Iran 'liberator' bit too busy to invade this week
By Mohsen Asgari and Gareth Smyth
Published: September 30 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 30 2004 03:00
Tehran's bush telegraph has been abuzz in recent days in expectation that amysterious exile would return to Iran and overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Taxi-drivers, housewives and shopkeepers have been talking about little else other than Ahura Pirooz Khaleghi Yazdi, a 57-year-old businessman based in Los Angeles who is promising through satellite television broadcasts to land in Iran with 50 aircraft full of exiles, journalists and United Nations monitors.
Mr Yazdi originally set September 25 as the date for the "liberation" of his country but this has now been postponed until October 1 owing to his being "busy with preparations".
The whole affair highlights weaknesses of the Iranian political opposition more than any real threat to Tehran's 25-year-old clerical- led regime.
Despite US pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme and Washington's occasional flirtation with a policy of "regime change" in Tehran, the CIA reported to Congress this year that Iran's rulers were secure for the foreseeable future.
Recent street gatherings called by Mr Yazdi have attracted only a handful of well-heeled young people.
"I just went to see what is going on, for fun, like I go to the cinema to watch Godzilla," said Reza Abdullahi, a student who turned out on Sunday.
Mr Yazdi is managing director of Rangarang, one of 23 LA-based satellite Iranian language television stations that beam into Iran a diet of music videos, political programmes calling for the return of the royalist system overthrown in 1979 and advertisements for liposuction and weight-reducing vibrating belts.
Since Iran's judges closed more than 100 reformist newspapers and magazines, Iranians have tuned into satellite television as an alternative to the mainly state-run domestic media.
But despite an avalanche of publicity through Rangarang and his website, Mr Yazdi remains an enigmatic figure. He speaks up-to-date colloquial Farsi and, according to his biographical details, gained a PhD at 16.
Sceptics include Zia Atabai, a chat-show host on the rival LA-based station, National Iran TV, who suggested that Mr Yazdi was a "puppet of the Islamic Republic" and not to be trusted. "If he goes to Iran and liberates the country, I will cut my own throat," vowed Mr Atabai.
Washington has cast round without success over many years for a credible opposition force. This year it enraged Tehran by giving "protected status" under the Geneva Convention to the Mujahideen-e Khalq, a cult-like Iraq-based group once armed by Saddam Hussein, which has mounted periodic attacks in Iran.
The US has also reportedly had talks with Ali Chehregani, a Washington-based activist calling for independence for Azeris living in north-west Iran.
The most public face among the US-based opposition has been the 42-year-old Reza Pahlavi, eldest son of the Shah deposed by the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Mr Pahlavi has appeared regularly on LA-based television to assure Iranians that a restored monarchy would be democratic and secular.
The remoteness of the opposition and the failure of President Mohammad Khatami's reformist project have together produced a mixture of fatalism and alienation from politics that can build an attractive fantasy round a figure such as Ahura Yazdi.
The Islamic Republic was unperturbed. Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of the conservative Kayhan newspaper, called Mr Yazdi and his followers "the army of the insane". www.ahura.info