Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East

by Jared Cohen

  The concerns were real, but they seemed to be slowly overtaken by my disbelief that in just a matter of hours I could get from Tehran to Natanz. I didn’t even know what I would do there, but I was certain that the small glimpse I had gotten on my way back from Esfahan would not suffice and I wondered if one of the many taxi drivers who had spurted out antiregime rhetoric to me would be willing to drive me back?

  It had been an intense couple of weeks already. I had been hassled by the Iranian intelligence services for conducting interviews, meeting with members of the opposition, and violating the protocol that they had tried to lay out for me. I was on their radar screen, but that didn’t stop me from pushing my luck. I had spent the early part of my trip to Iran running from intelligence officials, avoiding arrest, and attending wild underground parties. My attendance at these and in the festivities of the late-night street parties in Tehran was undoubtedly risky. After all, these young Iranians were breaking the law and I was right there with them. But the penalty for these escapades would be nothing compared to the potential consequences for the far greater risk that I was now entertaining.

  I needed to be discreet because I was still stuck with my intelligence guide on most days, who certainly would have reported me should he become aware of any desire I had to return to the nuclear facility. This was different than talking to youth; if he had any idea where I was going and what I was doing, I would have been in serious trouble. One day, I contrived a story about how I was feeling ill and intended to spend the morning and afternoon strolling through the Park Laleh.

  When the time came to depart, I felt kind of like I was back in high school, cutting class. All I could do was hope that the random taxi driver I’d selected hated the regime as much as the other couple dozen taxi drivers I had met. I was paranoid that everybody over the age of thirty worked with the intelligence services. I could just imagine what an intelligence report would look like that evening:

  THE AMERICAN HAS STOPPED TO TAKE PICTURES OF THE NUCLEAR FACILITY AND IS ASKING THE PEOPLE IF THEY WANT NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

  This was not a comforting feeling and when I got to Natanz, I was so paranoid that I barely spent any time there before turning around and heading back to Tehran.

  The nuclear issue had been on my mind since the day I arrived in Iran. The first newspapers I read in Iran had headlines like “U.S. Produces Fake Nuclear Documents on Iran.” Other headlines referred to “Iran’s right to advance” and the “necessity of nuclear power.” The regime was not shy about using government propaganda to promote their nuclear ambitions.

  On the surface, the public perception of Iran’s nuclear pursuits baffled me. I consistently saw Iranians adopting an intellectual posture of loving anything their government hated, and hating anything their government loved. I concluded that it was in this way that the majority of Iranian youth derived their political persuasions, but the nuclear issue didn’t seem to fit my formula. The regime supported Iran’s nuclear aspirations, and so did almost everyone else in Iran—including young people.

  I wasn’t shy about discussing various political topics, but I was always apprehensive about bringing up the nuclear issue. My hesitancy was bolstered by the first group of Iranian students that I had met at the University of Tehran, who assured me that at Iranian universities, there are students who are on the payroll of the intelligence services; I needed to be aware that these students might try to instigate the type of conversation that could really get me in trouble. Even people who I thought were helping me could very well be intelligence officials, and I was told to be mindful that I was being followed and only to talk about sensitive issues in a safe environment.

  The nuclear issue first came up with a group of architecture students that I met in Shiraz. The group was spread out in an old historical mosque, doing what appeared to be a drawing exercise. They looked busy but not unapproachable. In what was the usual sequence of events, I approached two of the students and within seconds had a crowd of fifteen to twenty students surrounding me.

  We began the conversation with small talk about my travels in Iran, but it did not take long for the conversation to turn to politics. The students and I spoke about the lack of freedom in Iran and concerns about the bad economy, and several of the students expressed worries that after they finished their architecture degrees, they would not be able to find jobs. Their concerns extended beyond job prospects as a number of others expressed their horror at a growing drug culture in Iran. I was reminded that the long border Iran shares with Afghanistan has led illicit entrepreneurs to capitalize on the turbulent environment that first prevailed under the Taliban and ceased to subside under President Hamid Karzai. Opium, heroin, and cocaine are tearing away at the social fabric of Iran by seeping into wealthy communities and trickling down into the most impoverished. Having seen their willingness to speak candidly with me, I asked the group of students what they thought of Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

  After only a few seconds of silence, I heard a high-pitched voice exclaim something from the back of the group. “What is the problem with this?” she asked me with a perplexed look on her face.

  She was short, maybe five feet one or two, and wore a black hejab that she tucked in to her white, button-down jacket. She stood there with a stern look on her face and her hands tucked into her pockets. Underneath the jacket, I saw that she wore fashionable blue jeans and white sneakers, with the ends of her jeans slightly torn and resting almost perfectly on her shoelaces. She was clearly the most outspoken of the group, and on several occasions shushed some of the guys when they tried to speak.

  This young woman didn’t wait for me to answer. With the same stern look on her face, she made sure that I would not forget her words.

  “You know, we have a right to advance too. The energy will be good for Iran and it will help us.” She looked me right in the eyes with every word. She was abrasive but not unfriendly. Even with a large group present, she didn’t give anybody else the chance to speak. She then yielded the floor to me. Her confident silence was as assertive as her words had been; her look said, “I dare you to respond to that.” I told her that I understood the need for nuclear energy and that I, too, viewed such technology as advancement. But I asked her, “You say that nuclear energy will be good for Iran, but what if that energy is used to build nuclear weapons?”

  Her hands went deeper into the pockets of her coat as she once again challenged me. “Well, so what? This doesn’t harm anybody.”

  I told her that many were worried that the regime would either sell a nuclear weapon to terrorists or use it themselves, most likely on Israel. She dismissed this as hypocritical. “America used nuclear weapons against another state,” she reminded me. I explained to her that the United States government dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the context of an armed global conflict and that many believed more lives would have been lost on both sides if the war was prolonged any further.

  This didn’t satisfy her.

  “Well, if we want nuclear weapons, why should we not be allowed to have them? America has them, China has them, India and Pakistan have them, Israel has them; so many countries have them. Why can’t we be the best too? Is it fair to say that we can’t?”

  I wasn’t getting anywhere with her so I tried another approach. “Well, can I ask you something else?” I said.

  She laughed and turned to the girl on her right and said something in Farsi. I think she seemed to like going head-to-head with me in front of her friends. More important, she clearly thought she was winning.

  “Bale, ask your question,” she said.

  “What if I were to tell you that nuclear weapons will continue to keep the mullahs in power? Won’t this worsen the economy and prevent you from getting democracy? Is it really more important than these things?”

  I expected another crafty justification for Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons, but she instead looked at her classmates and said a few sentences in Farsi. Everyone burst into laught
er.

  “What did you just say to all of them?” I asked, eager to know what was so funny.

  She caught her breath as she tried to stop laughing herself.

  “I said to them: Well, if it is between the nuclear program and the mullahs’ staying in power, we don’t need it that badly.” So even though the youth believe it is their national right to have nuclear weapons, it is not worth the regime staying in power.

  Although the regime wants nuclear weapons for its own self-preservation, Iran’s nuclear aspirations have been propagandized into a symbol of Iranian pride. Newspapers and speeches by the Iranian government refer to a “right to master this technology” and a “need to advance the sciences.” Given the sense of pride that is so deeply embedded in Iranian culture, it is not surprising that when nuclear weapons are presented through the lens of nationalist spirit, most of the youth are sold on the idea.

  By galvanizing the Iranian people behind issues of national pride, and the sovereign rights of the country, the nuclear question has become the sole issue around which the regime has successfully mobilized mass support for itself. As a result, that issue has become too valuable an asset for the regime to forfeit on terms other than its own. One wonders if the youth can be made to differentiate between the abstract concept of nuclear energy and the dangerous reality of nuclear weapons. This is a challenge because they view both as part of a greater scheme for advancement. Each young person I spoke to seemed to individualize the idea of a nuclear Iran. For them, it was not about energy or weapons; it was about Iran moving forward and advancing. They become energized talking about this issue, in part because it is one of the rare political issues that they can actually talk about freely.

  The architecture students I met in Shiraz represented a common trend among young people: They want the energy; they want the weapons; but they don’t want them so badly that they would support keeping the regime in power in order to see Iran’s nuclear aspirations achieved. In order to get to this final revelation, however, I would have to ask the right questions, and I noticed students rethinking their stance once I suggested that the weapons might keep the regime in power. All of a sudden they would want to know how and why that would happen and where I’d heard such an idea.

  The typical security arguments for stopping a nuclear Iran do not resonate at all with the Iranian people. Iranians do not care as much about international issues as they do about their own immediate domestic concerns and their sense of Iranian nationalism. As a result, the suggestion that Iran might sell weapons to terrorists or use weapons on Israel does little to shift opinion away from dreams of a nuclear Iran.

  I noticed that few young Iranians were aware of the domestic repercussions of pursuing weapons in addition to energy. They hadn’t thought about the billions of dollars that were being allotted for the nuclear program, money that was desperately needed for other parts of the economy. Many hadn’t given attention to the detrimental consequences this issue has had on Iran’s standing in the world. Most important, few of the youth I met seemed to have entertained the idea that the government’s desire for nuclear weapons was merely a scheme to stay in power. Whenever this last point was disputed, I would always tell my peers that a Kim Jong Il with nuclear weapons is much more likely to stay in power than a North Korean regime without nuclear weapons. Both because the analogy was simple and because Iranian youth are repulsed at the thought of their beloved Iran being compared to a rogue dictatorship like North Korea, I often made use of this comparison.

  The economy is the most pressing issue in Iran and I always found it convincing to talk about how the money that was spent on the nuclear program could be used for economic programs. When it became clear that the nuclear program detracted attention—and funds—from rehabilitating the economy, young Iranians frequently shifted their priorities and cast aside their vision of a nuclear Iran.

  Since my last trip to Iran, the danger of the nuclear program has been highlighted by the ominous statements of conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His rhetoric surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, coupled with calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, have led many to forecast the danger of a nuclear Iran. Even the United Nations imposed some degree of sanctions. While Iranians for the most part scoff at a president whom they find embarrassing at best, the international community is determining how to react to his antagonistic statements. Even though it is unpredictable what Iran might or might not do with nuclear weapons, one thing is certain: If Iran does acquire them, it is certainly not the president who will have the nuclear launch codes, as is commonly—and incorrectly—believed by many.

  CHAPTER 5

  “DEATH TO AMERICA”

  IRAN, 2005

  In June 2005, Iranians went to the polls to vote in the Islamic Republic’s ninth presidential election. As in previous years, thousands of candidates were disqualified by the Guardian Council before the election. Seven men ran for president and not a single one gained enough votes to win outright; the top two vote-getters, former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, would compete in a runoff election.

  In the days leading up to the runoff, I received dozens of e-mails from my Iranian friends, all of whom were extremely concerned about the prospect of a victory by the hard-liner Ahmadinejad. One friend wrote, “Most of Iranians are worried and have hesitation about what is going to happen. It was unpredictable for us that he was the second and we have another round of election!!! He has told if he will be the president he wants to establish a real Islam like Taliban and he wants to force all the women to wear chador.” This same friend went on to say, “My friends and I say he is similar to a monkey and if he is going to win, all Iranian should run away from Iran!!!”

  Another friend of mine from Shiraz echoed this concern. She wrote, “All here are worry except the religious groups. We don’t like to vote but this time we really have to because if Ahmadinejad wins, this country will be disappeared forever (of course it is now). The election is on Friday and we will see if we still have a country.”

  The day before the election my friend Sharzad wrote from Tehran, “Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad are going for a second round of election, but how did that happen? When I asked most of the people, they told me they voted for Moeen or Rafsanjani. I don’t know how Mr. Ahmadinejad, the most ugly man that I’ve seen, could come up????!!!!!” She explained that most people believed they should now vote for Rafsanjani because Ahmadinejad was too religious. Her forecast was that “if he be the president, all of us believe that none of the Iranian should stay in Iran.” After Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, one friend wrote:

  You can’t believe we are all shocked. I just got a chance that on Thursday my exams got finished and I graduated from university. I am lucky because surely Ahmadinejad will make women wear chador in universities. It is the biggest fraud in the Iran history. Today we couldn’t even talk to each other because what should tell each other? A donkey has become our President. We are hopeless and I don’t think that we can change anything because they react with a gun. Most decide to go out of Iran; so do I. As soon as possible I want to run out of here and I prefer to go to US….

  This e-mail expressed the sentiments of many Iranian youth I spoke to after the election. Especially upset were my Iranian Kurdish friends, who believed Ahmadinejad had played an active role in terrorism against the Kurds. They claim that in 1989 a young Ahmadinejad traveled to Vienna, where the Kurds and many others have suggested that he was was involved in the assassination of three Kurdish leaders who opposed the regime in Iran.

  My young friends suggested that four factors led Ahmadinejad to win the presidential election in Iran. First, the conservatives mobilized the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Basij forces, Ansar-e Hezbollah forces, and all elements of the military apparatus to vote for Ahmadinejad. Many members of the IRGC, Basij, and Ansar-e Hezbollah were bused from town to town, some of them voting as many as twenty-five times. Getting Ahmadinej
ad in a runoff against Rafsanjani was of the utmost importance for hard-liners. Many Iranians believed the wealthy Rafsanjani was a crook; he was an easy target. In the runoff, then, conservatives cast Rafsanjani as an out-of-touch kleptocrat and painted Ahmadinejad as a populist candidate. Creating this dichotomy was not difficult: Ahmadinejad was relatively unknown and could take on whatever attributes his supporters desired, while Rafsanjani’s lust for wealth was legendary.

  Second, while the hard-liners were getting out their base—by any means necessary—many young people in Iran remained on the sidelines. Most believe the 2004 Majles (parliamentary) election had been hijacked by conservatives; these young people saw no reason why the presidential election would be any different, especially given how many reformist candidates had been disqualified before voting had even begun. Given the low turnout of reform-minded youth, the well-organized military and proregime contingency were able to stage a reasonable showing.

  Third, the precedent of the 2004 Majles elections led the conservatives to believe that they could commit widespread election fraud with virtually no consequences or backlash. In 2005, they were not worried about widespread violence, riots, or action by the international community. It has also been suggested that the government scheduled the most important university exams at the time of the election, reasoning that students would be too preoccupied with their studies to go to the streets for demonstrations or riots.

  Finally, the conservatives needed to prevent a victory by Rafsanjani. They didn’t want him to get credit either for cutting a deal on Iran’s nuclear program or, conversely, for pushing forward with it in the face of international opposition. Whatever the ultimate course he chose to take, Ayatollah Khamanei, the true leader of the Islamic Republic, needed a president he could control.