TEHRAN:

The Iranian Artists’ Forum is the kind of institution any country would be proud of—a lively, pulsating place, with auditoria, seminar rooms and exhibition halls, at which exciting events in Iran’s flourishing art world happen. It’s similar to Lahore’s Alhambra complex, only more liberal, multicultural and plural.

The Artists’ Forum exudes freedom and creativity. Not many developing countries have a comparable arts complex.

The Forum is a redesigned military barracks located right next door to the long-closed down United States embassy. Hundreds of young people “hang out” at the place. Its ground-floor coffee shop is fully vegetarian and serves “chapatti bread”, besides sandwiches, pizzas, soft drinks and teas (including ayurvedic tea). Why, it even offers its own versions of thalis: “Gita Set” and “Lotus Set”.

It’s tragic, therefore, that the Forum is becoming a target of censorship. Last week, it hosted the release of a special issue of a remarkable magazine “International Gallerie”, published from Mumbai, devoted to Iran’s contemporary culture. But its management turned down requests to hold a vocal music performance as part of the event. It also disallowed the display of some posters based on the issue.

“It’s not that the Forum management favours censorship”, said an art critic, who insisted on anonymity. (Nobody wants to be quoted in Iran for fear of harassment). “But it’s being closely watched. If the management is to keep the institution running, it must not say anything critical of the regime—or risk closure. It ends up practising self-censorship.”

Opponents of self-censorship were offered an object lesson last week. The authorities closed down the cheerful “Café 78”, located in Aban Street. “Café 78” was the favourite haunt of radical students, both female and male, who would chat animatedly about avant-garde art, music, culture, Che Guevara, politics, whatever… As the conversation progressed, and modern Iranian music blared, veils would recede by inches (all women must wear headscarves in public), and romantic words would be discreetly exchanged.

“Café 78”’s closure, like the Forum’s self-censorship, is part of a new drive by Iran’s authorities to regiment individual conduct. There’s a nationwide campaign against the wearing of tight clothes and skimpy headscarves by women. This is customary at the beginning of summer, when hemlines become shorter.

Yet, the drive has generated great fear because it follows countless other repressive measures. These include detention of dozens of feminists for collecting one million signatures demanding changes in the Constitution in favour of gender equality. Schoolteachers have been arrested for agitating for higher pay.

Even worse have been the purges of secular teachers from the universities and closure of more than 110 pro-reform periodicals over six years.

The repression isn’t a response to a particular threat. “It’s part of a ‘regime maintenance’ strategy ,” says a political scientist. “Iran’s hardliners don’t want people, especially the youth, to feel free. They know that young Iranians loathe regimentation. They take recourse to the Constitution’s “Islamic” values and vilayat-e-faqih (government guided by clerics) to enforce discipline.”

True, this discipline isn’t extreme. Iran is no “Taliban Lite”—a Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. Iran is sufism’s homeland. Its Islam is more about ritual than rigid doctrine. Iranians interact closely with the West through their million-plus expatriates, the Internet, and consumption of mass culture, including Hollywood, jeans and fast food.

The mismatch between “regime maintenance” and popular aspirations to freedom produces duality, even hypocrisy. Public debate is banned on “sensitive” subjects, including nuclear issues. But people discuss these in classrooms, buses, taxis, homes, and cafes. Women “jump” communications barriers ingeniously—through dummy websites and blogs. (Iran has the world’s third highest number of blogs.)

Officially, liquor is a strict no-no. But it flows like water in Iran’s living rooms. The Armenian minority is allowed to make wine, beer and spirits. Specially established distilleries in neighbouring countries cater to Iran’s thirst for alcohol.

Iran is one of the few West Asian countries which holds relatively free and fair elections. But Iran’s democracy is deeply flawed, with little freedom of political association. Parties are registered only if they conform to Islamic tenets.

Freedom in this deeply paradoxical society has had periodic ups and downs. Today, it’s on a downward trajectory.

Three factors will influence Iran’s short-term evolution: President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s growing unpopularity; the ability of reformists to counter the government’s use of the current slogan, “Islam and the Nation”; and Iran’s confrontation with the West, in particular, the US.

Ahmedinejad recently suffered several setbacks, including defeat of his nominees in local elections. His populist handouts have blown up the special fund financed by Iran’s oil sales, estimated at $40 billion. He’s increasingly seen as a politician given to intemperate statements. He’s not fully trusted by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

If he’s reined in by the Establishment—as happened during the recent British sailors’ detention and release—that will strengthen the reformists. Reformists, including former Presidents Mohammed Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashmi Rafsanjani, could still exercise a restraining influence.

The reformists’ success will critically depend on preventing nationalism from being used as a self-legitimising platform by the hardliners. Britain’s recent adventurism on the sailors issue played straight into their hands. They drummed up national pride and won a public relations victory. Britain had to open clandestine talks with Tehran and make a deal.

Much will also depend on how the West deals with Iran’s nuclear programme. The US is implacably hostile towards Iran, which it wrongly sees as an “Axis of Evil” state supporting terrorism.

In fact, Iran is anti-al-Qaeda and has behaved with restraint in Shia-majority Iraq despite its considerable influence there. Iran feels humiliated at the sanctions imposed on it for running a nuclear programme which is legitimate—despite relatively minor infractions of International Atomic Energy Agency rules.

The more Iran is cornered over its nuclear activities, the more it’ll be tempted to be defiant—and made boastful claims about its uranium enrichment prowess. Iran is many years away from enriching enough uranium for a Bomb. Its facilities for uranium conversion into hexafluoride (Natanz) and its centrifuge plant (Isfahan) are under IAEA safeguard and cannot be used for weapons purposes.

Contrary to the claim that it has installed 3,000 centrifuges, the IAEA says it has about 1,300 primitive machines. It’s unlikely that Iran has stabilised these delicate centrifuges, which rotate at extremely high speeds like 1,000 revolutions per second. (Even India has had serious difficulties in stabilising centrifuges.)

More important, the Natanz facility produces gas which is probably too impure to lead to enrichment. IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei discounts Iran’s claim to “industrial-scale” enrichment and says “Iran is still at the beginning stages”.

This offers the US, UK, France and Germany an opportunity to negotiate nuclear restraint with Iran while not denying its right to enrichment for peaceful purposes. Iran is willing to talk—without suspending enrichment. A way out is possible. But the US must muster the will to explore it while abandoning ill-conceived plans to attack Iran.

Much of what happens to and in Iran will depend on the US—just as in 1953, when it toppled Iran’s first elected leader, and in 1979, when it courted the Revolution’s hostility by backing the Shah.