The Islamic Republic of Oxymorons

Oxymoron: a rhetorical figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined. 

It’s no coincidence that going back centuries, Persian literature is brimful of oxymorons. More than 600 years ago the great poet Rumi wrote about “crazy wise men. "

Contradiction lies at the very heart of Iranian society and culture. Since the Revolution, living with it has become a matter of survival. The everyday contradictions in Iran’s political landscape expose the fissures that split the ruling elite.

Here are a few that have struck me.

 For example, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has invited the Islamic Republic of Iran to start negotiation for accession to the organization. Many business people and officials would love to join the WTO. But Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei still promotes the so-called “resistance economy,” a euphemism for protectionism – the very opposite of everything the WTO stands for.

President Hassan Rouhani makes speech after speech about "constructive engagement" with the international community. At the same time, the supreme leader warns about “the cultural, economic and political influence of the West” and hints darkly about its “spies” – paid or unpaid, knowing or unknowing – infiltrating Iranian society.

The so-called reformists criticized ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for provoking the West and inviting further sanctions by hosting a Holocaust-denial conference. But those same politicians are mute about Iran’s recent long-range missile tests – and the fact that the missile itself had “Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth " written on it.

President Rouhani's diplomats brag about Iran's considerable influence in the Arab capitals of Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut and Sana’a.  Meanwhile, they simultaneously warn that “foreign countries must not interfere in the domestic affairs of Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and Yemen”.

The Iranian Chamber of Commerce along with various political figures have urged Western businesses to invest as much as they like in Iran.  But Western organized labor is not allowed to help Iranian workers form independent unions and guilds. Instead they are accused of espionage.

 The supreme leader insists that the nuclear agreement is the only deal that will be made between Iran and America and its Western allies, while President Rouhani and his diplomats are wheeling and dealing on everything from Syria to secret business with Airbus, Boeing, Total and BP.

 The American flag is still burned publicly at protests in Iran — but American Coca Cola has been produced and bottled in different cities in Iran since the Revolution.

 Top Iranian officials bombard people with harsh criticism of American values and culture, and warn young people to stay away. Yet we all know many officials send their children to the US at great expense to study. Some are even discreetly trying to get green cards – or become citizens of the “Great Satan.”

 In the run-up to the parliamentary elections in February, the Supreme leader publicly encouraged so-called “dissidents” to vote, but later “clarified” that though they could cast ballots they should never be permitted to hold elected office themselves.

Also in February, the famous journalist Akbar Ganji encouraged voters to support former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for a seat on Iran’s Guardian Council. It was a startling 180-degree about face. In 2000, it was Ganji who wrote a scathing denunciation of Rafsanjani, implicating him in a string of murder of dissident authors and political activists.

The government of the Islamic Republic is still keeping prominent opposition figures under house arrest, ever since the chaotic presidential election of 2009. Still corralled are the presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, along with Mousavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard and the activist Mostafa Tajzadeh. Others, like Akbar Ganji, are in exile abroad. 

 And yet the powers that be are never honest about the reasons for the sidelining of these important voices. Similarly they never explain why 38 percent of the 54.9 million eligible voters simply failed to cast ballots in the last two parliamentary elections, in 2013 and 2016.

President Rouhani says the proof that Iran’s religious minorities are free lies in their having representatives in parliament.  But he will not explain why the Jews, the Zoroastrians (fewer than 20,000 in the whole country) and the Armenian Assyrian Christians (fewer than 50,000) have their own Members of Parliament – but the Baha’is (who number more than 120,000) have none.  

He doesn’t want to admit it has to do with the Islamic Republic’s inability to accept dissent -  rooted in the fact that the Baha’is split 160 years ago from mainstream Shi’ism.  

One of the greatest contradictions is Iran’s political structure. Our republic and our parliament were both imported from the West after the Revolution – then weirdly distorted by the grating on of sharia law and Islamic values.  Our rulers call this awkward concoction “democratic theocracy,"  a label that is – when you think about it – a delicious oxymoron.

 There are other labellng contradictions too.  Streets and alleys in middle-class and wealthy areas are named after pre-Islamic historical and mythological heroes and heroines: Cyrus the Great; Anahita; Sohrab; and Arash. In contrast, poor areas have their highways and byways named after either "martyrs" killed immediately after the Revolution or Shi’ite religious figures: Imam Hossein; Mahdi; or other 12 immaculate Shiite leaders.

 In literature, oxymorons convey irony, humor and subtlety.  

 In Iran’s political life they merely highlight social dissonance and the constant, ugly struggle for power.