IRAN: COMING IN FROM THE COLD?

Ramita Navai

THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN likes to look lonely. It prides itself on being a fortress in a hostile world, encircled by truculent Arab nations and an aggressive Israel that is always ready to pounce. This partly stems from a culture of victimhood deep in the Iranian psyche – that of the oppressed Shia, forever marginalised, forever the underdog. But it is also a function of Iran and Iranians being demonised by the West. Isolated internationally, the Islamic Republic has learned to survive on its own. A regime ideology of standing alone against enemies has been forged and tempered in wars of one kind or another, whether the hot and bloody conflict with Iraq, which cost over a million Iranian and Iraqi lives, or the newer cold conflict of sanctions and diplomatic seclusion. This status of the isolated outcast has allowed the regime to ramp up the revolutionary rhetoric and externalise blame for its internal frailties.

But now it seems Iran has grown weary of isolation. It wants to come in from the cold. What better moment than when the region is threatened with serial crises, dangerous wars and instability than to evoke the image of Iran as the moderate regional broker that the West can do business with? The Arab Spring and the unravelling of the Middle East that followed have provided Tehran with unprecedented opportunities to expand its regional and international influence, and perhaps to draw the sting from a growing domestic opposition.

The cries for reform and the gunfire that met and killed protesters back in 2009 during mass protests against the theocratic regime still resonate today. Six years ago, millions of Iranians took to the streets to contest the latest presidential election results. The regime had been blindsided and it responded with lightning brutality. Hundreds were killed; thousands were imprisoned. The government appeared panicky – even turning on its own, among them some of the founding figures and architects of the Islamic Republic itself. The presidential candidates and leaders of the so-called reformist Green Movement, Mir Hossein Mousavi and the cleric Mehdi Karroubi, were placed under house arrest. A feeling of overwhelming anger and resentment gripped the country. Even some members of the Basij militia, the paramilitary volunteer organisation operating throughout the country, showed disgust at government violence, refusing orders to beat demonstrators. The regime had never appeared so factious and vulnerable.

When the Arab Spring began just over a year later, some say triggered by the 2009 protests, in true regime-style the Islamic Republic tried to appropriate the uprisings, calling them an ‘Islamic Awakening’ and spinning the protests as populist support for Islam against imperialism and oppression. Tehran feared that the rebellions would inspire the Green Movement to rise up again. The regime moved fast by snatching another opportunity to invoke revolutionary ideology – the state’s predictable and incessant need to reinforce its own raison d’être: it compared the Arab Spring to the Islamic revolution. This rebranding of the Arab Spring as part of the tradition of Iran’s revolution did not work. But the results of the Arab Spring’s drift into a chaotic and bitter winter of counter-revolution and civil war meant that even opponents of Iran’s regime backed away from the notion of a wider movement towards reform in the Islamic Middle East. In addition, Iran drew some satisfaction with what appeared to be a rapid decline in the influence of the Great Satan, the United States, over many of Washington’s former client states and allies in Cairo, Jeddah, the UAE and North Africa. However, Iran’s influence, at least initially, also looked to be diminishing.

The Syrian civil war cemented the divide between Iran, a Shia nation, and the Arab world, mostly Sunni, which viewed Iran as a menacing interloper in the Syrian crisis. Iran has been the main sponsor of the Assad regime ever since the collapse of its original benefactor, the Soviet Union. As Iran’s only real ally in the region, Syria is of supreme geopolitical and strategic importance to Iran; with a shared hatred of the United States and Israel (and initially a shared hatred of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq), Syria forms a key part of the ‘axis of resistance’ challenging what Iranians perceive to be US ambitions of regional hegemony. Syria also acts as a Shia-friendly buffer to anti-Iranian Sunni countries. If Assad falls and the majority Sunnis take power in Syria, the so-called ‘Shia crescent’ that stretches from Tehran, slicing through Iraq and Syria into southern Lebanon, will be broken. Iran would also lose its main means of pressurising Israel, because a Sunni or Western-installed government would not allow the regime to supply weaponry to the Lebanese Shia militias of Hezbullah through its borders (as Assad has been doing).

To ensure Assad’s survival, Iran sent weapons and fuel. The Revolutionary Guard Corps dispatched hundreds of men, including senior commanders from the elite Qods Force, to train and advise Syrian government forces. Syria quickly became the battleground for proxy wars, with Shia Iran pitted against old enemies in the form of Saudi- and Gulf-funded Sunni jihadists and militias. As the effects of the war spilled over into neighbouring countries, there was a backlash against Iranian meddling in Lebanon. When Iraq crumbled under the divisive Iranian-supported president, Nouri al-Maliki, who had inflamed political sectarian divisions, alienating Sunnis and Kurds as he destroyed national institutions and the army as threats to his Shia rule, Iran was blamed.

More worryingly for those in power, resentment against the Iranian regime was spreading at home in the early stages of the Syrian civil war. Post-2009, Iranians were finding it increasingly hard to swallow the regime’s bellicose and theocratic revolutionary propaganda. After a disastrous eight years in office, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad left the country in a mess. The economy was in ruins, with inflation at about 40 per cent and the rial the lowest it has been against the dollar in decades. Iranians were subjected to debilitating sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the US and the European Union over its nuclear programme. News of the regime reportedly spending billions of dollars on the internecine Syrian war did not go down well with the public.

When President Hassan Rouhani was elected in 2013, his speeches on equal women’s rights and social equity ignited hope. During his campaign, he had used the symbol of a key to represent the unlocking of the political door, inferring that once open he would rescue both the economy and civil society. But almost immediately, citizens’ rights and the struggle for a more robust civil society fell victim to the internal battle between the reformists and the hardliners. Life for ordinary Iranians has not changed much under Rouhani.

Just as President Khatami experienced during his term, most of Rouhani’s attempts at social reform were stifled by the country’s hardliners. Keen to reassure conservative supporters that they are still in charge, these hardliners have ensured that morality police patrols continue. There are the same periodical crack-downs on women deemed to be wearing ‘bad hijab’ – from an awry or too transparent scarf to form-fitting clothing. Women have been banned from volleyball matches at the Azadi stadium in Tehran and a British-Iranian national was imprisoned for daring to attend a match in protest – a very loud and clear signal intended to embarrass Rouhani, who was in the midst of negotiating with the British on the nuclear issue. The conservatives, as usual, revel in controlling all aspects of women’s sexuality, absurdly spending valuable time in parliament discussing ‘leggings’ – not, as one would hope, as a crime against fashion, but as a crime against morality.

Iran’s human rights record has regressed. According to the United Nations, there has been an ‘alarming’ surge in executions, with over 800 prisoners killed in Rouhani’s first year in office.¹ Iran’s most famous political prisoners, Mousavi and Karroubi, are still under house arrest. Other victims of the power struggle between Rouhani’s administration and the hardline-controlled judiciary and intelligence ministry were journalists and activists. With at least thirty journalists imprisoned in 2014, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Iran ranked second to China as the world’s biggest jailer of journalists. The Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent, Jason Rezaian, an Iranian-American, was arrested even as Iran was negotiating with the US. He has been detained for longer than any other Western journalist in the country.

The hardliners know they must strike a careful balance between reminding their citizens of the red lines and keeping them sweet. They are very aware that they can no longer stop information from the West coming in. News channels, Western films and porn are all beamed into the country via satellite dishes bought on the black market and installed in the houses of all classes, secular and religious alike, over the whole of Iran. A government official recently acknowledged that there were around 4.5 million satellite receivers in the country. Despite heavy censorship of the internet – dubbed the ‘Filternet’ – the government has reported that nearly 70 per cent of the 23.5 million young people using the internet deploy proxy servers called VPNs – Virtual Private Networks – to circumvent the government’s internet filter, allowing computers to function as if they were in another country.² During elections and protests, the authorities grind internet connections down to an excruciatingly slow speed. The internet has also spawned new social trends that threaten the fundamental values of the Islamic state. More and more people are using dating and hook-up sites that provide opportunities for ‘un-Islamic’ meetings; the internet has also invigorated the gay scene. According to recent figures released by Google, internet searches for porn in Iran are reportedly one of the highest in the world.³ In response, the government launched the cyberpolice in 2011 to fight internet crimes and protect ‘national and religious identity’. The cyberpolice have also announced crackdowns on internet and Facebook pages that promote pornography and prostitution.

As economic conditions worsen due to stifling sanctions and economic mismanagement and corruption under Ahmadinejad, so do societal problems. And with increasing access to information, these are getting harder to shield from view. Iran now has one of the highest rates of drug addiction in the world. Official estimates of the number of addicts varies wildly – between 1 and 3 million – and crystal methampheta-mine has now overtaken heroin to become the second drug of choice, after opium. Drug addiction among women has reportedly doubled in the past couple of years. The government has launched anti-drug advertising campaigns and there are drug rehabilitation centres. Despite the failing economy, the illegal narcotics trade is booming.

Prostitution has become so ubiquitous on the streets of Tehran that the issue has been discussed in parliament over the past years. Official figures of prostitutes in Tehran are at around 300,000, which many believe is an underestimate, with the average age of girls starting out only sixteen. The interior ministry has even suggested rounding the women up and taking them to a specially designated camp where they can be ‘reformed’. Material need seems to be eroding the moral high ground so vigorously and often viciously touted by the regime.

On a winter’s day in late 2013, on a busy main road in Tehran, a dozen women are touting for business; among them is a housewife whose husband has lost his job and a student from a southern province. There are fewer women than usual, as recent raids have forced most of the women to work from a shopping mall a few blocks away. Here the women are younger and some admit they are not driven by a need for financial survival but by a need for conspicuous consumption.

‘I pick out whatever I want – usually clothes or handbags – and the client will buy them. And then we’ll go to his place and have sex,’ says one prostitute in her early twenties, whose wages as a secretary do not cover luxury items. She says she feels a sense of satisfaction in selling sex, because in her own way she is making a political stand.

Attitudes to sex are changing across society. Among some groups, sex has become a form of rebellion, where those who feel constrained by the social strictures of the regime say that only in sex do they feel that they have absolute control over their bodies and lives.

Disillusionment and discontent thus bubble to the surface; Rouhani and other pragmatic politicians realise that the status quo is precarious and cannot be maintained for ever. Despite Rouhani’s stirring statements on the freedom of the press and civil rights, he has not been able to deliver on these issues. If he fails he will at best be cast in the same mould as Khatami – a weak president unable to get political traction and placate the hardliners. At worst, his failure to turn the economy around could be the catalyst for another uprising.

Rouhani’s reaction has been to concentrate all his efforts on solving Iran’s nuclear crisis; if he can negotiate with the West and have sanctions eased, he can unlock the key to inevitable reform through economic growth and relations with the outside world. Sanctions are not new to Iran. They started when the US froze Iran’s assets during the hostage crisis over thirty years ago, but with the plummeting price of oil in 2015 and exports slashed to a third under Ahmedinejad, the results have been catastrophic for average Iranians, who have seen the value of their wages plummet.

However, the nuclear negotiations have already dragged on for twelve years. Iran insists it simply wants nuclear power, while the West and Israel maintain it wants a bomb. The nuclear programme is one of the few issues that unifies Iranians of all political and social stripes. It elicits a passionate response born not only from pride – the patriotism of national identity – but also from a sense of injustice at Western hypocrisy. Even Iranians opposed to the Islamic regime argue it is unfair that Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers such as Pakistan and Israel, all of which acquired nuclear programmes illegally, yet unlike Iran are not signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and are not subject to the same stringent scrutiny. The framework for a nuclear agreement set at Lausanne on 2 April 2015 cemented hope for a final deal. The foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, was even given a hero’s welcome on his return to Tehran. Crucially, the Supreme Leader was careful to reign in criticism of the negotiations, giving Rouhani and his government room to manoeuvre. This was a clear indication that even in the higher echelons of the regime, making a deal with the Great Satan seemed necessary not only for economic recovery, but as part of a geo-political strategy.

Nevertheless, Rouhani is still meeting most resistance from hardliners over negotiations which focus on reducing the country’s nuclear capabilities. Iranian hardliners see a nuclear Iran as non-negotiable. The day after the historic phone call between Rouhani and Obama on 27 September 2013, posters produced by the Revolutionary Guard sprang up across the city depicting two hands stretched out, ready to shake. One was Iranian, the other the clawed hand of the devil – the United States.

When Rouhani first came to power many thought he would be the perfect person to walk the tightrope between the technocrats and pragmatists (people like the powerful cleric and ex-president Rafsanjani) and the hardliners. But Rouhani is not an obvious liberal. For sixteen years he was the Supreme Leader’s representative in the Supreme National Security Council, which has ultimate power in setting nuclear policy. He may have softened his position and be well placed to bring others with him. Yet even as an insider Rouhani has struggled to negotiate a clear policy. This shows just how much power the hardliners wield, and how much it probably suits them to keep Iran as a lonely pariah state.

Just when this attitude appeared to be driving Iran into another stalemate with the international community, and as Iran’s regional power appeared to be dwindling with the draining effects of sending men and arms to fight in Syria and Iraq, along came a perfect enemy: the Islamic State (IS). The apocalyptic Sunni death cult has provided the hardliners from within the regime with a new cause for war – and perhaps an opportunity for reformers to bring Iran in from the international cold.

The Islamic Republic has always striven to be seen as the superpower of the region and, for the first time since the 1979 revolution, the regime may be the closest it has ever been to fulfilling that dream. Iran, although still suffering from isolation, is now among the more stable countries in the Middle East. The chaos wreaked by the Islamic State, the disintegration of old alliances and the potential to redraw borders are kicking up opportunities – and Iran has thrust itself on to centre stage.

The regime is also enjoying a more submissive population, for there is less thirst for dramatic domestic regime change than ever before. This is partly a result of the government’s brutal reaction to the 2009 protests and partly a result of the chaos raging in the countries across its borders – both of which have left Iranians feeling cautious and fearful. It is increasingly common to hear talk of change coming from within; even those who claim to abhor the regime seem resigned to slow, internal evolution. Unlike a decade ago, it is unusual to hear talk of outside intervention and of revolution.

Suddenly, Tehran and Washington have found themselves on the same side, de facto (and unacknowledged) allies fighting a common threat. In late 2014, after a summer where the Islamic State swept through the border areas of both Iraq and Syria, the countries shared intelligence – although it must be remembered that it is not the first time this has happened. The Iranians shared intelligence with the US over the Taliban in 2001, and nothing came of that, so the question must be asked: can there be more than a temporary tactical union?

But Washington and Tehran may be drifting closer to one another on the winds of war that blow through Mesopotamia. After the downfall of Maliki and the ascension of a more acceptable Iraqi regime to both Washington and Tehran, Iran has provided troops, military advice and equipment to help the Iraqi army against the IS onslaught. Similarly, the US-led coalition has provided air support to fight the same enemy. American Special Forces and Iranian Qods soldiers have been sharing the same battle space on the ground as Iranian and American jets fly above them. Not talking directly, not even acknowledging each other’s existence, but nonetheless comrades in arms against a common enemy.

Iran’s engagement against the Islamic State has had a surprising effect at home: the Revolutionary Guards, who are usually viewed with suspicion and disdain, are being regarded with more respect; more and more Iranians are now proud that their forces are gaining the world’s attention and fighting off an evil enemy. Even the tone of opinion pieces in reformist newspapers such as Shargh and Etemaad is much more supportive of and positive towards the Revolutionary Guards, and its commander, Qassem Suleimani, has become a heroic figure.

The rise of the Islamic State has also changed the game plan for nuclear negotiations. Détente with the West is key for Rouhani, not just in overcoming the hardliners, but in strengthening Iran’s role in the region. A positive outcome to the nuclear negotiations would allow sanctions to be lifted and oil sales to recover and give Iran access to some $100 billion in frozen assets.

But the West needs resolution just as much as Rouhani. Before the emergence of the so-called Islamic State, the idea of a resolution was almost unthinkable; now a deal is conceivable, perhaps necessary for both sides. The collapse of the notion of the nation-state across northern Iraq and much of Syria, the infighting between rival movements within Sunni Islam in the region, and the key role that Iran can play in influencing Assad and combating Islamic State mean that the Arab Spring has provided Tehran with an opportunity to dramatically improve its international standing.

Post-Arab Spring Iran has to face subtle choices over how far it wants to ease its relations with the West by winding down its nuclear programme and continuing its fight against IS alongside a growing coalition of Sunni Arab nations and Western powers. Doing so could strengthen the hand of reformers and return Iran to the community of nations. But it would meet with stiff resistance from Iran’s hardliners. Their doctrine of ‘resistance’ needs something to resist. And vested interests are not purely ideological – sanctions have served some members of the regime well, allowing for control of certain industries as well as the black market and the spectacular enrichment of clerics or their families.

Nonetheless, it is much harder for the hardliners to continue to define Iran’s core mission as being the lone warrior against the West and most of the rest. That mission keeps Iran in the cold and does not risk opening the doors to economic expansion and political reform – both of which could, or would, inevitably follow an easing of sanctions and a thawing of international relations.

Rouhani has so far failed to deliver exactly what Iran’s theocrats most deeply fear – an end to isolation. But neither has he failed. He has the potential, and the regional political space, to wrong-foot hardliners within Iran’s body politic. The chaos in the Levant offers the possibility and the global community may need, may even welcome, Iran’s return to the warmth of international partnership. Coming in from the cold will have its costs for Tehran. A regime that has been built on a cold shoulder may find a warm embrace even harder to accept.