Iran: Poets Face 99 Lashes and Prison
by Amir Taheri • November 9, 2015 at 5:00 am
- "She writes something but means something else." — Tehran Islamic Prosecutor.
- The irony in all this is that Ekhtesari is not a political poet. In fact, she has written that those who try to use poetry for politics betray both.
- The sentencing was made easier thanks to a recent lecture by "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, laying down the rules of what he believes "good Islamic poets" should observe when writing poetry.
- The poet Sa'id Sultanpour was abducted on the day of his wedding and shot dead in a Tehran prison. Rahman Hatefi-Monfared had his veins cut and was left to bleed to death in the notorious Evin Prison.
- "I hope to see the day when no one is sent to jail in this land for writing poems." — Mehdi Mussavi, convicted poet.
The Islamic Court in Tehran sentenced two poets, Fateme Ekhtesari (left) and Mehdi Mussavi (right), to nine and 11.5 years in prison respectively, plus 99 lashes. Ekhtesari was charged with reciting "poems full of ambiguity and capable of being read in deviant and dangerous ways." Mussavi was charged with "insulting sacred values of the Islamic ummah."
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Does a seminar on reforming the meter and rhyme schemes of Persian poetry violate "Islamic values" and threaten the foundations of the Islamic Republic of Iran?
That is the view of the Islamic Court in Tehran, which last month sentenced two poets, Fateme Ekhtesari and Mehdi Mussavi, to nine and 11.5 years in prison respectively, plus 99 lashes of the cane for each in public.
One of the two, Mrs. Fateme Ekhtesari, was sentenced to 11.5 years for "undermining the security of the Islamic state" by composing and reciting in public a number of "poems full of ambiguity and capable of being read in deviant and dangerous ways."
Ekhtesari is a surrealist poet whose verse could, and indeed is intended to, be read in many different ways. One of her diwans (collections of verse), for example, is called "Crying on the Shoulder of An Egg". Another comes under the title "A Feminist Discourse Before Baking Potatoes."
Iran's Mirage: More Humiliation to Follow
by Lawrence A. Franklin • November 9, 2015 at 4:00 am
- The Rouhani-Zarif façade of civility toward the West was enough to persuade the vain, delusional and acquisitive in Western leadership circles that change had finally come again to Iran. However, no amount of Persian tea or Iranian rosewater-drenched ice cream shared between Kerry and Zarif can drown out the deceptive hoax of the JCPOA. Before the ink was dry, Khamenei and the security services announced that the agreement has no standing in Iran.
- To punctuate the point, Tehran arrested a prominent Iranian-American businessman, Siamak Namazi, and a Lebanese-American, Nazar Zaka, to add to its collection of fraudulently-charged hostages: Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian; former marine Amir Hekmati; Pastor Saeed Abedini, and retired FBI agent Robert Levinson.
- Just in case the U.S. needed one more symbolic kick, the regime closed down the first KFC fast food restaurant in Tehran on Monday, just one day after it opened.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (left) and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (right). The two men's façade of civility was enough to persuade the vain, delusional and acquisitive in Western leadership circles that change had finally come again to Iran.
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In the end, it matters little what the government, people, or even the theocratic institutions think is in Iran's best long-term interests.
Unfortunately, for those U.S. career diplomats, hopeful politicians, and international businessmen, normative incentives, such as money, sanctions relief, and better foreign relations take a back seat in a regime such as the Islamic Republic. It is a regime where one man, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, supported by a clique of militants, makes all the critical decisions.
