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Tehran's Self-Fulfilling Paranoia

[Washington Post] Haleh Esfandiari - Two years ago I was released from Evin Prison after 105 days in solitary confinement. I was arrested in early 2007 on the ludicrous charge of attempting to foment a "velvet revolution" to overthrow the Iranian government. Even President Ahmadinejad acknowledged the absurdity of the charges; this month, explaining why he fired his minister of intelligence, he noted that the intelligence chief had made himself the subject of ridicule by charging "a 70-year-old woman" with wanting to start a revolution. (Actually, I was 67 then.) Thousands were arrested in the protests after the June 12 presidential election that large numbers of Iranians believe was rigged in Ahmadinejad's favor. More than 100 of the protesters and their leaders were put on trial this month. In weeks of interrogation during my incarceration in 2007, I came to understand only too well the paranoia that drives Iran's security agencies and its hard-liners. These men fear that they will be overthrown by a mass movement of their own people. The trials have caused as much revulsion at home as abroad. The widespread discontent will not be easily silenced. Iran's hard-liners seem to have accomplished what their ubiquitous foreign "enemies" could not: They have planted the seeds for their own, homegrown velvet revolution. The writer is director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
2009-08-21 08:00:00
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