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Tracing the Role of Technology in Iranian Politics: from the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to the Presidential Election of 2009
IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 21, Issue 4, Ver. 7 (Apr. 2016) PP 06-16 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.iosrjournals.org Tracing the Role of Technology in Iranian Politics: From the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to the Presidential Election of 2009 Dr. Farid M.S Al-Salim History Program . Department of Humanities . College of Arts and Sciences. Qatar University P.O Box 2713 Doha, Qatar Abstract: This paper will attempt to examine the question: Given the advances in technology, why did the 2009 election protest movement fail to accomplish any of their goals while the participations of the 1979 Revolution were able to succeed in accomplishing their expressed objective? This question will provide a simplified test to a common tenant of those that support the use of technology as a means of bringing about regime change: that advances in communication technology are diffusing power away from governments and toward individual citizens and non-state actors. In order to answer this question this paper will examine the role of technology as an enabling factor in both the 1979 revolution and 2009 election protests. A brief historical context of the 1979 and 2009 conflicts will be provided, followed by a short history about the use of the Internet in Iran and finally the concluding remarks. Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi was said to be “The Shah-in-Shah” or the King of Kings.1 The head of the Iranian government, son of Reza Shah and architect of the White Revolution, Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi would also be the final ruling monarch of Iran. -
The National Security Council and the Iran-Contra Affair
THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL AND THE IRAN- CONTRA AFFAIR Congressman Ed Jenkins* and Robert H. Brink** I. INTRODUCTION Early in November of 1986, newspapers in the United States carried the first reports that the United States government, in an effort to gain release of United States citizens held hostage by terrorists in Lebanon, had engaged in a covert policy of supplying arms to elements within Iran.' Later in that month, following a preliminary inquiry into the matter, it was revealed that some of the funds generated from those arms sales had been diverted to support the "Contra" 2 forces fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The events giving rise to these disclosures became known collectively as the "Iran-Contra Affair." Both elements of the affair raised serious questions regarding the formulation and conduct of our nation's foreign policy. In regard to the Iranian phase of the affair, the Regan administration's rhetoric had placed the administration firmly in op- position to any dealings with nations supporting terrorism, and with Iran in particular.' In addition, the United States had made significant * Member, United States House of Representatives, Ninth District of Georgia. LL.B., University of Georgia Law School, 1959. In 1987, Congressman Jenkins served as a member of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. ** Professional Staff Member, Committee on Government Operations, United States House of Representatives. J.D., Marshall-Wythe School of Law, College of William and Mary, 1978. In 1987, Mr. Brink served as a member of the associate staff of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. -
CJR - Iraqgate, by Russ W
CJR - Iraqgate, by Russ W. Baker March/April 1993 | Contents IRAQGATE The Big One That (Almost) Got Away Who Chased it -- and Who Didn't by Russ W. Baker Baker, a member of the adjunct faculty at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, is a free-lance writer who regularly contributes to The Village Voice. Research assistance was provided by Julie Asher in Washington and Daniel Eisenberg in New York. ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop. "It is becoming increasingly clear," said a grave Ted Koppel, "that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy." Is this accurate? Just about every reporter following the story thinks so. Most say that the so-called Iraqgate scandal is far more significant then either Watergate or Iran-contra, both in its scope and its consequences. And all believe that, with investigations continuing, it is bound to get bigger. Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage? Certainly, if you watched Nightline or read the London Financial Times or the Los Angeles Times, you saw this monster grow. But if you studied the news columns of The Washington Post or, especially, The New York Times, you practically missed the whole thing. Those two papers were very slow to come to the story and, when they finally did get to it, their pieces all too frequently were boring, complicated,and short of the analysis readers required to fathom just what was going on. -
Inform Our View of Iranian Contemporary Art
Layla M. Heidari ‘15 Middle East Studies // History of Art and Architecture HONORS THESIS FRAMING IRAN How ‘politics of perception’ inform our view of Iranian Contemporary Art Advisors: Sheila Bonde // Shiva Balaghi // Sarah Tobin Brown University-April 15, 2015 Heidari I would foremost like to thank the hospitable, caring and compassionate people in Iran without whom this project would not have been possible. Your strength, drive and outlook on life is truly unique and inspiring. Thank you for challenging me, educating me and enriching my life. I miss you all very much and I hope I made you proud. Be omideh didar! To my wonderful advisors Sheila Bonde, Shiva Balaghi and Sarah Tobin- thank you for sticking by me when things were looking grim and for believing in my project. We did it! Thank you to my friends, family and the Middle East Studies department at Brown University for your continued support throughout this process. Finally, I would like to pay a special tribute to the incredible country of Iran. May you continue to prosper and may the world come to fully appreciate your richness and beauty. 2 Heidari CONTENTS ABSTRACT 4 INTRODUCTION 6 PART I: INSIDE IRAN 14 Chapter 1: Art Institutions in Tehran ! Amir Ali Ghassemi, Interview ! Behzad Khosravi, Interview ! Case Study: Aaran Gallery ! Case Study: Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMOCA) ! Case Study: Ali Bakhtiari, Independent Curator Chapter 2: Artistic Practice Inside Iran 36 ! Case Study: Mariam Amini, Artist ! Case Study: Behrang Samadzadeghan, Artist PART II: FRAMING IRAN 51 Chapter 3: The 2009 Moment 56 ! The Green Movement of 2009 Chapter 4: Exhibiting Iran 63 ! Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East-Saatchi Gallery, London ! Iran Inside Out-Chelsea Museum of Art, NYC CONCLUSION 82 APPENDIX 86 WORKS CITED 102 3 Heidari ABSTRACT This paper will discuss the “exceptionality narrative” that is occurring in today’s discussion of Iranian contemporary art. -
Democratic Vanguardism
Democratic Vanguardism Modernity, Intervention, and the making of the Bush Doctrine Michael Harland A Thesis Submitted in Fulfillment of The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Department of History University of Canterbury 2013 For Francine Contents Acknowledgements 1 Abstract 3 Introduction 4 1. America at the Vanguard: Democracy Promotion and the Bush Doctrine 16 2. Assessing History’s End: Thymos and the Post-Historic Life 37 3. The Exceptional Nation: Power, Principle and American Foreign Policy 55 4. The “Crisis” of Liberal Modernity: Neoconservatism, Relativism and Republican Virtue 84 5. An “Intoxicating Moment:” The Rise of Democratic Globalism 123 6. The Perfect Storm: September 11 and the coming of the Bush Doctrine 159 Conclusion 199 Bibliography 221 1 Acknowledgements Over the three years I spent researching and writing this thesis, I have received valuable advice and support from a number of individuals and organisations. My supervisors, Peter Field and Jeremy Moses, were exemplary. As my senior supervisor, Peter provided a model of a consummate historian – lively, probing, and passionate about the past. His detailed reading of my work helped to hone the thesis significantly. Peter also allowed me to use his office while he was on sabbatical in 2009. With a library of over six hundred books, the space proved of great use to an aspiring scholar. Jeremy Moses, meanwhile, served as the co-supervisor for this thesis. His research on the connections between liberal internationalist theory and armed intervention provided much stimulus for this study. Our discussions on the present trajectory of American foreign policy reminded me of the continuing pertinence of my dissertation topic. -
Introduction
NOTES Introduction 1. Robert Kagan to George Packer. Cited in Packer’s The Assassin’s Gate: America In Iraq (Faber and Faber, London, 2006): 38. 2. Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004): 9. 3. Critiques of the war on terror and its origins include Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana (Routledge, New York and London, 2004); Francis Fukuyama, After the Neocons: America At the Crossroads (Profile Books, London, 2006); Ira Chernus, Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin (Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO and London, 2006); and Jacob Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (Doubleday, New York, 2008). 4. A report of the PNAC, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, September 2000: 76. URL: http:// www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf (15 January 2009). 5. On the first generation on Cold War neoconservatives, which has been covered far more extensively than the second, see Gary Dorrien, The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture and the War of Ideology (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1993); Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America’s Politics (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979); Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2005); Murray Friedman ed. Commentary in American Life (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2005); Mark Gerson, The Neoconservative Vision: From the Cold War to the Culture Wars (Madison Books, Lanham MD; New York; Oxford, 1997); and Maria Ryan, “Neoconservative Intellectuals and the Limitations of Governing: The Reagan Administration and the Demise of the Cold War,” Comparative American Studies, Vol. -
Neoconservatives Among Us? Astudy of Former Dissidents' Discourse
43 L 62 Neoconservatives Among Us? A Study of Former Dissidents’ Discourse* JENI SCHALLER Abstract: Neoconservative political thought has been characterized as “distinctly American”, but could there be fertile ground for its basic tenets in post-communist Europe? This paper takes an initial look at the acceptance of the ideas of American neo- conservative foreign policy among Czech elites who were dissidents under the communist regime. Open-ended, semi-structured interviews with eight former dissidents were con- ducted and then analyzed against a background of some fundamental features of neocon- servative foreign policy. Discourse analysis is the primary method of examination of the texts. Although a coherent discourse among Czech former dissidents cannot be said to ex- ist, certain aspects reminiscent of American neoconservative thought were found. Key words: neoconservatism, Czech dissidents, foreign policy, discourse analysis I. INTRODUCTION Neoconservatism, as a strain of political thought in the United States, has been represented as “distinctly American” and Irving Kristol, often considered the “godfather” of neoconservatism, emphatically states “[t]here is nothing like neoconservatism in Europe” (Kristol 2003: 33). Analyst Jeffrey Gedmin writes that the “environment for neoconservatism as such is an inhospitable one” in Europe, especially Germany (Gedmin 2004: 291). The states of Cen- tral Europe, in contrast to many of the established continental EU members, represent a rather more pro-American stance. With groups of former dissi- dents whose political leanings are in part informed by the American anti- communist, pro-democracy policies of the 1970s and 1980s, could there be a more hospitable environment for neoconservative ideas in a Central Euro- pean state such as the Czech Republic? The Czech dissident community was not as extensive or well-organised as that in Poland or even Hungary, largely due to the post-1968 “normalisation” in Czechoslovakia. -
Khomeini's Face Is in the Moon
Khomeini’s Face is in the Moon Limitations of Sacredness and the Origins of Sovereignty Olmo Gölz Introduction During the course of the year 1978, the person of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini1 became regarded as the leading figure of the Iranian Revolution who “ultimately engineered the downfall of the Pahlavi monarchy”.2 From his exile, first in Iraq and since September 1978 in France, he maintained his grasp on the events in Iran through his local network and developed a distinct charismatic, if not messi- anic appeal – so that the later success of the revolution was closely associated with both the abscondence of the detested Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in January 1979 and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran some days later, culminating in the public opinion that the Shah had left by the force of the Ayatollah.3 In his persuasive evaluation of the source and significance of Ayatollah Khomeini’s charisma during the Iranian Revolution of 1977–1979, the political scientist Daniel Brumberg came to the conclusion that the revolutionary leader’s gravity drew on a rather multi-faceted foundation.4 On the one hand, the Ayatol- lah’s example would validate Hannah Arendt’s theory that mass leaders tend to use the notion of infallibility as a propaganda effect and therefore often an- nounce “their political intentions in the form of prophecy”.5 In this regard, cha- risma is explained as the effect of deliberate use of cultural symbols by elites,6 and Brumberg admits that Khomeini grasped this logic, for example, when in 1978 he publicly legitimized out of exile the deviant actions of his followers as the fulfil- ment of a divine prophecy. -
Iran's Nuclear Ambitions From
IDENTITY AND LEGITIMACY: IRAN’S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS FROM NON- TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVES Pupak Mohebali Doctor of Philosophy University of York Politics June 2017 Abstract This thesis examines the impact of Iranian elites’ conceptions of national identity on decisions affecting Iran's nuclear programme and the P5+1 nuclear negotiations. “Why has the development of an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle been portrayed as a unifying symbol of national identity in Iran, especially since 2002 following the revelation of clandestine nuclear activities”? This is the key research question that explores the Iranian political elites’ perspectives on nuclear policy actions. My main empirical data is elite interviews. Another valuable source of empirical data is a discourse analysis of Iranian leaders’ statements on various aspects of the nuclear programme. The major focus of the thesis is how the discourses of Iranian national identity have been influential in nuclear decision-making among the national elites. In this thesis, I examine Iranian national identity components, including Persian nationalism, Shia Islamic identity, Islamic Revolutionary ideology, and modernity and technological advancement. Traditional rationalist IR approaches, such as realism fail to explain how effective national identity is in the context of foreign policy decision-making. I thus discuss the connection between national identity, prestige and bargaining leverage using a social constructivist approach. According to constructivism, states’ cultures and identities are not established realities, but the outcomes of historical and social processes. The Iranian nuclear programme has a symbolic nature that mingles with socially constructed values. There is the need to look at Iran’s nuclear intentions not necessarily through the lens of a nuclear weapons programme, but rather through the regime’s overall nuclear aspirations. -
Supplemental Statement
Received bv NSD/FARA Registration Unit 12/30/2019 11:55:09 AM OMB NO. 1124-0002; Expires February 28, 2014 U.S. Department of Justice Supplemental Statement Washington, dc 20530 Pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended For Six Month Period Ending Nov 30, 2019 (Insert date) I - REGISTRANT 1. (a) Name of Registrant (b) Registration No. National Council of Resistance of iran-US Rep Offi 6171 (c) Business Address(es) of Registrant 1747 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 1125 Washington, DC 20006 2. Has there been a change in the information previously furnished in connection with the following? (a) If an individual: (1) Residence address(es) Yes □ No H (2) Citizenship Yes □ No 53 (3) Occupation Yes □ No IS (b) If an organization: (1) Name Yes □ No E3 (2) Ownership or control Yes □ No H (3) Branch offices Yes □ No ® (c) Explain fully all changes, if any, indicated in Items (a) and (b) above. IF THE REGISTRANT IS AN INDIVIDUAL, OMIT RESPONSE TO ITEMS 3,4, AND 5(a). 3. If you have previously filed Exhibit C1, state whether any changes therein have occurred during this 6 month reporting period. Yes □ No 0 If yes, have you filed an amendment to the Exhibit C? Yes □ No □ If no, please attach the required amendment. 1 The Exhibit C, for which no printed form is provided, consists of a true copy of the charter, articles of incorporation, association, and by laws of a registrant that is an organization. (A waiver of the requirement to file an Exhibit C may be obtained for good cause upon written application to the Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division, U.S. -
Notes on Iran-Contra Investigation: Summary of Oliver North's Testimony, July 7-10 Deborah Tyroler
University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository NotiCen Latin America Digital Beat (LADB) 7-22-1987 Notes On Iran-contra Investigation: Summary Of Oliver North's Testimony, July 7-10 Deborah Tyroler Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/noticen Recommended Citation Tyroler, Deborah. "Notes On Iran-contra Investigation: Summary Of Oliver North's Testimony, July 7-10." (1987). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/noticen/790 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Latin America Digital Beat (LADB) at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in NotiCen by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LADB Article Id: 076375 ISSN: 1089-1560 Notes On Iran-contra Investigation: Summary Of Oliver North's Testimony, July 7-10 by Deborah Tyroler Category/Department: General Published: Wednesday, July 22, 1987 The main points of fired National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver North's testimony before the House and Senate select committees are summarized below: * North said he did nothing in his 5-1/2 years on the NSC staff that had not been approved by his superiors. He protested the implications of others that he had been, as he put it, "a loose cannon on the gun deck of state at the NSC." "I haven't in the 23 years that I have been in the uniformed services of the USA ever violated an order, not one," he said. * Although no one explicitly told him so, he said, he "assumed" throughout that Reagan had known about all of his activities including the diversion of profits from the Iran arms sales to the contras. -
Iran's “Second” Islamic Revolution
IRAN’S “SECOND” ISLAMIC REVOLUTION: ITS CHALLENGE TO THE WEST Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira and Daniel Diker Iranian President Mahmoud The ideological engine powering the Iranian re- via what is known in the West as “Gog and Magog” Ahmadinejad delivers gime’s race for regional supremacy is among the events is driven by his spiritual fealty to the fun- a speech on the 18th more misunderstood – and ignored – aspects of damentalist Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi anniversary of the death Iran’s political and military activity in the Middle and the messianic Hojjatiyeh organization. These of the late revolutionary East. Particularly since the election of Mahmoud religious convictions have propelled the regime founder Ayatollah Khomeini, Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2005, Iran’s revo- toward an end-of-days scenario that Khomeini had under his portrait, at his 3 mausoleum just outside lutionary leadership has thrust the Islamic Republic sought to avoid. Tehran, Iran, June 3, 2007. into the throes of what has been called a “Second 1 Hard-line Ahmadinejad said Islamic Revolution.” In its basic form, this revolu- Iran’s Second Islamic Revolution is distinguishing the world would witness the tion seeks a return to the principles of former Ira- itself from the original Islamic Revolution in other destruction of Israel soon, nian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 important ways: Iran is not only spreading its pow- the official Islamic Republic Islamic Revolution, which was based on: destroy- er in the region by reaching out to Shiite communi- News Agency reported. ing Israel – “the Little Satan” – as a symbol of the ties such as in Iraq and Lebanon, the regime is also United States, “the Great Satan;”2 exporting the actively cooperating with Sunni terror groups in an Islamic revolution domestically and against Arab effort to solicit support from the Sunni Arab street “apostate” governments in the region, and forc- over the heads of established Arab governments.