Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2000, pages 54-57

Southern California Chronicle

Iran Exporting Islamic Democracy, Not Revolution, Says Gary Sick at UCLA Conference

By Pat and Samir Twair

Gary Sick, White House Middle East adviser in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, opened a two-day conference April 14 and 15 at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) on “Iran and the Surrounding World Since 1500: Cultural Influences and Interactions.” The conference honored Prof. Nikki R. Keddie, who has taught at the Westwood campus since 1961.

Sick, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and author of October Surprise: American Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan, stressed that the revolution of 1979 demolished the entire architecture of Iran’s foreign relations. Yet, 20 years after the shah’s fall, Sick said, “the radicals who started the revolution would probably scarcely recognize Tehran’s current foreign policy practices.”

Proof, he said, is that a prominent Iranian remained unscathed after publicly stating that “the revolution was not a renaissance, it was a riot.” Early revolutionaries took no interest in diplomatic niceties, he noted, until the Iran-Iraq war necessitated that they have some allies. In October 1984, the Iran observer said Ayatollah Khomeini summoned his envoys from abroad and told them to take a new approach and develop relations with foreign governments.

Sick defines this as a turning point as Tehran shifted from “the turmoil of the early ’80s and began to think about foreign policy.” After Khomeini’s death, Sick theorizes, the principle objective of President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was to revive relations with Iran’s neighbors, Europe and the United States, although the effort with the latter was a failure.

Sick, White House adviser during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran, pointed out that Rafsanjani’s efforts were thwarted by Iranian intelligence operatives who were carrying out assassinations in Europe. Rafsanjani’s trip to France was canceled after Shapour Bakhtiar was stabbed in Paris while under the protection of the French government. A series of assassinations and attempted assassinations were carried out in Germany, Norway, Italy and Austria until 1993, when Rafsanjani seemed to get a handle on the situation.

“Repercussions from these killings continued to reverberate and complicated [Iran’s] efforts to rejoin the world community,” Sick said. The May 1997 election of Mohammed Khatami was another turning point, he continued. Khatami campaigned on a program of civil society and rule of law which were domestic issues, but these were translated into foreign policy.

Khatami made official visits to Italy, France, Qatar and Syria, but the most fruitful relationship was the one that blossomed with Saudi Arabia, culminating in the 1999 visit to Tehran of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, which led directly to Saudi-Iranian cooperation within OPEC and the revival of petroleum prices.

Quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini, who said “there is no joy in Islam,” Sick said this was contradicted by the smiling visage of Khatami, who places an emphasis on freedom of expression and appears to be genuinely popular with the Iranian people.

Whereas the U.S. historically had deferred to the British in the Gulf, the Iran-Iraq war brought Washington into the equation as never before. Sick said Iraqi President Saddam Hussain’s “rampage for two decades” was responsible for U.S. involvement in the Gulf. The turning point, he said, was 1987, when the U.S. Navy reflagged Kuwaiti tankers. Another side effect of the Iran-Iraq war was that while the two major Gulf countries were preoccupied with war, the six other Gulf states were able to create the Gulf Cooperation Council, omitting both Iraq and Iran and producing a third, balancing indigenous power center in the Gulf.

“In less than 20 years, the strategic landscape was totally redrawn with the GCC states, Iran and Iraq forming a triangle which now is a quadrangle with the inclusion of the U.S.,” Sick pointed out.

Noting that the signing of the Camp David accords and the Iranian revolution occurred simultaneously, Sick theorized that as the possibility of Egypt going to war against Israel diminished, Washington increasingly focused on the Persian Gulf, which it wanted free of Soviet interference.

“Desert Storm almost coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union—as the U.S.S.R. was going, Saddam was coming,” Sick said.

Rhetorically asking what effect Iraq had on the Iranian revolution, Sick said Baghdad “punctured the balloon of the revolution, let the air out of the excitement and hope to spread the revolution.”

Revolutionaries no longer could enthuse over their victory, they were obliged to think about organizing an army, and economy and foreign policy. When the war ended, the challenge was to create jobs and feed the populace.

The Iranian revolution is like no other, Sick stated, because it has not gone through the stages of the French, Chinese and Russian revolutions starting with a radical clique, evolving into a dictatorship and establishing a one-party rule that will not tolerate dissent.

“The reality is that, from the onset, Iran encouraged elections. They weren’t free and fair according to international standards—candidates were pre-selected, limitations were made on political speeches and one party dominated the media,” Sick said. “But votes were counted correctly, people voted their minds and in the last three elections, they slapped the conservative elite.”

Iranian President Khatami pursued an envelopment strategy of bringing in the presidency, municipal council and the parliament. Yet things are far from certain and even on April 14, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei delivered a tough speech attacking the reform movement as being united with the outside powers.

Despite the conservative mullahs’ hatred of the reform movement, Sick said, they are aware they can no longer put the genie back in the bottle.

“It is ironic,” he concluded, “to realize that instead of exporting revolution, Iran is exporting a democratizing system within an Islamic context.”

MPAC Honors ‘Three Kings’

The Muslim Public Affairs Council Foundation has earned a reputation over the years for its Entertainment Media Awards, which honor individuals whose work develops a better understanding of Islam. Award recipients have included actor Morgan Freeman for his role of Azeem the Muslim in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” director Spike Lee for the production of “Malcolm X,” and Karen Armstrong for her books on the history of religion.

The year 2000 awards went to the makers of “Three Kings,” a feature film that accurately portrayed the plight of the Iraqi people after Saddam Hussain’s defeat in the Gulf war.

Receiving awards for the blockbuster Warner Brothers film were writer/director David O. Russell and producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Charles Roven, Paul Junger Witt and Edward L. McDonnell.

In presenting the awards, Dr. Maher Hathout praised the filmmakers for being the first in the movie industry to expose the real suffering of the Iraqi people, who have lived under an embargo for nearly a decade. He stressed that during a meeting in the White House he urged President Clinton to drop supplies of food and medicine over Baghdad.

Washington, DC attorney George Salem thanked the Warner Brothers executives for going beyond stereotypes and insisting upon portraying Iraqis as sensitive humans. This was achieved by bringing in Iraqis Sermid al-Sarraf and Sayed Moustafa al-Qazwini as consultants to ensure the authenticity of Islamic practices, the Iraqi dialect and cultural behavior.

In accepting his award, di Bonaventura said the film gave him the opportunity to learn about a community he had not understood and to authenticate the film down to the smallest detail.

Writer/director Russell noted he was deeply moved when he met the Iraqi consultants and tried to convince them that “Three Kings” was critical of how the United States did not finish the war in the Gulf.

“I think we changed the perception of millions of viewers on Muslims, Iraqis and how the war ended,” Russell noted. “We were invited to show the film to President Clinton in the White House. After he saw it, he said if he had been president in 1991, he would have created a large safe zone for the Shi’i in the south.”

Not only did President Clinton call “Three Kings” an important film, Russell commented, “he named it his favorite movie for 1999.”

Al-Qazwini told the audience he was in Iraq at the time of the war and that “Three Kings” replicated all aspects of the battle-scarred terrain.

“Not only was it a departure for Hollywood to portray Arabs accurately, but it was a departure for me to be involved in the making of a movie. Growing up in Iraq, it was taboo for me to attend the cinema,” the Muslim cleric stated. “When, at age 22, a television set was brought into our home, it was strictly for watching the news.

“Seven years ago, I could never have dreamed I would be working on a movie set. Now, we must encourage our children to go to Hollywood.”

Continuing to address his responsive audience, the Shi’i leader said he lent his own religious robe and turban to an actor who was playing the role of an imam. Noting that only two weeks earlier he had been sworn in as an American citizen, Qazwini concluded: “I care about America and I care about Iraq. I have found peace here. And I want America to know the realities of what has occurred in Iraq since Saddam Hussain came to power.”

As the standing ovation for Qazwini drew to a close, Dr. Hathout noted with a smile, “We can say tonight that a star was born.”

L.A. Israeli Film Festival

In the past, the Israeli Film Festival in Los Angeles has offered feature films by an Israeli Arab and Israelis that show the Palestinian perspective, but this year’s 16th festival offered three documentaries revealing a few reasons behind Palestinian angst.

“Four Friends,” a 1999 documentary directed by Esther Dar, made its U.S. premiere here. It records a reunion by four real, not fictional, women who attended an elite British school for girls in Jerusalem in the 1930s and 1940s. Through conversations in English they recall how each of their lives unfolded in the half-century since they last were together.

The Palestinian women are elegant Selma Dejani, the beauty of the group, and kindly Wadad Shihade, who was forced to leave her family home in Jaffa in 1948 and has since lived in Ramallah. The Jewish women, who just can’t quite come to terms with the losses of their Arab friends, are Olga Belkin, whose family were early Zionists, and Sharona Aharon, whose father formed the first Jewish brigade in the British army.

Reunited in 1998 at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, each woman recalls shared school memories and recounts her life since they were separated a half-century earlier. While Olga was recruited to write Zionist propaganda after Israeli independence, Sharona became a folk singer and is active in the Neve Shalom/al-Wahat Salam peace program.

The viewer watches as the aristocratic Selma returns to her Jerusalem home which the Israelis have turned into a hospital and as she discovers, to her dismay, that her father’s grave has been disturbed and no longer is beneath his favorite tree.

Wadad visits Jaffa and is rebuffed by the people now living in her family home who refuse her entry. She visits elderly relatives who exclaim, “Jaffa will never return to its history and glory without its people.” Wadad’s attorney husband, Aziz Shihade, was assassinated in 1985 in Ramallah, but she seems resigned to the tragedies life has dealt her.

A lively documentary is “Rhodes to Peace,” which candidly reveals the tensions between Arab and Israeli journalists as they attend a contemporary five-day conference on the Greek island of Rhodes, site of peace negotiations at the time Israel was created. Directed by Itai Kan-tor and Gili Goldschmidt, the film begins with the comments of skepticism by assembled reporters and their efforts over the next few days to establish understanding of each other’s frame of reference.

Initially, a right-wing Jewish reporter, Tommy Lapid, complains the Palestinians are only spouting propaganda when they complain they can’t move freely in and out of Jerusalem. The Arab and Jewish contingents dine separately on the first evening, and the only strict Muslim in the group sits at a table by himself because wine is served to both groups.

On the second day, an Arab reporter suggests UNESCO could spend its money better if it gave such conferences to Israeli and Palestinian youth, since it is unlikely either Jewish or Arab writers will change their attitudes.

But slowly the journalists break up into smaller groups. An Israeli editor chats with a Syrian reporter. A Jordanian and a Palestinian talk to Yossi Halevi of Ha’aretz. A yarmulka-wearing Israeli columnist invites all Palestinian journalists to come to dinner in his home when they return from the conference and guarantees he can arrange passes for them to enter Jerusalem.

On the final evening, even the devout Muslim reporter joins in a line dance with the Israelis. The group proposes to keep in touch in the future and find a meeting place accessible to both groups. Halevi of Ha’aretz remarks that he has come to understand the Palestinian argument more than he can that of the Israeli left.

A hopeful afterword to the film states that none of the Palestinian writers have yet dined in the Jerusalem home of the right-wing Israeli columnist, but they have corresponded with him, and that a Press House for both to meet in has yet to be established.

“Borders” is a more disturbing film that takes the viewer to some of the communities established along the 731 miles of borders Israel shares with Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Against a backdrop of roadblocks, barbed wire and minefields, the tormented, tense and sometimes entrepreneurial people living at these outposts tell their stories.

Director Eran Riklus visits a Druze family in Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where a young woman prepares for her marriage to a young Druze man living in Syria and the harsh reality that after her wedding she will be unable to return to visit her relatives on the Israeli side of the line.

After showing Christian pilgrims bathing in the Jordan River at an Israeli-Jordanian border point, the film shifts to an interview with a gun-dealer, whose face is hidden by a keffiyeh, in a house on the Gaza-Israeli border.

Asked if he operates inside Israel, the keffiyeh -disguised man comments in the affirmative, adding, “Whenever I want to.”

“How?” his interrogator asks.

“I get in, I can’t say more,” is the reply.

“Do the Israelis who let you in know you are selling guns [to Palestinians]?”

“Yes,” comes the answer, “because this is a business.”

At the Israeli-Palestinian border in Jericho, an English-speaking Palestinian officer demonstrates that if he steps 30 inches one way, he is illegally inside Israel, and 30 inches the other way, he is legally in Jericho.

Shaking his head sadly, the Palestinian admits that, ironically, he could move more freely—if clandestinely—in the time of war than in peace “with all the new borders.” The Palestinian Authority guard complains that whenever he travels from Jericho to Halhoul in the West Bank, he must pass 14 borders.

Inside Lebanon, in what the Israelis claim as their “security zone,” we hear Samir Farhat, also known as the Border Fox, boast about his success in trading any commodity he can for profit. We observe the hairy-chested Maronite receiving a massage from an Asian woman while he describes how sorry he will be to leave Christian families whose men took money from the Israelis to serve as their mercenaries. He will be gone by the time the Israelis retreat to the Galilee. But he cannot decide whether or not to take with him the widow of a fallen South Lebanese Army officer who has offered herself to him many times.

The camera returns to Majdal Shams, where the Druze bride wearing a wedding gown and veil is being escorted by a motorcade to the border with Syria. At the no-man’s-land of the United Nations checkpoint, the bride tearfully says goodbye to her family, steps into the U.N. sector and then is told she cannot proceed.

As the camera recedes, we observe the bride, in full wedding regalia, sitting on a chair, left in limbo, unable to return to her family in the Golan and now barred from proceeding to her bridegroom in Syria.

Friends of Sabeel Organize in Southern California

Under the direction of Alex Segebre, a Southern California chapter of Friends of Sabeel has been organized. At the inaugural session at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Darrell Meyers announced the fourth international conference of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. Slated for Feb. 21 to 24, 2001 in Bethlehem, sessions will convene under the theme “One New Humanity: Where Justice is at Home.”

The Reverands Meyers and Segebre are requesting Southern Californians and others interested in attending the conference to sign up early in order to lower transportation fees and to arrange special tours to Gaza and/or Hebron.

Additional information on the conference will be announced when the chapter convenes a special meeting the first week in June with the Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek.

Muslim Women’s Convention at USC

“Being Muslimah in the West” was the theme of a two-day conference at the University of Southern California dealing with all aspects of a Muslim woman’s role in the United States. All sessions were exclusively for women, with concurrent special programs presented for men.

Topics included “The Muslim Woman in All Her Roles,” “Empowerment of Communications for Women,” “Rights and Obligations of a Muslim Wife,” and “Successful Approaches for Raising Children.”

In a session dealing with the American media’s misrepresentation of Muslim women, Dr. Rasha al-Disuqi stressed the need for Muslim women to become active in their communities in order to dispel misconceptions that they are suppressed. She urged mothers in the audience to encourage their daughters to pursue careers in medicine, research and education.

One of the strongest speakers was Shariffa Carlo al-Andalusia, who converted to Islam while she was teaching at the University of South Carolina. Al-Andalusia covers her face in public and operates an international consulting firm for American businesses hoping to open branches in Arab countries.

“I’m the breaker of all stereotypes,” al-Andalusia told the Washington Report. “I cover my face to prove I’m not a stereotype—my features may be hidden, but everyone knows who I am.”

An Islamic fashion show closed the full schedule of events. Other speakers were Farida Um Abdullah, Tajudiin Shuaib, Rahma Ben Nabi, Naziha Wareh, Sakeena Mirza, Salim Morgan, Ali al-Timimi, Muhammad S. Adly, Abdullah Adhami, Mamduah Muhammad and Safi Khan.

WAC Honors Jordanian Ambassador

The Los Angeles World Affairs Council conferred its 11th annual Diplomat of the Year Award on Marwan Muasher, ambassador of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the U.S., at an April 10 black-tie dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel.

Ambassador Muasher discussed Jordan’s political and economic challenges in the new millennium, observing that the late King Hussein, mindful of his country’s scarce resources and small market size, understood it had to “go global” to compete.

Noting that Jordan cannot afford to miss the chance for peace, or for political and economic development, the diplomat stated:

“There is no doubt in my mind that a majority exists on both sides that supports a meaningful and peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But there are also vocal minorities against this settlement on both sides as well. If these voices are left unchallenged, they threaten the future of the whole process. This is the time when pro-peace forces should stand up and be counted, when the divide should not be across Arab-Israeli lines, but rather between those who want peace and those who oppose it. We need to join forces, Arabs, Israelis and Americans, Muslims, Christians and Jews, those who are for peace against those who are opposed to it.”

Syrian Journalist Visits U.S.

Bachar Rahmani, an Aleppo-born Syrian who made it in Paris’s magazine publishing business, has been a guest of the U.S. State Department on a tour of six American cities, where he visited journalists and educators.

After graduating from Damascus University, Rahmani earned a master’s degree in art history from the Sorbonne. In 1990 he joined a group of journalists to found Arabies and became its artistic director, a position he still holds. He describes the French-language publication as a bridge of understanding between Europe and the Arab world and vice versa. Two years ago, it began publishing an English edition.

In addition to covering news events, Arabies offers in-depth articles on economics, culture, politics and communications and features guest writers who are making waves in the Arab world.

In Washington, DC Rahmani met with editors of The Washington Post and U.S. News and World Report, and in New Orleans he was the guest of the French consul general and members of the French community. He spoke to high school students in Houston and in Los Angeles, where he also spoke at UCLA and met with these columnists. His visit in San Francisco was planned around a visit to Silicon Valley, where he met with multi-media innovators to learn the latest developments in interactive imaging.

What does he think of the U.S.?

“Americans are well organized.”

“More organized than the Germans?” we asked.

“Definitely,” he replied. “Everything works like efficient clockwork in the U.S.”

RAND Specialist Looks at Afghanistan

Dr. Zalmay Khalizad discussed the problems Afghanistan poses for U.S. foreign policy at a March 9 program of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

The Afghanistan-born speaker holds the position of director, strategy and doctrine program, Project Air Force, at Santa Monica-based RAND.

Noting that he was an adviser to the secretary of state on the war in Afghanistan during the 1980s, Dr. Khalizad said the U.S. blocked a victory by the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.

Although U.S.- and Saudi-funded aid to Afghan forces forced the Soviets to withdraw, their departure created a vacuum that was filled by rival Afghan forces supported by Pakistan and Iran. The subsequent civil war has left some 80 percent of Afghan territory in the hands of the Taliban.

“The Taliban are a primitive, radical, rigid group of warriors who are determined to establish their very particular version of an Islamic state,” Dr. Khalizad continued.

Enumerating the challenges Afghanistan now poses, he stated: “One is that Afghanistan now has become the world’s number one producer of opium. The narcotics production and trafficking is a main source of revenue throughout the world.

“Two, Afghanistan is impacting the stability of the newly independent Central Asian states. Afghanistan was and is a possible corridor for the export of oil and gas from the Central Asian states down to Pakistan and to the world.”

In his view, extremism in Afghanistan is the result of the long life-or-death struggle against the Soviets. “As millions of Afghans became refugees, their education became an issue. The schools that became available in Pakistan were largely schools that were run by clerics. Those schools produced people that are now the Taliban.”

Contributing to the extremism were the estimated 50,000 volunteers who entered Afghanistan from all over the Islamic world to wage war against the Soviets. “Some of those people who fought in that war are still in Afghanistan,” Khalizad said, “whether it’s Bin Laden or other elements of his network.”

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.

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