AMY GOODMAN: We continue on Iran. We’re speaking with Hamid Dabashi. He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Among other books is Iran: A People Interrupted. He was born in Iran himself.

Your piece in the New York Times today is called “Looking for Their Martin Luther King.” Explain.

HAMID DABASHI: It’s based on my reading of what I believe is happening in Iran. This, in my judgment, is a post-ideological generation. My generation was divided into third world socialists, anti-colonial nationalists and militant Islamists. These are the three dominant ideologies with which we grew up. But if you look at the composition of Iranian society today, 70 percent of it is under the age of thirty—namely, born after the Islamic Revolution. They no longer are divided along those ideological lines.

And if you read their newspapers, if you watch their movies, if you listen to the lyrics of their underground music, to their contemporary arts, etc., which we have been doing over the past thirty years, this, to me, is a civil rights movement. They are operating within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. They don’t want to topple the regime. If you look—come outside, from the right of the right, in the US Senate to the left, is waiting for yet another revolution to happen. I don’t think this is another revolution. This is a civil rights movement. They’re demanding their civil rights that are being denied, even within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. From their chants that they are doing in the streets to their newspapers, to their magazines, to their websites, to their Facebook, to their Twitters, everywhere that you look, this is a demand for civil liberties and not—

There are, of course, underlying economic factors, statistically. The unemployment in the age cohort of fifteen to twenty-nine is 70 percent. So this is not a class warfare. In other words, people that we see in the streets, 70 percent of them, that a majority of them are young—70 percent of them do not even have a job. They can’t even rent a room, let alone marry, let alone have a family. So the assumption that this is a upper-middle-class or middle-class, bourgeois, Gucci revolutionaries on the side of Mousavi and poor on the side of Ahmadinejad is completely false.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about this issue of who supports President Ahmadinejad and the people who do not believe that the election was rigged. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was among the first world leaders to recognize the election and congratulate Ahmadinejad on winning a second term.

       PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: [translated] We ask the world to respect Iran, because they are trying to influence the strength of the Iranian Revolution. We ask the world to respect the triumph of President Ahmadinejad. It was a triumph in every respect. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad’s triumph and weakening the government and the Islamic Revolution. I know they are not going to achieve it. From here, we are sending our solidarity to the brotherly nation of Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, that’s Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Your response, President—Professor Dabashi?

HAMID DABASHI: Oh, thanks, God, not president.

Now, listen. There are a number of issues. Number one, on the election, that the election was rigged is a social fact. People, millions of people, believe it was rigged. The three oppositional figures that are of three different colors believe it was rigged. People are putting their lives on the line that it was rigged. Already, people have been killed. There is no independent way of knowing. There are some statisticians that are looking at these numbers that are coming out suspiciously. But I think it is a moot question, is just an academic question, doesn’t mean anything.

Now, then, if you flash back to pre-election, there is an alliance, a regional alliance, for example, between Chavez and Ahmadinejad, or between—equally, Hassan Nasrallah has also—have come—Hezbollah has come to the support of Ahmadinejad, because if you look at the regional politics, the alliance between Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Mahdi’s army was something that we were sort of thinking that this is the situation before this election.

What has happened after the election, this young Iranian demanding the civil rights have thrown a monkey wrench at that regional arrangement. So, while I understand why is it that, because of his own regional concerns and geopolitics, Chavez and Nasrallah are coming to the aid of Ahmadinejad very, very swiftly, but the fact of the matter is that there is a significant proportion of Iranian society that is not only rich and upper-Tehrani and such that think this is rigged, number one. Number two, the question of this election is really the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. This is a pent-up anger that has been building over a very long time.

The other result—the question is that, up until this election, I even thought that domestic politics, national politics, has become irrelevant, that is, not out of how smart Ahmadinejad was, but how stupid Bush was. The arrangement—around Iran, the situation that President Obama has inherited, he can’t do anything in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan without Iranian help. This is why he’s walking this tightrope. However, domestic Iranian issues have now emerged. That is, there is this generation that is very dissatisfied. They don’t want to topple the regime. This is where the left is going wrong—the right is going wrong. They simply want to secure their civil liberties. And they refuse to have their internal concerns, that ranges from unemployment to civil liberties, to be sacrificed to the regional politics.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Professor Dabashi, the call of Senators Graham and the former presidential candidate McCain for increased sanctions, whether US or United Nations, against Iran?

HAMID DABASHI: Absolute—first of all, it’s very hypocritical of the US Congress. The night before the presidential election in Iran on June 12th, they called for increased sanction against Iran. Tomorrow morning, the day of election, that translates into “Vote for Ahmadinejad.” That translates into economic hardship for already those demonstrators that now they pretend they want to support. Any support for these demonstrators, for this green movement, on part of official American officials is a kiss of death.

What this movement needs—anything is—from the United States is, because I see it as a civil rights movement, is the support of civil rights icons. Reverend Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton, these are the people who should come to its support, not official Americans. And as a result, President Obama’s position has been very pitch perfect, very calibrated. That is, he endorses the civil liberties of these demonstrators, without taking sides, and consistently insisting that this is a domestic Iranian affair, because the fact is he may have to deal with Ahmadinejad.

AMY GOODMAN: The death of Neda, her image all over the world, and even you, at the beginning of this interview, saying you’re getting through the censorship somehow.

HAMID DABASHI: Exactly. Well, again, if my reading of the event, this, what we are witnessing, as a civil rights movement, it already has the figure of Neda Agha Soltan as the Rosa Parks of—the granddaughter of Rosa Park’s character. And the picture of her at the moment of her death that is now all over—I mean, if you look at the websites and Facebooks and Twitters of the young Iranians that are watching, it’s absolute heart-wrenching how this is galvanizing the movement. It has captured the imagination of youth. And she represents—she is pretty, she is a young woman, she’s a student, she was a student of philosophy. The older man that was accompanying her is not her father; it was actually her professor. All of the indices of what this generation is about is captured in the figure in Neda.

AMY GOODMAN: And she was nineteen years old?

HAMID DABASHI: No, she’s twenty-seven, I believe.

AMY GOODMAN: Twenty-seven.

HAMID DABASHI: Exactly. A student of philosophy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I wan to thank you very much for being with us.

HAMID DABASHI: Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He’s author of over eighteen books, including Iran: A People Interrupted. 

Source: http://www.democracynow.org/

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