Iran Weekly Wire Podcast

Every year, on the Tuesday just before the Persian New Year, Iranians do something that drives Islamic fundamentalists a little crazy.

They celebrate an ancient fire festival called Charshanbe Soori. The name of the festival literally means “Wednesday light.” They celebrate it by lighting bonfires and jumping over them.

It’s a ritual of purification and renewal that‘s rooted in the antique Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrianism predates Islam in Iran by around two thousand years. While the Iranian government tolerates it as an official minority religion, they don’t like it when Iranians adopt its rituals as part of their national identity.

From the perspective of an Islamic government, the celebrations can look a little revolutionary, even if they’re really just an opportunity for a big party.

But in the Western province of Kermanshah this year, a police chief has threatened to prosecute anyone who celebrates.

Announcements like this usually start in one province, and then get repeated by authorities in other provinces.

Now, the state’s attempts to confront the festival are nothing new. The government has disapproved of expressions of Iran’s pre-Islamic culture since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Even so, the tactics they’re using this year suggest that they haven’t had much luck confronting the festival with religious arguments.

This year, they have rolled out a host of health and safety pretexts aimed at preventing celebrations.

They say they want to stop people from blocking streets with their gatherings, and to prevent children and teenagers from getting injured.

They also say they want to protect people from dangerous explosive materials, by which they must mean fireworks.

Of course, any festival involving fire isn’t completely safe. A few people do injure themselves letting off fireworks and jumping over fires every year.

Curiously, one of those was one of Ayatollah Khomeini’s neighbors. According to his family’s website, a lady once caught fire on Khomeini’s street on Charshanbe Soori, and died. Khomeini never forgot the smell of burnt flesh.

The site is rather ambiguous about Khomeini’s position on the festival. It says, "Khomeini could not be indifferent towards Charshanbeh suri, but never said a word." So it seems he never condemned it.

Hard-line conservatives in Iran say the family website misrepresents Khomeini’s views, and that in fact he opposed the holiday.

Charshanbe Soori isn’t the only holiday authorities in Iran object to. They complain about Western-imported holidays like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day too.

But Charshanbe Soori, with its pagan fires, inflames their imaginations a little more than others.

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Where police in Kermanshah may be shy about their motives, Conservative clerics are more blunt.

Mohammadali Movahedi Kermani, one of Iran’s most influential clerics, has warned a university Islamic society in Mashhad that Iran’s cultural scene is in chaos.

He says the solution is more censorship.

Kermani is one of Tehran’s Friday Imams, which means that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has personally selected him to preach political sermons.

He’s also the Supreme Leader’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, and the General Secretary of the Association of Combatant Clerics, which is one of the most hardline organizations in the country.

As it happens, Iran already practices pre-publication censorship for books, and does its best to control music and films too. But Kermani appears to have been unnerved by the Ministry of Culture’s recent relaxation of publishing rules.

He said the Ministry of Culture should practice “restraint” when granting publishing permits, and that there were too few “useful’’—i.e. religious—books being presented at book fairs.

He also complained about what he called “obscene” films and “obscene” concerts, and said that authorities had to “prevent the spread of perversion in society.”

Authorities, he said, should “initiate a jihadist movement.”

Now, it’s not easy to guess exactly what he meant by “jihadist movement”

Sometimes initiating a jihadist movement just means trying really hard to do something. Other times it can be an incitement to break heads.

Chances are he’s not calling for violence in the case, because his real target seems to be the policies of President Hassan Rouhani.

In particular, he is unhappy with Rouhani’s Minister of Culture, Ali Jannati. Jannati is a reformist who is at odds with his reactionary father, the Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati.

Kermani told his audience, “It is the duty of both government and its people to prevent sins”. Inappropriate people, he said, should not be put in charge of cultural affairs.

He said the government should give strict orders on cultural matters and not pander to anyone who goes against Islamic values. “We should react to every single sin,” he said.

So nobody’s going to see him laughing it up and jumping over bonfires next month.

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One of the most common expressions of frustration you can hear in Iran is “There are no laws here”.

Of course, Iran does have laws.

It’s just that the Iranian judicial system often seems to disregard them. It’s full of powerful and capricious judges who make things up as they go along.

This is an everyday reality for Iranians, but international cases sometimes give outsiders a look at what Iranians are up against.

The ordeals of two Americans imprisoned in Iran illustrate the point.

Just about everyone who follows Iran knows about the case of Jason Rezaian. Rezaian is a Washington Post reporter, and he was was arrested with his wife Yeganeh Salehi last July.

Salehi was released on bail after two months, but Rezaian remains in prison and has yet to be charged.

Somewhat less known is the case of Amir Hekmati, a former US marine who served in Iraq, and was arrested in Iran in 2011 while visiting his grandmother. He was charged with espionage, and has been in prison ever since.

Although their cases are completely separate, both men have reportedly been forced to give confessions on video. And both have been refused legal representation by the same terrifying judge, Abolghassem Salavati of the Tehran Revolutionary Court.

Salavati is infamous for trying political cases, and denying the rights of the accused. He has handed down harsh sentences, including death sentences, in bizarre trials.

He once sentenced a 37 year old man to death for presenting the story of Jonah and the Whale as a metaphor, not literal truth. The man was hanged last September.

To Iran, both Rezaian and Hekmati may be leverage in dealings with the United States.

Both are caught in a legal black hole, and neither of them knows when he might be allowed to go home.

In Rezaian’s case, authorities have never presented a charge, and state media has so far kept his rumored video confession under wraps.

Rezaian’s family has hired a prominent Iranian lawyer, Masoud Shafii, to take on his case.

Speaking to IranWire’s Nargess Tavassolian last week, Shafii said that Judge Salavati had repeatedly prevented him from entering the revolutionary court or meeting his client.

Court officials told Rezaian’s family that Shafii had had his license revoked, which wasn’t true.

They misled Shafii too, telling him that Rezaian’s family did not want him on the case.

He said that under Iranian law, authorities have no right to deny Rezaian free choice of counsel.

As for reports that Rezaian has confessed to a crime, Shafii said that confessions given under interrogation are not valid.

He also said that many people who have confessed during interrogations have renounced their confessions once they have been released.

“Unfortunately,” he says, “these confessions have been manipulated for political aims.”

Cases like this can go on for a very long time.

Amir Hekmati, the former US Marine, has already spent more than three and a half years in Evin Prison in Tehran.

He first visited Iran in 2011. Officials at the Iranian interests section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington DC assured him his military background wouldn’t be a problem.

But Iran is full of competing factions and ministries that don’t talk to each other.

The reassurances proved worthless. Iranian intelligence officials arrested him just days after he arrived.

They charged him with espionage and sentenced him to death in a secret court. They later retried him, and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Hekmati has written an open letter to Hossein Karimi, the head of Iran’s supreme court. He has asked for his case to be reopened.

In his letter, he tells Karimi that authorities tricked him into giving a confession on video. He says they have no evidence against him.

He says that after four months in solitary confinement, he was taken to a hotel in Tehran, given cigarettes and food, and told that he would be released if he confessed.

He was told his confession was would only be used to train intelligence agents.

In fact the purpose of the video was to prepare public opinion against him.

He tells Karimi he’s now stuck in a swamp because of a political game, but he doesn’t say what the game is. Chances are he doesn’t know.  

Just as in Rezaian’s case, Hekmati alleges that judge Salavati has effectively refused him counsel.

This isn’t the first time Hekmati has written to Iranian authorities.

He has addressed Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, the head of the judiciary,

Sadegh Larijani, and the Minister of Intelligence, Mahmoud Alavi.

Each time he asked them to consider his case with “understanding and compassion.”

The very fact he has to rely on compassion, suggests that, like many Iranians, he has given up on the law.