Post-election Iran faces turning point, journalist Wright says
Posted By Katherine Johnson On September 10, 2009 @ 12:32 pm In Davidson and the World,Davidson College | Comments Disabled
Robin Wright speaks at Davidson College. (Bill Giduz photo)
By KATHERINE JOHNSON
DavidsonNews.net
People worldwide may be disappointed that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remains in office after this summer’s fraud-ridden-election, but Iran is at a critical turning point, facing a severe challenge to its 30-year-old Islamic Revolution, journalist Robin Wright said Wednesday night at Davidson College.
Thanks to news coverage of post-election protests, “the outside world sees Iranians to root for and people we can identify with,” Ms. Wright said in lecture at Duke Family Performance Hall.
The acclaimed journalist, foreign affairs analyst and author was the opening speaker in this year’s Dean Rusk International Studies Program lecture series at the college.
Ms. Wright also believes shock waves from last summer’s political tumult in Iran have reverberated through the rest of the Muslim world, as Iran’s protesters “are applauded with envy” by those living in other authoritarian Islamic regimes, Ms. Wright said.
Dean Rusk Director Dr. Chris Alexander introduced Ms. Wright, who has written about Iran and other international issues for publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time, won accolades including the United Nations Correspondents Associations Gold Medal, and appeared on such programs as CBS’s “Face the Nation” and CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
Those in attendance ranged from faculty members and Davidson residents who watched the 1970s Islamic Revolution and the Iranian hostage crisis unfold on television, to Davidson students only familiar with those events thanks to parents and history professors.
Ms. Wright began her talk by asking, “Why should we care about Iran?” As it turns out, the reasons are many, she said.
Iran has been “the nemesis of 5 American presidents,” from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, and “could be what decides (President Barack) Obama’s legacy, even more than Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Ms. Wright said.
WAR WOULD BE DIFFICULT
President Obama has the unenviable task of using diplomacy to halt Iran’s nuclear program, while simultaneously refraining from lending political legitimacy to President Ahmadinejad, Ms. Wright said.
She swiftly dismissed the idea of going to war with Iran over its nuclear program. “You thought the Iraq war was difficult? Try going to war with Iran,” Ms. Wright said in response to an audience member’s question following the lecture.
Ms. Wright spent most of her lecture addressing last summer’s contested Presidential elections that pitted reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi against President Ahmadinejad, who was supported by the hard-line, traditionalist, puritan Islamist forces of the country. Mr. Mousavi’s supporters mostly were youth who supported freedom of the press, freedom of speech, opening up the economy and increasing women’s rights. Mr. Mousavi’s wife, especially, brought women’s rights to the forefront of the reformists’ rhetoric, and she was viewed as “the Michelle Obama of Iran,” Ms. Wright said, drawing laughter from her audience.
When Ms. Wright visited Iran the March before the presidential election, she “felt a sense that Iran was about to blow” and that “Ahmadinejad was going to lose.” But he did not lose the fraudulent election, and millions of youth took to the streets of Tehran in displays “of peaceful civil disobedience.”
The Iranian government barred journalists from the country, but protesters on the streets of Tehran used sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to share photos and videos of the often violent standoffs between protesters and the “religious vigilantes paid by the state to turn against Iran’s own citizens,” Ms. Wright said.
A poignant moment of the evening came when Ms. Wright showed pictures of the tragic death of Neda, a young woman who was shot by a government sniper on the streets of Tehran. The video became a rallying cry for protesters and has been viewed on YouTube “tens of millions of times,” she said.
Wright thinks recent political unrest has set the stage for a fundamental change in Iranian politics. For now, President Ahmadinejad’s “regime will hold, but the long-term winds of change are blowing.”
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#1 Pingback By IRAN NEWS DIGEST On September 10, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
Link from Iran News Digest website: “We are a big fan of Ms. Robin Wright. She gave a speech Wednesday night at Davidson College. Ms. Wright began her talk by asking, “Why should we care about Iran?” As it turns out, the […]
#2 Comment By jmkimmel On September 11, 2009 @ 5:55 pm
Robin Wright’s talk – and pictures – meshed well with a speaker who came a couple of years ago. The government’s predicament is made worse not only by the very large young population, which she mentioned, but more important, the economy is not diversified enough to give them jobs. Iran imports gasoline because the infrastructure is so minimal, and in any case, oil does not provide the kinds of jobs needed to put their educated people to work. Iran, with or without a nuclear weapon (one) needs all kinds of economic development to really be what they want to be – the leader of the Islamic countries. This is another case where our needs can be met without war.
#3 Comment By Dave Kimble On September 13, 2009 @ 5:25 pm
Questioning Mousavi
Robin Wright fails to mention that the “reformist candidate” for Iranian President, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was the lynchpin at the Iranian end of the Iran-Contra scandal back in 1985-6, and as such has shown himself to be capable of arms-dealing with “the Great Satan” while at the same time publicly slandering them. Such duplicitous behaviour is unlikely to convince many that he really cares about human rights and democracy.
Wright’s support for Mousavi underlines the Iranian claims that the US is busily trying to bring about regime change through military and economic means, as well as propaganda and soft revolution. The propaganda comes from the pen of Wright in the mainstream media, and the subversion comes from organizations like the Wilson Center, a CIA front where Wright works as a “Public Policy Scholar”. The Director of the Wilson Centre’s Middle East desk is Haleh Esfandiari, who was arrested in Iran in 2007 for espionage and released after making a confession video.
Wright knows full well that the US Government isn’t interested in human rights for Iranians either – any more than they care about human rights for Palestinians, Saudi Arabians or Egyptians.
What the US is really interested in is made clear in a paper by Wright and Shaul Bakhash (husband of Esfandiari) in 1997, “The U.S. and Iran: An Offer They Can’t Refuse?” which points out :
Besides, Iran is a country that the United States can no longer afford to ignore. There are simply too many vital interests at stake. Economically, Iran’s gas reserves are second in the world, and its significant oil resources make it a pivotal player in the energy markets. Before the 1979 revolution, the United States was one of the Islamic Republic’s top three trading partners—a relationship that supported thousands of U.S. jobs and $2.7 billion in annual export revenues for America. Up until the early 1990s, the United States was still among the top five purchasers of Iranian oil. Today, Iran represents a potentially important market for American goods and technology, particularly in the oil, aviation, and computer industries, which could again produce billions of dollars of income. Iran also offers some of the most economically viable transit routes for oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia and the Caucasus, now freed from Soviet control.
Iran may object to the American military presence in the Persian Gulf, but it must recognize that the United States has legitimate interests to protect–most notably, safeguarding the flow of oil and enforcing sanctions against Saddam Hussein.
… the U.S. government could lift legal restraints to allow U.S. companies to tranship Iranian oil to Europe, help to develop Iran’s oil and gas facilities, or sell oil-drilling equipment to Iran–projects that generate jobs and income for Americans.
Yes, the real interest in Iran lies with its oil, pipeline routes and markets for US exports, not in human rights. The youth on the streets of Tehran will learn a bitter lesson indeed if the soft revolution ever occurs, just as the color revolutions of Georgia, Kosovo and Ukraine were never about human rights or the wishes of the people in the streets.
Dave Kimble
The writer lives in Queensland, Australia, and runs a website called Peak Oil Australia, http://www.peakoil.org.au