Quick quiz. Which of the following are forbidden in Iran?
If you answered all of them, you would be almost correct. While skinny jeans have been officially banned in Iran, Persian hipsters (and everyone else in Iran) are welcome to wear denim to their heart’s content, so long as they leave some slack around the ankle. Jean shorts (jorts) are also outlawed.
This past week, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu sat down with BBC Persia and gave an interview in which he spoke directly to the Iranian people. After many years of trying to convince Israel, the West and the world-at-large about the dangers of an nuclear-armed Iran, Bibi turned his attention to the Iranian people.
He told them that they deserve better and that if their nation becomes a nuclear power, their lives will only get worse.
The first part is unquestionably true. Persians are an ancient people, predating Egypt by half a millennium, and have made countless important contributions to the world including the windmill, the brick, the original predecessor to the guitar (the Tar), the cookie AND ice cream, as well as algebra and taxes. Yet in modern Iran, citizens can be imprisoned if they mis-style their hair.
The second part is more complicated. If they do become a nuclear power, Iran will be forced to withdraw from the NPT, increasing already painful sanctions and solidifying their pariah status on the world stage. Nuclear power will also act as a safeguard for the Ayatollahs against external regime change. A nuclear weapon serves as an international guarantee that no matter what the world’s opinions on internal matters, diplomatic solutions will be sought. Bibi is arguing that if Iran obtains the bomb, the Iranian people will be stuck with their leadership indefinitely.
This argument too proves problematic. A nuclear weapon cannot protect a government from its own people. Certainly unconventional weapons can be utilized against insurrection from within (as we have witnessed in Syria), but short of committing national suicide, the nuclear option simply cannot be seen as a relevant factor within a civil war. So Bibi is warning the Iranian people that if they become a nuclear power, the world will be unable to invade on their behalf in the future.
It is a strong argument when speaking to the West that a nuclear weapon will crystalize the mullahs in Iran indefinitely, but it makes much less sense when speaking directly to the Iranian people. According to a recent Gallup poll, 63 percent of Iranians support their government’s nuclear program; they see it as their national right. In that same poll, respondents were asked who they most blame for the sanctions that have crippled their economy. Nearly half (47 percent) blame the West. Ten percent blame their own government, which is about the same amount as those who blame Israel (9 percent).
Bibi has good reason to fear a nuclear-armed Iran and he has been lobbying tirelessly for many years to convince the world’s leaders that they must match his passion on the issue. As a thirty-plus year standoff between the US and Iran appears to be starting to thaw, Bibi is working as furiously as ever. Along with meeting with President Obama and speaking at the U.N. on the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, he has been steadfast in his efforts to convince the world that they must look beyond Iran’s new friendly demeanor (on offer from newly elected Iranian President Rouhani) and pull back the curtain to reveal the true epicenter of power in Iran: the mullahs.
As Haaretz noted regarding Netanyahu’s approach to the apparent warming of relations:
He is entrenching himself in his role as angry prophet warning against Iranian deception. The message is that the American president is naïve – one could almost say foolish – and that only the Israeli prime minister is sober and experienced.
It was supposed to be this sober and experienced Netanyahu speaking to the Iranian people this week, but he made a gaffe. He claimed that Iranians were not free to wear jeans. They are.
It is a particularly interesting gaffe. North Koreans are not allowed to wear jeans (or worry about accessing Twitter or Facebook, as the internet is outlawed outright). Perhaps this is what he was thinking about. The real question is why was he telling Iranians what they are and are not allowed to do. This does not sound like a sober reflection but a lecture. And the Iranian people took to the internet to deride Bibi’s slip-up. They corrected him en masse and posted endless photos of Iranian people in jeans, of jeans in Iranian closets and the like. And what medium did they use to post these pictures: Twitter, of course. You read that right, they took to an outlawed medium to decry and defend their freedom to wear jeans.
That is the true problem with this gaffe: Who cares if someone can wear jeans in Iran if they cannot talk about them, or anything else, freely on the internet? Bibi was saying that Iranians lack freedom, but he set the bar on what constitutes freedom so low that he missed the mark. Through his error, he undercut the entirety of the message. He failed his Nick Naylor 101 final exam. But he is not wrong, he simple failed in his hyperbole. Jeans do not equal freedom.
The larger issue at play is that Netanyahu has spent years cultivating the image that he is an expert on Iran. He considers himself the one man on the world stage who truly understands the Islamic Republic; while everyone else has their head in the sand, his eyes are clear. Fair or not, critics will ask: If he doesn’t know this, what else doesn’t he know? One snarky question that was asked of Bibi repeatedly from critics on Twitter: Why didn’t your Mossad agents in Iran notice that the streets of Tehran are filled with denim? The implication is clear. If you can be wrong about something so simple, what else are you wrong about?
Is this a reasonable counter-argument? Of course not. Does someone need to understand the full ins and outs of the U.S. tax structure to know that the government shutdown is a problem? Do they need to follow American Idol to have an opinion about American drone attacks? Let’s hope not. But when a world leader spends years touting himself an expert, and then makes a mistake, things begin to unravel.
Now if only the Iranian people could speak about these issues openly and freely on Twitter — without fear of imprisonment — maybe the real conversation could begin.
Follow me on twitter @jlemonsk
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