by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with the Asia Times by special agreement with the author)
While the dogs of war bark, the Ancient – and New – Silk Road goes on forever and a civilization with a long and proud history gets on with life
The minute you set foot in the streets of Mashhad, the air smelling of saffron, a fine breeze oozing from the mountains, it hits you; you’re in the heart of the Ancient Silk Road and the New Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
To the east, the Afghan border is only three hours away on an excellent highway. To the north, the Turkmenistan border is less than four hours away. To the northwest is the Caspian Sea. To the south is the Indian Ocean and the port of Chabahar, the entry point for the Indian version of the Silk Roads. The Tehran-Mashhad railway is being built by the Chinese.
A group of us – including American friends, whose visas were approved at the highest levels of the Iranian government – have gathered in Mashhad for the New Horizon Conference of independent thinkers. Right after a storm, I’m in a van on the way to the spectacular Imam Reza shrine with Alexander Dugin, which the usual suspects love to describe as “the world’s most dangerous philosopher,” or Putin’s Rasputin.
Debating and discussion time
We’re deep in debate not over geopolitics but … bossa nova. Exit Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, enter Tom Jobim and Joao Gilberto.
Persia traditionally has been a land of serious intellectual discussion. At the conference, after a lunch break, a few of us decide to start our own geopolitical debate, no cameras rolling, no microphones on. Dugin expands on what multipolarity could be; no universality; pluriversal; a realm of pluralistic anthropology; all poles sovereign. We discuss the pitfalls of Eurasian identity, Islamic identity, sub-poles, India, Europe and Africa.
A few minutes later Iranian scholar Blake Archer Williams – his nom de plume – is delving into “The sacred community of Shi’ite Islam and its covenantal dispensation.”
Karaj is a bustling three million-strong city one hour away from Tehran by freeway. Early one morning I enter a room in a hawza – an Islamic seminary. In my previous travels I have visited hawzas in Qom, but never a female-only school. This one harbors 2,275 active students from all over Alborz province up to PhD level. They study philosophy, psychology, economics and politics. After graduation, some will go abroad, to teach in Islamic and non-Islamic nations.
Our Q&A is exhilarating. Many of my interlocutors are already teachers, and most will become scholars. Their questions are sharp; some are extremely well informed. There’s so much eagerness to know detail after detail about life in the West.
High academic standards
The next day I visit the Islamic Azad University; more than four million alumni, 1.4 million current students, 29,000 faculty members, 472 campuses and research centers and 617 affiliated high schools. The Karaj campus is the second in importance in Iran.
This is an extraordinary experience. The hillside campus may not be a UCLA, but puts to shame many prestigious universities across Europe. Not to mention the annual tuition fees; only US$1,000 on average. Sanctions? What sanctions? Most of the equipment may yield from the 1980s, but they have everything they need. As attested by jovial master architect Ali Kazemi, who spent 16 years in Paris after graduating from Nanterre, the academic standards are very high.
Rector Mohammad Hasan Borhanifar – formerly at the University of Kyrgyzstan in Bishkek – opens all the doors at the campus. I’m shepherded by Mohammad Hashamdar, from the Faculty of Languages. I talk to the deans of all faculties and have a Q&A with students, mostly in international relations.
Even before the proclamation of the “strongest sanctions in history,” everyone wants details on the US Treasury’s new form of financial war, even more deadly than a hot war. In slightly more than two months, the purchase of US dollars, steel, coal and precious metals will be banned; there will be no more Iranian imports to the US and aviation and the car industry will be under sanctions.
Airbus may have to cancel multi-billion dollar orders from Iran. An IT professor tells me Iran can buy excellent Sukhoi passenger jets instead. No Peugeots? “We buy Hyundai.”
My interlocutors update me on investments by Total, Airbus, BASF, Siemens, Eni – its branch Saipem signed a $5 billion deal with the National Iranian Oil Company, NIOC, to develop oil and gas fields and ultimately supply energy to Europe. They confirm that if Total pulls out of the development of the 11th phase of the South Pars gas field, the Chinese CNPC will take over.
Almost 70% of Iran’s oil exports go to China and Asia, 20% go to Europe. Almost 90% of what the EU buys from Iran is oil, going mostly to Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Germany and the Netherlands. Iran remains THE Big Prize, as Dick Cheney well knew; an astonishing $45 trillion in oil and gas reserves.
A wide gene pool
I’m slightly alarmed when, talking to the Friday prayer imam – who is the actual representative of Ayatollah Khamenei in Karaj – he’s clueless about the New Silk Roads. Just as the Ancient Silk Road allowed Buddhism to fertilize Chinese culture, Iran, India and China are bound to cross-fertilize again; imagine a trans-Eurasia lab equipped with a wide gene pool and well-educated young armada searching for creative solutions.
The LA freeway hell pales in comparison with being stuck in a monster three-hour traffic jam from Tehran to Karaj, only 25 kilometers. I duly incorporate a Persian imprecation to my vocabulary; kharab beshe, which in polite translation means “going to nowhere.” I miss my requisite geopolitical dinner with Professor Marandi of the University of Tehran; we do it later on Whatsapp – like MBS and Jared Kushner.
What daily life in 17 million-strong, congested to death Tehran reveals is the standard of living essentially of a mid-level emerging nation. Everyone has a car, and smartphones and wi-fi are ubiquitous. In parallel, everywhere we feel intimations of a Persian civilization boasting at least a millennium of fabulous history even before Islam was born. And when we talk to the secularized intellectual elite, it’s clear that for them, in comparison, Arabs are nothing but trouble.
Everywhere I go I’m back in the ’70s; the whole infrastructure seems decades old, but everything works. Except for timing; Iran might as well be the land of magical realism 2.0, where the unexpected happens when all hope has been forsaken.
A smart, young generation
In Mashhad, I’m the guest in a political talk show on Khorasan TV – in a studio immaculately preserved from the ’70s. Yes, this is the heart of the fabled Khorasan – “where the sun arrives from” – that transfixed Alexander The Great. I spend half an hour dissecting the JCPOA; my translator is an over-qualified import-export expert. Khorasan TV’s blockbuster is an American-style cop show essentially covering road accidents in real time; after all, the crime rate is negligible.
Real inflation is at 16% a year – so far. Foreign exchange inflation is much higher. Real youth unemployment is at a steep 30%, in a country of 80 million where the median age is 29 and 40% of the population is under 24. One of my translators in Karaj, Ali, is 24; he’s unemployed, learned English by watching DVDs and cannot afford to rent his own place.
Under the new rial devaluation, the median regional salary plunged to about US$250 per month. One cannot rent a 40 square meter apartment near Azad University for less than $200 per month.
I stop for a late night pizza in Mashhad. The bill reads a whopping 200,000 rials; that’s a little more than $3. The euro in the black market spikes to nearly 80,000 rials.
Social media
Telegram has been blocked – but still, everyone uses both Telegram and WhatsApp. Some VPNs work, some don’t. The block was not necessarily linked to the spread of anti-government rumors during the January street protests – which actually started in Mashhad.
Elaheh, who did her language master in France; Bojan, who has a PhD in economics from San Diego State; or Ayoub Farkhondeh, who works on terrorism studies at the Habilian research institute, are all amused by the “bizarre” coverage by Western media of all things Iran.
The analysis of well-educated people in both Mashhad and Tehran tends to qualify the protests as essentially IMF riots – which happen when the Washington Consensus forces governments to reduce subsidies. Real revolutions, in Iran, involve clerics, middle-class intellectuals and the bazaaris.
This time the focus was the grassroots; the working class in small provincial cities. Millions in Iran, after all, depend on government salaries and subsidies. In contrast, Team Rouhani is essentially neoliberal.
Of course, there’s government criticism – more towards the clerics than neoliberal Team Rouhani. Businessmen told me of untold ministerial-level corruption – but it’s virtually impossible to verify the numbers. The Pasdaran, as the IRGC is referred to, continue to control a great deal of the economy and to manage a welfare system and client system that distributes favors to millions of people, but also imposes rigid social control.
At the same time, not looking at Iran via a windowless cubicle in Washington but actually on the ground, it’s clear that NSC Adviser John Bolton’s plan to revive the Mujahedin-e Khalq, known as MEK, to attempt a color revolution will fail miserably. MEK is universally despised. The whole of Iranian society won’t blame either Khamenei or Rouhani for the incoming economic war.
Europe on the spot
Persian politeness, hospitality and graciousness always strike a visitor as deeply touching. All that combined with an obsession with the image that the West has of Iran. Iran does not seek “isolation”; it’s Washington politics that wants it isolated.
So no wonder Europe is on the spot. The EU will activate a 1996 law which forbids European companies to comply with US sanctions, protecting them “against the effects of the extra-territorial application of legislation adopted by a third country.” Still, the question is ubiquitous; “The Europeans will side with us or the Americans?”
In parallel, Iranians don’t want to be like the West. And the best way to understand it is by visiting the Imam Reza shrine over and over again – I went early in the morning, after an afternoon storm, and at night.
The Imam Reza shrine, known as Astan Qods-e Razavi, is a marvel enveloped in golden and turquoise domes, lavish minarets and 12 courtyards spread over one million square meters. It hosts the largest Iranian NGO; a centuries-old administrative structure encompassing eight general directorates, more than 50 industrial, agricultural and service companies, over 15 cultural and research institutions and more than 12,000 students.
The 12th-century library at the shrine is one of the world’s oldest, along with Alexandria, the Vatican and Topkaki. Ayatollah Khomeini ordered its preservation. The public library holds four million books in more than 90 languages. There’s even a lab to “cure book diseases.” Mashhad runs a library in India plus a documentation center with more than 18 million items, including a 1,300-year-old document linked to Imam Ali.
Before leaving on a night flight to Doha, I visit the shrine one last time with two fine, steeped in history, Italian observers, ace journalist Giulietto Chiesa and writer Roberto Quaglia. It’s the first day of Ramadan. We’re speechless facing the crossover of aesthetic beauty, spiritual illumination and plain old fun.
Whole families gather, improvise a picnic, chat, take selfies, kids roam around playing. Instead of being glued to some dodgy version of Big Brother, like most across the West, they prefer to live life in a shrine. It is indeed an organic “third day,” like a government insider told me in Tehran.
Meanwhile, a Chinese train is snaking along from Mongolia to Tehran carrying sunflower seeds. While the dogs of war bark, the Ancient – and New – Silk Road goes on forever.
I am glad that Pepe thinks MEK is not getting any traction in Iran (possibly due to their siding with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.) But it is important to remember that regime changers do not always have to be popular with the masses in order to act as agents of destabilisation.
Right now there are several camps in Albania that are currently incubating this group. (Kosovo is the place for Daesh terrorists and Albania is the place for MEK).
“Since 2013, the Obama Administration and Albanian government have extended the agreement, consequently increasing the number of asylum seekers to somewhere in the range of 500-2,000 MEK members. During the summer of 2016, Tirana received the largest contingent of about 1,900 people- an operation managed by the UNHCR.” http://www.balkanalysis.com/blog/2017/01/29/the-iranian-mek-in-albania-implications-and-possible-future-sectarian-divisions/
Apparently John Bolton promised them a celebration in Tehran before 2019
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/23/heres-john-bolton-promising-regime-change-iran-end-2018/
Well the good news is that John Bolton has an absolutely amazing record for being dead wrong.
Pepe has it right – the MEK has zero chance.
Less than zero – they fought with Saddam against Iran. Case closed.
They only exist because the West, Israel and Saudis fund them to do spy work inside Iran, but they are a dead organization to all Iranians .
Yeah but the Western Private Central Banking Cartel has much capability. If it is not MEK then they will try something else. I used to believe all the stupid western propaganda. Now my daily fears are that Syria or Iran will fall to the west. This vampire banking cartel needs fresh blood to drink.
The Silk Road is placed far away from the seas, so that Leviatan can not reach it.
It is a question if time that oxidation will take care of the , now useless, world’s greatest navy.
Thanks
The dogs of war will be more than barking. The flow of terror will swim in from Afghanistan and Pakistan, ferried on US dollars and helos. Iran will have what Syria got.
Iran needs work for its youth. Rigid religious social norms is no substitute for a job and money in the pocket.
It is disgusting that the religious leadership has not struck hard at corruption in their state and local government.
The thievery has stolen the future of an entire generation. Fate will not be kind in the coming years if reform does not achieve a fair and stable society.
What a great nation Iran could be, if . . .
reform for a ‘meritocracy’ system which is the core of capitalism?
what is in detail the reform you wish or dream for I ran?
Cleanup of the corruption that is sucking the lifeblood of the economy.
Theocracy is a very stifling societal system. It limits the Iranian people.
(The Iranians I know and have worked with and count as my friends over the last twenty years are spectacularly intelligent, talented, industrious and calm people. So, I judge that against the present government and its policies internally.)
Iran, China & Russian governments should band together and push E.U. to show some spine.
E.U. can put crippling fines on U.S.A.-related S.W.I.F.T. transactions.
E.U. can demand a fee/tax on all electronic financial transactions via S.W.I.F.T between U.S. & the rest of the world, if the latter initiated third party sanctions or even better if they continue breaking the international treaty JCPOA.
S.W.I.F.T. falls under Belgian and European law, whether US is a stockholder or not. Although E.U. has no jurisdiction over foreign policy, economic policy is it’s collective prerogative.
US government breaks a U.N.-ratified treaty and on top of it sanctions 3rd party companies, to the monetary detriment of Europeans, Chinese, Russians, Latin-Americans, Africans, … basically the whole world.
S.W.I.F.T. fine/tax can compensates the individual European companies that will be affected by US fines or third party sanctions’ related losses.
The breaking of JCPOA international treaty, gives a good excuse for all (E.U., Iran, China, Russia, … the whole world) to put Trump on his place and financially recover the individual countries’
This is not only a payback time for S.W.I.F.T. blockage a couple of years ago it will be an effective way of reimbursing the damages that European (or other 3rd party companies) suffer.
“One cannot rent a 40 square meter apartment near Azad University for less than $200 per month.”
Why is it so expensive?
Why is there no affordable housing in Iran?
Presumably most of housing market in Iran isin private hands. Very surprising.
Earthquakes.
Good buildings need proper design and materials. Iran is one of the most active zones on the planet. They have lost thousands of people in previous quakes. The most violent was 7.9 on the Richter scale. This destroys lots of buildings. Today, modern engineering will allow persons to get out of the building even though it might be damaged beyond repair. They are designed to break in certain ways that will get you out alive.
Iran has (and had) some great engineers.
Located in the historic centre of Isfahan, the Masjed-e Jāmé (‘Friday mosque’) can be seen as a stunning illustration of the evolution of mosque architecture over twelve centuries, starting in ad 841. It is the oldest preserved edifice of its type in Iran and a prototype for later mosque designs throughout Central Asia. The complex, covering more than 20,000 m2, is also the first Islamic building that adapted the four-courtyard layout of Sassanid palaces to Islamic religious architecture. Its double-shelled ribbed domes represent an architectural innovation that inspired builders throughout the region. The site also features remarkable decorative details representative of stylistic developments over more than a thousand years of Islamic art.
For more details see http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1397
The Nezam al-Molk Dome is the first double-shell ribbed dome structure in the Islamic empire, which introduced new engineering skills, allowing for more elaborate dome constructions in later mosque and burial complexes. On the basis of these two elements, the Masjed-e Jāme is a recognized prototype for mosque design, layout and dome construction, which was referenced in several later eras and regions of the Islamic world.
The domes have withstood many centuries of tectonic upheavals. It might be one of the safest places to be in case of an earthquake. Another good reason to go visit…
Thanks, Saker, I might have missed that issue of Asia Times. Pepe in top form, with contacts and insights making predictions which I have found, over the years, are usually proved right. His remarks about good universities and bright students but with equipment dating from the 70s and 80s reminds me of the 70s when my colleague Prof.Guido Pontecorvo was invited to advise the new Iranian govt on science education. He said, They have some good people and a lot of new equipment but their thrust is too academic. Pontecorvo advised them to build more technical schools and train more technicians — which the Iranians seem to have done, judging by the quality of their missiles and AA defense systems.
I presume that their equipment still dating from the 80s is a result of Uncle $cam’s Spiteful Sanctions. Like Cuba’s famous trademark cars that date from the 60s. Welcome to the free world. This sort of conservation and recycling might become the way to counter our headlong stampede toward global warming in the countries of the AZC.
Iran needs to shake itself free of the US dollar, which is weaponised against them.
It is now at war ,having passed the first 2 of the 3 stages,
Financial warfare via sanctions and attacks on the riyal currency , Information war via demonization and anti-Iran propaganda. The next and final stage will be military war via tanks ,guns and planes.
Their Economic Ministry needs to unlearn the Western weapon of neo -liberalism, which is the privatisation and looting of the State.
The lessons of Modern Monetary Theory are clear. A Sovereign Independent Nation with its own Sovereign Currency can buy any resource within its borders including all idle labour and create a wealthy nation.
All it needs is the political will to use its resources to improve the welfare of its citizens.
A youth unemployment figure of 30% creates a dangerous weapon that can be used to cause civil unrest, and it needs to be a priority to put these youngers into paid employment.
One big advantage for Iran is not being a member of the Central Banking system.
@Salford Lad. That all makes sense to me. I remember videos of a how run-down and dispirited Iraq was looking, just after the years that Cheney got Clinton / Albright / UN to blockade Iraq and just before the years that Cheney got Bush / B.Liar / Coalition to invade Iraq. Also remember several Socialist governments getting their people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Ramin Mazaheri might show us how socialist Iran is in that regard: a National Bank that not only is owned by The People but works for the people.
As for the explosiveness of 30% Youth Unemployment: “…would that youth would sleep out that age, for in between it is nothing but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry and fighting the constabulary”.
Pepe demonstrating once again what journalism is supposed to be. Cheers!
What a privelege to be participatory in such events…and rightfully earned by this reputable and insightful journalist that we are so fortunate to follow….thank you.
Wise and informing writing about Iran. How lucky the world is to share in it’s life.
Pepe, again a great piece of writing.
What I would like to add is this: You can expect people of Iran , who have thousands of years of history behind them to act like mature adults in the house. Unlike some others with fake or short history which is all about violence.
The oligarchs are the top predators of our world, roaming the globe in search of prey to devour. No nation or natural resource is safe from their bottomless hunger for more, more, more………
mike. “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is not enough” — Epicurus
I’m already jealous. I looked up the name Alexander Dugin. Looks like that will provide some interesting reading. Archive.org returns a lot of free links in response to a search on that name. The intro to the linked article seemed interesting.
If you can judge a man by his enemies, then the fact that the National Review, William F. Buckley’s old propaganda rag, hates the guts of Mr. Dugin, then that alone will make me want to read more. :) Over many decades, reading and checking out the people hated by the National Review has generally served me well!
Sounds like a fascinating person with whom to share a bus ride. Like I said, I’m jealous. :)
Civilized people preserve libraries and museums.
Barbarians loot, burn or otherwise destroy libraries and museums.
As usual, fantastic writing from Pepe!
PRC is strong enough and need energy from Iran to keep prices low, its Russia that may cause problems, the jews are too strong there. Remember medvedev and the S300 sanction, Putin reversed the ban but pokhorovsky are not happy with him.
There is a huge example right next door, Pakistan. All Iran has to do is convert its transportation and other energy use to cng/lng with a free for all unlimited acces to all gas fields. The oil,condensate and refined hot cake products to be sold to the many landlocked bordering nations and even bunker fuel on the high seas. Sanctions, what sanctions??
lol pakistan, their elites are black sheeps among muslims. When the sanctions against iran come into force, pakistan would be one of the first nations to implement it. ‘muslim’ nations like pakistan and turkey are allies of the west. Both the countries have partnered with NATO to destroy other muslim countries. Iran should never trust the leadership of pakistan and india.
Great article! As good as promised – many thanks!