Iran conservatives trying to weaken President Rouhani's nuclear negotiations by fighting "western culture"
- May 21, 14
Bio
Trita Parsi was born in Iran and grew up in Sweden. He earned a Master's Degree in International Relations at Uppsala University, a second Master's Degree in Economics at Stockholm School of Economics and a PhD in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University SAIS. He has served as an adviser to Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH18) on Middle East issues and is a co-founder and current President of the National Iranian American Council (www.niacouncil.org). Dr. Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance - The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007). He has followed Middle East politics for more than a decade, both through work in the field, and through extensive experience on Capitol Hill and the United Nations.
Transcript
Arrest of 'Happy' Dancers Reflects Power Struggle in IranPAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay.
The six Iranian youth who danced in a YouTube video to the song by Pharrell Williams "Happy", who were arrested by Iranian authorities, have now been released. But the director is still being held in custody, according to news agency reports.
Well, what is all this about? Why are these six kids arrested? They certainly didn't expect to be arrested, or one thinks they wouldn't have made this YouTube video. So there's something going on within the Iranian regime, or some force within it decided to make a symbol of these kids.
Here's a little bit of the video that has caused all the commotion.
[video clip plays]
Okay. Now joining us to try to unpack the motive behind the arrests of these young people is Trita Parsi. Trita is founder and president of the National Iranian American Council. He is an author. His books include A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy with Iran and Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S.
Thanks very much for joining us, Trita.
DR. TRITA PARSI, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL IRANIAN AMERICAN COUNCIL: Thank you so much for having me.
JAY: So, apparently President Rouhani's Twitter account--I don't know whether it's him or somebody who Tweets for him--tweeted in response to these arrests that happiness is a right of Iranians. He's been promoting more use of the internet. I think at some point he Tweeted that the access to the internet is an actual right for Iranian youth or for Iranians in general. But these kids get arrested. Clearly someone's trying to send a message. What's all this about?
PARSI: Well, there is a major conflict going on in Iran, of course, and it's been ongoing for some time. And there's essentially also a dimension of it is that there's a cultural war.
Now, what is happening in this situation is that many of the conservative forces that are opposed to Rouhani are primarily opposed to him because they don't want Rouhani to be able to gain greater political standing in the country and start taking them on on the cultural issues. And as a result, they seem to be challenging him on this, because they know very well on the nuclear issue he has protection, and he has been very successful precisely because he has protection and the supreme leader is, currently, at least, backing him.
On cultural issues, however, Rouhani does not have this backing. But Rouhani did promise when he was elected that he would take on these forces and that he would open up Iran and they would break the atmosphere of security, the securitized atmosphere in the country. Well, this is part of it. A lot of youth have started to challenge the red lines of the society. They have taped videos like this. And I don't believe a video like this would have been done three, four years ago under Ahmadinejad. And I think this is now a reaction to that, in which some of these forces are trying to intimidate the rest of the youth [incompr.] the population by making an example of these guys.
But it seems to have backfired, because it caused a Twitter storm and Rouhani realized there was actually a lot of support for what the kids were doing. And then he also then came out and indirectly lent his support to them.
JAY: So, within the country, what is your sense of where public opinion is? Is it--. When the Green movement was at its height, there was a lot of talk that this represented more upper middle class, urban young people, not so much rural people and not so much working-class people. In fact, that was a matter of debate if that was even really true. But when it comes to these cultural issues, where is Iranian public opinion? Does Rouhani have support for reform? Or is there more support for the conservative faction?
PARSI: He certainly has support for reform. He would not have been able to beat six other conservative candidates in the election and finish it off in the first round if he didn't have support.
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