This week, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed his Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, for no given reason. The problem is that the mainstream media, and most politicians, haven't stopped to ask why the Foreign Minister was dismissed. Instead, they've wondered whether this will result in a change of direction with respect to Iran's nuclear program. Think about it: Iran drops its foreign minister, basically an employee, and the press asked questions about policy change. If McDonald's fired their drive-through order taker, would this signal an upcoming change in the menu? It seems like it hasn't even occurred to the analysts and politicians that this seemingly small action, which will likely have no immediate impact on diplomatic efforts, is actually the clearest sign yet that Western leaders do not comprehend the reality of Iran's highly volatile political situation.
The focus on the nuclear program has literally made the media blind to the whole picture.
The reason for Ahmadinejad's move is obvious. Inside Iranian politics, Ahmadinejad and his hard-line policies are being threatened by the chairman of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani. Larijani and the other "Principalists" are also conservatives, like Ahmadinejad, but they are highly critical of his administration. Many believe that his reckless economic policies are driving Iran's economy into unsustainable inflation. They believe that Ahmadinejad's hostility towards Israel and the West have alienated Iran from the rest of the world. They also believe that Ahmadinejad's administration has botched the response to last year's presidential election. Things are so tense between Ahmadinejad and his parliament that just last month he was nearly impeached, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei had to stop the proceedings. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is extremely close with Larijani. His firing is a sure-fire sign that Ahmadinejad is getting nervous about the loyalty of his own government. On the other hand, Ali Salehi, the new Foreign Minister, is extremely close with Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. This power struggle is heating up, and it has massive implications.
The media is ignoring Ahmadinejad's fading power inside his own party. They are also ignoring one of the major stressors to the regime, the ongoing protests of the opposition movement and the struggle of journalists and free thinkers inside Iran. Just last week, thousands of protesting students, at universities in multiple cities, took to the streets to protest the actions of their own government. These protests erupted during a holiday commemorating the sacrifices of students in the freeing of Iran from the CIA/UK backed monarchy in 1953. Students chanted and sang protest songs in unity, and in defiance of the regime. These protests were larger and more widespread than many predicted, indicating that the green graffiti and protest slogans often seen on the sides of buildings are only the tip of the iceberg.
The Iranian Green Movement is playing a dangerous game. Since June 2009's presidential elections, thousands have been arrested, many of whom have been whipped or tortured. Others have been killed or beaten in the street. Hundreds of journalists, protesters, and human rights activists remain in Iranian prisons. Some of these prisoners may die there. Just this week, news emerged that dissident Isa Saharkhiz is suffering from internal bleeding and is in critical condition. Many other activists, including journalist & filmaker Mohammad Nourizad and attorney Nasrine Sotoudeh, have their health threatened by their own hunger strikes, one of their last tools to bring attention to their plight. Others, like Hossein Ronaghi-Maleki (Babak Khorramdin), a cyber activist, have had to hide their arrest out of fear of reprisal against friends and family. Still others face death penalties for little more than being ethnic minorities, like Zeinab Jalalian, a 27 year old woman, who is facing death, basically for being Kurdish.
So why is the media ignoring these other stories? One of the reasons is that this story is notoriously hard to report. Since the failed elections, all foreign journalists have been expelled from Iran. The result is that the news is smuggled out through social media, a handful of opposition websites, and second and third-party sources. In fact, besides the network of bloggers that cover these stories, only the Wall Street Journal and the L.A. Times had coverage of last week's protests at all. Most news agencies are uncomfortable getting their news this way, and they are probably more than slightly threatened by the websites that do use these methods to report the news from the hard-to-reach places of the world.
But there is another reason. Western audiences, and especially Americans, don't like complicated, sad stories. We like good guys and bad guys, cowboys and Indians, terrorists and allies. We don't like to hear that 40-60% of the population of a country that we view as an enemy might very well be a friend. We don't like to hear that the government we are negotiating with is illegitimate, or weak. We also don't like to follow the slow development of an opposition movement that we can do little to help. We like sexy stories like weapons of mass destruction or revolution, and we certainly like clarity.
Unfortunately, as long as we're not paying attention, we're also not helping, and until the media starts to cover these stories, many more people may die before things improve in Iran.
Thursday marks the Ashura holiday in Iran. James will be covering the event live, starting at midnight (EST) on his blog, Dissected News.
Follow James Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dissectednews
Ahmadinejad to Gaza convoy: Israel an insult to humanity
I question the motives, however, of commenters that are focusing on the first part of this article by accusing an 800 word blog of oversimplification. I also find it funny that these defenders of the Islamic Republic are trying to claim that Iran has freedom of speech and a free press.
Propaganda offers simple answers, and the message I am spreading is that the story of Iran is far more complicated than the news media often makes it out to be. Similar mistakes were made before the 2006 Hamas election, and before the Iraq wars. The media is offering half the story, and many on here are guilty of what they accuse.
http://www.payvand.com/news/10/dec/1155.html
Thanks for the info!! I support this article.
I remember the fall of shah. It was six months before his downfall, his regime was called "the island of stability"! Are we not seeing the SAME wrong analysis about the mullahs' regime? Why is the mullahs' regime arresting, tor.turing, ex.cuting, imprisoning and all other tactics which can be used to suppress the people? Is it because of its "popularity" or "a fair election" or "support" of the majority? Or Antari-nejad just likes to have problems or khamenei, for that matter? What is the reason for so much of suppression?
More "playful hyperbole"? Suzanna Arama commented on the "impeachment":
"Wishful thinking is more the case, I think. Former presidential candidate Ali Larijani and three of his buddies started a movement that could only garner (from 290 lawmakers) 40 of the 75 signatures needed, before needing to go to the floor to beg an additional 35 votes, seems like a fairly weak initiative. If Larijani went to the floor with the 75 needed to beg the 141 votes needed for impeachment that might be a different story. Most world press reports this as a flopped opportunistic power grab, rather than some desperate fiat of the Iranian vox populi. "
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703904804575631093531990342.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLETopStories#articleTabs%3Dcomments%26commentId%3D1800955
Q&A: Mohammad Reza Heidari explains why Ahmadinejad fired Mottaki
http://www.insideiran.org/featured/qa-mohammad-reza-heidari-explains-why-ahmadinejad-fired-mottaki/
Also, Ahmadi is looking to the 2012 majles elections. Larijani barely retained his speakership recently. Let the conservatives duke it out amongst themselves, though at least the Principlists are more sane (relatively speaking).
And totally agreed on the one-track myopia of the American/Western media. It's downright Pavlovian. After all, how could Iran be about anything else than the nuclear issue. That's it sees, so that's all that must be going on, right?
Interesting that the Leveretts' fan club couldn't bear to even give you props on that, James.
A brief look at Google search results for 'Iran expels foreign journalists" has only one relevant hit:
your blog. Perhaps you would be so kind as to list some of the foreign journalists which you claim have been expelled from Iran.
All foreigners in Iran need a visa to remain there. No journalists have this. In fact, Anderson Cooper has done several excellent pieces on this, and I'd suggest that an expert at Google could find it for us.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=43827
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-21/world/iran.bbc.journalist.expelled_1_bbc-journalist-tehran-iranian-authorities?_s=PM:WORLD
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/04/theguardian.pressandpublishing
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/10/iran-journalists-arrested/
http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/21-05-2004/57233-0/
From your links:
2009: "It said the BBC office in Tehran remains open."
2008: "The ministry gave no reason for its decision but said the newspaper was free to put forward another journalist as its correspondent in Iran.
2004: "Iran has expelled for three months American journalist Dan De Luce"
and one link is about the two Germans, who are not journalists, being arrested for trying to contact Sakineh Ashtiani's son.
I really don't have time for this apologia. Too many books, too many journalists in Iran telling their own stories.
Your line of reasoning is a simplistic straw man.
Ahmadinejad's power is not failing. In fact, he is now challenging the position of supereme leader in Iran convinced of his popularity and the support of his base that is made up of vetrens of Iran/Iraq war. Furthermore, as wikileak cables between turkish and US show, Ahmadinejad is considered the reasonable voice in the negotiations.
Yes Khamenei drives foreign policy, and you are correct that Mottaki is not the chief negotiator. I was insinuating that the mainstream media has focused on how this change will effect Iran's nuclear negotiations, and was pointing out that this was a complete misreading of the power structure there.
Ahmadinejad's power has been threatened, however, by both the supreme leader (at times) and Larijani. This was an example of Ahmadinejad striking back to gain more power, as sure sign that he feels like he needed to throw his weight around.
As for the last point, Ahmadinejad's defiance of the international community is too well established to argue against. Elections are still years away, so Ahmadinejad's political strengths and weaknesses still have plenty of time to play out. There are so many detractors from his way of doing things that the future has become VERY hard to predict in Iran.
As for the nuclear negotiations, If the demand is indefinite suspension of the fuel cycle, which means giving up their right to nuclear technology, no Iranian government, even a secular government would be able to agree to.
AND that is true anywhere.
Thanks, often my comments get deleted, you didn’t do that. I deeply respect those whose integrity is not for sale and they truly believe in what they are saying.
If you think I also belong to group of spammers who defend the Islamic Republic of Iran please pay attention to the first sentence of my comment.
“I agree Iran’s regime is corrupt and backward yet I think it is way more democratic than most of the neighboring countries.”
I try hard to back my assertions with convincing evidence. I think, here too, I didn’t deviate from that principal.
Wish you all the best.
At the end of the day, no one outside of the inner circle of Ahmadinejad's government know what the vote totals were. Plenty of evidence suggests that he may have won, but there is also plenty of evidence to suggest that the government didn't even count the votes. That's not just my assessment, but that of many at the Foreign Policy institute, Time Magazine, and many other election monitoring organizations.
I would also argue that after the first bullet was fired into a crowd of peaceful protesters, the vote tally was no longer the problem.
For the record, I'm not arguing that the Iranian gov't is on the verge of collapse. Far from it. But the interplay of internal politics with internal and external pressures is being missed by the media. I'd like to give you a prediction of what the outcome will be, but I have none.
I think we should be exchanging ideas and people, not bombs, and a peaceful internal revolution will lead to a real democratic government.
Violence will not solve the problem.
We all know, that the false charge of nuclear weapons is a talking point for neo-con warhawks, not humanitarians that want to prevent war.
As well, there is absolutely no mention of nuclear weapons in the article, as there is no evidence of nuclear weapons in Iran.
There are too many neo-con war hawks pretending to be humanitarians, pretending they care about Iranian human rights, but simply using them as a platform to broadcast their neo-con pro-war agenda.
I don't want to think that is what Mr. Miller is doing, but one has to wonder about his title.
I would appreciate some clarification from Mr. Miller.
There is a problem in this debate, because there are war hawks who are looking for ammunition. There are also those who would ignore the humanitarian issues in order to secure peace. Neither is acceptable for things to get better.
Thanks, again, for the comments.
I put Nuclear Weapons in the title to prove a point, that we focus on Nuclear Weapons far too much. I don't recall putting much emphasis on Iran's nuclear program in other articles that I've written.
I also share your fear. I worry that the focus on the Green Movement, or human rights in Iran, or anything that paints Iran in a negative light, could be used as grounds to attack Iran. I have a long record of having opposed the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and I would do the same with respect to Iran, not because I am a pacifist but because it would be the wrong course of action (that would require another article to flush out).
However, I cannot let fear of war distract from telling the stories about the Iranians who suffer on the streets or in prison.
First of all, this article this isn't about elections. Here is the logical argument presented:
1. Ahmadinejad dismissed his foreign minister as a power play, putting those who challenge him (namely Larijani) in their place.
2. Ahmadinejad is being challenged because he has botched his handling of the economy, foreign relations, and post-election protests, which were substantial and still are.
3. This is significant because it could effect the plight of those in Iranian prisons, those who protest against the government, and the direction of Iran as a powerful nation in the Middle East. The opposition movement is a stressor to the system, and by this fact alone its presence is significant.
A more interesting question is how Larijani will react to this move, and whether or not the Principalists are a better alternative than Ahmadinejad's ilk. Another interesting topic might be how all of this changes the landscape for the next election.
Secondly, My analysis of the elections in 2009 can be found here: http://www.dissectednews.com/2010/05/who-really-won-the-disputed-iran-election.html
Cheap tactic. People can disagree with you, without being supporters or defenders or the regime.
I agree with the humanitarian nature of your article, but after reading your cheap insult at people who disagree with you, I wonder why you put "Nuclear Weapons" asthe first words in your title?
There isn't any mention of nuclear weapons in the article, and there certainly isn't any evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons, although war mongers love to shout out that there is?
Could it be, that you are not really humanitarian minded, and are actually promoting a pro-war agenda while pretending to be humanitarian minded?
It sure looks like you are, to me.
I wrote this article not to demonize Iran but to point out that it is not a monolith. In fact, the whole point is that George Bush, with his turn right doctrine and his "Axis of Evil," actually blew the best chance for peace we have with Iran. Frankly, I see that there is still a lot of hope left.
The only mention of nuclear weapons in this article speak to the media's attention on the program. I figured that there are already plenty of articles that discuss that nature of Iranian-World relations.
First of all, I'm certainly not the only person who thinks along these lines. Look at all the links. Secondly, are you insinuating that there are no human rights abuses in Iran? The largest collection of jailed journalists in the world is inside Iranian prisons. I assure you, that is not a fraud.
You actually have some legitimate points about why Ahmadinejad might be irritated at Mottaki. And in the entire history of the Islamic Republic, no foreign minister has ever been dismissed, certainly not one that had direct ties to Khamenei.
But I also assure you that my analysis of the 2009 election is solid. In fact, not a single point that I have made there has been disproven. Follow the link and try for yourself.
While you do that, I'll be busy liveblogging Iran's human rights violations. Cheers.
I agree Iran’s regime is corrupt and backward yet I think it is way more democratic than most of the neighboring countries.
I see this arctic from a higher perspective ie the West and Israel are determined to crash Iran.
The neocon war camp not only is not remorseful from its deceptions in Iraq war it is now brazenly preparing the simple-people for another tragic war.
So far their propaganda has succeeded.... the majority of Americans believe Iran is building or already possesses the “atomic bomb”.
The scholars account for many ‘Big Lies’ of the neocons on Iran (similar to Iraqi case) which are successfully spread all over the world. The biggest is about the “widespread fraud” in June 2009 Iranian Presidential Election.
Nearly everyone in the world believed that big lie.:
Western pollsters, analysts and scholars are finding mind boggling facts on that election: If you are familiar with Statistics watch this one hour video of World Opinion Polls by University of Maryland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKG-hUyk1_0
Or read this 38 page investigative report by Eric A. Brill
http://iran2009presidentialelection.blogspot.com/
The author of that report concludes “Not a single credible evidence of fraud was found in that election”
Not a single evidence of fraud? This conclusion is an astounding revelation.
This post is not about the elections, it's about politics, this weeks news, and the people being arrested, beaten, or the people who may die on the streets and in the prisons of Iran
I'll try to get back to you whenever I'm done.