Why I defend Iran and the Iranian President

Iran is not the found again paradise, I´m well aware of that. But I still dare to defend this country and it´s government.

For the sake of peace, truth and justice, I see it as absolutely necessary, that people of conscience show their fellow western citizens the positive sides of Iran, which in my opinion, far outnumber the negative ones.

For western libertarians or progressives or even mainline Christians it is very hard to look past the anti-Iran propaganda.

We all have been taught over and over again that a obligatory head-scarf is the ultimate sign of oppression against women.

Sharia law has been declared as the ultimate tool to maintain medieval backwardness. And a state based on a religious constitution is considered nothing else but a dictatorial theocracy.

In pictures from the demonstrations in front of the Columbia university in New York you can see people with signs that say "Ahmadinejad is bad, but no war against Iran".

This is how anti-war people see it, and how they saw it in a similar way in the run-up to the Iraq war.

But people who were not so sure about their stance, where persuaded then that a war against Iraq would at least free the people of Iraq from their dictator.

Of course, the war has caused a million times more death and destruction than Saddam ever did.

This time around the same trick is played on the western population: "Ahmadinejad, the new Hitler, Ahmadinejad, the petty dictator and the Mullah-regime the medieval dark inquisitors of a terrorist religion"

But while Saddam indeed was an often muderous dictator, all the allegations made in our western media against Ahmadinejad and the clerical regime of Iran are false. Every single one of those allegations can be proven as either an outright lie or a spin-job, turning and twisting events and words out of context and out of proportion.

What I have found out about Iran has led me to the conclusion, that we should neither support a violent overthrow of the Iranian government, nor hope for or actively help to instigate a "peaceful" one.

In many parts of Iran, the people are still dirt poor. In those parts they also still live very traditionally, and women have few rights there.

The judiciary in those rural parts is ultra-conservative, and from there come the horror stories which are hyped in the western media.

But the fact, that Iranian women are getting so well educated, and that so many women are present in economic and public life means that a process of liberation is going on in the population centers of the country, which in a few years will have spread even to the most rural parts.

Even the judiciary which was totally a male domain has now opened up for some 50 female judges as of today.

Women are also becoming scholars of Islam, which will mean, in the long run, that a more female perspective will find its way into the interpretation of Sharia law.

Iran has not the fastest growing economy in the world. But the Islamic constitution makes sure, that economic wealth and development must be spread around.

In the case of the Ahmadinejad government it means, that government owned banks are supporting small upstart businesses with loans, even while the survival of those businesses is less secure than the one of the large corporate projects.

The Iranian press reports that Ahmadinejad is being criticized a lot for those decisions.
Economists and politicians close to the upper class of rich Iranians see this kind of economic policies as a failure.

And of course, it is true, that small businesses are risky, but some will indeed survive and most will at least bring employment while they last. This will spread the wealth of the nation among more people and it will decrease the power of the ultra-rich.

For you see, large enterprises are necessary for economic growth and stability. And a industrial society needs a lot of cooperation for it´s complicated production processes. But there is also a big danger that large enterprises will monopolize too much wealth and so bring too much power into too few hands. And power monopolies are always a fatal danger to any democratic system.

And Iran´s political system is indeed an electoral democracy based on an Islamic constitution, which the whole population of Iran voted for in a majority vote at a public referendum.

There is a division of political powers, a directly elected Parliament, an elected head of the executive, (today it´s President Ahmadinejad). And there is an indirectly (by clerical council) elected supreme leader (today it´s Ayatollah Khameni). He has a Veto right on laws made by the Parliament when they seem unconstitutional, and he is officially the armies commander in chief, but he does not formulate the government policies.

And Iran has a judiciary which is independent in it´s decisions from the executive, but has to follow the sharia law, laid down in the constitution.

The Islamic constitution, however, does also lay down the rules of a necessary strive for social justice and development of the whole country and not just for the population centers.

The Ahmadinejad government is therefor also trying to slow down the migration of population from the rural areas into the urban slums of Tehran and other population centers by raising the minimum wage and supporting rural development projects.

An economic policy which is trying to implement social justice policies and development in remote areas of a country, will from the neo-liberals point of view be less profitable than they would wish for.

But while for some Iranians the Iranian economy does not grow fast enough, it does, according to the numbers presented by national and international institutions still grow sufficiently to be viable, and in some parts, even grow faster than under previous governments.

And as to the censorship of media, there are indeed subjects which are taboo in the Iranian press, mostly those concerning religious commandments.

But you can also find a lot of open criticism against the government, which means that the government does not exercise a tight control over the media.

In the anti-Iranian government documentary made by the BBC "Rageh in Iran", Rageh is told by his dissident Iranian reporter friends, that most censorship in Iran is self-censorship.

Well, everyone will agree with me here, that there is a whole lot of self-censorship in the western media at the moment, and actually has been for as long as there has been a mass-media in the west: "the press is only free for those who own it".

Another rather interesting part of the BBC docu was, when the "dissidents" told Rageh not to go so much into the areas where the poor people live. So Rageh went mostly into the areas of the rich, where everybody hated Ahmadinejad and the women had more plastic surgery than the women of Beverly Hills in LA.

The negative opinions we hear from Iranians about Ahmadinejad and his government comes most often from Iranian exiles, who once had been connected to the Shah regime or from the ultra-rich Iranian business class, or from people who have been educated in the west and have been influenced by western ideologies and life style.

The majority of the Iranian population does not belong to these groups, but the majority opinion has no room in western media.

And one big reason for the anger against Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics of quite a few rich reople, is the fact that the judiciary has now gotten a green light and a bit of pressure to go after the corrupt fraudsters who had been allowed to run wild under the governments of the so-called "reformers".

Iran daily calls them the "big fish". They had increased their wealth by insider deals with the help of government officials and by juggling around with the Iranian stock-market using loans from government owned banks.

The Iranian President has this to say about it:

“Our goal is not to confront the job or capital market. We are saying that we should confront administrative corruption by amending the existing laws and by exercising more correct supervision. Some people talk about capital flight. Is everybody thieves that they might escape? Is everyone corrupt?

We have thousands of entrepreneurs and wealthy people who prefer not to use their capital for positive economic activities because they do not trust the government’s health. If we do not confront administrative corruption, these people will not use their capital for positive industrial and agricultural endeavors."

And while he was talking to an assembly of students in Tehran about corruption, he told them a story:

"The dictator "Reza Khan"- the bully - sent a message to Martyr Modaress and said: ‘Mister, don't put your feet on my tail. And remove your foot from my tail.’ Martyr Modaress answered: ‘Please, tell us where your tail ends.’"

Translated into western speak you would say, Ahmadinejad is stepping on a lot of toes, domestic and foreign, and those toes need to be stepped upon for they have just gotten a far bit too large.