Squirt Guns Endanger Islamic Republic of Iran

From The Wall Street Journal

Iran's Wet Blankets Put a Damper on Water-Park Fun

August 31, 2011
Fearful of Facebook and Frolicking Youths, Regime Cracks Down on Squirt-Gun Fights.

Authorities in authoritarian Iran have determined the latest threat to the Islamic Republic: squirt guns.

Agents of the regime fanned out across Tehran late last month to question toy store owners about whether the fake guns had been imported from America. Nope: made right in Iran or imported from China.

Why all this fuss? A water fight among playful youth at a water park.

After heeding a call on Facebook, a group of nearly 800 young men and women were among those who showed up at the park. They were surprised to find others there eager to drench anyone in sight.

They chased strangers around a giant water fountain, screaming and laughing as they splashed each other with water from toy guns, bottles and plastic bags.

"We had a blast. It was a rare chance for boys and girls to hang out in a public place and have fun," said Shaghayegh, a participant who did not want her last name to be used.

Among Iranian authorities, the fun and games triggered a different reaction. Police raided the park, engaging in a four-hour cat-and-mouse game with the youth, who turned their squirt guns on the cops and threw plastic bags full of water on the policemen's heads, according to participants and media reports.

Finally, park authorities cut off the water, rounded up dozens of young men and women, and dragged them to jail. Tehran's police chief vowed to crack down and warned that similar water-war events were planned in other cities.

While flash mobs have become a serious concern elsewhere—including London's recent riots—such organized fun, in most parts of the world, would be regarded as yet another youthful rite of passage.

But that doesn't apply in Iran, where a seemingly innocent gathering, especially one that involves men and women interacting, can be cast as a decadent rebellion against the government.

"These events are a disgrace to our revolution. Our security forces and judiciary must stop the spreading of these morally corrupt actions," said conservative lawmaker Hossein Ibrahimi, according to official media.

Although the water wars and the government response have a comically absurd quality, the recent tension shows how fearful the regime is of its young.

Iran is one of the world's youngest countries, with 65 percent of its 75 million people under the age of 30. The Islamic Republic imposes strict social codes that call for segregation of sexes in school and some public spaces and demands a conservative demeanor from citizens.

Authorities are particularly sensitive to events organized through social-networking sites in light of the pro-democracy Arab Spring uprisings where youth mobilized through Facebook and toppled governments.

Fars News Agency, affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guards, blamed Zionists and Americans for corrupting the minds of the youth and coaxing them into water parks.

Pictures of the young women, their tight coats and colorful scarves drenched, squirting water at young men in wet, tight T-shirts surfaced on websites and newspapers, creating an uproar that reached the parliament.

The water wars have become a ripe subject for jokes in Iran.

"What kind of a country do we have? Even a water gun can shake its foundations?" writes a reveler named Ashkan on his Facebook page.

Security forces are hunting organizers and participants of the water episode through their Facebook accounts and have detained some of their friends. The Facebook page for Water Wars in Tehran has over 19,000 members and 22 local chapters for cities across Iran, including conservative small cities like Marageh.

Earlier this month, police arrested the administrators of the Facebook page for Shiraz Water Wars, and 17 young men and women who were playing in a water park in the southern coastal city of Bandar Abbas were detained, according to media reports. Authorities also paraded young people on television, forcing them to confess—a move typically reserved for political detainees.

"Police will deal forcefully with park violators who are threatening the security and peace of our society," Tehran police chief Hussein Sajedina said.

Farzan, a 22-year-old university student who was one of the organizers of the Tehran water war, says police tracked him down through Facebook and raided his house in the middle of the night. He was arrested, held for three days and beaten up, he says. He has a court case pending.

Shaghayegh, who escaped the park, received a call from national security police earlier this month and went to Vozarra detention center in Tehran where she says she was held and interrogated all day. She was released after a written pledge not to participate in any more water wars.

Young Iranians say although the event started out as innocent fun, it has now turned political. They are vowing to challenge them with more events.

A nationwide water war is scheduled for Friday, after the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Some toy stores have suspended selling toy guns, which go for between $25 and $35, until the scandal subsides despite an increase in demand.

"Every day I have dozens of young people coming in to the shop asking for water guns," said one shopkeeper at a toy store in downtown Tehran. "Our youth won't give up this easily."

And You Thought It Was Only Nancy Reagan Who Did It...

From The Wall Street Journal
June 10, 2011
Rough Spell for Iranian Politics: President's Staff Accused of Sorcery
Fortune Teller to the Elite Fears Evil Plot, but Ahmadinejad Calls Attacks 'Jokes'.

By FARNAZ FASSIHI
In a small leafy village outside of Isfahan, a 67-year-old sorcerer with thinning hair and deep wrinkles deploys his supernatural powers in service of Iran's government.

Seyed Sadigh, an alias he goes by, sits cross-legged on the floor dressed in loose gray pants and a long shirt. He recites Quranic verses in a low hypnotic voice and rubs his fingers together. He is summoning Jinn, invisible creatures who, according to Islamic teachings, live in a parallel world, can shift form, travel at the speed of light and know the unknowable. The Jinn who communicate with Mr. Sadigh are visible only to him.

Sorcerers, fortune tellers or Jinn catchers, as they are colloquially known, have existed for centuries in Muslim lore. Ordinary people in Iran and elsewhere flock to these men to get spells and prayers, and to communicate with Jinn in order to discover the whereabouts of a lost loved one or stolen property.

Government officials, on the other hand, aren't known to consult with sorcerers. Or are they?

Mr. Sadigh is considered the top sorcerer among Iran's ruling elite, according to associates, clients and government officials. He says dozens of officials call on him regularly and that he has met President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad twice, the last time two years ago, but has stayed in contact with the president through members of the administration.

"Officials seek me out because I can help untie some difficult knots," says Mr. Sadigh in an interview at his summer home. "We have had a long battle to infiltrate the Israeli Jinn and find out what they know."

Indeed, Mr. Sadigh says he doesn't waste Jinn powers on trivial matters such as love and money. Rather, he contacts Jinn who can help out on matters of national security and the regime's political stability.

His regular roll call includes Jinn who work for Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, and for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Occasionally, he says, he beckons Jinn who are in the service of Arab Gulf countries.

Some typical questions his visitors ask of the Jinn: What does Israel have on Iran's nuclear program? Is it planning to attack Iran? What is Washington's plan for a soft war on Tehran? Are Arabs polluting Iran's waters? What is Saudi Arabia's contingency plan for when Shiite Islam's 12th Imam, the Mahdi, re-appears from hiding to save the world?

Mr. Sadigh's work with government officials comes as his profession is at the center of a controversy that threatens to bring down Mr. Ahmadinejad's administration. Since late April, more than two dozen officials in the president's inner circle have been arrested on charges of practicing sorcery and black magic. The accusations are part of a larger struggle for power by conservative clerics and rival political factions.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's detractors have accused the president and his advisers, including the Presidential Palace's top imam, of belonging to a cult-like ring that promotes superstition and mystical fanaticism. Some have said that Mr. Ahmadinejad is under a spell cooked up by his chief of staff, Esfanidar Rahim Mashaie. Mr. Mashaie is already a controversial figure for promoting nationalism over religion, and for his alleged affinity for astrology and mysticism.

The president was acting "strange" and "irrational" during a recent dispute over dismissing a minister, said the Ayatollah Mohamad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi in a magazine interview. The former spiritual leader for Mr. Ahmadinejad said it appeared the president's "free will has been taken away."

Mr. Mashaie has denied the allegations, jokingly challenging the clerics to use their Islamic teachings to remove his spell on the president, according to the official Iranian news agency IRNA.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has also denied the allegations. "Those who have spoken in recent days about the influence of fortune tellers and Jinn on government were telling jokes and it made us laugh," Mr. Ahmadinejad said last month, according to Iranian media reports.

But the controversy hasn't gone away. Opposition websites and conservative newspapers continue to carry articles poking fun at the president's inner circle. One cartoon depicted Messrs. Ahmadinejad and Mashaie as two Jinn with horns and tails standing side-by-side.

Some of the most outlandish allegations have been against Abbas Ghaffari, a member of Mr. Ahmadinejad's office, recently arrested as a ring leader of sorcery in the government and deemed influential on the president. Javan Online, a news site linked to the Revolutionary Guards, accused him of hypnotizing and raping 360 women, as well as defiling the Quran to obtain demonic powers. Mr. Ghaffari is in prison and can't be reached for comment.

Iranians have had a mixed reaction. In interviews, some say they get a dark satisfaction from the smearing of Mr. Ahmadinejad after a disputed reelection and his administration's crackdowns on the opposition. Others are embarrassed, saying they wished the government would focus on resolving economic and social problems.

Still others think consulting Jinn is legitimate. "All countries have enemies, sometimes you have to use every option to stand in front of them," says a man who would only identify himself as Iraj, a taxi driver who has occasionally sought spells and prayers for his family disputes.

On a recent spring afternoon, a small group of clerics traveled from Isfahan to consult with Mr. Sadigh, the sorcerer. He received them in a garden dotted with tall cypress trees and jasmine on a wooden daybed covered in cushions next to a shallow blue pool.

Mr. Sadigh, who says he doesn't see walk-in clients or accept money for his work, read from an old Islamic manuscript and in neat Persian calligraphy wrote spells and prayers on a thin piece of paper.

He says he worries about Mr. Ahmadinejad, and thinks the president has surrounded himself with the wrong kind of sorcerers, specifically Mr. Ghaffari, who might do him more harm than Israeli or American Jinn ever could.

"I have information that Ahmadinejad is under a spell and they are now trying to cast one on [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali] Khamenei to obey them blindly," he says.

One way to ward off the evil Jinn is to wear a silver agate ring or to tuck one of Mr. Sadigh's special spells under a rug. He says he sends Mr. Khamenei prayers every month with a messenger, although he doesn't know if he uses them or not.


How rich!  The high mucky-mucks who are (nominally) in control of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran engage in practices for which, I understand, the penalty can be death.  I wonder if it's occurred to any of them that the Israeli and CIA jinn their magician is conjuring up are actually feeding them false information invented by the jinn of MI5.  Ya know, you just can't trust a jinn to be straight with you.