Iran now a land of theocrats and cynics
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
BY BORZOU DARAGAHI
For the Star-Ledger
TEHRAN, Iran -- In a narrow alleyway, the Refah School, incubator of Iran's revolution 25 years ago, continues to pulse with life.
The Refah School is where Shi'a Muslim clerics secretly met for years to prepare for the arrival of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who commanded a revolution that introduced Islamic fundamentalism as a force in the world.
Today Refah is an elementary school for girls. They have festooned its walls with drawings and poems decrying America, Israel and the shah who had ruled Iran before Khomeini, and praising the leader of the revolution.
The slogans remain the same, but Iran is far different from when Khomeini seized power, 25 years ago tomorrow.
Months of street protests against the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had paved the way for Khomeini's return from 15 years in exile. He arrived in Tehran Feb. 1, 1979, on an Air France plane from Paris. The U.S.-backed shah had already fled, and Khomeini was received by throngs of millions in the streets.
Ten days later, he took control of the government and declared the birth of the Islamic Republic, sending the country on a collision course with the Western world.
Contemporary Iran is younger, busier, more complex, modern and secular. It is also more cynical and outspoken.
"The revolution put us at least two decades ahead of other Arab and Muslim countries. People in those countries now want religious government," said Hamidreza Jalaipour, a University of Tehran social scientist.
"We've already experienced that. We thought religious government could solve all our problems. But religion didn't become more popular, the mosques didn't become more full and the state didn't become more efficient."
Twenty-five years later, the revolution that started at the Refah School casts a long shadow on Iran.
There was the 444-day hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy, just blocks away, that destroyed ties with Washington and led to a quarter-century of economic isolation. There was the eight-year Iran- Iraq War that left hundreds of thousands of Iranians dead or wounded.
The clerics' shock troops enforced Islamic rules against liquor, dancing and pop music -- bans that continue today.
There was the clerical takeover of the courts, intelligence services and military, the stifling of dissident voices, the jailings, the executions, the creation of a police state that forces women to cover their heads.
There were the militants dispatched overseas, the masters of terror who frayed Iran's relations with nearly every country in the world.
But today, with U.S. troops occupying Iraq to the west and guarding Afghanistan to the east, Iran's clerical leaders are under pressure to establish some sort of relations with the country they consider the Great Satan.
Europeans are demanding Iran make concessions on terrorism and weapons proliferation in exchange for foreign investment badly needed to help curb Iran's unemployment, estimated as high as 20 percent.
Europeans, Americans and Iranian dissidents also have demanded that Iran be more accountable for its human rights record, which only worsened from the time of the shah and the first few years of the clerical regime that succeeded him.
Most agree human rights have steadily improved since the late 1980s. But the government has shut down scores of newspapers over the past few years and continues to jail dissidents.
"The reality is our situation is like a nightmare," said a prominent intellectual released from jail last year, who asked that his name not be used for fear of retribution. "I'm waiting to wake up ... and be able to comfortably think and write without worrying that my phone calls are being monitored and that my activities are being watched."
Over the past few years, a group of people within the regime has tried to change Iran, a group led by President Mohammad Khatami, the cleric who was elected with huge majorities in 1997 and 2001. These reformists were recently barred from running in the Feb. 20 legislative elections by the hard-line judiciary, setting off a political crisis that has yet to abate.
But increasingly, politicians aren't the only driving force for change in Iran. Two-thirds of Iranians are under 30, a generation of well-educated discontents pushing for good jobs and opportunities.
Women, especially, are a force of change. The revolution at first reinforced patriarchy, giving men custody rights and keeping women and girls at home. But restrictive childhoods made them academic superstars. Now 60 percent of university students are women, a confident generation entering previously taboo arenas.
Jalaipour, the social scientist, calls the stronger role of women in Iran one of the positive results of the revolution. "It brought women into the streets," he said. "Before the revolution, religious women were stuck in the house. Now their life is outside -- in the schools, in the universities, in the workplace, in the gym."
Internet service, lackadaisically filtered, and satellite television, banned but tolerated, have opened the world for Iranians.
"You can't open a magazine or look at a billboard or look at a business card these days without seeing the company's Web address," said Majid Imami, vice president of Pars Online, Iran's largest Internet service provider.
Khomeini, who died in 1989, once said he hadn't led the revolution to improve people's material lives. But sensing people's needs, even Khomeini's ideological heirs have adjusted their message.
Though he continues to disparage America and Israel and to cite many of the revolution's spiritual successes, conservative historian and cleric Mohsen Alviri admits the regime needs to do more to address people's earthly needs.
"Domestically in terms of management and solving economics, we haven't been successful," he said.
Even a man called simply Bashir, who as a member of the Basiji militia would spend weekends harassing women showing too much hair or boys playing pop music, says he no longer has the heart to do it.
"People have such big problems and they're out trying to enjoy themselves a little bit," he said. "Either the guy has economic problems and can't get married, or he's got difficulties at work. Who am I to bother him?"
Not everyone in Iran complains of poverty. Late-model Mercedes-Benzes roll through streets lined with expensive jewelry shops. Tehran's stock market has risen an average of 50 percent a year over the past five years, enriching some in a country where many live in dire poverty.
Critics complain that the economy remains in the hands of conservative clerics and their allies who seized businesses at the beginning of the revolution. More than half of all stock market volume is owned by organizations or individuals with ties to the government, says Fariborz Raissdana, an economist barred from teaching for his outspoken views.
"There's no accountability," he said. "You have no idea whether they're well-run or where the money's going. You just know they're making money for someone."
Such corruption has disgusted many Iranians, including those in the spiritual center of Qom, the city 75 miles south of Tehran where Khomeini studied religion for years.
Liberal clerics there say the revolution has strayed far from its original purposes. "We were looking for freedom and social justice," said one of those clerics, Fazel Maibadi. "We wanted to eliminate poverty and corruption. We wanted real freedom. We're still a long way from that."
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-13/107639704979190.xmlUpdate at 8 AM, 43 passengers killed, 3 survivors.