American Footprints » Iran

Technology Sanctions

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:47:25 +0000

The Obama administration has announced new sanctions on those who provide Syria and Iran with technologies of repression:

“On Monday, he (President Obama) announced an executive order that allows U.S. officials for the first time to impose sanctions on foreign nationals found to have used new technologies, including cellphone tracking and Internet monitoring, to help carry out grave human rights abuses.

“The order specifically targets companies and individuals aiding the Iranian and Syrian governments, but administration officials say it could be expanded to include other countries using technology to crack down on dissent.

“Under the order, the administration announced new sanctions, including a U.S. visa ban and financial restrictions, against Syrian and Iranian agencies and individuals. Those include the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate, the Syriatel phone company and Ali Mamluk, the director of Syria’s general intelligence services.

“In Iran, the sanctions target the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the law enforcement forces and Datak Telecom.”

The logical next Middle Eastern country to be targeted by such sanctions is Bahrain, and in fact its absence from this initial wave is already conspicuous. However, I’m not holding my breath, and will be pleasantly surprised if it happens.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Khamene’i on the Bomb

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 18:29:56 +0000

Juan Cole talks about Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i's views on nuclear weapons:

“A week and a half ago, Khamenei gave a major foreign policy speech in which he said:

“‘The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.’

“Now, you could maintain that Khamenei is lying when he says he holds that possessing nuclear weapons is a grave sin. (You could also maintain that the Popes are lying when they say using birth control is a grave matter, but you’d have to explain why they put their papal authority on the line for a lie they weren’t forced to utter). But even if you think it is a lie, you have at least to report what he says. I guarantee you that Khamenei’s speech opposing nukes was not so much as mentioned on any of the major American news broadcasts.”

Khamene’i's consistent views on this matter may or may not be truthful, but Cole is right that they should be reported. They are credible given Iran’s victimization by weapons of mass destruction deployed by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War, and the nuclear program is consistent with the desire of many nations to have nuclear power as a sign of national status.

Cole is also right that Khamene’i's views matter a lot more than those of President Ahmadinejad. From 1997-2005, when the reformist Muhammad Reza Khatami was president, conservatives compared the Iranian presidency to the head of a high school student council with the Supreme Leader as principal. That was an exaggeration, but the fact it was suddenly dropped when convenient villain Ahmadinejad came into office shows the duplicity of the rhetoric.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Electing the Ninth Islamic Majlis

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:08:50 +0000

Geneive Abdo reports on the eve of Iran’s parliamentary elections:

“Now, just hours before the polls open on March 2, Khatami and many other Iranians for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution will stage a boycott. This is the only election in which a major political faction will remain on the sidelines. All the ‘signs,’ as Khatami put it, are there — the only candidates allowed to compete are largely from three conservative factions among the regime’s shrinking cast of political elites. All others were banned from running candidates.

“But what is more significant than the rigged vetting process is what the election sadly reveals for many — a changed Iran. Gone is the euphoria that energized millions of Iranians before past presidential elections in 1997 and 2009 and parliamentary elections in 2000. Instead, this week’s elections will take place under the watchful eyes of 50,000 election ‘monitors’ nationwide, thousands of basij fighters designated just for Tehran, and the heaviest police presence since after the disputed presidential election of 2009…

“The scripted election also illustrates a political realignment that has occurred since 2009 and the consolidation of power around Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In addition to ensuring the reformists’ — and even quasi-reformists, such as Hashemi Rafsanjani — departure from politics, Khamenei’s loyalists have also paved the way for the demise of the ‘deviant’ faction, as it is called, which represents President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…

“After this election, assuming Khamenei will succeed in eliminating Ahmadinejad’s faction, only two political trends will remain relevant inside the political system. One is the conservative traditionalists who are members of the old guard, such as Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani. The other is the far right, comprised of hardliners, grouped around Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, an aging revolutionary figure who proclaims to be committed to the ideological purity of the Islamic republic, at last as he interprets it.”

With regards to the last paragraph, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi and Ahmadinejad actually represent the same movement. Mesbah-Yazdi’s political party, the JPEE, has expressed support for Ahmadinejad’s presidency, and the cleric’s son Mojtaba Mesbah-Yazdi has said that his 2005 election “revived the true Islamic discourse.” However, Mesbah-Yazdi would most like to ascend to the Leadership after the death of Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, and the Assembly of Experts, which will make that decision, was cleared of many of his supporters during those last elections.

Iran, in other words, is well along the way to becoming a clerical monarchy, one in which Khamene’i may even be succeeded by his son Mojtaba. In the minds of those running them, these elections aren’t for the people to choose, but rather to ratify choices already made.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Rafsanjani Falling

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:05:44 +0000

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who served as Iran’s president from 1989-1997, lost to Ahmadinejad in 2005, and was a behind-the-scenes mover of Mir Hussein Musavi’s 2009 campaign that led to the Green Movement, has been taking major political hits for at least a year, possibly as payback for his 2009 actions. Tehran Bureau reports:

“Two websites connected to Ahmadinejad and the security forces claimed that when the current term of the chairmanship of the Expediency Discernment Council expires next month, Khamenei will not reappoint Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as its Chair. Bultan News, a website linked with the security forces, speculated that Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator during the Khatami administration, will be the new Chair of the Council. Rowhani is a member of the Council, as well as the head of its Center for Strategic Studies.

“Then Shabestan News Agency, run by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, analyzed the possibility that Rafsanjani might be assassinated, but dismissed the notion, pointing out that he is no longer an influential figure after losing the Chairmanship of the Assembly of Experts and control of Islamic Azad University. He also no longer serves as the Friday prayer Imam of Tehran. It then speculated that he will not be reappointed as the Chairman of the Council.

“Since the June 2009 presidential election, the hardliners’ pressure on Rafsanjani has increased tremendously. In addition to losing all his influential posts, the website that reflected his views has been blocked, his daughter Faezeh Hashemi has been sentenced to six months in jail, and his 16-year-old grandson is under investigation. The family of one his sons has also been barred from leaving Iran.

“As a result of a quasi-coup, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has finally succeeded in taking control of the Islamic Azad University, Iran’s largest university system, one of the largest of its kind in the world. It happened at the end of a meeting of the board of trustees of the university, which Rafsanjani leads. After the former president and his supporters left the meeting, the representatives of Ahmadinejad’s camp on the board announced that Farhad Daneshjoo, a brother of the Minister of Science, Research and Technology, which overseas the universities, has been elected by the board as the new president of the university, replacing Rafsanjani’s ally Dr. Abdollah Jasbi, who has led the university since its inception in 1982. Rafsanjani said that he will not sign the order for Daneshjoo’s appointment, but Daneshjoo has said that he will not back down because the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, an extra-constitutional body that control cultural affairs, has confirmed him as the new president of the university.”

Some of that is unconfirmed or still being battled over, but the trend is clear. Leadership of Islamic Azad University is a big deal financially as well as politically, as it has well over one million students. It has been the scene of political fighting at least since mid-2010.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Weird Iran Plot

Brian Ulrich — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:26:47 +0000

Both Robert Mackey and Barbara Slavin round up the reasons many experts are skeptical of the Obama administrations assertions that the Iranian government was planning to launch an assassination and terrorist attacks within the United States. For me, the most convincing evidence that Iran’s main intelligence organs were not involved is the sheer incompetence of it all:

“If Arbabsiar really had been an Iranian intelligence asset, he would have been informed if there’s one thing the US typically monitors, it is money transfers of more than $10,000 (as a measure against drug money laundering). The only safe way to undertake this transaction would have been cash, and no one in the Quds Brigade is so stupid as not to know this simple reality. Moreover, would the Quds Brigade really depend so heavily on someone with a fraud conviction, who was therefore known to US authorities? Expert terrorism deploys ‘newskins’ people who can fly under the radar of police and security forces.”

The plot was also discussed on an open international phone line, which espionage professionals know would be tapped.

What’s less clear is why the Obama administration is so assertive in assigning Iran responsibility. Juan Cole suggests Iranian drug cartels could be the culprint, and attempting to deflect blame to the Iranian government. Another possibility is a false flag operation, in which a third party, such as Saudi Arabia or Israel, is trying to create a crisis between Iran and the United States, though that again runs into the sloppiness argument.

I’m most interested in the idea that the plot arose from a faction within the Iranian government seeking to use an international crisis to enhance its own stature. President Mahmood Ahmadinejad, who thrives on controversy, has been on the losing end of a power struggle with Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, the country’s paramount leader, and with his military connections could leave the appropriate fingerprints.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Iran’s New Oil Minister

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:27:04 +0000

One trend of the past decade or so of Iranian history has been the growing involvement in the IRGC in Iran’s economy. Now, a prominent officer/businessman has become the country’s oil minister:

“Iran’s parliament has voted to approve Rostam Qasemi, a Revolutionary Guards commander, to head the country’s oil ministry.

“The country’s president had called on the Majlis to confirm Qasemi and end months of wrangling over control of oil and gas production in the world’s fifth biggest crude exporter…

“Qasemi heads a major engineering company – owned by the elite military body – and is under US and EU sanctions due to Western concerns Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons technology, a charge the Islamic republic has always denied…

“The newly appointed minister comes from Khatam al-Anbia, the Guards company initially set up to conduct vital infrastructure work during the eight-year war with Iraq which followed the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“It has since executed oil projects worth a total of $25bn, state-owned IRNA reported recently, quoting Ahmad Qalebani, managing director of the state National Iranian Oil Co.

“Qasemi’s position has drawn the attention of Western countries that believe the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliates are involved in Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons, a goal that Tehran denies.”

This affair, however, shows that in contrast to previous analysis, Ahmadinejad may not be part of a solid front with the military, as he tried to prevent Qasemi’s rise to that post.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Gulf International Relations

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 02:10:48 +0000

Gregory Gause’s The International Relations of the Persian Gulf provides an excellent overview of its subject over the past 40 years since the British withdrawal, while providing both interesting unifying themes and well-supported arguments about several controversial issues. Gause views the Gulf states bordering the Gulf as forming a “regional security complex,” meaning that the bulk of their foreign policy energy is dedicated to their relations with each other. Between 1971 and at least 2003, the Persian Gulf saw a tripolar system based around Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Politics among them was often characterized by concern with transnational identities, such as Arab ethnicity or Shi’ism, and a critical factor shaping interstate relations, including the major wars, was states’ fears that these identities could be manipulated so as to undermine their own internal security. This is especially true when discussing Iraq.

An early case of a Gulf regime entering a conflict was Saddam Hussein’s decision to attack Iran in 1980. While acknowledging that the Iraqi government saw an opportunity to advance territorial claims at the head of the Gulf, Gause argues based on the timing of events that the actual decision to go to war was motivated by a fear of revolutionary Shi’ism spreading to Iraq, a fear which also motivated support for Iraq by Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states. Gause adduces a similar motivation behind Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, producing a great deal of evidence that Saddam Hussein, with a certain amount of paranoia, believed Israel, the United States, and the smaller Gulf monarchies were conspiring with internal dissidents to undermine his regime in the wake of the unsuccessful Iran-Iraq War. A belief that danger was imminent led him to attack Kuwait in August 1990, instead of trying to wait until he had nuclear weapons. In this context, Saddam saw Kuwait’s over-pumping of oil as in part an attempt to undermine his own economy and patronage capacity by driving down prices.

Gause devotes an entire chapter to the American decision to attack Iraq in 2003, which he argues undid the tripolar system leading to a current situation in which it is unclear how power and influence will ultimately be distributed. His argument here is that while some within the Bush administration were in favor of an attack on Iraq from the get-go, Bush himself only came to support the idea after September 11, and this support was based primarily on the belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons programs and could provide such weapons to terrorists. Once this decision was made, confirmation bias and internal administration politics led to exaggerations of the intelligence in areas such as nuclear weapons and al-Qaeda links that served to make the case for war to the American public.

As someone who follows these issues closely, I felt like I’d heard almost everything in this book before at some point or another, but it was still invaluable to have it all in one place as part of a common narrative and analysis. Looking at the region today, one can see the continued foreign policy salience of regimes’ concerns for their international security in Saudi Arabia’s decision to help suppress demonstrations in Bahrain. At the same time, I’m not as convinced as Gause is that Iraq is now primarily a playing field for outsiders as opposed to a power in its own right. While there are definite internal tensions to be resolved, Iraq currently has a stable government with a steadily increasing capacity, and I’m dubious that any of its neighbors want to see it collapse back into civil war. The key issue to watch there is what kind of path it charts amidst the Saudi-Iranian rivalry.

In summary, Gause’s book is a highly effective introduction to key regional issues, as well as a useful resource for those with some background in the area, which will continue as a flashpoint in world affairs for the foreseeable future.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Iran’s Crisis of Authority

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 06 May 2011 00:39:58 +0000

Those interested in a brief (109-page) overview of the historical and political context for Iran’s June 2009 election controversy should check out Ali Ansari’s most recent book, Crisis of Authority: Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election. In this Chatham House publication, Ansari analyzes the competition between principlists and reformists before and after the election as the latest stage in the struggle to work out an interaction between what he calls “Islamist” and “republican” elements of the governing system, one in which the nature of the struggle has, perhaps like never before, been made obvious for all to see. Early on, he points out that, for the Ahmadinejad and his principlist supporters, elections are not about people’s right to choose their own government:

“The vanity of the governing elite may require public acclamation but not legitimacy, which for the ideologues of the right comes from God rather than from the people. In their view, if the people do not have the wisdom to vote for the correct candidate, their misfortune should not obstruct the regime’s consolidation of power…The further one looks from the date of the election – in either direction – the clearer this becomes”

Amidst a brief political history of Iran since the 1989 death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Ansari explains the ideological underpinnings of the different political movements and their claims to embody the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution. As in his other work, the reformists come across as highly complacent about the lengths to which their opponents would go to retain power. The principlists, however, fare little better, as he says:

“Their failure to see the changes taking place beneath their own gaze has regularly been their ondoing. The eruption of popular anger that followed the stolen election of 2009 stands testament to the persistence of this extraordinary hubris among Iran’s governing elite; while the failure to move swiftly to capitalize on this anger reflects the persistent romanticism of the reformist leadership.”

Ansari also highlights a key point about the election’s aftermath:

“The strategy of the authorities has been to raise the stakes, to turn an electoral dispute into a confrontation about the nature of the velayat-i faqih (guardianship of the jurist). This had the desired effect of clarifying the nature of the dispute and reinforcing the core of their support. But it also raised fundamental questions about the nature of governance and accountability that many Iranians preferred not to confront. It was as if the ambiguity that had been essential to the character and political sustainability of the entire edifice of the velayat-i faqih had been discarded. Iranians could no longer remain ambivalent about their position towards the system; it had to be absolute, one way or the other. Put simply, did Iranians really believe that obedience to Ahmadinejad was equivalent to obedience to God.”

I read this book a couple of weeks ago, then got distracted by the last week of classes and final exams before posting about it. I remember thinking Ansari was optimistic about the hardline regime’s eventual collapse, but can now no longer find an explicit section that gives that impression. As the quotes above suggest, however, he believes it has become difficult if not impossible to sustain the government ideologically, while on the level of personalities, divisions among the elite remain a critical asset for the Green Movement. Regardless of those conclusions, however, this book has a clear narrative that reviews all the major elements of the 2009 crisis and their possible implications for the future.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Ayatollah Khoeiniha

Brian Ulrich — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 19:08:38 +0000

This guy sounds like someone whose name I’ve certainly run across before, but he’s definitely never made an impression until now:

“Since the mass unrest that followed the June 2009 presidential election, the Iranian authorities have succeeded in suppressing street protests and decapitating the opposition movement.

“The two leaders who stood against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, are in detention, as are dozens of their supporters.

“The conservative factions that run Iran should be feeling confident they can win the parliamentary election later this year virtually unopposed.

“That hope may be premature. At the end of March, a 70-year-old cleric who had hitherto kept out of the headlines came out of the shadows.

“News websites run by conservative groups – often the first sources of such information – reported that Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha was making plans to ease the way for a number of candidates, presumably with opposition leanings, to get through the vetting process that might otherwise exclude them and stand for election.”

The link is to a full IWPR profile of Khoeiniha, a reformist who during the Islamic Revolution served as the clerical liaison between the U.S. embassy hostage takers and Ayatollah Khomeini. He had some mid-level prominence in the 1980′s, but was later edged out of government and became an important of apparently quiet player in the reform movement.

It speaks well of the climate for reform in Iran that even with its A-team of leaders out of the picture, it can find a such a respectable B-team.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Bazaar Strike Redux

Brian Ulrich — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:38:46 +0000

Gold traders in Iran’s bazaars are on strike again:

“Gold merchants throughout Iran are joining a strike to protest a new tax on gold that they say severely hurts their business, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.

“The gold bazaar in Tehran went on strike shortly after the government announced on September 26 that it was adding a 3 percent VAT (value-added tax) on gold products.

“The strike has since stretched to other cities such as Mashhad, Shiraz, Ghazvin, Qom, and Sabzevar.”

The widespread bazaar strike over the summer began in the gold and textile sectors. However, so far, I haven’t seen anything suggesting this one is spreading across economic sectors. See here for a little about how the Iranian bazaar today is different from that of the 1970′s

(Crossposted to my blog)

Ahmadinejad’s Power

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:06:42 +0000

During the past five years, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has built up an unprecedented amount of real power for an Iranian president. Much of this is related to his military ties, and the Republican Guard has seen an economic bonanza under the current administration. As Golnaz Esfendiari reports, he has also used the appointment of special envoys to develop independent foreign policy clout:

“Decisions on foreign policy issues — including the contentious issue of Iran’s nuclear program — are traditionally subject to the supreme leader’s approval. However, four appointments made by the president in recent weeks suggest that he intends to exert greater influence on Iranian diplomacy, and could be trying to wrest outright control from Khamenei in the sphere of foreign policy.

“Special presidential envoys for foreign policy are not without precedent — President Mohammad Khatami, for example had two such envoys. The difference is that under Khatami, the appointment of envoys was decided by consensus and subject to approval by the president’s cabinet, while Ahmadinejad appears to be making appointments unilaterally.

“On August 22, Ahmadinejad appointed his highly controversial chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, as his special envoy to the Middle East. Hamid Baghei, the head of Iran’s Cultural Heritage Foundation, was appointed as special envoy for Asia affairs. Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh has been named Iran’s envoy on Caspian Affairs. And Abolfazl Zohrevand, deputy head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, is now the president’s envoy to Afghanistan.”

This is happening amidst a shocking amount of conflict between Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i described by Muhammad Sahimi:

“The behind-the-scenes confrontation continued after the nuclear deal. In a previous article, I described the June 4 ceremony at the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to commemorate the 21st anniversary of his death. The aftermath of the event demonstrated the friction between the two camps. In a completely unprecedented web article, an anonymous hardliner rebuked Khamenei by name and referred to Khomeini only as the ‘former leader of the Revolution.’ The piece accused Khamenei of preventing the uprooting of nepotism among the clerics and mocked the Bayt-e Emam (the Khomeini family). Anyone who can post such a scathing piece with impunity must have ties with the highest levels of the military-security establishment.

“Two recent developments represent the most telling evidence of the deepening rift between the two men. One emerged when Ahmadinejad and his cabinet met with Khamenei last week. Ahmadinejad presented a list of his government’s ‘achievements,’ but the ayatollah rebuked him, directly or indirectly, over each item, which is without precedent. The ayatollah had previously gone out of his way to exaggerate Ahmadinejad’s ‘successes,’ but not this time.

“When Ahmadinejad claimed that his government had spread ‘economic fairness,’ the ayatollah responded, ‘In order to assess whether fairness has been achieved, certain criteria must be set to see whether it has really happened in the various aspects of the society — economical, social, cultural, and educational.’

“After Ahmadinejad stated that his government is ‘rapidly’ achieving the goals set out in the Expediency Council’s 20-Year Vision Plan, the ayatollah retorted, ‘The government must appoint some people to study whether the pace of progress has been good’ during the period Ahmadinejad has been in office.

“Ahmadinejad then told the ayatollah that the main focus of his government is ‘culture.’ Khamenei pointedly responded, ‘Showmanship in cultural affairs is not only not useful, but also damaging,’ a reference to Ahmadinejad’s constant boasting of his accomplishments.”

Sahimi speculates that Ahmadinejad may have an ambitious goal more commonly associated with the most radical reformists, the end of the clerical regime:

“There are other signs that Ahmadinejad wants to do away with Khamenei and the clerics. He and his team have repeatedly visited and talked about Jamkaran, the site near Qom where people can supposedly make contact with Mahdi, the Shiites’ 12th Imam who is supposed to return from hiding one day. Many people interpret this as an example of Ahmadinejad’s demagogic exploitation of superstitions. I believe it his subtle way of saying, ‘If we can directly contact with Imam Mahdi, we do not need the clerics to do that for us.’”

(Crossposted to my blog)

IRGC Leaves South Pars

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:45:13 +0000

An interpretation advanced by me among others holds that the growing economic role of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was an important factor contributing to the 2009 electoral coup. The fact that economic role is increasing in any case makes this interesting:

“Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards will not be involved in developing Tehran’s part of the world’s largest gas field, said a senior gas official on Monday.

“‘Khatam al-Anbia has pulled out of developing all phases of the South Pars gas field,’ Mohammad Hassan Mousavizadeh told reporters. Khatam al-Anbia is an engineering and construction arm of the Guards.

“The Guards, hit by sanctions imposed by the United Nations and the United States, has played a growing economic role in the Islamic Republic since hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first took office in 2005…

“After Norway’s Kvaerner pulled out, development of phases 15 and 16 of South Pars were handed over to Khatam al-Anbia in 2006.

“In May the group also signed an agreement to develop three other phases of South Pars, the world’s largest reservoir of gas.

“The Security Council resolution passed in June blacklisted 15 firms belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”

Meanwhile, the bazaar strike has ended.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Bazaar Strike Revisited

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:02:05 +0000

By coincidence, this week I’ve been reading Arang Keshavarzian’s Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace, an extremely theory-heavy political science monograph examining the effects on political mobilization of transformations within the Tehran Bazaar since the Iranian Revolution. It usefully examines the bazaar, not as a unity, but as a series of networks created by the space of the bazaar and the ways of doing business, and argues that under the Pahlavi regime, these networks gave rise to a “cooperative hierarchy” which allowed for mass mobilization of the type seen in the revolution, whereas the policies of the Islamic Republic have, largely as unintended side effects, reduced the importance of bazaar space and given rise to new “coercive hierarchies” which are related to patronage ties, tend to be segmented among different sections of the bazaar, and do not have the same social force as the pre-revolutionary bonds. This new situation means that bazaar strikes tend to be of short duration and limited to certain areas.

The current bazaar strikes have had an impressive duration, but how do they fit this pattern? Reading articles closely, one finds:

“A strike that began last week at the gold and textile sections of the bazaar in Tehran as a protest against a government plan to increase the income tax on merchants grew on Tuesday to other sections, according to the Web site Khabar Online.”

There is also:

“On Sunday, subways heading to the bazaar were relatively empty. Whole swaths of the market were shut down…

“News websites said authorities arrested the head of the union of fabric traders in Tehran’s old bazaar for allegedly speaking to merchants through a loudspeaker to assemble in Sabzeh Maidan Square, the main gate of the old bazaar, against the tax hike.

“Some Iranian youth joined the merchants in protest at Sabzeh Maidan. Eyewitnesses report that when a student attempted to record the scene, police beat him with a baton and arrested him, spiriting him away to an unknown location. Witnesses claim that plainclothes policemen and government security forces then launched tear gas bombs at protesters…

“Some merchants continue to pay the taxes. A man who has been selling scarves in the bazaar for more than 40 years said he will comply with the law…

“In the sections of the bazaar still open, electricity brown-outs kept plunging the shops in darkness, even during daylight, and the merchants could be seen angrily fanning themselves with small hand-held fans, made in China.”

One can see while this is a significant event, there is clearly a segmented element to its organization, and many shops, apparently those in certain areas which almost certainly sell similar products remain open. Organization is difficult even such a significant grievance on the part of the entire merchant class. Some unknown number of students are also involving themselves. Strikingly, Reformist leaders seem invisible, perhaps because they see the new taxes as necessary even if they condemn the policies of the oil boom years that led to the current situation.

UPDATE: Keshavarzian himself weighs in with Tehran Bureau.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Iranian Economic Unrest

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:27:40 +0000

IPS News reports that bazaaris aren’t the only ones with complaints in Iran:

“Meanwhile, industrial workers are increasingly restive. According to the Iran Labor Report, a Web publication of Iranian labour activists, 180 workers at the Alborz china company in the northwestern city of Qazvin staged a demonstration Jul. 6, complaining that they had been paid only twice in the last 12 months. They had previously protested on May 1.

“Kevan Harris, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University who frequently travels to Iran, noted that the head of a government-run trade union in the northern city of Tabriz complained recently that workers there have ‘reported not receiving wages on time, receiving below the minimum wage, no payment of overtime, being cut out of government sponsored entitlements such as food vouchers, and moving towards temporary contract labour’…

“A major test is likely to come when the government phases out subsidies of consumer staples and replaces them with cash payments. The subsidy reform, already postponed several times, is now due to be implemented in late September.”

One school of thought felt that the regime was so repressive in 2009 because it knew 2010 would be a year of austerity.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Tehran Bazaar Strike

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:04:01 +0000

Iran’s capital is witnessing one of the largest bazaar strikes since the fall of the shah:

“With shops that sell everything from herbs and spices to carpets and gems now firmly closed, Tehran’s Grand Bazaar is on strike with merchants warning that higher taxes could force them to shut down for good.

“The usually bustling corridors of the centuries old market, known as ‘Iran’s economic pulse’, have been deserted for the past week in a standoff between the hard-line government and merchants. Some shops were draped with black banners in protest.

“Work stoppages are rare in Iran but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s decision to raise the rate of Value Added Tax (VAT) on goods set off a strike that merchants have threatened to extend despite a government offer to suspend the increase…

“Iran’s economy is over 60 percent dependent on oil income and the sharp fall in oil prices threatens its finances. The government had hoped to fill the shortfall by increasing tax.

“The tax forms part of wider economic reforms planned by the government, including a bill that will end subsidies on energy and food.”

The government has declared a holiday in a probable attempt to disguise the strike.

(Crossposted to my blog)