E-mail a friendAzadeh Moaveni
airdate June 5, 2009
A contributing writer on the Middle East for Time, Azadeh Moaveni is one of few American correspondents allowed to work continuously in Iran since '99. She's reported on women's rights and Islamic reform and covered the Iraq war for the Los Angeles Times. She's also written two autobiographies, Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran. Moaveni grew up in Palo Alto, CA and studied politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She won a Fulbright fellowship and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo.
Time magazine's contributing writer on the Middle East talks about the difficulty working as a journalist in Iran. (:51)
Full interview. (11:30)
Azadeh Moaveni
Tavis: Azadeh Moaveni is a noted journalist and best-selling author whose previous works include the critically acclaimed memoir, "Lipstick Jihad." Her latest is called "Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran." She now resides in Cambridge, England which is where we find her tonight. Azadeh, welcome back to the program.
Azadeh Moaveni: Thank you for having me.
Tavis: Before I get into the text, which I'll do in just a second, let me start with some questions specifically about Iran, given as I said at the top of the show, we know these elections are happening next week that we'll be watching closely, for that matter, folk around the world watching what happens in the Iranian elections.
Let me start by asking how tense things are inside the country right now? What's your sense of that?
Moaveni: It seems to me that people are very engaged in this election. There's a lot of activity on the internet, on Facebook, on blogs. There have been very open debates amongst the candidates.
So while it's an incredibly important election, perhaps the most important election since the revolution thirty years ago, there's a real buzz of excitement and I think a real sense of enjoyment actually that people are talking about it online. The internet is becoming a part of the debate. So I say it's excitement more than tension.
Tavis: Why would you describe this as you did as perhaps the most important election in Iran in the thirty years since the revolution? Why?
Moaveni: Everything is on the agenda here. It's Iran's relationship with the world and the West, Iran's attitude toward the rest of the Middle East, Lebanon, Israel, all of these important hot spots, Iraq especially, Afghanistan, and it's incredibly important domestically too. Ahmadinejad has taken incredibly controversial steps dealing with the economy. Inflation is high.
There's a sense among young people that whoever wins is going to decide whether social and political freedoms are sort of eased back into Iranian life or whether it's going to be a very tight and repressive four years. So everything that could really matter is on the table.
Tavis: Every country, I guess one could argue, finds itself in flux perpetually, but give me a sense of how much flux the country of Iran is in as we speak.
Moaveni: I would say there's a sense that life has become incredibly chaotic more so than in the past decade, I would say. In the last four years of Ahmadinejad, Iranians have suffered inflation that's as high as fifty percent. In Tehran, the capital, housing prices have gone up over a hundred fifty percent. When there were changes in gas subsidies, there were four-hour lines for gas. It was like wartime Baghdad.
So for Iranians, I think there's been a sense that their lives have been turned upside down these four years and they're looking for a sense of stability in whoever they choose on the 12th of June.
Tavis: One last question about the election before I move into the text here. I'm not sure that we - that is, to say we Americans - understand how their process works.
Give me a better understanding of how these elections work starting with the fact that I think many of us don't know that to run for president in Iran, you have to be vetted by this council before you can even get in the race. There are a few other people running against the president in these elections next week. Give me a sense of how this process works.
Moaveni: Well, it's certainly very tightly regulated. It's not an open democratic system in which relatively anyone from across the political spectrum can simply get on the ballot by virtue of their place within the political establishment essentially.
There's an un-elected body that vets candidates, so there are actually very important and significant political players in Iran who are not on this ballot that would attract a lot of votes. So it's certainly, in that sense, a very restricted election.
But that said, it's also very competitive. There's a leading reformist on the ballot. There are conservatives who are, to more or less degrees, hard-line. So even though it's not what you would call a truly democratic or fair election in that sense, it's very contested. It's a fiercely contested vote.
Tavis: Ahmadinejad, though, still expected to win at this point?
Moaveni: At this point, I think it's completely up in the air. I think everyone's very reluctant to make predictions because of what happened four years ago when no one expected Ahmadinejad to even come in second or third and he won the election.
So that said, though, I personally would be flabbergasted if he were re-elected because Iranians are so incredibly dissatisfied with his record in government in four years. Reluctant to make predictions, but I would very surprised by an Ahmadinejad re-election.
Tavis: He's been a flamethrower, for lack of a better word, where relations with the United States are concerned. Give me an understanding of how relations with the West, relations specifically with the United States, will factor into this election no matter who wins.
Moaveni: That's certainly immerged even as a very important issue in the last couple of weeks in Iran. It was thought that the economy would be the lead issue in this election, but foreign policy and how the candidates are going to deal with the West is now sort of becoming front and center because there are very real differences among the candidates.
I think it's sort of cliché in the West for people to say, "Well, Iran is an autocratic system run by Mullahs, so it doesn't matter who wins." The president doesn't have any real power. But it certainly does make a difference, as we've seen. I mean, with Ahmadinejad, we had a president who put Iran back again on a hostile course with the West. Before that, we had a more liberal president who talked about a dialog with civilizations.
So no matter what happens, I think the core issue with the West is going to be the nuclear program, Iran's nuclear civilian program, and to what extent Iran is going to cooperate with the West over that program, how transparent it's willing to be, how much it's willing to be patient and enter confidence-building steps with the West in return for what it wants politically from the West as well.
Tavis: Is it clear to you who the United States wants to win this election?
Moaveni: I think that the Obama administration has very wisely held off on making any big decisions about Iran until they see who wins. I can see that the United States would see sort of benefits and values in different candidates.
Mousavi, the leading reformer, for example, is democratically minded. He has support among the West. He would certainly, I think, you know, lead the way in terms of progress on women's rights issues, civil freedoms. So the United States would find it easier, I think, politically to do business with someone with those kind of politics.
That said, if a conservative wins the race, it's always easier to negotiate tough political issues with someone who has the weight of the entire system behind them. So there could be a benefit to a conservative victory as well in the eyes of the West.
Tavis: As one can tell by your understanding of these issues, you've covered these issues enough in Iran to have written not one but two books now. "Honeymoon in Tehran" picks up where your last book, "Lipstick Jihad" left off. Give me the setting for this second volume, if you will.
Moaveni: "Honeymoon in Tehran" unfolds in 2005 on the event of the election of that year when Ahmadinejad came to power. So it's really a book about how Iran changed under Ahmadinejad and how Iran's place in the world was experienced, how that changing place in the world was felt by Iranians.
You know, the baby boom generation that I wrote about in "Lipstick Jihad," now that they're in their thirties, how are their politics changing? How are their expectations changing? So it's a slightly darker book because Iran has gone through darker times, but I think it looks really critically at where we've come sort of in the arc of the last decade.
Tavis: The subtitle of the book, as I mentioned earlier, the subtitle "Two Years of Love and Danger." In short, what was the love you found and what was the danger you felt?
Moaveni: The love that I found was meeting my husband, or the man that would become my husband. We got married in Iran and we started a family there and that's a thread of the story. How does a young person start a family in Iran? Do many want to leave? It tackles these questions.
The danger element refers to how precarious it always is to work as a journalist in Iran and what a complicated and tough system it is to have to work in as a journalist to stay safe, to avoid sort of falling into traps that the government can set for you.
Tavis: There's an individual, a character really, in the book known as Mr. X. You don't reveal who Mr. X is, but, again, central to the book, tell me about Mr. X and his relation to the text.
Moaveni: Mr. X was my minder in Iran and has been for almost the last decade. Most journalists in Iran have to deal at some point with intelligence agents or minders who monitor their work. So Mr. X was my minder. I met with him regularly over the years to brief him on stories that I was working on.
Of course, as an agent of the government, part of his role was to tell me about the red lines, were to keep me intimidated oftentimes. Sometimes our relationship became very scary for me because Iran is a government that has a very pragmatic face and also a very dark and fundamentalist face. I experienced both of that in my dealings with Mr. X.
Tavis: You now live in London with your husband and your child. Any interest in returning and might that depend on who wins this election and what the future holds for the country?
Moaveni: I would love to go back to work. I see Iran as sort of the central story of my life as a writer, as a journalist. So I want to go back for years and years. I think that all journalists are sort of looking to this election to see whether a more liberal official becomes president of Iran because Ahmadinejad has been tough on journalists.
It's been a tough time for especially journalists with ties to the West. So I'll certainly be looking and I think that, if a reformist or a more progressive candidate is elected, I think that we'll have more news out of Iran and people like me will be able to go back and forth more freely.
Tavis: Azadeh Moaveni's new book is called "Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran," the follow-up to "Lipstick Jihad." Azadeh, nice to have you on the program. All the best to you. Take care.
Moaveni: Thanks so much for having me.
Tavis: My pleasure.
Back to June 5, 2009