Iran: the waiting game

"... At this period when I am inflicted with separation from the dear light of my eyes and the power of my heart, I am reminded of you and your beautiful face is reflected in my eyes."  Nasrin Alavi is the author of We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs (Portobello Books, 2005). She spent her formative years in Iran, attended university in Britain and worked in London, and then returned to her birthplace to work for an NGO for a number of years. Today she lives in Britain.

Also by Nasrin Alavi on openDemocracy:

"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fear" (1 November 2005)

"Inside Iran" (14 February 2006)

"Iran: the elite against the people" (22 May 2006)

"Tehran's red card to human rights" (23 June 2006)

"Iran: cracks in the façade" (11 December 2006)

"Iran's election backlash" (19 December 2006)

"Iran's attack blowback" (5 February 2007)

"Women in Iran: repression and resistance" (5 March 2007)

"Axis of Evil vs Great Satan: wrestling to normality" (2 May 2007)

"The Iran paradox" (11 October 2007)

"Iran's circle of power" (23 October 2007)

"Iran: the uses of intelligence" (6 December 2007)

"Iran's new order" (28 January 2008)

"Iran's election signals" (18 March 2008)

"Iranians' interrupted freedom" (8 October 2008)

"Iran: after the dawn" (2 February 2009)

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, letter to his wife (Beirut, April 1933)

It's no secret that Iranians - even the unlikeliest - garland their everyday conversation with quotations from Persian poets. The notion of Iran as a land of gol-o-bolbol (flowers and nightingales) is one the people themselves both are attached to and gently satirise. The mix of susceptibility to a bit of ornate verse, self-parody of the exalted Persian soul, and genuine love of the great national poets helps define the Iranian sensibility to themselves.

So when Barack Obama released a video-message addressed to the Iranian people at the time of their nowrooz (new year) - and in the process quoted the 13th-century poet Saadi - it is very likely to prove disarming to some at least of the everyday Iranian citizens who were able to hear it.

Poetry may or not save the world, but words matter: and words such as "respect" and "dignity" matter more than ever in a world of tension and polarisation. When Obama's predecessor as United States president, George W Bush, placed Iran amid an "axis of evil" in his state-of-the-union speech on 29 January 2002, the words received so much airtime in Iran that many may well know it verbatim.

This young American president's offer of a "new beginning" has yet to be fully aired inside the country. So far it has been met by a guarded response from Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has demanded an actual policy shift from the United States, adding that "[If] you change your approach, we will change our approach."

The election ride

Inside Iran the roadmap to possible change may well appear more apparent after the presidential elections on 12 June 2009. The incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who had a great sparring partner in George W Bush has been uncharacteristically silenced by the recent US overture. Yet his economic mismanagement may yet lead to his downfall at the polls. There is mounting unemployment and high inflation; and with falling oil revenue and a budget deficit he is no longer able spend his way out of trouble. 

Marie Antoinette may or may not have advised the French people to "eat cake" during a time of bread shortage in the late 18th century. But a close political ally of the Iranian president, Asadollah Badamchian, when asked about the decline of living standards despite record oil prices, argued that people should make homemade jam; adding that "People are not prepared to keep chickens in their homes as they smell, lest they get their eggs in such a way. Out of the three million households in Tehran how many keep birds?  How many are prepared to grow basil in a pot to eat with their bread and cheese?"

Most of Tehran's working-class families are - perhaps unlike Asadollah Badamchian - crammed into tiny apartments with no room for chickens or pots of fragrant herbs. Badamchian is one of the leaders of the highly influential Motalefeh, a society of moneyed bazaar merchants who threw their financial might behind Ayatollah Khomeini in his fight against the monarchy in the 1960s; its members today are staunch allies of the Iranian president. Such utterances without doubt add insult to economic injury, and are not likely to have done the president any good ahead of the race in June.

But Ahmadinejad's failure is by no means guaranteed - for especially if there is a low turnout he may well be re-elected. There is a precedent: Ahmadinejad became the mayor of Tehran in 2003 after an election with a 12% turnout, and this proved to be his springboard to the presidency. This time, however, he is more of a known quantity, and he will face opponents from different parts of the political spectrum.

A possible one, though no official announcement has yet been made, is Ahmadinejad's successor as mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer-Qalibaf. He has made a reputation for himself as the man who makes sure that the part of the country of flowers-and-nightingales he governs lives up to its name. The nightingales remain as ever imaginary; the oppressive air of the capital allows no room for any fragile free birds, though there are manicured lawns and fresh flower-beds in the squares and parks. The rubbish is also collected in time and snow is efficiently cleared from the roads after a heavy blizzard. These practical demonstrations of simple efficiency will give the mayor some momentum if he chooses to run.

A more definite candidate is the reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi. He was prime minister during Iran's 1980-88 war with Iraq, and is widely respected for running the country at a time when it was under siege through heavy sanctions and daily bombardment. He is a trained architect and a painter, whose contemporaries recall his absorption in the art-student flower-power scene of Iran's pre-revolution Melli University (hinted at also by his abstract self-indulgent retro paintings). It remains to be seen if a man who has led almost a reclusive political life for the past two decades is able to arouse the voters to back him.

Iran in motion

No matter who wins the June 2009 election, the conditions for any rapprochement between Iran and the United States will be dictated by the realities on the ground. For both sides, the financial constraints arising from the global recession are major influences on their conduct. For the Americans, achieving key objectives in the main areas of conflict - to ensure stability in Iraq, to reach a settlement in Afghanistan, and to find a viable exit strategy in both countries - will depend to a great extent on making peace with the Iranians.

For the Iranians, the need to entrench the security of their regime and influence in their region could lead them towards cautious outreach. Whether and in what way Ahmadinejad will continue to play a role will become clearer after the election: he has put on an entertaining show, but has failed to prove that he and those who think like him are capable of making Iran a 21st-century country.

It has been said that history repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Iran's hardliners no longer have the resources to finance Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's revolutionary amateur theatrics. It is perhaps time to leave the death-chants behind and return to what once came more naturally to Iranians and might again: a touch of poetic persuasion of their own that expresses a generous, outgoing national pride and confidence.