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

The Observer, Sunday September 7 2008

Nobel laureate JM Coetzee is not the first writer to discover that his work has been published without consent in Iran - a country that regularly incurs wrath by not abiding by international copyright law - but he might well be the angriest. ‘It’s not solely for the sake of money that authors are concerned to maintain copyright over their works,’ he stormed to the Browser. ‘But it does upset writers, justifiably, when their books are taken over without permission, translated by amateurs and sold without their knowledge.’ Quite right, Coetzee, it’s a disgrace!

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Also related, but not published:

The 2003 Nobel Laureate JM Coetzee objected his works in Iran after being informed that almost all his works, including Waiting for the Barbarians, Disgrace and Life and Times of Michael K have been translated into Persian and published in the country without his consent, during last ten year.

Coetzee, in an official statement addressing Iranian publishers said: “It is not solely for the sake of money and sometimes not for the sake of money at all, that authors are concerned to assert and maintain copyright over their works.”

Iran does not obey copyright law. Many classics and internationally bestselling titles are translated and published in the country without its author’s permission.

“I know of many writers - myself included - who ask only for nominal payment from altruistic publishers who are struggling to sell books in difficult markets. But it does upset writers, justifiably, when their books are taken over without permission, translated by amateurs, and sold without their knowledge”, states Coetzee.

At the same time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government is cracking down on Iranian writers through huge censorship and not giving them permission for the publication. Iranian writers face immense challenges in getting their works read.

More links: The gag is tightened, The Guardian

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.”