Iran’s Good Cop, Bad Cop and Prospects of Dialogue
Though many believe concerns regarding western infiltration in Iran’s decision-making circles is once again becoming the conveyor belt of principlist ambitions, days before a parliamentary runoff that could set the stage for next year’s presidential race, a backstage principlist figure is seemingly opening a window for negotiation and reconciliation.
On Tuesday, Iranian state radio announced, in an unprecedented report, that four security suspects had been handed prison sentences of five to ten years. Tasnim quoted their lawyer’s remarks as saying the Revolutionary Court had convicted his journalist clients, Afarin Chitsaz, Ehsan Mazandarani, Davoud Asadi and Ehsan Safarzaei, of propaganda against the establishment as well as gathering and conspiracy against security, sentencing them respectively to ten, seven and five years. Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei told Tasnim they planned to lodge an appeal against their sentences.
The familiar-sounding story came after several months of investigation and interrogation. For more than two decades, Iranian Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has kept warning against cultural invasion and westernization. Following the same cues, intelligence services stay on their toes in monitoring privately owned media for links overseas. A relatively large number of journalists have been arrested, making Iran look like a horrible place for journalists in the eyes of the West. However, a recent interview with the director of Kayhan Research Center, Hassan Shayanfar, originally conducted about two months ago, hit online on Tuesday, could illuminate how the Iranian intelligence and security arms view the issue, how their views are justified, and to what extent infiltration can incite divide among Iranian political leaders, if any.
The interview, Shayanfar’s first to ever be published, is a narrative, in more than eight thousand words, of cultural invasion, transformation and infiltration in the 37 years since the Islamic Revolution. Shayanfar drops a myriad of names, some familiar and some foreign to the ear, ranging from journalists to low-key politicians, from poets to novelists and artists, from traders to Iran scholars, including as well a party as notorious as Mojahedin-e-Khalq, as instances of western infiltration through the history of the Islamic Republic. And he has modern examples, too. “Do all the foreign journalists working in Iran really want to make reports? They do not cover their reports appropriately, but they do establish their links and connections,” Sayahnfar told Fars News Agency. Calling cultural infiltration worse than any other sort, he also labeled efforts by western countries to launch protecting powers or open embassies as a struggle for further infiltration.
Ripped off its examples for lack of space, the interview might seem as lacking flesh, but the bone structure is what catches the eye.
Shayanfar believes Iran is also partly to blame for foreign infiltration in that it has neglected the issue and had no plan to fight the complicated plots behind. “Of course, the worst kind of infiltration is one into beliefs which has taken place after the war, with our negligence leading to infiltrating streams enter the political scene,” he said.
Mentioning names of a number of secular high-key individuals who returned to Iran after the Revolution in different guises to collect information and implement their assigned foreign plots, Shayanfar stresses the role of Rotary International, as it tries to monopolize capital and ransack the resources in developing countries.
Elaborating on the root causes of vulnerability, he said the so-called “administration of reconstruction” laid the bad beginning of a liberal economy. This was followed by the presidency of “those who claimed to be reformists and seek political development, when an anarchy and radicalism among the dependent parties led to the negligence of culture.
According to Shayanfar, extremism and gradual steps toward western liberal development in economy and politics during the presidencies of Hashemi Rafsanjani and Khatami deteriorated infiltration. “Of course, a number of those in charge of cultural and political development in Khatami’s tenure were not infiltrators but rather revisionists compromising their revolutionary identity,” he added.
His critique, embellished with factual historical examples and quotes, went on highlighting premonitions made by Imam Khomeini. “We should be worried when differences abound and mosques are abandoned,” he quotes Imam Khomeini from memory.
The research director at Kayhan says the revival of the western semi-intellectual movement has led us nowhere and victimized its own adherents, noting the example of the two presidents at the end their tenures. He anticipates that Rouhani will have to face similar unpopularity and campaigns to move past him, as the movement views individuals as mere bridges facilitating transition from stage to stage, and chooses them from within the establishment.
Even Ahmadinejad who was once hailed as the blue-eyed savior of principlism in Iran did not get away with Shayanfar’s elaborate, historically-driven critique of negligence in the face of foreign infiltration. “Gross mistakes” he made during his last years in office, within the managerial realm of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, his controversial confidant, once again rolled out the same mistakes made by the reformist administration, the most severely hit in the interview.
“The revisionist domestic party thinks it can reconcile with the US through such methods. They will make a terrible mistake if they do not understand the true nature of the United States. The US does not take interest in any party. They pursue their own interests. The more the differences in this country, the more vulnerable we will be,” he said in his comments.
It is the Supreme Leader’s tact that brings back for participation those who once boycotted the election, he added. It is the Revolution’s tact to transform the opposition into a demanding faction inside the establishment. And by implication, the critiques Kayhan publishes against certain sides will improve their management.
Dismissing the existence of a media monophony, he called it a claim made by those who speak in chorus with foreigners. Instead, while hailing Iran’s tolerance, he put forth a reversed version in which revolutionary forces are deprived of the right to voice their demands. “A capacity for freedom is available in the establishment and the Constitution … if the opposition works within the framework of law, there will be no problem,” he said.
The illustrative interview makes any impartial reader’s hair stand on end, even though it might represent stigma regarding the West and freedom of the press. However, it does carry an air of national reconciliation and provides a bird-eye view into the country’s foreign policy strategy.
“In sum, it is a scenario in which one is playing the bad cop and the other is the good one. And there will be no problem if they both end up benefiting the Revolution’s,” he said.