Iranian rumors

There are two unsubstantiated rumors currently being circulated by some of the Iranian opposition to Ahmadinejad that I would like to put to rest. Let me preface this by reiterating that I support neither Ahmadinejad nor Mousavi, but I do support the protesters. I think that spreading rumors such as these two damages the credibility of the protest movement. It is simply hypocritical to accuse Ahmadinejad of fraud and then circulate forged letters and false rumors.

The first is a letter, purportedly sent in secret from the Iranian Minister of the Interior to Ayatollah Khamenei, which says the following:

Interior Ministry's letter to the Supreme Leader

Salaam Aleikom.

Regarding your concerns for the 10th presidential elections and due to your orders for Mr Ahmedinejad to be elected President, in this sensitive time, all matters have been organised in such a way that the results of the election will be in line with the revolution and the Islamic system. The following result will be declared to the people and all planning should be put in force to prevent any possible action from the opposition, and all party leaders and election candidates are under intense surveillance. Therefore, for your information only, I am telling you the actual results as follows:

Mirhossein Mousavi: 19,075,623

Mehdi Karroubi: 13,387,104

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: 5,698,417

Mohsen Rezai: 38,716

(signed on behalf of the minister)

You can view the original Persian text here.

It should be immediately obvious that this letter is fake, best taken as a joke, yet somehow it has been making the rounds on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other sites as "evidence" of electoral fraud. Despite the letter having been thoroughly debunked (see here and here), the imminently naïve Robert Fisk cluelessly wonders "Could this letter be a fake?" in an article for The Independent.

I have reproduced an anonymous commenter's post on the Why We Protest message board, which sums up the evidence of forgery.

This is obviously a forgery due to the following:

1- The type face used for the body of the text is named "Titr" (translation: headline). Titr is a display typeface and not used for copy text. The interior ministry has strict formatting and style guidelines.

2- the ascender on the letter "ک" the second line of the letterhead is cutting into the line above it. The letterhead would also normally state the individual's name which is absent here.

3- The actual letter is missing basic punctuation which is commonly use in formal governmental correspondence.

4- The letter outright says "... based on your judgment in choosing Mahmoud Ahamdinejad as the best individual in forwarding the goals of the Islamic revolution..." This would not be included in this type of letter.

5- There is no watermark or confidential stamp.

Clearly, this letter is fake. It brings to mind a popular forgery from several years ago, a fake letter from the Iranian king Yazdgerd III to the new Caliph Omar, which was also conclusively debunked.

The second rumor I want to address is one that claims that the Iranian state brought 5000 members of the Lebanese Hizbullah movement into Iran to attack protesters. Additionally, it is now being claimed that Hamas members are also participating in violence against Iranian demonstrators. Here is one example of the rumor regarding Hizbullah, and another regarding Hamas.

Views from the Occident has done an excellent job at breaking down what is suspicious or unbelievable about this rumor. I highly suggest you read his post on the matter, as well as Abu Muqawama's. Here is a brief summary of what I consider their most salient points:

• Reports claim that 5000 Hizbullah fighters are in Iran, but Hizbullah only has 1200-2000 active fighters.
  
• It would be extremely unlikely for Hizbullah to abandon Lebanon for something like this, especially since tensions are high after the March 14 Coalition assumed victory in the recent Lebanese elections.
  
• Western journalists may have confused Hizbullah with the Iranian group Ansar-e Hezbollah, which bears no relation to the Lebanese movement. There have been reports that members of Ansar-e Hezbollah have been attacking Iranian protesters.
  
• The rumor neatly plays into existing Persian chauvinist and anti-Arab sentiment held by some Iranians.

I would like to add some comments of my own. First of all, the violent attacks on protesters in Iran have been very well-documented and are not in question. However, there exists no documented evidence whatsoever that would suggest a Hizbullah or Hamas presence in Iran, other than the reports of a few people on Twitter or various blogs. Even the reports themselves are spurious: some claim the attackers "looked like Arabs" or were speaking Arabic, whereas others claimed to have seen Hizbullah flags. There is an enormous amount of photos and video footage of the attackers, which can easily be found on Youtube or on popular blogs such as The Daily Dish, yet not a single one of them shows any Hizbullah flags or insignia, or anything else to suggest that Hizbullah or Hamas is present.

As others have pointed out, Hizbullah would have nothing to gain (and a lot to lose) from coming to Iran to attack protesters and support Ahmadinejad. There is no reason to suspect that Mousavi would lessen Iranian support for Hizbullah as president. Hizbullah was founded between 1982 and 1985, right in the middle of Mousavi's term as Prime Minister of Iran, and during that time Iran provided military and financial assistance to Hizbullah. His stance on Palestinian liberation is no different; Ahmadinejad even brought this up during the presidential debates prior to the election, saying "Mr. Mousavi had explicitly announced that we will send military forces to go stand alongside the Palestinian resistance to fight against the occupiers. Mr. Mousavi announced that the Zionist regime must be wiped out." Mousavi's stance regarding Hizbullah and Hamas is nearly identical to Ahmadinejad's, so why would these groups risk so much to support one over the other?

The unsubstantiated claims that the attackers "looked" Arab or were speaking Arabic fit the profile of Persian chauvinist anti-Arabism perfectly. The roots of Iranian anti-Arabism are deep and would take up an entire post of their own, but they were particularly inflamed during the Pahlavi regime (1925-1979), where Persian chauvinism/Aryanism and anti-Arabism dominated state discourses on Iranian identity. It was often repeated that the Arabs destroyed Iranian civilization during the Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century, that Arabs were the enemy of Iranians, and so on. This kind of thinking flourished amongst Iranians who left Iran after the 1979 revolution; I am sure that any of my Iranian readers who grew up or lived in diaspora can recall their relatives telling them of the horrors the Arabs inflicted upon our country. Many Iranians who stayed in Iran after the revolution also continued to harbor anti-Arab sentiment nurtured under the previous regime. As I explained earlier, some Iranians (in particular, the same demographic that tends to favor Mousavi) harbor particular resentment against Lebanese and Palestinians due to the Islamic Republic's support for them.

Arabs make up about 3% of the population of Iran, living primarily in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, and face both racism and state repression. In order to explain the Hizbullah rumor, some people have posited that the Arabs in question are Iranian Arabs from Khuzestan. While this may be possible, I find it very unlikely. The reports have all been from Tehran or other cities far from Iran's southwest, and there are few (if any) Khuzestanis in Tehran. Moreover, Mousavi (and Karroubi) campaigned on a platform of greater rights for Iran's ethnic minorities, and Iranian Arabs are typically already hostile to the Iranian state because of the repression they face (see Al Jazeera's reports on the subject here and here). It is doubtful that they would have any interest in attacking the protesters, many of whom are demanding greater rights for Iranian Arabs and other minorities. Therefore, the rumor that the Arabs in question are Khuzestani is just as unlikely as the theory that they are Lebanese or Palestinian.

I think it's most likely that there simply are no Arabs at the protests. There is no evidence whatsoever, and the rumor fits prior Persian chauvinist narratives of "foreign Arabs ruining our country" too well, or as my friend Piotr put it, "they're sending in the ruthless foreigners because our people would never hurt their own."

Update, 07/25/09: A more recent and thorough compilation of false rumors can be found here.