THE
ROVING EYE The ultimate
martyr By Pepe Escobar
TEHRAN and QOM, Iran - Mahmud Ahmadinejad,
the Iranian president, has been very quiet lately
- at least for his standards. But may no outside
observers doubt his popular appeal.
After
last Friday's prayers at the University of Tehran,
he chose not to use the VIP exit and decided to
mingle with the crowd, surrounded by only a few
bodyguards. There was nothing to
disguise him from the
sartorial shabbiness of his audience, except that
his face was beaming like a saint's. There was
bread for the famished, and an old gentleman on a
soapbox was spraying perfumed water over the
masses. In these biblical circumstances the
president was so enthusiastic that he almost
boarded one of the lime-green buses available free
of charge for the faithful, until someone in the
security detail reminded him that he, after all,
was the president.
Behesht-a Sahra, the
"Paradise of Sahra", the largest martyr cemetery
in the whole of Islam, southeast of Tehran near
the highway to Qom, ranks as one the most
extraordinary sights in the world: hectares and
hectares of tombs of martyrs, or "barefoot
soldiers" who reached eternal glory in the name of
the Islamic Revolution, now enveloped in an eerie
silence barely disturbed by the whistle of the
desert winds. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's
enormous mausoleum - a sort of Shi'ite cathedral
now being renovated into a revolutionary theme
park - is only a few minutes away.
No
wonder virtually every visitor to the Paradise of
Sahra nowadays is an Ahmadinejad supporter. In the
Islamic Revolution scale of values, to die as a
martyr is an even greater honor than to live as a
good, practicing - and in most cases poor -
Muslim. The president himself might have yearned
to die as a martyr; but now he'd rather bask in
worldly glory, as the beggars in the (oil and gas)
banquet still regard the 49-year-old son of a
blacksmith, self-described "street cleaner of the
people" as the true believer who keeps the flame
of Khomeini.
It was not by accident that
the first thing Ahmadinejad did after he won the
presidency was to pay his respects to the martyrs
at Behesht-e Sahra, and then to Khomeini's shrine.
The ultra-pious double act was complemented with a
first cabinet meeting - photo opportunity included
- staged at the tomb of Imam Reza, the fourth
Shi'ite imam, and the only one buried in Iran, in
a spectacular shrine in the holy city of Mashhad.
The theocratic nationalism power
play Ahmadinejad, the former Revolutionary
Guard, may reach passionate outbursts ayatollahs
can only dream of, but the fact of the matter is
that ultimate power in Iran's theocratic
nationalism will always lie firmly in the hands of
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And the
supreme leader, Tehran insiders confirm, has in
fact downgraded the president from first-class to
economy. Ahmadinejad is now a so-called "domestic"
affair.
It was the supreme leader who
proclaimed Iran's nuclear program "irreversible".
Ahmadinejad only assented - later on. In the past
few days, the supreme leader has multiplied public
references to the "hard as steel" resolve of the
Iranian nation against "global arrogance".
Ahmadinejad, who is currently on his 10th
provincial visit - in the southwest - after he
launched a campaign of "bringing the government
closer to the people", just sticks to vague
accusations against "enemies" who should
"apologize to Iran for their insults. They accuse
the Iranian nation of warmongering, and this is
the biggest insult."
It is the anointed
prince (who could not win an election), secretary
of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC)
Ali Larijani, who's in charge of defining the
scope of the upcoming US-Iran negotiations on
Iraq. Foreign policy - and a "consultant" role in
the nuclear negotiations - is the domain of former
president Hashemi Rafsanjani, the pragmatic
darling of quite a few in the West who nonetheless
lost the June 2005 elections to Ahmadinejad.
Rafsanjani is now being rewarded for his
own version of martyrdom-lite - to the benefit, of
course, of the Islamic Republic. In the second
round of the June elections, all classified
government polls were declaring Rafsanjani would
lose. He was tempted to withdraw. But he didn't.
The White House and the US State Department were
on overdrive spinning mode, branding the Iranian
elections a sham.
Rafsanjani played the
part of loser to perfection. When the supreme
leader upgraded even more the already-powerful
role of the Expediency Council, which oversees
every government action, Rafsanjani became the
ultimate winner; after all, he is the chairman of
the council. It was Rafsanjani who publicly
announced that Iran would "break down the colonial
taboos against using nuclear energy peacefully" -
a unanimous decision made by the council.
As an indication of how north Tehran's
Western-educated upper middle class, as well as
diplomatic circles and foreign observers, were
detached from the real sentiment in Iran, nobody
saw it coming - the pious, the apolitical and the
downtrodden voting en masse for Ahmadinejad. But a
few cynical Tehran-based analysts have an
alternative take. According to them, Ahmadinejad
was destined to win from the start, even before
the first round.
The clerical oligarchy
knew how unpopular they were. So why not
facilitate the emergence of a populist - so the
excluded could vent their anger and renew their
faith in the revolution? It was a question of
renewing the faith in the concept of
velayat-e-faqih - the ruling of the
jurisprudent - according to which government by
the pious and for the pious is nothing but an
expression of the will of God; thus it must be
isma (infallible). Ahmadinejad's pious
credentials were beyond doubt; and better yet, he
was a "street cleaner of the people".
Take me to the Mahdi on
time Contrary to Western perceptions, the
upper echelons of the Islamic Republic dabble in a
very complex game involving various competing
circles or power.
Ahmadinejad may be the
perfect embodiment of the militaristic strand of
the theocracy. His military background in the
Revolutionary Guards formed his world view. He
lived the eight-year hell of the Iran-Iraq War in
full. He deeply believed that the Islamic
Revolution was fighting for its life against the
"apostate" Saddam Hussein. At the same time, he is
fundamentally a believer in the Mahdi - the 12th
hidden Shi'ite imam whose Great Occultation began
in the 10th century and whose return is imminent
to, in essence, save mankind from itself.
It was a rainy Tuesday night in Qom, but
the sprawling Jamkaran Mosque in the outskirts of
town was absolutely packed with tens of thousands
of pilgrims from all over Iran, many of them
camping out on the cold concrete with little to no
infrastructure. According to Shi'ite tradition, if
you come to Jamkaran 40 Tuesdays in a row, with no
interruption, you will "see" the Mahdi. This
particular Tuesday was more special than others;
it fell one day before a holy day, the anniversary
of the death of the Prophet Muhammad (in the
officially proclaimed "Year of the Prophet",
according to the Iranian government) and two days
before the anniversary of the death of Imam Reza,
the one buried in Mashhad.
So no wonder
Jamkaran was at fever pitch. The mosque dates from
the year 1050, after a very poor farmer claimed he
had seen Imam Mahdi and envisaged a mosque built
in his honor at the site. Behind the mosque there
is a well. Most Shi'ites believe the Mahdi is
hiding at the bottom of the well. The well is
surmounted by a box over a pillar encased in metal
protection. An endless stream of pilgrims bursting
into tears write their vows or requests, attach a
written supplication and drop them to the bottom
of the well while feverishly kissing the square
metal protection. The atmosphere is solemn and
reverential. But before the Islamic Revolution,
not many people came to the well.
The
president reportedly made a state donation of
US$14 million to the holy well. Tehran cynics
swear - and theological students in Qom deny -
that the president also told his cabinet members
to sign a declaration of loyalty to the Mahdi that
was duly dropped to the bottom of the well, as
millions of pilgrims have done for centuries.
Ahmadinejad even has his own roadmap for the
return of the Mahdi; he drew it himself. According
to Shi'ite tradition, the Mahdi will rise in Mecca
- not in Qom - where he will preach to his close
followers (Jesus Christ puts on a guest
appearance), draw up the armies of Islam and
finally settles down in Kufa, Iraq.
I
will only settle for a
caliphate Ahmadinejad's ultimate spiritual
mentor remains Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, who is the
dean of the Educational and Research Institute of
Imam Khomeini, a very influential hawza
(theological school) in Qom. It's impossible to
interview Ayatollah Yazdi - officially because of
"new government rules", unofficially of his own
volition.
The crucial election of the
Council of Experts (86 clerics only; no women; no
non-clergy) will take place this coming summer, by
universal vote. It's the Council of Experts that
chooses the all-powerful supreme leader.
Influential people such as former presidential
candidate Hojatoleslam Mehdi Mahdavi-Karrubi and
former imprisoned philosopher Shoroush are
terrified: according to them, Ayatollah Yazdi is
trying to influence the outcome of the elections
to take over power.
"You see, it's a
circle," said a ministry official insisting on
anonymity. "The people elect the Council of
Experts, but only religious people can run. The
Council of Experts elects the leader. The leader
elects the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council
filters the presidential and the parliamentary
elections. And people believe they are electing
somebody."
In the event of taking over
power, Yazdi would implement "real Islam", as he
sees it. He does not believe in Western democracy.
He wants a kelafat - a caliphate.
Ayatollahs like Yazdi are simply not concerned
with worldly matters, foreign policy or
geopolitical games; the only thing that matters is
work for the arrival of the Mahdi. The ayatollah
is on record saying he could convert all of
America to Shi'ism. Some of his critics accuse him
of claiming a direct link to the Mahdi, which in
the Shi'ite tradition would qualify him as a false
prophet.
US researcher Dr Muhammad
Legenhausen, who has lived and taught in Qom for
more than a decade, speaks fluent Farsi and is
married to an Iranian, is one of the top scholars
at Yazdi's hawza. By telephone, he declined
an interview, saying he's "not interested".
Ayatollah Yazdi is also the spiritual
mentor of the Hojjatieh, a sort of
ultra-fundamentalist sect whose literal reading of
Shi'ite tradition holds that chaos in mankind is a
necessary precondition for the imminent arrival of
the Mahdi. Ahmadinejad may not be a Hojjatieh
himself, but he totally understands where they are
coming from.
Ahmadinejad's slightly more
worldly mentor is Mojtaba Hashemi Samareh - his
closest adviser. Samareh, also a former
Revolutionary Guard, met the president during the
Iran-Iraq War, in Khuzestan. Then he came under
the wing of, once again, Ayatollah Yazdi, who
sponsored him for entering the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (one of his jobs was to teach the
"psychology of infidels"). He has also spent many
years at the Intelligence Ministry.
Samareh's allegiance is first and foremost
to Ayatollah Yazdi - not to the Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Khamenei. He's always right behind
Ahmadinejad - a sword of Damocles over every
minister, ambassador or high official. Every day
they pray together at the mosque at the
presidential palace.
Hail against the
infidels Ahmadinejad, a second-generation
revolutionary, ruffled some very powerful,
first-generation clerical feathers - extremely
zealous of their power bases - when he embarked on
some sort of pogrom at the Ministry of Foreign
Relations, the Ministry of Finance and the
provincial governorship level. Most of these key
posts were handed over to former Revolutionary
Guards - his old mates. That was a bad diplomatic
move.
A dinner last weekend in north
Tehran's Zafar neighborhood drew in filmmakers,
urban planners, businesswomen, economic analysts.
There was not a single reference to Ahmadinejad
politics. The conversation centered on what's
going on in the great world cities, on poetry,
film and literature, and on how Iran looked and
felt during the 1970s. Books on Persian art and
architecture were carefully reviewed.
These men and women are part of the new
worldly Iranian elite - the quintessential Islamic
Republic version of a "leftist". Iranian
"leftists" are US- or Canada-educated, in favor of
total freedom of speech, liberal democracy,
deregulated economy, a strong role for private
enterprise and foreign investment, a strong voice
for women and a strong civil society. In sum, they
embody post-modernist Islam. They go on with their
lives in spite of Ahmadinejad.
Well-connected intellectuals and
businessmen in north Tehran cannot help but mock
his accent, mock his shabby suits, and even swear
Ahmadinejad was personally responsible, in the
early 1980s, for summary executions of political
prisoners in Evin prison - Iran's version of Abu
Ghraib. But as the Revolutionary Guards' press
office in Tehran is more than happy to
acknowledge, his countrywide popular base of
support remains undiminished, in the tens of
millions, from the Pasdaran - the Revolutionary
Guards - to the Bassijis, the hardcore
paramilitary militia, also known as "the army of
20 million", and expanding to the pious,
apolitical, downtrodden masses, mostly rural but
also urban (in sprawling south Tehran, for
instance).
There's one huge problem,
though. He's not delivering - in economic terms.
As a ministerial government official put it,
visibly anguished, "of course he is an honest man.
In his declaration of assets, mandatory in our
constitution, he put only his old car [a rickety
Paykan from the 1970s] and a small house. But he
does not have the personality for the job."
The masses were totally excluded from the
late shah's secular, Westernized, petrodollar
banquet. They kept getting nothing under the
revolutionary, clerical oligarchy that never
implemented in practice the rhetorical slogans of
Islamic solidarity. Former president Mohammad
Khatami, for all the appreciation of his "dialogue
of civilizations", did nothing to put more mutton
kebab on people's plates. Every major decision -
even in domestic policy - remains with the supreme
leader.
The economy remains atrophied,
dependent on bazaaris and bonyads
(foundations) that ultimately respond to the
supreme leader. According to a US-educated
economic analyst, who insists on anonymity for his
own protection, income tax accounts for less than
7% of the state's budget, deficits are
underestimated, inflation could easily spin out of
control and the private sector is atrophied
compared with the omnipresent state.
Ahmadinejad's much-taunted plan last year
to "put oil revenues on people's plates" was
ditched: it would lead to an explosion of
inflation. He couldn't even place his own man at
the crucial Ministry of Petroleum. As another
government official put it, "It's hard to believe
we have to import 60% of our gasoline from abroad.
The previous governments built too many mosques
and not enough refineries."
The worldly,
secular Ebrahim Yazdi, former Iranian foreign
minister (under Khomeini) and current secretary
general of the Freedom Movement of Iran - an
opposition party banned from contesting the latest
elections - tries to sum it up. "Ahmadinejad has
failed his promises of economic justice. Under
Khatami, at least we had long-range planning and
investment in the private industrial sector.
Ahmadinejad is in favor of the welfare state, a
19th-century idea. We have a proverb in Persian:
'A good year could be judged by the spring.'
Ahmadinejad's 'spring' says it all."
Nine
months into the Ahmadinejad administration, Iran's
political apartheid is still more than evident.
For all of the president's populist rhetoric and
his outsider posture, it remains a case of the
khodiah (our people) against the gheyreh
kodiah (the others), insiders against
outsiders. In many aspects, foreign outsiders
cannot shake the impression of an austere,
melancholic, suffocating society carrying the
weight of 27 years of a historical, sociopolitical
and religious experiment gone wrong.
The
majlis (parliament) could invoke its
constitutional powers and sack the president
before this coming summer. Tehran insiders say
there's no evidence of a white coup - at least not
yet. The outspoken president may persist - in his
own mind - in a battle against infidels, while
personifying to the letter the prized Shi'ite
cosmology of suffering as the only way to reach
paradise. The last thing Iran's clerical-political
establishment need at this delicate moment is for
the ultimate "martyr president" to martyr the
nation into the status of ultimate global outcast.
But it all goes way beyond Ahmadinejad.
It's as if Iran as a whole needed someone to
deliver the nation from its current plight. That
certainly won't be Imam Mahdi.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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