Opinion: Iran is all smoke and mirrors

Ahmadinejad would have us believe that his government is in a position of strength, but that's not the real story. GlobalPost's media columnist Tom Fenton gets the inside scoop.

Tom FentonDecember 7, 2009 16:13Updated May 30, 2010 13:15

Student supporters of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi show victory signs during protests in central Tehran, Dece. 7, 2009. Iranian security forces fired warning shots and teargas in Tehran on Monday to disperse opposition demonstrators seeking to renew their challenge to the government six months after a disputed presidential election. (Reuters)

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.