The Iranian Exodus

IRANIAN UNREST: Iran has announced that it will try three Americans jailed July for crossing the border from Iraq -- a step certain to aggravate the U.S. at a time when Tehran is locked in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program. International negotiators are debating new, tougher sanctions against Iran in Europe. In Bangkok, a plane from North Korea loaded with arms thought to be headed for Iran has been seized. Iranian backed Shiite guerillas operating out of Yemen attacked Saudi Arabia border posts this week. Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to join his pals, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe in Copenhagen next week to hyperventilate on global warming. Business as usual? Hardly.

By Dennis Mullin

Conventional wisdom is that the Mullahs in Iran keep thumbing their noses at the international community with impunity and that there is nothing anyone can do about it. The Washington pundit class widely dismisses the protests against the regime by Iran’s young people as a nuisance propagated by spoiled kids. They haggle endlessly about the internecine conflicts and jockeying for power among the ruling Mullah elite. But look beneath the surface and there is a lot going on in Iran that does not portend well for either Ahmadinejad or his theocratic backers.

PROTESTS: The protest movement erupted last June when the results of the Presidential election were widely regarded as rigged in Ahmadinejad’s favor. But weeks of street protests were blacked out on the national media and slowly faded from the public consciousness. But they are going on still, and in fact are spreading from Teheran to the regional universities throughout the country. Have a look at Twitter or Facebook and you will see a steady stream of protests occurring with greater regularity.

We noted in the posting here on July 22 (CYBER REVOLUTION), that, “we shouldn’t forget that the revolution against the Shah built in momentum over several months, before coming to a head. Then President Jimmy Carter (bungling his way as usual through the geopolitical China shop) visited Tehran and gave the Shah his full backing on New Year’s Day 1979 – and the Shah was on a plane into exile just six weeks later on Feb. 11.”

STRIKING: “Some 60 percent of the Iranian population is under the age of 30, and unemployment is near 25 percent. They don’t even remember the Shah. The most striking first online impression is that there is very little mention of religion in any of the chatter. One says: `Who won the election is irrelevant, this is about whom is shooting innocent people.’ Another says `No Mullahs are Acceptable.’”

The postings certainly indicate that these protesters are in for the long haul and want more than cosmetic reforms. They range from instructions on how to deal with tear gas, to how to obstruct security forces, to stockpiling medical supplies and water and gas cylinders in anticipation of power outages, to blocking the airport road to prevent President Ahmadinejad from escaping to exile in Russia.”

There are concerns in the U.S. that the threat to try the American hikers could be used by Iran as bargaining chips in talks over its nuclear programs. But beyond that, consider some of the other developments that have occurred in recent weeks. There are now credible reports that at least two senior Iranian nuclear scientists have defected to Saudi Arabia, the first such acknowledgement by the regime.

COUNTER CHARGES: Ahmadinejad claimed last month that the U.S. was holding several Iranian citizens. He drew a link between the case of the three Americans and the trial in the U.S. of Amir Hossein Ardebili, an Iranian who faces up to 140 years in prison after pleading guilty to plotting to ship sensitive U.S. military technology to Iran.

According to court papers, Ardebili worked as a procurement agent for the Iranian government and acquired thousands of components, including military aircraft parts, night vision devices, communications equipment and Kevlar. U.S. federal authorities targeted him in 2004 after he contacted an undercover storefront set up in Philadelphia to investigate illegal arms trafficking.

NO MERCY: Iranian authorities have also arrested several people accused of destroying photos of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic's revered founder,  and the current leading Mullahs at student demonstrations. Tehran's prosecutor promised to show "no mercy" to those responsible.

In demonstrations on university campuses last week, supporters of Iran's pro-reform opposition movement burned and trampled on pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They oppose him for backing hard-line President Ahmadinejad's disputed June re-election, which the opposition says was rigged. Reformists, including opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, maintain their supporters had nothing to do with the burning of Khomeini's picture, which they say is being used by the regime to discredit the opposition.

But in last week's demonstrations, tens of thousands of students protested for two days on campuses in the capital, Tehran, and other parts of the country. There were also a number of demonstrations outside of campuses. They were the largest anti-government rallies in months, sparking violence as hard-line students and paramilitary Basij forces scuffled with protesters.

EVOKING THE SHAH: During the Dec. 7 rallies, student protesters shouted, "Death to the oppressor, whether it's the shah or the leader!" — making a daring comparison between Khamenei and the pro-U.S. shah, despised in Iran since his 1979 overthrow. A defiant Mousavi vowed Monday to continue protests against the ruling system, saying the use of force has not and won't resolve the crisis.

"After the election, people asked, ‘where is my vote?’” he said. “If people's questions had been addressed and violence had not been used, we would have not seen taboo-shattering moves." He accused authorities of sending hard-liners armed with sticks and disguised as students to Tehran University to crush the protests there.

"They send non-students with batons and sticks to the university and call them students. Then, they say students threw tear gas at each other. This is nothing but deception. At least be sincere and say (authorities) sent forces to confront protests," he said.

CHADORS: Now another new anti-government movement has sprung up among protesters in Iran -- and even among their supporters in other countries -- with men posting pictures of themselves on the Internet wearing women's head scarves as a political statement. The movement began in recent days as an online backlash after the arrest of one anti-government protester, Majid Tavakoli.

The day after his arrest, an Iranian news agency published a picture of Tavakoli dressed in a chador, a black head-to-toe garment worn by Iranian women. The government claimed the man had been caught wearing the garment in an attempt to hide himself and avoid arrest, but opposition bloggers insisted that the photo published by the semi-official Fars news agency had been manipulated. Within hours of the Fars report on the arrest of the 22-year-old protester, men both inside and outside Iran responded using the new tactic -- they began posting pictures of themselves online wearing head coverings that are mandated for women in the Islamic republic.

VIDEOS: Meanwhile the videos keep showing up, indicating that this revolt is far from the minor disturbance many view it as. One of hundreds filmed during Iran’s nationwide demonstrations last week showed demonstrators changing slogans that make it clear that their target is not just the President, or the disputed election that returned him to power in June, but the entire foundation of Iran’s theocracy. The civil tone of many earlier rallies was noticeably absent.

Instead, the protesters, most of them young people, took direct aim at Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Aki Khomenei chanting, “Khamenei knows his time is up!” They held up flags from which the Islamic “Allah” symbol -- added after Iran’s 1979 revolution -- had been removed. Most shocking of all, some burned an image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution.

RADICALIZATION: That creeping radicalization has underscored the rift within Iran’s opposition movement, analysts say, and poses a problem for its leaders, including Moussavi and the reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi. “The longer this goes on, the more difficult will it be for the likes of Moussavi and Karroubi to sustain their current position,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who has worked for the State Department. “They have to at some point opt for regime survival or become the leaders of an opposition movement calling for more than reform.”

Some in Iran have even speculated that Moussavi and Karroubi were uncomfortable with the most recent round of protests, which were timed to coincide with a holiday commemorating the killing of three students by the shah’s forces in 1953. While they were involved with earlier protests, the opposition leaders did not organize the most recent ones. They do not appear to have attended any of them and have been silent since.

It is not clear how much influence they have over the movement, which often seems to be built more around semi-spontaneous mobilizations over Facebook and Web networks than with the aid of any clear leadership.

AGGRESSIVE TONE: The aggressive tone the latest protests may partly reflect the fact that they took place on and around university campuses, where radical sentiment is more common. But students have long been central to social movements in Iran, where the population is now overwhelmingly young; as Moussavi himself pointed out, 1 in 20 Iranians is a student. And this week’s protests, “in at least a dozen cities and towns across Iran, were much broader than the ones that shook Iran in 1999,” said Rasool Nafisi, an academic and Iran expert at Strayer University in Virginia.

Even before the latest round of protests, a number of high-ranking figures in Iran had taken note of the opposition’s trend toward radicalism. Over the weekend, Ali Rafsanjani, an influential former president, warned in a speech that “the young and the elite have been estranged from the regime” and criticized the government for using the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia against protesters.

Rafsanjani, a founder of the Islamic Republic who has provided crucial support for the opposition since the election, added pointedly that “there are some conservatives who think the people’s vote is just a decoration.” He admonished this group, saying, “If they want us to rule, we will; if they don’t, we will go.” Other leaders have also called for a greater spirit of compromise from the government.

But the government’s response has been anything but conciliatory. Many witnesses said the police and Basij militia members were more aggressive than at any time since last summer, beating protesters with chains and truncheons and arresting hundreds of them in cities across Iran. “The regime is on a path which threatens its own survival,” declared the Iranian Writers’ Society, in a statement released Tuesday and posted on opposition Web sites. “Those who sow the wind will harvest a typhoon.”

EXODUS: In response to the turmoil, there has also been a significant increase in the number of Iranian refugees -- businesspeople, dissidents, college students, journalists, athletes and other elite Iranians – that are fleeing the country and transforming the global face of Iran's resistance movement.

"Because of new technology and the Internet, prominent figures of the opposition can be more effective outside of Iran and do things they wouldn't be able to do there," says Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University. People staying behind "are ridiculed and sidelined," or thrown in jail.

The United Nations says more than 4,200 Iranians world-wide have sought refugee status since Iran's controversial June presidential vote and bloody street violence. Most leave via Turkey, which doesn't require Iranians to obtain a visa in advance, where many have settled -- but Iranians in increasing numbers have started turning up in countries as far away as Australia, Canada and Sweden.

BRAIN DRAIN: Iran's refugee exodus is exacerbating a brain drain that has stunted the country's development for years. Dabashi, the Columbia professor, says he has fielded hundreds of inquiries from students in Iran wanting to study overseas -- more than 20 times the rate of previous years. "It's mind-boggling how many extremely accomplished young people are trying to come abroad," he says.

Not all defectors are necessarily politically active. Two athletes from the national wrestling and karate teams, a well-known anchor on state television and a young film director have all applied for political asylum in Europe in recent months.

No matter the route, many Iranians arrive abroad carrying pictures or videos of themselves participating in post-election demonstrations in Tehran. Some also continue their anti-government activities by blogging or distributing photos, videos, articles and news to Iranians inside and outside the country.

TO THE U.S.: The State Department says the U.S. is prepared to accept more Iranian refugees provided the U.N.'s refugee agency makes the referrals. It says there is a refugee quota of about 35,000 this year for the Near East and South Asia, so "there's enough wiggle room that we could increase the number of people we take out of Turkey."

Turkey is one of the world's only countries that bans refugees from taking up permanent residence within its own borders. The U.N. has found no evidence that Turkey is treating Iranian political refugees any differently than other refugees. Still, there is fear among Iranian refugees in Turkey of being caught or harassed by Iranian intelligence agents. Many say they are afraid to call their families back home, believing the phone lines in Iran are tapped and that relatives there will face reprisal.

QUOTAS: Once in Turkey, Iranians must wait for the U.N. to approve their status as refugees, which can take several months. If approved, they then next wait for assignment to another country (typically the U.S., Canada or Australia), which can take two years because of immigration quotas. If they're rejected as refugees, they can appeal, extending the process.

UN officials say the number of refugees in Turkey has increased in recent years, largely because of an influx of Iraqis. Waiting periods for resettlement have also grown. Last year, there were only about 5,000 placements for 18,000 refugees. The U.S. accepted 1,099 Iranians from Turkey. An additional 486 went to six other countries.

While refugees wait, Turkey charges them the same residential-permit fees as any foreigner, about $200 per adult and $100 per child, every six months. The fees have stirred up resentment, since Turkey also prohibits refugees from finding legal employment if Turkish citizens are qualified to do the job. Many work illegal, $10-a-day jobs like house painting. Unemployment in Turkey is already over 10 percent.