What a country fears is very telling. If they are afraid of intellectuals, which the world’s most repressive states are, they are on the wrong track. I was particularly struck by this watching the General Patreus hearing on television and noting the usual “demonstrators” who had to be ejected from the room. There was Media Benjamin, one of San Francisco’s most notorious lifelong demonstrators whose career is based on condemning all things American. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a disaster from which she and her followers never recovered. Ms. Benjamin has a considerable academic following, but thirty or more years of her activity has not brought down an American government. She generates annoyance, not fear.
Iran, however, has a different set of worries. Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, Director of the Middle East Program of the Wilson Center in Washington, was arrested while visiting her 90-year-old mother in Tehran last year. Accused of being a spy for the United States, she was held for months and interrogated daily, only to be released when the international fuss became embarrassing. Dr. Esfandiari is now back in Washington, thanks to an agreement in which her mother’s apartment is held as surety by the government.
This scholar, who is in her 60s, was feared, as her interrogators told her, because the conferences she was organizing (the women’s workshops and the exchanges of scholars) were seen as the same first steps that eventually dismantled the former Soviet Union, the Ukraine, and other countries. Intellectual freedom is seen by the Iranian government as a threat to their stranglehold on Iran. Dr. Esfandiari failed to convince them that they are powerful enough and feared enough in the region to withstand a women’s workshop or exchange of scholars. They eventually let her go without harm, other than a weight loss she could ill afford.
The late Shah of Iran was also focusing his attention on the country’s intellectuals, whom he was certain were being manipulated by the Soviets. They were, and proved themselves to be a great nuisance, but it was not these feckless intellectuals who took down his government. It was the combined might of the Shiite clerics, experts in rent-a-mob pyrotechnics, and the labor movement that the Shah himself had begun. When the oil workers went on prolonged strike (during a cold winter), the government fell. The Shah had pursued the wrong internal enemy, and now the current Iranian government is doing the same.
Dr. Esfandiari was puzzled by the insecurity of this government, whose constant chest-thumping hides worries about their survival. I would suggest that they have plenty to worry about. The government’s oppressiveness has alienated the merchant class (the Shah’s mistake too) and there is another sector that they need to fear—the labor movement. The American Teamsters Union (President James Hoffa) seems to be generating something in Iran akin to the Solidarity movement in Poland, which transformed organized labor into a political movement. In December, 2005, Hoffa wrote to President Ahmadinejad demanding the release of 14 labor union workers who had been detained and beaten. In 2007, he again demanded release of the brutalized Bus Transport Workers Union leader, and condemned the government’s flagrant disdain for freedom of association and expression.
Iran’s theocrats worry about a close nexus between free labor unions and political freedom. There have been arrests, secret trials, and hangings a-plenty. We only hear about the persecution of elite women dressed in fashions not to the clerics’ liking—but persecution of labor leaders is far more dangerous.
A recent poll in Iran placed popular support for the mullahs at 5 to 10 percent. President Bush has relatively low poll ratings in the US, but not to that level—and he will be out of office legally in another year. Neither Media Benjamin—nor all the university rent-a-mobs--will be able to reduce the President’s tenure by one day. But the Iranian government had better worry about James Hoffa, not Haleh Esfandiari.
As Mahtaub Hojjati, a founder of a Washington think tank, the Institute for Persian Studies, notes: “Because their grip on power is tenuous, every semblance of freedom is crushed. Dissident voices and newspaper publishers are left to suffer in Evin prison, Iran’s version of the Bastille. Women clothed in garb more fetching than head scarves or chadors are harassed and detained by police. Every candidate for office must be theologically scrubbed by the extremist Guardian Council. The economy is in shatters because of ill-conceived monopolies granted to the Revolutionary Guard. Corruption is staggering. Unemployment and underemployment are widespread. Inflation is galloping. Foreign investment is at a trickle because of international sanctions and slim protection of private property. Gasoline rationing has provoked vandalism.”
American negotiators should take note. These fellows are not sleeping well—and unlike our president, who will peacefully step down—their heads are less secure. Tyranny always provokes violent reaction, and one is on the way for them. As I was leaving Iran on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, my taxi driver told me: “Madam, when you return, you will see a mullah hanging from every lamp post.” Better late than never. We will miss President Ahmadinejad’s visits to the UN and Columbia University.
