Scott Peterson, one of the most well traveled and experienced foreign correspondents of his generation, spoke about his new book, Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran – A Journey Behind the Headlines with Gary Sick of Columbia University as interlocutor on September 20.
Sick introduced the book and the subject of Iran by saying it’s perfectly understandable that most Americans don’t know anything about Iran. “It’s really a complicated system,” he said. “It doesn’t play by the rules. But for those who are really interested, there has been a lot of good reporting over the years, but I can’t think of anybody who has consistently over a long period of time who’s done a better job than Scott. The [Christian Science] Monitor granted him room to do what he does in a way that most newspapers simply would not. The idea of having someone stay with the story all the way through, at least in modern American journalism is really extraordinary.”
Peterson agreed the benefit to going back to Iran repeatedly is to return to the same voices. “I got to know the people and trace their own political changes,” he said. “I chart their pulling away from politics and their disillusionment with the regime. [The book] is really a tale of two visits.” He said during his first visit he went to the province that voted the most for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in all of Iran. “The people said, ‘it’s fantastic,’ of Ahmadinejad’s victory then,” he said. “The people complained about local officials and saw Ahmadinejad as a savior [in 2004].” Peterson returned to the city four years later and within thirty minutes, Mir-Hossein Mousavi the opposition candidate arrived. The reception for him was overwhelming. “They killed cows alongside the road [in his honor],” Peterson said. “The political situation had changed there. This was just a fragment of the Iranian picture.”
Sick asked Peterson what Americans missed by not having journalists in Iran. Peterson said, “The kind of things you miss is to be there the day Ahmadinejad won in 2005. The first one to vote was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a huge character in the establishment. When he voted, he voted where the Ayatollah Khomeini used to preach. The man came in like an emperor, cast his ballot then said, ‘I dedicate my life to ending religious fanaticism in this country.’ This is the old-guard voting. What you needed to feel and taste and eat in fact on that day in 2005, was the scene that took place in eastern Tehran where Ahmadinejad voted. The moment Ahmadinejad walks in, it’s like someone rolled a grenade down the aisle. The man bear hugs and kisses his way through the crowd. This is the popular flavor in action in the subsequent five years. How he handles his politics is very much a part of that. If you didn’t see that transition on that day, you probably missed something in the translation.”
Peterson has not returned to Iran since the election in 2009 and said there are very few ways to speak and communicate with people inside Iran. Skype is probably the best way or on landlines because they’re neglected by the regime in favor of monitoring cell phones.
While the regime has been successful in keeping people off the streets, Peterson said, “I don’t buy into the thinking that the green movement is dead, or because we don’t see it on the streets that it doesn’t exist or that somehow the regime has won. I think the regime knows that it’s lost. The social contract that the regime had with Iranians for all these years broke during the violence that happened in this election. No one expected it would be stolen, or the reaction. Anger still exists. It’s widespread.”
The book’s title comes from Imam Hussain’s martyrdom in 680 A.D. Peterson explains that Hussain said, “‘if the religion of Muhammad will only survive with my death,’ then he opens up his tunic and says, ‘oh let the swords encircle me,’ and he became the lord of the martyrs and revered by Shiites and used as an ideological tool by the Islamic regime for convincing people that this was in fact the purpose of this war.”
This explanation dovetailed nicely into Peterson’s descriptions of one of the more successful tactics the regime has undertaken to control its populace: a series of propaganda films translated as “Tales of Victory.” The films follow military units of soldiers on the front line and its purpose was to give a salt-of-the-Earth ideological justification for why they are there. Peterson is one of the few Americans to have seen a few of these 30- to 60-minute films.
“What you see in these films are soldiers saying, ‘we are the new martyrs; we are the soldiers of God,’” Peterson said. “This is some of the most powerful propaganda. It appears so natural, so straight, so from the heart. The genius of this director is putting it in a way that makes goosebumps jump up on your skin.”
As for the future of Iran, Peterson said the only way to forecast the future of Iran is to know that it’s unpredictable and that change will come on the heels of a sudden event, like an unexpected death among the Islamic regime’s top ranks.
OPC member George Bookman asked if Americans should fear nuclear weapons from Iran. Peterson said the regime has not made a decision on nuclear weaponry and it doesn’t need to. “The determining factor may be how much the U.S. and Israel push Iran.” In addition, the regime like the U.S., is so mired in its domestic issues like quashing internal resistance that nuclear arms are tenth on their list. Sick added, “there are forty countries in the world that can build nuclear weapons and Iran wants to be in that club and are close enough to be.”
Peterson was asked if the Iranians are happy. Peterson said that Iranians are similar to Americans. “They are determined to live their lives within the confines of the Islamic regime. People complain. But in Iran, you can do anything.”
For more videos from the conversation, go to www.youtube.com/opcofamerica
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