arms'
Bush's 2004 State of the Union
Full text of Bush's 2005 State of the Union
United States and Europe Differ Over Strategy on Iran
Reflections on the State of the Union (Hoder)
The new problem of democracy:
interview with Professor John Keane (University of Westminster):
Part 1 & Part 2.

Rhetoric of freedom and its paradoxes

2005-02-02T16:26:00.000-08:00

Perhaps one of the central issues which have to be addressed when someone is denouncing the warmongering of the Bush adminnistration is the palpable existence of the language of civil society and liberalism. Contrary to what Bush is apparently claiming, there is no such thing as freedom and democracy on his agenda at all. Freedom and democracy are, most optimistically, excuses for establishing and reconsolidating the military hegemony of the US in the Middle East region. I would even go further to say that this is not merely for the Middle East. It is a much broader attempt to restore the damaged face of the American foreign policy in the world.

It goes beyond saying that those who have been pondering on the more theoretical aspects of the issue immediately recognize the flaws of Bush's rhetoric. Liberal democracy is coming to a point of decline in the Unites States. One might be able to call the American society a civil society which could secure the individual liberties of its citizens, but it would be indeed inconceivable to say that this is the achievement of Bush administration.

Raising the flag of war against Iran or even threatening to do so, is the hallmark of the decline of liberalism in the US. The very tone and language of war, particularly when it takes an ideological and dogmatic embodiment in terms such as 'Just War' are terrifying in themselves. This language is being misused for power. I think there is an urgent need for a sort of linguistic disobedience to purify the language of civil society from barbarian elements which have crept into it under the pretext of freedom. The double standards of Bush's kind of democracy end up in the debasement of democracy itself.

*Daryoush Mohammad Poor

Preemptive Dissent

2005-02-01T16:21:00.000-08:00

Had I believed the current U.S. government had the slightest of what I consider to be "common sense," I would not be writing this today. The irony is, George W. Bush's "sense" does seem to be quite "common" here in America, and that is bad news for everyone in the world, but particularly for the people of Iran.

I would rather err on the side of caution and take the dangerous signals being sent out by Neoconservatives and Likudniks in the U.S. and Israel during recent months very seriously. If any of us has the power to do anything to prevent disaster, we will have to do it now. One dimension of any effort at such prevention will have to be in the realm of information, or more precisely, in fighting the dis-information campaign that is being waged at an ever-more alarming rate, some say to test the waters, others say to lay the grounds, for a coming war.

This group blog is one small step in that direction.

*Alireza Doostdar is a Ph.D. student in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.