 |
|
| page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|
August 2, 2005: Judith Kipper, Director, Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, discusses politics and the press in Iran with anchor Bill Moyers.
BILL MOYERS:
Judith Kipper is Director of the Middle East Forum at the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations. She's one of the country's leading students, scholars, and authorities on that part of the world. And, she's here now to talk with me about Iran. Thank you for being with us on WIDE ANGLE.
JUDITH KIPPER:
Thank you. My pleasure.
BILL MOYERS:
We see so little of Iran on American television today. Here's a film about one small slice of a newspaper that's trying to function there. What does that film tell you about what's going in Iran?
JUDITH KIPPER:
Well, when I was in Iran -- it's a few years already. But, I went to a newspaper just like that. And, the young people are enthusiastic, determined to succeed, and have this voracious appetite for openness in journalism and investigative journalism. And for democratic process.
They try to operate within the lines that are set for them. Sometimes they cross it. They close down. But, they reopen. And now they're blogging like mad. There's hundreds of thousands of bloggers in Iran. They're using the internet. And, they are also managing to keep a few of the reformist papers alive as well as several magazines. So, people are getting a wide spectrum of news in Iran.
BILL MOYERS:
When I saw that film I, of course, compared the courage and bravery of those young people to our too often timid journalism in this country. They pay a price for what they do there, don't they?
JUDITH KIPPER:
They do pay a price. And, it's not an accident that in the reformist, open papers that want to really do what we understand as journalism, that they are also young. Because by the time they're in their 30s, they're getting married. They have children. And they can't take the risk. And they can't live on the very meager salaries that they get as journalists because these newspapers clearly don't make money and they're struggling to stay alive.
BILL MOYERS:
The editor of that film -- the filmmaker who produced that film -- told us that most of those young journalists we saw on that paper have a second job.
JUDITH KIPPER:
Yes.
BILL MOYERS:
Just to make ends meet. And then they don't really make ends meet.
JUDITH KIPPER:
Well, most people in Iran have a second job. Professional people, even people who work in the private sector -- not only those who work for the government, which is of course the biggest employer. And, that's what this last presidential election was about. It was unlike the '97 election where people wanted political change. In this election it is clear that the vast majority of people came out to vote want economic change because they are struggling.
BILL MOYERS:
But, they elected a hard-line, conservative guy as president. A guy who is believed to have been one of the students who seized the American Embassy back in 1979 and held the Americans hostage for 444 days. What does that say about their choice?
JUDITH KIPPER:
First, the vast majority of voters in Iran don't remember the revolution or the hostage taking because they're very young. Seventy percent of Iranians are under the age of 25.
BILL MOYERS:
Seventy percent?
JUDITH KIPPER:
About that. Yeah, something like that. And they don't care that he's conservative and hard line. They do care that he campaigned as a populist. "I'm going to help the poor, the downtrodden. We're going to use the oil money, 40 billion of which they get now every year to help the poor people. The people who are struggling in our economy."
So, he's calling for really a command economy, more bureaucracy. And more of the same. It's not going to work. But, he certainly appealed to a great number of voters that he would improve their economic condition.
BILL MOYERS:
And it's interesting, the interpretation in this country was that he won because he was responsive to mullahs, responsive to the clerics, responsive to the Islamic power in Iran. But, you're saying it was more economics?
JUDITH KIPPER:
Yes. And that's our problem is that we interpreted it that way because that's our interest. Culture, culture, culture. When we went into Iraq we didn't know anything about Iraqi culture. And, unfortunately, we're not really able to understand the dynamic in Iran, particularly with this election.
Look, even the people on the right, the Iranians that I see, say that though he is a populist, he is conservative, he's a hard-liner, he's put the head of the Basij, which are the really bad guys --
BILL MOYERS:
The militia--
JUDITH KIPPER:
over there.
BILL MOYERS:
And, that's the home guard.
JUDITH KIPPER:
That's right. And, he puts him as head of the police. We'll see in a few days -- sometime in the summer-- who the cabinet will be. But, even on the right, the thousand families who are important in Iran, and the conservatives but who are not religious, but very, very conservative want to maintain the status quo. They don't necessarily support him. So, even the right has its divisions.
BILL MOYERS:
The crackdown on journalism in Iran came under the last administration, which was said to be reformed-minded. Who is putting this pressure on journalists in both administrations? The old administration and now the new administration. Is it the government? Or, is it that the Ayatollah and the clerics who are the government behind the scenes?
JUDITH KIPPER:
Well, the President of Iran and Khatami was considered a reformist president. A man who wanted the rule of law and move more towards democratization and openness. He has some power, but not a whole lot of power.
Iran is not like Iraq where it was a one-man show. Iran is a country of institutions. We don't like their institutions. But, they have the Guardian Council--
BILL MOYERS:
What's that?
JUDITH KIPPER:
It is a group of appointed people who are the primal arbiters of big issues.
BILL MOYERS:
Above Parliament?
JUDITH KIPPER:
Above Parliament. Oh yes. And, of course, the Supreme Leader and his advisors and the institutions that belong to the Supreme Leader are the ultimate arbiters of the big issues.
BILL MOYERS:
The Supreme Leader being the Ayatollah?
JUDITH KIPPER:
Ali Khamenei in this case. Right. And his religious credentials are not particularly good. But he is the Supreme Leader. And he has his hands on power. And ultimately that's where power lies in Iran.
But, there's several power centers in Iran. The clerics, the conservatives, the vested interests. If they start reading things in the liberal press or the reformist press that annoy them, that might undermine their economic advantages or corruption in Iran. Then they start voicing their opinion, and there's a crackdown. This is a system that has elements of democratization. But it can't be said to be a really democratic system.
BILL MOYERS:
Yeah, we think of democracy as being a society in which the elected leaders make the policies. But you're describing a situation where policy's made by a complex labyrinth of forces including the preachers.
JUDITH KIPPER:
That's exactly right. Don't forget this is ancient Persia. And, this is, you know, there's Iranian Nationalism and politics, or the discourse in the nation is Islamic. But in the end this is Persian culture. And it is a labyrinth. And it is very complex. It is very personal. It is very tribal. The families, where you come from, who knows whom. Although Iran is, compared to other countries, very modern. They have about the same literacy rate as we do. They have 1.5 million applicants for university every year. And they can only accommodate 200,000.
BILL MOYERS:
They are Muslim, but not Arab.
JUDITH KIPPER:
That's right.
BILL MOYERS:
And what difference does that make?
JUDITH KIPPER:
Well, they are Shia, primarily Shia. There are other minority religions -- Christians, Jews, Zoroastrian in Iran. But, Iran is primarily a Shia country, which is a different branch of Islam than most Arabs. Although the Arabs are starting to face the reality, the three countries in the Arab world have a plurality of Shia -- Bahrain, Iraq and Lebanon. So, this is an adjustment. And, the competition that has existed all of these centuries between Shias and Sunnis is very much alive and well.
|
|
| page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
continue to next page  |
|
 |
 |
|
|
Judith Kipper, Director, Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations
|
|
