[Reader-list] Iran Discussions on the Reader-List (I)

[shuddha at sarai.net]

Dear Junaid, dear all on the list, 

A few weeks ago, we had the inauguration of a useful and interesting thread
(Iran Discussions on the Reader-List) on the situation in Iran, which
marked what I hope is the beginning of the end of South Asian,
particularly, Indian narcissism and self-obsession on this list.

I would like to return to that exchange in the spirit of open discussion,
and invite you all to participate in it and take it further.

Junaid, (with whom, as I have said before, I am usually in agreement, and
whose contributions from and on Kashmir I consider to be especially
valuable) had raised a number of significant objections to my reflections
on the 'post-election' scenario in Iran.

His arguments, can be summarized under the following heads: 

1. The progress made by Iran in social and economic spheres since the
establishment of the Islamic Republic. The position of women. Comparison
with India and other developing economies.

2. Ahmadinejad's social base and the economic implications of his policies
as the basis for his supposed popularity. Ahmadinejad as a channel for
subaltern articulations in Iran. The question of whether or not the
'opposition' to Ahmadinejad is rooted in 'urban elitism' and a class bias.

3. The role played by religion in Iranian political life at the popular
level, and the popular legitimacy of the institutionalization of religion
and the clergy in the political structures of the Islamic republic.

4. More specifically, the role of the Guardian Council

5. The nature and reality of anti-zionism, and its distinction from
anti-semitism, in the political imagination of Ahmadinejad.

6. The rhetoric of anti-Imperialism, and its place in a resistant political
imagination.

7. Finally, a plea as to why there should be inordinate attention focused
on repressive tactics used by the Basij (the official militia subordinate
to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards of Pasdaran) while similar tactics,
when employed in say, India, with regard to the repression of the Honda
workers, does not invite comment.

8. The question of 'hatred' towards Iran, the Khamenei-Ahmedinejad Regime,
the issue of comparison with Israel, with Natanyahu etc.

I would like to take each of these in turn, and respond to them in some
detail. So apologies in advance for what might be a lengthy set of postings
 In this posting I will respond to the first two of the above set of
points.

<1. The progress made by Iran in social and economic spheres since the
establishment of the Islamic Republic. The position of women. Comparison
with India and other developing economies>

and 

<2. Ahmadinejad's social base and the economic implications of his policies
as the basis for his supposed popularity. Ahmadinejad as a channel for
subaltern articulations in Iran. The question of whether or not the
'opposition' to Ahmadinejad is rooted in 'urban elitism' and a class bias.>

looking forward to responses and discussion, critical as well as otherwise, 

best, 

Shuddha
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Iran is no doubt a wealthy country, and its wealth primarily depends on its
substantial oil and gas resources, and a moderately sized manufacturing and
services sector, fuelled by a relatively well educated and productive
workforce.

There have no doubt been substantial gains made in education and literacy,
particularly women's education and in primary health care. Paradoxically,
much of the foundation for the generalized improvement in basics like
health and education, dates to the period of the Shah's 'White Revolution'
when a substantial measure of land reform freed large sections of the rural
population from land based servitude, initiated women's education and basic
health services, financed to some extent by the increase in oil revenues
following the oil shocks. It was this population, that came of age in the
early years of the Islamic Republic.

The HDI indicators that Junaid mentions have been consistently high for
Iran vis-a-vis other developing countries, and this secular trend of a
rising standard of living predates the establishment of the Islamic
Republic.

There has been definitely a much larger involvement of women in Iran in
higher education and employment in the post Islamic Revolutionary period.
But this has happened co-incident with a steady erosion of women's legal
rights, and their rights to equal pay for equal work and other rights in
the workplace. Iran continues to be a non signatory to the UN charter on
women's rights. The high visibility of women in the workforce and in
education has also something to do with the actuality of the consequences
of the Iran-Iraq war. Iran lost something close to one million able bodied
men of working age in the Iran Iraq war. And just as the 'missing millions'
of European and Russian men after the first and second world wars brought
millions of women into the workforce and into higher education in Europe
and in Russia, so too Iran has seen a very high influx of women in these
areas. Iran has a strong and vocal feminist opposition, and it has actually
been in the forefront of the anti-Ahmadinejad camp's political positions.
In many respects, Iranian feminist voices (some of whom call themselves
'Islamic Feminists' ) go much further in their opposition to the
Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime than the Khatami-Moussavi faction.

Crucially, what needs to be borne in mind is that social inequality has
actually deepened in post 'Islamic Revolution' Iran. This has something to
do with the steady devaluation of the Iranian rial, which plunged from
seven Rials to the US Dollar in the immediately pre-revolutionary period 
to something close to four hundred rials to the US Dollar now. This means
that those in Iran who have access to foreign remittances have
substantially higher cash reserves compared to those who dont. The Iranian
regime has discreetly worked to encourage this fact, creating a class
(including key figures in the leading families - the Khameneis and the
Rafsanjanis) who have large assets abroad, with 'dual' lifestyles, not
unlike the Saudi, Pakistani and Nigerian elites, and a large underclass of
people in genteel urban immiseration and large-scale rural poverty,
suffering the consequences of very high unemployment (close to 16%
nationally, 26 % in some areas) and galloping inflation, especially in
terms of abnormally high costs for basic necessities like food and housing.

This explains the paradox of Iran having relatively high figures in GDP,
GDP per Capita, GDP per Capita relative to Purchasing Power Parity, and a
sudden plunge when it comes to indices of economic equality. So, while
India, for instance, is low on GDP, GDP per Capita, GDP per Capita read off
PPP, it performs much better than Iran on questions of economic equality
(not as well as Sweden, Finland, or Israel, but much better than Iran, or,
for that matter China, Venezuela, South Africa or the United States of
America.)

I append below a series of figures, and some rankings, taken from a series
of "Lists of Countries" based on UN, World Bank and IMF data, on Wikipedia.
While these may or may not be exact and accurate, i do think they give a
reasonably good indication.


I. GDP Per Capita (IMF, 2008)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

Venezuela 53rd Rank US $ 11, 388
Turkey 55th Rank US $ 10, 472
Mexico 56th Rank US $ 19, 235
Brazil 64th Rank US $ 8197
South Africa 76th Rank US $ 5,693
Angola 84th Rank US $ 4,961
Iran 85th Rank  US $ 4732
Algeria 88th Rank US $ 4732
China 104th Rank US $ 3315
Egypt 117th Rank US $ 2161
India 142nd Rank US $ 1016
Nigeria 144th Rank US $ 1451

II. GDP Per Capita PPP (IMF, 2008)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

Mexico 54 - 14,560
Venezuela 64 - 12, 785
Turkey 62 - 13, 138
Iran 71 - 11,250
Brazil 77 - 10,326
South Africa 79 - 10,119
Algeria 96 - 6698
Angola 98 - 6331
China 100 - 5963
Egypt 101 - 5898
India 129 - 2762
Nigeria 140 - 2134

III. HDI INDEX
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

Mexico 51
Venezuela 61
Brazil 70
Iran 84
China 94
Algeria 100
Egypt 116
South Africa 125
India 132
Nigeria 154
Angola 157

IV. GINI INDEX (Income Inequality)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

Algeria 35.3
India 36.8
Israel 39.6
Iran 43
United States 40.8
Turkey 43.6
Nigeria 43.7
Mexico 46.1
China 46.9
Venezuela 48.2
Brazil 57
South Africa 57.8

INCARCERATION

 A classic index of inequality is the rate of incarceration. Prison
populations and crime rates are always higher in countries with higher
inequality and repression, not necessarily in countries with larger
absolute numbers of the working poor. If criminality, on a broad,
generalized scale, is a reflection of the intensity of informal class
conflict in any given society then, it would be easy for us to understand
that societies with higher conviction rates, higher prison populations also
tend to be those with greater levels of inequality and class conflict.

If we compare India, say with Iran on the Incarceration Index, then in
terms of numbers of prisoners per 100,000 people, Iran comes out at rank
57, with 222 prisoners per 100,000 prisoners, while India comes out at rank
201, with 33 prisoners per 100,000 prisoners. (United States and Russia
have much higher rates, indicating that they are even more unequal
societies).

These figures are taken from the 'World Prison Brief' compiled and
conducted by the International Centre for Prison Studies at the Law School
of Kings College, London.

see: <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php?area=all&category=wb_poprate>

But what this means is that Iran has roughly seven times as many people
(relative to the population) in prison as compared to India.

Going by all of the above factors, unemployment, income inequality,
incarceration, the picture that we get of Iran, in comparison to other
developing countries, including India, is not as rosy as we might expect
when we look at indices like HDI and the rates of literacy, infant
mortality etc.

The official unemployment rate has grown from 10.5% to 17 % during
Ahmadinejad's tenure. Inflation today is at a record high of 35 %.

Since 1997 unemployment rates for 20 to 24 year old Iranians have increased
from 15 % to 22 % for men, and from 23 % to 44 % for women.

In terms of absolute poverty, figures released by the Iranian central bank
indicate that poverty fell by 2 percentage points each year during the
eight years of the reformist Khatami administration (1997-2005) but,
significantly, during the first two years of the Ahmadinejad
administration, urban poverty increased by 1.5 percentage points, or
roughly 680,000 more people were added to the overall number of the urban
poor (despite an overall declining population) during the first two years
of Ahmadinejad rule. This is not an invisible reality.

This is acknowledged even in sources that are not necessarily inimical to
the current regime. Here for instance, are two articles from Press TV, the
Iranian regime's current favourite 'independent news channel' . Both quote
Hossein Raghfar, a professor of economics at the Al Zahra University in
Tehran, who has been an advisor on welfare and economics policies to the
Iranian government, including under Ahmadinejad.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Experts say Tehran's poverty line has reached USD 860
Press TV, March 12, 2009

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=88372

The poverty line for Iran's metropolitan areas has increased by almost 10
percent reaching 8,500,000 rials (USD 860), experts say.

"With a possible 35-percent inflation rate next year, a family of five
would be in absolute poverty with a [monthly] income of under 8,500,000
rials," university professor and poverty mapping expert Hossein Raghfar
told Farsnews on Wednesday.

Raghfar made the announcement in the final days of 1387 -- the current
Iranian calendar year, which will end on March 21.

"This time last year, we predicted that that the poverty line for Tehran
would be around 7,800,000 rials for a family of five in 1387, and we saw
that the Central Bank released the same figure for the country's major
cities later on in the year," he added.

This is while officials at Iran's Ministry of Welfare and Social Security
have not yet announced the official poverty threshold.
 
Former Minister of Welfare Mohammad Sharif-Zadegan also said that the
figure had risen. However, he added that the increase was not so high as to
cause panic.

"Our data shows that the poverty line has increased, but not that high to
cause concern when announced. Therefore, we must not be afraid of
announcing it," Sharif-Zadegan explained.

"University studies show that low income groups have spent less while high
income groups have spent more. These studies show that the poor have become
poorer while the higher income families have spent more," he added.

Another figure, also announced on Wednesday, was the minimum wage for
Iranian workers, which was set at a monthly rate of 2,745,500 rials (USD
279).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. 29 and 33 percent of Iranians live under the "absolute poverty" line.
Press TV, 06 June, 2009
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=97282&sectionid=351020102.)

An Iranian specialist in poverty, development and economy, Dr. Hossein
Raghfar says that between 29 and 33 percent of Iranians live under the
"absolute poverty" line.

Dr. Hossein Raghfar noted that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "presented his
own unrealistic figures on oil revenues, which pegged Iran's income as USD
211b in the year ending March 20, 2009, whereas careful analysis of the
income will show a total of USD 265b," reported Iran's Labor News Agency
(ILNA) on Friday.

In analyzing the government calculations he said that the sales of natural
gas and related material were not included in the total income figure.

Coming to the question of poverty, Raghfar said, "Between 29 and 32 percent
of Iranians live below the poverty line and the reason for this range are
accounting factors. A small shift in the poverty line could put a large
number of people below it, as there is a large concentration (of people)
around this line."

"According to the last published figures for the poverty line for Tehran in
the year ending March 20, 2008 it was $9,612 per year as announced by the
Central Bank and the national average was $4,932," said the economist.

He said that the initiatives undertaken by the government show that it is
impossible for the government to distribute oil revenue through its program
of 'justice bonds' or even direct subsidies.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 In fact, given Iran's relatively high GDP (due to petroleum and gas
exports, which put it in the same relative bracket, as say, Venezuela, or
for that matter, Norway, (the poorest country in Europe before Oil was
struck in the late 1950s, around the same time, if not later, than in Iran)
the question to ask is why are the HDI indicators not as high, but, on the
contrary, as low, as they are? Why has the Iranian revolution been, on so
many counts, been such a colossal failure, in so far as the harnessing of
revenues from valuable resources for the alleviation of the standard of
living of the majority of the population. When we realize that this occurs
despite the fact that Iran has traditionally had the best educated
workforce in the region, then we are forced to acknowledge that the regime
that has ruled the Islamic Republic actually maintains a situation of class
priviledge as endemic as obtained under the tyranny of the Shah.

This brings us to the second major point. 

<2. Ahmadinejad's social base and the economic implications of his policies
as the basis for his supposed popularity. Ahmadinejad as a channel for
subaltern articulations in Iran. The question of whether or not the
'opposition' to Ahmadinejad is rooted in 'urban elitism' and a class bias.>

Ahmadinejad may have come to power with the promise of addressing this
situation, and there is no doubt that he was genuinely popular, and
perceived as a 'maverick outsider'  to the establishment, but there is
every reason to believe that his colossal failure on the economic front has
actually contributed to a sharp edge of bitterness about him in precisely
those people who may have initially voted for him in the previous election.

While thinking about these issues, it is also important to recognize that
the idea of the 'rural subaltern' vote for Ahmadinejad is in fact a myth.
Iran is an overwhelmingly urban country. 68 % of the Iranian population
lives in cities. 20 % live in Tehran alone. Rural to Urban migration peaked
in the years after the 'Islamic Revolution' because the Khomeini regime
backtracked on land reforms, actually returned re-distributed land to rural
landowning classes, including the clergy, leading to widespread rural
immiseration and migration to cities. It is the children of these migrants,
educated, unemployed, with no prospects, unable to settle down in decent
housing, unable to marry, unable to better their prospects that constitute
the basis of the massive popular discontent against the Islamic regime.

Ahmadinejad's economic policies, which consisted of cash (and potato)
handouts to the urban and rural poor, and a sqandering of the oil revenue
reserves earmarked for the future, has the same shallow demagogery as
Indira Gandhi's 'Garibi Hatao' programmes of the 1970s. It has not taken
the highly politically aware working population of Iran long to realize
that these cash handouts actually imply a devaluation of their own future
even as the regime shores up the power and financial clout of the
'nomenklatura' that controls the 'bonyads' or quasi public 'foundations'
that dominate large elements of the service and manufacturing sectors of
the economy that tie sections of the clergy and the security establishment
into the micro-control of the Iranian economy. At the very top of the
pyramid are the uber-elite, who continue to siphon off large amounts of
money into overseas banks, especially in Switzerland and Britain. This
includes people like Mojtaba Khamenei, Ayatollah Khamenei's second son,
whose recent rage at the British government's freezing Iranian held bank
accounts in the UK had a great deal to do with what was happening to his
own little crony-capitalist fortune.

In fact, in an unprecedented move, 150 of the 290 members of the Majlis ,or
Iranian parliament, censured Ahmadinejad in 2007, for his profligate
economic policies, which are widely being seen as contributing to a
deepening economic and social crisis in Iran. At least two governors if the
Iranian cectral bank hane resigned in protest. The people backing
Ahmadinejad are the desparate captains of a sinking ship, who are behaving
with the characteristic brutality of those trying to defend their
privileges at all costs.

The scale of the disaffection against Ahmadinejad is far too wide to be
interpreted as a 'middle class or elitist' reaction against a populist
incumbent president. In fact, as Hamid Dabashi, an astute commentator on
the Iranian scene says, there may be a 'privileged' constituency for
Ahmadinejad that has so far carefully escaped analysis. His comments,
published recently in his coloumn in Cairo's respected Al Ahram weekly,
bear quotation at length.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking in the wrong places
Hamid Dabashi
Al Ahram Weekly, 2-8 July 2009
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/954/op2.htm

The assumption that supporters of Mousavi and/or Karrubi, or indeed that
masses of millions of people who have poured into the streets of Tehran and
other cities, come from "the middle class" is a common fallacy...

The problem with the false impression about this mysterious "middle class"
is not only that it distorts the reality of what we are observing in
Iranian cities, but that it also inadvertently fuels the conspiratorial
theories among certain segments of the North American and Western European
left that take this observation one delusional step further and believe
that CIA (on behalf of neoliberal economics) is behind this "velvet
revolution". That particular pathology needs a separate diagnosis, but the
false premise of "middle class" support for Mousavi, particularly by people
I deeply admire, needs more urgent attention.

Of a total Iranian population of 72 million, upward of 70 per cent are
under the age of 30. While the total rate of unemployment under
Ahmadinejad, predicated on correspondingly high numbers under Khatami's
two-term presidency, is 30 per cent, this rate, according to Djavad
Salehi-Isfahani, the most reliable Iranian economist around, for young
people between the ages of 15 and 29 (some 35 per cent of the total
population) is 70 per cent. So seven out of every 10 people in this age
group can scarce find a job, let alone marry, let alone have children and
form a family. In exactly what phantasmagoria definition of "the middle
class" can they hope to be included?

Let me cite other statistics. You must have noticed the overwhelming
presence of women in these demonstrations. Right? Now, 63 per cent of
university entrants in Iran are women, but they make up only 12.3 per cent
of the workforce. In other words, one out of every two women university
graduates earn their degrees and then go back to live with their parents,
remain a burden on their limited budget, and can only hope to leave their
parents' home if they find a husband among those three out of 10 young men
who may be lucky enough to find a job that would enable them to marry. In
what Marxist, Keynesian, or neoliberal definition of this blessed "middle
class" would they fit?

Consider another fact. If we were to believe the official tabulation of the
presidential election, which I have no way of proving otherwise (though
that they are rigged is now a "social fact"), twice as many of these young
voters have voted for Ahmadinejad as they did for Mir- Hussein Mousavi,
Mahdi Karrubi and Mohsen Rezai put together. In other words, the official
results shoot the argument of a pro-Mousavi "middle class" in the foot, for
we will end up either with the bizarre proposition that pro-Mousavi
Iranians voted for Ahmadinejad, if the results are accurate, or else the
perfectly plausible possibility that the unemployed -- and thus by
definition the poor -- voted for Mousavi, if the results are rigged. Either
way, the supporters of Mousavi are not the upper middle class bourgeois
class that thinks its votes are worth more than others.

But all these and similar statistics pale in comparison to another
statistic that shows the real horror at the heart of the Islamic Republic
-- for which not just Ahmadinejad but the entire militant disposition of
the ruling elite is responsible. In 1997, some three million high school
graduates participated in the Iranian national university entrance
examination, of which only 240,000 managed to pass through the Seven Tasks
of Rostam and enter a university. So the full capacity of the entire
Iranian university system is less than 10 per cent of the total applicants.
What happened to that more than 90 per cent? Where did they go? What job,
what opportunity, and what education?

The answer is frightful. A significant portion of this remaining 90 per
cent is absorbed into various layers of the militarised security apparatus,
including the Basij and the Pasdaran. If in fact anyone qualified for that
dreaded "middle class" status it is precisely this component of the 15-29
year olds who have not made it to the university system and have joined the
security apparatus of the regime, for they have a steady job, can marry,
form a family, and have a solid investment in the status quo and be
considered "middle class". In other words, instead of spending the national
budget on expanding the university system, and then generating jobs, the
custodians of the Islamic Republic, not just Ahmadinejad, insecure of their
own legitimacy as they are, would rather spend it on fortifying a security
apparatus that keeps their ageing banality in power.

Of course Ahmadinejad is not entirely responsible for this sad state of
affairs. The Iranian economy is 85 per cent oil-based and an oil-based
economy is not labour intensive, while the Iranian "middle class" has
always, since the 19th century, been a feeble and shaky proposition. But
Bishara's assumption that "Ahmadinejad is less a representative of Iranian
conservatives than a rebel against them from within their own
establishment," or that "he has lashed out against them, including corrupt
clergy, using the principles of the Islamic Revolution as his weapons" is
deeply flawed. Of course there was corruption in the two previous
administrations of both Khatami and Rafsanjani that preceded him, and that
gave free reign to neoliberal privatisation and its catastrophic
consequences. But in what particular way has Ahmadinejad corrected that
course? The answer: in no way. The battle between Ahmadinejad and
Rafsanjani is not a battle between revolutionary purity and ageing
corruption. It is a battle between a retiring elite and an emerging,
previously lower-ranking, echelon that is coming up for grabs. It is a
romanticism of the most dangerous sort to imagine Ahmadinejad as a man who
"wants to restore the revolution to its youthful vigour and gleam". He is
so patently transparent that all you have to do is sit through 10 minutes
of his charlatanism during the televised presidential debates to see
through the rampant lumpenism with which he operates. The only way that "he
distributes oil revenues among the poor" is by recruiting them into the
multi-layered and brutal security apparatus of the Basij and the Pasdaran.
This, again, is not his invention. He simply carries on an innate
insecurity of the regime by over-investing in security forces.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While news from Iran has currently died down, overtaken in part by the
media hysteria around Michael Jackson's funeral. Things in Iran are as
tense as they were, if not more, compared to a month ago

Even sections of the Revolutionary Guards are disaffected, a major
Revolutionary Guard general Ali Fazei is reported to have been imprisoned
for his refusal to give orders to shoot at the population, and the Army,
and police reportedly stands divided. Sections of the Pasdaran, allied to
Mojtaba Khamenei and his cronies have effectively staged an internal coup,
and Ahmadinejad is more their puppet than he is anything else

Iran has again seen massive protests in recent days, though they are not
being reported as widely, including as recently as on the 9th of July, the
anniversary of the student protests of 1999 and 2003. There is is likely to
be even more as the anniversaries of the massacre of July 14 (1999) and the
end of a month since the stolen election itself (13-15 July) begin to
unravel on the streets of Iran's cities, towns and villages.

(TO BE CONTINUED)