Nov 23, 2007

The mullahs of Iran

Again this was written in 2004, and I have not edited it.

http://bangladesh-web.com/view.php?hidDate=2005-02-24&hidType=HIG&hidRecord=0000000000000000034578

Some of the mullahs think all is well when in reality it is not. Well how could they be after twenty-five years of dreamy mullah rule, that they should now contemplate consolidating their power.

Perhaps a few of them sense danger, and that their demise is just around the corner? Consolidation includes the execution of 24 key senior officers, including the founding fathers of the Revolutionary Guard earlier this year. The foundation and key of mullah power in Iran (the Pasdaran). They were executed because they had written an open letter protesting about the trafficking of children by certain corrupt government officers.

(titled 'We the warriors')

The closing of 110 newspapers, and the heightened activity of the special ‘Press court’ whose sole duty is to prosecute journalists who do not sell their truth. The mullahs have also drastically reduced the size of the Basij, the children’s militia which until recently could be mobilized to 8 million. The mullahs did this because children along with adult citizens have been very active in protesting against the mullah run government. There is a real fear that with American troops in Iraq, and Afghanistan, that force so large could become a peoples army against the mullahs.

In addition, large sections of the population and especially children look to America for ‘inspiration’ in most matters, and twenty-five years of mullah rule has not dampened their Western aspirations. In terms of the over all population devoid of government opinion/rent a crowds, Iran is one of the most pro-American societies in the Middle East. Indeed the trend and aspiration is growing, and thus inevitably in time will clash with the increasingly hard line mullahs in Iran. If the mullahs are to be seriously dealt with, then this is the most obvious portal. Primarily through soft power first.

The sheer mismanagement of the country by the mullahs makes matters worse, so that unofficially there is now in Iran 25% unemployment. Where 70% of the population is below 18, with low opportunities in life, juxtaposed with the affluence enjoyed by others projected from the satellite television images. Then all it requires is a spark to create a new revolution against the mullahs. Most ‘normal’ governments with an unofficial 25% unemployment rate could not survive in power for very long but the mullahs do so by the use of brute threats which has a short term coercive effect on the population.

The scope for youthful frustration is thus very enormous, and the logical channel for that latent expanding frustration will find its expression sooner or later against the mullahs. The revolution against the mullahs will come from that section of the population which has no real memory of the 1979 Islamic revolution. It is thus not surprising that the mullahs have executed as a percentage of the over all population, last year alone the highest number of children (Amnesty International 2004).

Some of the mullahs by contrast have been utterly corrupted by power and some in addition have become billionaires, most notably Rafsanjani. Their consolidation of power within Iran, in this year alone, by blocking out 2400 legitimate candidates for the February elections can be seen in this light. On the one hand there is the insecurity of power, and on the other the addiction and corrupting effects of power.

Fuelled by the mesmerizing climb of the price of oil. This year alone Iran could be earning $55 billion in petro dollars exports, compared to $35 billion last year, and if the price of oil rises any further then it could be well over $70 billion next year. We can easily guess that the petro dollar wind fall is being misappropriated without being a Milton Friedman or an Alan Greenspan.

Given that much of a rise in exports then your economies real GDP growth should be well over 10% fuelled by this export, rather then the very mediocre projections of 4/5% real GDP growth projected for this year and the next couple of years. How many luxury cars does a mullah need, or luxury houses, or foreign bank accounts. They certainly are not passing this wealth on to their impoverished fellow citizens where this year alone large numbers of teachers have gone on strike for lack of months of back pay, but the mullahs instead of meeting them and negotiating in a civilized manner put the unions heads in prison.

They have also reorganized the Revolutionary Guard, and its former head has been appointed as the head of the media. Abolhasan Pavordi, director of the office that deals with Iranian cinema has been arrested recently. Many women in recent months have been arrested around the country for wearing ‘inappropriate’ clothing and wearing make up in public. The new hard line parliament is discussing putting more restrictions on the rights of females, and rolling back the few concessions that were given to them under Khatami, especially in relation to divorce, inheritance, and child custody. They have also shifted large military formations around the country in anticipation of mass civil disorder.

The mullahs rule in Iran has always been an anomaly, a strange surreal dream, where mullahs have been running a large sophisticated country (by Middle East standards) with a population of 70 million, which until 1979 had a middle class base of 35%. The prerequisite to a modern advancing society and economy. This middle class was enjoying things like trendy theatres; modern art galleries; live symphony music from a national orchestra; a ski resort near Tehran; Western films; the latest literature the world had to offer; sexual promiscuity, and finally that most essential of modern behavior, expanding consumerism on the back of a steadily expanding economy of 8% real GDP growth.

Where the Shah wanted the economy to be the fifth largest in the world by the year 2000. Such optimistic projections led them to anticipate that the country might reach near depletion of their gas and oil reserves and before the nation came to that juncture they wanted to consider alternative forms of electric power. This led to the initial construction of a total of 20 nuclear reactors with German assistance from 1974. The idea for this actually came from Henry Kissinger, the then Secretary of State, to meet the future energy shortfall.

We attribute these things not to the Shah, but to the broad habit of the Persian people cultivated over 3000 years. It was never the case that the Persian people suddenly ‘discovered’ philosophy in the rapidly expanding sixties, ‘Let us all wear beach towels and drive Ford cars’. It was already there deeply rooted in their society, with its long magnificent history. Therefore the rule of the mullahs after the initial euphoria of getting rid of the Shah must have come as a very rude shock to a great deal of the civilized and urbane Iranian people. This is a society after all where in some parts if you speak too loudly people will actually come up to you and politely request that you speak more quietly.

The mullahs have been doing some strange things within Iran over the last 25 years to amuse most people, if not the majority of the long suffering Iranians. Franz Kafka novels could not possibly out perform the mullahs over the last twenty-five years.

In the eighties the mullahs appointed a twelve year old boy to the governorship of Khuzestan province, bordering Iraq, and the main theatre of the Iran/Iraq war. Perhaps we should give them credit, because it may have been a cynical move to entice more twelve year olds to the front to die as human mine clearers. The largely illiterate mullahs did not know that you can buy mine clearing equipment quite cheaply in the international market. In coming to power in 1979 they lowered the marriage age to nine for girls. Most amusing of all is when in the early nineties they appointed a blind cleric to be the official censor for the theatre and cinema. A guide would sit next to the blind mullah and quietly interpret what was going on.

Finally on a more technical note, the mullahs have purchased from the Russians three Kilo-class submarines. Which without going into too much detail, were built by the Soviets in the sixties for deep water warfare in the Atlantic. In the very shallow waters of the Gulf, they are in effect beached whales, which have zero military value, since they are such large visible targets to the naked eye or military satellite, that in any future engagement with any state these submarines will be the first to be destroyed. A couple billion dollars totally wasted.

But perhaps we ought not to be too harsh on the mullahs, after all in the normal rational world they would be running mosques, not 70 million countries. We may laugh or we may cry, depending on where we stand and our view of the country. The mullahs have not merely ruled the country but have grossly run the country down. Up to 2 million highly skilled middle class Iranians have fled the country for the sanctuary of the West, and the mullahs do not care that this brain drain is continuing. Indeed some Iranian observers state that the mullahs may be deliberately encouraging this in the hope that the less educated population will be more amenable to their control.

The mullahs in this light are utterly selfish in that it has been suggested that they conducted the 8 year gulf war, which unofficially led to 1 million deaths, and $500 billion worth of damage to the country, just so that they could consolidate their power whilst they kept the distrusted armed forces busy. No longer can the mullahs rely on conjured up mischief and crisis to sustain themselves in power.

The Gulf war was only imposed on them up to 1982, after which Saddam sent signals to them for peace in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. So the mullahs were responsible for the war after 1982, and theoretically could have fought the war well into this year, 2004. They sued for peace because their supply of ammunition and spares ran out from their two main suppliers the British and the Americans. This was again because the Iranians started attacking neutral ships in international waters from 1986, and laying mines in international waters.

Of course that was not the only episode, because barely had the war ended the mullahs deliberately steered one of their civilian airlines into the radar screens of the American warships in the Gulf, and it was subsequently shot down, with the loss of 298 lives. From the American’s point of view it could have been a hostile plane or missile where they had a very brief engagement with the Iranians in the Gulf.

Most prominently the Salman Rushdie affair, the author of the ‘Satanic Verses’ in 1989, and the subsequent fatwa against that author, where the mullahs became the most celebrated agent of that author. Rushdie’s career is built around writing fiction which tickles the fancy of trendy champagne drinking friends in the West, and this includes deriding the prophet of 1.2 billion people, albeit through a dream of a character in his book. Two points I want to make which are related to this incident. Rushdie’s family left the Indian Sub continent in its hour of independence for the UK.

Given his record one can legitimately ask what on earth Rushdies family was doing for the colonials to warrant such a sudden move to the UK. Second, there were hundreds if not thousands of writers from a community of 1.2 billion Muslims who would not measure up to the standards of the mullahs of Iran. Certainly in 1989, and definitely more now. The mullahs in reality were seeking vulgar attention away from the fact that they had in many ways lost the 8 year Gulf war, and they wanted to give the Iranians some thing new to play with.

Most recently the capture of eight British Royal marines off international waters had all the hall marks of the past, but unlike the past the safety mechanisms built into the Iranian foreign ministry quickly stepped in to defuse the situation. However equally shamefully not before the eight marines were tied and blind folded and made to do the ‘follow my leader’ routine in front of the camera which was then beamed around the world. Utterly shameful and after twenty five years some of them have yet to learn their lesson.

These are of course cheap diversionary tactics long practiced by the mullahs to divert attention away from their profound misrule, and the ever present fear that one day the essentially urbane Iranian might wake up from this night mare and ask what on earth they are doing having their country run by mullahs of all people. Perhaps the people of Iran will have seen this years Olympic games, with more than 200 participating countries, and some of them will no doubt have wondered about the number of those countries which are actually run by mullahs or priests. I wonder just how many Iranians voluntarily came into the streets of Tehran to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the revolution( to be continued ...)