In 2001, Jack Straw became the first senior British Foreign Secretary to visit Iran since the 1979 revolution and he has developed a growing interest in the country ever since. In 2003, with his French and German counterparts, he initiated the nuclear negotiations which led to the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015.

But when Straw took a family holiday to Iran in October 2015, he was handed a document blaming him for more than a century and a half of malign British interference in Iranian politics. That experience led him to write his latest book The English Job: Understanding Iran and Why it Distrusts Britain which examines the UK’s extraordinary, tangled and difficult relationship with Iran, and why, he says, so many Iranians are obsessed with Britain’s role in their history.

With tensions rising sharply between Iran and the west following President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, we welcome Jack Straw to the Frontline Club for a timely discussion with journalist and author Ramita Navai about British-Iranian relations, his view of Iran’s internal politics and the culture, psychology and history of a much-misunderstood nation.

Speaker:

Rt Hon. Jack Straw is one of three senior ministers to remain in Cabinet throughout the 1997-2010 Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He was Home Secretary (1997-2001), Foreign Secretary (2001-06), Leader of the Commons (2006-07) and Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary (2007-10). He was co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Iran (2010-15). His most recent visit to Iran was in January 2018. His memoirs Last Man Standing (Macmillan, 2012) received wide praise. Jack was the Member of Parliament for Blackburn from 1979 to 2015, when he retired from the Commons. He is honorary vice president of Blackburn Rovers AFC.

Before becoming an MP, Jack practised as a barrister and then worked as a special adviser in the 1974 Labour government. He lives in London.

Chair: 

Ramita Navai is an Emmy award-winning British-Iranian journalist, documentary producer and author. She has reported from over forty countries and has a reputation for investigations and work in hostile environments. She was the Tehran correspondent for The Times from 2003 – 2006 and she makes documentaries for Channel 4 and PBS Frontline.

Ramita’s first book City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death and the Search for Truth in Tehran won the Debut Political Book of the Year at the 2015 Political Book Awards, and was awarded the Royal Society of Literature’s Jerwood Prize for non-fiction. She is also a contributing author to Shifting Sands: The Unravelling of the Old Order in the Middle East (published in the UK and US).

Moseley’s broad and intimate history draws on newly discovered material to offer a comprehensive account both of the war and the abundance of individual stories and overlooked experiences, including those of women and African-American journalists. Reporting War captures the drama as it was lived by reporters on the front lines of history.

Ray Moseley enjoyed a long career as a foreign, diplomatic, and chief European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, stationed in London, Washington, Berlin, Rome, Cairo, Belgrade, Moscow, and Nairobi. He lives in London.

Martin Woollacott is a former foreign correspondent, foreign editor and commentator on international affairs for the Guardian

“To live in Tehran you have to lie. Morals don’t come into it. Lying in Tehran is about survival.”

Speaking at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 21 May about her new book City of Lies, Ramita Navai was joined in conversation by the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent Jeremy Bowen. She began by elaborating on the notion of lying as a means for survival and how each character in the book reflects these contractions within Iran:

“For me it was interesting to see how Iranian’s have adapted during the 30 years of the Islamic regime. One of the ways they have adapted is that lying [has become] an everyday common place activity. You have to do it and don’t think twice about it. Its really become part of the culture.”

Referencing an important theme running through the book, Bowen asked how this culture of lying manifests itself, specifically focusing on sex and how it is used as an act of rebellion in Tehran. Reading from the book, he continued:

“Sex is a form of protest. Only in sex do many of the younger generation feel truly free. Their bodies are weapons of revolt, a backlash against years of sexual repression.”

On the disconnect between Iran’s perception in the west of a totally sexually repressive society and the reality in Tehran, Navai described the explosive atmosphere which, nevertheless, demonstrates the inherent contradictions within the society:

“On one hand you could get killed for you sexual preferences yet it is still extraordinary what is happening with the youth and sex.”

Speaking specifically on the characters she encountered and chose to illustrate these contradictions, Navai described many of them as coming from the margins of society:

“To really understand a city and the way it ticks, the way it works, I am always drawn to the dark underbelly. While you have sex and drugs in every city, in Tehran everything is just so much more extreme because of the social strictures and because of the boundaries that you have.”

With so little of this known or reported outside of Iran, Bowen described the western perception as one based on “unreconstructed viewpoints” containing none of the subtleties that emerge in the book or any of the human frailties on display on the ground. Responding to this, Navai posits a misrepresented view of Iran “as this monolithic society”.

“One thing I wanted to do with my book is to show that it is actually so complex, that there are so many different layers where it is impossible to assume somebody’s views or how religious they are from their class or how much money they have.”

Navai commented that while the uprising of 2009 was ultimately repressed and failed, Iranian’s, having seen what has happened in Syria and as a consequence of the Arab spring, are now “resigned and yet happy with change happening very slowly”.

Citing Iran’s current brain drain, Navai questioned the failure of any one Mandela-like reformist figure to emerge and challenge the regime. Bowen responded by asking whether this meant any subsequent reform would have to come from the regime itself?

“I think so. Pretty much everyone that I spoke to, say seven or eight out of ten people, have said that they believe that the system can only change from within.”

Speaking of a gradual, organic process led by a Gorbachev-like figure, Navai commented that “they have been scared off by the Arab Spring and scared off by Afghanistan”.

Do book titles distort perceptions of #Iran? City of Lies? Reading Lolita? @ramitanavai says titles symbolic of what's beneath the surface.

— Azadeh Moaveni (@AzadehMoaveni) May 21, 2014

In closing, Navai was again asked to elaborate on her choice of title, the reception it has had received within Iran and to define her conception of lying as an act akin to breathing – necessary as a means of survival.

“Most Tehrani’s have loved [the title] because they can relate to it. It is not said in a pejorative way. It is because of the everyday need to lie to be true to yourself. To me, it is testament to the spirit and Iranian’s romantic spirit that you must be true to yourself. The fact that Iranians are these adaptable people – that they want to lead the lives they want to lead, means that in order to do that they will lie.

“Names of books are symbolic as well. So it is symbolic of what happens in a city of 12 million people where you are forced to live two lives; your internal home life and your external public life.

“Of course you lie in every city, but the point with Tehran is that everything is more exaggerated because of the contradictions within the society.”

Watch and listen again here:

From over five years of interviews with members of the main cartels in Mexico, ex-policemen, army generals and officials in the government, journalist Anabel Hernández‘s book Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their God Fathers investigates the corruption and compliancy of the official governmental system and the drug cartels in her home country of Mexico. Selling over 200,000 copies since it was originally published in 2010, it is still the best selling book in its category in Mexico.

Anabel Hernández in conversation with Ed Vulliamy

“Mexicans want answers and I think this book gives them…the people really want to understand. The official version doesn’t fit with reality, it’s very obvious in Mexico,” Hernández said in conversation with journalist and author Ed Vulliamy, at the Frontline Club on 11th September 2013. “Nobody is in jail, the government of course protect them, but now in Mexico everybody knows who is who and that’s the most important thing.”

The book has now been translated from Spanish into English for a completely new audience – an audience that Hernández says has as much to do with the drug economy in Mexico as drug lords such as Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán and Miguel Treviño Morales.

But how can this new audience begin to understand how Mexico came into its current position? Hernández explained:

“In the sixties the federal government protected all the cartels, they let them do their business [in exchange] for money; it’s always about money. . . . At that moment the money that came from the medium crime organisations was used to build schools”

 

“In the 1980s and 1990s the Guadalajara Cartel came to dominate the city. [They] started to be the conduit to traffic the cocaine from Columbia to the USA. So that money made the medium crime organisations more powerful [and] that’s when the Guadalajara Cartel was created…Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero [of the Guadalajara Cartel], started to change their game… They became free,”

 

“A law unto themselves,” Vulliamy added.

The Mexican economy grew existentially during this time Hernández says:

“That money was useful. For example in the 1980s Félix Gallardo created many enterprises in Guadalajara. Guadalajara was this size [very small] in the 1980s but with the money of the Guadalajara Cartel the city started to grow and grow and grow. He built hotels, restaurants he create car dealerships.”

 

“That’s why in the 90s when he is put in jail…the government put him in jail but they government never confiscated his money because his money was moving the economy.”

 

“This has happened many times – now how can Mexico live without that money? That is the question.”

Vulliamy asked Hernández how the meaning of the book changed with the new English translation. What about “the responsibility of everybody who sells a gram of cocaine, takes a gram of cocaine, where does this stop?… Who are the criminals?”

“There are many guys [in Mexico], we can find their faces in the pages of the FBI or Interpol…”

 

“There are very many other important businessmen in the world that are drug lords too. . . . They like to look like legal people, but I think they are worse that Chapo Guzmán, because if you see Chapo Guzmán in the street, you can see he is coming – maybe you’ll walk away. . . . Who is worse? The Chapo Guzmán or the people who pretend to be in the legal world but launder their money and buy the guns?”

 

“When I really talk with the drug cartels… and their lawyers, one lawyer told me ‘stop thinking of the violence, stop thinking in the murders, this is just a business . . . like Coca-Cola or Pepsi. If a market exists we want it.”

 

“Dirty money moves the economy . . . my country is very poor, but still having a fake economy, with money of the drug cartels [is preferable], the price that we have to pay is very high.”

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/insight-with-anabel-hern-ndez

Bangkok-based photographer Nic Dunlop, in conversation with BBC foreign correspondent Fergal Keane, previewed his new book Brave New Burma at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 15th May. Twenty years in the making, Brave New Burma explores the country from the ongoing civil war to its deceptively tranquil cities, using both photographs and words by Dunlop.

Fergal Keane (L) and Nic Dunlop. Photo credit: Sally Ashley-Cound

Keane started off by asking Dunlop: why spend 20 years photographing Burma? Dunlop explained:

“I understood so little about Burma and I felt the only way to really get to grips with it was not only to read about it but to travel. . . . It grew out of a quest to really understand how a deeply unpopular regime could hold on to power. . . . I thought that if I was really going to get under the skin of what was going on in Burma I needed to really bide my time.”

Until recently the Burmese regime was considered to be in the same bracket as North Korea, but Dunlop said that initially he got little sense of that:

“Everything seemed normal, any sign of oppression – what I was expecting – was not there. It was a country that had been sealed off from the outside world for many years, steeped in tradition; it was almost like it was trapped in the 19th Century.”

http://twitter.com/#!/DocChrisKing/status/334745775575805955

Dunlop said that he has a difficult time trusting photography so he felt that putting words to his images helped to contextualise his work and, in turn, the oppression of the Burmese people:

“What journalism in general has a difficulty with is trying to uncover or follow ongoing oppression. . . . When people talked about oppression I didn’t know what they meant. I didn’t know what it looked like so I resolved to take photographs and try and describe something of what was happening on a daily basis.”

Of a photograph showing the distribution of newspapers, Dunlop commented:

“Images like this are very deceptive. Without the context that I’m going to give you now, you wouldn’t know what this photograph says. Many journalists were in prison when this photograph was taken . . . they were heavily censored. Photography for me has always been a difficult and complicated medium, I’m not sure I entirely trust it. That’s why I felt that contextual information was important, hence the idea of the book.”

http://twitter.com/#!/charlyfeldman/status/334757068533813248

Keane asked whether Dunlop is hopeful about the future of Burma:

“I think an opportunity has been missed. I think that Suu Kyi’s continued silence on the violence that has been perpetrated by many different groups, and the silence about the militaries role in all of this, has dashed any hopes of any sense of reconciliation between enemies that have been enemies for many years.”

“We have to look at Burma for the complicated place that it is and not see it as being this polarised idea. I think if we can engage in Burma in the complicated, fascinating, diverse and dynamic country that it is, then yes [I am hopeful].”

Dunlop continued:

“2007 was a landmark event, not so much for Burma, [but] in the way the West understood what was going on. The monks took to the streets and protested against the regime . . . within days the army and the police, with rifles and live ammunition, opened fire and it was quelled within a matter of days. I think it really confirmed to many people throughout the world that the regime was brutal. . . . It became a major media event and Aung San Suu Kyi became the embodiment of everything that was right about Burma, and the military was everything that was wrong.”

“It’s become almost impossible to talk about Burma without talking about Aung San Suu Kyi herself.”

Keane then added:

“She is taking the stick [for not doing anything about the oppression], when she actually has no real power to effect any change.”

Burmese civil war has been ongoing since it attained independence in 1948 and it is the longest-running civil war in the world, involving over 135 ethnic groups. These ethnic diversities are reiterated in Dunlop‘s photographs:

“The first thing you notice is the look of everyone; how rich and diverse. . . . It’s these [portrait] pictures that defy the national image that the Burmese regime has tried to impose – that there’s only one original ethnic group.”

Nic Dunlop’s new book Brave New Burma is available on Amazon now.

Sally Ashley-Cound is a freelance journalist based in London.

Watch Nic Dunlop discuss his photographs in full or listen to the podcast below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/in-the-picture-brave-new-burma

By Nicole Hunt

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors meets in Vienna on Monday, with Iran likely to be high on the agenda following last week’s report expressing increased concerns over ‘undisclosed nuclear related activities’ in the country.

Bouthaina Shaaban, political adviser to Syrian President Bashar al Assad, is in Moscow, where she is scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and hold a press conference for international media. Shaaban was one of three Syrian officials slapped with sanctions by the US Treasury Department at the end of August.

The African National Congress is expected to wrap up disciplinary proceedings against controversial ANC youth leader Julius Malema on Tuesday, having recently moved the hearing from the ANC headquarters at Luthuli House to an undisclosed location in Johannesburg following violent protests last week. Malema is accused of bringing the ANC into disrepute and sowing divisions within ANC ranks after he encouraged the overthrow of Botswana’s government.

In Brussels, the OECD publishes its annual Education at a Glance report, analysing the education systems and performances in member states. For the first time, this year’s report also looks at education in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg hears a complaint on Wednesday brought by four people who say they were illegally deprived of their liberty without justification while they were held in a police ‘kettle’ during the 2001 May Day protests in London.

In New York, the UN Security Council holds a debate on drought-stricken Somalia, where security issues have compounded problems as aid struggles to get into the country and people struggle to get out.

Parliamentary elections take place in Denmark on Thursday. Recent polls say Helle Thorning-Schmidt could be the country’s next Prime Minister, as her opposition Social Democrat party looks poised to win the most seats.

A court in The Hague is due to rule on Apple’s application to ban sales of Samsung’s Galaxy phones. A temporary injunction banning sales and distribution throughout much of Europe was issued on 11 August, but is not due to come into effect until 13 October.

Following debates this week in several European parliaments on new powers for the European Financial Stability Fund, European finance ministers begin a two-day meeting on Friday.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague holds a confirmation of charges hearing for Callixte Mbarushimana, a former UN employee charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2009. Mbarushimana is alleged to have been the executive secretary of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda and directly responsible for at least 32 deaths in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide while still employed by the UN, but has never been charged.

Libyan schools are scheduled to re-open on Saturday, with a brand new curriculum devoid of Gaddafi-era subjects such as the Green Book.

At the Dead Sea in Israel, photographer Spencer Turnick stages another mass nude photoshoot, hoping to bring awareness to the fact that the famously salty lake is drying up.

The week wraps up with state elections in Berlin, the sixth in Germany this year. The regional elections have generally proven disastrous for Angela Merkel’s CDU party, which has suffered losses country-wide to the Social Democrats, a trend that many expect to continue into the 2013 federal election.

Live TV by Ustream

Charles Glass will be at the Club tonight to talk about his new book, Americans in Paris, with the journalist and author Alan Massie. We’ll be broadcasting the event live on the Frontline Club Live Channel and, above, on the Frontline blog. We start at 7pm GMT/11am PST tonight Tues 24 March. If you can’t make it to the Club in person, we hope you will be able to join us online,

Charles Glass provides an exciting, fast-paced and elegantly written saga of the moral contradictions faced by Americans in Paris during France’s most dangerous years.

His discovery of letters, diaries, war documents and police files shows as no book before has how American expatriates were trapped in a web of intrigue, collaboration and courage. This is an unforgettable tale of treachery by some, cowardice by others and unparalleled bravery by a few. link

Usually when traveling and working abroad I like to be reading about something completely off-topic. For this trip I brought with me Dick Davis’ translation/reworking of Abu al-Qasim Ferdowsi’s 10th century Persian epic, the Shahnameh or Book of Kings.

I studied parts of it in classes at university, always perplexed by the complexity of the original Farsi/Persian, but reading it in translation I’m often taken aback by turns of phrase and imagery Ferdowsi uses. Take this description of the city’s inhabitants defending themselves against the armies of the dreadful Zahhak:
“Like dew from dark clouds, bricks and stones rained down from the walls and roofs, and the narrow streets were cluttered with swords and arrows.”
I’ve also been grazing through the February 1998 ICRC report (in cooperation with Somali Red Crescent Society) entitled Spared from the Spear: Traditional Somali behaviour in warfare.

It’s an account of traditional Somali codes of conduct regarding conflict, and the report shows how Somalis have their own customary law and culture of regulating conflict – very similar, in fact, to the principles of the Geneva Conventions. It reminds me – as so many things in this country do – of Afghanistan, and the Pashtun traditions of Pashtunwali.
ICRC have recently been trying to revive the memory of this culture in cooperation with local radio stations, but more on that later.

I am struck by some Somali proverbs included as an oral repository component; I find the imagery used extremely refreshing, just as with Ferdowsi above. Here’s one:
“If some people do not act more sensibly than others, there would be no rainfall.” (In Somali culture, rain is the symbol of everything good and desirable.)
and
“It is peace [rather than war] that provides milk.”