THE
ROVING EYE Irreversible
Iranians By Pepe Escobar
"And if you are angry with us, then all
I can tell you is to keep angry and die from this
anger." - Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, March 14
TEHRAN - What was an
open secret is now official: the Bush
administration is after regime change in Iran - or
"resistance to the theocracy", as some elegantly
put it. So how does the theocracy in question feel
about it?
They don't care.
News of
the "regime change" option [1] came only a few
days after US President George W Bush had declared
Iran "a grave
national security concern" -
prompting Iranian clerics in their Friday mass
prayers to denounce Bush's use of the nuclear
issue as a weapon of regime change.
Hamid
Reza-Asafi, the Iranian Foreign Ministry
spokesman, a calm and ponderous man not devoid of
a sense of humor, has had to perform quite a few
somersaults these past few days.
Informally, businessmen living in north
Tehran - its "Upper East Side" filled with condos
and satellite dishes, somewhat Westernized and
boasting a stream of underground parties soaked in
good scotch - swear it does not matter what the
ministry says: the ultimate arbiter on the nuclear
row - and many other rows - is Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Anyway, it's up to the
Foreign Ministry to convey the Iranian position to
global public opinion.
But something is
not quite right. The press conferences at the
crowded, cramped, rectangular room in the ministry
building in downtown Tehran are basically an
Iranian affair. They are always delivered in Farsi
- and subject to misunderstanding when translated.
The Western foreign media are virtually absent,
apart from British Broadcasting Corp, Reuters and
Associated Press cameras and microphones.
There's no concerted effort to try to
convey the Iranian point of view to public opinion
in America and Europe, even now, as Iran's case
sits with the United Nations Security Council,
waiting to see what action the council will take.
Iranians always refer to their nuclear
stance as "logical" - and to the US and European
stance as "illogical". But suggestions that the
Iranian point of view and its multi-layered
argument be delivered in a daily press conference,
in English, directed to global public opinion, are
brushed aside.
Asafi does the best he can.
Even an official at the Ministry of Culture and
Islamic Guidance said that "the situation changes
all the time, and very few people know what really
is being negotiated".
On Sunday, Asefi
said that negotiations with Russia over a possible
compromise on Iran's nuclear program, that Iran be
allowed to conduct limited research and
uranium-enriching activities on its own soil, had
come to a dead end.
But a fresh round
started on Monday. Then on Wednesday Asefi said
that Iran was (again) talking to everyone, the
Russians and the Europeans. That evening it
emerged, via Supreme National Security Council
spokesman Hossein Entezami, that Iranian-Russian
negotiations in Moscow had been "successful" - but
no details were provided.
As for the
Europeans, Asefi would not name which countries
were talking to Iran. A Western diplomat from one
of the EU-3 (Germany, France and Britain - the
three countries involved in earlier negotiations
with Iran) in Tehran says it's most definitely
Germany, as relations with Britain and France have
considerably soured the past few months.
The secretary of the Expediency Council,
Mohsen Rezaei, confirmed that the Iranians were
having close talks with the Germans. He said he
had met with the German ambassador in Tehran,
Baron Paul von Maltzahn, and they had agreed that
the nuclear issue must be solved within the
International Atomic Energy Agency, and not the
Security Council.
There's a possibility
Italy is also involved, as the Italians, who want
to invest heavily in Iran, had always complained
they were not included in the EU-3 negotiating
team.
With the US "regime change" program
now fully on the table, the official rhetoric is
more than ever in sync. Ahmadinejad, currently
touring his country to adoring crowds - it's the
chador-clad women who do the screaming -
said that "the technology to produce nuclear fuel
today is in the hands of the youth of this land
and no power can take it back from us".
Practically in tune, Energy Minister
Parviz Fattah announced that Iran would start
building its first indigenous nuclear power plant
in the next six months. This is part and parcel of
the Iranian leadership's argument that the country
needs nuclear power to generate electricity; its
current fuel resources are not up to the task.
Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jaafari
said, "I'm not worried about sanctions. It is
unlikely that the Europeans decide on sanctions
against us, but even if that is the case, it would
rather harm them." According to the minister, Iran
has put aside almost US$20 billion from its Oil
Stabilization Fund in case it has to face
sanctions imposed by the UN, or countries acting
unilaterally.
He complains that up to
eight international financial institutions -
including the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS),
Credit Suisse and ABN Amro - have been restricting
Iran's dollar transactions. Nobody in Tehran can
actually evaluate the amount of Iran's foreign
holdings; the figure goes from a minimum of $25
billion to as much as $600 billion, which would be
held mostly by the Iranian diaspora.
The
most important point was inevitably made by
Khamenei, who said the civil nuclear program was
"irreversible". There will be no retreat; that
would mean "breaking the country's independence".
To drive the point not home but abroad, Khamenei
summoned all Iranian ambassadors across the world
for a special briefing.
When the Supreme
Leader says that "the use of nuclear technology is
a national obligation and demand", everyone
listens. Lily Sadeghi, a BBC producer, said the
response varied from region to region, and between
peasants and urban intellectuals.
"But
when you go to the countryside, they just repeat
'we need nuclear power' like a slogan. They are
not aware of the implications or the consequences.
The government does not explain it to them. So
yes, the nuclear program is popular, but very few
people know what it actually means," said Sadeghi.
In this sense, the US strategy of trying
to "separate the [Iranian] people from the regime"
seems doomed to failure. Nationalist fervor
regarding Iran's nuclear rights is at a peak - and
cannily manipulated by the government.
Moreover, even the average Iranian is an
avid analyst of Iraq's political situation. For
many, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
saying, "We do not have a problem with the Iranian
people; we want the Iranian people to be free",
reeks of the 2002 mantra, "We do not have a
problem with the Iraqi people."
Iranians
know how the "Iraqi people", jobless, insecure to
death and without water or electricity, are mired
in a sorry wasteland three years after the US-led
invasion.
By proclaiming the nuclear
program "irreversible", the Supreme Leader might
be thought to be referring to the Islamic
Republic's regime as well.
