The Dominion Post, New Zealand
Power Play
Nuclear Iran’s PR offensive – The Dominion Post | Saturday, 22
September 2007
Tim Pankhurst reports from Tehran on Iran’s bold ambitions in the
Middle East and beyond.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a message for the West. The
nuclear dossier is closed. Iran is a nuclear power and the world
should accept that.
He told the opening session of a top-level Non-Aligned Movement
conference in Tehran, attended by ministers from 56 countries and
observers from another 40, earlier this month that Iran was also ready
to transfer its nuclear knowhow "to other brotherly countries".
Iran was cooperating with the watchdog International Atomic Energy
Agency, he said, and its aims were peaceful. It did not intend to
develop nuclear weapons.
Iran argues its population has grown rapidly to 70 million, its
industry is expanding and it needs to generate electricity by means
other than oil.
Elsewhere in Tehran on the same day, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed
Ali Khamenei delivered a similar message. Iran was determined to
develop its scientific prowess in a current "glorious phase". He said
it was surprising that those who initiated two world wars within 20
years and committed crimes against humanity in Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Kosovo were creating obstacles to
Iran’s nuclear programme.
"In the past 28 years, Iran has never been the initiator of any
aggression or military strike. Iran withstood and will withstand the
US bullying and will never yield to pressure."
Just in case there is any doubt about its nuclear intent, President
Ahmadinejad has also announced that 3000 uranium-enriching centrifuges
are in operation and more will be installed every week.
While the nuclear issue is dominating Western concerns, there is the
wider issue of Iran’s higher profile in the volatile region. Again,
Iran makes no secret of its ambitions. The president says United
States power is rapidly collapsing in neighbouring Iraq, and Iran is
ready to step in to help fill the vacuum.
Diplomatic activities are intense as Iran seeks to build its influence
in the Arab and Muslim worlds. In just the first week of this month,
it announced agreements with Pakistan on fighting drugs;
anti-terrorism with Kazakhstan; customs and tax policy with
Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Zimbabwe; maritime cooperation with
Turkey; water and electricity with Syria; trade tariffs with Armenia;
international relations with Venezuela; free trade with Persian Gulf
states; dialogue on Iraq with the Arab League; shipping with Georgia;
power projects with South Korea; housing with Kenya; and trade with
Poland. Iran is also a significant aid donor and has built schools and
hospitals in countries such as Ghana and a just-opened flour mill in
Venezuela.
The propaganda front is not being neglected, either. Poor publicity
by the public relations offices was "the worst weak point of the
post-revolutionary governments in Iran", according to the president’s
information adviser, Mehdi Kalhor.
The rhetoric as reported in Tehran’s English dailies is
strident. Ayatollah Mohammed Kashani, addressing Friday prayers at the
highly politicised Tehran University, said people in the US and Europe
were living wretched lives.
According to his vision, family foundation has no real meaning in
these societies. "Philanthropy, faithfulness, friendly relations,
love, living with one another and caring for spiritual matters have no
place in Western societies."
The Iranian people are also told that the Taleban and al Qaeda were
founded by US extremists and President George W Bush and that fellow
neo-conservatives make utmost use of their acts. Iranian Majlis
(parliament) deputy Kazem Jalali told the Iranian News Agency on
August 30 "the world’s public opinion know that al Qaeda is led by
Washington".
Iran is also on the offensive on human rights, pointing to the US role
in killing civilians in Iraq and its blind support for Israel, no
matter the cost to the Palestinians. This is despite Iran’s public
hanging of 21 drug smugglers and other criminals this month, bringing
the total executions to 210 this year. Adultery is also punishable by
death under classical Islamic sharia law imposed after the 1979
revolution.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the fierce post-revolution leader, argued
that: "Criminals should not be tried. The trial of a criminal is
against human rights. Human rights demand we should have killed them
in the first place when it became known that they were criminals. We
are executing the brutes."
Which makes the proposed establishment of a Non-Aligned Movement human
rights and cultural diversity centre, to be based in Tehran, an
interesting concept.
Some of the more extreme rhetoric would be laughable were the stakes
not so high. And it has to be recognised that Iran has good cause to
harbour resentment toward the US.
It was a US-backed coup that overthrew a democratically elected
government and installed the Shah in 1953.
In the brutal eight-year war initiated by Saddam Hussein against Iran
in 1980, the US supplied Iraq with weapons and satellite data,
protected its oil tankers and turned a blind eye to its use of poison
gas.
In 1988, an American warship shot down an Iranian airliner, killing
290 civilians. And relations reached rock bottom in 2002 when Mr Bush
lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of evil".
There is talk at senior US Government levels of bombing Iran’s
military and nuclear facilities. This week, France’s Foreign Affairs
Minister, Bernard Kouchner, warned that the world should brace for war
with Iran, echoing French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s hard line.
The US is convinced that Iran is arming Shi’ite militia, who are
killing American troops in Iraq, and plans to designate the
Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation.
Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hizbollah in Lebanon are both
backed by Iran.
AN AUSSIE at Dubai’s vast airport, returning to prospecting work in
Iran, advises that the Iranians are good people. "But they don’t like
the Americans."
They are not welcoming to me, either, at the Laleh International
Hotel. There is no booking, despite the trip being arranged by the
Iranian embassy in Wellington.
A journalist? A list is produced and my name does not appear. This is
not surprising given it is made up of Venezuelans.
My passport is carried off and they experiment with the name, Teem
Pank-horst, as if testing its suspiciousness. A woman in a black
chador peers out from an inner office. At last, a room is provided.
There is a Koran and a prayer mat in the bedside drawer. An arrow on
the ceiling in the corner of the room points the way to Mecca.
The bulky Qur’an, as it is titled, has some advice. Alas, Allah
withheld his bounty but he did offer: Verily, Allah will defend the
believers Against their enemies; verily, Allah does Not like the
ungrateful traitors. And elsewhere: The Fire will scorch their faces
and They will be grim-looking.
Right then. Better be on best behaviour.
That means no alcohol for a start. Beer is readily available, but it
is non-alcoholic. Why would you bother?
The exchange rate helps make up for such deprivation. When my wife
and I roughed it in Iran in 1981 on the hippie trail from Kathmandu to
London, the official exchange rate was 80 rials to the US dollar and
120 on the black market. The rate at the hotel is 9200 to the
dollar. A $50 note returns nearly half a million rials, making the
wallet too stuffed to close.
No wonder American academic Roger Stern, from Johns Hopkins
University, said earlier this year that "the mullahs are doing a good
job of destroying Iran’s economy. They should be left alone to do
their work. The best policy toward Iran may be to do nothing".
This is doubly good advice when the US, not content with its fiasco in
Iraq, is threatening Iran as well.
Inflation has fallen from a high of 50 per cent 10 years ago, but is
still officially about 20 per cent.
Mr Ahmadinejad’s proposed solution is an interest-free banking system
based on Islamic principles and an end to banks’ involvement in
profit-making activities.
But there are encouraging signs of less hardline attitudes. A Western
orchestra played in Tehran two weeks ago, the first since the
revolution.
Twenty-six years ago, we were among the very few Western tourists who
entered a highly volatile country and we were treated with suspicion
everywhere, pitching our tents in a police compound one night after a
camping ground took our money and then refused to let us stay, and
sleeping far off the highways in the desert on others.
In Isfahan, a citizen warned "if you are good, Iran is good". In
Kerman, I snapped a forbidden picture of an enormous US military
helicopter on display in the town centre, a trophy of the aborted
American bid to rescue its staff held hostage in its embassy, labelled
the "nest of spies" by Iran, for 444 days.
This time, the Iranians are more relaxed, despite the latest US sabre
rattling, but there is still a mandatory visit to the disturbingly
Orwellian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for a press pass.
The taxi driver explains that motorists in this oil-rich land, the
world’s fourth-biggest producer, are allowed only 100 litres of petrol
each a month. The price has just gone up from 800 to 1000 rials a
litre – about 9 cents. Extra petrol can be bought on a black market
from those who don’t use their full ration at up to six times the
standard rate.
Venturing into a peaceful park near the hotel – an oasis of eucalypts
and pines in the choking traffic – to do some filming, I saw a young
man lying on a bench spring up. He’s a civil engineer and he wants to
practise his English. He doesn’t mind talking about his life and
politics to the camera and is thoughtful about the troubled
relationship with the US.
Once, he says, he thought Iran could be friends with America, but not
any more. He says Iraq is all about oil and that is America’s
overriding motive in the Middle East.
Old men play chess at benches and signal that they, too, have no
objection to being filmed. Courting couples sit chastely on seats
throughout the trees, the women all wearing the obligatory head
coverings. With their dark faces framed by the veils, many are
strikingly beautiful.
An official slogan is: A woman in a veil is protected like a pearl in
an oyster shell.
In a country in the grip of a fundamentalist government, women are
forbidden even simple contact such as shaking hands with non-family
members.
Women’s role is in teaching, according to Mr Ahmadinejad "The best and
most beautiful scene for women’s social presence is education and
training," he said this month.
The old women who make up my room are happy to talk to
strangers. "Welcome," they nod and ask where I am from. "New Zealand,"
they repeat, puzzled but wanting to please.
"When can women swim in the hotel pool?" I ask one of our media
guides. "Never," he laughs.
America is the external evil that keeps the focus away from internal
absurdities. A common question in a country obsessed with its position
in the West is: What do you think of Iran?
How to answer?
That its people are hospitable and generous, that its suppression of
women – for a visitor, it is like being in a never-ending nunnery – is
hard to accept, that we must work at building mutual respect, that
this is a proud, fascinating and complex country with a rich 7000-year
history, that it does not deserve to be demonised in the West. And
that, as much as either side may resist the notion, American and
Iranian fates are intertwined.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
