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The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robin Wright on the Eruption of Violence in Iran
00:15:40
In November, Iran announced new fuel rationing and price hikes, just at a time when U.S. sanctions are crippling the economy and especially the middle class. Protests broke out immediately, and the government responded by shutting down access to the Internet, arresting protesters, and using lethal force: more than two hundred people are said to be dead, according to Amnesty International. The Iranian government has laid blame on the United States, which has a campaign of “maximum pressure” aiming to destabilize the country—and Donald Trump is happy to take credit. But Robin Wright, the author of several books on the Middle East, notes that Iran is also facing opposition from some of its Shiite allies in the Middle East. In Iraq and Lebanon, protests have erupted against Iran’s efforts to increase its influence in the region, and the Iraqi Prime Minister announced his resignation partially because of that unrest. The Iranian regime is in real trouble, Wright believes. As she sees it...
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- [00:08]
A
This is a bonus episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Dorothy Wickenden. Good to talk to you.
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B
Nice to hear your voice. Oh, my God.
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A
You know the explosions. In mid November, we started hearing about protests in Iran against a sudden rise in gas prices. Then Iran seemed to explode as the government met the protests with violence. The Revolutionary Guard is reported to have surrounded and gunned down unarmed protesters. Amnesty International cites a death toll of more than 200, and the number may ultimately be quite a bit higher. This appears to be the harshest crackdown in decades about an issue Americans had heard very little about. So I wanted to talk with the New Yorker's Robin Wright. Robin has reported on Iran throughout her career and written some of the best recent books on the Middle East. Hi, Robin.
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B
Hi, Dorothy.
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A
So, Robyn, the New York Times on Sunday called this Iran's worst unrest in 40 years. That would take us back all the way back to the Iranian revolution when the Ayatollah Khomeini first came to power. Is what's going on now that big? That consequential?
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B
There was one period of much more extensive protesting, and that was in 2009, when, during a presidential election, Iranians felt that there had been widespread fraud and miscounting votes that led to the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmainejad, a notorious hardliner. And during those protests, which ran on for. On and off for six months, millions and millions of people turned out on the streets spontaneously to demand either a revote and, as the protests accelerated, the ousting of the supreme leader. So that was probably the most extensive in the 40 years since the 1979 riot revolution. But these are different in a sense, because they come at a time after the Trump administration has reimposed economic sanctions and walked away from the nuclear deal. And Iran's currency has plummeted at one point by as much as 70%. It's risen a bit since then, but the whole idea that you lose 70% of your resources. And then the government decided with no notice in mid November to raise oil prices. Now, for most Americans, this would be almost laughable. They increased the price of a liter of gasoline from 8 cents to 12 cents, which would be about 50 cents a gallon at a time that in the United States, we're paying close to, on average, $2.60, but it was a 50% increase. And for people who had far less money in their pocket, this was catastrophic. And the government also imposed a rationing system so that you got 50 cents a gallon for your first 15 gallons. But after that any purchases of fuel after that increased almost double to 90 cents a gallon. So this long term could have a serious impact. But it also seemed like the government was pulling the rug out from under its own people and not announcing it. They just declared it one night, and prices went up the next morning, and there was no period of adjustment.
- [03:33]
A
So how did it escalate so quickly? I mean, it was just in a matter of a day or two, from the regime's gas hike to shutting down the Internet across Iran, to sending troops to massacre civilians.
- [03:46]
B
You're absolutely right. It was breathtaking in the swiftness people took to the streets when they went out in the morning and found the gasoline would increase by 50%. And that led people to take to the streets. And the government, having been aware of those protests in 2009 when people started calling for the ouster of the regime, and again two years ago, when economic protests over a wide diversity, unemployment, you know, inflation, a wide range of causes, led to protests in 30 of 31 Iranian provinces. So the Iranian regime was better prepared this time, and it very quickly cut off the Internet, which stunned everybody that they would take such a draconian step. But it reflects just how much trouble the government realizes it is in at the moment.
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A
Have you spoken with any of your sources in the Iranian government? I wondered what they're saying about how the protests have been handled.
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B
Well, I haven't, in part because the Internet was cut off.
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A
It's back up now, though.
- [04:48]
B
It's back up now. And the government says, look, it is trying to adapt, and they're trying to place the blame on the United States for reimposing sanctions. Remember, we're in the middle of a much bigger crisis between Iran and the world over its nuclear deal. The world's six major powers did a deal with Iran in 2015 to limit its nuclear program, and President Trump decided to walk away from it last year and then to reimpose sanctions. The other five countries have stuck to the deal, and Iran is in the midst of feeling a squeeze, trying to figure out how does it get back on track. And the other parties to the deal, the Europeans particularly, have had a hard time convincing President Trump to pull back. And the Trump administration instead is introduced something called Maximum pressure campaign, where it's increasing sanctions, not only imposing the old sanctions, but reimposing new ones for everything from human rights violations, as we saw in its treatment of protesters, to support for extremist groups in the region, missile tests, and other issues. So the administration is really clamping down.
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A
Hard so maybe tell us a little bit specifically how sanctions have affected daily life in the last couple of years. How much have people been squeezed?
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B
Well, let me give you a little bit of background. I covered the Iran Iraq war in the 1980s, when Iran was under sanctions and the revolution was a pariah, was isolated by much of the world. And I remember going into grocery stores and you'd find, you know, empty shelves. There was rationing of meat and rice and gasoline. People had coupons to get these things, and there would be. It was a big black market. And so that was the toughest time, arguably. What happened after the war ended, the government tried to win people back. Remember, we're talking about over 125,000 people dead. There were hundreds of thousands of casualties, people who were maimed, and the war became very unpopular. So the government tried to win people back by opening up markets and importing goods, whether it was Mercedes Benz cars or Oreo cookies, that you could get anything in Iran, that is still true. One of my barometers is always to go to the Porsche dealers in Iran to find out how business is, because Porsches have 150% import tax, and that means the price is, you know, two and a half times what you'd pay in the West. And when I was there the last time, three years ago, you couldn't keep the Porsches in stock, they were going so fast. And that was true of luxury cars in general. I am told that Porsches are less available in part because of the tax. So you can get a lot of goods, but the price of everything have risen enormously.
- [07:51]
A
And what about the other end of the economic spectrum? Haven't a lot of the demonstrators come from the poorer neighborhoods?
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B
And it's been true for a long time that people would work two or three jobs. Even people in the military often have to take a second job to make ends meet. The economy has been in trouble for a very long time, and Iran has survived via oil. One little statistic that's kind of interesting to make clear how tough times are for this country. At the time that sanctions were lifted because of the nuclear deal in 2016, Iran could export 3.2 million barrels of oil a day. Today, the estimates are at somewhere around 300,000 barrels a day. So they've lost. You know, oil sales are down 90%, and a lot of it has to circumvent sanctions. Remember, the United States not only sanctions Iran, it also sanctions any country that buys Iranian oil.
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A
You know, but from the Trump perspective, presumably he regards this as a great success of his policy. So I wonder how the administration has been responding to all of this. You know, his general approach has been, if it's bad for Iran, it's Good for the U.S. absolutely.
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B
And the administration had counted on the regime, regime basically imploding or collapsing within three months after it reimposed sanctions last year, and it hasn't. Iran is in serious trouble, and the administration likes to claim credit for it because of its maximum pressure, economic squeeze. The reality is that Iran can stumble along, I think, for quite a while. The big question is, can they stumble along long enough to get through the electoral season hoping that someone else will be elected, or are they under such pressure that they see more and more of these demonstrations and have to get more and more draconian, and they lose the support of the countries who have not reimposed sanctions and are still part of the nuclear deal, particularly in Europe.
- [09:53]
A
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei charges the Trump administration with encouraging rioters. There's a certain amount of truth to that. Could you talk a little bit about how Secretary of State Pompeo and others have been responding?
- [10:07]
B
Well, the secretary of Pompeo, President Trump in London today, Brian Hook, the special envoy on Iran, have all used very tough language. President Trump today said that he was fully supportive and always has been of protests against the regime. Now, the United States claims that it's not after regime change. I think there are some in the Trump administration who would like to see regime change. I still think President Trump would like to do a deal with Iran to get it back to the table to get a different kind of nuclear deal that also covered issues like missile tests and support for extremist groups. So there's a difference even within the Trump administration. But for now, they are strongly supporting the protests. And I think we're likely to see a lot of language claiming credit for some of the protests.
- [10:59]
A
There are also major protests now in Iraq which have forced the prime minister to resign. And there's a direct connection between what's going on in Iran and what's going on in Iraq. Could you explain that a little bit?
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B
Well, the protests in Iraq erupted in early October, and they targeted the government, demanding more jobs, lower inflation, lower costs. They're very concerned about corruption. It is widely perceived as a government that has been corrupt almost since the United states intervened in 2003. But what was really interesting about the protests is that many of the Shiites in Iraq were protesting against the government, and the government is led by Shiites. Iran is the world's largest Shiite country. And it has long intervened in Iraq to make sure that there is a friendly government in power, partly dating back to that war I covered between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, when a Sunni government was in power in Baghdad and it was fighting a Shiite government in Tehran. But today, one of the things that's about Iraq is that the Shiites in Iraq are demanding an end to Iranian Shiite involvement in Iraq. And you see nationalism emerging as an issue. They think that the government is more interested in doing Iran's bidding than in helping its own people. And as a result, you've seen attacks on two Iranian consulates in two holy cities, Shiite holy cities, Karbala and Najaf, that, you know, the chance were Iran get out, get out. And that's a real change. And we're seeing it also play out in Lebanon, where Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, has been the target of protests because it's now part of the Lebanese government. And so Iran's Iran is in trouble not only at home, it's in trouble in terms of its influence across the region. You could say that Iran has never been in such trouble regionally in at least 30 years since that war, and arguably in terms of the scope of it at home and in the Middle east since the revolution in 1979, you've.
- [13:21]
A
Covered so many uprisings in the Middle east and elsewhere. When a government brutally cracks down on protests, does it ever work in the long run?
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B
Well, it worked in Iran in 2009 when it took six months, but there were thousands, maybe even tens of thousands arrested. Crackdowns do work, but at the end of the day, they don't solve the problems. I think there's something happening in the region where people know what their rights are. People, you know, outsiders like to say, oh, the Arab Spring was a blip on the. On the screen of history, but in fact, it was the beginning of a process that plays out in a lot of different ways that we're seeing. I also think that's playing out in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Syria, in. In Yemen, in Libya, that there are a lot of places in this most volatile region that we're only in the beginning of a transition. I think we're likely to see instability across this region, internal instability, not the kind of Arab, Israeli wars that we used to see in the 20th century. The 21st century is about something much more basic, more fundamental, and it has to do with issues of rights and responsibility and the efficacy of government.
- [14:38]
A
Robyn, thank you so much. This has been really enlightening.
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B
Thank you, Dorothy, always.
- [14:43]
A
Robin Wright has been a contributor to the New Yorker since 1988. She's the author of Rock the Casbah and other books on the Middle East. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Dorothy Wickenden. And thanks for joining us today.
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It.
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Sam.