The revolution strikes back A special report on Iran l July 21st 2007 Artist CREDIT if required Republication, copying or redistribution by any means is expressly prohibited without the prior written permission of The Economist The Economist July 21st 2007 A special report on Iran 1 The revolution strikes back Also in this section Men of principle Iran’s neoconservatives and their white coup. Page 3 Bombs away A suitable case for pre-emption? Page 6 The big squeeze But sanctions are not yet painful enough to change Iran’s nuclear policy. Page 8 Only engage The case for a grand bargain. Page 11 The verdict of Qom Theory and practice. Page 12 Khomeini’s children An uncompromising Iran and an uncomprehending America may be stumbling to war, says Peter David Not happy, but probably not eager to become Westernised either. Page 14 T IS Friday prayers in Tehran. Several to its present policy Iran will not have ne- Iblocks around the university and Pales- gotiations with it. Now, before the main tine and Revolution Squares have been sermon, comes the warm-up. A speaker closed to trac, as they are every week at denounces Islam’s foes. Shame on you Is- this time. Throughout the morning lines of rael, down with Israel, the seated throng soldiers in khaki and Revolutionary bellows in response, sts pumping in un- Guards in green have been ling into a vast ison. Death to America. hangar. Knots of civilians stroll up in the The prayer leader takes his place be- sun. From within, loudspeakers squawk hind a lectern. In one hand he holds a gun, sermons and bursts of martial music. to represent the sword of Islam. He then re- This week happens also to be the 25th cites in a tremulous voice the lamentation anniversary of the liberation of Khorram- for the Shias’ rst-century martyr, Imam shahr, a bloody Iranian victory during the Ali. At this the assembled worshippers cra- eight-year imposed war against Iraq. All dle their heads and sob, shoulders heaving week footage of the ghting has been with sudden grief. The preacher then takes broadcast on television, even lling the a sip of water, signalling that this morn- half-time gap in the European football cup ing’s main political messagewhich will nal between AC Milan and Liverpool be preached at similar meetings in all of (which soccer-mad Iranians watched Iran’s citiesis about to be delivered. avidly). The Iran-Iraq war cost Iran hun- Today’s theme is a forthcoming meet- dreds of thousands of lives, helping to con- ing in Baghdad between Iranian and Acknowledgments Besides those mentioned in the text, the author would like solidate the very revolution Saddam Hus- American diplomats, the rst formal direct to thank the following for their time, help and insights: Ak- sein had foolishly attacked. Posters of the contact after decades during which nei- bar Alami, Mohammad Atriafar, Patrick Clawson, Richard martyrs still adorn the streets of Tehran. ther country has been willing to talk to the Dalton, Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Mehran Ghassemi, Bijan Khajehpour, Afshin Molavi, Karim Sadjapour, Barbara Sla- Inside the hangar tens of thousands of other. The preacher is at pains to explain vin and Hamid-Reza Taraqqi. men (the women are screened out of sight) that Iran is not showing weakness. That sit in rows on prayer rugs. At the front un- carnivorous wolf is not of the type to enter A list of sources is at der a podium is much of the country’s tur- negotiations, he says of America. Amer- www.economist.com/specialreports baned political leadership. Also present is ica is only after securing its own hege- General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the com- mony. Isn’t America the axis of evil? mander of the Revolutionary Guards, Wasn’t refusing to talk to America a princi- An audio interview with the author is at which wrested control of the war from ple of the blessed Ayatollah Khomeini? www.economist.com/audio what had been left of the shah’s army and There will be no departing from principle, has exercised growing inuence in Iran he says. All that has happened is that Iraq’s A country brieng on Iran is at ever since. Under the podium a green ban- government has asked for help. And all www.economist.com/iran ner proclaims: So long as America sticks Iran will do is insist that as Iraq’s occupiers1 2 A special report on Iran The Economist July 21st 2007 2 the Americans are responsible for the CD on which they can look up who is dent Ahmadinejad would be more dan- mayhem there. We can with most cer- thought to be investing what in Iran. Why? gerous still. Would he consider using tacti- tainty announce today that the United Because, says Danielle Pletka, an AEI vice- cal nuclear weapons against Iran? You States has become the obvious manifesta- president, people need to understand that can’t rule out anything. John McCain re- tion of the axis of evil in the region, he de- between (a) doing nothing about Iran and cently broke into song, intoning bomb- claims. The seated throng roars its assent. (c) dropping a bomb on it is a third pos- bomb-bomb bomb-bomb Iran to the sibility, (b), of inicting economic pain un- tune of a Beach Boys song. The audience in America til the mullahs change their ways. This Alongside the work of the think-tanks Tehran’s Friday prayers are broadcast all week too Dick Cheney pipes up from the and the warnings and ditties of the politi- over Iran and around the world. The ery deck of USS John Stennis, one of the addi- cians comes a drumbeat of alarming slogans of the worshippers reinforce the tional aircraft carriers America has sent to newspaper articles. In the Wall Street Jour- scary fanaticism outsiders have come to the Persian Gulf. The vice-president says nal, Norman Podhoretz, a hero of the neo- associate with the Islamic Republic since America will stand with our friends to conservatives, concludes in an op-ed Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution more stop Iran getting nuclear weapons and piece: The plain and brutal truth is that if than a quarter of a century ago. And no- dominating this region. Iran is to be prevented from developing a where in the world do Tehran’s morning Some say that Mr Cheney is the last nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to prayers have a more attentive audience hawk standing in the Bush administration. the actual use of military forceany more than in the capital of the United States. But anxiety about Iran’s nuclear inten- than there was an alternative to force if For all its problems in Iraq, America is tions stretches right across American poli- Hitler was to be stopped in 1938. also xated on Iran. In 2005 George Bush tics. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of promised that he would stop the world’s state, claims that America faces no greater The audience in Iran most dangerous men from getting their challenge from a single country than from Is that really where things stand with hands on the world’s most dangerous Iran. And most of the presidential candi- Irana new Hitler and a new 1938? Look weapons. That same year a brash former dates for 2008 are talking equally tough. again at Tehran’s Friday prayers. One thing mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadine- Hillary Clinton favours opening a dip- a visitor notices at once is how little con- jad, won a surprise victory in Iran’s presi- lomatic track with Iran. John Edwards nection this stage-managed event has with dential elections. Since then he has done supports a non-aggression pact. Barack the everyday life of the bustling metropo- his level best to look like one of the world’s Obama says it would be a profound mis- lis around it. Even the audience, squatting most dangerous men. take to start a war. But neither Mrs Clinton in serried ranks beyond the dignitaries, President Ahmadinejad took over from nor Mr Edwards nor Mr Obama rules out looks untypical. a middle-aged cleric, Muhammad Kha- force if Iran persists with its nuclear plans. Iran is a young country (see chart): two tami. As president, the mild, bespectacled For Rudy Giuliani, the Republican out of three people are below the age of 30. Mr Khatami had pushed for liberal re- front-runner, a military strike would be On the streets of auent north Tehran, forms at home and talked reassuringly to very dangerous, but nuclear arms in the young people dress in the latest fashions the outside world about Iran’s desire for a control of an irrational person like Presi- even if the jeans-clad women are obliged dialogue of civilisations. The new presi- by law to wear the Islamic headscarf (the dent, a former Revolutionary Guard and a hijab). The audience at prayers, however, is Holocaust-denying demagogue, does not A young country 1 older: shabbily dressed men well into their do reassurance. Since his election Iran has Population, m 40s, regime stalwarts who have trekked deed the UN Security Council’s orders to uphill from the poor southern suburbs. 80 stop enriching uranium, threatened Which is the true Iranthe consumer- 70 repeatedly to make Israel disappear and oriented young, bored by the slogans of a 60 declared war on Iran’s internal reformists. long-ago revolution and impatient to 50 Switch to a typical week in Washing- move on? Or the regime faithful chorusing 40 ton, DC, just before those Friday prayers.