Valentina Pasquali

Washington D.C. – In an effort to assess the impact of Iran’s domestic political developments on the country’s future security policies, experts from the United States and Europe spoke Thursday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington-based think tank. Ali Ansari, Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and Suzanne Maloney, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution, a research center based in the national capital, exchanged their views on Iran’s growing nationalism, the Iranian people’s increasing de-politicization and the importance of the upcoming national elections.

Ari Ansari expressed concerns that electoral politics is steadily losing its significance and that the Iranian leadership is reverting the trend toward democratization that the country had embraced in recent years. “The experiment of the Republic has been suspended,” Mr. Ansari commented. The Iranian people are suffering from what Mr. Ansari called de-politicization; an active effort on the part of the ruling elite to estrange regular citizens from the democratic process. The lower-than-average voters’ turnout at the most recent parliamentary elections is a worrying indication of the success of this policy. While electoral politics seems to be losing ground, nationalism has been gaining centrality and now contributes more substantially to the way the Iranian state defines itself. According to Mr. Ansari, this renewed wave of nationalism is not merely a state-led phenomenon. Irrelevant of the fact that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been efficient in exploiting people’s feelings, Iranian nationalism reflects changes in the texture of society and is here to stay. Concurrently Iran has been witnessing a rebirth of revolutionary purity – Mr. Ansari claims – and people are being given positions of responsibility on the basis of their adherence to ideological principles rather than their professional abilities.

Suzanne Maloney took a slightly different view on the issue of elections, pointing to the fact that the Parliament still matters, and that it has decision-making power on things such as the national budget, the impeachment of government ministers and the selection of magistrates. “The four-year turnover,” Ms. Maloney said, “injects a decent amount of fresh blood into the parliament.” In the opinion of the Brookings scholar, Iranians still show a strong commitment to voting and “the Islamic Republic has institutions that will survive even this very irresponsible leadership.”

Both scholars agreed on a negative assessment of Ahmadinejad’s Presidency, under whose watch Iran has experienced increasingly strained foreign relations and a dwindling economy. “Ahmadinejad is an existential threat indeed,” Mr. Ansari commented, “but for Iran alone.” Beyond its President, Iranian politics is characterized by a certain degree of pluralism and by the coexistence of many centers of power. The reform movement appears to be at a crossroad. The reformists’ cards, Ms. Maloney believes, are relatively limited and their hope for regaining power exclusively centered on former President Mohammad Khatami. It isn’t clear yet whether or not he will participate in the next presidential elections and thus far he has publicly flirted with both the idea of running and that of retiring. “Khatami is the only personality that can take on Ahmadinejad in 2009,” Ms. Maloney claimed, while recognizing that he is viewed by a significant number of Iranians as an outdated politician symbol of a bright past but not of the future.

The conservative movement is going through its own difficult moment, mostly due to internal divisions. Such divisions, Ms. Maloney said, “will play out in the person of Ari Larijani and in how the parliament will relate to the government.” At the same time Suzanne Maloney warns that we should not overstating the degree of internal squabbling and predicts that there will be a higher level of cooperation than there has been with the current legislature. One cannot forget that, in the end, Larijani was elected Speaker of the Parliament with the support of Ahmadinejad’s adversary faction. A development that could have significant consequences for Iran’s relations with the West is the loss of political clout by Akhbar Rasfanjani. “He is no longer a figure who can direct the machinations of Iranian politics from behind the scene,” Ms. Maloney said. Rafsanjani had always been, among the conservatives, the one who appeared open to engagement.

Independently of internal power struggles, there are a few elements that continue characterizing the whole of Iranian politics, Mr. Ansari thinks. Among them it’s an imperial mentality and the understanding that Iran is the status-quo power in the region. These, combined with a traditional and ever growing suspicion toward the West and the current political landscape, is at the basis of what Ms. Maloney called an increasing securization of Iranian politics. Ahmadinejad personally embodies this trend and this “wonderfully imperial attitude,” as Mr. Ansari defined it. The Iranian President has always shown more interest in the foreign policy arena than in domestic politics and his bias becomes even stronger in a time such as this, when the country is experiencing many crises, particularly at the level of the economy. In this context, the rhetoric of a potential confrontation with the United States is even more relevant in diverting the public’s attention. It doesn’t help that Ahmadinejad, and more importantly the Iranian clergy – which remains the fundamental depository of power -, also nurtures a worldview based on the idea that the US is a declining power.

The exact repercussions this domestic scenario will have on Iran’s security policies are hard to forecast. “It will be an interesting six months,” Suzanne Maloney thinks. Iran is faced with a number of difficult questions, while it also experiences a time of internal transition, especially with the upcoming presidential elections. In the end, “Ahmadinejad is a master of propaganda,” Ms. Maloney commented, “and he is very well positioned to take another four years,” she predicted.

What is certain is that Iran cannot simply be ignored, and for different reasons; because of its oil and gas reserves, for one. Or because of its increasing influence in Iraq, which Ari Ansari described as the “perfect example of its imperial mentality.” As far as the nuclear issues, Europe and the United States will have to accept that, as Ms. Maloney pointed out, “we are not in 2005 anymore and anyone who is looking for a serious long term suspension of Iran’s enrichment program must face reality.” In this respect, the November elections in the United States will be an important stepping stone; “Iran is hedging its bets and waiting for the new American Administration before accepting to engage in serious diplomacy,” Suzanne Maloney concluded.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Dennis Kux is Senior Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. A retired State Department South Asia specialist, who served in Pakistan from 1957 to 1959 and 1969 to 1971 and became the U.S. ambassador to the Ivory Coast from 1986 to 1989, he has written histories of U.S.-India and U.S.-Pakistan relations. The New York Times called his book India and the United States: Estranged Democracies, 1941-1991 “the definitive history of Indo-American relations.” Ambassador Kux spoke with Washington Prism about the current situation in Pakistan, the historical roots of today’s problems and the future of the country.

Valentina Pasquali (VP): In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the novelist Salman Rushdie said that the roots of modern Pakistan’s problems can be traced back to partition. Rushdie says, “What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You’re all Muslim, so now you’re a country. As we saw in 1971 with the Bangladesh secession, the answer to that was: Oh no, we’re not… It’s much more important for Punjabis to be Punjabi and Sindhis to be Sindhi . . . Religion doesn’t offer enough of a common basis.” Do you agree with this assessment? Are ethnic and religious identities the most important hindrances to Pakistan’s development?

Dennis Kux (DK): I think that this is overstated. It is true that there are strong regional feelings but I don’t think the place is going to come apart. Moreover, the one virtue of the current national government is that all the regions are included, so that nobody can say they were left out.

Pakistan’s main problem has been its lack of self-identity, of a positive self-identity. Pakistan has always acted on the basis of a negative identity, on the premise that A) it is not India and B) it is terribly threatened by India. In short, the rivalry with India is still a major driver. It has been the rationale for heavy military spending, which has diverted important resources from basic infrastructure.

This has allowed the military to run foreign policy, and also to some extent interfere in domestic policy. Since the late 1970s the army has seen itself as not only the protector of Pakistan, but also as the protector of a Pakistani ideal, which they have defined as an Islamic state – not necessarily a Taliban state but one with a heavy dose of Islam. Basically, one can say that this approach, and the effort in using different terrorist groups as proxies in the struggle with India and for Afghanistan, has backfired. Pakistan has raised hell in Kashmir, but it hasn’t moved things toward a settlement. And in Afghanistan getting the Taliban in was hardly a positive achievement. But Pakistan thinks that the US is not going to stay in Afghanistan and fears that if the US leaves the place will fall apart again and the Iranians will come in with their friends, the Russians with their friends and above all the Indians. So they want to have their friends there, the Taliban.

Nonetheless, one can argue that supporting the Taliban now, which certainly some elements of the military are doing, is undercutting what you think Pakistan would aim at, trying to find a modus vivendi with India and having better relations with Afghanistan.

VP: Given this history of Pakistan’s spasms of democracy, and the military’s periodic intervention, how do you assess Pakistan’s national elections that took place in January? How solid do you think the new coalition government is?

DK: The elections provided a new opportunity for Pakistan. The people rejected President Musharraf and picked two parties, Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), which are secular, middle-of-the-road, slightly left of center.

The PPP and the PML-N said they were going to get together, and they did, forming a grand coalition. They also brought in the local party who won the elections in the Northwestern frontier provinces, which is a secular party that beat the religious leaders. And they are trying to bring in the secular party from Karachi.

They agreed on two main points: they would be for a more democratic government and that they would reinstate the judges that Musharraf had fired. But they disagreed on how to do that. I think part of the disagreement is that Sharif, who was in jail for treason and was thrown out of the country by Musharraf, has an issue with the President and just wants him out. Zardari, on the other hand, is someone who may suffer personally if some of Musharraf’s decisions are rolled back, because he was given an amnesty and there are questions on whether the amnesty was legal.

Nawaz Sharif’s ministers recently pulled out of the cabinet, but his party remains part of the coalition for now. It is important to note that the PML-N has formed the government in the Punjab, the largest province. Punjab is very important — it has 60% of the population and even more of the economy. If Nawaz Sharif was to pull out of the central government, it would make the situation very complicated with two different parties ruling Lahore and Islamabad. It’s a recipe for troubles.

There is also the added complication that the lawyers, who sparked the difficulties for Musharraf last year when they protested the firing of the Chief Justice, are now protesting again because the judges haven’t been reinstated. They have the support of Nawaz, but only partial support from the PPP.

The role of the army also remains unclear. Musharraf, to some extent, is on his own, the army did pull back at the time of the elections, which is why we had free elections. But it’s not clear exactly what they are going to do, they are feeling that their image is tarnished by the Musharraf years and they feel this was good time to pull back and let other people hold the bag. Especially since the economy, which was supposedly in good shape, has gone very bad: inflation is way up, there are power shortages, and food prices have increased significantly.

In general the situation is fairly unstable, which is too bad because what Pakistan needed was stability, political stability.

VP: Do you see this current government as a potentially trustworthy partner for the US?

DK: We don’t know if Pakistan is a trustworthy partner. It is especially unclear when it comes to terrorism and civilians-dictated policies to fight it. If you look at the ongoing negotiations with the Taliban, you’ll notice that different people say different things and it is hard to predict where these are headed.

The US certainly doesn’t like that Pakistanis say, “This is a political question and we can work something out that will take care of the problem of people crossing over the border.” The fear here is that they will make a deal which will provide peace in Pakistan but then leave it open for the Taliban and Al Qaeda to continue attacking Afghanistan from the sanctuaries in Pakistan. That’s a big worry here in the United States.

Now, the difficulty is to getting Pakistanis to do what you want them to do and the dilemma is; “How do you apply pressure, should you apply pressure?”

VP: How do you evaluate President Musharraf’s position today? How much longer do you think he will remain a key political figure in Pakistan? What is his relationship to the United States?

DK: President Bush called Musharraf last week. We’ve been criticized for supporting Musharraf too much, but I think now it comes down to Bush’s loyalty to his friend.

Musharraf’s position is much weaker. He doesn’t command all the levers of power anymore, the situation is more fractured.

It all depends on what sort of an agreement the coalition parties reach, if any. If they don’t, he may well stay on, just because he is there. Nawaz Sharif talks about impeaching him, but that is possible although the military might not want to see their former chief put through that process, it reflects badly on the army as well.

Basically Musharraf is one of the three big players. You have Zardari, you have Sharif and you have Musharraf. One of them is going to go. It is not entirely clear who it will be. It is not going to be Zardari. More likely we will see Musharraf ease out or retire, (there were rumors last week that he was thinking of retiring), or we will see Sharif quitting the government. If this is the case, then the PPP will have to try forming a coalition with the former Musharraf group, which will make for a strange affair.

VP: Would it be accurate to say that for the stability of Pakistan the best solution would be that Musharraf voluntarily retires?

DK: It would be good for the country if the government stays together and tries to work through this next term. No political government has last through a whole term, ever.

VP: In recent years, the Bush Administration has chosen Musharraf as its direct interlocutor in Pakistan. How do you judge such policy? And considering the new government and Musharraf’s increasing difficulties, what do you think the new Administration should do?

DK: There has been the feeling that the Bush Administration has put a lot of his currency on Musharraf. Part of the reason was that they liked him, but they also feared that, a fear that Musharraf himself promoted, if he went out the religious parties would be the big gainer. The good news out of the recent elections is that the religious party did very badly, much worse than what they did in 2002. They won 60 seats in parliament then, and this year they only won 5. They went from 11% to 2.2% of the vote. This showed that the public in Pakistan is not pro-Islamist at all. However, the Islamist parties are still able to make a lot of noise, and they are all in part affiliated with the various terrorist groups.

Today, of the two predominant personalities, Zardari is seen as the more accommodating to the United States, in part because the US helped arrange an agreement between President Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto when she came back and was granted amnesty. But Nawaz Sharif was not part of it and he was, wrongly I think, seen as being anti-American. He is perhaps more nationalist than Zardari, but really he is more of a smart politician than anything else.

In any case, both of the parties have been pushing for talks with the militants claiming this to be the best way to try to solve these problems. The US doesn’t see it in the same light. Our concern is that in the negotiations, as in the deal that Musharraf worked out two years back, the government simply agrees to pull out and let the militants and the terrorists do whatever they want as long as they leave the Pakistanis alone. The US is concerned about an agreement which does not end the use of Pakistan as a safe-haven. The government spokesman just said that they will take care of that but so far it hasn’t happened.

In Pakistan we are faced with a real problem. The US is dependent on the Pakistanis, and they partly help, but they are also a part of the problem at the same time. The question is,
“how do you balance this off, with your aid? Should you be more discriminating, should you put more conditions on the aid?” I think what we should be trying to do is to strengthen the institutions, but you can’t do it until they settle down and stop fighting.

VP: The International Herald Tribune recently wrote, “The car bomb that went off Monday at the Danish Embassy in Islamabad was only the latest of several recent signs pointing to Pakistan as a nexus for terrorism and religious extremism.” What shall the US and the international community make of such nexus? How dangerous is Pakistan with regard to international terrorism?

DK: It is a complex situation. One can say that Musharraf either played a double game or he wasn’t able to deliver on at least part of his agreement with the US and, although he provided help and did a lot of things against Al Qaeda, he didn’t do much against the Taliban. And he allowed them to reestablish themselves.

This is partially due to the fact that the military has used these terrorist groups as proxies for Pakistan over the years, not unlike what the US did in the 1980s with the Mujaheddin. Today’s militants belong to the same groups, in various and different forms, that were used against India in Kashmir. Then there is the Taliban, which although not a creature of Pakistan was greatly supported by Pakistan.

Musharraf had a lot of strong words but the actions haven’t been as strong and now we see the consequences. By not acting more firmly earlier and then by acting unwisely a couple of years ago when he sent a lot of soldiers into the tribal areas where they hadn’t been before, and did very badly, we have a situation now which is very troubling, and an area that provides a sanctuary for all sort of terrorists.

Now, the new government claims that it wants to change its approach, but their first move is to try to negotiate. The US keeps repeating that the negotiations have failed. There is significant lack of communication and of agreement between us and the Pakistanis.

VP: Speaking of security-related issues; how do you view the situation in the tribal areas? How should we understand the relations between terrorist organizations and their militants and tribal leaders who simply do not abide by constitutional rule? Are those inherently connected, or are they two separate problems facing the Pakistani government?

DK: I think the situation varies from place to place. The tribal areas, both culturally and legally, are in fact not fully part of Pakistan. The laws that apply elsewhere don’t apply there, so they are used to this independent existence. People see them simply as they are — an autonomous part of Pakistan. They have a long history of fighting against outside authority. Many live off smuggling. The region is perceived as backward and the economic situation there is much worse than the rest of Pakistan.

As far as their links with terrorism, I think it is all one big challenge. And I also don’t think there is much difference among the different groups and organizations in the various parts of the country. They are different but they work together. It is hard to differentiate between the Pakistan Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, Al Qaeda, other groups working from Uzbekistan.

VP: Much of the international debate on Pakistan revolves around security issues. However, the country has been struggling with rising food prices, energy shortages, and an economy that for the first time in years is expected to grow less than 6%. How serious do you think these issues are? Is the new government addressing them effectively?

DK: The economic difficulties are very important. We see, right now, 12-13% inflation. The present government will start to be blamed for this if they don’t do a better job. To some extent they are prisoners of what happened in the rest of the world. But they are, in a way, the victims of the failure of the past military government. This did a good job at a macro level, but they didn’t take advantage of it to tackle some of the underlying problems — education, health, infrastructure, etc.

Moreover, they continue to have only limited trade with India, which means they have lost the opportunity to gain access to the Indian market, which would be good because the Pakistanis have a comparative advantage in certain areas.

The civilian government should really be focusing on this rather than to keep fighting among themselves. Recently they put out a budget, but it wasn’t very realistic. On paper it balances everything but it’s hard to say whether it will prove effective. It withdrew a lot of subsidies, it supposedly raised taxes, increased the tax base, but it’s not clear what kind of effect it will have. The trouble is that they say they are going to implement the reforms, they pass laws, and then nothing happens.

VP: In the same interview mentioned above, Salman Rushdie speaks about his 1983 novel Shame, which he wrote about Pakistan, and says that it is even more relevant today; “Corruption, power, generals, the whole thing. Pakistan is not different, it’s just worse.” Do you agree? In conclusion, are there reasons to be optimistic and what instead are the biggest hurdles ahead for Pakistan?

DK: “Pakistan is not different, it’s just worse,” I would agree with that.

The thing that is clearly worse is this threat of terrorism. In 1983 we didn’t have entrenched terrorist groups that were ruling parts of the country and now we do have that. They are trying to assert themselves, mainly in the Pashtu areas. That’s certainly an important threat and something that we didn’t have in 1983.

We also have insurgencies in Baluchistan. They have existed for a while and they rarely have accommodated well within the national government. Recently the biggest grievance is about the big blue-water port that is being built in the city of Gwadar. The Baluchis say that they are not going to get any benefit out of it. Moreover, the military was very heavy handed in dealing with the tribes, which helped cause uprisings in Baluchistan. However, it was a political insurgency and not a movement to try to separate from the state or to impose Sharia law; they were looking for more autonomy.

I guess one has to be pessimistic. Pakistan just has continuing problems. I don’t think the state will collapse but I don’t see the civilian government doing what they really need to do. In the end, we will have to see how they come out on the courts issue. This is a fairly important problem, how they deal with the Constitution, with issues that are still on the table and haven’t been resolved. They agreed together that they would solve the court problem but they have missed the deadline.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – Seventy percent of Iranians are under the age of thirty, a striking comparison, for example, to rapidly ageing Europe. Recording the activities, hobbies and moods of this burgeoning Iranian youth, Greek writer, photographer and producer Iason Athanasiadis lived and traveled in Iran from 2004 to 2007.

“I let serendipity take hold and move me according to its wishes,” Athanasiadis told Washington Prism in an interview. “I worked on television documentaries on Iranian music and cultural traditions. Through my travels, I found myself in situations that allowed me to take images indicative of the youth zeitgeist,” he said explaining how he carried out the project. His photos are now on display at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a respected think tank in Washington.

Shortly after arriving in Tehran in 2004, Athanasiadis realized that there was something missing in the Western media coverage of Iran and that the foreign policy issues that hindered the country’s relations with the West were often no more than mere speculations. “Did Iran have a nuclear weapons program, and if so, what to do about it? Did Iran support militias in Iraq, and if so, what to do about it?” Athanasiadis said criticizing mainstream reporting on Iran.

Instead, another fascinating story was taking place, one that was – still is – destined to have wide-ranging social ramifications. It was the story of the emergence of Iran’s youth. “When I arrived in Tehran, all the rage was about Orkut parties, where young people who had met online on the social networking site Orkut would meet up in real life, in cities around Iran,” Athanasiadis recalled in his interview with Washington Prism. “It was a way of getting around the Islamic prohibition on unrelated members of opposite sexes socializing, at least before Orkut was filtered by the authorities.”

This new generation of Iranians that Athanasiadis met was one born after the Shah left Iran and retained scarcely any personal memory of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. “They are children of a revolution they had not participated in, in some cases asked for,” the Greek journalist said, “They view the Islamic Republic with a realism that comes from those who are pragmatists, rather than idealists who tasted disillusionment, as many of their parents are.”

Children of the Iranian Revolution is the title given to Athanasiadis’ exhibit, which runs at the Wilson Center through July 14^th. It is a collection of shots bustling with life, portraying youngsters banging heads at a rock concert, a couple of rappers rhyming hip-hop lyrics in a recording studio, friends attending a soccer game wearing Metallica shirts. There is a touching portrait of a boy and a girl cuddling with each other on a park bench, and another of a young bride wearing a Western-style strapless wedding gown surrounded by a cheering crowd of older veiled women. Athanasiadis’ work is a rich and compelling tale about the exceptionally lively and continually expanding underground life in Iran, although, like the artists explains; “underground loses meaning when large segments of a society are at it.”

“I came to know Iason through the Wilson Center’s Southeast Europe Project (SEP),” the Center’s Special Events Coordinator, and curator of the exhibit, Maria-Stella Gatzoulis said in an e-mail interview with Prism. “Iason approached SEP’s Chairman John Sitilides, and expressed interest in showing his photography at the Woodrow Wilson Center,” Ms. Gatzoulis recalled. “He was in Greece at the time and we discussed reviewing the idea if he were ever to come to America. As things turned out, Iason was appointed as a Harvard Fellow one year later.”

The son of two academics who used to bring carpets and objets d’art back from trips to Iraq, Egypt and Syria and whom his mother would lull to sleep with stories from the 1001 Nights, Iason Athanasiadis studied Arabic and Middle East Studies as at Oxford, holds a Masters Degree in Persian and Contemporary Iranian Studies from Tehran’s School of International Studies and speaks Arabic, Persian and is now learning Turkish. “The kind of journalism I practice is predicated on learning the culture and speaking the language before I start writing about a place,” Athanasiadis told Washington Prism.

“I think the greatest strengths in Iason’s show are his images of the people behind the scenes of what life appears to be in Iran today,” Wilson Center’s Maria-Stella Gatzoulis told Prism; “With his exhibit, he captured the reality of the joys and pastimes this generation is enjoying. He goes beyond Western stereotypes of what Iran appears to be today to show us what Iran is really like through the eyes of its young generation.”

“The first thing I noticed about Iran when I stepped off the plane was the incredible vitality you see in the streets,” Athanasiadis said remembering his arrival in Teheran. He was struck by the proximity he felt with the people he met. “Despite the language barrier, our interactions reminded me of being with my friends in Greece. I realized that a great generation gap was in play between themselves and their stiffer, more formal elders.”

Wanting to avoid showing elite activities but instead trying to focus on how ordinary youth is looking for a balance between adapting to the globalized world and preserving local traditions, Athanasiadis found out how dynamic Iran’s middle class is. “They have neither too much money as to be cautious, nor so little that all their efforts are spent working to make enough to put food on the table,” the Greek photographer discovered. “Hence the extraordinary artistic and cultural innovations they are pioneering in Iran, both in visual arts and music.”

The exhibition, however, is not meant as a purely aesthetic portrayal of a new Iranian generation. “The show is as much ethnographic as journalistic as artistic,” said Iason. At the same time, and because of how controversial the debate on Iran is nowadays, in order to preserve the value of the contribution offered by his photographs, Athanasiadis has tried to avoid direct political statements. “To not get drawn into the politics of the US-Iran confrontation, I put up the show exclusively with my own money and no sponsorship, in order to avoid allegations of political bias.”

Iason hopes that his exhibit displays an image different from the usual fare on the more mainstream media. Similarly, “the objective of the Wilson Center in putting up this exhibit is to enlighten people through pictures and captions of the lifestyle of the third generation of Iranians,” Ms. Gatzoulis said. “Its goal is to promote an understanding of the culture and its people and to hopefully open doors for greater friendship, understanding and dialogue.”

Athanasiadis believes that “a process of dehumanizing Iran and its people is gripping the US media that is similar to what happened prior to the war against Iraq. The voices of the people are not transmitted to us. We don’t know what they think.” What he found during five years living and traveling in Iran, and listening to regular Iranians, is that “the people in my pictures do not want to be liberated. They are engaged in their own struggle to redefine the Islamic Republic they inhabit, but from within.”

What is important for Americans to understand, according to Athanasiadis, is that Iranians, including the globalizing youth, are not happy with what the US has done to their neighbors, “and have cooled off on their support for the West.” In the opinion of the photographer, US policymakers tend to misunderstand the signals coming from this third generation and too easily interpret its love for Western fashion as a call for ‘liberation’ or ‘regime change’. “Yes, it’s true that there are Iranians who dislike their regime and wish for the US to come liberate them from the Islamic Republic, but alliances built on mutual interests are seldom solid,” Athanasiadis believes. “For a fiercely patriotic people such as the Iranians, foreign occupation would be just as unpalatable as it has proven in Iraq.”

Athanasiadis has a warning and a suggestion for the American public, gathered thanks to his experience in the country. On the one hand, “they should not feign shock when they travel abroad and find themselves less than embraced.” At the same time, Americans should remember that they come from a great country with a superb tradition of hard work and meritocracy. “These are the aspects of its culture the US could focus on exporting to the world,” said the artist.

In conclusion, Athanasiadis believes, Iran is in the process of a tough and wrenching transition as the Islamic Republic is constantly redefined from within. In his opinion, the US and the international community should let this process run its course since outside interventions seem to only offer the government a pretext to crack down on civil society.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism – Persian Edition