From the London Economist, October 31, 1970
- From: "Joubin Houshyar" <Sun_of_27@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 27 Aug 2005 19:53:38 -0700
"The Young men of Iran"
A young ex-communist: "I do not support the Shah, I support his
ideology."
A nation's morale goes up and down. today, Iran's morale is very much
on the up. The downs after the turmoil of the 1950's and early 1960's
seem to be many more years in the past than they in fact are. The
self-assurance of the place shows in many small ways. "The last man on
earth is more important than the first man on the moon," Iran's prime
minister, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, told the Washington National Press club
when asked what he thought of Frank Borman and company flying round the
moon. To such a house-proud audience it was the kind of risque remark
which no Iranian would have thought of venturing a few years ago. The
Shah himself does not hide his satisfaction ; he likes to point out,
for instance, that doubts expressed in The Economist four years ago
about the dangers to Iran's balance of payments have not materialised.
"In the short space of six years," wrote the American journalist Alfred
Friendly, formerly a vigorous critic of the Shah, in the Washington
Post last year, "the Shah has made his promises good, his opposition
disappear and his detractors look silly. Iran has its problems, to be
sure, deep, difficult and dangerous. But they are problems which
develop from success." Most Iranians positively relish the discomfort
of a western observer eating humble pie. Like the resurgent Japanese,
though in a more humorous way, Iran's intelligentsia feels vindicated
at last by its success. In the Middle East only Israel and Lebanon have
an educated class to match Iran's. In Iran this class has for
generations either been idle or up to its ears in action fighting. Or
in many cases its nembers have disappeared abroad in forced or
voluntary exile. There was no wider or more vocal network of
disgruntled emigres than the "exile" Iranians.
Four or five years ago some of these began to trickle back. They more
than rickle back today, and, talent being scarce in the developing
world, they are run off their feet when they arrive. Ministers and
several people immediately below ministerial rank have formerly been
the inside of Persian jails, a number of them as members of the banned
Tudeh (communist) party. Other ex-members of this party are now
captains of Iran's burgeoning private industries. In a recent paper Mr.
Shaul Bakhash, a most thoughtful Iranian critic, points out that this
conversion has taken place partly because the price of opposition (was
made) increasingly steep." However, says Bakhash:
"an extensive programme of government sponsored reform --at the
heart of which lies land reform -- made the government far more
acceptable than previously to the younger generation. Men who in the
1950's absolutely refused to be identified with the administration,
suffer no pangs of conscience in being part of it today. . . The
process of change has infused the whole government machinery with an
energy and elan, a self confidence in problem-solving that it has not
witnessed in years."
Using modern men in government began to work only under the late Hassan
Ali Mansur, member of an old family whose brief as prime minister in
1963 seems to have been to form a party from the young and the bright.
One man Mansur took into government from the national oil company was
Amir Abbas Hoveyda, seen at left. When Mansur was assassinated in
December, 1965, Hoveyda became caretaker prime minister. Five years
later he is still prime minister. Success and more particularly, a
desire for calm after so many years of upheaval have contributed to his
unprecedented survival. Hoveyda has turned out to be good at the
flim-flam of politics, good at diatribes in the Majlis, good at kissing
babies. He exhibits almost always a pugnacious bonhomie. But when his
political number comes up, as it will, his real achievement will be the
train of brainy young men whom he has introduced to the Shah and who
are now part of the administration. Several of the youngest Hoveyda men
have gone to bigger things outside the central govrnment -- rnayor of
Teheran, governor of the ports, big private enterprise jobs. The ablest
being perhaps, Hushang Ansary, Hoveyda found making expatriate millions
in Japan. In quick succession Ansary became ambassador to Pakistan,
minister of Information, anibassador to Washington, and now minister of
the Economy.
Many of the brightest younger members of government have come back from
abroad simply because they have heard what is going on in Iran, and
will stay there, regardless of politics, so long as they can find the
right people to work for. Both the World Bank and the IMF have been
stripped of their cadre of Persians in order to people the economic
branches of Iran's government. One of these young men advises Ansary.
Another recently returned to be deputy Governor of Iran's Central Bank.
The three men in direct line of command under the chief of the
important Plan Organisation are all on extended leave of absence from
the IMF and World Bank, and so is the dean of the new faculty of
economics at the University of Teheran.
The problem in an economy doubling inside a decade is that there are
not enough men of talent to go round. Moreover, the government has to
cornpete on unequal terms with the private sector. For every young
technocrat in government several now join business. Some of them have
already become millionaires. More substantial in a new class of urban
rich, and haute bourgeoisie of mounting size, are such traders turned
industrialists as the Khayyamis and the Akhavans (motor cars), brothers
like the Reza'is (steel and copper), old yet entirely professional
families like the Kouros's rnd the numerous Farmanfarmaians. The
foreign ministry's recruiting problems, once the easiest, are now
enormous. In the economic ministries and in the prime minister's office
a host of young people will go when their booses go, not out of
political pique, but because most of them, having done their stint in
government, now understandably covet the rewards of the private sector.
So the government has doubled its effort, originally undertaken for
political reasons, to persuade Iran's 4o,ooo or more students working
abroad to return as soon as their degrees are won. Many of these are
almost permanent students, Trofimovs from the Cherry Orchard, and the
pick of this crop has been taken already. Left behind is a hard core of
opposition at which the government can only nibble, notably the well
organised and well sustained but steadily decreasing group in west
Germany which dogs the Shah when he travels through northern Europe,
peppering him with absurdly rnis- informed propaganda. Missions led by
Ministers and other luminaries constantly seek out Persian students in
Europe and America. When abroad the Shah gives speeches and audiences
urging them to return. Pardons and jobs are shelled out to,those who
need them. Prodigals who return spread the word to the friends they
have left abroad.
.
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