E-mail a friendRoger Cohen
airdate July 1, 2009
Before becoming a columnist for The New York Times, Roger Cohen was a foreign correspondent and foreign editor for the paper and had written for the International Herald Tribune's Op-Ed page. He worked for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal and was twice nominated for a Pulitzer. He's also written/co-written several books, including Hearts Grown Brutal, an account of the destruction of Yugoslavia's wars, and a biography of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. Cohen is a graduate of the University of Oxford's Balliol College.
New York Times columnist comments on the expectations Iran's young population has of their government. (1:55)
Full interview. (11:13)
Roger Cohen
Tavis: Roger Cohen is a columnist for "The New York Times" whose recent pieces on the unfolding drama in Iran have been some of the most widely read dispatches from Tehran. Recently he was forced to leave the country and return to the U.S. after the Iranian government revoked his press pass and the expiration of his working visa. He joins us tonight from New York. Roger, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Roger Cohen: Pleasure, Tavis.
Tavis: We all know that you got kicked out recently; we'll come back to that in just a moment. Let me go back to the beginning -- that is, the beginning of your trip there to cover the elections. Tell me when you went and why you wanted to go, Roger.
Cohen: Well, I went, Tavis, because I'd been in Iran earlier in the year, in January and February, and I spent three weeks there. And I became captivated by the country -- in fact, somewhat obsessed. And I wrote a series of columns in which I -- the first one I wrote was called "The Other Iran" and it was about this very young -- 65 percent of the population is under 35 -- and I thought very engaged, very civic-minded, pretty sophisticated population that I didn't think was getting a whole lot of attention because everybody's minds were on mad mullahs and nuclear bombs and that kid of thing.
I'm not belittling nuclear bombs, but I just thought we should try a more rounded picture of Iranian society and that's why I decided to go back for the election, which I thought was a critical event.
Tavis: To use your word, roger, obsessed -- what is it about Iran that obsesses one?
Cohen: Well, it defies stereotypes. It's not an Arab country, it's a Persian country. We think of it sort of lumped there in the Middle East but Iran has been striving for a hundred years to develop forms of liberal and democratic government. It had its first constitutional revolution in 1906. It had a leader named Mosaddeq whom we actually overthrew in 1953 who was democratically elected, and the revolution of 1979 set up something called an Islamic Republic.
Two words there -- Islamic and republic: one bit theocracy, one bit, in theory, at least, democracy. And the tensions between those two words have existed for 30 years and they just exploded. So all that to me makes it a fascinating place, plus the beauty of it, the rich history of it, the sophistication, as I mentioned, of the population. Very high degree of education -- millions of kids -- and this is a tribute to the revolution -- in college, of whom today 60 percent are women.
Tavis: I want to come to your point about women here in just a second because they played a key role, it seems to me, in this revolution. Not a lot said about that, so we'll come back to that in a moment.
But with regard to your first answer, you said obsessed. That got my attention. What also, though, got my attention was your statement, your fact that you shared with us that 65 percent of Iran are persons 35 years of age and under. That's startling. Contextualize that for me, help me understand that better.
Cohen: Well, after the revolution there was a population boom. Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, encouraged Iranians to have kids. It's leveled off now; we're peaking on the population boom. One reason for that was that no sooner did the revolution happen than Saddam Hussein, of infamous memory in Iraq, invaded Iran and there ensued a war that didn't necessarily get that much attention.
We were on Saddam Hussein's side at that time. In fact, we were helping to arm him. Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad around that time. And this war led to hundreds of thousands, some people say up to a million, dead. So Ayatollah Khomeini was urging Iranians to have kids to replenish the population.
So what you have in the streets today, Tavis, is, if you like, the generation of the revolution. Most of these people were born after 1979 and in that sense I think the revolution is devouring its own because it educated these kids, it raised them. They grew into maturity in the revolutionary years. And most of them went into this election not wanting to overturn the system. They just believed that every four years the Islamic Republic gave them a right to nudge things one way or another. And they tried to nudge it one way, and in what I regard, at least, as a massive fraud, their wishes were overridden and we've seen what's happened in the streets in the last two weeks.
Tavis: Does the fact that the country, again, is so young, give you -- should it give us cause for concern or hope about the future of Iran in the short term?
Cohen: Well, that's a very good question, Tavis. In theory, it should give us cause for hope because you have to believe that a society that is moving in a certain direction cannot eternally be governed by a government or regime that is diametrically at odds with that society -- with the values of that society, with where that society wants to go.
However, we know, and there are examples still in the world like North Korea or others, a dictatorship, so long as it has the monopoly of force, can hold on for a long time, even if society wants it to move in another direction.
The optimistic view of Iran was always well, okay, let's be patient here, and I must say I subscribe to this view before what we've just seen. Let's be patient. These people saw what happened to their parents with the revolution. They don't want blood in the streets. They want to move the society in a certain way. They're coming into greater power now.
They're getting older, getting positions of more influence, and inevitably and inexorably and without an uprising they will take the Islamic Republic in a reformist direction. Well, the events of the last two weeks do throw that into question to some degree.
Tavis: On Monday of this week we know that the recount started in Iran, number one; number two, nobody I know believes that this recount is going to lead to a turnover in the election. Ahmadinejad, as best I can tell, is still going to be the president once this recount is done. And yet, Roger Cohen tells me what he saw was massive fraud.
Cohen: Well, the Guardian Council, Tavis, that is overseeing the recount -- and in fact I think they've pretty much definitively now said we uphold the election, it was a healthy election -- well, no surprise there. One of the members of the 12-member Guardian Council is actually the spokesman for Ahmadinejad's government so that gives you some sense of the degree of objectivity there.
To anybody who was on the ground, as I was, in the night from Friday, June 12th, to Saturday, which is the night, actually two hours after the polls closed, they announced the result -- I don't know how they got them; I think they just drew a number out of a hat.
But anyway, in theory, President Ahmadinejad got two-thirds of the vote, 63 percent of the vote. Now, what happens if you win by that much? You go out and celebrate, right? Well, instead in the streets early that morning, what did I see? There were riot police, militia out there already beating people, closing down the opposition candidate, Mayor Hossein, Moussavi's officer's websites.
I don't need to rehearse it all; we know it now. But it was just so obvious that something very strange was happening.
Tavis: And even though Ahmadinejad is still the president and we expect him to be, as we said earlier, when this recount is done, you've argued of late that you believe, though, that the regime has been weakened.
Cohen: I do believe that, Tavis. I think at least in the medium term it is weakened because millions of Iranians who I would say were in a mode of reluctant acquiescence. They didn't like it, but they were prepared to live with it and they believed they could, as I said, have some influence on where society was headed.
Those people have moved into outright opposition. That's the outside, if you like. On the inside of the regime, in the clerical, political, and maybe even to some degree the military establishment, the brazenness of this ballot box putsch I think has thrown a lot of people into opposition.
The religious establishment in the religious city of Qom has been notably silent. There are leading figures of the regime who have declared their opposition. So I think Ahmadinejad is without question at this point the most divisive political figure in the 30-year history of the revolution and I don't think we've reached the end of the story of how that's dealt with.
Tavis: We don't know how this story is going to end but we do know that in this particular chapter of the story women are a central character. Let's close our conversation with your thoughts on the role that women have played in the protests as we know them now.
Cohen: Well, Tavis, their role has been absolutely central. I saw many occasions, women rebuking the men around them, telling them move, come forward, stand up, don't run away. They have very strong feelings. Women marched in 1979 for the revolution but of course their rights have been subjugated, curtailed by the Islamic Republic in many ways, from the way they're dressed to their lack of equality before the law for issues including inheritance and other things.
And women are highly educated, as I said. The republic has educated 60 percent of women -- of the students in college are women, and these women want greater rights so they are pushing very hard.
When the cries go out from the rooftops of Tehran and I would go out on the little terrace I had there every night at about 10:00 and listen to them, these cries of Allahu Akbar, God is great, and death to the dictator, marg bar dictator, it was women's voices that prevailed.
So I think going forward women are going to continue to play a prime role, and it's one of the ways, again, in which I think Iran is a distinctive society. The women of Iran, as compared to women elsewhere in the Middle East, are very much in the forefront of social and intellectual development.
Tavis: Roger Cohen left Iran, he says, with a heavy heart, but he's been all over this story and I'm delighted to have him on the program tonight. From New York, Roger Cohen, thanks for sharing your insights again. Delighted to have had you on.
Cohen: Thank you, Tavis. Thank you very much.
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