By their friends shall ye know them?

I hope to write at some length about Hugo Chavez, but may never get round to it. In the meantime, here is a photograph of the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran standing beside his coffin.

Source

After Mubarak: Part 3 - International Effects of the Fall of Mubarak

Final Episode

In the short term, the successful ouster of Mubarak is likely to lead to more protests in other Arab countries. There has already been unrest in Yemen and Libya, two countries with long-serving leaders who have, like Mubarak, considerably outstayed their welcome; it will be interesting to see whether this intensifies. There are also reports of emerging unrest in Algeria, where a thuggish military clique has been in power since not long after independence, and also in Sudan.

Whether the reformist wave spreads to the monarchies will be interesting. I suspect that the Gulf oil plutocracies may well prove immune to serious pressures for democratisation, but the likes of Jordan and Morocco may find their regimes under serious threat if a wind of change blows through the rest of the Arab world. Whether unrest spreads to Syria will also be interesting to see. Syria has been ruled by the same family since the early 1970s and has the usual underperforming economy of Arab countries, but it is a bit of an outlier in other respects, being perhaps the most rigidly authoritarian country in the region but also the one Arab country that is still an enemy of the West* and Israel. The latter maybe gives the Syrian regime a credibility that the various US-backed kings and dictators elsewhere lack.

The really interesting possible contagion effect of the Egyptian protests could be in Iran. The Iranian regime announced a while ago that it supported the Egyptian protests because they were akin to the 1978-1979 protests that brought down the Shah and brought the Islamic Republic into being. However, opposition figures in Iran have drawn similarities between the Egyptian protests and Iran's own protests against last year's rigged presidential election. There is talk of Iranians taking to the streets to support Egypt's revolution and then implicitly or explicitly demand democratic change at home, something the country's power elite do not want to happen.

In the longer term, the country with most to lose from the transition in Egypt is Israel. Even if a new government in Egypt does not go to war with Israel or start arming Palestinian militants, any government in a more democratic Egypt is going to be less accommodating of Israeli interests than Mubarak was. Israeli leaders will therefore be watching developments in Egypt with some nervousness. In particular, it will be interesting to see whether Egypt continues to assist Egypt in maintaining the siege of Gaza (up to now Mubarak had been keeping the Gazan-Egyptian frontier largely closed). I find it hard to see how any democratically based Egyptian government can continue doing Israel's work for it, so some opening of Gaza's southern border is to be expected. I am not sure what the Israeli government would do in response, though I note their tendency to respond with extreme violence whenever a problem presents itself.

At the moment, Egypt receives an enormous amount of aid from the United States of America. If Egypt moves to a more confrontational relationship with Israel then this aid is likely to dry up. I am not sure how much of a loss this would actually be to Egypt, as much of it comes in the form of tanks, airplanes, and other toys for the Egyptian armed forces – does anyone know if a significant proportion of it comes in more socially useful forms? Either way the loss of this aid would hurt Egypt, so a less confrontational line towards Israel may be pursued in the hope of hanging onto at least some of it.


*The extent to which Syria is actually an enemy of the West is a bit arguable; it is more that successive American regimes are hostile to it, for all that they are happy to subcontract torture and intelligence gathering to the Syrian security services. American hostility stems from Syria's support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and its reluctance to accept a one-sided peace deal with Israel. Syria's attempts to run Lebanon as a client state, meanwhile, cause problems in its relations with other western countries, notably France.

From Hunting Monsters

Iranian hair

Here is an interesting article by Jon Leyne about hair in Iran. Usually when people write about hair in Middle Eastern countries, it is women's hair with which they are concerned – in particular with whether it is being hidden by the hijab or a more extreme type of veil. In this case, though, the primary focus is on men's hair. The article reports that outlandish male hairstyles have become very common in the Islamic Republic, and elements within the regime have decided that enough is enough – a list of appropriate male hairstyles have been published and the direst sanctions threatened against those men who keep their hair in styles deemed un-Islamic.

Disappointingly, the article does not link off to gallery of Iranian men and their extravagant hairstyles. It also heads back to the more usual obsession of western journalists with the hijab and women's hair. Readers will be astonished to discover that many women in Iran dress as fashionably as they can, given the restrictions the regime enforces. A photo of some Iranian ladies with the most token veils reinforces the point.

One thing I wonder with the article is whether it can be assumed that having an outlandish hairstyle in Iran is really a token of resistance to the regime. Leyne mentions that there is a particular look associated with the regime and its paramilitary supporters, but I think it a bit of a leap to assume that every flamboyantly coiffed individual is using his hair to stick it to the man. People style their hair for any number of reasons, and extravagant male hair is not uncommon across the Middle East. Likewise, while unusual hairstyles might be a sign of youth rebellion, that could be the kind of unfocussed apolitical "rebellion" the youth in the West are famous for.

Who bombed Lockerbie?

I have previously mentioned the release from a Scottish jail of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. Mr al-Megrahi was convicted for causing the Lockerbie bombing. In my previous post I mentioned how the relatives of the British victims are much more open to the idea that Mr al-Megrahi was framed, while relatives of the American victims seem to be uniformly outraged at his release. I suggested this might be because of a series of high-profile miscarriages of justice, in which convictions for terrorist and other crimes were quashed, often after those falsely convicted had served many years in jail.

The solicitor Gareth Peirce played a major role in overturning those Britiish miscarriages of justice. Now she has written on the al-Megrahi case in the London Review of Books. She asserts that his conviction is a stitch-up and a travesty of due process. Forensic and eye-witness evidence were used to convict al-Megrahi. Peirce suggests these are both deeply flawed. The forensic evidence was largely prepared by the same dodgy scientists who produced the flawed evidence used in earlier miscarriages of justice. The eye-witness, meanwhile, initially failed to pick out al-Megrahi in an identity parade, but subsequently was miraculously able to do so and now is living in suddenly acquired affluence.

Peirce also points out that in the early stages of the Lockerbie investigation, the finger of suspicion was pointing at Iran. The Iranian regime had a motive – a US warship had just shot down an Iranian airliner, and then, grotesquely, the crew of that ship had been honoured by President Reagan. As the US regime started to engage with the Iranians to buy out its hostages in Lebanon, it became inconvenient to blame Iran for Lockerbie. Someone had to pick up the tab, with Peirce arguing that that someone ended up being Libya and Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

It is unfortunate that al-Megrahi was required to drop his appeal when he was released on compassionate grounds, as it would surely be better for everyone if these allegations could be addressed in an open court.


See also: 'Flaws' in key Lockerbie evidence (BBC)

Montazeri dies

If I followed Iran a bit more closely I could say interesting things about the death of Hoseyn Ali Montazeri. This Grand Ayatollah was a Shia scholar highly respected as a theologian and an early supporter of the Islamic Revolution, but he fell foul of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1988 and has lived under house arrest ever since. Montazeri was interesting in that he represented a religious opposition to Khomeini's Republic of Faith, someone who had far more impressive religious credential than Khomeini's successor, the current supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Montazeri recently criticised the regime after the rigged presidential election earlier this year.

There are suggestions that reformists in Iran may use Montazeri's funeral as an opportunity to stage protests.

Montazeri obituary

Crowds gather to mourn reformist Iran cleric Montazeri

"The Priest and the King"

The full title of this book by Desmond Harney is The Priest and the King: An Eyewitness Account of the Iranian Revolution. Mr Harney seems to be some businessman fellow who was a large international bank in Iran at the time of the Shah's fall. The book is a diary of political events he kept during the last months of the Shah's regime. One thing that strikes about it is that by the time he starts writing the Shah's position already seems terminal, even though it was still four months before the fall of the monarchy and the Ayatollah Khomeini's return. The sense of impending doom seems to have driven Harney to start writing. He had been out of Iran on holiday, but while he was away news came in of a massacre of demonstrators by the Shah's soldiers. Sensing that this was going to both trigger further unrest and expose the regime as morally bankrupt, Harney raced back to Iran, and rapidly becomes convinced that the regime, and the Iran he knew, was doomed.

Oddly, the Ayatollah Khomeini takes some time to appear in this book. Although the Shia Muslim clergy played an important part in the agitation against the Shah, Khomeini was not initially that prominent. At the commencement of the unrest, Khomeini was in exile in Iraq, confined to the city of Najaf. Messages smuggled from him there were reaching the disaffected in Iran, and his teachings did have some resonance. In an attempt to reduce his influence, the Shah prevailed upon Saddam Hussein to deport Khomeini, to remove him from the vicinity of Iran. From Iraq the Ayatollah made his way to France, where he was able to speak to the world media, with his message making its way into Iran through the BBC World Service's broadcasts. This seems to have turned Khomeini from being just one of many disaffected clerics to being the face of opposition to the Shah.

Once the unrest got seriously going, it took a while to bring down the Shah's regime, but the outcome (to Harney anyway) was never in doubt – he consistently dismisses as too little too late any attempts to form new governments acceptable to the opposition. He also has no time for the talk, common in the elite circles in which he moves, of a hard-line crackdown by the regime, or even a rightwing coup that would remove the Shah and crush the opposition. To Harney, a crackdown was impossible, as after the initial massacres of demonstrators morale in the army had collapsed, and there was the real likelihood that the army would mutiny or disintegrate if ordered to shoot demonstrators again.

As well as the demonstrations, Harney also mentions the labour unrest that paralysed Iran in 1978. Half the country seems to be either on strike or else showing up to work but not doing any. From his perspective, it is not too clear how much of this is political and how much purely economic – Iran had been going through an inflationary boom, and many workers would have found prices rising faster than their wages.

One thing you hear in retrospect about the Iranian revolution is leftist played a major part in it, only to be crushed after the fact by Khomeini and his allies. You do not really get much of a sense of this from Harney. Leftists are fairly invisible, with the demonstrations appearing to be lead by the clergy. As Khomeini assumes greater prominence, pictures of him are increasingly everywhere. He does mention one demonstration by the Tudeh ("masses"), Iran's communist party. It comes pretty late in the day, and comes across distinctly as a "we're here too!" affair. It sounds almost quaint and, in the light of what came after, rather sad – the demonstration features mass ranks of men and (unveiled) women marching hand in hand, openly repudiating the Khomeini-ist social codes they would soon have to live under.

One factor significant in the Shah's fall that Harney does not mention, because it only came into the public domain afterwards, was how unwell the Shah was at the time. Harney does comment on the unfortunate paralysis of the regime, its inability to act or take any kind of serious decision. We know now, of course, that the Shah was severely unwell in the last years of his rule, and was basically terminally ill at a time when his regime most needed direction. Whether his dynasty could have survived if he had been in a position to provide clearer direction is something we cannot say, but it is often noticeable in history how often monarchical regimes fall when a major crisis coincides with some kind of weakness at the top.

A couple of things in the book seem relevant to current events in Iran. One thing he is struck by is how the Shah has no riot police – so once a demonstration becomes too big for the ordinary cops to deal with, the authorities have to either surrender the streets or call in the army to start shooting people and creating martyrs. In contrast, during the recent unrest in Iran it was noticeable that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad clique was able to deploy riot police and various paramilitary thugs to crack heads and clear the streets, keeping demonstrator fatalities to a minimum. On the other hand, the role of external broadcasts (indeed, of the BBC) is strikingly similar in both cases. In 1978, the BBC world service was broadcasting to Iran in Farsi*, carrying reports of the unrest that the censored local media was ignoring. In 2009, meanwhile, the BBC was publicising the unrest on the web and in Farsi-language satellite news broadcasts. Memories of the role played by the BBC in the fall of the regime they replaced may well have driven the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad faction's recent vilification of the BBC.

There is one big difference, though, with the fall of the Shah and the current situation in Iran. In 1978, the Shah's regime increasingly had no support whatsoever outside the various placeholders who surrounded him – in society at large it was increasingly isolated. This is not really the case with the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad faction. They may have stolen the recent election, but they do have a significant bloc of public support. Their supporters may well be a minority, but they might well be a minority sufficiently large to keep the regime in place so long as it is willing to crack the heads of anyone who tries to stand against it.


*Farsi is the main language of Iran. I am guessing the word comes from the same root as Persian.

Iran

I have been having problems accessing the Internet. I have also been a bit short of time for any kind of serious analysis of anything. So, in lieu of an actual substantive post, here are a load of links to stuff about Iran's recent travails.

Iran election turnouts exceeded 100% in 30 towns, website reports
There was some suggestion in the immediate aftermath of the election that Ahmadinejad might actually have won it fair and square. This Guardian article discusses a statistical analysis of the vote that makes straight-forward vote-rigging highly likely.

Iran: Where did all the votes come from?
This BBC article takes a similar look at things.

Iran's old rivals renew their battle
This Guardian piece traces the long-running personal squabble between Mir Hossein Mousavi (the guy who may have had the election stolen from him) and Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader.

Insight: Iran and lessons from history
This BBC piece looks at the Iranian protests and considers whether they can shake the current regime. The article quotes people who feel that regimes can only be brought down when the regime itself is divided or demoralised. I may return to argue this point.

In other election news

Astonishingly, the United States of America is not the only country in the world that holds interminably drawn out presidential election campaigns. Iran too elects its presidents, and people are already limbering up for the next vote, scheduled for June 2009. Farideh Farhi takes us through the issues and likely candidates.

Apparently you need to win an Iranian election by at least five million votes to be sure of actually winning it, because it is always possible for the country's self-perpetuating elite to conjure up five million votes against someone they don't like.

Link originally from Brian's Study Breaks.

Iran: cut and thrust

Recently in the pub I found myself discussing Iranian politics with my old friend "Ken". The subject of that country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came up. Many people in the West assume that, because Ahmadinejad is the president of Iran, he must be in charge of the country. This is, of course, not true. The presidency is just one of several offices in which political power resides, with the posts of Supreme Leader and chair of the Expediency Council being other loci of influence. Ali Khamenei is Iran's Supreme Leader; his title is a subtle clue to the fact that he is the pre-eminent figure in the country's political structure. Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, meanwhile, is the chairman of the Expediency Council, and is arguably also a more powerful political figure than the country's president.

In some respects, it is not too surprising that people in the West typically assume that Ahmadinejad is Iran's paramount leader. He is a far more public figure than either of the other two figures, and has attracted considerable notice in the world media for his somewhat buffoonish approach to diplomacy. However, all his talk does not change the fact that it is the Supreme Leader who controls the country's military and security apparatus, with Ahmadinejad not really being in a position to act on his big foreign policy talk. The media does not cover the intricacies of Iran's internal politics, so people miss that Ahmadinejad is not the actual leader of his country.

When I thought about it a bit more, though, I reckoned that people who have paid even the slightest attention to current affairs over the years have no real excuse for seeing Ahmadinejad as the supreme figure in Iran. Before Ahmadinejad, the presidency was held by Mohammed Khatami. Khatami was elected on a reformist ticket, but his programme was largely blocked by conservative figures in the Iranian state apparatus. Khatami's inability to overcome his opponents was widely reported in the Western media, so anyone had been awake during the Khatami presidency should now be wise to the relative weakness of that office.

One other thing about Iranian politics that people have more justification for missing is that Ahmadinejad is, like Khatami before him, something of a radical. He was elected on a populist ticket after appealing to the have-nots in Iranian society, people who feel that the country's current establishment are lining their pockets at the people's expense. One thing often said is that Ahmadinejad's inflammatory approach to international relations is designed to boost his popularity in Iran, where anti-American and anti-Israeli statements go down well. It also makes it harder for his enemies to move against him, as Iran's conservatives are wary of being seen to attack someone of impeccable anti-Western credentials.

And so to current events. Brian Ulrich on American Footprints reported earlier this week that Abbas Palizdar, a parliamentary ally of Ahmadinejad, has recently made various allegations of corruption and malpractice (extra-judicial executions, that kind of thing) against figures within the country's establishment. >He (Palizar, not Brian Ulrich) has since been thrown into jail on charges including "spreading lies and disturbing public opinion". Palizdar's actions could represent an early move of Ahmadinejad's campaign for re-election or an attempt by the president to discredit his opponents in the unelected part of the state's power elite. This could play in a number of ways. It was when Khatami's allies attempted an anti-corruption drive that the Iranian establishment moved to effectively neutralise his presidency.

Some Links

In lieu of a substantive post, here are some links:

International Development

My old friend and quaffing partner "wwhyte" discusses international capital flows, based on a chunky PDFed article by Brad DeLong to which he links. With the US economy in trouble, there could be net capital flows to Third World countries. This may or may not be a good thing. Actual capital investment (you know, money coming in to build productive resources etc.) can often be the kind of thing less developed economies need. Hot money (fast moving liquid cash) and portfolio investment (purchasing of shares and bonds) can however be problematic in such environments, as they create instability in a system unable to manage it.

d'Hondt or D'Hondt

Matthew Søberg Shugart ponders The Great Debate – how do you spell the name of the guy who invented the d'hondt system for seat allocation in proportional electoral systems. Like most people in Ireland, I first became aware of d'hondt in the context of government formation in Northern Ireland. During the years of peace process & political paralysis, there kept being a lot of talk of "triggering d'hondt", meaning that the parties would get an allocation of the places in government based on their representation in the Assembly. They then picked the government positions one by one; I'm not sure if d'hondt covers this.

A Sensible Path on Iran

Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Odom talk about Iran, arguing that the more pressure the country is put on, the more likely it is to develop nuclear weapons. This is hardly an orginal argument, but it is well-stated here. Brzezinski & Odon also discuss countries that gave up their nuclear weapons programmes, typically without external pressure. I suppose part of what makes this all interesting is its broadly Realist bent, and its sense of the limitations of US power.

Fringe Thoughts

The brainy sociology blog of people I know. Sociology is an interesting discipline… looking at it from the outside, it all seems very leftist. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, but it might marginalise sociology somewhat. I wonder are there any right-wing sociologists (by which | mean not Nazis but people who aren't leftists - you know, people do not believe in the desirability or possibility of radical social change).

I am basically revealing my ignorance of sociology here, as I have not really engaged with it since I left it behind for the questionable benefits of political science and economics. I don't even know what sociologists argue about with each other. Maybe they have transcended disagreement.

The Postmodern White House

You may recall that I was discussing theoretical approaches to International Relations. That ran into the ground a bit, sadly before I reached any of the more entertaining theories. One day I will climb back on the wagon.

In the meantime, an entertaining thing to do can be to look at real world political leaders or organisations, and try to work out what is their theoretical perspective. Take George W. Bush (please, take him*). Like most people, he probably does not think of himself as having a theoretical perspective, he just does things he reckons will advance whatever goals he happens to have at hand. Or maybe he just does things (the whole idea of people actually having clearly defined goals that they rationally work to advance is surprisingly problematic when applied to real situations). However, one can still look at what he says and does and attempt to deduce the perspectives that guide him, even if they are subconscious.

The Bush regime is sometimes seen as embodying a realist view of international relations, with all that willingness to project US power wherever they like and tell anyone who doesn't like it to shag off. But the current US administration is also often seen as being driven by liberalism, albeit a kind of crusading bad-ass liberalism far removed from the stereotypes of hand-wringing whingey liberalism. From this point of view, it is Bush's liberalism that drove him to invade loads of countries and threaten bloody war on others - he is trying to make the world a better place, and you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

It might be, though, that in trying to place the White House in terms of the old-school big two of International Relations theory, people are missing the point big time. We live now in the 21st century, and the Enlightenment derived certainties that drove people in the past are looking distinctly frayed around the ages. Realism and liberalism are both approaches from within the tired Enlightenment tradition... could it be that in our post-Enlightenment era, the current US administration is driven by post-modern ideas?

In 2002, some journalist fellow called Ron Suskind talked with a Senior White House Figure. The SWHF took issue with something the journalist had written, and berated him for belonging to a "reality-based community", defined as being people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality". The SWHF went on talk about how the world no longer conforms to this paradigm: ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality" (SWHF quotes from this article by Ron Suskind: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush)

A key feature of the postmodern worldview is to repudiate the idea of objective reality. Instead, people construct a reality for themselves. Ideas and theories become more important than mere facts, and if you can get enough people to believe something you have created your own reality. Suskind's contact suggests that at least some people in the White House buy in to this kind of postmodern perspective.

The last few days have seen another example of the Bush regime's postmodern view of reality. Over the last while, the Bush administration has been talking a lot about how Iran has a nuclear weapons programme and how something needs to be done about it; that "something" is implicitly war of one sort or another. However, US intelligence officials have released a report that says that there is strong evidence to support the idea that the Iranian regime halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. While one could argue that this evidence supports the idea that a tough Western policy forced the Iranians away from nuclear weapons, it severely undermines the idea that Iran needs to be invaded or fucked up to stop it acquiring nuclear weapons in the very near future. President Bush, however, is determined to press ahead with his policy of ramping up sanctions against the Iranian regime, possibly as a way of building tensions that will have the way towards a US strike. Bush's response to the inconvenient, reality-based report of his intelligence community has been to ignore it - instead he has rhetorically urged Iran to come clean about its non-existent nuclear weapons programme. In doing so, he is attempting to conjure such a programme into being, at least in so far as it can be used as pretext for war.

Pictures from, in order: Wikipedia, Wikipedia, and the BBC.

* Thank you, I am here all week

More Lolcrime

And again, not so funny if you are the person on trial.

In Iran, Mehrnoushe Solouki, a French-Iranian national resident in Canada, is in custody awaiting trial. She is a documentary film-maker, and is accused not of actually doing anything, but of intending to make a film critical of the Iranian regime (it was thought that she might be intending to include footage of mass graves of people massacared by the regime in 1988. She has received one piece of good news while in jail awaiting trial - the prison authorities have said that they probably will not torture her to death, like in 2003 they did Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian journalist. Thanks to Randy McDonald for alerting me to this disturbing story.

Meanwhile, in Sudan, Gillian Gibbons has been jailed for letting her pupils vote to name a teddy bear Mohammed. She was apparently lucky to escape receiving 40 lashes. The people who run Sudan are pretty funny guys - I remember reading some years ago that they were planning to deploy Jinn against the rebels in the country's south (I really wish I had a source for this, other than "I read it somewhere").

Shooting the Messenger

Shaul Mofaz, Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, has called for the sacking of International Atomic Energy Agency head, Mohammed ElBaradei . Mr ElBaradei has reported that there is no immediate prospect of Iran developing a nuclear weapon or evidence that it is trying to do so. The Israeli leadership would like Mr ElBaradei to report that Iran is close to building nuclear weapons, as this could trigger US military action against the Islamic Republic.

Mr ElBaradei is no stranger to controversy. Prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he was criticised for reporting that the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme was non-existent. No evidence for Saddam Hussein possessing a nuclear weapons programme has yet been found by Iraq's occupiers.

Unlike Iran, Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel is the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East.

All politicians are the same

There are those who say that it does not matter who becomes President of the USA, as whoever gets the job will always pursue the interests of the US power elite.

It is, however, only Republican candidates for the nomination who are at this juncture talking about nuclear strikes on Iran.

Academic Boycotts

British lecturers vote to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

Iranian government directs Iranian lecturers to boycott all non-Iranian academic institutions.

Meanwhile, Spy School is effectively boycotting me thanks to its libary's restrictive summer opening hours.

Evin Prison

Iran is one of the more democratic states in its region. Criticisms of its regime are often made cynically by those looking for excuses to invade it. As a result, it is easy to forget what complete cockfarmers the rulers of Iran are. It is sometimes said that liberal democratic states have a self-perpetuating power elite that exercises real control despite the facade of elections. In Iran, the self-perpetuating power elite's role is written into the constitution.

With the real organs of state power largely outside the remit of the elected bits of Iran's government, it is no surprise that they behave in the most thuggish and nakedly authoritarian manner. At the moment Ms Haleh Esfandiari, a visiting academic, languishes in the terrifying Evin Prison, accused of being part of an international revolutionary syndicate led by George Soros; Iran is one of few countries where Soros' civil society organisation could be considered some kind of subversive organisation. Last year Mr Akbar Mohammadi died mysteriously in the same prison; he was serving a fifteen year jail term for organising student protests, and while in Evin he had suffered a spinal injury before allegedly dying of a heart attack. In 2005 Ms Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian photojournalist, was raped and tortured to death in Evin. These are obviously just the most famous victims of these seemingly unaccountable gangsters.

Somewhat ironically, perhaps, Evin Prison was famously used as a jail and torture centre by the Shah; the likelihood has to be that some of the regime's current stalwarts enjoyed its hospitality before the revolution. It is apparently situated next to an attractive park and tea house, both of which attract visitors to the area. If you find yourself there, be careful with any camera you have, lest you suffer the fate of Ms Kazemi (although Ms Fariba Amina seems to have got away with it; photos from her article on Payvand News of Iran)