In 1978, the future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi helped storm the justice ministry in Tehran in protest against the shah. 'The future appeared full of promise.'
By DAVID FEITHAPRIL 23, 2011
'At the time I really believed that an Islamic Republic would bring us independence and liberty." The time was 1978 and the belief belonged to Shirin Ebadi, then a 31-year-old judge on the Tehran city court. So strong was her revolutionary fervor that she helped storm the justice ministry, one of many acts of revolt that eventually toppled the shah and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran's supreme leader.
"What would happen to our beloved Iran? No one knew," Ms. Ebadi writes in "The Golden Cage," her new book out next week, "but the future appeared full of promise."
The future, it turned out, was full of 7th-century religious fanaticism and brutal political repression. Now 63 and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her work defending the Islamic Republic's victims, Ms. Ebadi is no longer a revolutionary. She is subversive and brave, to be sure. But in this season of Middle Eastern uprisings, when a new Iranian revolution would be the most important to date, she conveys caution and gradualism.
"Some people believe that we have to throw out [Iran's] constitution and come up with a new constitution—this means revolution," Ms. Ebadi says. "Of course deeply I believe that this is not a democratic constitution, but I am looking for pragmatic ways. . . . We have to bring power to the people gradually."
Over two conversations this week in New York City and Washington, D.C., Ms. Ebadi says through an interpreter that she fears a Libya scenario in which Iran's leaders act like Moammar Gadhafi. Any attempt to end their rule, she worries, "is going to call for blood-shedding. . . . I am for solutions with less blood-shedding. I am a defender of human rights. That's why I don't want to find ways that would hurt people."
Ms. Ebadi prefers to focus political and legal pressure on getting the Iranian government to begin respecting the many existing constitutional rights that it ignores. For example, the right of ethnic minorities—the Azeris, Baluch, Arabs and others—to teach their mother tongues to their children. "This is the first step, to ask for the implementation of these laws. After that people will naturally become stronger. Then they can take other steps."
Dogged persistence, not grand action, is this lawyer's way. The Khomeinists kicked her off the bench for being a woman in 1980, mandating that she work as a secretary in the court over which she once presided. By the early 1990s, she established a law practice that focused on representing the weak—refugees, women, children. She took on the cases of intellectuals, students and others whom the regime had targeted as zedd-e enghelab, counter-revolutionaries. Often that meant representing the families of individuals whom government agents had stabbed to death in their home, for example, or shot in their university dormitory.
The work got her thrown in jail for 23 days in 2000, and it nearly cost her life: That same year, while reviewing intelligence ministry files to prepare for a case, she found her own name on a list of intellectuals to be targeted for extrajudicial killing. Her death warrant was cancelled by Iran's then-President Mohammad Khatami before it was carried out. Now, a decade later, she lives in exile (mostly in Atlanta, Ga.), having not returned to Iran since June 2009, fearing certain arrest. Her husband and sister remain there and have been arrested as a means of pressuring Ms. Ebadi. They are now out of prison but can't leave Iran.
Ms. Ebadi nonetheless calculates that the best way to change Iran is to work within the system, as she once did navigating the country's courts and ministries. In this regard her outlook is similar to that of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, Iran's most prominent opposition figures. Both former regime officials, Messrs. Mousavi and Karroubi ran for president in June 2009. Since the election was stolen by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both men have advocated deep reform but not revolution.
Both have been under house arrest since February, when they tried to lead marches in solidarity with the democrats of Tunisia and Egypt. In the 10 weeks since their confinement and effective silencing, the Iranian opposition has appeared to be in remission, with no high-profile protests or diplomatic defections.
But Ms. Ebadi says the Iranian opposition has actually "become stronger." She claims that "dissatisfaction is increasing every day" and points specifically to the economy: "The price of food in Tehran is twice as much as it is in New York." She mentions a recent International Monetary Fund report that Iran's economy is experiencing no growth and 22% inflation, and also a parliamentarian's recent statement that unemployment exceeds 30%.
What's more, she says, the Ahmadinejad government has hurt itself by cutting food and fuel subsidies. Others have interpreted the subsidy cuts—which were bound to be unpopular—as a sign of government confidence. But, says Ms. Ebadi, they sent the price of natural gas up 20 times and caused angry protests in front of parliament.
Ms. Ebadi also expresses optimism about opposition from organized labor, which was crucial to dislodging the shah in the late 1970s. "For the last two weeks, the workers at the Mahshahr petrochemical company have been on strike and the plant has not worked at all. . . . During the shah's reign, when the workers went on strike that was political—their salaries were paid but they didn't want the shah. But now they say 'We are hungry.' And I think that a hungry worker speaks stronger."
The point is surely debatable. As the political scientist Francis Fukuyama has written, channeling Samuel Huntington, the successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt fit a classic model, driven "not by the poor but by upwardly mobile middle-class people who find their aspirations stymied." By this reasoning, bread riots are less likely to yield the fundamental change that Iran needs. When that change looked possible in the summer of 2009, Iran's protesters were generally not the poor and their motivations appeared more political—"Where is my vote?"—than economic.
Another advantage for Iran's opposition, says Ms. Ebadi, is that the government's nuclear program is increasingly unpopular. "Ahmadinejad talks about nuclear energy as national pride . . . but that's not true. People don't care."
This is a reversal for Ms. Ebadi. In a 2006 Los Angeles Times op-ed, she wrote that "Although a vast majority of Iranians despise the country's hard-liners and wish for their downfall, they also support its nuclear program because it has become a source of pride for an old nation with a glorious history."
That was true "at the time," she now says. "But after the Security Council of the United Nations placed economic sanctions on Iran, and the violence of the government increased, and poverty was increased, then the people found out that the policies of the government in this regard were wrong. Now they don't care at all. Remember that people don't always think the same, they change."
The most convincing plank in Ms. Ebadi's generally optimistic view is Syria. "People are very happy about the uprising of the people of Syria. . . . If there is democracy in Syria it's like the arms of Iran are cut off," she says. "The people of Iran would be very happy if Bashar Assad is toppled because that's the beginning of the toppling of the Iranian government."
As for U.S. policy, Ms. Ebadi first states pointedly that "A military attack or a threat of military attack is the worst thing." This answer is of a piece with Ms. Ebadi's statements since winning the Nobel in 2003. Along with the dissident Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji, she has for years represented a view that the U.S. could do little right in Iran.
In 2007, after the Bush administration allocated $75 million to support freedom and human rights in Iran—through TV and radio broadcasts, exchange programs and support for civil society groups—Ms. Ebadi wrote in the New York Times that "Iranian reformists . . . believe that the best Washington can do for democracy in Iran is to leave them alone."
Now, with a new U.S. president and Iran's enduring postelection crackdown, she's tempered that view. She underscores that she would never accept non-Iranian funds for her work, but she wants the U.S. to "provide access to the news for the [Iranian] people. . . . What I'm talking about is the Internet more than anything else."
This sounds a lot like the Bush administration's program, so I ask if informing the Iranian people should extend to supporting Iranian journalists and civil society groups. "Of course," she replies.
She also supports U.S. and international sanctions against Iran's energy industries, though in 2006 she wrote that "imposing U.N. sanctions on Iran would also be counterproductive, prompting Tehran to leave the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."
Then there's her call, which she has sounded consistently, for the West to prioritize human rights and press Iran to respect its own laws and treaty obligations. That agenda includes promoting the newly appointed U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran; demanding the release of political prisoners like her personal lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, the student activist Bahareh Hedayat, and the leaders of Iran's Bahai community; and calling for Iran to suspend its (sometimes public) executions of criminals and political prisoners, which numbered nearly 100 in January alone.
This would require some major U.S. rethinking. The State Department talks about Internet freedom, but for years it has sat on $30 million allocated by Congress for the promotion of "scalable, field tested" firewall-circumvention tools. On sanctions too, a strong law is now on the books, but the Obama administration hasn't seriously enforced it. Just this week, more than 450 foreign companies attended the Iran Oil Show in Tehran to explore opportunities in Iran's oil, gas, refining and petrochemical industries.
As recent events have shown, the main actors in the Middle Eastern drama will be the people of the region, not the U.S. So what advice does Ms. Ebadi have for the Tunisians and Egyptians now building their own postrevolutionary states?
"Usually in any revolution people are focused on who wants to have the most power. But the most important thing is the laws that are written during that time," she says. "What happened in Iran? . . . Numerous of the bad laws were passed within the first months. But then we thought that's not that important, if the president's good we can change it or make it good later. And we had a good president, [Mr. Khatami], but he couldn't do anything with the bad laws."
Ms. Ebadi, the cautious lawyer, may yet live to see the day when she can rewrite those laws.
Mr. Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at The Journal.
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