Khomeini's grandchild breaks her silence
By Omid Memarian
BERKELEY, California - If your grandfather was the founder of the first Islamic
Republic of Iran in 1979, you would probably expect to have a very comfortable
life in the land of ayatollahs, where Mahmud Ahmadinejad is president and
Ruhollah Khomeini's successor has absolute power. But you would be wrong.
"No recreation is available to us. Arrests are the order of the day. Students
are secretly arrested and imprisoned in droves," the granddaughter of Khomeini,
Zahra Eshraghi, told Inter Press Service in a telephone interview from Tehran.
In 1979, Eshraghi's grandfather sent shock waves around the
world by leading the last great revolution of the 20th century. Nearly 30 years
later, she feels that Iran is in peril.
"The whole country is under pressured silence, begging to ask questions, but,
unfortunately, no one in the regime is protesting," she said. "It may take many
years for a person to destroy a country, but [hardliners] have managed to
accomplish this in a just a few."
On a sunny day back in the spring of 2004, she invited this reporter to her
office to discuss a blog she was hoping to create. At that time, blogging was a
new phenomenon in Iran, and government officials were exploring it as a way to
reach out to the youth in a country where 69% of the population is under 29.
The blog run by Mohammad Abtahi, a cleric and former vice president, was
becoming extremely popular, and many, like Eshraghi, were eager to jump on the
bandwagon.
Eshraghi was then an advisor to the deputy minister of the interior, Ashraf
Boroojerdi. Her husband, Reza Khatami, was the deputy parliamentary spokesman,
and her brother-in-law was the president himself, the reform-minded Mohammad
Khatami.
Unlike most religious women in Iran, who are uncomfortable speaking with a man
one-on-one, she welcomed the visitor with a warm smile. Eshraghi, now 44, was
fashionably dressed, reminding me that she had once lived in London while her
husband was studying dentistry.
Today, her situation is very different. Her husband has been disqualified from
running a re-election campaign; her brother-in-law is out of power; and she has
been asked by her family, who she says fear her forthright opinions, to refrain
from speaking to the media.
Her last interview, with New York Times correspondent Elaine Sciolino in April
2003, sparked controversy when she was quoted as saying that she felt trapped
by her family history and hated wearing the black veil known as the chador.
Eshraghi, responding to protests initiated in the Iranian religious center of
Qom, later denied making the remarks. Her family also advised her not to pick
fights with conservative hardliners, and she has put aside the idea of creating
a blog.
She granted this interview shortly after the Ministry of the Interior announced
the disqualification of most of the reformist hopefuls for the March 14
parliamentary elections, in which conservatives won about three-quarters of the
290 seats in parliament. This sweeping disqualification even included current
members of parliament, prompting the European Union to criticize the polls as
"not fair or free".
Since coming into office in 2005, Ahmadinejad has used the prospect of foreign
threats - including the so-called "regime change" policy which has been pursued
by the George W Bush administration - as a pretext to suppress his opponents
and critics. This has been done through arrests of journalists, activists, and
students. In addition, Iran's Guardian Council has halted Ahmadinejad's
potential rivals from running for office by hand-picking the candidates.
The Guardian Council is comprised of influential hardliner clerics and
lawmakers. Half of its members are appointed by the Supreme Leader and the
other half by the Parliament, both of which are conservative.
Ahmadinejad has also tried to portray himself as a man with a personal
connection to higher powers. This, Eshraghi says, is a "delusion".
"The government suffers from delusions, believing that it can eliminate
everyone, [believing that] uniform thinking and restricting choices for voters
can help it confront foreign threats, should they emerge," she said.
Ahmadinejad's claims about his connection to God first surfaced after he
addressed the UN General Assembly in September 2005. He said that someone
present in the audience told him that a light surrounded him while he was
delivering his speech. He added that he, too, had sensed it.
Eshraghi believes Ahmadinejad is losing support from his base. She believes
this is due to his "delusion of receiving messages from above, and his delusion
that the people support hardliners fully and will appreciate any opinions they
may have". She, on the other hand, thinks the cabinet no longer enjoys the same
support it did at the time of the presidential elections in 2005.
"The current situation is highly undesirable both from a security and a foreign
relations viewpoint," Eshraghi said. She believes that the UN Security
Council's multiple sanctions against Iran have harmed the economy and the lives
of ordinary people.
"Sanctions on Iran have already started showing their effects, putting Iran in
an extremely precarious position. There are signs of these effects today, but
by next summer the effects will be devastating ... do we need more problems?"
she asked.
On February 22, Ahmadinejad responded to the possibility of a new sanctions
resolution in an interview with state television, stating that the UN Security
Council "could spend 100 years passing resolutions, but it wouldn't change
anything".
Ahmadinejad's foreign policy is now the focus of his opponents' criticism. His
stance on Iran's nuclear program, coupled with his unprecedented statements on
Israel and his challenging of the accuracy of Holocaust, has led to three
rounds of sanction resolutions by the Security Council.
To illustrate how the hardliner government has also failed to do its job
domestically, Eshraghi cited the fuel shortages that have plagued the Iranian
people this winter, in a country that has the second-largest gas reserves in
the world after Russia. "With the modest snowfall, the country was shut down.
The government is not sufficiently well-connected to the people to see what
they want," she said.
During the past two-and-a-half years, more than 50 economists and academics
have sent joint letters to Ahmadinejad criticizing his populist economic
policies, which have raised inflation to 18%, the highest rate since 1990.
But does this dire situation affect the family of the founder of the Islamic
Republic of Iran like it does ordinary people?
Yes, says Khomeini's granddaughter. "This situation affects everyone. Many
might believe us to belong to more comfortable classes, but [it is hard] even
for us. I know of many workers - and even many of my relatives and friends
around me - who voted for Mr Ahmadinejad, but they regret it now and say that
their economic situation has worsened a lot."
Omid Memarian is a peace fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at
the University of California, Berkeley. He has won several awards, including
Human Rights Watch's highest honor in 2005, the Human Rights Defender Award.
His blog can be read at http://omidmemarian.blogspot.com.
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