The Iranian Revolution is Stronger Than Ever After 40 Years

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
 

On Feb. 1,1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini landed at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport, after more than 14 years in exile. And the world changed forever.

An Iranian monarchy that had seemed so secure had now crumbled into dust and the country’s ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, had already fled the country.

A few months later, at a talk I gave in Toronto, I suggested that this would prove to be an event even more important that the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

I was right. The Soviet Union no longer exists, while Iran’s Islamic Republic goes from strength to strength. 

Iran remains a very strong state, supported by a robust form of religiously-based nationalism. It exports its ideology throughout the Middle East and farther afield. It provides weapons to proxies and supports terrorism, while also working diligently to destroy Israel.

How did all this come about? It all began in 1963, when the Shah instituted a series of measures intended to accelerate Iran’s modernization and strengthen and centralize his power. These reforms were known as the White Revolution.

The powerful Shi’a clergy were enraged both by their reduced power and authority, and by the increased penetration of Western culture. One of the strongest voices against these reforms came from a cleric named Khomeini, who issued a strongly worded declaration denouncing the Shah and his plans.

In return, he was arrested and then exiled to Turkey. He then settled in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf in Iraq, where he continued to call for the Shah’s overthrow. Forced to leave Iraq in October 1978, Khomeini moved to a suburb of Paris – but not for long.

Following his return to Iran, Khomeini oversaw the writing of the country’s new constitution, which has been called a hybrid of theocratic and democratic elements. While there are elections for the presidency and the Majlis, or parliament, they are subordinate to the Council of Guardians, a clerical body, and the Supreme Leader. 

As the highest-ranking political and religious authority in the nation, the Ayatollah became the country’s ruler, and governed until his death on June 3, 1989. His successor, Ali Khamenei, rules today.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the regime. The mullahs had to cope with the brutal invasion unleashed by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 1980; the eight-year conflict resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians. 

They have also faced resistance from their own people at times; for example, there were major disturbances in 2009 following the clearly rigged re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

The regime was forced to respond with violence, and many hundreds of protestors died or were imprisoned in the post-election unrest. 

A year ago, Iranians, facing economic hardships, poured into the streets to denounce ­Supreme Leader Khamenei. But the clerical establishment has always weathered these storms. In fact, Tehran has taken advantage of the chaos unleashed by the Arab Spring by expanding its reach across the Middle East. 

It now virtually controls the fates of Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria, and supports a Shi’a uprising in Yemen. The Sunni Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, now live in fear of Iran, so much so that they are even prepared to work with Israel. Iran has even had covert contacts with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The United States for the past four decades has used both the carrot and the stick approach when dealing with Tehran. 

President Barack Obama tried to reason with the regime’s political leaders; this culminated in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed by Washington along with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

Under the accord, Iran agreed to limit its sensitive nuclear activities and allow in international inspectors in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions that had been imposed on Tehran.

On May 8, 2018, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal and re-imposed sanctions. He has been far more outspoken about the dangers posed by the regime.

Tehran was probably continuing the work on developing nuclear weapons in any case. Should they eventually succeed, Tel Aviv will disappear from the face of the earth. The Iranian mullahs should never be underestimated.

Iran and Israel: Four Decades of Enmity

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 

Forty years ago this February, a revolution led by Shi’a Muslim clerics ousted Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Iran’s monarch, and installed a theocratic regime.

The Shah had been on fairly good terms with Israel, but suddenly all that changed.

Beginning with its new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, the Islamic Republic has been threatening to destroy the Jewish state ever since.

Every few months, some newspaper columnist assures readers that the regime is in danger and on the verge of collapse. This usually happens when there has been some economic setback in Iran.

Two recent examples picked at random are a Nov. 23 Washington Post piece by Anne Applebaum entitled “Iran’s Regime Could Fall Apart. What Happens Then?” and a Jan. 1 commentary in the New York Post by Alireza Nader, “Iranian Mullahs’ Lock on Power is Now Shakier than Ever.”

I have never been one of these writers, having penned numerous opinion pieces, dating back to the mid-1980s, cautioning against such wishful thinking.

In truth, Iran remains a very strong state, supported by a robust form of religiously-based nationalism.

It exports its ideology throughout the Middle East and farther afield. It provides weapons to proxies and supports terrorism, while also working diligently to destroy Israel.

Iran espouses the most radical anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist position in the Muslim Middle East, calling for the elimination of Israel. 

Ayatollah Khomeini maintained that Zionism was the culmination of a Jewish-Christian conspiracy against Islam. Fusing together anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist ideologies, Iran became a disseminator of Holocaust denial in the Middle East.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president from 2005 to 2013, was particularly notorious as a Holocaust denier, as well as for his statements, made at various times, about the need to “wipe Israel off the map.” 

Speaking to about 4,000 students in October 2005 at a program called “The World Without Zionism,” in preparation for an annual anti-Israel demonstration, he contended that “the establishment of a Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world.”

But he only expressed what less outspoken Iranian leaders think. 

Destroying the Jewish state remains high on their agenda.

Of far greater significance are the words of the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, in his book entitled Palestine, published in 2015:

“Our position against Israel is, as always: Israel is a malignant cancer gland that needs to be uprooted. In contrast to what shallow people believe, it is not impossible to defeat Israel and the United States.”

The opposition to Israel “is now the meeting point of Jew-haters of diverse political and ideological colors, the common ground of present-day anti-Semitism,” contends Monika Schwarz-Friesel of the Technical University of Berlin and author of Inside the Antisemitic Mind: The Language of Jew-Hatred in Contemporary Germany, published in 2017. “The old Judeophobia is projected onto the Jewish state.”

Iran’s ideology poses an existential threat to Israel; its Syrian and Shi’a Lebanese Hezbollah military allies sit on Israel’s northern borders.

By signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015, Iran agreed to limit its sensitive nuclear activities and allow in international inspectors in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

But last May U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal that had been sponsored by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and re-imposed sanctions. So it’s possible the Iranians have resumed their quest to produce a nuclear weapon.

Iran has already test-fired a ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to the entire Middle East.

Should the Iranians eventually succeed in their nuclear program, Tel Aviv will certainly disappear from the face of the earth. 

But since Israel also has a nuclear arsenal, the same fate may befall Tehran and other cities. Is it a wonder some fanatics are beginning to talk of an Armageddon in the Middle East?

Nigeria's Upcoming Election is One to Watch

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

A number of African states will be holding elections in 2019. In the case of Nigeria, the incumbent had had to insist he was still among the living.

Early in December President Muhammadu Buhari was forced to deny rumours that he has died and been replaced by a lookalike. 

Rumours that he had been replaced with a body double called “Jubril” from Sudan had been widely shared online.

The president assured Nigerians he is alive and will be asking Nigerians to vote him back into power in the Feb. 16 election. 

The 75-year-old has been beset by ill health since taking office in 2015. He was on “medical leave” in Britain for three months in 2017. 

The presidential contest will basically pit Buhari, the standard-bearer of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) against challenger Atiku Abubakar, who is 71, of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

There is an unwritten rule between the two major parties that the presidency should alternate every eight years between the predominately Muslim north and the predominately Christian south. It currently is the north’s turn, and the candidates are therefore northern Muslims.

The key concerns are the same ones that dominated the 2015 vote. The first, as is so often the case in Nigeria, is corruption.

In 2015, Buhari drew heavily on his reputation as incorruptible. In 2019, he will undoubtedly reiterate this promise and he does have some things to boast about.

His government claims to have recovered $2.75 billion in stolen assets. And it has overseen the conviction of two former governors.

Many, however, see President Buhari’s war on corruption as disappointing. Critics accuse the government of only targeting political opponents, while allowing its cronies to go scot-free.

Still, the ruling APC has a clear advantage on this issue. The PDP is remembered for plundering the country during its sixteen years in power.

Atiku, who was the former vice-president from 1999 to 2007 under President Olusegun Obasanjo, is one of the country’s richest politicians and has faced several allegations of fraud. In some circles, his name is synonymous with high-level graft.

Secondly, there is the struggling economy, which plunged into recession in 2016. It has since recovered, but growth remains slow.

Buhari is currently implementing social intervention programmes said to be touching the lives of thousands. In recent months, he has also launched a collateral-free loan program for micro-businesses, which could win sympathy among many voters.

Atiku is promising to revitalise the economy and is emphasising his experience. He has business interests across Nigeria and claims to have provided some 300,000 jobs across the country.

He also wants to restructure the federal system and devote a minimum of 21 per cent of the budget to education, which may also win him some supporters.

And then there is security, in a country riven by internal conflicts and terrorism.

Buhari made big gains against the Islamist group Boko Haram when he first took office. The insurgents previously controlled a sizeable portion of the North-East, but are now a weakened force.

But Atiku may also seek credit for mobilising hunters to wade off the militants in his native Adamawa state.

However, insecurity pervades much of the rest of the country. Nigeria faces escalating separatist growth in the former Biafra. Heading this movement is the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), which has organised large-scale demonstrations and disruptions in the past few years demanding independence.

Armed banditry and kidnapping for ransom have also become growth industries. Buhari has been seen to be slow to respond to many of these threats.

The North-West, by far Nigeria’s most populous zone, is particularly strong Buhari territory. In 2015, he won all seven states. Buhari is similarly well-liked in the North-East, where he is credited with suppressing Boko Haram and bringing normalcy to Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

The APC and Buhari play poorly in the South-East, however, and they are even less popular following their handling of the Biafra secessionist movement. The South-South will also largely back the PDP as it did overwhelmingly in 2015.

In 2015, Buhari won election by a margin of 2.5 million votes in defeating incumbent Goodluck Jonathan. Although his record in office has been mixed, still, 2019 looks like his election to lose.

Ethiopia's New Leader Promotes Women to High Office

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Abiy Ahmed, the new prime minister of Ethiopia, has accelerated a radical reform programme that is overturning politics in the vast and strategically significant East African country.

Since coming to power as prime minister in April, the 42-year-old has fired formerly untouchable civil servants, made peace with hostile Eritrea, lifted bans on websites and other media, and released thousands of political prisoners.

He also invited back exiled opposition leaders, ordered the partial privatisation of massive state-owned companies, and ended a state of emergency imposed to quell widespread unrest.

Abiy is chair of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of four parties which has been in power since 1991.

But he is its first leader from the country’s largest ethnic community, the Oromo, who have complained for decades of economic, cultural and political marginalisation.

Abiy was born to a Muslim Oromo father and an Orthodox Christian Amhara mother; the Amhara were Ethiopia’s long-time rulers. He is a devout Pentecostal Christian and has broadened political participation to underprivileged groups.

Analysts say Abiy’s mixed Christian and Muslim background, and fluency in three of the country’s main languages allow the new leader to bridge communal and sectarian divides. 

He has also reached out to women. Last October, he appointed a new cabinet that is half female, in an unprecedented push for gender parity in Africa’s second-most-populous nation.

Women now occupy the top security posts for the first time in Ethiopia’s history. Aisha Mohammed is in charge of defence, and Muferiat Kamil, a former parliamentary speaker, heads the newly formed Ministry of Peace.

She aims to tackle the widespread ethnic unrest that has erupted in the country since the easing of authoritarian control.

Women also head the ministries of trade, transport and labour, as well as culture, science and revenue.

“It is a very important and progressive move on the part of the prime minister and very consistent with the transformative agendas he’s been pursuing,” stated Awol Allo, an expert on Ethi­o­pia at Britain’s Keele University.

Also in October, Ethiopia’s parliament approved the country’s first female president, Sahle-Work Zewde.

Sahle-Work was previously the special representative of the UN secretary general to the African Union. Before that, she headed the UN’s Nairobi office with the rank of undersecretary general.

She has emphasized the importance of respecting women and the need to build a “society that rejects the oppression of women.”

In November, the country’s parliament installed as Supreme Court president a women’s rights activist. 

Meaza Ashenafi was a judge on Ethiopia’s High Court from 1989 to 1992 and then an adviser to a commission writing its new constitution. She also founded the Ethio­pian Women Lawyers Association and helped start the first women’s bank in the country.

Abiy said she would improve the court’s ability to implement reform in the country and the demands of justice and democracy.

“All these developments are exciting, but it is something that’s happening up top,” cautioned Blen Sahilu, a lawyer and women’s rights activist.

“In order for the shift to happen at a grass-roots level, the work is going to take years.” She pointed to factors such as widespread teen marriage and the lack of access to secondary education that hold women back.

“We have very progressive laws for gender equality enshrined in the constitution,” remarked Ellen Alem, a gender and development specialist at UNICEF Ethiopia. “The problem is in translating those to reality.”

Of course there is realpolitik involved in these reforms. Ethiopia’s rulers have been shaken by two years of anti-government unrest. Expanding women’s cabinet representation has been one of Abiy’s first moves. 

He recognizes that women’s political support can help him mobilize voters and help solidify the EPRDF’s  hold on power. And women will supply loyal female politicians to fill parliamentary and cabinet posts.

Is History Repeating Itself at Ivy League Schools?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Calgary] Jewish Free Press

A landmark lawsuit alleging that Ivy League Harvard University discriminates against Asian American applicants went to trial in October, thwarting months-long campaigns waged by the university to avoid a courtroom fight.

Filed by the group Students for Fair Admissions, it asserts that Harvard uses “racial balancing” to artificially determine the demographic breakdown of each incoming class.

Admissions officers gave Asian-American applicants lower scores for personal traits such as “humor” and “grit” in order to offset their higher academic grades from tests. Through such means, Harvard sets a cap on the number of Asian Americans it will admit, the plaintiffs argue. They ask the court to bar colleges from being able to consider, learn about or even become aware of an applicant’s race.

The judge in the case said she might not make a decision until February.

Other major universities have also been accused of the practice. Richard Sander, a law professor who studies affirmative action, filed a lawsuit in November against the University of California system, where he teaches. seeking access to records that he says could reveal whether the system defied state law by surreptitiously reintroducing race as a factor in admissions.

A newly formed group called the Asian American Community Services Center has joined the lawsuit. George Shen, a Southern California businessman, said many Asian-Americans believe that “we’re not getting a fair shake, so this is a big issue.”

We might see gifted Asian American students, in this as in many other respects, as the “new Jews.” 

Because similar underhanded practices kept Jews out of top-rated universities a century ago, a practice not discontinued at some until the early 1960s.

When Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell assumed the Harvard presidency in 1909, Boston “Brahmins” and alumni of elite boarding schools made up most of the student body.

In an attempt to diversify, the admissions committee of the day created the “Top Seventh Rule,” which required Harvard to reach out to those who finished in the top seventh of their class, regardless of school or location.

By 1922, Jews constituted over 21.5 percent of Harvard’s student body, while they were only around 3.5 percent of the U.S. population.

So in that year, Lowell sought to institute a Jewish quota. He had “discovered” that a major cause of anti-Semitism was the presence of Jews. “The antisemitic feeling among students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews,” Lowell wrote in a 1922 letter.

If they “should become 40 percent of the student body, the race feeling would become intense. If every college in the country would take a limited proportion of Jews, I suspect we should go a long way toward eliminating race feeling among students.”

Lowell contended that enrolling a high number of Jewish students would “ruin the college” by causing elite Protestant students to attend other schools.

Jews were widely regarded as competitive, eager to excel academically and less interested in extra-curricular activities such as organized sports. Non-Jews accused them of being clannish, socially unskilled and either unwilling or unable to “fit in.”

So new standards were put in place to put downward pressure on the “troublingly” high Jewish population and restore Harvard’s traditional demographics by requiring applicants to demonstrate “character and fitness and the promise of the greatest usefulness in the future as a result of a Harvard education,” as well as good academic standing.

The new criteria would reward “leadership” and “well-rounded” candidates. They would be achieved through recommendation letters and interviews. As well, a passport-sized photo would be required as an essential part of the application.

Finally, to ensure “geographic diversity,” students from urban states were replaced by students from places with few Jews, such as Wyoming or North Dakota, who ranked in the top of their high school class.

Elite colleges also began to use legacy admissions during this period by giving preference to children of alumni — who were mostly not Jewish.

Through such subterfuge, most Jewish students could be rejected, without openly discriminating against them.

By 1931, Harvard’s Jewish ranks were cut back to 15 percent of the student body.

Not until the early 1960s did Yale University end an informal admissions policy that restricted Jewish enrollment, according to the book Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale by Dan Oren, originally published in 1986.

The book describes a folder in the university archives, labeled “Jewish Problem,” that contained a memo from the admissions chairman of 1922 urging limits on “the alien and unwashed element.” The next year, the admissions committee enacted the “Limitation of Numbers” policy. Jewish enrollment was held to about 10 percent for the next four decades.

The same methods ensured informal quotas of Jews at other top-tier universities. At Columbia University during that period it fell from 32.7 percent to 14.6 percent. At Princeton, perhaps the most exclusive of the Ivies, the university had fewer than two percent of Jews in its student body in 1941.

University of California, Berkeley, sociology professor Jerome Karabel detailed this discrimination against Jewish students in his acclaimed book, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, published in 2005.

By the 1960s, the Ivy League had ended its quotas for Jews, but now it’s doing the same thing to Asians.

Just as their predecessors of the 1920s always denied the existence of “Jewish quotas,” top officials at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the other Ivy League schools today strongly deny the existence of “Asian quotas.” But there exists powerful statistical evidence to the contrary.

An internal Harvard document from 2013 found that, based on admissions criteria that considered academic performance only, Asian-Americans would account for 43 percent of the admitted class. But their actual admission rate was 19 percent then and has risen to only 23 percent since.

Discrimination against Asian students, and not just by Harvard, but throughout higher education, has been an open secret for years. Like Jews, they come from cultures that prize education and academic achievement, and so proportionately, many of them work harder, study longer and care more about school.

In response to the suit launched against it, Harvard contends that it does not discriminate but that “colleges and universities must have the freedom and flexibility to create the diverse communities that are vital to the learning experience of every student.”

Of course, in the 1920s, such schools also denied they were discriminatory. They just created vague excuses which effectively placed a quota on the number of Jews admitted. Back then, it was designed to keep out Jews. Today it’s Asians. It seems history is repeating itself.