Opinion: The complexity of covering Iran

ANTIBES, France — The wave of protests in Iran is extraordinarily difficult to cover. The Iranian government is expelling foreign correspondents and cracking down on local reporters, so much of the reporting is being left to the participants themselves. The world is flooded with information on Twitter and other sites, but most of it cannot be independently verified. Shocking videos posted on Facebook and YouTube of the last moments of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young Iranian women shot dead during an anti-government demonstration, have stirred protests throughout the Western world.

The Iranian government is keenly aware of the power of pictures and the speed of information in today’s online and smartphone world. It is using sophisticated Western technology not only to slow down, filter and block communications, but also to spy on the Iranian protesters and to spread confusion and disinformation.

The Iranian people, left to their own devices, have been using old-fashioned word of mouth to spread news and instructions. They have also learned to read between the lines of the local press and to decode government spin on their television.

Much of the international coverage of Iran is now being assembled outside the country from citizen reporting on websites, interviews with “experts” and whatever information foreign and local journalists still working in Iran can gather. Much of this journalism is necessarily second-hand and naturally distorted.

In the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the contested presidential election, Western reporters tended to talk to educated, English-speaking citizens from Tehran, the capital. They are not a typical cross-section of the population. It seems clear that most of them voted for the runner-up, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, but it is quite possible that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually won re-election, even if not by the wide margin claimed by the government.

Much of the foreign coverage is colored by the belief that Iran is undergoing a “green revolution” against a hated, despotic, clerical regime. It makes a good story, but oversimplifies the real situation. There are two battles going on at the same time in Iran.

One is the protest in the streets of Tehran and reportedly some of the other larger cities. It consists of people who firmly believe — on the basis of questionable private opinion polls and their own experience — that their votes were stolen. They voted for Mousavi, an uncharismatic 67-year-old engineer who had once been the country’s prime minister, because he seemed to promise fewer annoying religious restrictions on their daily lives and greater opening to the outside world. What some of the international media tended to miss is that most of the demonstrators were not demanding an end to their country’s Islamic system of government. Nor, for that matter, were they demanding the abandonment of Iran’s nuclear research program.

But there may have been just as many, or even more, Iranians who voted to re-elect Ahmadinejad, a populist politician, because they saw him as the defender of the poor and an opponent of the wealthy and corrupt clergy who dominate Iran’s Islamic system of government.

And that brings us to the second battle, which is taking place largely behind the scenes. It is a classic political struggle, although with a special Iranian flavor. The chief opponents are:

• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the clergyman who presides over the country’s complex government system in the role of Supreme Leader. He controls the forces of order, backs Ahmadinejad and has ordered the protests to be repressed.
• Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and one of the wealthiest and most powerful politician-clergymen in the country. He backs Mousavi and heads the committee that elects the Supreme Leader. He has been keeping his cards close to his chest but seems to be trying to act as kingmaker, a role he has played in the past. There are reports that he wants to unseat Khamenei, but these rumors may be no more reliable than the rest of the flood of information and disinformation from Iran.

What stands out from this welter of confusion is that it does not seem to be a revolution. It is a battle for political power within a system, rather than an attempt to overthrow the system. At least, so far.

In short, Iran is not the simple story in black and white that has been reported in much of the Western media. It never was. And because we are seeing only a small part of a very complicated picture, it is doubly hard to perceive how it will all end.

Faced with such a complex situation, President Barack Obama seems to be hedging his bets. He has adopted a moderate tone, trying to keep open the possibility of settling America’s 30-year dispute with Iran no matter who comes out on top of the power struggles.

Click here for an overview of GlobalPost Iran coverage.