What Happens When the News is Locked Up in a Cell?

What Happens When the News is Locked Up in a Cell? Scattered around a sad, walled-in garden, with a few dusty and thirsty trees, broken pieces of rudimentary equipment for physical exercise lie around although no one is in any mood to exercise or body building here. The air in Iran’s Tehran is so polluted these days that it is hard to breathe without a face mask. This is a corner of the notorious Evin prison in north Tehran. Over the past few weeks, Evin has been receiving new residents at all hours, day and night. And, with the resulting shortage of space, the terrified new arrivals have to sleep in the corridors. In the sad, walled-in garden of Evin's Ward 935, the 200 prisoners shuffle around - for two hours a day - to expose their eyes to a bit of natural light. They are not allowed to talk to each other to exchange their scraps of news; scraps that amount to little more than speculation and guesses, because their contact with the rest of the world has been completely severed and they are not allowed any visits or telephone calls. Until just 35 years ago, what is now Evin prison was a beautiful garden built by a former prime minister, who was using it to breed rabbits. But, then, the garden was handed over - on the Shah's orders - to SAVAK, the notorious security and intelligence service, to allow the construction of a modern prison with individual cells. Iran's last king, who was happy to be seen by the world as the absolute ruler of Iran and the top man in the region, ordered the construction of Evin prison so it could be used to lock up "the dozen or so terrorists and saboteurs". Even in the last days of his reign, the Shah kept insisting that his opponents had orders from abroad to disturb the country's peace. But it became clear 30 years ago that there had been millions - not a dozen or so - discontented people in Iran; people who both forced the Shah to flee the country and freed thousands of political prisoners. More recently, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, in the opinion of his opponents, has held on to the presidency by rigging the June 12 election, described Iranian freedom advocates and activists as "a few bits of dirt and dust". But, in just the past month alone, several thousand protestors have been detained, joining the 3,000 prisoners who were already in Evin. And on 15 June, two million people marched through the streets of central Tehran. In their chants, addressed to Ahmadinejad, they cried: "You're the one who is dirt and dust, you're the one who is the enemy of this land", "Tell us the real election results, you liar". As it became clear that the declared election results had sparked extensive protests in Iran, Ahmadinejad’s government, his hardline supporters and the proponents of violence showed that they had no intention of accepting people's demands. They arrested young people and university students, handcuffed them and took them to unknown locations. This is in circumstances in which the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran says that people are free to hold peaceful demonstrations as long as they are not anti-religious. But the government has been dispersing demonstrators with tear gas, electric batons and clubs. The government has said that seventeen people have been killed in the streets of Tehran in the course of the protests. But word has it that the number is much higher than this, especially in far-flung towns. It is said that a special section of Evin prison, where a small studio has been constructed, has the task of providing propaganda material for the hardline groups' media: the confessions of people who are being held in solitary confinement. Audio- and video-recording equipment and hidden cameras have been installed in this section of the prison. The aim is to tell the public exactly what the Shah's government used to tell them, which is that people's peaceful protests against election rigging is "a velvet revolution" commandered by foreign governments. Prisoners are being forced to make confessions, but, the moment they can say otherwise, they will explain that the confessions were extracted forcibly and against their will. Among the thousands of people who have been arrested by the security forces and Ahmadinejad's supporters, there is a group of about one hundred, who have a special status. Their crime is that they are journalists. The government is angry that reporters filmed the peaceful protests and the violent way in which they were suppressed; thereby allowing the world to learn about the fate of "a few bits of dirt and dust" in Iran. The government has used money, which it should have used to improve people's living standards to buy expensive equipment for blocking websites, jamming satellite channels, and cutting off mobile phones and SMS communications (cellphone text messaging), so that it can dump whatever news it wants on people and keep them ignorant about many developments. It goes without saying that such a government sees journalists as its number one enemy. The detained reporters, journalists and bloggers harmed the government because they foiled all the government's efforts to keep people in the dark. This is why the detained reporters' situation is different from that of all the other detainees. Reporters have to confess that they ecnuaged or forced university students, women's rights activists and the other "bits of dirt and dust" come out into the streets. They have to confess that, through their actions, they made people take part in demonstrations instead of going to work or to their classes; they made them insult the very popular government; and they made them accuse it of tampering with the election results. Reporters have to confess that they were spies and that they reported on events on the orders of foreign powers' intelligence organizations. But these one hundred detainees are the people who kept the world informed about what was actually happening in Iran. They did their professional duty as journalists everywhere in the world are expected to do. After several weeks of detention and round-the-clock interrogations, the government disseminated two so-called confessions. The first was that of a young journalist Amir Hossein Mahdavi. In order for state-affiliated media to make his confessions appear serious, they described him as one of the main members of a political opposition group. And they cited him as saying that the groups which are criticizing Ahmadinejad's government have links to foreign governments and were trying to create chaos in the country. Another person whose purported confessions were reported by state media was Maziar Bahari, a reporter for Newsweek magazine who is also an Iranian affairs analyst, a documentary filmmaker, and the editor of interesting books about Iran in English and German. He has also worked for reputable international TV stations, such as Britain's Channel 4 and Al-Jazeera. Maziar Bahari is one of the best-known Iranian journalists among the foreign media. And, over the past three years, he has produced dozens of documentary films from Africa, the Middle East and West Asia which are all shining examples of professional work, unbiased reporting and a sense of responsibility. It is precisely because of his experience and record that many religious scholars, diplomats, thinkers and politicians (including many supporters of the Islamic Republic) have divulged their views in interviews with him. Maziar, who had just completed a documentary film about injustices against people in Southeast Asia, was in Iran at the time of the presidential election. He was there because it was the right place to be for news. Many of the world's most reputable reporters had also headed for Iran to cover the election. Of course, Iran is also Maziar's home country. And, now, he has been a prisoner in Evin Prison for three weeks. He is again in a place that is full of stories to tell and scenes to film. Many of the world's journalists would pay a high price to speak to the freedom-loving young Iranians who are fighting a bullying, dictatorial state, and to interview them in their condition as prisoners. Many of the world's distinguished journalists have been making repeated attempts to receive the authorization to go to Tehran to cover the most exciting movement that the world has seen in recent years. But Maziar Bahari is deprived of the opportunity to cover this story. Although Maziar Bahari, a hard-working professional journalist, is in the closest location possible to cover the green movement of Iran, he can only hear muffled sounds. For the crime of tying a green band around their wrists, taking part in peaceful civil protests and crying out, "What happened to our votes?", young men and women, artists, sportsmen and even elderly women first had to endure beatings with clubs and electric batons, and then to be tossed into the back of a van like a sack of potatoes and taken to Tehran's notorious prison. These detainees know thousands of songs and poems, all of which are about love and friendship and shunning violence. Maziar can hear them but he cannot record any of it. He has no recording equipment. Maziar’s prison cell measures one meter by one and a half meters. He is alone. There is no paper or pen, never mind about a camera and the laptop that he used to produce his films and interviews. These were all taken away from him when he was arrested and who knows if he will ever get them back. But what could be worse for a journalist than to hear something being shouted from rooftops throughout a city every night and not know what the shouting is for? But, in all earnest, what does it mean when a single cry can be heard throughout a city every night, so that you can even hear it being voiced in the cell next to yours - even though the prison guards have forbidden any talking and signalling? Iran is pregnant with events. Maziar Bahari is in prison, along with well-known journalists who used to work for the now-banned newspapers in Iran, because the state wants to prevent the world from hearing the cry of the Iranian people's peaceful movement. And the best way to do this, as far as Iranian officials are concerned, is to jail journalists like Maziar Bahari, who wrote in his articles and analyses just a few weeks ago that Iran is in the transitional stage to democracy and that it is ahead of many other Middle Eastern countries in this respect. He said that the Iranian state was much more tolerant than many of the other regional states. But now he has been put in a solitary confinement cell to make the "confessions" that foreign governments had a hand in Iran's reform movement. He has to "confess" that the movement of peaceful young Iranians is bad. He has to come up with an explanation that will convince Iranians that bullets are good, tear gas is good, banning newspapers is good, prison is good. Maziar has to confess these things with longing and sorrow. And in his heart he has to write a sentence that he wrote years ago about an African country: "They may not even realize what the cure for their ailments is, but their eyes say 'freedom'." Even if they are forced to "confess" something else, Maziar Bahari and all the other journalists who are in prison in Iran and elsewhere believe only one thing: Freedom of expression is the cure to backwardness in human societies. Freedom of expression insures societies against corruption and putrefaction. Freedom of expression is a garden, for the greenness and lushness of which many people have lost their lives over the course of history. It is a crying shame that, at a time when a generation of Iranians is crying, "freedom", the people who should be conveying this cry to the world are themselves in prison.

 Princess Ashraf Pahlavi 

Death of Reza Shah’s Controversial Child

Ashraf Pahlavi, twin of Mohammad Reza Shah, the last king of Iran, died on Thursday 1 January 2016; the same day when eighty years ago, a woman from the Iranian royal family took off her Islamic veil and appeared in European style dress and hat in public. Reza Shah, her father, had already started the period of modernization in Iran. Her mother and sister also followed wearing the European dress. She always remembered that day during all the years until the royal system was toppled by Islamists; she continued the idea of freedom and indiscrimination against women by chairing an organization she established for this purpose.

Princess Ashraf, whose life was very similar to controversial and contentious life of Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth's sister, was in fact a friend of hers. According to different sources she had close relations with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the famous Pakistani President, Prince Hussein, king of Jordan and many other political and artistic figures. She had even used her coquetry, when she was twenty seven, to entertain Joseph Stalin for three hours. Pictures of her with fur coats, gifted to her by Kremlin rulers, were all over the yellow newspapers.

The most adventurous child of Reza Shah died 71 years after her father and 34 years after her twin brother, the last Shah of Iran. She, like those two, died in exile and in a hopeless situation. In her 96 years life, the world media described her with all sorts of labels: most powerful child of Reza Shah, richest and most corrupt member of the Pahlavi Dynasty, guardian of the crown, inherited from her father, bon vivant, grateful and ambitious, all said and written about her.

Ashraf was born on 26 October 1920, minutes after Mohammad, the first child of Reza Khan Mirpanj, in Tehran, Sangelaj neighbourhood. Nobody was waiting for her; neither her father, nor her mother who had wished Tajolmoluk Ayromlu to give birth to a son; not even the midwife of Sangelaj Neighbourhood had any idea that Mirpanj's wife might have a twin inside her.

Her biorth marked the dawn of Reza Khan's rise to power. The 3 Esfand coup took place when the twin were two years old, after which their father was named as Sardar Sepah. They were four when their father became the prime minister and were seven when he was crowned. But the people who celebrated the 4 Aban [26 October] nor her mother who donated to poor people on that day, ever mentioned Ashraf and this was because of the long shadow of Mohammad Reza.

Ashraf stayed in the shadow of her brother from the day she was born. She had accepted this discrimination but did nothing more that. Unlike her brother, she chose to fight and defy and get what she wanted. She said: "I was weak. Life made me fight. First in the family and after that with my father, whose slap still rings in my ear, and after that with the whole world. I promised myself to not fight with one person and he was my oldest friend. I loved him before birth. I was ready to get killed for him."

In a tape, she proudly says: "I was the only child who was slapped by Reza Shah."

When Ashraf saw her father, on the evening of 16 September 1942 in Esfahan, after he had resigned and afraid of being caught by Allied Forces, in the middle of crowded and sparse family, and realised the failure of his powerful father, it was as if she defined a mission for herself. Absence of her dictator father gave her an opportunity to come out of her shell. The next morning she decided to go to Tehran, despite British objection, accompanied by her smaller brother.

When Ashraf returned to Tehran, divorced from a husband imposed on her when she was sixteen, opened the doors of her palace to foreign envoys, politicians and businessmen and became the centre of influence and distribution of high ranking positions. From that period on, she intervened with every cabinet formation and selections of prime minister and ministers and parliament MPs and other officials in the country. This method, sometimes implemented without his brother's awareness, turned her into a power centre in Tehran in her twenties. Prime ministers like Soheili, Hajir, Razmara and Dr Eqbal came to power with her support.

In spring of 1947, she went to Moscow, to visit hospitals and health care centres in Russia, and managed to visit Stalin for three hours, a visit originally scheduled for 15 minutes.

Mohammad Ghavam, nephew of Ghavam –Ol Saltaneh and his office chief, says in his diaries that one of the ministers had asked why did they permit Shah's sister to travel abroad, because she could plot against the government. The politician had answered that she is a real man and will not be satisfied with the rule in the south of the country; she may act against my government but will not act against the territorial integrity of the country.

After the war and in the middle of conflicts which had exhausted the government, several politicians claimed that the idea of putting the government in the hands of Dr Mosaddeq, leader of the nationalisation of oil in Iran, was in fact an idea coming out of Ashraf's palace and that she had convinced the Shah. As a result one of people close to Ashraf and the head of royal family faction in parliament, suddenly brought up the proposal of Mosaddeq and it was accepted.

After Dr Mosaddeq was appointed as Prime Minister, Ashraf tried to tame this old man. When confronted by his stubbornness, she turned against him and convinced everyone that Mosaddeq was about to put an end to the rule of Pahlavi royal dynasty and to transfer the rule to his mother's dynasty. She convince the Shah as well as her smaller brother, Alireza, to fight Mosaddeq. It was said that she had several meetings with Russian ambassador to Tehran as well.

Following the above actions, Dr Mosaddeq, in his second year if office, asked the Shah to expel his mother and sister, who were plotting against the government. He stood for this position and was successful. But the impossible happened. Ashraf met Ghavam Ol-Saltaneh, her ancient foe, in a casino in Monte Carlo and made friends with him. The past discords were cleared and she proposed him to position of prime minister. Through this path, Mosaddeq's government was toppled in 1953 and Ghavam came to power. But in 30 Tir, with the resistance of the people, there was a revolution which pushed the Shah to retreat and brought Mosaddeq back to power.

Ashraf did not stop there. She went on to visit anybody she knew in London, Paris, Swiss and Mont Carlo. Her villa in Juan-les-Pins became a political centre and resulted in an agreement, with the presence of CIA. She returned to Tehran, despite Dr Mossadeq's order, with a fake passport and met Mostafa Moghaddam and Rashidian and Mohammad Ali Massoudi. As her presence in Tehran was revealed, she was taken to the airport by Mossadeq's threats and sent to exile.

It has been said and written that Ashraf's actions was instrumental in the success of the 1953 coup d'état. After the victory in returning the Shah and the fall of Dr Mossadeq's government, nothing else could hinder Ashraf from climbing to the top. The poor financial situation of Shah and his family, which became more evident during the period of exile, lead the royal family to show a great deal of temptation towards gaining wealth; nobody was more successful in this matter than Ashraf Pahlavi.

She saw herself as the second person in the country, after her brother. Therefore she had no tolerance with Shah's three wives and considered nobody as close and having a goodwill than herself to the Shah. But in Shah's final days, there is no mention of hostile behaviour between her and Queen Farah and Amir Abbas Hoveyda, with whom she been close as well; until the time when she was in exile again and the revolution had toppled the Shah.

Ashraf had reasons in crisis years to believe that Dr Mossadeq and Soraya Esfandiari, the Queen of the time, had a close familial relationship. When Shapur Bakhtiar was chosen as the prime minister by her brother, she thought this leader of the opposition [Bakhtiar] and a close family member to Queen Farah, had a reason to say farewell to Shah in the airport, while he was leaving the country for good.

In their latest exile, the Shah and Ashraf were rich and more experienced. It has been said that the Shah of Iran considered her sister's extravagance as a reason why people turned their back against him. He had once asked his Royal Minister to tell Princess Ashraf that one cannot be a hero for the women in the country and be active on the international scene and also seeking to be the General Secretary of the UN and also engage in all sorts of immoral activities, all at the same time. But not even the closest advisor to the king could not tell such things to Ashraf Pahlavi.

When during the revolution, the people shouted "After the Shah, it is America's turn" and after the students occupied the US embassy in Tehran and created the deepest crisis of the past cold war period, Ashraf Pahlavi turned her back against Hamilton Jordan, President Carter's envoy to Tehran and said that she is not going to shake hands with any American official.

In her last days, Ashraf Pahlavi took another action which will remain as her legacy; she was the only member of the royal family who helped high ranking officials, who were driven to exile by the revolution, to live in Europe and America. She became the only child of Reza Shah who showed respect for officials and was grateful.

On the first day of January, when she stopped breathing and her life support systems were cut off, it was quite a while that she could not feel anything. Before Alzheimer swept her memory, she insisted on the fact that the British had toppled her father and the Americans had toppled her brother. She was so persistent in her thought that once she told a reporter that the slogans people shouted in the streets, "Death to America" is the response to the betrayal of Americans against her father and brother.

Her wealth has been described as legendry and big numbers has been mentioned for it. This is result of two things. She had well educated people around her who helped her invest in the right places. She got every lesson from her father's life and did not deposit her money in foreign banks. Instead she invested in property and stock exchange. The second reason was her extravagant life style.

This wealth and the inheritance and tax disputes about her wealth, distanced her from her favourite apartment in Beckman in Manhattan and made her leave the US. She could not even live in Seychelles or southern France. She went to Mont Carlo and died there, before the legal meetings about her wealth came to an end. She had one son from her first husband, Shahram Ghavam (Pahlavi-nia). After Ashraf, the only living child of Reza Shah is Gholam Reza Pahlavi.

From; BBC Persian

Death of a prominent person,

Khodadad Farmanfarmaian

Five years ago, when Mehdi Sameii – prominent Iranian banking and planning figure who served as the Head of the Planning Organization and Chief of the Central Bank and a candidate for Prime Minister in Shah’s period – died in Los Angeles, Khodadad Farmanfarmayan, who was his deputy and a close friend wrote: “Mehdi Sameii was unique and a director whose signature worked like the credit of national money; he belonged to a short unprecedented period in Iranian history which was never repeated again.”

The period referred to in this remark is the politically tranquil years in the history of Iran; between 1955 and 1975, when the Royal Government of the country, hand in hand with the West, was going through a prosperous economic growth. This was an exception in the history of this ancient nation. The driving force of this period was a group of Iranians educated in world’s best universities, who were on the brink of being absorbed by the US and European labour market, but were recruited just in time by the Iranian government. One can name a group of fifty graduated Iranians who loved their country and returned to Iran, happy of the tranquil atmosphere of the country. Enthusiastic about their country, they came to have an impact on the process of their country’s development. But many of them were in their mid-ages and were driven out of the scene in the fifties and this marked the beginning of the end to those happy dreams, as many analysts believe.

Khodadad Farmanfarmayan, who died of cancer in a London hospital on 16^th December 2015, aged 87, did not mention his own name when he talked about Mehdi Sameii. He was one of the few outstanding figures in Iranian technocracy who abandoned his Princeton and Harvard University positions, to return to Iran in the tranquil atmosphere of the second half of the thirties, when he was in his twenties. It was believed the country was in a golden era and was filling the gap with the industrial countries.

Khodadad was one of the smallest children of Abdolhossein Farmanfarma, famous Qajar Prince and the first prime minister after the Constitution. When he entered into public services he thought working in an economic research centre such as the Plan and Budget Organization will not turn him into a “subject of the State”. The Qajar Prince prohibited his children from working for the state. But Khodadad left his position in Princeton and flew to Tehran.

At that time the Americans had proposed economic and development aid to Iran and requested an organization to take care of and coordinate the development process in the country and to elaborate six year development plans. Abolhassan Ebtahaj, neglecting the ruling power and the temporary government, established a data bank in the Plan and Budget Organization and created a specialist team, aware of the global changes, to manage the elaboration of developments plans, confirmed by the international and Western centres to be the key to the progress of underdeveloped countries.

When Khodadad Farmanfarmayan worked in the economic research centre, one of his relatives, Ali Amini, economist and economic minister during Mosaddeq period, became the Prime Minister. In a row between Amini and Ebtehaj, both trusted by the Americans, Ebtehaj had to quit the Plan and Budget Organization; but his legacy remained: educated Iranians aware of global situation who were each appointed to be in contact with domestic and foreign clients.

Mehdi Sameii became the third chief of the Plan and Budget Organization; same as Ebtehaj in Central Bank. Khodadad Farmanfarmayan replaced Sameii in both cases.

One thing that all those in the Plan and Budget Organization and the government after the 60s had in common was that they all were in ages similar to the last Shah of Iran. What they saw in Mohammad Reza Shah was a democrat who loves the development of the country and to pull out the country from poverty. They realised that he, unlike traditional ruler, was keen to listen and learn and wants to list Iran under the industrialized countries.

Khodadad Farmanfarmayan, even before he became the deputy of the Plan and Budget Organization, had the opportunity to talk to Shah in economic council, when he served in the economic centre of the organization. As he described in his memoire, he was delighted to talk to Shah and sometimes criticized the programmes relentlessly. The elder politicians of the time recommended him to keep his distance with the Shah. But Khodadad Farmanfarmayan was a technocrat, planner and researcher. He had a simple life and was committed to what he had learned and could not but speak frankly and to the point. Along with the Land Reform programme, Shah invited Mehdi Sameii to become the chief of the central bank and to develop the bank, just like its global counterpart, as an institute independent from the government and other fluctuations. Sameii responded to Shah by saying that he is an accountant and knows nothing about banking and told him he can only accept the job if Khodadad Farmanfarmayan becomes the deputy chief of the bank. Shah said Khodadad Farmanfarmayan is a supporter of Mosaddeq. And this was a serious allegation at that time. Shah was pointing to the 1953 coup in which Dr Mossadeq, relative of Khodadad Farmanfarmayan, was toppled during Winston Churchill government and the help of the CIA. Dr Mossadeq was the nephew of Farmanfarma’s children. Despite this, Sameii persistence lead to Khodadad Farmanfarmayan going to the Central Bank.

Khodadad Farmanfarmayan says in his autobiography in a long interview with his colleagues in the Plan and Budget Organization, before going to the central bank, that they even challenged Shah’s decision to weapon purchases. They even once wrote a letter in this regard, signed by him, Reza Moghaddam and Cyrus Sameii and sent to Shah’s office; a move that had severe consequences years after when he was dismissed.

After the Royal Celebrations, which the Shah called a big victory and a sign of the exceptional progress, the rise in oil prices brought the queue of ships waiting in Iranian ports, bringing all sorts of commodities from around the world. The inflation was high and popular demands from the government was on the rise. Rural immigrants settled around large cities. This situation was partly anticipated by the new generation managers before.

Khodadad Farmanfarmayan, who had written about the land reform and modification in agricultural system years ago and had discussed this with Hassan Arsanjani (becoming the next Agriculture Minister and executive of the land reform), like many of his colleagues, criticized some points in the “Revolution of Shah and the people.”

In the 50s, the younger managers such as Alinaqi Alikhani, Ardeshir Zahedi, Mehdi Sameii and Khodadad Farmanfarmayan, were driven off the ruling body one by one, which lead them to work in the private sector. Rumours in the political circles attributed this to the competition by Amir Abbass Hoveyda, the obedient prime minister. But, as mentioned a few times in the years to come, Shah’s eagerness to progress the country was so intense that he could not accept any criticism or challenge. He mocked the intellectuals and technocrats saying they do whatever he says.

Their first dispute with Shah rose when the oil prices increased. Economists and the educated people warned him about the coming crisis. They recommended to save the oil revenue for infrastructural works. They often warned Shah in public and private meetings of the coming inflation and recession.

The second pint which distanced Shah from them was his view about reaching the peak in a short time – as turning in one of the five top industrial countries in five years. No economist deemed that feasible.

Twenty eight years after the fall of the royal rule in Iran, once again the rise in oil prices made the country susceptible to yet another crisis, which the international system tried to prevent by the sanctions upon Ahmadinezhad’s government. People like Alinaqi Alikhani and Khodadad Farmanfarmayan were to witness the history repeat itself.

A review of 87 years of life of Khodadad Farmanfarmayan is an occasion to review a special period in Iranian history and the missed opportunity of a generation of Iranian, who came to participate in the progress of their country but was faced by a modern and reformist dictatorship who blocked the way for any progress. Eight years after Khodadad Farmanfarmayan quit the governmental roles to join the private sector, the Shah was faced with a popular uprising which toppled him and gave way to a middle ages type of rule and all those technocrats were either executed or forced to leave the country. Khodadad Farmanfarmayan managed to flee after a short time after the revolution and went to Britain and stayed there until the end of his life. He used his expertise in international banking and educational institutions.

He established two academic institutions in Iran which were related to Harvard University and European academic centres. He was proud of his educational endeavours, much more than his high ranking and managerial roles.

Where did he come from?

Khodadad Farmanfarmayan was eleven years old when his father died. When he was born Farmanfarma had no more power because all the power concentrated in the hands of Reza Khan Pahlavi who even turned their house into his personal palace. After the WWII he went to Beirut, like many of Farmanfarma’s children and then to the US to study.

He was studying in Stanford when due to the process of the nationalisation of oil industries he could not receive money from Iran. For the first time after eleven years he came to Iran by a university loan and travelled to many parts of the country.

His article Social change and economic approach in Iran, was published in prominent Harvard publications by the help of Professor Cole. This put him in the centre of interest. Many of the things which occurred in the management system of the country was what he mentioned as the main infrastructural framework needed for the country.

He was twenty when he defended his PHD thesis and married Joanna. She was with him for 67 years. They had three children. Khodadad Farmanfarmayan had no arrogance of a prince and no failure or success ever changed his course. He had a well intention and a freedom lover and remained so until his last days.

 from: BBC Persian

Omid,s exhibition

The Iran that Omid Salehi has been photographing for nearly a quarter of a century is one of intensity and unexpected beauty. Salehi started working at the age of seventeen in Shiraz and has since won numerous photographic awards. He belongs to a generation of artists whose experiences of the Islamic Republic have only served to strengthen their resolve to document the social transformation of their country. Omid’s images embody geometrical patterns of movement and design. They reveal the extraordinary in the everyday – a gathering of women across a sacred terrain of a religious festival; the solicitude of men in an ancient “hammam”; or the interplay of sunlight and water among children herding buffalo.

The photographs in the exhibition also present a visual critique of Iranian self-perception in regards to expectations projected by society at large – at home and abroad. There is a level of disconnect between what is and what could be in Omid’s photos of truck drivers and their cabs plastered with pictures of movie stars and wealth. Similarly religious tourists to the tenth-century city of Mashad document their pilgrimages by having their souvenir portraits taken in front of murals of mosques instead of the actual holy sites.

His work captures the harder edges of “the modernity of tradition”, as described by the writer Coco Ferguson. Omid’s photo-book, The Control Project, was borne out of his experiences of seeing so many CCTV cameras while visiting London. Inside his Tehran apartment building, he spies on neighbours, close up and nervous under his ever-watchful surveillance camera. This Iran is raw and uncovered. Also included in the exhibition is another photo-book, Fragmented Lives, which explores the schizophrenic existence of a cyber-obsessed younger generation who thrive on the internet. Meanwhile his video Distances illustrates the discordant relationship, between the public and private lives of Iranians across the great divide of exile, on Skype.

The intriguing photographs, books and films of Omid Salehi not only challenge existing perceptions of Iran, they reveal a country and a people like never before.

J

on the work of Omid Salehi

Calls for Foreign Military Intervention

During the last two months, even though talks over Iran’s nuclear program between representatives of P5+1 countries and Iran have resumed, three prominent Iranian dissidents were invited by two European governments to separately meet the foreign ministers of the a European government and the leader of the opposition. The subject of discussion between them was to learn what the three would do if the West launched a military attack on the Islamic republic. All three replied that they were against a military attack on Iran and said that if that were to happen, they would return to their country to join the people of Iran in determining their fate

The next question the Europeans asked was what percent of Iran’s urban population were in favor of such an attack that could result in the fall of the Islamic republic. Based on reports, all three, with some minor differences, said that most of Iran’s urban population was against such an event and that their opposition was serious.

Apparently the responses by the Iranians at both sessions surprised the hosts who then asked how come such an opposition did not come about in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. According to what the European representatives said, the exiled opposition from the three countries had welcomed US, European and NATO intervention to cooperate with them and in practice did exactly that and used the opportunity to liberate their countries. So why were Iranian opposition groups not willing to make such an investment, they asked, adding whether it was because they believed that the operations would not succeed therefore imposing severe costs on them.

History of Anti-Foreigners

As to why form a political, historic or social perspective are Iranians different from their neighbors is a subject on which much has been discussed and written. More recent events and experiences have also been added to those. Countries that in this decade succeeded to free themselves from their autocratic regimes appear to be different from Iran. People in countries that were ruled by Mola Omar, Saddam and Ghaddafi had no reservations about requesting foreign assistance and riding on foreign tanks to return to their homes. This way they succeeded in bringing about a major change in their country and generally liberate themselves from their autocratic, violent and oppressive regimes. But as it appears, even their successful liberation has not enticed Iranians to do the same.

Is this because of historic age and historic unity the cause of this difference? A country that claims to have had a sustaining civilization for some thousands of years is certainly different from those that were created in the twentieth century. The former has literature and history that perpetually disdains cooperating with foreigners, while the latter has no such issues. One cannot claim that literature and history play a small role in people’s lives.

Is this because of people’s historic movements and efforts to fight for freedom that brings about such a view? In other words, does a nation like Iran which 150 years ago successfully launched the first revolution in the Middle East to curtail the powers of its ruler, at a time when only half Europeans had democratic governments, behave in the same fashion as a people who experienced nothing but dictatorship from the day of their birth?

Through the last 150 years the Iranian people have launched, witnessed and recorded a constitutional revolution, the opposition movement during the minor dictatorship, democracy and chaos during Ahmad Shah’s rule, constructive dictatorship of Reza Shah, the freedoms following World War II, the movement to nationalize its oil, the modern dictatorship of Mohammad-Reza Shah, the revolution that brought about the Islamic republic, the reformist movement of 2^nd Khordad (launched in 1997), and finally the Green Movement to attain and institute free elections. Throughout this history, their goal and slogan has been opposition to autocracy and foreign intervention. This is different from countries whose creation was signed by a person whose son or grandson rules the territory today.

It is because of this history that even today the most powerful and common charge against dissident Iranians is an assertion, by those in power in Iran, that the dissenters are affiliated to foreigners. Similarly, the most potent weakness that the opposition raises against a regime or government is that the latter has made the country more dependent on foreigners in the course of its rule. When such claims and ascertains are made, the record of the claimant plays no role. How can the slogans of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who more than the clerics has for two decades been airing anti-foreign screams, has antagonized the world against himself through which he has bought himself support among the deprived people of the region, but has also destroyed domestic production and to continue to appear to be the leader in anti-Americanism has in practice turned Iran into a political colony of Russia and economically dependent on China, be taken seriously?

When the last Iranian monarch, who was an ally of the US and the West – something that is not hidden from anyone – was told that his cabinet minister of science had a US Green Card, ordered that he be dismissed from his post and disregarded explanations that professor Samii got his Green Card to avoid standing in long visa lines every time he wanted to return to his US university when he was a student. But Ahmadinejad, whom the deprived of the world view as a hero against the US and Israel, have two cabinet ministers and seven advisers who hold European and one American citizenships.  More recently, his choice for the president of Bank Melli has turned out to be a Canadian citizen.

When Nasser-al-Din Shah who ruled Iran for fifty years and made no claims to being a nationalist or anti-foreigner, was forced to accept at a young age Mirza Agha Khan Nouri as his Prime Minister, conditioned his appointment to that the premier tear up his British passport before the king issued his appointment decree.

Similarly, if we look at the World War II record of the two Pahlavi kings who rightly or wrongly have been accused of being brought to power with foreign assistance – specifically that of Britain – and point to the two coups of 3 Esfand (February 21, 1921 which brought Reza Shah to power) and 28 Mordad (August 19, 1953 when the Mohammad Reza Shah was reinstated as king) that resulted in Reza Shah son’s accent to the throne as their proof – and even the events of 20 Shahrivar (September 11, 2009 when the Islamic republic violently suppressed the popular demonstrations and protests held against the rigged elections) - it becomes evident that when the conditions were right to challenge foreign powers, these rulers did not do any less than those who flouted claims of being non-aligned [or independently national]  and according to one historic theory Reza Shah and his son brought about their downfall because they strived to clear their name from that shame by engaging in extreme anti foreign actions.

Kings who were accused of being dependant on the West behaved in this manner so how can one expect political activists who long for freedom and liberty for their country and who want to get the votes of the same people with such traits and characteristics, to give up their dreams and idealism for a handful of grain and add more sins to the existing unjustified sins?

Historic Examples

If we accept that despotism and imperialism are the two driving forces that make freedom-loving people rise and act, then it should be noted that prominent Iranian heroes such as Dr Mossadegh gained their reputation as challengers of foreign powers. Amir-Kabir, the 19^th century prime minister accepted death rather than take refuge in a foreign embassy and as history attests said, “I want the flags of seven foreign countries under the Iranian flag, how could I myself then put the flag of a foreign country on my rooftop?” I have heard Dr Shariati say that the Pahlavi kings will have a different fate than other kings because the other kings came to power by fighting foreign enemies and in their defense of the motherland while Reza Shah not only did not fight a war with foreigners but is known to have ascended the throne because of the wishes of the British.

In history, the most shameful act is described as the moment when Mohammad-Ali Shah took refuge in the Russian embassy out of fear of revolutionaries.

Reza Shah developed thousands of areas while Ahmad Shah left none behind, but when the allies took him as a prisoner, people distributed free sweets and pastry in the streets. But just 16 years earlier, the very same people chanted songs in favor of Ahmad Shah and his absence. The first king is rightly or wrongly accused of having come to power on recommendations of General Ironside while the latter is rightly or wrongly known to have stood up against the transgressions of the British government and did not sign the 1919 agreement that divided Iran. My teacher Sheikh-ol-Islam used to say that this is not how things happened, but what can I do because this is what people have come to believe.

Tens of other similar examples can be cited. I suspect that the argument that times have changed and that the traditional type of independence-seeking and foreign-fighting is no longer common - as one of my respected political teachers has written - cannot reject all the other evidence to the contrary and cannot move this tradition-stricken society.

It is because of this that I think those who are writing about inviting Americans to intervene militarily in Iran – articles written in any form or label – represent a futile effort. Perhaps it is possible to say the same about those who write the opposite. I mean those who write fiery articles against US military intervention are also wasting their time.

When international conditions are as threatening today and the media is so full of conjectures, political groups and parties are expected to present their policies in an open fashion. Nobody expects those writers whose views are not pursued or cared in Iran and whose rulings do not ignite anyone to war or peace, to air more views. I think these heroic writings have no impact except to present the patriotism of the writer in a fantasy court.

Absence of the Person

Those who oppose military action in Iran need to be reminded that no Iranian political group till today has supported a foreign military strike against Iran, not even the only armed anti-Islamic republic group that at one time had a military base in Iraq and whose representatives today are roaming government palaces and parliaments around the world to find friends. Supporters of the monarchy have rejected such a policy and the remarks that claim too lack such a message. Those in support of the republic too have expressly condemned all forms of foreign attack.

So what is left are a few pained and exiled writers who use the freedoms afforded to them in their host countries and write their opinions. They appear to be taking cue from the examples of World War II (Japan and Germany) when the military attack of allies eventually brought about a change in the lives of people in those countries. They argue that Iranians should not be comparing themselves with Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya but with Germany and Japan.

It appears that the debate over the benefits or harm of a military attack should be set aside and instead we should watch to see if any prominent politician has informed Americans or Europeans that he is willing to play the role of Hamid Karzai in Iran. I do not think anybody has done this till now. Instead, in meetings between Iranians and foreign government and parliamentary authorities it appears that some individuals have announced their readiness to play the role of ayatollah Khomeini 1979, Jalal Talebani in Iraq, Mersi or Ahmad Shafiq in today’s Egypt.

Foreign negotiating parties know very well that the prerequisite for playing such a role is having supporter who will first need to fill the streets, something that has not been seen in recent years. When something like that did take place in 2009 when protestors and demonstrators took to the streets to protest against the officially announced results of the last presidential elections in Iran, nobody was willing to assume a role higher than the president of the Islamic republic.