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The Azadi tower in Tehran is strung with black flags. Photograph: Amos Chapple/Getty Images/Lonely Planet Images

In 1966, a 24-year-old architect who had just graduated from Tehran University hesitantly entered a competition to design a monument to mark the 2,500-year celebration of the founding of the Persian empire.

In hindsight, it was a competition of a lifetime, organised by the shah of Iran, who envisioned that the monument would act as his memorial tower, or Shahyad.

The architect, Hossein Amanat, had no idea that his hastily prepared design, which went on to win the competition, would one day become a focal point of the Iranian capitals skyline, serving as a backdrop to some of the countrys most turbulent political events.

The 50-metre (164ft) tall structure, now known as the Azadi (Freedom) tower, rode out the 1979 Islamic revolution, an eight-year war with Iraq and the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-era anti-government demonstrations.

But as his tower prospered, Amanats life unravelled.

The monarchy was overthrown in the 1979 revolution, which ushered in an Islamic Republic with Ayatollah Khomeini as supreme leader. The shah, along with many of those believed to be associated with him, left the country and there was a crackdown on the Bah faith, which Amanat practises.

His name was put on a death list, and his belongings were confiscated. He fled Iran and has not returned since.

The Bahs are Irans most persecuted religious minority. After the revolution, more than 200 Bahs were executed in Iran because of their religious allegiance. In 1981, the religion was banned.

Since then, its followers have been deprived of many of their fundamental rights, including access to higher education and the right to work freely. In July, at least six Bahs were arrested in the cities of Gorgan, Kashan and Shiraz.

The Iranian authorities link Bahs to Israel, mainly because its governing body is based in the Israeli city of Haifa, and have accused adherents of spying or conspiring to topple the Islamic establishment.

In a rare interview discussing his religion, Amanat, who also designed three Bah administrative buildings in Haifa, called on Iran to rethink its approach.

They should put aside the suspicion, Amanat, 75, said. Bahs dont have any aims to harm the Islamic establishment. They [the authorities] have repeatedly claimed that Bahs are spies, but have they found even a single document of proof? Theyve found nothing. They should let Bahais live like other Iranians.

The Bah faith, which is monotheistic, accepts all religions as having valid origins. It was founded in Iran in the 19th century by its prophet, Bahullh, who defined the purpose of religion to establish unity and concord among the peoples of the world; make it not the cause of dissension and strife. Nearly 300,000 Bahs are believed to live in Iran, and about 6 million worldwide.

According to Asma Jahangir, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, discrimination against Bahais is legally sanctioned by a lack of constitutional recognition.

A follower was murdered outside his home in Yazd last year by two young men because of his faith, a March report by Jahangir said, and at least 90 Bahais are behind bars.

Amanat was hopeful when Irans moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, was elected in 2013, but said nothing had changed and the situation had even got worse in some situations.

Iran has a special place in the hearts of the Bahai community, he said. Im saddened that my fellow Bahais are under pressure. If theyre given the opportunity they can do good for their country.

Amanat expressed regret for not being able to live in Iran and contribute more to its architecture.

The Azadi tower, he said, was an opportunity to design modern architecture using old language, to preserve the good things about a culture, leave aside the meaningless parts and create something new and meaningful. A tribute to an old human civilisation, the monument was such that if this was erected somewhere else it would have no meaning you cant put Shahyad in Cairo.

It took five years for the Azadi tower to be finished. In 1971 the Shah unveiled the tower, having flown to Tehran from the ruins of Persepolis in Shiraz, where he had held an enormous, lavish event to celebrate the Persian empires 2,500th birthday.

Of all the towers defining moments in modern Iranian history, one incident struck a chord with Amanat.

I was touched deeply once when millions of people went to Shahyad in 2009 [during unrest under Ahmadinejad], and then they were beaten up and many were killed, he said.

I was so saddened by it. As a Bahai, I forgive others, I dont dwell on the injustices done to me, I go forward, but when that happened it was difficult for me because people had taken refuge there.

Reflecting on the country of his birth, Amanat said: I miss Iran a lot, partly because of the sun and the architecture. I am away from everything I had and from my neighbourhood. I have three kids, theyve tried to learn Farsi but cant read a Farsi newspaper fluently and this makes me sad none of them have ever seen the Azadi tower in their life.

Continued here:
After Azadi: man behind Iran's freedom tower on how his life unravelled - The Guardian

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5 things for August 15: Charlottesville, North Korea, Iran nukes ... - CNN

Iranian lawmakers voted to raise spending on the nations missile program and elite forces, bolstering twin pillars of the security establishment that are at the center of a growing dispute with the U.S.

Parliament on Sunday overwhelmingly approved a bill sanctioning an additional 20 trillion rials ($609 million) for Irans missile program and the Qods Force arm of the Revolutionary Guards. The legislation cited hostile U.S. policies against Iran and American adventurism in the region, according to Tasnim news agency. President Donald Trump has expanded sanctions on Iran and swung behind its Gulf rivals since taking office, amid signs he might attempt to sink the 2015 nuclear accord that opened the Islamic Republic for business.

The extra funding -- on top of two years of increased defense spending -- serves as amultifaceted message, according to Ariane Tabatabai, a senior associate with the Proliferation Prevention Program at theWashington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The missile program serves to project power and show strength at a time where the region is incredibly volatile and is geared toward Irans regional adversaries like the Gulf Arabs, as well as ISIS and other terrorist groups, she said. It also serves to show the U.S. that the chest-thumping wont intimidate Iran. From their perspective, this is about deterrence.

In another sign of escalating tensions, the U.S. said an Iranian drone operating without navigation lights came within 1,000 feet (305 meters) of U.S. aircraft from the carrier Nimitz that were in flight during night operations in the central Persian Gulf on Sunday. The approach created a dangerous situation with the potential for collision and is not in keeping with international maritime customs and laws, Commander Bill Urban, a spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said Monday in a statement.

The seven-party agreement curbing Irans nuclear program led to increased Iranian oil sales and investor interest in Iran, and was heralded as a basis for talks on easing clashes over Mideast flashpoints where Iran and Sunni powers allied to the U.S. are on opposite sides. But the deal has run into greater turbulence under Trump, who argues that its overgenerous terms have emboldened authorities in Tehran that oppose American interests.

His administration has so far found Iran to be in compliance with the accord after quarterly reviews -- a judgment also made by international monitors -- while saying its missile tests and overseas military interventions are in breach of its spirit.

Irans other malign activities are serving to undercut whatever positive contributions to regional and international peace and security were intended to emerge from the accord, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said last month.

In June, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signaled that support for peaceful regime change in Iran may be one option for the U.S. to consider.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose diplomatic overtures concluded with the landmark breakthrough, on Sunday again warned against unilateral efforts to undermine it.

Anyone who harms the accord harms himself and his country, Rouhani was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News Agency. If the U.S. acts against the agreement everyone will side with us and against the person who wants to weaken it, he said in reference to other signatories to the deal, including Germany and France, which strongly support its continuation.

Rouhani has come under growing pressure from conservative opponents at home who want a more assertive response to Trump.

The bill passed on Sunday, which had been before parliament for two months, constitutes a first step, speaker Ali Larijani was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. If the U.S. applies sanctions that violate the multi-party nuclear deal with Iran, the Iranian government will be bound to react, he said.

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Iranian officials have asserted that the legislation doesnt violate the agreement and a subsequent United Nations resolution, which discouraged but didnt bar missile development. Tehran considers American actions to have contravened the accord as the extra sanctions have further disrupted efforts to normalize trade. The bill needs to be approved by Irans Guardian Council, a body of Islamic law experts and jurists, in order to take effect.

With assistance by Anthony Capaccio

Excerpt from:
Iran Military Boost Signals Resolve to Resist US Pressure - Bloomberg

The administration is still working on its Iran strategy, but Mr. Trump and his aides have put a few cards on the table, demonizing Iran; backing tough new sanctions related to missiles and human rights violations; and pledging cooperation with Sunni countries that, like Israel, view Iran as a singular menace and demand its isolation.

Irans threatening behavior certainly deserves pushback from the United States and others. But Iran is not the only destabilizing force in the region, and unremitting hostility is not the answer. Even during the Cold War Washington engaged Moscow, when possible, on nuclear weapons, regional conflicts and human rights.

The United States and Iran had almost no contact after the 1979 Iranian revolution until Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif formed a working relationship during the nuclear negotiations. Instead of building on that, Mr. Trump and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, have refused to even meet the Iranians.

A more imaginative policy would revive the secretary of state channel to resolve conflicts before they grow and explore solutions for Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. There is precedent for cooperation. Iran helped America and others to organize the new Afghan government after the Talibans ouster in 2001 and to forge a unity government in 2014. Iran could be encouraged now to press the Taliban to enter reconciliation talks with Kabul. Iran and the United States could also work together to combat drug trafficking in Afghanistan, another shared concern. And Iran has been helpful in Iraq by fighting the Islamic State.

Last week, 47 national security leaders urged America and Iran to begin discussing with the nuclear deals other signatories a follow-up agreement that could extend the nuclear restraints on Iran further into the future and expand them to other countries in the region that have or are considering nuclear energy programs. In addition, they proposed a new consultative body so that Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia, Turkey, China and the European Union could consult on major regional disputes.

There are other constructive ways for the United States to counter Irans influence, like joining with its Sunni allies in helping the regions war-torn countries rebuild. Saudi Arabias recent moves to improve relations with Iraq by opening a land border and resuming air links are a good sign.

Iran is too big to be ignored. And if Washington pursues regime change, as some officials seem to favor, the risks will be huge. This is a crucial moment for Iran as revolutionary leaders die off and competition heats up between hard-liners with a strict anti-Western Islamic ideology and pragmatists who back the nuclear deal and international engagement.

In the balance is a population of 80 million, mostly young, Iranians who have in recent years elected relatively moderate leaders inclined toward evolutionary reform. As it has done with adversaries such as the Russians and the Chinese, America can make progress by engaging the Iranians and avoiding the kind of escalation that empowers hard-liners.

A version of this editorial appears in print on August 14, 2017, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Before You Rip Up That Iran Deal ...

Originally posted here:
Before You Rip Up That Iran Deal ... - New York Times

Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali is notorious as Iran's "hanging judge," having ruthlessly ordered hundreds of summary executions after trials that sometimes lasted just minutes in the months following Iran's 1979 revolution.

His daughter, however, remembers him differently.

"My father's outside image is very violent," Fatemeh Sadeghi says in an interview published this month in the Iranian magazine Andisheye Pouya. "But that's not the image of him that I had at home. He was very strict at home, but he would never beat me."

Sadeghi said her father never discussed his dark past with her.

"He didn't want to talk about it," she said. "It was clear that he had [some issues], but he wasn't remorseful."

Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini selected Khalkhali to head the newly created Revolutionary Courts shortly after taking power. Before Khalkhali was forced to step down and sidelined in December 1980, he sent hundreds of people to their deaths, including many affiliated with the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

In his 2000 autobiography, Khalkhali wrote that he indeed felt no remorse.

"I killed over 500 criminals close to the royal family, hundreds of rebels in the Kurdistan, Gonabad, and Khuzestan regions, and many drug smugglers,'' Khalkhali wrote, according to a translation by The New York Times.

''I feel no regret or guilt over the executions. Yet I think I killed little. There were many more who deserved to be killed, but I could not get my hands on them," he added.

Khalkhali died in 2003 at the age of 77.

The Andisheye Pouya interview this month marks the first time that Sadeghi, a respected women's rights activist who has criticized the compulsory hijab in the past, has spoken publicly about her father.

He presented himself as a revolutionary and believed that he had to accept some bad notoriety for the revolution."

While she says she doesn't intend to justify her father or defend his actions, she asserts that, at that moment in her country's history, those in charge had to demonstrate "revolutionary decisiveness."

"The atmosphere then was very ideological," Sadeghi said. "I don't want to say that my father was kind -- not at all. But that ideological atmosphere required revolutionary decisiveness."

"At that time, they all wanted to present themselves as revolutionaries to scare the enemy. This is how I see things," she added.

She says she never felt she had to defend Khalkhali, who is believed to have acted with Khomeini's blessing, because "my father always insisted that his political face -- good or bad -- was his business."

"He presented himself as a revolutionary and believed that he had to accept some bad notoriety for the revolution," she said. "[My father] would always say: 'We made the revolution and we have to stand by it.' I can still hear him."

People often criticize her father, but Sadeghi says she doesn't react. She merely takes note so she can later tell relatives what she heard.

"People have the right to make judgments about political figures, so whatever I hear is not strange to me," she says.

Why didn't Fatemeh Sadeghi say: 'Although Khalkhali was my father and I love him, he did bad things to people -- many bad things.'"

Sadeghi then recounts a particular episode that has stuck in her mind.

She was riding in a long-distance taxi from Tehran to Karaj, about 30 kilometers west of the Iranian capital, when she heard one of the passengers attacking her father.

"[That person] started saying very bad insults about my father," she recalled. "He said that [my father] was once detained in France with two sacks of gold, adding that his wife was also with him.

"Those moments were hard on me. But I wanted to laugh at the image of my mother carrying a sack of gold," Sadeghi said. "[My father] wasn't a thief. He didnt have any hidden wealth.

"My father ordered the [execution] of [former Prime Minister Amir Abbas] Hoveyda. He went to Kurdistan (where Khalkhali ordered the execution of many Kurds)," Sadehi said. "All of this happened, but he didn't steal."

Khalkhali presided over the brief trial of Hoveyda, who served as prime minister under the shah for more than a decade. Moments after being sentenced to death, Hoveyda was taken outside and shot in the back of the head. Khalkhali then returned to the courtroom and announced that the sentence had been carried out.

The New Haven-based Iran Human Rights Documents Center reports that Khalkhali was proud to have been present at Hoveyda's execution and had kept the pistol as a memento.

She said that Khalkhali, who had become a supporter of the reformist movement, convinced her in 1997 to vote for reformist presidential candidate Mohammad Khatami, who won the election and served as Iran's fifth president from 1997 until 2005.

The interviewer, who says she is a friend of Sadeghi, rarely challenges her. At one point, she asks Sadeghi if she misses her father.

"It's a tough question. Is there anyone who doesn't love his or her parents?" Sadeghi asks.

Sadeghi's interview has been criticized by some as a dubious effort to humanize a monster.

"I wish Fatemeh Sadeghi had continued her silence regarding her father," wrote exiled Iranian journalist Arash Bahmani on Twitter.

The Iranian blogger who goes by the name Zeitoun commented on Facebook: "Why didn't Fatemeh Sadeghi say: 'Although Khalkhali was my father and I love him, he did bad things to people -- many bad things.' Why didn't she say that?"

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Daughter Of Iran's 'Hanging Judge' Breaks Silence About Her Notorious Father - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty