Wide Angle . Red Lines and Deadlines . Transcript

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BILL MOYERS: How did you get so interested Iran? JUDITH KIPPER: Well, once a upon a time, early in my career, before I got into the Middle East I lived in Paris. And I'm a child of immigrants. I wanted to understand better the emerging countries of Asia. So, I drove from Paris to India. I was not a hippie and it was really a life-shaping experience. BILL MOYERS: You drove? JUDITH KIPPER: Drove. BILL MOYERS: Marco Polo. JUDITH KIPPER: Drove half-way around the world. BILL MOYERS: Marco Polo. Alexander the Great. Judith Kipper. JUDITH KIPPER: Well, it was very interesting because, you know, the Soviets and the Americans built the roads, all the roads because all of them were on one side or the other of the Cold War. And they were very nice to have hooked them up to each other. That the Soviet roads hooked up with the American roads. And, there's one road, it's pretty good, goes straight from Turkey all the way to India. BILL MOYERS: But Iran today is not the Iran of your youth. JUDITH KIPPER: No. It's not. It is not. It is a tough country. It is a country that's out of touch with the rest of the world. It's a country whose leaders believe that they can remain isolated and outside the whole globalization process. And although the technology in Iran, the literacy, the science, for a developing country is quite high, but it is a country detached from the many trends in the world. And, sooner or later, that's going to catch up with them. BILL MOYERS: But is it detached from the powerful current of the Middle East? Particularly among the Muslim states where this militant fundamentalist fervor is growing that led, as we were discussing, to 9/11 and London and Madrid? I mean, there's no question that there is at the core of a part of the Muslim theology, Sunni Muslim ideology there is this deep, deep anger against the West. JUDITH KIPPER: I think the excesses of the revolution in the early 80s and during the Ayatollah Khomeini's period, that they're on the other side of that fervor now. And these economic personal opportunity issues, even though, is the voice of Islam. No doubt about it. But, I think they are on the other side of that fervor, that fanaticism. I think that it's all about politics now. It's about money and politics. BILL MOYERS: Well, that's certainly Western. JUDITH KIPPER: It's about money and politics. They will crack down on political dissent, but the social issues--I don't think they're going to tell the women put your scarves back. Don't show any hair. Take off your nail polish and your make-up. And the boys and girls who now will walk together. That's a little more openness. So it's been a little bit of positive change in that direction. I don't think they're going to crack down on that. But politics and economics -- BILL MOYERS: But, these urges, these appetites, these yearnings on the part of these young people you just described so eloquently, I think, conflict with the reigning ideology of the disciplinary mullahs who run this country in the name of God. JUDITH KIPPER: Well -- BILL MOYERS: Their attitudes towards women. Their attitudes toward rituals. Their attitudes toward the West. JUDITH KIPPER: Well, but this is an ancient culture. They have history on their side and they're sure of their identity. And you'd be surprised how well the youngsters, the youth, the people in their 20s manage to get around the rules and the regulations, and to live as well as they can considering the circumstances. I mean, the clerics are not popular. A very minor cleric or a clerical student wearing clerical robes, and this story's told all the time, can wait hours for a taxi to stop to pick him up. And that's a political statement. So, it's about politics and money. And nobody gives up political power or financial power willingly. You've got to find other ways and means, non-violent, to ease them away from vested interests. BILL MOYERS: Do you see any similarities between these mullahs and the Ayatollahs of Iran and the preachers in this country? The Robertsons, the Falwells, the Dobsons, who are trying to press their religious convictions onto public policy? JUDITH KIPPER: I think very much so. And, you know, for a lot of our Christian right preachers -- it's also politics and money. But we're a democracy, so we have the whole rest of the country with another point of view. We can tolerate it because they are a minority. When they start imposing it here and there, taking over states and coming through school boards and changing what's in libraries and school books, I think that the American people will react because that's not who we are. Those are not our American values. BILL MOYERS: You have a deep appreciation for the ancient Iranian culture, don't you? JUDITH KIPPER: Yes, I do for all the ancient cultures. Chinese, Egyptian, Turkish. BILL MOYERS: What's the one thing you think the Americans ought to understand about Iran? JUDITH KIPPER: How much has come from Iran. Rumi -- an Iranian poet is the best selling poet in America today. They have a fantastic history of art, of culture, music. As with all these ancients, they're down and out right now -- all of these countries. But maybe we have as much to learn from them as they have learned from us. Sooner or later their science will be as good as ours. Maybe they'll cure cancer. Invent a bigger and better computer. And, you know, some kind of airplane. But, all of those ancient, cultural questions, be it China or Iran or India, Turkey, Egypt. I learned on that trip from Paris to India something that's really very important in my life about culture. Not better, not worse, simply different. Let's appreciate our differences. And let's not get scared. America is a country of foreigners. But we don't like foreigners. We get scared of other cultures. They're noisy, the language, the food, it's different. And, we just have a terrible problem with that. BILL MOYERS: That's true. But, we particularly don't like foreigners who drive airplanes into the World Trade Center. JUDITH KIPPER: That's right. But those were Sunni Arabs. They weren't Iranians. BILL MOYERS: Let's assume that you're right when you say that the real threat to stability in the Middle East and Iran in particular comes not from supposed nuclear weapons, but from the reality of these throngs of young people growing up without enough education, without enough jobs. I heard you once, and I've read you talk and write about dealing with that through "soft power." What do you mean by "soft power"? JUDITH KIPPER: Well, I think that it's really very important for the United States to show some understanding of others cultures and some appreciation for our differences. We're the superpower the likes to the world has never seen. But all of our might, all of our military power, is not going to be able to respond to these kinds of threats. So we need to have a different message. And, to the extent that we can, we need to let the Iranian youth know that we're on their side. That when the time comes, if their government will talk, that we're ready to engage. That we'd like to do business there again. We'd like to welcome them to our universities as they used to be. And that there is something out there for them. That the United States is not an alien, hateful place. The Iranian youth do not hate the United States. But they want more from the United States. And we don't have a whole lot of ways to give it to them right now. So the message and how we send the message. For example, there is some talk in Washington about providing some public diplomacy money to Iranians in this country, in the United States, who are profoundly anti-clerical regime. I think that's a waste of money and it's a misdirected policy because they're living now as Americans. They're here as Americans. And, when the time comes, they'll go back to visit their villages, fix up their house, and most, they still have relatives there. And they are not the ones living on the other side of the world who are going to stimulate change in Iran, or give the youth hope that in the future they can have better economic opportunities, that there will be jobs for them, that they themselves can have choice in a democratized society. Having anti-regime American-Iranians is not the way to go. BILL MOYERS: How do we reach out to them with soft power? How do they learn about us if the government and the Ayatollah keep closing down these newspapers? JUDITH KIPPER: Well, you'd be surprised how much they know about us. And, the United States has a Farsi radio station that is -- BILL MOYERS: That's the language -- JUDITH KIPPER: Right. That's their language. Persian. And it is based in Prague. And they're call-in shows. And they call in. The Iranian youth call in, and they have a very, very lively dialogue. Many of them have satellite dishes. Computers are everywhere. There are bloggers. So we have to use modern technology -- BILL MOYERS: So the threat to these newspapers doesn't eliminate the reach of internet and other means of communication. JUDITH KIPPER: That's right. And, they have suddenly sprouted hundreds of thousands of bloggers. So, they are finding ways and means, not only to talk to each other, but to talk to the world. And we need to talk to them. And we need our government to talk to them in ways that will encourage them to think about real reform, change, more choice, and that we like Iran. It's a great country. We don't like the government of Iran. But, we're not against the Persian culture or the people of Iran. And we would like to, again, have a warm and close and friendly relationship with them. BILL MOYERS: Those bloggers must drive the Ayatollahs crazy, to be secular about it. JUDITH KIPPER: Well, I think that that's part of allowing a little bit of blowing off steam, because we've seen demonstrations in Iran and we will see more demonstrations. But the regime -- it's not China, it's not going to be a Tiananmen Square. BILL MOYERS: They won't crush it that way. JUDITH KIPPER: They will not crush like that. There have been some incidents -- people got hurt. We've seen the police clashes. There've been a few outright murders of people by elements of the regime in the past. But because it's a country of institutions and because they're a highly educated country, the clerics cannot imagine an incident that would lead to something that looked like Tiananmen Square. BILL MOYERS: But I think of Iran, on the basis of what I've read, is a state with a dismal human rights record. Summary executions, imprisonments without trials, torture. Is that not happening? JUDITH KIPPER: Sure it's happening. It's happening in all the countries out there. BILL MOYERS: So they have the capacity to crush their citizens. JUDITH KIPPER: They do, but you know, they can bring the tanks to the street if there's demonstrations. But, it's not likely that they will do so. In the past they have negotiated. They have waited it out. They've changed policy. They've acquiesced, depending on what issue it was. That there are prisoners who are tortured, there's no doubt about it that they have some political prisoners. A lot of journalists are their political prisoners. BILL MOYERS: There's one on a hunger strike right now. JUDITH KIPPER: That's right. There is. This is not a country -- it has a dismal record on human rights. But, at the same time, the youth, when they are frustrated enough, do take to the streets. They do protest, which is a good thing. It's a way to blow off steam. It's a way to let their leaders know that they're unhappy. And we need to respond to it in appropriate ways. Not to immediately say, "Oh good. They're in the street. It means there's going to be regime change in Iran." No. But, to say that we're glad to see that Iranian youth are making their views known. And that they are able to go to the streets and to express themselves. And we applaud their efforts in self-expression. BILL MOYERS: Well, thank you very much, Judith Kipper, for being with us on WIDE ANGLE. JUDITH KIPPER: Thank you.

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Judith Kipper, Director, Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations