Why banning foreign films could hasten the Iranian theocracy's demise
Having received a comprehensive – if unexpected – election victory back in July, Iran’s new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has endured a torrid introduction to his new job. Having promised to improve the lot of Iran’s poor, and campaigning on a platform of economic revival, Ahmadinejad has struggled in his first few months to make any headway on his pledges. The Financial Times reports that, despite high oil prices, this resource-rich country is failing to provide for its large population. The Tehran stock market has dropped 20% since the election, while private business is grinding to a halt, wary of the direction that the country is going in.
Meanwhile, on the world stage, Ahmadinejad has fallen increasingly foul of the international community. The country’s desire for nuclear energy – which, it is suspected, is a front for a secretive plan to build nuclear weapons – is causing huge consternation at the United Nations. While the US prepares to bring Iran to the UN Security Council, the EU trio of countries – France, the UK and Germany – who had fought so hard to negotiate with Tehran, is quietly giving its approval for sanctions. Tony Blair has warned Iran that “life could become a lot more difficult” if it continues it’s truculent refusal to cooperate. While it smacks of typical Western hypocrisy to deride Iran’s nuclear ambitions whilst turning a blind eye to Israel’s stockpiles in the Negev desert, it is foolish for the regime to ignore the threats. Any sanctions would certainly plunge the country into further trouble, and could well spark off civil unrest.
So how has Ahmadinejad responded to these problems? By doing the old fashioned thing, and blaming somebody else. In the last week he has announced that foreign films will be banned from Iran. The Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, which Ahmadinejad heads, specifically targeted films that “promote secular, feminist, liberal or nihilist ideas”, and ones that feature “violence, narcotics consumption and propaganda for the world oppression”, by which it presumably means the US. While such sentiments would most likely warm the hearts of the American Family Association, they would perhaps be less enthused by the president also outlined his vision of a “Koranic Society”. Presumably, by this opaque phrase, he means that the limited liberal reforms attained under the previous ruler, Mohamad Khatami, are shortly to come to an end.
This week, Ahmadinejad has also turned up the heat on Israel once again. He appeared at an event called ‘World Without Zionism’ call for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map". He also warned “any country which acknowledges the Zionist regime”; such nations would, he claimed, be “confronted with the wrath of the Islamic umma and will forever be disgraced.” These latter comments were directed mainly at Pakistan, which has recently opened small-scale negotiations with Israel, which many hope could lead to diplomatic representation and ultimately recognition between the two countries. As far as Ahmadinejad is concerned, any such move would be result in “the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world”.
The ‘World Without Zionism’ conference was a sequel to a similar event last year, which was entitled ‘A World Without America’. One wonders just how the Iranian regime would prop itself up without these two nemeses to blame all their problems on. Unfortunately for Ahmadinejad, it is unlikely to work for much longer. While Goebbels may have said that “if you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”, the Iranian population has now had nearly three decades of excuses. The hard-won reforms of the previous eight years are unlikely to be given up easily. In this report from the New York Review of Books, Timothy Garton-Ash describes the young citizens of Tehran “talking on their cell phones or flirting in the parks, the girls' hijabs a diaphanous pink or green, pushed well back to reveal some alluring curls of hair, while their rolled-up jeans deliberately show bare ankles above smart, pointed leather shoes”. In such a young country, he hears of “this generation's hedonism; of wild parties behind the high walls of apartment buildings in prosperous north Tehran, with Western pop music, alcohol, drugs, and sexual play.”
Will the increased conservatism that Ahmadinejad brings hasten the demise of the theocracy? The proliferation on the Internet of Persian-language blogs – run by Iranians both in the country and those in the increasingly broad diaspora – indicate that there is a huge willingness to change, to confront and remould the country. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, on the world stage, Ahmadinejad has fallen increasingly foul of the international community. The country’s desire for nuclear energy – which, it is suspected, is a front for a secretive plan to build nuclear weapons – is causing huge consternation at the United Nations. While the US prepares to bring Iran to the UN Security Council, the EU trio of countries – France, the UK and Germany – who had fought so hard to negotiate with Tehran, is quietly giving its approval for sanctions. Tony Blair has warned Iran that “life could become a lot more difficult” if it continues it’s truculent refusal to cooperate. While it smacks of typical Western hypocrisy to deride Iran’s nuclear ambitions whilst turning a blind eye to Israel’s stockpiles in the Negev desert, it is foolish for the regime to ignore the threats. Any sanctions would certainly plunge the country into further trouble, and could well spark off civil unrest.
So how has Ahmadinejad responded to these problems? By doing the old fashioned thing, and blaming somebody else. In the last week he has announced that foreign films will be banned from Iran. The Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, which Ahmadinejad heads, specifically targeted films that “promote secular, feminist, liberal or nihilist ideas”, and ones that feature “violence, narcotics consumption and propaganda for the world oppression”, by which it presumably means the US. While such sentiments would most likely warm the hearts of the American Family Association, they would perhaps be less enthused by the president also outlined his vision of a “Koranic Society”. Presumably, by this opaque phrase, he means that the limited liberal reforms attained under the previous ruler, Mohamad Khatami, are shortly to come to an end.
This week, Ahmadinejad has also turned up the heat on Israel once again. He appeared at an event called ‘World Without Zionism’ call for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map". He also warned “any country which acknowledges the Zionist regime”; such nations would, he claimed, be “confronted with the wrath of the Islamic umma and will forever be disgraced.” These latter comments were directed mainly at Pakistan, which has recently opened small-scale negotiations with Israel, which many hope could lead to diplomatic representation and ultimately recognition between the two countries. As far as Ahmadinejad is concerned, any such move would be result in “the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world”.
The ‘World Without Zionism’ conference was a sequel to a similar event last year, which was entitled ‘A World Without America’. One wonders just how the Iranian regime would prop itself up without these two nemeses to blame all their problems on. Unfortunately for Ahmadinejad, it is unlikely to work for much longer. While Goebbels may have said that “if you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”, the Iranian population has now had nearly three decades of excuses. The hard-won reforms of the previous eight years are unlikely to be given up easily. In this report from the New York Review of Books, Timothy Garton-Ash describes the young citizens of Tehran “talking on their cell phones or flirting in the parks, the girls' hijabs a diaphanous pink or green, pushed well back to reveal some alluring curls of hair, while their rolled-up jeans deliberately show bare ankles above smart, pointed leather shoes”. In such a young country, he hears of “this generation's hedonism; of wild parties behind the high walls of apartment buildings in prosperous north Tehran, with Western pop music, alcohol, drugs, and sexual play.”
Will the increased conservatism that Ahmadinejad brings hasten the demise of the theocracy? The proliferation on the Internet of Persian-language blogs – run by Iranians both in the country and those in the increasingly broad diaspora – indicate that there is a huge willingness to change, to confront and remould the country. Time will tell.
posted by DN at 3:24 PM
2 Comments:
time will tell...
very interesting piece... i wonder with with the almost bizarrely violent rhetoric of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and with both blair and bush coming into their final furlongs if it will be a case of manifest destiny for all three men and the once unthinkable sequel to iraq will take place with iran. all three seem perilously in want of an ideologically huge move.
somethings in the air, were living in a time of men wanting to make history. it'll be dangerous to get in the way...
Thanks for the comment, ramblin'. While these men may want to 'make history', whether they'll be able to is another matter. Both Bush and Blair are currently engulfed by domestic troubles, and each has (at most) little more than three years left in power. While there is no doubt some in the US government who would relish an invasion of Iran, the chances of it happening, I think, are negligible. There are too many factors involved: the problems the US military has in Iraq would exist tenfold in Iran. Furthermore, the danger is that a hostile move against Iran would shore up the hardliners' power, and render the nascent democratic movements in the country irrelevant. A missile assault from the West on Tehran would give the mullahs all the succour needed to tighten their stranglehold.
Of a more immanent danger, perhaps, is Israel; having been threatened (albeit somewhat toothlessly) with annihilation, it is entirely possible that the Israeli government may decide to do what they did to Iraq in the early eighties and take out the country's nuclear facilities with a missile strike. In an increasingly fractious Middle East, the aftermath of such a unilateral action would be absolutely disastrous for the entire region.
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