Sean Penn in Iran

 

DAY FIVE

It wasn't easy to cut through the red tape necessary for Sean Penn to visit Iran in June, just a week before the country's presidential election. But it was almost as difficult for him to get out of the country. .

The bomb had been detonated in Tehran's central Imam Hussein Square. Reports of the number of dead ranged from one to 20. Evidently, this was not a weapon of great sophistication. However, four simultaneous blasts in Ahvaz, which had killed as many as 30 people, had evidently been the work of sophisticated extremists, with most suspicion focusing on the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization, MKO (also called MEK). Among those with whom I spoke, in and out of government, the consensus was that the bombings in Tehran and Ahvaz were intended to deter voting in the presidential election. MKO, formed in the 1960s, opposed U.S.-Iran relations under the Shah and participated in the assassinations of U.S. military and civilians. Following a power struggle upon Khomeini's return to Iran and bombings that took the lives of more than 2,000 people, MKO's leadership was exiled to Iraq. Since that time, they have propagandized their legitimacy and enlisted the support of conservative members of the U.S. Congress by supplying dubious information related to the nuclear weapons program in Iran. Reputable journalists for publications as varied as the Times of London and Newsweek have reported that the CIA has increasing ties with MKO. And it is feared the MKO may well be performing the misinformation tasks in Iran that the Iraqi National Congress has recently been exposed as playing in Iraq.

As a frame of reference, there are about 68 million people in Iran. Less than 4 percent are Arab, about half are Persian and the balance is made up of many diverse groups, including about 25,000 Jews -- more than any other state in the region after Israel.

Journalists were being prevented from visiting the bomb scene. Everyone we knew who'd made the attempt had been arrested. So we made the decision that sleeping in the jail for a couple of seconds of looking at the charred remains of the area wasn't worth the price of admission.

I went upstairs, called my wife and filled her in on the events of the day. She was displeased with the bombing stuff, but it was lunchtime back in the States and she had something on the stove, so I was spared the "What the f -- are you doing there" speech. And I was able to spare her the dumb "I didn't plant the f -- bombs" speech. I went through the messages that had been slipped under my door during the day, and each day there were many. This one sticks out to exemplify the experience: "Mr. Penn, on Thursday 14/06 at 5 p.m. there is a great election meeting of Dr. Moin fans in Tehran University Stadium and we have some secret news that Ansar Hisbollah group threaten to attack the stadium, I think it's a good opportunity for you to cover this news. Because of our safety, please don't speak to anyone about this message." It was unsigned. So I searched my room for hidden cameras and microphones until I fell asleep. That night I had a dream. I was in the stairwell of the Laleh hotel, replaying a childhood pastime, I had a test tube of hydrochloric acid in my hand. I drop 3 inches of magnesium ribbon into it. I place a balloon over the mouth of the tube. The balloon fills with hydrogen. I lay it on the step and grab a bamboo stick with a match attached to its end. I light the match and reach it to the balloon. BOOM! That'll wake you up. And it did.

It was 9 a.m. We rushed off to Moin headquarters. Dr. Mostafa Moin was the "students' candidate." A former minister of education and health, running as the main reformist. He was presently campaigning in the provinces, but his spokeswoman and key adviser, Elaheh Kulyai, had agreed to meet with us. Upon arriving at the headquarters, it struck me that while there were eight candidates for president, there were only eight. And it seemed odd that there would be no security, the day after these bombings that even the foreign ministry had acknowledged were election-related, for a primary candidate in said election. We cruised right into the building and sat down with Kulyai. She is the reformist parliamentarian who was the first female legislator to attend sessions without wearing a chador or body cape, despite threats of beatings by her fellow female parliamentarians. She was careful to introduce herself as Dr. Moin's spokeswoman. "Tolerance is a new word in our society," she said. "The obstacles of reform are cultural, economic and social." I asked Kulyai what had led to a statistic where women were so in the majority, both in graduating universities as well as the 75 percent dominance of university professorships. She said, "There are two explanations for this. The will and fortitude of Iranian women. But also, you must know, that men enter the workplace at a salary of $140 per month, and so, to provide for their families, they must begin to work, and are not able to attend university at the rate of women." Like Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, Kulyai believes that reform should move slowly. She, too, respected the long reach of the hard-liners and concurred that it would take great patience to bring reform.

In the mid-afternoon traffic, we traveled across town for a meeting with Hassan Poushnegar of the National Center of Studies and Public Opinion Measurement. The center conducts polling on everything from issues of public transport to presidential elections. He was considered the most credible of political pollsters. But whether or not the science of his work was unencumbered by the regime, of the top four candidates, within days of the election, none would go on to become president. The numbers at that time were Hashemi Rafsanjani at 30 percent, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf at 21 percent, Moin at 15 percent and Ali Larijani at 14.5 percent. In fact, there was not one person throughout my entire visit who mentioned a prediction on behalf of, or a willingness to vote for, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Baseej militia instructor who defeated Rafsanjani in the June 24 runoff election and today is president of Iran.

While Mohammad Khatami's regime fell short of legislating for social freedom, the people of Iran have lived these past eight years under an increasing tolerance toward reformist behaviors and attitudes. With the election of Ahmadinejad, even these phantom freedoms may be rescinded, and I worry for the people I met and faces of hope I saw. When first lady Laura Bush recently visited Afghanistan, she was reported to have described it as an "exotic" place. Iran is also an exotic place. And I can't help thinking of the students I met on the Tehran University campus and their steadfast respect for their ancestry as a foundation for their reform. One can only hope that the exotic integrity of Persia will be maintained by choice rather than authoritarian moral slavery. In a statement following the results of what would be a very questionable election, reformist Moin warned his countrymen: "Take seriously the danger of fascism. This will lead to militarism and social and political suffocation."

I was nearing the end of my visit, with my flight scheduled to leave at 3: 05 a.m. Tuesday. The Film Museum of Iran had asked for the opportunity to honor me. I accepted for two reasons: First, I have deep respect for the creative talent in the motion picture business in Iran, and many of them were being pulled away from other engagements or had offered to join in this event. Additionally, it was a way to appease what had been a fairly aggressive and annoying media that I was very interested in boring into the submission of not following me to the airport. So I went. On the drive there, as we were passing under the trees of Mellat Park, there was an announcement on the radio that some arrests had been made in the previous day's bombings. But no details. Later, at the museum, I was given a tour and a trophy.

I left to pack my bags at the hotel. There was a bit of a crowd in the lobby waiting for me, just young Iranian movie fans, and I supposed the event at the film museum might have hit Tehran TV. I made my way through the crowd and up to my room, with the kind help of hotel staff. It was just after midnight on the ride to the airport when my mind began to drift to my 14-year- old daughter. Her middle school graduation was to take place the following day. Because of the bombings, the airport and country were on "high alert." Should anything cause me to miss my flight or delay it, I would miss the ceremony, so I started getting nervous.

My car was diverted by airport police some distance from the drop-off area. But it looked as though all would go smoothly from there. That was until I tried to put my bag with the trophy from the Film Museum of Iran in it through the metal detector. They opened the bag and pulled out the trophy, looking at it the way a gorilla looks at a football. "What's this strange object?" it seemed they thought. They turned it upside down, on its side; one even made a clubbing motion with it. And just at the point where it seemed it might be confiscated, the clubber looked at me, suddenly recognizing me. It stopped him, mid-clubbing motion. He said, "Hashemi?" It was a reference to a newspaper photo that had appeared from my meeting with Hashemi Rafsanjani the prior day. Again, "Hashemi?" I nodded, "Yes, that's me. I'm the guy in the newspaper with Hashemi." He put the trophy very delicately back into my bag. Zipped the bag shut and I was on my way to Frankfurt, with a connection to San Francisco. It wasn't until I landed that I felt sure my notes and pictures would get home without confiscation.

Jet lag had cut me down around midnight the day of my return from Tehran, but my fractured body clock sounded its alarm at 4:30 a.m. the following morning. I got up, went to the kitchen, flipped on the TV and surfed my way through the channels, landing on CNN's "American Morning" with Soledad O'Brien. Her every hair in place, perfectly manicured lip line and striking mascara. She reported that I was in Tehran -- present tense -- on behalf of The San Francisco Chronicle, as, in fact, I sat in my Northern California kitchen. She followed by saying that while she didn't agree with me on many things, I seemed to be a thoughtful and well-read man (I'll confirm nor deny neither). Then as footage of me ran from the farewell given me by the Film Museum of Iran, she observed that I looked to be "playing the part" of a journalist. Gravitating toward such a packageable level of human insight, it dazzles the imagination that she is capable of making the connection. Being an actor, and the notion of playing the part of a journalist? Get it?

In fact, the tape CNN was airing had been recorded following my official duties in Iran, in essence, on my way to the airport, and had nothing whatever to do with journalism. Played or realized. And it didn't end there. The talking heads had me as an anti-American/pro-Iranian sensation, banking one inaccurate presumption after another.

While the dismissive editorializing and trivial attacks on me may be perceived as bickering over details in the life of a Hollywood actor, the reporting of the number of dead and the purpose of war are not. I couldn't help thinking about the irony: I had just returned to my own country, where we had a "free press," after spending several days in a country that clearly does not. Information is controlled, restricted, altered to fit the needs and purposes of those in power. And here was my own American free press, reporting me to be thousands of miles away from my kitchen in Northern California.

As the Iranian government strives to keep the people in the dark, consider the outside world and our perception of this ancient, now strongly conservative culture. What we know of Iran comes largely from news sources. But if news sources can't track the current whereabouts of an actor-journalist, can we depend on the accuracy of the information we are receiving about Iran? These questions relate to accuracy of information. So what of the spin? Look at it, more than 1,800 young Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 10,000 maimed and wounded. Numerous contractors dead. Human aid workers dead. U.N. staffers blown out of their lives by a truck bomb, and of course, the untold numbers of civilian casualties unspecified in a war justified, not by persuasion but by fear. Our nation seems under a spell where courage is violence, and the archives will show in television coverage and newspaper print, both through spun journalism and even more dominantly, editorial restriction, a consistency of media support for the casting of that spell. And with Iran now in the crosshairs of the nuclear debate, we might note that the most costly and competitive arms race in the world is taking place right here at home, between Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories. Those facts, above all, seem to me to dictate the importance of accurate and truthful reporting, on all sides of the world debate.

As I came to the end of the writing of this piece, I was in London. It was Thursday morning, July 7. I had been writing all night and was rushing to get a cab to the train station, where I'd board the Euro-star to Paris to attend the wedding of a friend. I came out the door of my hotel and asked the bellman to call me a taxi. There were sirens blaring in all directions within blocks of where I stood.

I said, "What's going on?"

He told me, "There's been an explosion."
 

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'We need reform, not revolution,' official says

On our fifth evening in Tehran, we went back to the hotel and sat down with the deputy secretary and spokesman for the foreign ministry, Hamid Reza Asefi. This guy was good. He could out-Western any Westerner, in speech and innuendo. Likable, smart and with the appearance of great candor. "Iran does not want to encourage an arms race in the region," he said. "Show us the evidence. You talk about Iraq -- Iraq was ruined by a stupid dictator. For us, should we have an independent policy, we experience pressure. But we are glad to see U.S. troops in Iraq. When the United States leaves, they will not be well thought of. But Iraq and Iran will have been made new friends. If the insurgency backs off, the United States should leave Iraq. If not, it serves us that they remain."

"Democracy," he continued, "is progressing every day. Be very clear, the inclusion of Iran by your President Bush in the term 'axis of evil' is not about squeezing us for our oil. The intention recognizes the influence of Iran on the entire Islamic region. Look at our country. They have learned how to express their position under (ex-President Mohammad) Khatami. And now we are in an election week and you see what they do?" referring to supposed U.S. support of MKO and insinuating MKO's involvement and destabilization of the elections through the bombings.

We asked about free-press issues, but he dismissed our run-in with the authorities at the women's rights demonstration that day. "You know how this is," he said. "Sometimes the police officials are in the lower end of literate and you came across one who behaved wrongly." Reese Erlich blurted that indeed "there were no less than 20 rejecting our combined credentials at the demonstration, and clearly that represented the policy of the regime."

"I was not there so I cannot speak about this," Asefi responded. "We must be patient. To reform too quickly would cause a deep backlash. You see about the bombings today, and we expect them now to continue. This process must move slowly or not at all. We need reform, not revolution."