Iran is a land that cannot be easily pigeon-holed.

 America’s sworn enemy which brands the United States the “Great Satan” is the only country in the Middle East where citizens went onto the streets with a candlelit vigil in a spontaneous show of sympathy immediately after 9/11.
 

The Islamic Republic, the embodiment of radical Islam in the eyes of many a Western politician, is also the place where the most popular public holidays hark back to Iran’s Zoroastrian past that pre-dates Islam.

 And then there are the women in their veils. Many you can hardly see, shrouded in their black chadors — a word which literally means ‘tent’ — holding the edges of the cloth in their teeth to keep it tightly bound round their faces.

 Look elsewhere, particularly in the upscale parts of town, and the veil hardly covers their heads, pushed back behind bouffant hair styles, more Yves Saint Laurent than Islam. “Bad hejab” it’s called. (Persian and English share the same word for “bad”, perhaps testimony to ancient linguistic roots.)

 But the omnipresent veil tells you little. Whether all enveloping or pushed back on the head to the limits - and beyond - of acceptability, it gives no indication of where women see their place in society or their political view.
 I first travelled to Iran in 1999. Politically a very different time. Pro-reform politicians had swept to power. Change was in the air although, as it happened, it didn’t last long.

 On that occasion, I was travelling with a U.S.-Iranian friend who was touring the Islamic Republic as part of some research. The trip took us to Ardebil, a city in northwest Iran.

 We had met a kindly man on the flight. He insisted we stay with his family. We declined many times, but this was not traditional “taarof”, the Iranian tradition of making an offer that the recipient is expected to decline. He meant it. And we agreed.
   

We were having lunch. The wife with her neat veil served the food, with her daughter’s help. The men were seated. The women chose to eat in a separate room. We tucked in. Then, after finishing, the wife and daughter joined us for tea. We chatted.

So what has the revolution achieved? my friend asked, speaking 20 years after the Islamic Republic emerged.
   

The husband answered, well, it’s been tough, we still have many problems, but we have made progress. He listed the advances. His wife was listening with increasing agitation.

Finally, unable to hold herself back, she blurted out her  response. In short, he was talking nonsense, she said. She laid into his account with vigour - in front of the visitors - perfectly confident that her opposing and less rosy view of Iran’s progress was just as valid.

That’s what struck me. It’s not what the wife said that mattered. It was her assertiveness. There seemed no inequality in that room. Eating apart and wearing a headscarf were just tradition or polite custom, it was not a statement about her position. Her words that spoke volumes.

That scene in 1999 is just as relevant today. But the political landscape is different. Reformists are no longer in government pushing for social and political change. Hardliners hold the reins of power. And different images now come to the fore: those of women battling to change their status in the eyes
of the law.

It is the era after Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Peace prize in 2003 for her work on democracy and human rights. She was the first Iranian, first Shi’ite Muslim and first Muslim woman to be so honoured.

She and other activists are fighting for the same divorce rights as men, to have their witness given the same weight in court and seeking other changes that will put them on a par. They pay a heavy price.

Suspended jail sentences for their actions or even time inside are not uncommon . The Iranian authorities deny discrimination and say they are simply implementing Islamic sharia law.

What women are fighting for highlights their aspirations but their determination tells you more about where they see themselves, as equals, even if the activists number just a small
minority in this country of 70 million.

The Islamic Republic often seems as intricate and complex as the mosaic tiling on its mosques. It’s difficult to categorise. Veiled women, whether covering up for conviction or because the law demands it, suggest appearances can indeed deceive.

    A  fellow journalist, an Oxford alumnus who worked in Iran, had a soft spot for Qom. There was something he found familiar about the Islamic Republic’s centre of Shi’ite learning.

     The brickwork and tiled domes did not much resemble the classic stone structures of his alma mater. Nor did students in their robes and turbans look like their jean-clad counterparts in the heart of England. But seminaries, set around courtyards, and the air of erudition evoked for him the quads of that city in Oxfordshire and its history.

    Qom now, however, is more like Oxford of centuries past when scholastic theologians wandered its streets. Philosophy and politics may be debated but everything comes down to theology.

    For Qom is the beating heart of the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late figurehead for the revolution in 1979, was in exile when he propounded his theology of ‘velayat-e faqih’, or rule by the religious jurist. But it is the clerics of Qom who hold it in trust. The city provides the religious and political compass for the system.

    That does not mean Khomeini’s theology is not subject to debate. Some clerics argue that the supreme leader — the position Khomeini occupied and now held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – draws his power from the will of the people. Others say it is divine will that matters, and the electorate confirms what has been ordained by God, providing further legitimacy. But what you don’t hear (at least out loud) are those challenging what is still a controversial theory in the Shi’ite world outside of the Islamic Republic.

    So why dip into this arcane theological debate? Because some in Iran’s clerical establishment, say analysts, are nervous. They cite two particular reasons: the first is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and second involves the re-awakening of that other Shi’ite religious centre, Najaf, in Iraq.

    Ahmadinejad’s presidency marked a break with what had become a tradition. Not for about a quarter of a century had there been a president who was not a cleric. The last secular politician to hold the post did so in the early years after the 1979 revolution when the religious establishment was still bedding down the idea of having clerics in charge.

    Ahmadinejad makes much of his religious conviction but some clerics voice concern about where his faith is directed, namely his very public devotion to the Mahdi, the Shi’ites 12th Imam who disappeared in the 10th century and in Shi’ite belief will return to usher in an era of Islamic justice. You see, say analysts, for those nervous clerics, if Ahmadinejad’s real allegiance lies with the Mahdi, where does that leave them?

    The man who matters, Khamenei, Iran’s top authority, has shown no such concern. He publicly praises the president.

    But analysts say clerics have sought to ensure their voices are not drowned out by the outspoken president by electing Ali Larijani as a Qom MP. Ahmadinejad’s political rival has now become parliament speaker. An influential former nuclear negotiator, Larijani also comes with a military background, having served like Ahmadinejad in the ideologically driven Revolutionary Guards, and is from a well-known clerical family.

    For other clerics, their concerns lie across the border. The closest equivalent to the Vatican for most of the world’s Shi’ites is not Qom but Najaf. That Iraqi city and nearby Kerbala are home to some of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest shrines. Unlike Qom, the seminaries of Najaf have traditionally espoused a more quietest theology. Shi’ite religious leaders, they say, should leave the murky world of political power to others.

    So there is some irony that Khomeini was in Najaf when his revolutionary sermons were smuggled in pamphlets and on tapes into Iran, helping bring down the then U.S.-backed shah.

    Najaf, however, was heading into dark days as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the Sunni strongman who became president, crushed opposition particularly among Iraq’s majority Shi’ites. Najaf  fell into enforced slumber from which it is now emerging.

    Such theological rivalry can seem remote to observers, particularly those from the more secularised West. Oxford’s theological focus long ago disappeared into the history books. But such issues are helping to shape this part of the world, forming a real and live discussion.

Was the meeting in Geneva filled with “meandering” small talk? Or did the discussions between world powers and Iran begin work on an intricately woven carpet, that in time, would yield an “elegant and durable” outcome?

The two views, the first voiced by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the second by chief Iranian nuclear  negotiator Saeed Jalili, say much about how the two foes approached Saturday’s meeting to resolve Iran’s long-running nuclear row with the West.

It may also indicate prospects for a deal between officials from the “Great Satan” and “Axis of Evil”, who have spent so long without diplomatic ties that they have forgotten what makes the other one tick — while trust has all but vanished.

Perhaps the result of Saturday’s meeting (Iran, it was announced, did not give a clear answer to demands by world powers) was clear before officials sat round the table.

Those who watched the scene in Geneva saw U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns enter with a demeanour that did little to suggest a man who really wanted to be there.

If history was on his mind, he had little reason to be encouraged. Talks to try to get Iran to halt the most sensitive part of nuclear work, uranium enrichment, have gone nowhere since Tehran tore up a previous suspension deal with the European Union in 2005. The United States saw this as a sign Tehran was bent on producing a nuclear bomb, despite Iran’s insistence that it was just exercising its right to develop the technology needed to make electricity.

The Iranians also offered little reassurance before Jalili sat down in front of the six world powers and their representative, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Shortly before discussions began, an official told Reuters bluntly: “Any kind of suspension or freeze is out of the question.”

The only person by this late stage who showed any visible enthusiasm was a Swiss passerby, who when asked why all the cameras were crowding outside the talks venue, was told they were waiting for Brad Pitt. Out came the pocket camera ready for the Hollywood star, until a sheepish television producer admitted the real reason. The bystander trudged off.

Everything had seemed so much more upbeat even hours earlier. A British newspaper had reported Washington would soon announce plans to open a low-level diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in almost 30 years. Iran said it would consider such an idea, and was also ready for direct flights. Days earlier, Iranian newspapers were filled with debate, involving some high-level politicians, about how Iran should respond to the nuclear, trade and other incentives offered by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Such unprecedented debate surely signalled a change of heart?

And so we come to the bit where neither side seems able to read the other.

What, from the U.S. side, may have been a bid to show what Iran could win from a concession, Iranians — as subsequent newspaper editorials make clear — saw as a pitifully small gesture for stopping a programme that is a symbol for many of them as a point of national pride and regional status.

Likewise, the Iranian debate that became so public, and which some in the West saw as a signal of a soul-searching, perhaps indicated the fractious nature of the Iranian leadership but said less about its willingness to switch direction.

That, say diplomats and analysts, is because it is difficult to determine whether the debate went to the heart of Iran’s leadership. Ultimate decision-making may lie with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but he tends to look for consensus, they say. Iran’s multi-layered structure (including a national security body, a council to mediate between parliament and a constitutional watchdog, plus a clerical assembly that technically has the power throw out the supreme leader) means it is not always easy to determine the seriousness of any discussion when it does finally emerge in public.

And even if debate does go deep, there are powerful checks on any change in policy when the aim is to reach a common view among such hydra-like bodies, not to mention securing the backing of a handful of powerful politicians who have helped guide the country since the 1979 revolution.

This then helps makes sense of Jalili’s comment to an Iranian reporter, cited by the daily Etemad-e Melli, as he left Saturday’s talks: “Diplomacy is like a Iranian carpet that progresses by the millimetre. Diplomacy is also elegant and exquisite and, God willing, the outcome is beautiful, elegant and durable.”

Perhaps it’s also understandable why Jalili’s approach in Geneva did not go down well with the straight-talking U.S. administration and looked more like time wasting. As Rice put it on Monday: “I understand it was at times meandering.”

When diplomatic ties have been cut for three decades and a “wall of mistrust” has been built up — as one moderate Iranian president once put it — a deal may not come swiftly.

 The simple answer is inflation is rocketing. But it doesn’t really answer the question analysts often ask which is: what is the actual inflation rate in Iran? To that there is more than one answer, which often seems the case in the Islamic Republic.

    The Central Bank of Iran generally cites two figures. The first is sometimes referred to as the average rate for the consumer price index, which in May hit 19.8 percent. The second is the central bank’s year-on-year rate, which was 25.3 percent in May.

    Given a choice, economists tend to prefer the latter rate, because they say it reflects what they call the point-to-point rise in prices. Put simply, what does a kilo of tomatoes cost today compared to the same point a year ago. The government, for its own reasons, tends to prefer the former.

     Some economists and analysts question both rates. As indeed will most shoppers if you ask them what they are paying each day in the supermarket or bazaar. The central bank’s explanation for consumers is that they feel prices rise faster because they are focusing on a few select items that are their daily needs, while the basket of goods on which the bank’s figures are based is broader and more representative.

   Critics however say the basket itself is skewed. Some say it includes too many items which ordinary Iranians hardly purchase. One independent assessment — based on a basket of goods drawn up by an economist who has closely followed the Iranian market — indicated inflation was running at 32 percent in May. The body behind that independent assessment say it’s higher than the central bank rate, but both are showing the same broad trend — up and fast. Some economists following Iran say even 32 percent may be conservative.

    But isn’t this just an academic debate? Maybe not, for the answer could have real implications with Iran now roughly one year away from a presidential election.

    President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 pledging to spread Iran’s oil wealth more fairly. He promised other things too, but this is the one most Iranians remember. And a common refrain these days, at least if you ask city dwellers, is what he laid on their dinner tables was higher priced food.

    The worse inflation gets, say some analysts, the tougher the challenge Ahmadinejad will face if he seeks a second four-year term. (He hasn’t said so yet, but few doubt he will run again.). Ahmadinejad is quick to blame global factors for the price surge (not an unusual line from politicians in a world where commodities prices have surged). He also said price rises are the product of a conspiracy by Iran’s “enemies”, or even just hyped by the media. Come round to the corner shop near my place to buy tomatoes, they’re cheaper there, he once memorably told a grumbling parliament.

    Iran is not the only oil producer enjoying a revenue bonanza but also coping with the downsides of a flood of extra cash in the market. Across the Gulf in some oil-rich Arab states, inflation has climbed to double digits.

     But Ahmadinejad’s critics say this does not explain the speed at which prices are rising. Instead they blame what they call his profligate spending of Iran’s oil earnings — which topped $70 billion last year. The central bank should raise interest rates, they argue — as indeed the bank has indicated it wants. Ahmadinejad has talked about controlling prices while saying rates should be lowered — an argument some economists find difficult to square with orthodox economic theory.

    So higher inflation is surely bad news for the president. Yes, say the analysts, but that’s not the whole story. It never is. Firstly, much may well depend on whether Ahmadinejad retains the support Iran’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has heaped praise on the president even if he has in the past gently chided the government over its economic management. And secondly, Ahmadinejad has splurged much of his cash on provincial areas and villages, which long felt neglected by central government. They may be enjoying the attention and looking forward to more, suggest the analysts.

    There’s rarely one answer in Iran but there is always plenty of (higher priced) food for thought.

    Was the meeting in Geneva filled with "meandering" small talk? Or did the discussions between world powers and Iran begin work on an intricately woven carpet, that in time, would yield an "elegant and durable" outcome?

    The two views, the first voiced by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the second by chief Iranian nuclear  negotiator Saeed Jalili, say much about how the two foes approached Saturday's meeting to resolve Iran's long-running nuclear row with the West.

    It may also indicate prospects for a deal between officials from the "Great Satan" and "Axis of Evil", who have spent so long without diplomatic ties that they have forgotten what makes the other one tick -- while trust has all but vanished.

    Perhaps the result of Saturday's meeting (Iran, it was announced, did not give a clear answer to demands by world powers) was clear before officials sat round the table.

    Those who watched the scene in Geneva saw U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns enter with a demeanour that did little to suggest a man who really wanted to be there.

    If history was on his mind, he had little reason to be encouraged. Talks to try to get Iran to halt the most sensitive part of nuclear work, uranium enrichment, have gone nowhere since Tehran tore up a previous suspension deal with the European Union in 2005. The United States saw this as a sign Tehran was bent on producing a nuclear bomb, despite Iran's insistence that it was just exercising its right to develop the technology needed to make electricity.

    The Iranians also offered little reassurance before Jalili sat down in front of the six world powers and their representative, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Shortly before discussions began, an official told Reuters bluntly: "Any kind of suspension or freeze is out of the question."

    The only person by this late stage who showed any visible enthusiasm was a Swiss passerby, who when asked why all the cameras were crowding outside the talks venue, was told they were waiting for Brad Pitt. Out came the pocket camera ready for the Hollywood star, until a sheepish television producer admitted the real reason. The bystander trudged off.

    Everything had seemed so much more upbeat even hours earlier. A British newspaper had reported Washington would soon announce plans to open a low-level diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in almost 30 years. Iran said it would consider such an idea, and was also ready for direct flights. Days earlier, Iranian newspapers were filled with debate, involving some high-level politicians, about how Iran should respond to the nuclear, trade and other incentives offered by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Such unprecedented debate surely signalled a change of heart?

    And so we come to the bit where neither side seems able to read the other.

    What, from the U.S. side, may have been a bid to show what Iran could win from a concession, Iranians -- as subsequent newspaper editorials make clear -- saw as a pitifully small gesture for stopping a programme that is a symbol for many of them as a point of national pride and regional status.

    Likewise, the Iranian debate that became so public, and which some in the West saw as a signal of a soul-searching, perhaps indicated the fractious nature of the Iranian leadership but said less about its willingness to switch direction.

    That, say diplomats and analysts, is because it is difficult to determine whether the debate went to the heart of Iran's leadership. Ultimate decision-making may lie with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but he tends to look for consensus, they say. Iran's multi-layered structure (including a national security body, a council to mediate between parliament and a constitutional watchdog, plus a clerical assembly that technically has the power throw out the supreme leader) means it is not always easy to determine the seriousness of any discussion when it does finally emerge in public.

    And even if debate does go deep, there are powerful checks on any change in policy when the aim is to reach a common view among such hydra-like bodies, not to mention securing the backing of a handful of powerful politicians who have helped guide the country since the 1979 revolution.

    This then helps makes sense of Jalili's comment to an Iranian reporter, cited by the daily Etemad-e Melli, as he left Saturday's talks: "Diplomacy is like a Iranian carpet that progresses by the millimetre. Diplomacy is also elegant and exquisite and, God willing, the outcome is beautiful, elegant and durable."

    Perhaps it's also understandable why Jalili's approach in Geneva did not go down well with the straight-talking U.S. administration and looked more like time wasting. As Rice put it on Monday: "I understand it was at times meandering."

    When diplomatic ties have been cut for three decades and a "wall of mistrust" has been built up -- as one moderate Iranian president once put it -- a deal may not come swiftly.

 Is the United States going soft on Iran?

 In the past President George W. Bush accused Tehran of belonging to an “axis of evil”, compared negotiations with its president to appeasing Adolf Hitler, and warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would lead to World War Three.

His administration refused to join international talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, which it suspects could be used to produce a nuclear bomb, unless Tehran halted enriching uranium. It pointedly declined to rule out military action if a diplomatic solution was not found.

Now, the United States is sending one of its top diplomats – along with representatives from other major powers — to talks in Geneva on Saturday with Iran to hear its response to an offer of financial and diplomatic incentives if Iran gives up its sensitive nuclear work.

And Britain’s Guardian newspaper says Washington will announce in the next month that it plans to establish a diplomatic present in Tehran for the first time in 30 years — a move the newspaper describes as a “remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush”.

U.S. officials say the decision to send senior diplomat William Burns to the Geneva talks sends a strong signal that the United States is committed to diplomacy, adding that Washington will only join full-blown negotiations if uranium enrichment stops.

 One hawkish former U.S. administration official sees it differently. “This is, and the evidence is plain for all to see, the total intellectual collapse of the Bush administration,” former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Reuters. 

He wrote in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal: “There was a time when the Bush administration might itself have seriously considered using force, but all public signs are that such a moment has passed.”

He urges Washington to consider what cooperation it “will extend to Israel before, during and after a strike on Iran” but he doesn’t seem to think the U.S. administration is listening.

So is Washington preparing for a deal instead of war?

This might explain a flurry of regional diplomacy.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki heads for Turkey, shortly after meetings in Ankara by President George W. Bush’s National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley.
Burns will attend the Geneva meeting and then there’s the Guardian report.

Any deal has a logic that could benefit both sides. Analysts often point out overlapping regional interests. The two countries, say analysts, ultimately want a stable Iraq, share a loathing for the radical Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and (despite Iran’s recent buddying up) are equally distrustful of Russia. (It’s no accident that Iran under the shah was Washington’s closest Middle East ally — bar Israel.)

And yet — there always seems to one of those — the wheels of this happy bandwagon could come off, and quickly.

Much hinges on what happens in Geneva when Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili sits down for talks with the European Union’s Javier Solana, the representative of world powers in Saturday’s Geneva talks. Solana will want to see signs that Iran is ready to consider suspending uranium enrichment, a process Tehran has so far refused to halt.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose opinion ultimately holds sway in Iran, spoke on Wednesday of Iran’s “red lines” — not a very promising statement on the face of it.

Overlapping interests, say analysts, may not be enough for Iran to rehabilitate ties with the “Great Satan”. Interests have overlapped for the past 30 years or so but the hostility has continued. (President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has, however, said Iran would consider any overture to open an interests section).

And then, say some Western diplomats, there’s Israel. Will it take matters into its own hands after vowing not to let Iran get The Bomb? Diplomats say it might.

So there may be a shift in Washington. Some at least have detected it. Inside Iran, there has been an unusually public debate on how to handle the nuclear file even if there have also been some fairly uncompromising comments.

But are we really close to a breakthrough? And how long is Israel ready to wait? There’s still plenty to debate.

    It can be an unnerving experience wandering among the graves of Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, just outside Tehran.
    Photographs of the dead from the 1980-88 war with Iraq, “martyrs” as they are called here, stare out in seemingly unending rows. Often horrifyingly young. Many tombs are tended as if the dead died yesterday. Flowers are fresh. Small Korans are tucked into neat glass cabinets that serve as headstones.
    For a nation which still weeps for Hussein, one of the 12 Shi’ite Imams and who died in a hopeless battle at Kerbala in the 7th century, family heroes killed in a war that ended just two decades ago are still caught in a close embrace.
    So why are they relevant now? Because these dead have become caught up in a war of words that is escalating around the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear programme.
    Israel has vowed never to let Iran build an atomic bomb, which Tehran insists it doesn’t want. Washington says force is a last resort — but it remains an option.
    To that, Iran’s leaders say, remember our brave boys.
    Our “martyrdom-seekers”, like the men (and teenagers) who lined up in human waves against Iraq, will be ranged against you. The Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Gulf’s vital oil wells, will be shut down by those who spurn death. And these courageous individuals are only part of our armoury: missiles, ships and planes, even allies in the region, stand ready.
    The message is clear: Attack at your peril, Iran’s retaliation will be decisive, wide-ranging and devastating.
    But will it? Military experts accept Iran could cause havoc in the area. But what kind of match will it really be for the world’s only superpower when some of Iran’s weapons pre-date the 1979 revolution while others are modified Chinese and North Korean designs? Iran speaks proudly of its “martyrs”. But what use are rows of soldiers if strikes are carried out by U.S. and Israeli warplanes or guided missiles fired from afar?
    And then there is a bigger question: Iran may hark back to its all-out defence against the Iraqi assault in 1980 but does that really tell us about a future response?
    A study by two senior Washington-based researchers, Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt (http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/temp lateC04.php?CID=292) suggests not.
    Their study, called The Last Resort, aims to explain the consequences of what they call “preventive military action” against Iran, should Israel or the United States choose to act. Context, they write, matters. Whether Israel or America carried out the strike will matter. The kind of case Washington has made before staging any attack may determine whether it wins international backing or not. These kind of issues could help determine how Iran reacts — which is far from clear.
    “The Islamic Republic’s track record of responding to military provocations is decidedly mixed,” they write before listing seven such “provocations” with reaction. Three of these times Iran engaged in “no significant retaliatory action”.
    For example, when Iraq started targetting Iranian cities and oil facilities late in the 1980s war, Iran replied by sending its own missiles against Iraqi civilian population centres, striking international shipping and trying to destabilise nearby Arab governments. (The tactic backfired by strengthening international resolve against Iran, they write.)
    But when, in the closing stages of that war with Iraq when the ship USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner — an action Iran to this day insists was intentional — Iran never apparently retaliated, they write. Instead, Tehran seemed to view it as showing U.S. readiness to close ranks with Iraq and Iran shortly after agreed a ceasefire. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the later revolutionary leader, said it was like drinking poison. (Washington says the airliner was hit by accident and agreed to pay compensation.)
    “Tehran recognizes that at times its interests are best served by restraint, although it will react when circumstances permit,” the researchers write. “Tehran has not always reacted swiftly to foreign attacks to assuage nationalist passions — and it has sometimes not responded at all.”
    Those fallen men, and the youths who never grew up to have more than wispy beards, are testimony to admirable bravery. They died in defence of their country and cause. But whether this tells you how Iran would handle any future conflict is more open to discussion.
 
 

In the late 1990s, not long after pro-reform politician Mohammad Khatami swept to a landslide victory in the Iranian presidential elections, some Western observers started wondering if this was the step that would herald a collapse of the Islamic Republic — rather like the Soviet Union tumbled on Mikhail Gorbachev’s watch a decade earlier.

It was early days for me observing Iran. But an acquaintance of mine offered some analysis. Iran is not communist Europe. It is still a young revolution, he told me (at a time when it was
turning 20). There are still plenty of Iranians willing to die for the cause. Don’t expect it to come crashing down, he said.

It turns out he was right. After Khatami’s two terms, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to office in 2005. It is hard to think of a man more dedicated to Iran’s revolutionary cause. To be fair, it may have been his extravagant economic promises that played a bigger part in winning him the vote than his ideological credentials. But whatever the reason for swinging the election in his favour, the result is very much with us.

Why does this matter now? Well, there are people apparently working to try and drive the Islamic Republic into oblivion. According to Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker, those in the White House are at the top of the list.

So the question is: does what my acquaintance told me in the late 1990s hold true 10 years later? In a country where opinion polls are notoriously inaccurate — or simply don’t exist — judging popular opinion is a mug’s game. But an anecdote may give at least one aspect of the story.

Farhad Rahimi, in his 30s, is a member of the voluntary Basij militia. Speaking at a time when double-digit inflation was biting into his taxi driver’s salary, he was still a fervent supporter of Ahmadinejad’s policy of sharing out Iran’s oil wealth more fairly. He could list a few of what he said were the president’s mistakes.

But he’d seen transformations in villages, he told me, even if he and others in Tehran were seeing few of the benefits. He still lives with his mum and dad because he can’t afford a home of his own. Rahimi was not preaching to me. He was speaking calmly and cogently — and surprisingly openly — to a Western reporter.

The Basijis, like Rahimi, see themselves as the bastions of revolutionary values, the true loyalists. If young women’s Islamic veils are not properly covering their hair, a Basij
patrol may confront her. When Bam earthquake struck in 2003, Basijis were on the frontline digging out survivors — or, sadly, mostly corpses. Analysts say core Basij activists may number a million but some say total membership could be 12 million or more. That’s a lot of people voluntarily signing up in a country of 70 million or so.

Journalists are fond of anecdotes. All too many of them involve taxi drivers. Such vignettes never give the full picture. But colourful detail combined with the broader figures surely give pause for thought and, at least, are factors for careful discussion on where Iran is heading. I’m going to ask my acquaintance for his view.

There is a running joke among Western journalists, diplomats and other foreigners based in Iran who have the task of trying to understand what is going on behind the scenes: the longer you stay here, the more opaque Iranian policy making becomes.

It may be said lightheartedly, but it contains more than a grain of truth. The longer you spend trying to peel back the layers of the Iranian establishment to understand what the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is thinking, the more layers you discover.

And, frankly, as a Westerner — and even for Iranian journalists — there’s a very real limit to how many layers you are ever going to penetrate.

But penetrate you must because it’s Khamenei’s thinking that is the key.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the most public — and often most worrying to Western capitals — voice out there. But he is just one of the layers. One constituency contributing towards consensus. When national decisions are taken, however, Khamenei will be behind them.

So determining Iran’s nuclear policy, the most sensitive of issues in the Islamic Republic, often seems to present more questions than answers. Does Iran want negotiations that will end the standoff with the West? Or is talking just a way to buy time to master nuclear technology? Has the establishment calculated that it can survive military strikes on its nuclear facilities? Or is it looking for the “red line” so it can pull back from the brink at the last minute? And, perhaps, one of the more worrying questions is: does the Islamic Republic know where that “red line” to prevent military action really is?

There are analysts who look at Washington and say, after more than a quarter of century without an embassy in Tehran, the U.S. ability to understand Iranian policy calculations has been deeply eroded. But the same too can be said of Iran, which under the shah was — Israel aside — Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East but now is a sworn enemy. Set together, the possibility that both sides will end up talking past each other is real.

Some analysts also describe a big gap between a U.S. policy approach that tends to want straight talking and the Iranian preference for pondering its path in drawn out negotiations. The stereotype again may not be so far from reality: the cowboy with his six-shooter versus the carpet seller in the bazaar working out a price over endless cups of tea.

So now, six world powers — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — have again offered a range of incentives, such as state-of-the-art civilian nuclear power technology and trade benefits, if Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment (Enrichment is the real worry to Western capitals because, despite Iran’s denials, they fear the process will be used to make nuclear bomb material not fuel for power plants).

We’ve been here before. The deal is not so very different from one offered in 2006, and which was roundly rejected by Iran. Some Western diplomats chatter that senior Iranian officials have been making more positive noises. Others are more sceptical. But everyone is wary of predicting which way it will go. And with good reason. It’s those layers, you see. To change the metaphor, what most of us following Iran are able to learn about the Islamic Republic’s decision-making are the outer ripples from a stone that has been thrown into a pond. What that stone looks like is well below the surface.