Khaleej Times, April 28, 2007

The Iranian Artists' Forum is becoming a target of censorship as part of a new drive by Iran's authorities to regiment individual conduct, writes Praful Bidwai.

The Iranian Artists' Forum is the kind of institution any country would be proud of — a lively, pulsating place, with auditoria, seminar rooms and exhibition halls, where exciting events happen. The Forum exudes the freedom and creativity of Iran's flourishing art world. Not many developing countries have anything comparable.

The Forum is a redesigned military barracks located next to what was the United States embassy. Hundreds of young people "hang out" there. Its vegetarian café serves "chapatti bread", besides sandwiches, soft drinks and teas (including ayurvedic tea). It even offers "Gita Set" and "Lotus Set" thalis.

It's tragic, therefore, that the Forum is becoming a target of censorship. Last week, it hosted the release of a special issue of a remarkable magazine "International Gallerie", published from Mumbai, devoted to Iran's contemporary culture. But its management refused to allow live vocal music during the event, nor a display of some posters based on the issue.

"The Forum management isn't censorship-minded", said an art critic, insisting on anonymity. (Nobody wants to be quoted in Iran for fear of harassment). "But it's being watched. If it's to keep the institution running, it must not say anything critical of the regime. It ends up practising self-censorship."

Opponents of self-censorship were offered an object-lesson last week. The authorities closed down Aban Street's cheerful "Café 78". This was the favourite haunt of radical students, who would chat animatedly about avant-garde art, music, culture, Che Guevara and politics.

Both events are part of a new drive by Iran's authorities to regiment individual conduct. There's a nationwide campaign against the wearing of skimpy headscarves by women. Such campaigns are customary at the beginning of summer.

Yet, the drive has generated great fear because it follows countless other repressive measures. These include detention of dozens of feminists for collecting one million signatures demanding gender balance in the Constitution. Schoolteachers have been arrested for agitating for higher pay.

Worse, secular teachers have been purged from universities. More than 110 pro-reform periodicals have been closed over six years.

The repression isn't a response to a particular threat. "It's part of 'regime maintenance'," says a political scientist. "Iran's hardliners don't want people, especially the youth, to feel free. The youth loathe regimentation. The hardliners cite the Constitution's "Islamic" values and vilayat-e-faqih (government guided by clerics) to enforce discipline."

True, this discipline isn't extreme. Iran is no "Taleban Lite" — a Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. Iranian Islam is more about ritual than rigid doctrine. Iranians interact closely with the West through their million-plus expatriates, the Internet, and consumption of American mass culture, including Hollywood, jeans and fast food. The mismatch between "regime maintenance" and popular aspirations to freedom produces duality. For instance, debate on "sensitive" subjects, including nuclear issues, is banned. But people discuss these in classrooms, buses, homes, and cafes.

Women "jump" communications barriers ingeniously — through dummy websites and blogs. (Iran has the world's third highest number of blogs.) Officially, liquor is a strict no-no. But it flows like water in Iran's living rooms.

Iran is one of the few West Asian countries which hold relatively free and fair elections. But Iran's democracy is deeply flawed, with restricted freedom of political association. Parties are registered only if they conform to Islamic tenets.

Freedom in this deeply paradoxical society has had many ups and downs. Today, it's badly threatened. Three factors will influence Iran's short-term evolution: President Ahmedinejad's growing unpopularity; the ability of reformists to counter the government's use of the current slogan, "Islam and the Nation"; and Iran's confrontation with the West, in particular, the US.

Ahmedinejad recently suffered several setbacks, including defeat of his nominees in local elections. His populist handouts have blown up the special fund financed by Iran's oil sales, estimated at $40 billion. He's considered unreliable and isn't fully trusted by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

If he's reined in by the Establishment—as happened during the recent British sailors' detention and release—the reformists will be strengthened and could exercise a restraining influence. The reformists' success will critically depend on preventing nationalism from being used as a self-legitimising hardline platform. Britain's adventurism on the sailors issue played straight into their hands. They drummed up national pride and won a public relations victory. Britain had to make a deal through clandestine talks.

Much will also depend on how the West deals with Iran's nuclear programme. The US is implacably hostile towards Iran, which it wrongly sees as an "evil", pro-terrorist state.

In fact, Iran is anti-Al Qaeda and behaves with restraint in Shia-majority Iraq despite its considerable influence there. Iran feels humiliated at the sanctions on it for running a nuclear programme which is legitimate—despite relatively minor infractions of International Atomic Energy Agency rules.

The more Iran is cornered over its nuclear activities, the more it'll be defiant — and make boastful claims about its uranium enrichment prowess. Iran is many years away from enriching enough uranium for a Bomb. Its facilities for uranium conversion into hexafluoride (Natanz) and its centrifuge plant (Isfahan) are under IAEA safeguards and cannot make weapons.

Contrary to the claim of installing 3,000 centrifuges, the IAEA says Iran has 1,300 primitive machines. It's unlikely that Iran has stabilised the centrifuges, which are extremely delicate and fragile. (Even India has had serious difficulties here.)

Worse, Natanz's uranium gas is too impure to lead to enrichment. IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei discounts Iran's claim to "industrial-scale" enrichment and says "Iran is still at the beginning stages".

This offers the US, UK, France and Germany an opportunity to negotiate nuclear restraint with Iran while not denying its right to enrichment for peaceful purposes. Iran is willing to talk. A way out is possible. But the US must muster the will to negotiate while abandoning ill-conceived plans to attack Iran.

Much of what happens to and in Iran will depend on the US—as in 1953, when it toppled Iran's first elected leader, and in 1979, when it courted the Revolution's hostility by backing the Shah.