I found this article by accident. It is Michael Ignatieff's account of his last year's visit to Iran, with invitation from Ramin Jahanbegloo who was later arrested on charges of acting against the national security:
Jahanbegloo says he thinks of himself as a bridge between Iran and those universities. He invites a steady stream of philosophers like Richard Rorty from Stanford and Agnes Heller from the New School in New York to give talks to students. He sees some signs that their ideas are finding a toehold in Tehran. Three decades ago, the intellectuals du jour were Michel Foucault and fellow radical theorists. They arrived in Tehran proclaiming their solidarity with a revolution that actively despised them while persecuting its own freethinkers. Now the pendulum in Tehran has swung toward pragmatic liberals like Berlin.
It's quite interesting how Ignatieff dismisses Foucault's support for the Iranian revolution with just labelling him as radical and praises Jahanbegloo's attempts to bring the liberal, pragmatic thinkers such as Rorty and Heller.
This is of course a cheap shot at Foucault from the right, by Ignatieff, a strong supporter of the US invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds.
But also from the left has been emerged attacks on Foulcault's praise for the Iran's revolution, the most famous of which, by Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson in their book (an excerpt), titled 'Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism.' (I have ordered it recently to read Foucault's original dispatches for Corrierre Dela Serra in his two visits before and after the 1979 revolution.)
A recurring theme these days is that the lines between the right and the left, when it comes to Iran, has become so blurry that they has almost become meaningless.
The left has started to challenge the Islamic Republic's legitimacy in a similar fashion to the right. This is what living in the American paradigm does to one's intellect, I suspect.
I know, I have to elaborate on all this...
Back to our favourite Washington Institute fellow, Mohammad Mehdi Khalaji's lawyer's threats (PDF) to shut down my website, here are the things he has found problematic in a blog post of mine. They kind of sound ironic and even funny, in a Jon Stewart way:
These defamatory statements by Hossein Derakhshan directly and by innuendo:
a) state falsely that our client is a traitor to the government and people of Iran;
b) state falsely that our client has worked for U.S. Vice-President Cheney's office; and by innuendo is a dupe or puppet of the U.S. government;
c) state falsely that our client has counselled the Vice-President of the United States of America to bomb our client's former offices in iran;
c) state falsely that our client has counselled the Vice-President of the United States of America to bomb our thousands of men, women and children;
e) state falsely that our client counsels enemies of Iran and of humanity;
f) incites others to follow the defamer Hossein Derakhshan's lead by spitting in our client's face;
g) state falsely that our client holds and publicizes the belief that political change is not possible from within Iran;
h) state falsely that our client struggles to converse and express himself in the English language;
i) state falsely that our client counsels the government of the United States of America to choose military action and economic sanctions against Iran, over and instead of diplomatic talks;
j) state falsely that our client's academic research paper are in reality thinly veiled instruction manuals on how to locate and attack the weaknesses of the legitimate government of Iran;
k) state falsely that our client is a proponent of, and openly supports, civil unrest, revolution and a regime change in Iran through the use of the military, and violence if necessary; and
l) clearly evidence a personal vendetta being waged by Hossein Derakhshan against our client, under the guise of alleged "commentary."
Norouz, a website run by the Mosharekat party, says that the Iranians whose names were mentioned in the televised 'confessions' by Esfandiari, Jahanbegloo and Tajbakhsh are arrested by the Intelligence service.
As far as I remember, Bijan Khajehpour and Ali Afshari were the only Iranians being mentioned.
Ali Afshari, a former student leader, ironically, is now a fellow at the infamous National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC.
But I think Bijan Khajehpour, a business consultant, must have been back to Iran after, according to his biographies, finishing a programme at a business school in Paris.
So it's very likely he is at least one of the people who is arrested.
Who do you guess has said the following paragraph? Read it and I'll tell you later:
Iran today is very much like the Soviet Union in its last days. The ideology has burnt out, Iranian youngsters are disenchanted, the reform movement has failed to fulfil the popular demand and there has been practically every year spontaneous rioting and uncivil unrests in the major cities of Iran. But 25 years after the revolts that did away with the Shah and his regime, there is an absence of an organizational factor to unite the diverse inspirations of Iranians.
[..]
Based on this analysis of the Iranian situation, we are left with three scenarios for the future of Iran:
1) In the first scenario the Iranian regime will weather the storm and the so -called pragmatists or centrists among the ruling elite of Iran will be the survivors. Thanks to a leadership vacuum among the opposition, the centrists will buy some time by offering a series of strategic concessions. These concessions may come in two forms: to the West on the issue of WMDs and the Middle East peace plan, and to the Iranians in the area of social controls and guardianship (which could be replaced by the Expediency Council with a sudden death of Ayatollah Khamenei). Under this formula, Iran will integrate in the market economy and there will certainly be a shift from a monopolistic, mafia-type of economy represented by the new class of property owners to a more normalized market stability and investment security. The tendency of the pragmatist political leaders such as Rafsanjani and Mohsen Rezaii and centrist religious intellectuals such as Sadegh Ziba Kalam and Shamsolvaezin towards centrist politics is, in a sense, is a reflection of this change in Iran’s capitalist class. In this first scenario Rafsanjani will have an important role as the power broker.
2) In the second scenario unlike the first one the clerical regime will not be able to stand the socio-economic and political pressures and will be left with only one option to defend itself and that is a “palace coup” by the conservatives and the security agents such as Asgaroladi (leader of the Islamic Coalition Group), Badamchian and Shariatmadari (editor in chief of the journal Kayhan) to save the Revolution and the political Islam. Unclear though is the role played in this scenario by Ayatollah Khamenei?
3) In the third scenario the regime change will be inevitable. Irrespective of tactical manoeuvres by the Islamic regime and the absence of an organized leadership by the opposition, the regime will be unable to stave off the energy of dissent and answer the demands of the Iranian youth and Iran will see a series of urban unrests. In this scenario, there is also the closing of a window of opportunity for the Iranian regime and the imminence of political chaos in Iran.
Esfandiari, Jahanbegloo and Tajbakhsh's tv 'confessions' is only targeted at the ordinary Iranians inside Iran and the fact that they're broadcasting it on the Channel 1 confirms that.
But there is also another delicate detail no one has paid attention to yet that explains what exactly Iranian intelligence system is trying to achieve:
The above mentioned people, at least in the TV spots shown so far, are characterised as experts, not as prisoners.
The average man or woman in Iran who doesn't read newspapers or watch satellite television or simply doesn't follow politics has no idea about the conditions in which these individuals have said these things and would only be introduced to them as international relations experts. (The set where they are interviewed and their cloths also want to portray them as if they are in their offices or their homes.)
Personally I think it's a mistake by the Iranian government to assume such distinction or gap between the internal public opinion and external one.
Simply because of the widely popular foreign-based Persian-language satellite televisions such as the VOA and the forthcoming BBC are covering a considerable portion of the same people Iranian government try to target.
So in a few days the news that these statements were taken under pressure would be everywhere, mostly thanks to the popular VOA, and it would lose its value and effect.
I personally agree with legitimate and effective methods to expose the real intentions behind the American human rights and democracy project in countries such as Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia and many eastern European states.
But I believe these televised confessions are neither legally or ethically justified, nor are effective once people realise the story behind them. They even have an opposite effect since the average Iranians would think that there is no truth to anything anyone says along the same lines.
The Americans have repeated and publicly expressed their interest in using the civil society, especially student, women and labour movement, in Iran to destabilise the government and these are exposed by the US' own mainstream media.
But what Iran does with these televised confessions undermine all these realities and help the opposition to paint them as propaganda or conspiracy theories.
I have discontinued a website I made in 2003 to watch Internet censorship in Iran and here is a note, posted on its front page, to expalin why:
Dear Readers,
Internet censorship exists in Iran, as it does in many other parts of the world, especially in the Middle East.
But it has recently become another pretext for the American Empire to further demonise the government of Iran.
Despite all problems and challenges, I believe that Islamic Republic is a legitimate, sovereign and democratic system and I reject any attempts to participate in such nasty demonising campaigns, which ultimately try to justify the Western intervention.
I believe that Internet censorship is an internal problem and the only way to solve it should also come and develop from within. Taking such efforts beyond Iran and into the international scene will benefit the American politicians more than the Iranian internet users.
Therefore, although this website has not been updated for almost a year, I now officially shut it down.
I should thank Sanam Dolatshahi and and PY whose help in the final months was very important and much appreciated.
If I have time and energy, I will relaunch the website in Persian with the same focus on Internet censorship in Iran, but this time in a local scale because of the language.
Best,
- Hossein Derakhshan
After publishing 13 issues of Gooz Online, a parody of the Rafsanjanist propaganda website, Rooz Online, me and my partner decided to shut it down and republish it with a different name.
So the new name is Chalghooz and we want to satirise and expose the entire anti-Iranian propaganda and regime change campaign, especially those being done by some 'reformists' such as Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji, also Abbas Milani and Reza Pahlavi.
But somehow predictably, everyone has boycotted us: Almost no blog or website has linked to us. However we've managed to have over 140,000 page views since 10 June.
The most surprising website that has boycotted us is actually Jahanshah Javid's Iranian. Despite his explicit claims that he publishes any content people send to him, and despite the tagline of Iranian.com which is "Nothing is sacred," Mr. Javid has refused to republish Gooz or Chalghooz issue on the Iranian.com.
This is from the one hand sad that even for the most progressive websites on Iran, picking on neo-liberals or 'reformists' is actually quite sacred, unlike what they try to show off.
From the other hand it proves that we are hitting right on target in exposing the hypocrisy among the so-called reformists when it comes to free speech.
As, Ebrahim Nabavi, one of these exiled reformists put it recently in a series of angry posts and comments on his blog and elsewhere, no one is allowed "to criticise respectful people like Ganji and Ebadi." So obviously the boycott is just the price we have to pay for questioning the 'reformist' Gods.
Ilan Berman was on VOA Persian last week, promoting his recent book, titled 'Taking on Tehran: Strategies for Confronting the Islamic Republic.'
Meanwhile, Radio Farda, interviewing the 'reformist' Mahmoud Shamsolvazein, has accused the newly launched Press TV of being ideological.