Category: Iran

of motive.

Seams splitting:

The difference is sometimes caricatured as one between a Westernized urban elite and the pious lower classes. In fact, it is not that simple, even if there is little doubt about who all those fashionable Tehrani women in jeans and loose head scarves voted for. A vast opposition rally on Monday — in which more than a million people are believed to have taken part — was also full of people who looked more like Ahmadinejad supporters: women in traditional Islamic garb, and working-class men.

In essence, the core of the struggle is between two competing views of what this country’s Islamic revolution sought to achieve.

“One side wants a gradual evolution of democratic institutions and a more democratic reading of Islamic institutions,” said Kavous Seyed-Emami, a political science professor at Imam Sadeq University in Tehran. “The other side is for a populist and more or less authoritarian reading of Islam.”

tweets.

This is the key sentence:

That is, tweets by their nature seem trivial, with little that is original or menacing. Even Twitter accounts seen as promoting the protest movement in Iran are largely a series of links to photographs hosted on other sites or brief updates on strategy. Each update may not be important. Collectively, however, the tweets can create a personality or environment that reflects the emotions of the moment and helps drive opinion.

stop the presses.

At the other end of the spectrum, stop talking about Iran?

But the scenario which we don’t seem to consider, and which appears more plausible everyday, will be that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory will be confirmed, and he will remain as president for four more years.

If – when – that happens, the simplistic ‘Mousavi good, Ahmadinejad bad’ dichotomy could translate into unprecedented anti-Iranian hostility, which the current geopolitical climate simply cannot handle.

President Obama was elected on a platform of dialogue and reconciliation; the ‘Iran’ chapter of his strategy remains the most explicitly cautious, unsurprising given the strength of the –largely republican – anti-Iran current within his own Congress and the hostility displayed towards Iran by West Jerusalem. An American popular backlash could tip the balance towards the retraction of an amenable Iran policy back into the confrontation zone.

Alright, I can’t agree with this. In this day and age, international engagement over important regional issues (particularly in volatile Middle East) is key. The world is everyone’s responsibility. However, I do think that we jump in the mix with little to no thought on what we’re supporting (like I’m doing now!). I guess the suggestion here is inform yourself. Reach out beyond the usual boundaries of news and talk to real people. On that note, he does have a point: can Obama engage in talks with an ‘illegal’ Iran?

of twitter-ing.

While I remain optimistic, lots of people are telling Twitter off for its role in Iran. There’s definitely a few points to be made in this post (and those she links too). However, while there is much room for exaggeration in Twitter, I think it is possible to accurately deduce the atmosphere in Iran through the constant stream of updates.  Most importantly, it means that this general atmosphere is converted into a forefront ‘global event’ which survives the media’s ADD.

Without this, the movement in Iran would be bogged down by reports about puppies being flushed down toilets or CNN’s write off of the whole thing. While journalists are trained professionals, they have a whole host of problems that many believe social media can fill quite nicely. Journalists are generally distanced from the events themselves, parachuted in, unable to access what’s really happening on the ground, equally prone to exaggeration (but without context), and the list goes on. I don’t think anyone is trying to discount the role of journalists in Iran, but I do think that most of us see a new avenue here which journalism can’t fill.

And, I say this as someone who freelances in the industry and who one day wouldn’t mind joining a newsroom.