inspired by Iran’s revolution, but many young Arabs wouldn’t play by the script and the conference blew up in the regime’s face.
There were disruptive chants in support of the uprising in Syria as many of those at the conference refused to toe Iran’s line.
No one in Iran learned of the disruptions. The state-controlled media all adhered closely to the official line and reported no dissent. “We were given strict instructions not to say anything about Syria,” one smirking reporter for a local news agency said.
The regime clearly did not expect what happened as it invited a reporter from The New York Times to attend. He took extensive notes on the disruptions of the first morning’s session. But he was locked out thereafter.
As the conference began, the Times reported, a young man in the audience held up a sign with the word “SYRIA?” written in English with a question mark mocking the conference sponsors. Applause burst out in the crowd, followed by boos. Some audience members then began chanting the slogan of the Syrian protesters: “God, freedom and Syria!” But they were drowned out by others chanting pro-Assad slogans, the Times reported.
The screen in the auditorium showed framed portraits of dictators falling, domino-style: first the Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali; then Hosni Mubarak of Egypt; Col. Muammar el-Qadhdhafi of Libya; and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. But the falling dominoes continued and the still-ruling kings of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain all went down, to swelling orchestral music.
The official Iranian line is to hold up the struggle against Israel as a crucible of Islamic unity. But the Times said many in the audience found that to be “doctrinaire and shopworn, no matter how strongly they sympathize with the Palestinian cause.”
During a news conference with Ali-Akbar Velayati, the foreign policy adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi, a Jordanian reporter asked how to tell a real revolution from a foreign conspiracy, in a tone the Times said seemed almost tongue in cheek.
“Good question,” Velayati said. The answer was simple: “One of them favors the United States and the Zionists, and the other is against it.”
A Pakistani television reporter told the Times some members of the Pakistani delegation had made vicious slurs against Shiites in their own country, and now mouthed mantras of pan-Islamic unity — presumably, he said, to hedge their bets or seek alliances with Tehran on political issues. “The talk here is of religion,” the reporter said. “But under the surface it is all raw politics.”
Some participants said they respected Iran’s consistent patronage of the Palestinian cause. But others admitted they were simply happy to get an all-expenses-paid vacation in a place they had never been. This is a consistent remark at many conference that Iran hosts in Tehran with participants flown in from abroad to make Tehran look like the world center of whatever the Islamic Republic is pushing that day.
During a break in the proceedings, a 31-year-old Libyan, Hafez al-Razi Abdollah, stood outside in the sun, holding up a Libyan flag and talking to reporters.
“This conference is about the unity of Islam,” he said. “It’s a good thing.” But he quickly added that he and other Libyans were grateful to the United States for its help in overthrowing Qadhdhafi, and that he hoped for a democratic, secular government in his own country. Asked about Syria, he replied, “Bashar is a tyrant and must be overthrown.”
When asked why Iran still supported the Syrian leader, he smiled dismissively. “Ahmadi-nejad supports him because they’re both Shiites,” he said.