Arash and Kamiar Alaei are brothers from Kermanshah in Western Iran who have pushed boundaries in the Islamic Republic's approach to and treatment of AIDS and even helped change national drugs policy. I have been aware of their work for many years, since first writing about Iran's epidemic of heroin addiction for the Financial Times magazine: http://www.kamin.co.uk/Pages/Hero_Heroin.htm

Their innovative approach - treating drug addiction along with STDs and HIV in 'triangle clinics' - soon spread from one clinic in their hometown of Kermanshah, to 65 such clinics around Iran and soon expanded into Afghanistan and Central Asia. Their work has been recognized by international bodies such as the World Health Organization and Kamiar has been studying in the US for the past few years, where he was awarded an MSc by Harvard School of Public Health last year and is currently a doctoral student at SUNY in Albany.

The brothers were arrested in Iran at the end of June and there has been no news of them until now. Their family and lawyers have had no access to them. The below story from the IHT is the first news to come out of Iran about the brothers.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/02/africa/ME-Iran-Physicians-Charged.php

I have been writing about drug addiction and HIV in my homeland for many years now and I have seen how, in the space of a few years, drug policy in Iran has changed from merely punitive to preventative. There are now clean needle programs in all the jails in the country - where the majority of addicts end up and where most contract HIV by sharing needles - and in fact the Islamic Republic's drug laws now rival countries such as Switzerland and the UK in the enlightenment of their approach.

Much of this can be credited to the tireless work of the Alaei brothers and others like them who run NGOs that are struggling to deal with this epidemic. This is the link to another article of mine that sheds m... [Read More]

Iranian officials are extremely sensitive to Iran’s portrayal in the West and quick to respond when they feel their country has been unfairly treated. Earlier this year the government of Iran issued statements protesting the inaccurate depiction of the ancient Persians in the Hollywood film 300, pointing out that they were not, contrary to the film’s characterization, wild rabid creatures but in fact architects of the one of the earliest and greatest civilizations known to man.

 

 

In May, the Iranian regime summoned the French ambassador in Tehran. The reason? Marjane Satrapi’s animated movie of her best-selling books Persepolis was set to premier at the Cannes Film Festival. The books – and the movie – chart the author’s growing up through the events of the Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent war with Iraq. The graphic novels manage to pack in a lesson on Iran’s history while laying out a poignant memoir of a child’s experience of this turbulent period.

 

 

But because she writes/draws about the anachronisms of the Islamic regime, the rulers of Iran managed to find the time and energy to complain about the depiction of the Islamic Republic and ask for the film to be withdrawn.

 

 

The movie not only premiered in Cannes to a 20-minute standing ovation, but was joint winner of the Jury Prize.

 

 

If the Iranian regime is concerned with these ‘unfair’ depictions of Iran and its people, it should perhaps look a little closer to home. What ‘civilized’ country in the 21st century stones its people to death? Iran, unfortunately, despite its 2,500-year old history, despite being the longest continuously inhabited land by a single people in the world, despite the pre- and post-Islamic splendors of its architecture and arts, still puts people – mostly women &... [Read More]

Iranians riot in reaction to petrol rationing by Kamin Mohammadi in London

 

Tehran's petrol stations were aflame with protests last night. Although petrol rations have been expected for a few months, with phase one starting ten days ago with government vehicles, their implementation sparked furious riots in which petrol stations were set on fire and a supermarket and bank also attacked.

Iranians were given only two hours' notice of the move that limits private drivers to 100 litres of fuel a month, hearing an announcement on the news. The rationing is due to last four months but may be extended to six. The total amount allowed to private vehicles in that time is 400 litres. The aim is to reduce Iran’s petrol subsidies which are colossal.


Despite its huge energy reserves, Iran lacks refining capacity and it imports about 40% of its petrol. The country has a large budget deficit largely caused by fuel subsidies. The inflation rate is currently estimated at 20-30%.


How the government handles the inevitable rising anger of its people remains to be seen. Iranians are, much like Americans, in love with their cars and therefore oil, and as the country with some of the largest oil reserves in the world and OPEC's number two oil producer, they feel access to cheap petrol is their birthright.


Most of Iran's modern history, with its multiplicity of revolutions, is soaked in oil. This commodity has brought Iran its riches – and most of its troubles. Leaders through the ages have attracted support by promising to distribute oil wealth fairly, most recently it was an election promise of president Ahmadinejad's. Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary rhetoric included images of oil wells in every back garden.


But so far the oil wealth has yet to be redistributed, though heavy government subsidies have given Iranians petrol so cheap that a litre cost less than ... [Read More]

The latest news seems to be that  an order from the head of Judiciary, Ayatollah Shahroudi, has overturned the stoning verdict.

In light of the detention and charging of three American-Iranians in Tehran recently, the State Department yesterday issued a warning to dual Iranian-American citizens that they may face difficulties leaving Iran.

 

 

"Some elements of the Iranian regime and the population remain hostile to the United States. As a result, American citizens may be subject to harassment or arrest while traveling or residing in Iran," the warning said.

 

Leaving aside hostilities between the Iranian and US regimes, it is, in my opinion, misleading to suggest that the Iranian population is hostile to US citizens. Iranian people may not like US policy in the Middle East but they differentiate between the government and its people.

 

Many Iranians still recall the CIA-engineered coup of 1953 when the well-loved and democratically elected prime minister, Dr Mossadegh, was overthrown and an unpopular and despotic Shah was reinstated. Mossadegh's line of nationalism included taking back the oil industry for the Iranian nation, a move that infuriated Great Britain who, at the time, ran the Iranian oil industry, giving Iranians low-level jobs and the country just 16% of the profits.

 

America, up until then regarded as a great friend of Iran's – which had suffered years of virtual colonialism from GB and Russia – was a key player in the decision to bring back and support the Shah, who was seen as an ally in the Cold War. With Iran sharing northern borders with the Soviet Union, it was crucial to the US to have Iran ran by someone friendly to the US.

 

And so, with total disregard to the wishes of an Iranian populace who loved Mossadegh and the glimpse of democracy his years in power showed them, the American/British coup discarded Mossadegh and plopped the Shah back on the Peacock Throne, where he served the interests of the US for the remainder of his incre... [Read More]

The Pew Research Center's poll of Muslims in America fails in one key way: as has been the case since 9/11, Muslims are classed as a group regardless of nationality.

 

 

Islam is a religion, not a race, country or culture, and while there are of course many commonalities between Muslims from different countries, there are also differences.

 

A letter in the UK's Financial Times on 25 May from Chris Doyle, director of CAABU (Council for Arab-British Understanding) pointed out very eloquently that "the success - or failure - of Muslim communities to integrate has little to do with their faith" and points out that communities tend to form around shared nationalities rather than religion.

 

With the current Western fixation on the integration of Muslims into the host society, the letter also points out that "British expatriates all over the world have created isolated communities where so often they do not speak the host language or engage meaningfully with their surrounding society and culture." Unsurprisingly no-one has ever suggested the legion of Brits living in Spain shoud be adopting their host country's culture and language and values...

 

The full letter can be found here:

 

www.caabu.org/index.asp?homepage=press&article=caabu_letters&detail=ft_muslim_integration

There is news of a fifth American-Iranian possibly detained by the Iranian authorities today, and the UK's Financial Times ran a story a few days ago on the nervousness with which Iranians who have grown up in the West and have links with America are living at the moment in Tehran.

 

The American government and human rights groups are quite rightly calling on Iran to release those detained, and pointing out how damaging this is to Iran's image.

 

At the same time it is a good idea not to lose sight of what has made the Iranian regime this jumpy: the constant threats from the US and its allies, as well as the $75million 'democracy fund' that the US has earmarked for pouring into Iranian civil society projects that will bring 'democracy' in US words, 'regime change' in any other.

 

There is no defending the Iranian action. But the pressure being exerted on Iran by America has convinced the Iranian regime that it faces an existential threat, and this has made it turn in on anyone with possible connections to the US and the 'democracy fund'.

 

The Islamic Republic of Iran may be hard to fathom, it may not operate in quite the same way as Western countries but there must be many advisors in Washington who knew a year ago, when this 'democracy fund' was announced, that it would in fact taint the great work being done in Iran by many NGOs and the activists who are trying to build bridges between Iran and the West, and have precisely the reverse effect than that intended.

 

And so it has proved. America's clumsy attempts at exporting democracy to Iran have, in fact, caused much harm to Iran's civil society, and bridge-building hyphenated Iranians now find themselves operating in an atmosphere of insecurity reminiscent of pre-Rafsanjani Iran.

 

The irony is that people suffering the results of this heightened suspicion are not in receipt of the funds... [Read More]

On May 3, the Iranian website Baztab reported: "Forty days after the arrest of the British sailors, an informed source has disclosed the unsaid about the incident to Baztab. The informed source said: When the British sailors were arrested; there were no translator in the first group of Iranian captors. The British sailors, however, kept asking for something. When the translator arrived, it turned out that the British sailors were asking the Iranians not to chop them off and eat the alive. At this point some of the British naval personnel were so scared that they lost their control and made themselves dirty. Also, when the British forces were at the airport to be transferred to Tehran, an official cleric, who was present at the airport, said that the sailors were infidels and had to be tried and punished. The group in charge of transferring the personnel opposed the comments made by the cleric and this led to an argument, which made the British sailors more scared. It is also worth mentioning that in order not to use blindfolds, the Iranians used sunglasses and blankets to block the view of the British forces when transferring them to Evin Prison." - Baztab, Iran