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Khamenei aides criticism of Iraqs Sistani reveals disputes

Iraqi officials have condemned criticism of thecountry's top Shia cleric by a senior aide to Irans supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In an editorial piece for the conservativeKayhan daily, Hossein Shariatmadari, a close confident of Khamenei, criticised Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's meeting with the UN secretary-general's special representative for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.

In themeeting on 24 September, Sistani urged the United Nations to send election observers to Iraq to monitor the countrys upcoming parliamentary elections.

One year on, has Iraq's anti-government protest movement changed the country?

Shariatmadari wrote of the meeting that "inviting the UN to observe the elections in one country is equal to announcing the bankruptcy of that country, of not believing in your own nation, and of having hope in outsiders".

Officials in Baghdad,from across the political spectrum, swiftly moved to condemn Shariatmadari's comments.

We strongly condemn the commentary published in an Iranian daily that offended the great leader (Sistani); such insults are offensiveto all Iraqis," said Iraqs former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Meanwhile, reformist Iranian politicians also voiced their support for Sistani.

"The great authority, his Eminence, Ayatollah Sistani is the fortress of Iraq, the security valve for the region, and an asset for the entire Islamic world," tweetedMohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister.

Esmail Qaani, commander of Irans Quds Force, also praised Sistanis role in stabilising Iraq.

Ayatollah Sistani is a symbol of glory and authority for the Shia [religious scholars], and an icon of mobilisation power in Iraq and all Islamic societies, he was quoted by the state-run ISNA news agency as saying.

The increasing pressure on Shariatmadari, who is an appointee of Irans supreme leader at the Kayhan daily, as well asa former member of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), forced him to officially apologise in a second editorial published on 29 September.

Reformist outlets used the controversy as an opportunity to criticise the usually untouchable Shariatmadari.

Does Shariatmadari have any understanding of Irans complicated [political] situation in the region, where the United Arab Emirates has signed a normalisation agreement with Israel and Iranian-Saudi relations are at their lowest point, the pro-reformist Etemad daily wrote.

Following a report by Reuters that Iran had doubled its oil exports in September, newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad has revealed the means used by the country's oil ministry to sell oil and petrochemical products while bypassing US sanctions.

According to the daily, oil swaps and ship-to-ship oil transfers are the main tactics Tehran has employed to get around Washingtons full embargo on its oil exports and banking system.

Iman Nasseri, managing director for the Middle East at FGE Consultancy, told Donya-e-Eqtesadthat Iranian oil tankers cross international waters and store oil in Chinese ports.

Owners of oil tankers seized by US deny they were destined for Venezuela

The daily also revealed that Iran offers high discounts on its crude oil and condensate to attract customers who were previously scared off by the sanctions.

Ali Asghar Zargar, an Iranian oil trade expert, explained that not all tactics used by Iranian officials to get around the sanctions are known yet.

Iran has been exporting oil with tankers sailing with the flags of other countries, as well as tankers turning off their GPS devices to avoid detection by the US, Zargar was quoted by the paper as saying.

According to Zargar, Irans largest oil sales takes place on the sea and through ship-to-ship transfers.

Moreover, oil swaps and exporting crude oil to neighbouring countries through rail transfers are other tactics used by Iran, he added.

Experts say that recent fuel shipments to Venezuela, another nation heavily sanctioned by the US, also help explain the spike in sales.

In May, a five-tanker flotilla carried over 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and components from Iran to El Palito port in Venezuela.

The trade between Iran and Venezuela received a tough response from the White House, and in August the US seized four tankers carrying 1.2 million barrels of petroleum, saying the tankers had departed from Iran en route to Venezuela.

However, three Gulf companies owning the tankers rejected the US accusations, saying that the tankers destination was Trinidad.

On Monday, the Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, confirmed that a three-tanker flotilla from Iran had entered Venezuelas territorial waters.

According to Tasnim, the three cargo ships carried 820,000 barrel of gasoline to Venezuela.

Despite an international outcry, three Iranian writers and members of the Iranian Writers Association (IWA), Baktash Abtin, Reza Khandan Mahabadi and Kayvan Bajan have beensummoned to the Evin prison in Tehran to begin their jail terms.

On 26 September, the IWA posted photos on its Facebook account of a group of IWA members accompanying the three authors at the entrance of the prison, moments before they began their sentences.

Abtin and Khandan Mahabadi, both board members of the IWA, were found guilty on charges of propaganda against the state and collusion against national security at Irans Islamic Revolution Court, and were each sentenced to six years in prison.

Iran rejects Saudi accusation it trained terrorist cell uncovered in kingdom

Kayvan Bajan, a former board member of the IWA, was given a three-and-a-half-year jail term on the same charges.

According to the IWA, Irans security forces had filed the charges against theauthors to force them to stop publishing the IWAs internal magazine and halt their participation in the writing of a book about the history of the IWA.

During the trial of the three authors, the IWA slammed the government for putting pressure on independent writers, demanding it end the suppression of freedom of expression in Iran.

The only reason to put three members of the IWA on trial is due to their activities in advocating freedom of expression, and because of their opposition to censorship, the statement read.

At the same time, the international PEN organisation condemned the lengthy prison sentences for the Iranian writers and demanded the immediate release of the authors.

We stand in solidarity with our Iranian colleagues who are targeted due to their writing and peaceful activism,"said Rebecca Sharkey, campaigns and communications director of PEN International.

"We call on the Iranian authorities to drop all charges against them and to respect their right to freedom of expression.

The IWA, one of the most progressive art associations in Iran, was founded in 1968.

Despite its vital role in organising writers and poets against the Shah's administration, the association was banned after the Islamic Revolution in 1981, and a number of its members were arrested and killed.

*The Iranian press review is a digest of reports that are not independently verified as accurate by Middle East Eye.

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Iranian press review: Tensions flare in Iraq and Iran over criticism of Sistani - Middle East Eye

Babak Jeddi/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesA billboard of Gen. Qassem Soleimani as nationwide protests demanded the avenging of his assassination by the US military, Tehran, January 7, 2020

One spring morning, on a return visit to Iran in 2015, I was sitting in a taxi stuck in traffic in Tehrans Towhid Square and scanning the image-plastered dashboard to kill time. I took in the familiar snapshots: Los Angeles singers like Dariush and Ebi, scantily clad Bollywood actresses, framed verses from Quran swinging underneath the rear mirror, and an amulet dangling from its little frame. But amid this collage, there was also a photo of someone I had never seen before: a severe but distinguished-looking uniformed man. I pointed to the picture, and spoke.

Do you like Soleimani? I asked the taxi driver.

Oh, of course, he said. Hes my man. Then, seeing the confusion on my face, he added, I hate mullahs as much as anyone, believe me. But Hajj Qassem is different.

It was after that encounter that I began to notice how ubiquitous the image of Soleimani, a man whose name few people had known just a few years earlier, had become. In the windows of corner stores, on top of car trunks and van doorsposters of him were everywhere. Just like my cab driver, ordinary people had begun to revere him despite his steadfast loyalty to the system so many of them despised.

To urban liberals like me, this widespread adoration of Qassem Soleimani was baffling. He had never wavered in his commitment to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the Quds Force, the elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) under Soleimanis command, had proved vital to propping up Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Soleimanis surge in popularity after the Iranian intervention in Syria was also connected with the prevailing belief that it was he who had defeated ISIS. Without Hajj Qassem, according to conventional wisdom in Iran, that army of evil would have overrun the borders of Iraq and attacked Iran itself, raping women, enslaving children, and staging public beheadings. Soleimani had saved the nation.

Finally, as if Soleimani hadnt been romanticized enough, the US military, at President Trumps behest, assassinated him by drone strike on January 3, 2020, in a fashion that happened to neatly align with Shia martyrdom mythology: the central narrative of the holy day of Ashura involves a mighty power shedding the blood of a heroic underdog in a cowardly fashion.

Iranian officials were swift to launch a campaign integrating the loss of Soleimani into their daily political messaging. The campaign began immediately after Soleimanis killing, and it remains in full force today. His face is everywhere, writ large and small on billboards and on walls, on posters and in graffiti, on paper and on screens.

This commemoration of Soleimani as the ultimate martyr is the latest manifestation of the Islamic Republics long history of communicating political messages in graphic mediaa particular cultural tradition of propaganda. It is no overstatement to say that an understanding of Iranian politics today rests on the knowledge of the part murals have played ever since the regime came to power in 1979.

The first face of the revolution to become its leading icon was, of course, not a soldier but a cleric. There were colored photographs of the Ayatollah Khomeini, noted V.S. Naipaul in the travelogue of his first visit to Iran in that momentous year (published in The Atlantic in 1981), as hard-eyed and sensual and unreliable and roguish-looking as any enemy might have portrayed him. Naipaul got many things wrong about Iran at the dawn of the revolution, but there was something in this observation that was spot-on. Khomeini looked hostile. He never smiled. His piercing eyes, set deeply in his haggard face under a heavy black turban, stared belligerently at the camera. The mistrustful glare conveyed a clear message: I am watching you.

I was a child in the Eighties, and my memories of that decade almost all have an image of Khomeini embedded in them. His face was plastered on every empty wall in my hometown of Ahvaz, on our TV screens, even on the first page of our textbooks at school, and later on, after his death, on all bill denominations. The ubiquity of his likeness spoke absolute power.

Murals were a crucial element of Khomeinis propaganda machine, particularly during the IranIraq War. Some of those war murals can still be found on walls in Tehran and in other cities. They followed a simple template, involving a portrait of Khomeini accompanying wartime martyrs, innocent-looking young men, highlighting both their sacrifice and their complete devotion to the leader.

Mural artists essentially functioned as morgue masters: they took photographs of dead soldiers, sanitized the blood and gore, and refigured them as celestial beings taken up into the embrace of the divinea technique Hamed Yousefi showed in his 2013 documentary, Sanat-e Farhang-Jang (The culture industry of war).

With the death of Ayatollah Khomeini and the end of the war, which came within a year of each other, the ideological zeal that had engulfed the country in the immediate post-revolutionary period soon abated. The discourse shifted from martyrdom to managerialism: suits replaced uniforms, beards were trimmed short, battlefield commanders gave way to engineers. Women still had to wear full hijab, but they moved from support work behind the frontlines to jobs behind desks. Over the course of the Nineties, under presidents Akbar Rafsanjani and then Mohammad Khatami, only distant echoes of the tendentious ideology of the previous decade were heard.

This dramatic shift, reflected in the visual culture of the time, was clearly evident in newer public murals. The portraits of Khomeini and the martyrs lost their monopoly on city walls. A relatively obscure branch of Tehrans municipal government known as the Institute for Urban Beautification (also known as the Beautification Organization of Tehran) gained prominence. It favored colorful, somewhat kitschy work often with themes from nature or inspired by the love stories of classical Persian poetry.

An artist named Mehdi Ghadyanloo was particularly influential in changing the visual landscape of the capital in the early 2000s. A student of fine arts at the University of Tehran, Ghadyanloo responded to the call from the city authorities for a competition to decorate the thousands of empty walls in the city. He won the prize and got to work. Equally indebted to the surrealism of Ren Magritte and the Pop Art style of David Hockney, Ghadyanloo manipulated perspective to create fantastical but highly rendered scenes: in his murals, cars fly and people walk upside down, gigantic balloons soar through illusory ceilings, and vast voids fill flat surfaces, usually against the background of a pristine blue sky.

Unexpectedly popular, his murals soon became an intrinsic part of the urban landscape, reflecting his optimistic vision of a livable Tehran. Ghadyanloo carefully skirted politics. His images are soothing backdrops, offering a whimsical utopia amid the chaotic metropolis.

Official ideology never disappeared from public spaces, except that Khomeinis face was replaced by that of his successor, Ali Khamenei. But the fanciful and the doctrinaire coexisted on the walls of Tehranuntil Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf became mayor. This former commander in the IRGC turned police chief went on to hold the office for twelve years. (Earlier this year, he became speaker of parliament, a testament to the closed shop of political power in Iran.)

At the time he was first elected, in 2005, the city was undergoing major changes. A decades-long expansion of the city has seen a large portion of its population relocated to far-flung suburbs, and enormous, endless expressways now slice through the urban fabric. Tehran now feels increasingly hostile to pedestrians and most Tehranis spend hours commuting in cars, seeing the outside world in fleeting flashes. As a result, the old neighborhoods wall paintings have lost their former visibility and relevance.

This car-centered urban sprawl has ushered in the billboard era. Large vinyl surfaces mounted on thick columns, enabled by new printing technologies, have replaced painted walls. Overly excited at the creative possibilities, the Institute for Urban Beautification went in for extravagant experiments, like its 2015 billboard gallery of modern art that displayed gigantic reproductions of works by Kandinsky, Pissarro, and other Western artists for ten days on more than a thousand billboards in the capital city.

Around the same time, the mural artists working for the Institute, many of whom were visual artists with experience in galleries or as graphic designers in private companies, began to develop a new aesthetic for the political messaging they were tasked with conveying. In effect, they attempted a creative synthesis of the nonpolitical style of Ghadyanloo with the pure propaganda of the Imam and martyrs imagery.

Anti-American themes, often crudely rendered, have long been a staple of Iranian murals. But in the mid-2010s, at the height of the nuclear talks, the Institute artists started co-opting Western cultural symbolism to convey the untrustworthiness of the US as a negotiating partner.

In this example, the Iranian representative and the US envoy sit across the table from each other. On the right is the Iranian, neatly dressed, his hands on the table to show he has nothing to hide, one fist clenched in determination. In contrast, the American slouches in his chair, his body language exuding arrogance. Beneath his diplomats white shirt and suit jacket, he is wearing military fatigues and combat boots. Under the table, he brandishes a gun.

Another example appropriates the famous photograph of American marines raising their flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jimaexcept that here they are planting the Stars and Stripes not on a Pacific island but on a heap of destruction: broken bodies, demolished houses, and exploded cars. The iconic image of American heroism is turned on its head.

For the most part, though, this more sophisticated propaganda filled these billboards for only a few days at a time. The forces of exploding consumerism in Iranian society ensured that the space was soon taken by commercial ads. And for most of this latter period, the state itself seemed at a loss for a coherent, stable, visual theme to underpin its political mobilization. It was not until the assassination of Soleimani that it found one to replace Khomeini, who had died more than thirty years earlier, in 1989.

This first major billboard response to the Soleimani assassination was striking in its austerity of design: Soleimanis stylized likeness against a huge, blood-red field. The phrase your blood challenges any adversary, inscribed in a computerized Nastaliq calligraphy, barely makes sense in English. More literally translated as your blood calls for rivals, it draws on cultural and linguistic understandings inaccessible to non-Farsi speakers.

Harif talabidan (to challenge, to call for rivals) refers to part of an ancient warriors practice, radjaz. By this custom, a rhetorical exchange would take place on battlefields of ancient Persia before two armies clashed: the mightiest warrior from each side would soliloquize, praising his own side, shouting out to his ancestors, and enumerating his reasons for confidence in victory, while at the same time hurling insults and deprecations at the enemy lines.

The verb harif talabidan almost always has a human subject, yet here the subject is khoun (blood). This billboard thus works as a succinct, modern radjaz, itself challenging on the enemies of the Islamic Republic to combat.

A different billboard featuring Soleimani (below) appeared at Vali Asr Square, one of the busiest central hubs in Tehran. Saluting the passersby, Soleimani stands at the head of a crowd designed to represent Iranians of all walks of life. The caption, which is taken from a well-known 1979 revolutionary song, translates as Lets move forward together, and sing in one voice: Viva, our beloved Iran!

By Iranian standards, this billboard is notable for its diversity and inclusivenessyet not a single cleric is represented. Save for three women in chador, no one even appears to be of a particularly religious bent. In fact, some of the women portrayed here, should they walk down the streets of Tehran wearing their scarves that way, might be stopped by the religious police.

This contradiction with official ideology reveals the intention behind the image: aware of the deep discontent in Iranian society, the authorities are using Soleimanis popularity in an effort to repair their tattered legitimacy with their disaffected citizensremoving themselves and leaving only the general to represent the establishment.

Soleimanis assassination has also provided the state with an opportunity to rekindle nationalist pride, a rallying point of support for Iran as a power in the region. In this image, Soleimanis face has become a sort of map of Iranian strategic influence. The caption reads, Soleimani is still alive, with the hashtag #hardrevenge. Soleimani lives on as the personification of Iranian regional ambitions.

Palestine occupies a special place in this theme. The generals martyrdom creates space for imagining a world in which the armies of the Islamic Republic vanquish the Zionist enemy and celebrate the liberation of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

In this mural (below), Soleimani appears against the backdrop of the mosque. The simplicity of the image and its medium harken back, with an almost anachronistic quaintness, to the 1980s, when Khomeini and revolutionary martyrs appeared everywhere on city walls. Beneath Soleimanis prayerful hands, the caption reads: Quds [Jerusalem] is the compensation for your blood. Yet Soleimanis mild expression belies the martial message: he looks meeker than usual, his hair and beard whiter than they actually were. The modesty of his demeanor is perhaps a tacit acknowledgment of how distant the dream of a such a conquest in his name is in reality.

That restraint is absent from this detailed representation, below, of the utopia envisioned by the Islamic Republic. It connects a triumphant moment in post-revolutionary Iranian history, the breaking of the siege of Khorramshahr during the IranIraq War, with the future capture of Jerusalem: Quds will be the next Khorramshahr.

The only identifiable Iranians in the image wear the IRGC uniform. Having taken over the al-Aqsa Mosque, they are celebrating with ordinary Palestinians. Iranian-backed groups like Hezbollah and Hamas are represented through symbols on and around the jeep in the foreground. The man on the hood is holding a portrait of Sheikh Yassin, the founder of Hamas, along with Hamass original flag. Above him, another man is waving the flag Hamas has used since 2007, when it took control of Gaza. The Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyehs likeness appears several times, given pride of place thanks to his close ties with Soleimani. The yellow flag in the back of the car belongs to Liwa Fatemiyoun, an Afghan militia that also fought in Syria under Soleimanis supervision. The ensign of Hashd al-Shaabi, an Iraqi Shia paramilitary group, also features, while the blue-and-white flag of Israel burns. The only sign of the PLO is atop the mosque in the background, where a forlorn-looking fellow timidly waves the groups banner (the PLO is dominated by Fatah, Hamass rival for Palestinian leadership).

All told, this billboard represents the most elaborate treatment of the post-Soleimani utopia envisioned by the Islamic Republic, a detailed cartoon-graphic account of its idea of compensation for his blood.

This vast, nationwide campaign of commemoration for Soleimani aimed, above all, to exploit his popularity as a symbol of national unity while saber-rattling to advertise the countrys power to exact revenge on Soleimanis assassins. In reality, both national unity and retribution have proved to be chimeras. Beset by domestic corruption and severe economic sanctions, Iran has problems that run too deep to be dispelled by poster art.

Indeed, it now looks as though the disjunction between the regimes official messaging and its relative impotence has caused the martial, militant tone to give way to a very different mood. The following, erected at the same spot as the Call for Rivals billboard, exemplifies this transformation.

The occasion for this image is the newly designated National Daughters Day. The caption reads: With my angels, I am close to the heavens. Relegated now to the background, to the left of a youthful, caring father, Soleimanis framed portrait hangs on the wall, beneficently watching over the happy family, presumably from those same heavens.

In another, similarly themed poster, two other girls are delighted at the sight of a cake. The wall behind them is decorated with a childs painting of the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali. The image was created to celebrate the Shia anniversary of the Prophets designation of his cousin Ali as his successor, an occasion that has nothing to do with commemorating Soleimani, yet here he is again, holding the two girls in a framed photo on the shelf, as if a family member himself.

In this new phase of messaging, Soleimani is no longer at the center; a framed version of him hovers in the background, the national trauma of his loss soothed by the pious but gentle incorporation of his memory into Iranians daily domestic life. From the bold promises of bloody revenge to the proclamation of regional hegemony and fantasies of revolutionary justice, and finally to the quiet commemoration of the martyred general in the family home, the Islamic Republic is enacting its need to heal this wound to the nations pride on the walls of Tehran.

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The Martyrdom of Soleimani in the Propaganda Art of Iran - The New York Review of Books

News of the infection of the most powerful man in the world with the most notorious disease in the world drew instant reactions of shock, sympathy, undisguised glee and, of course, the ever-present outrage and curiosity that follow much of what Donald Trump does, even from 10,000 miles away.

Trump's announcement, on Twitter, on Friday that he and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, and the deep uncertainty that accompanied it, permeated the global news cycle, upending countless plans and sparking comment everywhere from presidential offices to the thousands looking to weigh in on social media.

The positive test reading for the leader of the world's largest economy adds more uncertainty to investors' worries, including how the infection might affect the Nov. 3 election between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden. U.S. stock futures and Asian shares fell in the wake of the news. The future contracts for both the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials lost 1.9 per cent. Oil prices also slipped. Stock prices in Japan and Australia tumbled.

To say this potentially could be a big deal is an understatement, Rabobank said in a commentary. Anyway, everything now takes a backseat to the latest incredible twist in this U.S. election campaign. World leaders and officials were quick to weigh in, and there was both sympathy and something approaching schadenfreude.

Wishing my friend @POTUS @realDonaldTrump and @FLOTUS a quick recovery and good health, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted.

U.S.-India ties have prospered under Trump, and India is seen as a partner to balance China's growing weight in Asia.

Our best wishes go to the president and the first lady, but it demonstrates that no one is immune from Covid-19 and catching it. So it shows that no matter the precautions, we are all susceptible to this, Australian Agriculture Minister David Littleproud, deputy leader of the conservative Nationals party, said on Australian Broadcasting Corp. TV.

A trying time, and it just goes to show that a global pandemic can in fact touch anybody, even the president of the United States. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, speaking at a weekly news conference, did not mention Trump's reluctance to wear masks when asked about his infection, but she said the news reminded me of how widely masks are worn in Japan. Major media across the globe also played up the announcement, with bulletins crawling across TV screens in Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei and Beijing.

China's official Xinhua News Agency flashed the news, and an anchor on state broadcaster CCTV announced it; there was no immediate comment from the government Friday, the second day of an eight-day national holiday. The positive test result for Trump and his wife was the most searched topic in China after news about the holiday on the widely used social media app Weibo a few hours after the announcement, with most comments mocking or critical.

One user darkly joked that Trump had finally tweeted something positive. The Chinese government has bristled at Trump's attempts to blame China, where the disease emerged, for the pandemic and called for global cooperation in fighting it, a message that has resonated with the public.

Hu Xijin, the outspoken editor of the state-owned Global Times newspaper, tweeted in English that President Trump and the first lady have paid the price for his gamble to play down the Covid-19.

Iranian state television announced Trump had the virus, an anchor breaking the news with an unflattering image of the U.S. president surrounded by what appeared to be giant coronaviruses. U.S.-Iran ties have suffered since Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed crushing sanctions.

Social media platforms in Asia were ablaze with quick reaction.

Would Trump blame the Chinese? Would he thumb his nose at his critics and enemies by breezing through the quarantine without serious symptoms, tweeting away from the White House? Would he become gravely ill, or worse, and, if he did, what would that mean for the U.S. election, one of the most contentious in recent history?

While the uncertainty seemed palpable on a scroll through various nations' social media, many of the comments seemed to revel in the announcement.

Here comes a chance for him to actually try out his idea of injecting disinfectant into himself and fighting back (against allegations that) it was fake news! tweeted Hiroyuki Nishimura, a Japanese internet entrepreneur, referring to an idea Trump floated earlier this year for treatment.

Keio University economics professor Masaru Kaneko tweeted that populist leaders, like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, "got infected because they tended not to take the coronavirus seriously. The two other leaders seriously tackled (the virus) after they get infected themselves.

The rest is here:
India to Iran: World reacts to Trumps infection with sympathy, mockery - Business Standard

The Afghan government and the Taliban will need to find compromises on a plethora of contentious issues to reach a peace settlement -- from civil liberties and womens rights to the country's name and flag.

The most crucial issue facing the warring sides is the makeup of Afghanistans future political system, which is currently an Islamic republic that is modeled on Western-style democracy.

An extremist Islamist group, the Taliban is seeking to transform the Afghan state into a theocracy. The militants see the current system as the product of a U.S. occupation.

The internationally recognized government in Kabul is seeking to preserve as much of the current constitutional order as possible, including key democratic tenets like womens rights, free speech, and competitive elections.

The Taliban has admitted that it cannot revive its Islamic Emirate, the official name of the brutal regime that ruled from 1996-2001. An international pariah that was targeted by U.S. sanctions and air strikes, the regime committed gross human rights abuses and persecuted women and religious minorities.

Fragile and deeply divided, the Afghan government has come to the peace negotiations that started on September 12 in the Gulf state of Qatar in relative weakness.

With roughly half of the country controlled or contested by the Taliban, Kabul lacks the military advantage to drive a hard bargain, especially with U.S. forces withdrawing, experts say.

As a result, they say, the Afghan government will likely have to accept significant constitutional changes and alterations to the current political system to achieve peace.

The Taliban knows that they cannot go back to their old emirate and will need to compromise because of their need for international recognition, says Kamran Bokhari, a director at the Center for Global Policy, a Washington-based think tank. We could see a hybrid between their medieval Sunni ideal and a modern Western-style state.

Bokhari says the likely outcome, if a peace deal is reached and the Taliban abide by it, is a Sunni Afghan version of the Islamic Republic of Iran -- a republican system with a heavy theocratic layer.

A political settlement between the opposing Afghan sides is a key component of a landmark U.S.-Taliban signed in February that is aimed at ending the 19-year war.

Under that deal, foreign forces will leave Afghanistan by May 2021 in exchange for counterterrorism guarantees from the Taliban, which agreed to negotiate a permanent cease-fire and a power-sharing formula with the Afghan government.

'Truly Islamic'

Rahmatullah Amiri, a Kabul-based political analyst, says recent remarks by U.S. officials and Taliban leaders appeared to show that regime change, via the negotiations, was under way.

Both sides will not use that term because of its sensitivity, says Amiri. But in reality, the Talibans main goal is regime change, and that is what is being discussed.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during the opening ceremony of the peace talks in Qatar on September 12, told the Afghan sides that the choice of your political system is yours to make.

He added that the size and scope of future U.S. financial assistance to the country, which relies heavily on international funding, would depend on that choice.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Talibans political chief and deputy leader, told the ceremony that Afghanistan should "have an Islamic system in which all tribes and ethnicities of the country find themselves without any discrimination and live their lives in love and brotherhood."

Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai, the head of the Talibans negotiating team, said the group was seeking to establish a "truly Islamic" system.

Abdullah Abdullah, the head of Afghanistan's High Council for National Reconciliation, a body that oversees the peace talks with the Taliban, made his own reference to the current political system that is supported by millions of men and women from a diversity of cultural, social, and ethnic backgrounds in our homeland.

Supreme Role Of Islam

There is common ground in the legal and governance systems of the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Both the Talibans political vision and the Afghan political system rely heavily on the centralization of power and the supreme role of Islam.

Afghanistans 2004 constitution prescribes that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam" and sometimes appears contradictory with more liberal and democratic elements within it.

Power resides in a heavily centralized government.

According to the Talibans views on governance, power should be centralized in an "Amir ul-Momineen," or leader of the faithful. This supreme leader is the head of state and has ultimate authority.

The Taliban, too, regards Sharia as the supreme law.

But the warring parties have staunchly different interpretations of Sharia law and the role of Islam.

The Taliban is a group of clerics, says Amiri. In any outcome, the implementation of their version of Islamic law is paramount for them.

The Iran Model

Experts say many new political systems are built on modifying existing models.

Bokhari says Irans Islamic republic, despite being predominately Shiite, could be used as a template in Afghanistan, a Sunni-majority country.

Under Iran's Islamic system of government, known as "velayat-e faqih," a top cleric serves as supreme leader and has the final authority on all matters of state and religion.

The system is designed to balance two forms of governance: theocracy and democracy. The supreme leader, the paramount expert in religious law, supervises the office of the president, who represents the people's will.

Bokhari says Afghanistans future political system is likely to have a complex web of institutions -- like the system in Iran -- that will be dominated by the Taliban at the expense of its opponents.

The Taliban could allow the presidency to remain in the hands of their opponents as long as it has oversight through a powerful cleric, much like Irans supreme leader, says Bokhari.

The Taliban will face stiff resistance in the legislative branch because they do not have a political party or experience in elections, experts say. But the group could look to establish a clerical body like Irans powerful Guardians Council, which supervises elections and vets legislation passed by parliament for compliance with Islamic laws.

Experts say the Taliban is likely to control the judiciary, which is already a stronghold of like-minded ultraconservative clerics.

The security sector, which is dominated by the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police, and the National Directorate of Security, the countrys main intelligence agency, is likely to be a major source of dispute.

Bokhari says the Taliban will look to break that monopoly through a Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) program as a framework for demobilizing or integrating fighters into the army or police.

Another option, he says, is for the Taliban to maintain a militia that is parallel to the state security forces like Lebanons Iranian-backed Hizballah, a powerful armed militia that plays a prominent role in politics.

Revolutionary Model

Experts say there are also reasons why the Talibans ideal "Islamic system" might not be based on or closely resemble Iran's.

It would be difficult for the Taliban as a movement, even among their own people and sympathizers, to put forward a model that was recognizably similar to the world's most prominent Shia Islamic state, says Andrew Watkins, a senior analyst for Afghanistan at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

The Iranian state is also based on a revolutionary model that seeks to export its 1979 Islamic Revolution, which goes against the Talibans insistence that its aims are solely national.

Shiite-majority Iran and the Taliban, a fundamentalist Sunni group, were former foes. But in recent years, the sides have forged closer ties.

External support has been key to the Talibans insurgency.

Pakistan, the Talibans main sponsor, has long been accused of sheltering and aiding the militants. U.S. officials have accused Iran of providing financial, political, training, and material support to the Taliban. Washington has also accused Russia of arming the Taliban, which Moscow denies.

The Taliban want to be seen as independent and not influenced by neighboring states, says Watkins. This will also likely steer it away from similarities with Iran's system.

The Saudi Template

Amiri says the Taliban appears to be most interested in replicating the system in Saudi Arabia, outside of it being a theocracy headed by a religious leader who rules for life and is chosen through bayat, or an oath of allegiance.

The Sunni kingdom is governed by Sharia law, has no elected legislature, and has a Council of Ministers, headed by the king, that exercises both legislative and executive powers.

While the Taliban might be interested in a Saudi style of government, they have not been able to articulate this because of the recent reforms made in Saudi Arabia have become unpopular among the Taliban, says Amiri, referring to Riyadhs publicly stated effort to open up the ultraconservative kingdom.

Saudi Arabia was among only three countries that recognized the Talibans brutal regime in the '90s and is believed to have sway over some Taliban leaders.

The Kabul government is not going to be able to secure a peace settlement without consenting to significant changes to the current political system, says Watkins. Whether those changes are constitutional in nature, or if the Taliban prove to be more flexible on the constitutional framework and more insistent in other ways, remains to be seen.

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Is The Taliban Seeking A 'Sunni Afghan Version' Of Iran? - Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty

The rediscovery of a film is seldom as fascinating a story as the film itself, but thats the case with Chess of the Wind (Shatranj-e Baad), directed by Iranian film-maker Mohammad Reza Aslani. It was only screened twice in Tehran in 1976, once to a cinema of hostile critics, and then to an empty cinema the bad reviews had done their work. The rediscovery of this film is great for me, says Aslani, now aged 76, and still living in Tehran. But it also allows audiences to view Iranian cinema from another perspective, and to discover other auteur film-makers who have been marginalised because of the complexity of their films.

Critical of the Shahs royalist government, the film also featured strong female leads and homosexuality, which didnt endear it to the Ayatollah Khomeinis regime either. In the politically tumultuous years that followed the Iranian revolution of 1979, the film was banned, and then presumed lost. Critics in Iran at the time of its release claimed the film didnt make sense, that my father was just trying to make an intellectual film, to imitate European cinema, says the directors daughter, Gita Aslani Shahrestani. But Aslani Shahrestani was determined not to let her fathers legacy languish. A writer and academic based in Paris, she was uniquely suited to the task. About seven years ago I was working on my PhD about auteur cinema in Iran, and this film was part of it, so I started to look for the film.

Having searched the international film archives without finding a copy, Aslani Shahrestani turned to her brother Amin based in Tehran to help in her investigation. Nothing could be found in the Iranian laboratories and archives either. It seemed that Chess of the Wind was lost for good. Then, browsing in a junk shop in 2014, Amin spotted a pile of film cans. On enquiring what they contained, the proprietor said he didnt know; they were simply on sale as a decorative element. Like something out of a fairy tale, on opening them Amin discovered a complete copy of his fathers long-lost film. Still banned in Iran, the print was smuggled out of the country via a private delivery service to Paris, where work began on restoring the film, overseen by Martin Scorseses non-profit organisation, The Film Foundations World Cinema Project, in association with the Cineteca di Bologna.

Chess of the Wind is a gothic family tale, following the (mis)fortunes of a paraplegic heiress played by Fakhri Khorvash, her angular face a study in controlled despair. Seeking to maintain her fragile independence, shes beset on all sides by predatory men her stepfather, his nephews, the local commissar who all seek to prise her fortune from her. Shes aided against them by her handmaiden, played by Shohreh Aghdashloo (nominated for an Oscar for her role in House of Sand and Fog). An erotic tension between mistress and maid adds spice and complexity to the proceedings.

The opulent, claustrophobic interiors are reminiscent of Persian miniatures. Theres also something of the gothic horror of Edgar Allan Poe. The influence of European cinematic masters like Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti and Robert Bresson is also apparent; the camera lingers on hands as they roll cigarettes, serve food, and feed gunpowder down the barrel of a gun, finding beauty in these simple actions. The sound design also stands out: wolves howl and dogs bay as they circle the house, ratcheting up the sense of menace; crows caw, jangling the nerves; heavy breathing makes the characters isolation in this haunted house increasingly oppressive. The soundtrack an early work by trailblazing female composer Sheyda Gharachedaghi takes inspiration from traditional Iranian music, and sounds like demented jazz.

Initial reactions to the restored film have been rapturous, to the delight of its director. I was not expecting such a positive reaction, says Aslani. Of course, Im very happy this film is finally being viewed fairly, and not through a lens that values populist cinema and propaganda.

Robin Baker, head curator of the BFI National Archive, who programmed the film in this years BFI London film festival, says, I think this film will have an impact on the world film canon its ambition on so many different levels is extraordinary. It has a resonance far beyond an Iranian cinema niche. I found it genuinely shocking at times. I think it will confound so many peoples expectations not only of the cinema, but also of the culture of Iran. I can confidently say that audiences wont have seen anything quite like this, no matter what their taste in cinema.

Sadly, Aslanis film-making career was a casualty of Irans political upheavals. Before Chess of the Wind, which he directed aged 33, Aslani had made two short films: a documentary (Hassanlou Cup, 1964), and a wry political allegory critical of the Shahs government (The Quail, 1969). Hed also directed the first season of a television series (Samak Ayyar, 1974) that was roundly criticised for its idiosyncratic, uncommercial style. Afterwards, he remained in Iran, continuing to work within the Iranian film industry. Hes since made more than 10 documentaries, an experimental piece (Tehran, A Conceptual Art in 2011) and another feature film, The Green Fire (2008), but his output has been severely curtailed both practically and conceptually by his situation. Yet he still has plans.

I hope to make another feature, says Aslani. Ive had a script for 10 years, but because Ive been labelled uncommercial and unentertaining in Iran, nobody wants to risk producing it. Its a historical film about one of the greatest Iranian poets, and the style of the film again recalls Persian miniatures, western painting and the cinema of Visconti and Bresson.

Meanwhile, Chess of the Wind is a reminder of his talent, and acts as a touching tribute by Gita Aslani Shahrestani to her fathers legacy. When he saw the restoration he said it was like seeing a therapist, that it reminded him why hed wanted to be a film-maker in the first place, says Aslani Shahrestani. He was really happy. He regrets nothing. He said the film was like a baby hed lost, and now theyre reunited.

Chess of the Wind is available for free on the BFI Player from 1013 October as part of the London film festival.

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'Audiences wont have seen anything like this': how Iranian film Chess of the Wind was reborn - The Guardian