“Memo to Secretary Clinton: Iran is neither a military dictatorship nor a police state... Yet."

In FP/ here via RFI

“Memo to Secretary Clinton: Iran is neither a military dictatorship nor a police state. Yet. There is no visible military presence at the international airport, where despite a European ban on flights to and from its capitals in mid-April when I arrived, jumbo jets discharged and loaded thousands of passengers a day arriving and leaving for points east and west. Tehran’s sleek and bustling Imam Khomeini international airport reminded one that an Icelandic volcano had temporarily managed to do to Europe what no American administration has succeeded in doing to Iran: isolating it—though not for lack of effort. There is also no visible military presence in the sprawling city of some 12 million souls and at times it seems an equal number of cars—save for the occasional hapless-looking, newly shorn, and unarmed young army conscript in fatigues, begging a ride on the back of a motorcycle or in a shared taxi, a presence that has always been visible in any city in Iran, even in days of the monarchy.” .....

“Iran is not in a revolutionary, not even pre-revolutionary state and the emperor is, unlike the shah of old (whose nakedness was revealed for all when he proclaimed in November 1978, on live national television, that he had ‘heard the people’s revolution,’), still very much clothed. ‘We can only pray for the health and life of the rahbar,’ I heard many times in Tehran; people from all walks of life (including staunch reformists) agreeing that without the supreme leader firmly in control, the stability of the country was seriously at risk, or that a small and extremist group of politicians might accomplish what Clinton warned of, a military dictatorship, back in February. A working-class acquaintance from South Tehran, one who told me last spring that Ahmadinejad would win the election even though he has boycotted every election in the Islamic Republic, was particularly dismissive of any talk of revolution or toppling the government. ‘Those on the other side of the water,’ he said, referring to Iranians in the United States, ‘exhort us to spill onto the streets and confront the system. For what? They want me to revolt on behalf of those who drive $300,000 Benzes on the streets of Tehran? Never.’”.....

“The nuclear issue looms large here in Tehran—there has never been as much talk and even anxiety over the possibility of a military assault on Iran, not even during George W. Bush’s days—but the issue seems to have become a distraction that impedes progress on all fronts, and not the weak point for the regime. My airport cab driver reminded me, as we were going around a traffic circle at an early-morning breakneck pace that he would be unable to repeat later in the day, that despite the ills of society and the political differences in Iran he recognized weren’t disappearing as fast as the anti-government street demonstrations, Iranians had one thing in common. ‘We Iranians have namoos,’ he said, ‘and if anyone even thinks of ravishing her, our gheirat will take over. Iran is our namoos.’ Namoos is a man’s wife, his woman; her chastity his responsibility to protect, and gheirat is pride and dignity—concepts both Persian and Islamic and one reason women, ‘sisters’ in the Islamic Republic, wear the hijab and many did even under the secular shah. What the driver meant was that if Iran were attacked, Iranians, and he presumably thought me as well, would defend her with their lives....

Tehran’s nuclear summit in mid-April, dubbed ‘Nuclear Energy for All; Nuclear Weapons for None’ and timed to contrast with Obama’s own summit in Washington (to which Iran was not invited), was, despite a paucity of media coverage in the West, successful in laying out Iran’s stated nuclear agenda—non-proliferation as well as complete disarmament—for a domestic audience and sympathetic listeners in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the developing world. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s opening address to the conference, read by his top foreign-policy advisor Ali Akbar Velayati, in which he emphatically proclaimed weapons of mass destruction haram, strictly forbidden in Islam, went a long way in convincing at least the pious that Iran is not developing nuclear arms…

But Iranians seem to also know that no summit, fatwa, or public proclamation by their officials will convince the United States that Iran is not hell-bent on building a nuclear bomb and then either deploying it against Israel, handing it over to terrorists, or using it to threaten the world at large (none of those scenarios appearing to be particularly plausible to the average citizen or even to citizens of the region). There are no scientific polls that can accurately gauge public support for Iran’s nuclear posture, but here in the capital it is hard to find an Iranian who doesn’t agree with at least the concept that Iran deserves to enjoy the same rights as other states when it comes to nuclear energy, even as many may find Ahmadinejad’s diplomatic tactics distasteful. In that sense, the military parade in Tehran on the second day of the nuclear summit and the Revolutionary Guards’ maneuvers in the Persian Gulf a week later were simply expressions of the national gheirat, particularly in light of escalating threats emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv.”..."