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).
]]>Navai focuses on eight protagonists: a porn star, an ageing socialite, an assassin and enemy of the state who ends up working for the Republic, a volunteer religious militiaman who undergoes a sex change, a dutiful housewife who files for divorce and an old-time thug running a gambling den. Drawn from across the spectrum of Iranian society, their lives present a fascinating and intimate portrait of a complex, colourful and changing city.
Ramita Navai, winner of The Debut Political Book Of The Year Award and The Jerwood Award For Non-Fiction, is a British-Iranian journalist and reporter. Born in Tehran, she has reported from over 30 different countries, including Sudan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria, El Salvador and Zimbabwe. She was awarded an EMMY for her undercover reporting from Syria. She has also worked as a journalist for the United Nations in Pakistan, northern Iraq and Iran, was the Tehran correspondent for The Times from 2003 to 2006 and reported for Channel 4’s foreign affairs series, Unreported World.
Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. This an informal dinner event. We start with drinks from 7pm, followed by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. Menu £25 per person excluding drinks.
The event will be hosted by Pranvera Smith and Ed Vulliamy, senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer.
]]>“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:
]]>The politics of Iran are frequently analysed and debated on the international stage but rarely do we glimpse what everyday life is like in Tehran. In her new book City of Lies, Ramita Navai returns to the city where she was born to explore the lives of its residents.
Navai focuses on eight protagonists: a porn star, an ageing socialite, an assassin and enemy of the state who ends up working for the Republic, a volunteer religious militiaman who undergoes a sex change, a dutiful housewife who files for divorce and an old-time thug running a gambling den. Drawn from across the spectrum of Iranian society, their lives present a fascinating and intimate portrait of a complex, colourful and changing city.
Ramita Navai will be joining us in conversation with the BBC’s Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, to talk about her exploration of modern-day Tehran and what life in the city signals about how the country will develop.
Ramita Navai is a British-Iranian journalist and reporter for Channel 4’s foreign affairs series, Unreported World. Born in Tehran, she has reported from over 30 different countries, including Sudan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Nigeria, El Salvador and Zimbabwe. She was awarded an EMMY for her undercover report from Syria. She has also worked as a journalist for the United Nations in Pakistan, northern Iraq and Iran, and was the Tehran correspondent for The Times from 2003 to 2006.
On 28 January at the Frontline Club, a panel chaired by CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer discussed the possible start of a new chapter for Iran following the election of Hassan Rouhani as president. Rouhani is not only in favour with the Supreme Leader and political hardliners but also backed by reformists, due to his running mandate “moderation and wisdom”.
Elizabeth Palmer, Shashank Joshi and Kelly Golnoush Niknejad discuss change in Iran
Palmer started by asking the panel if there had been change for the good since the election of Rouhani?
British-Iranian Emmy award-winning foreign affairs journalist, Ramita Navai said:
“He is the man who can change things, he’s a real insider. . . . He really knows how to negotiate the hardliners. . . . He’s also of course in favour with the big man . . . the supreme leader.”
Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, hosted by The Guardian said:
“The initial optimism that came with Rouhani’s win is definitely wearing off. When he released a group of prominent political prisoners before his UN trip hope went up that he was going to free [former presidential candidates Mehdi] Karoubi and [Mir Hossein] Mousavi and his wife [from house arrest] and when he didn’t do that . . . they were hoping that would legitimise an election they had taken part of.”
Packed house for tonight's Iran debate as our panel discusses the changes we have seen in the country pic.twitter.com/8JuPBJPuYW
— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) January 28, 2014
Shashank Joshi, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said that the nuclear deal, which was implemented on 20 January, would be the start of Iran becoming more economically viable internationally, but it is not the end:
“The so called ‘Joint Plan of Action’ . . . it was the biggest breakthrough for 10 years in the nuclear dispute. . . . [But] going from an interim deal to a final deal is very, very hard. . . . The one thing that unites those who hate the deal and those who love the deal is that both have a propensity to see this as the thin end of a wedge to a bigger rapprochement. . . . [Rouhani’s] mandate is to ease reconciliation for economic reasons, economic renewal, it is not a mandate for unconditional friendship with the west.”
@shashj on converging strategic interests btwn the West and #Iran: "Iran never easy to deal with even with mutual interests" @frontlineclub
— Julia Macfarlane (@juliamacfarlane) January 28, 2014
Iran’s success depends on economic success but the west has a dilemma. Former British ambassador to Iran (2002–06) Sir Richard Dalton said:
“The outside world . . . has got a genuine dilemma because the Iranian regime is not one which one would want to see strengthened. One would want to see aspects of the way it treats its own people and the way it behaves in the region weakened, frankly. . . . But at the same time, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and above all ensuring that the Iranian programme will not be misused in future is such a high priority issue that there are certain features that are going together with a solution which include boosting Iran’s growth rate. . . . In justification, an Iran that is prospering is an Iran that is more likely to reform long term.”
How much domestic pressure is there for the government to affect change, Palmer asked. Arron Reza Merat of the Economist Intelligence Unit said:
“Your question presupposes that there is a strong . . . democratic apparatus to press politicians to do anything and in Iran . . . the elite run Iran, the elections though do have some democratic elements in them are really just changing fractions within the original systems.”
An audience member asked whether the reformists have any hope in having an effect on the system. Merat said that there was hope in Rouhani’s relationship with the Supreme Leader and political hardliners:
“The one hope I think that the reformists have is that they’ve got a reformist-backed president who has the support of not only the reformists but the hardliners and this hasn’t happened since [former president Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani’s first term [in 1989]. . . . Ever since then Iran has been utterly polarised . . . nothing happens in Iran unless you have both sides on board.”
Sir Richard Dalton, Arron Reza Merat and Elizabeth Palmer discuss change in Iran
A final question from the audience asked what would be the significance of having Mousavi and Karoubi released? Dalton said:
“From my perspective I can’t imagine the streets of Tehran would be filled with people supporting them the day they came out. People are a lot more practical than that at the moment.”
Navai said:
“It is symbolic. It will signal that Rouhani has the power to change, the power to release them. . . . They are still perceived as a threat . . . it’s a fear apparently that if they do release them that the reformists, however dormant they are, will be strengthened before the parliamentary elections [in 2016] and of course the hardliners are very keen that Rouhani doesn’t gain ground in the parliamentary elections.”
Watch or listen back here:
Channel 4 presented its new series of Unreported World to a packed audience at the Frontline Club on October 31, followed by a panel discussion entitled “Reporting Social Change“.
Unreported World correspondents Aidan Hartley, Ramita Navai, Marcel Theroux, Jenny Kleeman, Seyi Rhodes, Channel 4 News anchor Krishnan Guru Murthy and series editor Monica Garnsey introduced extracts from the upcoming programmes and talked about the change of focus from the reporter to the interviewee in the new series.
Aidan Hartley presented his report about a British Somali businessman facing the continuous threat of suicide bombers in Mogadishu by opening new restaurants in the area.
“This is the story that I had been ignoring all of these years since 1991 and it was so incredibly good for me to do… in this story, there are all the hopes that you can relate to what Somali’s want from the country.”
Ramita Navai discussed her piece about the increasing frequency of sexual attacks on women in Egypt since the revolution.
“I was trying to figure out why it was so bad in Egypt, in a way that it isn’t in other Middle Eastern countries… There are a few interesting answers that come out in the film that we think are very important and we’re really looking forward to it getting out there.”
Marcel Theroux reported on the elections of the opposition movements in Russia. His film follows Kseniya Sobchak, a Russian socialite who went from hosting reality TV to becoming a contender in the opposition elections.
“I thought she is someone who really might be a potential leader of the future in Russia, because she really does connect to the new generation. Her fans are much younger, they are social-media savvy… She is constantly tweeting about political issues”.
Jenny Kleeman discussed the issues highlighted in her report about police crackdowns on clubbers in Mumbai.
“It’s about the pace of social change (in India). You’ve got a country that is changing so rapidly but not all the constituents of that society are able to enjoy the benefits of that change, and some feel very threatened by it.”
Seyi Rhodes presented his film examining the pressure young baseball players from the Dominican Republic face from their trainers, as they try to be recruited by American teams.
“The reality for them is that outside of some sort of amazing talent that will make you millions, you’re likely to be picking sugar cane for the rest of your life… If you’re right down at the bottom, you’re looking for the big jump to raise the whole family out of poverty.”
C4 News anchor Krishnan Guru Murthy discussed his piece on the influence of conservative talk radio shows in the United States and the difference in broadcasting ethics in America.
“The temperature that this cultivates is angry, is very polarized…What we found is that you hear a lot of the same arguments… which I found pretty horrific… your biggest fear as a broadcaster is just talking to people who agree with one side or just think one thing and not really talking to a broad spectrum.”
The correspondents discussed why the new Unreported World series focuses more on the characters in the stories rather than the reporters:
“People get involved with a character, they become invested with that character,” said Seyi Rhodes.
Jenny Kleeman agreed:
“Our job as reporters is to help people feel empathy for people living very different lives on the other side of the world.”
The new series of Unreported World starts Friday November 2, at 7.30 pm.
Watch the full discussion here:
To launch the new series, Channel 4 invites you to an exclusive talk: ‘Reporting Social Change’, introducing a line-up including reports on Indonesian anti-smoking activists trying to stem the epidemic of child smoking, British Somali businessmen ignoring the continuing threat of suicide bombers in Mogadishu to start up a flourishing sector, and a police crack-down on clubbers in Mumbai.
Unreported World correspondents Marcel Theroux, Jenny Kleeman, Ramita Navai, Seyi Rhodes, Aidan Hartley, C4 News anchor Krishnan Guru Murthy and Series Editor Monica Garnsey will be present to introduce extracts from the programmes and talk about the highlights, challenges and dangers of reporting on new kinds of conflict.
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This Autumn Unreported World’s intrepid reporters welcome a formidable new colleague, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the Channel 4 News presenter, as they investigate stories from some of the most difficult and hidden parts of the world.
In this series they reveal official corruption in South Africa’s townships, capture the astonishing lifestyle of Nigeria’s ‘millionaire pastors’, follow Paralympians in Gaza hoping to get to London 2012 and in Uganda they profile a hospital offering pioneering surgery, saving babies from a deadly brain condition. This latest run of Unreported World will continue to deliver compelling investigate reports that reveal remarkable characters living extreme lives.
To mark the launch of the series, Channel 4 invite you to join Siobhan Sinnerton, Commissioning Editor for News & Current Affairs for an exclusive talk. With reporters Evan Williams, Seyi Rhodes, Jenny Kleeman, Oliver Steeds, Peter Oborne and Ramita Navai as they reveal the highlights, challenges and dangers of their extraordinary jobs.
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A youthful Kate Brooks moved to Pakistan after September 11th 2001 to document the conflicts that flared in the region and make a name for herself as a photojournalist.
The ten years that followed took her through Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and beyond. Brooks’ images have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time and Newsweek, and she has received a number of international awards.
Her new book, In the Light of Darkness, records the major conflicts in the Arab world in the past decade, from the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, to this year’s Arab Spring. The book includes essays she has written to accompany her photography, describing her experiences as a female photojournalist in the Muslim world.
Brooks will be speaking at the Frontline Club at an event moderated by Ramita Navai, reporter for Channel 4’s Unreported World.
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