INSIDE IRAN

Surely NOT again! Would be a first thought for Iranians of a certain age.Those, for example, who lived through the previous civil unrest of forty years ago. For then it was protests against the secular leadership of the Shah Reza Pahlavi which crushed his leadership and brought in the religious theocracy of the Islamic clerics.
The Shah eventually fled Iran, but not before his oppressive and corrupt regime brought citizens on the streets. But it’s not difficult to say that today’s regime is heading the same way.

Most reports agree that the Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, has sole control of the power structure except the armed forces. Which is a scary thought in any dictatorship – ‘except’ the armed forces – something to consider whilst watching news reports of Iranian-made drones aimed at Europe.

Anyway, I first went to Iran over twenty years back. And on a later voyage (2001) to the port of Bandar Abbas, life for Iranians had got noticeably worse.For sure, US sanctions hasn’t helped Iran’s economy; indeed many report of the Shah’s days when one US dollar bought 70 Iranian rials; in 2022 it buys 12000.

But with a demographic showing half the population under thirty-five years old and largely unemployed it’s easy to see other reasons for decline.

For if we disregard the clowns running our own UK government, consider the policies of the Iranian Revolutionary government who banned contraceptives in order to boost the economy and raise more ‘Soldiers of Islam.’ For most of these under thirty-five age group are either still unemployed or else busy rioting against this oppressive regime – reap what you sow, goes the old saying.

Ship’s crews alongside in all Iranian ports get fed-up of soldiers for every vessel is instructed to host the Revolutionary Guards: there are usually about a dozen and they do little except eat the food and spy on the crew to ensure there’s no porn or alcohol anywhere.Some are polite and well-mannered; others however are real pigs – just like law-enforcers anywhere.

No surprise though that British and American crews aren’t even allowed ashore!Still – in my situation I had to have urgent dental treatment and fortunately a shore pass was granted. The ship agent, a friendly, youngish bloke called Karim was entrusted to take me there and back. He wore a smart business suit, had earned an accountancy degree at Brighton University and spoke warmly of his time there, but had lost touch with his English girlfriend and was now trapped in Iran due to overseas travel bans.

At the dental studio, the dentist was also UK-trained – it seemed in Edinburgh – and was similarly friendly with faultless English.The dentist was critical of Iran’s internet firewall – actually this deliberate obstacle to the World Wide Web is now even harder to traverse.So both guys were very keen to hear news of life in the UK because, as they explained, ‘our government in Tehran tells us nothing.’

The half-hour in the chair was painless with all modern equipment on hand.After which the agent suggested going for a hotel meal before returning to the ship. ‘Don’t worry’, he said – ‘I will charge the bill to your company. They won’t know a thing.’Well, I wasn’t keen on returning to the ship so off we went.We drove three times around the block – ‘making sure we’re not followed by the Revolutionary Guard,’ he reassured, finally stopping off at a fancy hotel in downtown Bandar Abbas.

At midday the hotel restaurant was filling up, surprisingly with European business-types.‘They are probably Swiss executives, Iran has lots of trade with Switzerland – but not so much with America’, he mentioned dryly.We ordered soup and a an Iranian dish called kuku sabdi made with soft saffron rice, lamb and salad, after which there were plenty of delicious Persian pastries on offer; after being on the ship for months the hotel was swish and air-conditioned with attentive staff speaking good English – all very enjoyable.

‘There’s no beer in Iran anymore though for which I’m really sorry’, he said. I replied that there used to be in a place called Kharg Island (oil terminal for tanker crews) years back. But of course, that was then.

But it was obvious he wanted to talk about life in the West and surprisingly started with a joke:
‘What do Americans and Iranians have in common?They both hate the US government!‘Ha-ha!’ , I responded – here’s a guy with a good sense of humour.Anyway, it was just an ice-breaker for him to ask me questions about life in the UK and US: ‘is life that bad in the UK with your Tory government? and ‘when will President Bush be voted out?’More often though there was talk about English football – Karim watched football on Iranian TV regularly and was pleased that their government did not censor the sport – except to say that women were not allowed to enter a football stadium.Neither were they allowed to play – anywhere.Mostly stuff beyond my ability to answer but far from being uneasy, I deducted that, indeed, here was a country in which citizens were being denied access to world news – this wasn’t so much an inquisition at all.

Anyway, Karim moved talk on to Persia (Iran) losing it’s world status as a former pro-Western, democratic and advanced nation. Their present government, he confided, had obscured all Iran’s historical achievements in science: astronomy, medicine and architecture, for example; architecture was one science they excelled at – who do you think introduced the geometry of the dome in Christian churches?’ he asked.

For me, this was a great history lesson and, in fact, Karim was only circumspect in discussing politics; what was plain though was his attachment to Western culture and values.
After an hour or so we left (‘got more business’, he said). But on our way back to the ship we were stopped by a red light and just to the right were two ‘morality police’ who were shuffling newspapers and magazines at a news kiosk.
‘They’re looking for imported literature’, was the explanation. ‘Publications such as Time, Newsweek, America Today, or even Hello magazine will get him a fine, but anything else and he’ll go to jail.’I worked out how the lives of over-paid ‘soap’ stars in Hello magazine could subvert Iranian values but could only conclude that the magazine’s display of skimpy clothing is a start.

All the same, it’s a paradox that Western fashion stores for women in Iran are aplenty including Gap, Jimmy Choo, Mango and Zara – Mango’s selection of sexy women’s lingerie is reputedly a top-seller – the difference is that in Iran there are no glossy pictures or posters of the same.

On feminist issues, this was about as close a subversive act as women could experience and although the morality police were then not harassing women over the non-wearing of the hijab – this would come later- most women despised the morality police stating that most of these ‘police’ were volunteers evading army service.

Still, it is little-known that men get constantly harassed by the morality police too, for ‘inappropriate dress’ and the latest check being upon the sporting of ‘Western haircuts.’ Again, men are randomly flagged down in the street and detained for having a hair-style that merely looks like Snoop Dogg’s, you know, all braids and corn-rows or similar.
But, of course, women lately are angry about randomly being stopped over the hijab – the latest over the death of a Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, by the security services has indeed lit a fuse.

Of course, our freedoms in Europe and the US, are often taken for granted, and I figure that we’d have to go back to Oliver Cromwell in England to find such interference by a religious extremist.

But twenty years back, few could have forecasted the hijab protests; even fewer could have foreseen the religious crackdown on perceived hostile organisations: not just the usual suspects of Kurdish Independence Groups, trade unions, human rights groups and journalists, but even writers’ organisations and art historians.

What is happening?, the world might ask.Maybe the regime knows that with peak demand for oil not far away; sanctions and inflation and globalisation of ideas, that it’s back is to the wall, so to speak.

Anyway, to return to the dentist, and another hotel meal with Karim was followed by a meaningful chat in which he stated he’d drive by some low-income neighbourhoods (‘to see how our oil incomes are wasted’, he said).
The three and four-storey apartments were bleak. A few rusting cars were around but the most noticeable sight was of families – children, mostly – gathered around a water pump in the courtyard.‘There isn’t any piped water in the apartments’, I was told. ‘In some cities we have huge IKEA furnishing stores with nice bathrooms and kitchens – just as you have in Europe – but in these tenements they have one cold water pump for washing and drinking shared between hundreds of families.’Apparently, these tenements were some of the better ones for every Iranian urban area has tent cities in which water supplies have to be dragged from a river or elsewhere.

But in these tenements people just survived: illegal booze gatherings were common with some Iranians either making their own, usually from non-alcoholic beer with added fermenting agents, or else wine procured from Armenians and Zorothrastrians – the only groups of people in Iran allowed alcohol.

Despite denials by government, prostitution is another survival tool and even the moderate Iranian newspaper Entekhab reports that ‘85,000 prostitutes work in Tehran alone.’ (1)So much for morality, and human trafficking and increased drug use is noted: many sources believe that causes of such social problems are troubled families, divorce, identity crises and social contradictions.

It sounds familiar, doesn’t it?Probably because we have similar problems in the West, but the difference is that we acknowledge ours through open data.

But personally, I found Iranians generally warm and cheerful with a desire to speak English. I reckon that after their 3000 years of civilisation it is hard for anyone to hold hatred or pessimism in their hearts.
Of conversation, scarcely any wanted to talk politics; on the other hand, neither did we.But favourite topics were mostly their families – especially their kids, football and movies – sometimes movies of the US genre.Of the latter, I wondered where they did watch American movies for the theocracy government has strict censorship rules.And although there are plenty of pre-1979 Revolution Hollywood movies about, ie, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, there are also millions of illicit modern-day offerings on DVD held by thousands of Iranians.

It seems that morality police do investigate, but the scale of DVD ownership is so massive that it’s mostly overlooked. Consequently, US films containing all the ‘un-Islamic’ material which is anything from feminism, contact between men and women and anti-state propaganda, for example, just gets through the net.Apparently one of the most-watched on underground DVD recently was Tom Cruise’s Maverick – Top Gun 2 – and I reckon that one comes tops for anti-Iranian propaganda.

But despite extreme censorship, films by Iranian directors are widely appreciated even though many now live in Germany, Sweden and Turkey.So from a country which has had a traditional love of poetry and art, the humanist stories in Iranian film-making are acclaimed by many including the BBC Culture list of greatest-foreign language films.

For sure censorship does kill creativity, but writers and directors find ways around censorship including symbolism and metaphor. Probably just like Chaucer’s satirical Canterbury Tales achieved in medieval England does the Iranian film The Lizard satirise their nation’s clergy – very watchable.
So movies could support a desire for change. Even though what the future holds is anyone’s guess although it seems the recent hijab protest are the start of something bigger.The Oslo-based Human Rights Watch, for example, reported ‘185 people were killed in the latest protest including 20 minors.’(2)
In the light of that I’d say that as well as being cheerful, the people are courageous and unflinching too. Let’s wish them well.

References: 

1) Lapidos, J. Persian Prostitution, (23/04/08) accessed 25/10/22
2) IRANTIL, Former US President Donald Trump Voices Support for Iranian People (10.09.22) accessed 26/10/22.