Iran's Paranoid Style

Wednesday marks the 36th anniversary of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. In a way, the timing couldn't be more appropriate.

Most are familiar by now with the history: On Nov. 4, 1979, several hundred protesters -- many of them Islamist students loyal to the Islamic Republic's newly anointed supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini -- stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking hostage dozens of American diplomats and private citizens in what would go on to become one of the worst diplomatic crises in American history.

Although the 444-day hostage crisis sparked on that day in 1979 rightly earns most of the historical scrutiny, there were in fact other, ultimately unsuccessful, attempts on the U.S. Embassy that very year. On Valentine's Day of 1979, more than 100 members of the Marxist Feda'iyan-e Khalq stormed the embassy and held its personnel hostage for several hours. In this instance, however, Islamist students rallied against the marxist group's actions, and security forces were eventually sent in to force the leftist activists to stand down. American diplomats went back to work that very same day, and the Islamist government of Iran chastised the Marxists for their behavior.

Khomeini -- who was still embroiled at that time in a fight with secular leftists and academics for control of the nascent revolution in Iran -- masterfully navigated and manipulated crises in order to consolidate power and reinforce the Islamic and anti-Western tenets of the 1979 uprising. The Nov. 4 assault on the embassy more neatly fit that worldview, whereas the Valentine's Day assault did not -- and so it was squashed.

With similar optics in mind, it would appear as though Khomeini's political progeny is sending a similar message to Iran's reform-minded President, Hassan Rouhani, and the recent uptick in arrests of journalists, artists, and dual nationals suggests that a new crackdown may be underway in the Islamic Republic. Reuters' Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Sam Wilkin report:

"Isa Saharkhiz, a well-known independent journalist, was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on charges of ‘insulting the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and propaganda against the regime,' his son Mehdi said in a telephone interview from the United States.

"Ehsan Mazandarani, managing director of the Farikhtegan newspaper, was arrested on security charges, the Tasnim news agency, which is linked to the IRGC, said. Staff at the paper confirmed the arrest to Reuters."

Saharkhiz, who served as a deputy minister of culture under another reformist Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, is just the latest to be targeted by an Iranian deep state that is bent on preserving power and sending a message to the West and to Iran's popular president. Much like Khatami before him, Rouhani has been given the freedom to re-engineer aspects of Iran's diplomacy and economy, while also being kept at a distance from the judicial and security branches of the regime, both of which are beholden to the supreme leader's office.

In addition to the recent wave of arrests, the country has also seen a marked increase in executions since Rouhani's election in 2013.

"Among the most troubling rights indicators is the steady rise in executions in Iran from fewer than 100 a year a decade ago to 800 -- and possibly 1,000 -- by the end of this year. Iran justifies the practice by saying it is necessary to reduce the large number of addicts in the country," writes Al-Monitor's Barbara Slavin.

The targeting of Western businessmen, moreover, fits with the many recent warnings from the country's current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and his Praetorian Guard, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute explains:

"[T]he writing has long been on the wall, with various regime officials issuing dark warnings about the threat American and Western businessman pose to the ideological foundation of the Islamic Republic."

[...]

"[E]very Western businessman seeking their fortune in the Islamic Republic should understand one thing: The paranoid ideology that Khamenei, Rouhani, and the Revolutionary Guards embrace sees every Westerner as a spy, all the more so if they claim to be connected. The Iranian people may be desperate to rejoin the international community, but that is the thing the Iranian leadership fears most."

Indeed, the foundation of the 1979 revolution, and the regime that it birthed, rests upon a resistance to Western influence and encroachment in the Middle East. As journalist and prominent Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji recently put it, "Without enmity toward foreign powers, the very existence of this faction is threatened, and normalisation of relations between Iran and other nations is apparently a grave personal threat to Khamenei."

This new wave of repression serves as a stark reminder that while there is reason for optimism in post-nuclear deal Iran, the Islamic Republic is still in the grip of those who followed Khomeini.

Around the Region

How Erdogan Did it. Analyst Mustafa Akyol explains how Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) capitalized in Sunday's election on increased violence and a decrease in interest in the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, or HDP, to retake a majority in parliament:

"One factor is that some of the votes it had won in June were ‘borrowed votes' -- that is, the votes of people who simply wanted the party to pass the 10% threshold but this time did not vote strategically, assuming that the party would safely pass the threshold."

[...]

"The resurgence of the three-decade-old war in July put the HDP in a tough spot, torn between its liberal narrative of peace and its obvious sympathy for the PKK. As a result, some religious Kurdish voters, who blamed the PKK for the resurgence of violence, returned to the AKP."

But we shouldn't eulogize the HDP just yet, argues Aykan Erdemir:

"Although the failure of the Kurdish peace process and the escalation of the PKK violence have presented significant challenges for the HDP, the party managed to clear the threshold again, albeit with significant losses. The HDP became the first pro-Kurdish party to win seats in the Turkish parliament. If the party can do some soul-searching to question the PKK's hardline tactics that have, unfortunately, served Erdogan's authoritarian ambitions, it could be integrated further into the Turkish political system."

America's Mideast mystery force. Last weekend's deadly plane crash in the Sinai Peninsula, coupled with an increase in jihadist violence in Sinai, has put an unexpected spotlight on one of the United States' least-covered fighting forces. David Schenker of the Washington Institute provides some background on the Multinational Force and Observers, or MFO:

"On August 2, four American servicemen were wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Egypt. The soldiers were serving with the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) in the Sinai Peninsula, one of the most important and perhaps least well-known U.S. peacekeeping commitments. Since 1982, the United States has been contributing hundreds of soldiers and airmen to the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), an organization tasked with monitoring the security provisions of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in the Sinai. In addition to ground operations, the MFO flies surveillance missions over the Sinai to determine whether Egypt's force deployments are consistent with its 1979 treaty commitments."

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