An Ex-Official Offers Glimpse of Iranian Views of U.S.
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN | NY Times | August 28, 2006 TEHRAN, Aug. 27 — A former high-ranking Iranian official wants Americans to see his cracked thumbnails. They were torn out, he said, after Washington’s friend, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, put him in prison in the 1970s.
Ali Muhammad Besharati, leaning back, a former interior minister and deputy foreign minister, with Intelligence Minister Ali Younesi last year.
His point is instantly clear: look at what happened when we had close ties to the United States.
“I was a medical student,” said the man, Ali Muhammad Besharati, a former interior minister and deputy foreign minister. “But they put me in prison because I opposed American dominance in Iran.”
In the continuing conflict over Iran’s nuclear program, there are disputes over enrichment of uranium, discussions of heavy water reactors, and accusations over the government’s intentions. But to listen to Dr. Besharati is to hear the fight described as Tehran’s frontline effort to block American influence in the region and to never again allow Washington to have an upper hand in Iran.
That attitude is obvious among Iran’s current leaders, who see this not just as a battle over nuclear weapons but a fight for survival against a far more powerful enemy that has lumped them into an “axis of evil” and allocated millions of dollars to oust the government, political analysts and Western diplomats here said.
Dr. Besharati, too, echoed the idea that giving in on the nuclear front would not solve Iran’s problems with Washington, only aggravate them.
“I would like you to write this down,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. “If we backed down on the nuclear issue, the U.S. would have found fault with our medical doctors researching stem cells.”
He smiled, sat back and let his point settle. “What they would like to see us do is plant corn, make tomato paste and bottle mineral water,” he added. “They do not want to see us get high-tech.”
His comments, during a 90-minute interview in his office, seem to reflect both a calculated political posture and a sincere hostility, and fear, toward Washington.
Dr. Besharati, 57, works from an office in the Strategic Studies Center, a tower in the leafy northern section of Tehran that serves as an influential research organization for many of Iran’s policy makers. He is not a member of the inner circle of power now, though he has a personal relationship with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and as interior minister he appointed the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a governor.
But his thinking reflects the spirit of a leadership that has given no indication that it is willing to halt enrichment or slow its nuclear march. In the imprecise language of Iran’s political divisions, Mr. Besharati would be considered a moderate-conservative.
Asked whether Iran is afraid that greater economic, political and social integration with the West might dilute the country’s Islamic identity, he turned the question around. “Can the West be more flexible and accept us as we are?” he asked.
He was born in Jahrem, near Shiraz, and as a young man was an Islamic political advocate. The shah imprisoned him for five years, and it was the feared Savak secret police that tore out his fingernails, he said.
After the revolution, he won important positions in government. He served in Parliament, for a decade as the No. 2 official in the Foreign Ministry, and as interior minister from 1993 to 1997. He was in charge of the election process the years that Mohammad Khatami, the change-minded cleric, surprised the conservative leadership and won a landslide victory as president.
In many ways he is the model of an Iranian official, both in his bearing and in his stated positions. He wears sharp Western-style suits and a scruffy beard.
He travels with an armed guard and speaks the language of what might be called peaceful defiance: blaming the White House for American-Iranian problems while insisting Tehran wants nothing more than to live in peaceful harmony with the world. He does not answer when asked why for nearly two decades Iran kept its nuclear program a secret, in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said, adjusting the ring on his right hand. “In one of the story books, Iranians have a fairy tale. A hawk is talking to a chicken in the farmyard. The hawk says to the chicken, ‘You are not very loyal. They feed you, but when they want to catch you, you run away.’ ”
He paused for effect. “The chicken said, ‘If you saw what was going on in the kitchen and the frying pan, you would not just hop from branch to branch, but fly away.’ ”
He smiled, rose from his chair and pulled three hardcover books off a shelf. He said they were memoirs of relatives of the former shah. “The shah of Iran never drank water without the permission of America,” he said he read in one of the books.
He opened one book, whose text was marked up, with important passages circled. “What was the result of all our confidence in the U.S.?” he asked forcefully. “Our agriculture was demolished. Our educational system was destroyed.”
True or not, balanced or biased, he was rolling, passionate and animated as he stated his understanding of Iran’s history and its relationship with the United States. He grabbed another book and said, paraphrasing, “All the interrogators in the secret police were trained in the United States and Israel.” Pause. “Five of my fingernails were peeled out in interrogation.”
Dr. Besharati recounted every modern American offense against Iran, from the shooting down of the Iranian airliner that killed more than 200 civilians, to officials of the Reagan administration calling for pulling the theocracy out by the roots. All this, he seemed to be saying, was why Iran would not give in to America’s demands on something as consequential as the nuclear program.
“Although our economic system may not be strong,” he said, “our minds and our memories are.”
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