A Not So Totalitarian Iran
By Christopher de Bellaigue
Christopher de Bellaigue is the author of "In the Rose Garden of the
Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran" (HarperCollins, 2005).
June 15, 2005
The Bush administration is unimpressed so far by Iran's election
campaign, which will end Friday when voters choose a replacement for
President Mohammad Khatami.
Following the disqualification last month of more than 1,000
presidential hopefuls by the Guardian Council, an unelected
constitutional watchdog body, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
remarked that Iran is "thoroughly out of step" with the trend toward
democracy in the Middle East. Hearing this in Tehran, my home since
2000, I was reminded of an observation, made by Rice earlier this year,
that the Islamic Republic is a "totalitarian" regime.
No
student of the former Soviet Union, such as Rice, bandies the word
"totalitarian" lightly. It connotes an official ideology intruding in
all areas of life, rigged elections whose results are guessed well in
advance and pitiless intolerance of anyone who dares challenge the
orthodoxy.
In light of Rice's comments on the Iranian
elections, Americans might be forgiven if they recall the final,
farcical "election" that Saddam Hussein used to legitimize his
condemned regime (in which he won in excess of 99% of the vote).
Pondering the life of a typical Iranian, they may think of Kafka's K
and Orwell's Winston Smith — individuals oppressed by a vast,
institutionalized evil.
Evil (as in, axis of), totalitarian —
such words trip easily from the mouths of officials in Washington, but
they do not always accord with reality. Here, in "totalitarian" Tehran,
I can sit in a shared taxi and hear five people, all strangers to each
other, lambasting the hypocrisy and venality of their rulers. Iran is
often described as a "religious dictatorship," but it is nevertheless
possible to buy surrealist novels that refer to drug abuse and
homosexuality (I am now reading such a book, Sadegh Hedayat's classic,
"The Blind Owl").
Most significant of all, Iranians are no surer of who will win the
coming election than Americans were in November.
The election will, indeed, be flawed — and not only because of the
mysterious bomb blasts that have killed at least nine people over the
last few days. Although few Iranians object to the Guardian Council's
disqualification of certain obscure wannabes for simplicity's sake, the
barring of all female candidates because of their gender is scandalous.
The main reformist candidate, Mustafa Moin, was cleared to run only
because the unelected supreme leader of the country, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, overturned the Guardian Council's decision to bar Moin. Many
Iranians — perhaps even a majority — will not bother to vote because
they have come to believe (during eight frustrating years of rule by
reformist President Khatami) that the president is powerless to prevent
Khamenei from running the country as he wants.
Nonetheless,
it is heartening that the lexicon of reform has been adopted by many of
the candidates, including one heavily tipped conservative, Mohammed
Baqer Qalibaf, and a prominent centrist, former President Hashemi
Rafsanjani. Neither is a democrat by conviction, but both know which
way the wind is blowing.
Clearly, Iran is no totalitarian
regime, but what is it? Is it an "emerging democracy," as European
officials liked to say during Khatami's hopeful early years, before his
reform program was derailed by the conservative establishment? I would
hesitate before attaching such a label to a regime whose longevity, now
that Iranians' adherence to the official ideology has waned, depends on
its ability to read and manipulate the public mood.
This
ability was in evidence after Iran's soccer triumph against Bahrain on
June 8, securing Iran's place in the 2006 World Cup finals. Reluctant
to sour the preelection public mood, the authorities did not intervene
to stop riotous celebrations that followed the match. Young men and
women thronged the streets, dancing to Western music, with some young
women throwing off the mandatory head covering.
A few days
earlier, in another gesture to public opinion, the hard-line judiciary
released Iran's most outspoken political prisoner, Akbar Ganji,
ostensibly for medical treatment. But these are merely gestures. After
the elections, official attitudes will again harden. There may be
reports of a "crackdown" on un-Islamic dress. Ganji is already back in
jail.
Nevertheless, the scenes of joy will not be easily
forgotten. Ganji's call for Khamenei to present himself for election
cannot be unsaid. Whoever wins, Iran will continue to evolve.
In his 2005 State of the Union speech, President Bush told Iranians,
"As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you." But Iran
achieved its semi-democracy despite foreigners, not because of them. In
1908, Russian Cossacks bombarded the first Iranian parliament. In 1953,
the CIA ousted an elected Iranian prime minister in a coup. Democracy
is not Bush's to confer. It is Iranians' to win.
