Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 Drugs Politics Iran has one of the world’s highest rates of drug addiction, estimated to be between two and seven per cent of the entire population. This makes the questions this book asks all the more salient: what is the place of illegal substances in the politics of modern Iran? How have drugs affected the formation of the Iranian state and its power dynamics? And how have governmental attempts at controlling and regulating illicit drugs affected drug consumption and addiction? By answering these questions, Maziyar Ghiabi suggests that the Islamic Republic’s image as an inherently conservative state is not only misplaced and inaccurate, but in part a myth. In order to dispel this myth, he skilfully combines ethnographic narratives from drug users, vivid field observations from ‘under the bridge’, with archival material from the pre- and post-revolutionary era, statistics on drug arrests and interviews with public officials. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core at doi.org/10.1017/ 9781108567084. MAZIYAR GHIABI is an Italian/Iranian social scientist, ethnographer and historian, currently a lecturer at the University of Oxford and Titular Lecturer at Wadham College. Prior to this position, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paris School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) and a member of the Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire des Enjeux Sociaux (IRIS). After finishing his BA and MA at the University of Ca’ Foscari Venice, he obtained a Doctorate in Politics at the University of Oxford (St Antony’s College) where he was a Wellcome Trust Scholar in Society and Ethics (2013–17). His interest falls at the crossroads of different disciplinary and intellectual fields, from medical anthropology to politics to modern social history across the Middle East and the Mediterranean. He is the editor of Power and Illicit Drugs in the Global South (Routledge, 2018). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 Drugs Politics Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran maziyar ghiabi University of Oxford Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108475457 DOI: 10.1017/9781108567084 © Maziyar Ghiabi 2019 This work is in copyright. It is subject to statutory exceptions and to the provisions of relevant licensing agreements; with the exception of the Creative Commons version the link for which is provided below, no reproduction of any part of this work may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. An online version of this work is published at doi.org/10.1017/9781108567084 under a Creative Commons Open Access license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 which permits re-use, distribution and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial purposes providing appropriate credit to the original work is given. You may not distribute derivative works without permission. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 All versions of this work may contain content reproduced under license from third parties. Permission to reproduce this third-party content must be obtained from these third-parties directly. When citing this work, please include a reference to the DOI 10.1017/9781108567084 First published 2019 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ghiabi, Maziyar, 1986– author. Title: Drugs politics : managing disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran / Maziyar Ghiabi. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019001098 | ISBN 9781108475457 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Drug control – Iran. | Drug abuse – Iran. | Drug abuse – Government policy – Iran. Classification: LCC HV5840.I68 G48 2019 | DDC 362.29/15610955–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019001098 ISBN 978-1-108-47545-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Every effort has been made to contact the relevant copyright holders for the images reproduced in this book. In the event of any error, the publisher will be pleased to make corrections in any reprints or future editions. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 In memoriam Massimo Riva, javanmard, for his love of living simply ﺑﻮﺩ ﺩﺭﺩ ﻣﻮ ﻭ ﺩﺭﻣﺎﻧﻢ ﺍﺯ ﺩﻭﺳﺖ ﺑﻮﺩ ﻭﺻﻞ ﻣﻮ ﻭ ﻫﺠﺮﺍﻧﻢ ﺍﺯ ﺩﻭﺳﺖ ﺍﮔﺮ ﻗﺼﺎﺑﻢ ﺍﺯ ﺗﻦ ﻭﺍﮐﺮﻩ ﭘﻮﺳﺖ ﺟﺪﺍ ﻫﺮﮔﺰ ﻧﮕﺮﺩﺩ ﺟﺎﻧﻢ ﺍﺯ ﺩﻭﺳﺖ My pain and my cure is from the friend. My closeness and my distance is from the friend. Should the butcher peel off my skin from my body, My soul will never depart from the friend. Baba Taher-e Oryan Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 Contents Acknowledgements page ix List of Figures xiii List of Tables xv Note on Transliteration xvi Persian Glossary xvii English Glossary xix Prologue 1 ‘Not the King but the Minister ...Not the Law but the Police ...’ 3 1 The Drug Assemblage 16 Part One 33 2 A Genealogy of Drugs Politics: Opiates under the Pahlavi 35 3 Drugs, Revolution, War 71 4 Reformism and Drugs: Formal and Informal Politics of Harm Reduction 98 Interregnum 137 5 Crisis as an Institution: The Expediency Council 139 Part Two 163 6 The Anthropological Mutation of Methamphetamines 165 7 The Art of Managing Disorder 189 8 Drugs and Populism: Ahmadinejad and Grassroots Authoritarianism 232 vii Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 viii Contents Epilogue 267 Power, Crisis, Drugs 269 Select Bibliography 289 Index 323 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 25 Sep 2021 at 15:35:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558 Acknowledgements The Wellcome Trust provided the funding for my doctoral research under the Society & Ethics Doctoral Scholarship [Grant no. WT10988MA], which is the basis of this book. It did so within an intellectual framework and academic vision that is rare in today’s funding landscape, especially for works related to Iran and the Middle East, where geopolitical interests overshadow any intellectual curiosity. Without this support, I would have not achieved my degree and this research would have not been written. I am also grateful to the team at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where I spent a beautiful eventful year as a postdoctoral fellow. Their humanistic kindness and intellectual overtures provided a stimulating, open-minded environment which made this book a less painstaking journey. I look forward to collaborating with them in the years ahead. My fieldwork and primary research owes much to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime where I worked as an intern in Summer 2012.