Iranian Madness

Il settimanale Panorama ha pubblicato un’interessante intervista a Pietro Masturzo, vincitore del World Press Photo Award 2009.

Che emozione che dev’essere stata vivere quelle notti insieme al popolo iraniano!

Come avevo già scritto in inglese, il premio della World Press per la miglior foto del 2009 è stato assegnato a un giovane fotografo italiano, Pietro Masturzo. E mi fa ovviamente piacere che il soggetto sia iraniano, e precisamente un tetto di una casa di Teheran nei giorni immediatamente successivi alle elezioni del giugno 2009.

Un’interessante commento di Masturzo sui fatti di contorno alla foto premiata si può leggere qui.

A mio parere, la foto è notevole soprattutto perché ritrae l’ordinarietà: persone qualsiasi, da un tetto di una casa qualsiasi, che urlano la loro rabbia al cielo.

It’s great to see an Italian photographer, Pietro Masturzo, win the World Press Photo of the year award for 2009 with a picture on Iran.

The black and white photo, showed below, depicts women shouting slogans against the regime from the rooftop of a house in Tehran. This mode of protesting is reminiscent of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when, in the days before the fall of the Shah, people used to shout “Allahu Akbar” from the rooftops of their houses in order to express dissatisfaction about the regime.

The other winners of the contest can be found here. Note the second prize for stories, also depicting scenes from the street protests that followed the June 2009 election.

It’s interesting to see the ups and downs of the seemingly never-ending relationship between Iran and Italy.

Not many people know that Italy owns the largest private piece of land in Tehran (and probably in the whole Iran): the ambassador’s residence in Farmanieh, with its flourishing garden of rare trees and its Qajar-style buildings, is a joy to see and be in (especially on 2 June, Italian National Day, when they tend to serve reasonable wine).

The relationship between Italy and Iran was so tight that this piece of land was among the few owned by foreign institutions not to be sequestered after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It remained the property of Italy and its people.

In more recent times, ties between the two countries remained close. Italy, together with Germany, is still one of the largest commercial partners of Iran, as reported recently by Israeli magazine Y-Net. Italian politicians and businessmen have worked actively around the sanctions to actively sustain, if not expand, their business with Iran. The deal is good for both Italy and Iran, especially in the energy sector: Italy is an avid consumer of oil and natural gas, and Iran must import fuel (mostly, petrol) due to lack of refining capacity and growing internal consumption.

So Italy gets the crude very cheap, refines it and sells back the lower-quality fuels to Iran. Not a bad deal, heh?

Many more less public and slightly less ethical business deals have taken place in the past, but they have been largely ignored by the public and the press. Italy’s lead politicians from the current centre-right and the previous centre-left government have also downplayed the issue of sanctions, if not openly opposed it.

The game has lasted until one of Italy’s most audacious journalists, Il Foglio’s Giulio Meotti, has published an article in the Wall Street Journal, outlining in detail everything that is going on behind the scenes. And it’s not a pretty picture.

Unfortunately, around about the same time Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was about to depart on one of the largest missions abroad that this government has undertaken in recent years: he and 8 other ministers: Economic Development Minister Claudio Scajola, Transport Minister Altero Matteoli, Labour and Social Politics Minister Giuliano Sacconi, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, EU Politics Minister Andrea Ronchi, Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo and Health Minister Ferruccio Fazio.

Who was almost half of our government going to visit? the other great friend of Italy in the Middle East, the country we’re helping protect from Hezbollah’s rockets with our largest military contingent abroad: Israel.

There is a problem with this double-faced approach, though: Israel and Iran aren’t exactly in good terms, and especially these days one could think that a war is going to be declared soon (by which of the two parties remains the biggest question). And the timing of Meotti’s article could not be more ill-fated.

Something had to be done in order not to spoil the visit to Israel. And given the choice, I believe Berlusconi decided to displease Iran. Just as the Iranian opposition seemed to favour thaws with the government and even Karroubi made conciliatory statements, the punch in the face was delivered straight by Italy’s main man.

First, he delivered a speech to the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, saying “We cannot accept the nuclearization of a country whose leaders have explicitly expressed their desire to destroy Israel, have denied the Holocaust and delegitimized the Jewish state“. The country in question was not specifically named, but it does not take a genius to guess it’s Iran he was talking about. He went on to call Israel’s last-year war in Gaza against Hamas “justified self-defence“.

The consequences were immediate: Italy’s ENI, which according to Meotti’s report is the largest single European investor in Iran, announced that it would pull out of Iran. And even though there are still around 22 large Italian companies that operate in Iran, the retreat is a low blow for Iran’s ambitions to further exploit its massive gas reserves.

Tehran’s reaction was immediate: its state TV called Berlusconi “a servant of the Zionist regime“, and even bothered to translate its statements into Italian.

To which our foreign minister Franco Frattini replied that “Italy is a servant of its values, and our values say that Israel is a free and democratic country, and as such must be defended“. Frattini went on later to state in an interview (in Italian) that “Iran’s reactions are a symptom of its weakness“.

The latest statement (also in Italian) of our Minister of Defense, Ignazio La Russa, is quite clear: “it is necessary to contrast Iran’s aggression“.

So is our long love relationship with Iran going to end? I won’t put my money on it. Many believe that this, like many others, is an attempt of the Italian government to save its face, especially at a time when most of our ministers were about to leave to Israel. But ENI pulling out of Iran is a warning: Italy can get serious if Iran gets over the top (the same message could be translated in German when Siemens, only a few days ago, announced its own pull-out of the Islamic Republic).

In any case, we need to see what will happen next Thursday, when the 22 Bahman celebrations are likely to become another stage for a large opposition gathering and demonstration. While opposition leaders such as Mohammed Khatami are publicly urging people to go out on the street and demonstrate, recent statements by Khamenei announcing “a punch in the face” of Tehran’s enemy make for a very uncertain future. This is likely to be another bloodshed, and amidst all this international pressure could be the event that really signals the end of Iran’s leadership.

Update

Just while I was busy writing the below article, the Italian embassy in Tehran was targeted by a group of Basiji militia. They threw some stones and shouted phrases like “death to Italy” and “death to Berlusconi“. More information on the attack here (in English) and here (in Italian). A video of the event is available here and some pictures can be found here.

As a gesture of retaliation, the Italian foreign minister has ordered Italy’s Ambassador in Tehran not to attend tomorrow’s celebration for the thirty-first anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Tension is on the rise!

The Basiji remove the Rome alley sign from a street adjacent to the Italian embassy in Tehran (Reuters)

One of the interesting side-effect of the disillusion of the Islamic Revolution in the people of Iran is the tendency to return to ancient Persian roots.

Suffocated by centuries of Islamic domination that only partially managed to change the country’s culture, Persian roots survive and in some cases thrive. By far the most celebrated public holiday is not Eid (like in most other Muslim countries), but No-Rooz, the Persian new year festival, dating back to the Safavid Kingdom times and of Zoroastrian origin.

Another (slightly more radical) Zoroastrian feast is the so called Sadeh (the Sacred Fire Fest). Fire is a holy element in Zoroastrian belief (along with Water, Air and Earth, and numerous are the temples where fire is kept burning since centuries (the most famous one, depicted below, is in the city of Yazd).

Nowadays, the people of Iran are getting back to these old traditions, regardless of their religion. They are considered part of the pre-Islamic Persian culture, and thus worth preserving and cherishing.

It may be hard to believe if you have never visited the country, but Iran is indeed a largely secular society.

The fire temple in Yazd

I really hope the world will start understanding that there is no such thing as the Great Islamic Nation. There are, instead, lots of different countries with very marked identity and extremely different cultural roots. Just like Christianity, Islam is too spread out to unify cultures (and islamists would argue that it’s not even supposed to).

It is therefore no surprise that the Islamic Solidarity Games, scheduled to take place in April 2010 in Iran, have been cancelled by the Saudi-based headquarters. The reason? the name of the Gulf between the Arabian peninsula and Iran. Is it Arabian, like the Arabs like to call it, or Persian, like the rest of the world has been referring to it for ages?

While we settle the dispute, let’s cancel the games altogether!

When looking at these pictures from Tehran and Isfahan, it’s not hard to bet that the Iranian establishment has no chance to get out of this wave of protests with their power untouched.

It may not be another revolution, but it’s certainly going to be a big setback for the mullahs.

Non manca la fantasia, in Iran: prima il quotidiano Emrooz, vicino al sindaco di Teheran Mohamed Bagher Ghalibaf, si inventa un logo che ricorda una ballerina stilizzata.

E poi, ovviamente, i bacchettoni conservatori fanno il loro dovere.

L’Iran è bello anche per questo: la battaglia si gioca su molti fronti, alcuni che fanno ridere (amaramente).

Un vero genio politico, l’Ayatollah Khamenei. Il suo fiuto gli permette di fare analisi visionarie sulla situazione politica iraniana che eludono la comprensione di qualsiasi altro essere umano.

Godetevi l’acume della sua intervista: ha addirittura compreso che la situazione in Iran è difficile.

Rimaniamo basiti davanti a cotale intuizione. Un vero leader del duemila!

Wow, I was not expecting this. No matter what the restrictions imposed by the authorities, the Iranian election affair still made it to be the most popular Twitter topic of the year 2009 – in the whole world!

No matter how the Ayatollahs try to limit the young Iranians’ expression freedom, it’s quite clear that they have blatantly failed.