Ramin Jahanbegloo: the courage to change (openDemocracy)

The public recantation of his views by the Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo reflects both a genuine change of mind and significant internal changes in the Tehran regime, says Hossein Derakhshan.

Ramin Jahanbegloo: the courage to change

There is a standard, typical formula in the confessions made by intellectuals and dissidents freed from prison in the Islamic Republic of Iran. What Ramin Jahanbegloo said in the first interview he gave after his release on bail on 30 August 2006 was very far from this template. So far, in fact, that it suggests a different explanation of what happened to the detained scholar than that proposed by Rasool Nafisi in openDemocracy (see "Ramin Jahanbegloo: a repressive release" (1 September 2006).

The first piece of evidence for this view is that Jahanbegloo's argument in the interview he gave to the Iranian student news agency (Isna) seems strong, coherent and consistent enough to rule out the possibility of it being imposed on him by his interrogators.

In a key section of the interview - which is not yet available in full in English translation - the political-science lecturer and philosopher describes how some American think-tanks provided him with research opportunities and financial support so that he could conduct comparative analysis of socio-political change in contemporary east-central Europe and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Read the full article on openDemocracy's website.