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Iranians Poised for Change
By Robert Dreyfuss
I went off in search of Ahmadinejad voters today in Tehran. They are not easy to find.
It's perfect election weather in Iran, relatively cool today with a nice breeze and clear skies, and at polling station after station, the turnout was huge. I began my day at the 7th Tir Technical School in central Tehran. It is a relatively prosperous, middle class area, and scores of people were on line this morning, ID cards in hand, waiting patiently to vote. A dozen election officials were milling around, and when they noticed that I was a reporter, out of nowhere appeared a tray with tea. An official checks my press credentials and says, "Welcome."
The people in line were solemn, men and women, some with kids. I do a straw poll, quietly asking voters who they plan to cast their ballots for, and why, and it's clear that at this station at least, it's Mir Hossein Mousavi country. Tarandeh, 38, a teacher with an M.A. in English, says, "I'm someone who has never ever voted before in the Islamic Republic, not once. I was the first on line today, at 8 am. And the gentleman looked at my voting book and asked me, 'Where are your other votes?' I told him, today is my first." Tarandeh's father was an admiral in the Iranian Navy, and he knows Mousavi from his days as prime minister in the 1980s. "I am sure he will not insult and disrespect the beliefs of others around the world, for instance, by talking about the Holocaust." She notes than Iran has a Jewish minority.
(0) CommentsJune 13, 2009
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Iran's Election Tension
By Robert Dreyfuss
It's a quiet Thursday in Tehran. Campaigning and electioneering is forbidden on election eve, and the crowds are gone, but the tension is palpable. Here and there are still visible people wearing the ubiquitous green armbands that signal support for former Prime Minister Mousavi. Everyone, but everyone, has only one thing on their minds, and rumors are flying, gossip is exchanged, and the latest news--true or not--is passed from mouth to mouth and via cell phone and text messages. Outside the gigantic, concrete edifice of the Interior Ministry, which has responsibility for counting the votes, a pair of young women wearing green smiled as we passed each other. It's inside that building, overlooked by a huge portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, where many Iranians worry that the vote will be stolen.
Though quiet now, over the past several days Iran has seen an outburst of political activity that far surpasses anythinge the gathering storm of the 1978-79 toppling of the Pahlavi dynasty. Last evening, I strolled across the campus of Tehran University, Iran's largest and most prestigious school. In the streets outside, thousands of green-clad students were laughing, cheering and carrying banners, and from the rooftops across the street people were throwing confetti that rained down on the streets below. Cars and vans, flying green flags, cruised the streets. A small group of supporters of President Ahmadinejad marched past, drawing jeers and mocking chants. A guard at the gate, an older man who lost a leg in the 1980s war with Iraq, smiled approvingly and said, of the Mousavi crowd, "It's a revolution."
A revolution. That's a phrase I've heard over and over again in the last few days, from students, office workers, taxi drivers, and passersby.
(38) CommentsJune 11, 2009
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Iran's Vote, Obama's Challenge
By Robert Dreyfuss
Foreign policy is front and center in the Iranian electoral debate. It's clear from countless discussions I've had in Tehran this week that many Iranians blame Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for isolating Iran, creating a needless confrontation with the United States, provoking a harsh set of economic sanctions that has crippled Iran's oil, aviation, and computer/IT industries.
Those Iranians want the next president, whoever he is--and all signs continue to suggest that Mir Hossein Mousavi will be the winner--to make restoring Iran's relations with the United States a top priority.
Of course, that might be difficult.
(139) CommentsJune 10, 2009
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Ahmadinejad's Red Tide
By Robert Dreyfuss
On Monday I wrote about Iran's Green Wave, in support of reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi. Today I am writing about the Red Tide. That's the red-armband-wearing, virtual fascist movement in support of reelecting President Ahmadinejad.
Picture the scene: hours before a rally held at a huge, special indoor prayer auditorium in downtown Tehran, tens of thousands of Ahmadinejad supporters began gathering for a pre-election rally. It's hot, sweaty, and dusty, and a ear-splitting sound system is playing martial music as thug-like young men chant slogans. As the crowd gathers, various speakers whip up a frenzy of anger, xenophobia, and religious ecstasy. Appeals are made about the need to honor the suffering of various, long-dead holy men of Islam, and speakers denounce the president's opponents.
Dark conspiracies are hinted at. "The buses and subways have been shut down! They don't want you here! It's the work of Hashemi Rafsanjani!" Rafsanjani, a former president and wheeler-dealer, is supporting Mousavi, and Rafsanjani's son runs the Tehran metro system. In fact, no shutdown has happened. It's a lie, but the crowd roars: "Death to Hashemi!" You can see the hatred in their eyes.
(77) CommentsJune 9, 2009
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Iran's Green Wave
By Robert Dreyfuss
There's electricity in the air in Tehran. Beneath the snow-capped peaks that tower over the city, crowds gather every night to argue in the streets. Campaign posters touting candidates in the June 12 vote cover the city. A year ago, when I visited Tehran in advance of the parliamentary elections, there was apathy. Voters then were convinced that their votes didn't matter, and that not voting was the best way to protest the current state of affairs. No longer. There's a wave building, and all signs point to a resounding victory for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the pro-reform candidate who is challenging President Ahmadinejad.
That wave is green. All over the capital, there are green signs and banners supporting Mousavi. Cars flying green flags speed through the city, honking horns for Mousavi. For years, the hardline clergy and their allies, including Ahmadinejad, have feared nothing more than an Iranian-style "color-revolution." Now, Mousavi--with solid establishment credentials, an Islamic revolutionary pedigree second to none, and an outspoken pro-reform message--finds himself at the head of a green parade.
Of course, the hardliners and Ahmadinejad have a lot of aces up their sleeve, including the security services, the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guard, and the interior ministry, which counts the votes.
(20) CommentsJune 8, 2009
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Three Tests for Obama After "The Speech"
By Robert Dreyfuss
I'm arriving tonight in Tehran, where I expect I'll get a lot of interesting reaction to President Obama's speech yesterday. (My own reaction was posted here, at length, yesterday.)
But I want emphasize one thing today: that by not mentioning "terror" or "terrorism" in his 55-minute address, Obama has formally turned the corner on the post-9/11 nightmare conjured by by President Bush and his ilk. If Obama sustains this, it has enormous potential not only to improve US relations with the Muslim world. It will utterly alter the discourse inside the United States, which for nearly eight long years has been distorted by the fear-mongering, Muslim-bashing, Osama-inflating, homeland security-worrying neoconservatives and their political allies.
As I pointed out yesterday, Obama stunned right-wing and centrist Israeli and pro-Israeli observers by referring with equanimity to Hamas, describing the Palestinian organization as having legitimate support among ordinary Palestinians and calling on Hamas to join the dialogue. A top Hamas official, Ahmad Yousef, an adviser to Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader and prime minister, said:
(195) CommentsJune 5, 2009
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Obama Hits A Home Run
By Robert Dreyfuss
I watched President Obama's Cairo speech from Dubai, the sprawling and frenzied city of gold and shopping malls on the shores of the Arabian--er, Persian--Gulf. (I'm on my way to Tehran tomorrow, to report on the July 12 presidential elections there, and I'd better keep my "Arabian" and "Persian" Gulfs straight.)
Based on early returns from a decidedly unrepresentative sample of Arab public opinion, Obama hit a home run. I agree. (Incidentally, it's not easy to find Arabs in Dubai, a desert kleptocracy run by a super-rich ruling clan, whose population is overwhelmingly from South Asia, East Asia, southern Sudan, and other parts of Africa.) In Dubai, at least, and in its media, Obama's speech was topic one, two and three all week.
That's good and bad. Obama's arrival in Saudi Arabia and Egypt was greeted in two ways. First, it had the trappings of a visit by an all-powerful but distant Great White Father--okay, he's black, but anyway--on whose words the fate of the Arab and Muslim world hangs, which is understandable in light of the fact that American troops and sailors are everywhere. And second, in contrast, sophisticated Arab opinion was truly hopeful that Obama's remarks would make concrete the sharp break with the Imperial America as represented by the administration of George W. "Crusader" Bush. I think the latter prevailed. Obama was appropriately humble, and he laid down important markers that signal a new U.S. approach to the Middle East and beyond.
(172) CommentsJune 4, 2009
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Obama's Cairo Speech
By Robert Dreyfuss
It's a mistake to see President Obama's June 4 speech in Cairo merely as a repudiation of George W. Bush's wrecking-ball approach to the Middle East.
It's certainly true that during the eight years of the Bush administration, the United States lost a great deal. Bush's War on Terror, which in a moment of candor he called a Crusade, was widely viewed by Arabs, Iranians, Afghans, Pakistanis, and others as an assault on Islam itself, a conclusion that was reinforced by right-wing US Christian denunciations of Islam as a religion of violence and by neoconservative and pro-Israeli efforts to exaggerate the importance of Al Qaeda in the broader Muslim world. The Bush administration's policy of regime change -- applied in its ugliest form in Iraq -- was originally intended to include Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan, as well, creating the image of the United States as a born-again imperial power in a region still recovering from the British, French, Italian, and other colonial powers that exited the region only recently. And Bush and Co. lumped together all of the region's anti-Western political forces, rolling Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Iran's Shiite clergy, Saddam Hussein, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia's Wahhabis, and the Syrian Baath party into one big "Islamofascist" ball of wax.
It is, of course, easy to find advocates for all of that, still, in the neocon-linked thinktanks and in the pages of the National Review, the Weekly Standard, the New Republic, and the Wall Street Journal editorial pages.
(43) CommentsJune 1, 2009
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The Battle of Lebanon
By Robert Dreyfuss
Five days before the crucial elections in Iran on June 12, voters go to the polls in another Middle East country: Lebanon. The stakes in Lebanon are high, since it's looking more and more likely that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalist group, and its allies will win a majority and take control of the government in Beirut. That would create a fundamental choice for the Obama administration: does the United States continue to have contact with, and send military aid to, a Lebanese government controlled by Israel's implacable foe?
Last year, in a power-sharing deal brokered by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, Hezbollah was given a share of power in the Lebanese state proportional to its strength in parliament and on the ground, after massive pro-Hezbollah demonstrations rocked the country.
Expect a lot of outside meddling in Lebanon during the next two weeks -- on all sides.
(112) CommentsMay 28, 2009
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More On That Bogus "Terrorist" Plot in New York
By Robert Dreyfuss
That bogus "terrorist plot" in New York has fallen from the headlines, but its pernicious impact lingers on. My earlier piece on this story, written late last week, drew a lot of comments, and a number of people contacted me about the story, too.
Here are a few updates.
First, a sensible AP story puts it in perspective, emphasizing the role of the FBI's agent-provocateur who entrapped the four men now charged in the "chilling" terrorism plot:
(89) CommentsMay 25, 2009
Robert Dreyfuss
A chronicle of America's adventures in foreign policy and national security.
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