IRAN: Revolutionary Guards Tighten Economic Hold

BERKELEY, California, Dec 29 (IPS) - News that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is withdrawing a billion dollars from the country’s Foreign Reserve Fund in order to complete Phases 15 and 16 of the gigantic South Pars gas project has generated concern among Iranian analysts, who believe the move reveals the military organisation’s excessive power over Iran’s economy.

In view of looming sanctions from the United States and the United Nations Security Council over Iran’s nuclear programme, the IRGC’s control over the country’s sensitive oil, and gas and nuclear industries could provoke a serious crisis, they warn. Read more

Obama’s Iran Dilemma: Human Rights or Nuclear Negotiations?

HuffPost- It took more than six months for the White House to “strongly condemn” the excessive use of force against the protesters in Tehran, and God knows how long it will take President Obama to conclude that compromising universal values, including human rights, at the expense of erratic negotiations with the Iranian government. It will not change the behavior of the Iranian government although it will undermine America’s moral authority. Read more

How to Help the Three American “Hikers” Come Home Soon

HuffPo-The Iranian government has announced that they will try the three American citizens who strayed across an unmarked border into Iran in late July. But the question remains how can the U.S. government help free them? And what should the families do to make this perplexing story be over?

Considering similar patterns in the past, it’s almost clear that the three young adventurists are not spies. In fact, if the Iranian authorities had any evidence in this regards, they would have presented it months ago in a public trial to embarrass the U.S. government; something they thrive on.

At this time the families are facing two scenarios. Read more

Iran’s protest movement has entered a new phase

The DailyStar-Last week, six months after Iran’s June 12 presidential elections, thousands of students protested against the government in universities across Iran – a strong signal that Iran’s domestic crisis is far from over, and moreover, entering a new phase.

Six months ago, the major focus of the hundreds of thousands of protesters who marched the streets of Tehran was to show their anger and dissatisfaction with the election results, which many believed were rigged and resulted in not only Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election, but also beliefs that this pre-planned coup was orchestrated with the support of the Revolutionary Guards, the para-military Basij, and the military intelligence.
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Iran’s Leaders Battle Over Khomeini’s Legacy

TIME, By Robert Baer and Omid Memarian- Are the wheels coming off the Iranian regime bus? On July 26, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fired the country’s Intelligence Minister, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie, a man who customarily reported directly to the Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, rather than to the President. The move came a day after Khamenei had forced Ahmadinejad to drop Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie as his candidate for Vice President. But in an act of flagrant defiance of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad appointed Mashaie as his chief of staff. All this suggests that a political brawl is raging within the corridors of power, the likes of which the world has not seen since Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989.

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A coup Manual: What We should Know About Iran’s Election?

HuffPo- The foreign media and western states are confused and puzzled as to how to interpret the Iranian election on June 12th. Over the past few days I’ve been speaking with many journalists in Tehran who normally go there for one or two weeks on assignment. Many of them, initially, believed that Ahmadinejad’s declared re-election was similar in nature to his first term election in 2005. Meaning that he had successfully mobilized his base of poor people and conservatives and that the reformists and Iranian middle class had, once again, lost the election. But recent development tells us that this is not the real story.
So, what are the sources of confusion? What went wrong and why are people angry and un-accepting of the results? Here are some essential questions that one might ask in order to fully understand the issues at hand: Read more

Policemen from Venezuela and Lebanon?

There are lots of rumors about what’s going on in Iran now. I just heard that Ahmadinejad’s government is preparing for the use of guards from Lebanon and Venezuela. It seems that the Iranian police is not going to do whatever they are asked to do. I hope this stays just a rumor. Iran’s police is not a professional one and most of the people we see in the streets as policemen are poor soldiers who spend their mandatory military service. They are just like the other people. Many of them probably do now support the government, and Ahmadinejad in particular.

IRAN: Ahmadinejad Victory Sparks Protests and Claims of Fraud

SAN FRANCISCO, Jun 13 (IPS) - Just a few months after a right-wing government gained power in Israel, Iran’s hardliner president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was declared the winner in Friday’s election, although his main rival has not accepted defeat and reformist supporters were skirmishing with security forces in the capital Tehran Saturday.

According to Iran’s Interior Ministry, Ahmadinejad took 62.6 percent of the vote, with leading reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi receiving 33.7 percent – thus averting a widely anticipated run-off. The ministry says turnout was a record 85 percent of eligible voters. Read more

Iran on the move

OpenDemocracy.org-Iran has experienced of one of the most exciting presidential elections since the Islamic revolution of 1979. All of the four candidates who appear on the ballot-paper in the first round of voting on 12 June 2009 may be handpicked by Iran’s Guardian Council, and each can be considered either a father or a child of the revolution. But two are reformists who embrace progressive agendas, and whose popular campaigns suggest that millions of Iranians - 70% of whom are under 30 years old - believe that Iran needs reform.

For Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. The leader elected in June 2005 expected an easy contest from opposition candidates who could be easily discredited for past failures or outflanked on nationalist rhetoric. Instead, he has been forced to grapple with harsh criticism of his economic policy, foreign policy and human-rights record - and is resorting to extreme denunciation of his rivals as a way of shoring up his core support. Read more

Q&A: Notes From Iran’s Underground Music Scene

BERKELEY, California, Jun 4 (IPS) - As Iran’s conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fights for his political future against two reformist challengers in the June elections, Arash Sobhani, a lead figure in the country’s underground music scene, says it’s a very tough time to be an artist in Iran.

“At the beginning of his [Ahmadinejad’s] first term [in 2005] there were still a few notable musicians who thought they should stay and try to work inside Iran and try to make things better little by little, like they had done for the past 26 years, but Ahmadinejad proved them wrong,” Sobhani told IPS.

Sobhani is the lead singer and songwriter of Kiosk, a band that is widely popular among Iranians inside and outside of the country. With its Mark Knopfler musical style and politically sharp and ironic lyrics, Kiosk is considered one of the most influential underground rock bands to emerge since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

“We grew up listening to [Bob] Dylan, [Leonard] Cohen, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd, and you can see how our music is influenced by these guys,” explained Sobhani. “Our roots are blues and rock but there has been a growing influence on our music from the gypsy tradition.”

Kiosk is one of the few Iranian underground bands to tour North America, Europe and Australia. Most of its members left Iran within three months after Ahmadinejad’s 2005 election.

“We were tired of trying to work with authorities who would cancel our concerts or refuse to give us permits to produce an album, and on the eve of the election, when Ahmadinejad came to power I knew that things were changing for worse,” Sobhani said.

In an interview with IPS, Arash Sobhani talked about Iran’s underground music scene, how it’s been received in the western media, and the obstacles and challenges for young musicians in Iran.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: Why your music is considered underground?

AS: I think what we call today “Iranian underground music”, like many other aspects of Iranian life, was forced to go “underground” in the early eighties. As the radicals started taking control over the country and imposing their values on the society, music and a lot of other cultural activities were regarded as “in contrast with Islamic morals”.

In those days, even carrying a guitar in the streets required a lot of courage. Obviously it was very difficult for the musicians to be able to get together and jam and create new music.

The Islamic Republic would reward its opposition with such brutality that thinking of a protest song, in those days, was even impossible so most of the underground bands then either did instrumental music or cover songs from favorites like Pink Floyd and the Eagles. No one dared to create music with new, original lyrics.

IPS: What are the major challenges of Iranian underground music?

AS: First is the fact that most of this music is made using western instruments, and is therefore in “form” very western and that creates a problem when the musicians try to integrate Farsi lyrics. Farsi, as a language, has its own music that may not quite fit on a 12 bar blues. So, essentially, like everything else that has come from the west, Iranian bands are still working on “Iranianising” this form of music.

The second challenge is the problem of getting exposure; there are no independent TV or radio stations to promote these bands. Therefore their music is produced, recorded and distributed underground, with no revenues and nowhere to perform and therefore most of these bands disappear after one or two albums. A few lucky ones have made their way outside Iran and of those few only two or three bands have been able to continue their work.

IPS: How many people are drawn to this music or support it? What are the major genres?

AS: There seems to be around 2,000 bands inside Iran, which is a great number for a country where the government thinks of these bands as Satanists! These bands come from variety of genres. Heavy metal, grunge, funk etc. But hip-hop is becoming more and more popular I think due to the fact that it’s cheaper to make music not using real musicians and just programming all the instruments.

IPS: Is there any research or documentaries about this music?

AS: There are a few documentaries, unfortunately none of them look at the underground music of Iran from the historical/analytical perspective, and none talk about the content or the lyrics. Like all the other cultural activities in Iran covered by the western media they have the attitude of the surprised westerner who is shocked to find out that there are people in the Middle East that play the guitar! Or make movies or publish newspapers.

On the other hand, the documentaries that have been made by the Iranians follow the same pattern, they try to capture what they think is amusing for Westerners and has a good “market”.

IPS: Recently, Bahman Ghobadi, the prominent Iranian director, released a film on Iran’s underground music titled “Nobody Knows About the Persian Cats” at the Cannes Film Festival. To what extent does this movie represent the diversity, message and depth of this music?

AS: I think “underground music” of Iran has become an interesting phenomenon for both the western media and the government of Iran.

The government is creating its own version of “underground music” like it did with the opposition parties or the cinema. Whenever they see there is an interest in something from the public they try to create a “controlled” version of it, they even pay the opposition media or create fake ones to have control over any movement, now they are doing the same thing with the music.

Having said that I think we will witness even more films that will cover this issue in the future. Will they really show the nature of the underground music in Iran? I really doubt it.

IPS: Why doesn’t the Iranian government tolerate hip-hop, rock and hard rock musicians and singers? Is it a matter of form or content?

AS: The Iranian government’s attitude towards social demands follows a pattern. They will eventually give in and I am sure we will see rock concerts in Iran. But they will make the process as slow as possible and with watered-down, harmless lyrics. Unlike what a lot of people think, they are not very persistent on their cultural agenda, they can tolerate anything, as long as they don’t lose their political power, but because of their rigid nature they make the process as painful and as slow as possible.

IPS: Has anybody gotten in trouble for following this path? As a musician or a fan?

AS: A lot of musicians have been ordered to stop playing music. A lot of bands were taken in and had to sign a piece of paper indicating that they will never play again. And in the past, a lot of people have had problems for listening to western music.

Kiosk was formed in Iran as a side project to my other band. Then, because of the restrictions imposed by the government on the lyrics, we decided not to even bother asking for permits and approvals needed for releasing an album. We recorded the entire album without any hope of ever publishing it.

(END/2009)

Iran: Saberi is no spy

25Apr09 – The imprisonment of Roxana Saberi for ‘espionage’ is the act of a government obsessed with controlling the media, says Omid Memarian

American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was sentenced to eight years in Iran’s notorious and feared Evin prison last weekend. She had been arrested in January by Iranian authorities. Her family was initially told it was for buying a bottle of wine, illegal under the country’s Islamic laws. It later emerged she did not hold a valid press card, required by law and issued by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The charge was then changed to espionage, of which she was found guilty. Read more

Suzanne Maloney: Both Obama and Clinton want negotiations but not a nuclear Iran

The United States will not initiate dialogue with the Iranian government, given the possible boost for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-elections next June, according to Suzanne Maloney, former State Department policy advisor and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

During his campaign Barack Obama has insisted on negotiating with Iranian leaders, regardless of its extensive political risk. But considering Iran’s domestic politics, American diplomats prefer to wait and see who will be Iran’s next president.

Many believe that Iran’s worsening economic situation, demonstrated by its high inflation, skyrocketing unemployment and the fall of oil prices, which have prevented Ahmadinejad from fulfilling his promises to the Iranian people, might change the result of the upcoming elections. Read more