Saeed Kamali Dehghan | The Guardian | March 2009

Last night, millions of Iranians lit bonfires at sunset and jumped over them till midnight to celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri, the most prominent ancient Persian outdoor festival to prelude the New Year, Norouz, which is coming next Saturday.

Chaharshanbe Suri (Red Wednesday in English), is an ancient Persian fire festivity from the Zoroastrian era which marks the euphoria of nature on the eve of spring, a Persian version of Guy Fawkes night with a difference.

Despite all the crackdowns over the past 30 years by the Islamic Republic, the ritual is still observed by an increasing number of people who go on to the streets to sing the traditional song: “Give me your fiery red colour and take back my wintry sallowness.”

Fire, which has always been a sacred item for ancient Persians and Zoroastrians, is supposed to give people its warmth and energy and take away their sickness, paleness and problems in return by the coming of the New Year.

The tradition is held on the night before the last Wednesday of the year when families and friends gather by a fire and keep it lit till dawn.

Unlike Norouz, which is mostly a private and indoor festival where people visit their relatives over a period of 13 days, Chaharshanbe Suri needs to be held in public, where people can eat, sing, dance and talk together.

But after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the government began to crack down on ancient Persian festivals and traditions, including Chaharshanbe Suri. The government was worried that people might worship the sun as an idol during the festival instead of Allah.

For most of the first and second decade of the Islamic revolution, people couldn’t celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri in public as dancing, boys and girls meeting, and any such so-called “deviant” behaviour was prohibited in the Islamic Republic.

The situation changed when reformist president Mohammad Khatami took office 12 years ago and relaxed social and cultural restrictions, giving people the chance to revive Persian culture.

Since then, participating in Chaharshanbe Suri has also become a sign of protest and dissent against the Islamic Republic’s restrictions of Persian culture, as it’s the only time of the year when people can go out en masse and show their presence without any excuse and the government can hardly stop it.

The gag released by Khatami has been tightened now under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, and the huge presence of riot police and army all over Iran last night showed their willingness to do that.

Chaharshanbe Suri is now a nightmare for Iranian officials. The festival has been given a new definition and a new function as a gigantic annual anti-government demonstration. Fire is now a symbol of Iranian anger over the Islamic Republic’s restrictions.

Last night, hundreds of thousands of Iranians threw Molotov cocktails and firecrackers in the streets to show the government their wrath, instead of lighting bonfires and jumping over fire and celebrating a traditional festival.

Chaharshanbe Suri has become the country’s most controversial cultural event, where many people suffer terrible injuries in conflicts with the riot police or while making Molotov cocktails or firecrackers in their homes.

Last night a new record was achieved according to Fars news agency, with around 100 Iranians injured and taken to hospital by ambulance.

It’s believed that Ahmadinejad’s huge crackdowns in Iran over the past four years, the terrible current economic situation in the country and the coming presidential election led to this new record of Chaharshanbe Suri casualties. The injuries have also brought officials to hospitals to visit the victims, including the Iranian health minister, Kamran Bagheri Lankarani.

For years, nobody had talked about Chaharshanbe Suri on state-run TV or any other official programme – the government just ignored it. People believe that if the government had accepted the festival as the former Shah did, rather than cracking down on it, many of the injuries would not have occurred.

Yet, there are also lots of Iranians who observe Chaharshanbe Suri the way it used to be, with bush-igniting, spoon-hitting, earthenware jar-shattering, shawl-dropping and eavesdropping on others as part of the traditional fun.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran

The Guardian, Tuesday 20 January 2009

Barack Obama took office just hours after the moderate former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, officially announced his candidacy for Iran’s upcoming presidential elections. This gave the thousands of Iranians who were watching the inauguration ceremony via their illegal satellite dishes a glimmer of hope that three decades of Iran-US hostility might be about to end.

Hamed Mohaghegh, 21, an industrial civil engineering student in Tehran, watching the ceremony on BBC, said that the US had given its democracy a boost by electing an black man as president,.

“Before Obama was elected, we had this impression in our country that a black man will never succeed to become the president of the States, a candidate who had an Arabic middle name, Hussein.”

“Ahmadinejad has also doubted - saying that he thinks that [American voters would] not let a black man become the president of the US,” said Reza Ahmadi, 40, an Iranian math teacher at high school.

Yet, others were disappointed that Obama has not responded to the letter of congratulation sent by Ahmadinejad to Obama.

“It seems that the whole world has a share of Obama’s Change That Can Happen except Iranian people”, he added.

Ali Mohammadi, 37, an Iranian businessman thinks that bringing Obama on the US political stage was the only choice Americans had.

“America is not popular and powerful as before, the US is rather notorious for its background in Iraq and Afghanistan right now and is facing an economical crisis, so Obama was the only one to stabilise the States not only economically but also to gets back the US ex-reputation in the world,” he said.

Media Kashigar, 52, a well-known Iranian intellectual and critic believes that the US foreign policy has not changed at least in the past 30 years toward Iran.

“Iran-US conflict is not a governmental or administrational problem. It is a mutual state problem, so I think neither Obama nor anyone else in Iran can ease the debate easily in next future”, he said.

“I don’t think the US president has much influence to change American foreign policy. We’ve experienced JF Kennedy, we’ve seen Clinton and Bush, but has there been any foreign policy apparent change in past 60 years in the US?”, said Amirmehdi Rezaee, 60, an Iranian retired-employee of the Iranian government.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran and Robert Tait

The Guardian, Friday July 18, 2008

For nearly 30 years, it has loomed like a ghost over the carcass of US-Iranian relations - a reminder of how Islamic revolutionaries rendered Washington impotent by holding 52 of its diplomats hostage.

To the US, its former embassy in Tehran conjures humiliating images of classified documents being desperately shredded and captured staff being paraded blindfold before angry jeering crowds after a takeover organised by pro-Khomeini militants.

For Iran’s Islamic government, it is the “den of spies” from where the US supposedly tried to sabotage the 1979 revolution that toppled Washington’s staunch ally, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s last shah.

But yesterday the former embassy - now a museum run by revolutionary guards - was an unlikely focal point of hope after news that the Bush administration plans to establish the first US diplomatic presence in Iran since the 1979-81 siege of the embassy, which lasted 444 days.

Most Iranians passing the property in Talaghani Street were unaware of the Guardian’s disclosure of the plans to open a US-staffed diplomatic interest section, a halfway step to full ties.

Conditioned by decades of Iranian government hostility and sabre-rattling over the country’s nuclear programme, many shied away from commenting on an issue still seen as sensitive in a society where anti-Americanism is paramount. But others were prepared to cautiously welcome back the nation officially reviled since the revolution as “the Great Satan”.

“This would be helpful to our people,” Muhammad Hosseinzadegan, an 18-year-old student, said. “The sanctions will go away and the mutual difficulties between the two countries might decrease. I really hope that this quarrel with America ends one day.”

Cyrus Mohebbat, the owner of a car accessories shop, said: “I’d be really happy if America opens this office. I think there are only a small number of people in Iran who are opposed to beginning new mutual relationships. Most Iranians will be happy with this.”

Yet such euphoria was tempered by an awareness that renewed relations face a wall of mistrust as the US seeks to pressure Tehran into abandoning a uranium enrichment programme that might be used as the initial step towards building a nuclear bomb.

“I think this will ease the negotiation process, but the question is how America is going to open such an office while people close to the government still chant ‘Down with the USA’,” said one man, who declined to be named. “Iran’s nuclear issue is now in a complicated and critical phase. Some think finding a way out is impossible. Rumours of war are widespread and people are asking whether the US will attack or not. It is so oppressive.”

Marjan Khajavi, 22, echoed the fear often voiced by the government and its supporters: that renewed ties would revive the servile policy they believe the shah followed towards the US. “I hope one day that these two countries can treat each other as friends and opening a diplomatic interest office would help this. But I’m absolutely against letting America control this country, as they did before the Islamic revolution,” she said.

Adel Karimi, 22, a civil engineering student, said the US was no worse than Britain - seen by many Iranians as a traditional enemy. “I think Britain exploits countries as much as the US, so why do we have a British embassy in Tehran and not an American one?”

But Muhammad Ali Benghani, 32, a state employee, voiced the fears that have long steered Iran away from ties with America. “I’m against letting America open such an office,” he said. “The US has never been our friend. It always thinks of its own interests, so I don’t think they would help Iranians.”