Iran: Toward a Plan B

by Amir Taheri • December 19, 2018 at 5:00 am

Is a Plan B possible? No one knows for sure.
What is certain, however, is that the possibility should be discussed. This is what we propose to do in this session with a paper aimed at opening the discussion on how to nudge, help or even force Iran out of the schizophrenic trap that its current ruling elite, or history if you prefer, have set for it -- a way out that points to Iran absorbing its revolutionary experience to re-become a nation-state with the needs, aspirations, hopes, fears, and patterns of behavior of nation-states.

Like other revolutions with international ambitions, the Khomeinist revolution regards Iran as primarily a base for promoting its universal message through a global revolutionary network that recognizes no frontiers. Pictured: The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (right), leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left), Iran's current "Supreme Leader", sometime in the 1980s. (Image source: BBCPersian/Wikimedia Commons)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For four decades Iran has been in world headlines, not always for the best of reasons. Many countries have had problems with Iran in its current version as the Islamic Republic. In turn, the Islamic Republic has not been able to find the place it covets in a global system that it rejects as a creation of the "Infidel".

Those having problems with the Islamic Republic have contemplated, planned and, in some cases, even tried quite a few Plan A options to deal with the Islamic Republic. These range from efforts to persuade the current leadership in Tehran to change aspects of its behavior to economic warfare, "crippling" sanctions, and, on occasions, even military action.

All those plans failed to produce the desired result because they were based on the assumption that the Islamic Republic is a classical nation-state and likely to respond as such.

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The Great Turkish Brain Drain

by Burak Bekdil • December 19, 2018 at 4:00 am

Scores of academics (more than 265) who signed the "peace call" are being prosecuted on charges of terrorism.
"Most better [academics] tend to leave the country," said one university professor in Ankara on condition of anonymity, himself in correspondence with two US universities for a teaching position.
"Children who do not read the Quran are with Satan and Satanic people." — Professor Ali Erbaş, Turkey's top cleric, head of the Turkish government's powerful Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet).

Dr. Yavuz Örnek, a pro-government academic from Istanbul University's Marine Sciences Faculty, claimed that technology was more advanced in the times of the Prophet Noah than it is today, saying Noah had talked to his son on a mobile phone in order to convince him to come aboard his nuclear-powered ark. Pictured: Istanbul University. (Image source: Mimihitam/Wikimedia Commons)

This author once described a Turkish university as "just a group of buildings gathered around a library and a mosque," to paraphrase a quote from Shelby Foote. Today, universities in Turkey are increasingly becoming seats of Islamic learning, zeal and government bootlicking.

Life, for many scholars, is gloomy. Since the attempted coup in July 2016, nearly 6,000 academics have been dismissed from public universities under emergency decrees, including 378 who had signed a January 2016 Academics for Peace petition condemning the government's security operations in the Kurdish southeast. Another 38 academics from public universities and 48 from private universities have been dismissed by their universities and were told by university officials that the reason was signing the petition. Scores of academics (more than 265) who signed the "peace call" are being prosecuted on charges of terrorism.

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