Mick Hartley

Journalist Akbar Ganji has been in prison in Tehran for five years, and now, two months into a hunger strike, is seriously ill. There’s a possibility that international pressure may be paying off, and he’ll receive a pardon. Amir Taheri, on why he’s such a threat to the Mullahs:

Ganji’s case is special for a number of reasons.

To begin with. he is almost entirely a child of the Khomeinist revolution in sociopolitical terms. By social background, family history, and political upbringing he should be the model Khomeinist. He has fought for Khomeinism, both in the war against Iraq and in campaigns against dissidents and armed secessionists.

Few in his generation have more revolutionary credentials. Mortazavi, the prosecutor, who specializes in tracing the slightest flaw in his victims’ revolutionary profile has been unable to find any in Ganji’s.

Unlike other in-house critics of the regime, Ganji has succeeded in liberating himself, morally and intellectually, from his Khomeinist illusions.

Moin, for example, [the candidate of the “reformists” in the recent presidential election] pretends that Khomeinism is a pure and beautiful ideal that has been sullied in practice. Ganji, on the other hand, has no doubt that Khomeinism itself is the root cause of all of Iran’s sufferings in the past 27 years.

Moin is like Mikhail Gorbachev, who, even in the final moments when the Soviet Titanic was sinking, was trying to fool himself and others with a vision of “ pure Leninism.” Ganji, however, is like Boris Yeltsin who, although a member of the Soviet Politburo for years, at one point realized that the Bolshevik Revolution had been “ the greatest tragedy in the history of the Russian people,” and said so publicly.

Moin wants to reform a system that is unreformable. Ganji wants a new system that is as distant from the one in place as possible. All this means that while Moin is no threat to the establishment of which he remains a privileged member, Ganji is.

The regime can cope with the “if” and “but” school of criticism. The more shrewd operators of the regime, such as the outgoing President Muhammad Khatami , even encourage this kind of “lite” dissent because it helps foster the illusion that the system can accommodate a measure of debate. That illusion, in turn, could hoodwink some Westerners, including former US President Bill Clinton, into believing that the Khomeinist system is “a kind of democracy.”

When the lawyer Mrs. Shirin Ebadi was nominated as the Nobel Peace laureate for 2004, Khatami welcomed her with the admonition not to “go beyond certain red lines.” Mrs. Ebadi took the advice, and all went well for her. She devoted her acceptance speech to attacking the United States for “abuses of human rights” in Guantanamo Bay, and castigating Israel for “oppressing the Palestinians.”

Knowing her red lines she made no mention of the tens of thousands of prisoners, including some of her own friends, rotting in Mortazavi’s jails. But the “most important red line” according to Khatami, concerns the criticism of the “Supreme Guide” or the late Khomeini himself. Ganji, however, has rejected all advice from Khatami. He has insisted that the only red lines must be fixed by law in a democratic system.

Khatami is reportedly trying hard to arrange for Ganji’s release, or at least make sure he stays alive for a few more weeks. This is because the outgoing president does not want his term to end on so tragic a note. But he is asking Ganji to do things that Ganji would never do: Respecting the “red lines” that Moin, Mrs. Ebadi and virtually all other in-house critics of the regime never cross.

Another reason why the regime is so incensed with Ganji is that , unlike other critics inside and outside the system, he cannot be accused of wanting anything for himself. He is not a politician and is not gunning for office. By remaining just a “concerned citizen” he appeals to those Iranians who feel that they, too, have been let down by the system. And because he is not associated with any political group he is respected by all.

But what may have triggered the “fight to the death” between Ganji and the system is his courageous and meticulously researched exposure of the corruption and cruelty at the heart of the regime, especially during the eight-year presidency of Ali-Akbar Hasahemi, the mulla who attempted a comeback but was soundly defeated by Ahamadinejad in last month’s presidential election.

The books that Ganji published on the subject were instantly banned. But they have sold millions inside and outside Iran and remain important documents submitted to the court of history.