Chatroom Revolutionaries

Iran's dissidents and exiles discover the Web.

Marc Johnson from the August/September 2004 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

"If I am a political activist, I think that everything should be channeled through me."

The only times in recent memory that the expatriate opposition has even gathered around the same table have been during periods of major crisis for those still in Iran -- when the regime has cracked down on dissent. Even when they do get together, it rarely results in any significant action. Describing an "old guard" among the opposition, Azarmehr says: "One thing which seems very fashionable amongst the Iranian opposition outside Iran is signing up to charters. They gather in some hotel, draw up a charter, and put their signatures at the bottom of the charter. Then they go away and nothing further happens."

Azarmehr's point is underlined by the array of Web sites advocating alternatives to the current regime, each of which seems to have a petition or charter of its own. With some, like activistchat.com, the ideology is difficult to divine on first examination; the site espouses secularism and provides news. Others, such as the Iran National Front (jebhemelli.net), proudly proclaim, "our path is the Mossadegh path," referring to the Iranian prime minister ousted by a CIA-backed coup d'etat in 1953.

Still others want to re-install a shah on the Peacock Throne. Freemyiran.com, a site that features pro-monarchist elements, offers free bumper stickers as well as flyers in Adobe Acrobat format that supporters can print out and distribute. And far from the front lines, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Reza Pahlavi, son of the late shah, is pushing his own political agenda with books, a Web site, and public appearances. Skirting a discussion of the troubling human rights record of the shah's intelligence and security service, the SAVAK, rezapahlavi.org provides position papers and speeches advocating secularism and a referendum on Islamic rule.

Farahanipour's Glorious Frontiers Party advocates a boycott of Shell Oil, the Dutch petroleum conglomerate that does business with the regime. Farahanipour's point is one pushed by many parts of the opposition: Cut off the money -- in particular the European investment that continues to support the leaders in Tehran -- and you will sever the regime's lifeline. His site -- which features a picture of a lion holding a sword in front of a blazing sun, a favored pre-revolutionary symbol -- asks the visitor to "support Iranians in their fight against religious apartheid in Iran."

Farahanipour concedes the diversity of opposition groups may be the external dissidents' undoing. "Unfortunately, each group wants to be the leader of the opposition," he says.

"Most groups focus their attention on putting down other groups, so they can make themselves more credible. The majority of political groups outside Iran simply do not have any power or members inside Iran."

The one factor that seems to bind the groups together is that their members all have day jobs. For the most part, funding is so scarce that they are beholden to a few meager donations from well-meaning businessmen. Despite the considerable size and relative affluence of the Iranian diaspora, the groups say funds are slow to come. Azarmehr, whose organization is based in Britain, complains: "Hardly any money comes from anywhere...Our own income last year came from one donor who gave a few hundred pounds to us to print some T-shirts with the picture of Batebi...and the sale of those T-shirts and our own individual donations has been our entire budget. We are all part-time activists and have the normal stresses of having full-time jobs."

Pirouznia spins it a different way. "We are night partisans and day workers," he says cheerfully.

The internal groups are finding it especially hard to make ends meet. "There is hardly any money which is being channeled to the combatants inside Iran," says Azarmehr. "We are talking about a few thousand pounds in irregular donations. Certainly compared to the financial backing that Khomeini had from some foreign sources and the Iranian bazaar merchants [in 1979], we really are talking a pittance." Farahanipour echoes this point: "We get our money from personal donations and our members. Whatever money we do receive, we simply try to pass on to our members inside Iran, or fund events to inform the public of what's going on in Iran."

To simplify the donation process, some of the groups have adopted high-tech money raising techniques. Several have signed onto PayPal and other online money transfer services. Farahanipour attributes the difficulty in raising funds to confusion about the groups themselves; he even hints at malfeasance by other anti-regime fund-raisers. "Unfortunately Iranians that live outside Iran have been lied to so frequently by the supposed opposition that they no longer believe that there are genuine opposition groups that need their donations," he says.

Few, if any, of the Iranian opposition groups receive U.S. government money, at least overtly. Radio Farda, funded through the State Department, keeps the opposition groups largely at arm's length. This suits the opposition, which takes a dim view of the State Department's strategy of engagement with the Islamic Republic. Farahanipour scoffs that Mohammed Khatami, Iran's reformist president, "attempted to show that a theocracy can be made a democracy, and it seems the only [people] he fooled were the State Department."

The Iranian opposition groups were apoplectic when -- following a dinner in January with Mohammed Javad Zarif, Iran's permanent envoy to the United Nations -- several members of Congress proposed an official visit to Iran. Opposition message boards around the world lit up, their participants incensed at the idea of rapprochement with the mullahs. It was spectacularly bad timing for the proposal, coming just as the Guardians' Council was disqualifying reformist parliamentarians from running in the February elections.

In the end, the opposition groups needn't have worried. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi indicated that the trip was "not on the agenda," a diplomatic way of telling the American politicians they couldn't invite themselves to Tehran so easily.

The State Department and errant members of Congress are not the only such objects of scorn. The European Union is derided by many groups for its "critical dialogue" policy, which stipulates that engagement with the clerical regime can in the long run improve conditions for ordinary Iranians. "We have always had a bad experience with European countries," says Farahanipour. "If you were to draw out all the advancements the E.U.'s critical dialogue brought, you'd be hard pressed to cite three things."