Opinion: Iran is all smoke and mirrors

GlobalPost
Updated on
The World

LONDON, U.K. — Ever since the fraudulent election last summer that kept President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power, the Iranian regime has taken extraordinary measures to hide the real situation in the country from the outside world, and even from its own citizens.

Local journalists have been harassed and imprisoned. Foreign journalists have been expelled and banned from the country. Some of them now report on events in Iran from neighboring countries, working the telephones, tracking Iranian blogs and trying to read between the lines of the tightly controlled domestic Iranian media reports.

The picture the world gets these days is necessarily incomplete and even to a certain extent misleading.

Media reports give the impression that Ahmadinejad's government and the hard line conservatives who now control most of the levers of power in Iran have strengthened their hold on the country. The image the regime presents is rudely defiant. Iran sticks a finger in the eye of the world, declaring that it not only refuses to stop its unauthorized program of enriching uranium, but will also build 10 more enrichment plants. A fist is their response to President Obama's outstretched hand.

With the United States hard pressed on so many fronts — from the economic and financial crisis to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the challenges of a touchy Russia and a rising China — Iran seems to be in a position of strength.

But the real picture is quite different. How do I know?

Short of being there yourself, the best way to learn the real state of affairs in Iran is to talk with an Iranian who still lives there, is well connected, and knows the complicated Iranian political scene inside and out. I have just spent a day talking with such a person during his brief visit to another country. I will not identify him, but I trust his judgment and believe what he tells me. We have known each other for several decades. I will call him Mr. X.

This is what X says: The Iranian regime is weak. It has lost all credibility with the great majority of its citizens, and even with the higher clergy. All but one of the Ayatollahs in the holy city of Qom refuse to endorse the results of election. That's the reason the regime is over-reacting, talking tough, locking up citizens who dare to protest that it stole the election and defying the world. In reality, the regime has never been weaker.

X knows the scale of the fraud. He had access to exits polls on election day. There is no question that the leading challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, won by a landslide. In some cases, provincial mayors were told by the regime what results to report before the ballots were even counted.

Initially, the public was shocked by the scale of the fraud. There were massive demonstrations in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities. Now in the past few months, as the government cracks down on all forms of dissent, the shock has hardened into anger.

And here's the real news. A year ago, if you had asked Iranians (as I did) how they would react if the United States attacked their country, most would have said without reservation that they would come to the defense of the regime. Now Mr. X tells me most would welcome the Americans. That's an almost unbelievable change.

One of the reasons the Obama administration has been careful about publicly supporting Iran's protest movement — the new “green revolution” — is to avoid giving the regime an excuse to label them as traitors and puppets of the United States. But Mr. X says many Iranians complain that President Obama is siding with a government in power that is against the people. They cannot understand why he does not support their cause, since they are campaigning for democracy.

Mr. X was an activist and supporter of the Islamic Revolution from its very beginnings in 1979. Now he despises President Ahmadinejad, the all-powerful Revolutionary Guards who are the strong arm of the regime, and even the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. He says there are millions like him.

By the way, one of the slogans the anti-regime demonstrators now use is, “Obama, are you with them or us?” (The actual slogan in Persian involves a play on words. Ou ba ma means "He with us.")

If there were more reporting of the real situation inside Iran, perhaps the Obama administration would be less cautious.

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