March 20, 2016
The editors of the Iran Times have named Iran’s nuclear negotiating team as the Newsmakers of 1394 inside Iran and Jian Ghomeshi, the deposed Canadian radio host, as the Newsmaker of the Year within the Diaspora.
As runners-up, the editors named former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who has risen from the political ashes this past year, and Naghmeh Abedini, wife of long-time jailed Christian Pastor Saeed Abedini.
Each year, the editors of the Iran Times review the events of the past Persian year and name those who have generated the most news, whether for good or for ill during the year, as the Newsmakers of the Year.
There was no question that Iran’s nuclear negotiating team—Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Atomic Energy Chief Ali-Akbar Salehi—dominated the news almost every month of the year until the nuclear agreement went into effect in January.
While Zarif garnered most of the limelight, Salehi may have been the main hero as the Foreign Ministry officials were simply not able to cope with the technical detail required in the agreement. When Iran brought in Salehi to help, the Americans brought in Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The two men both are nuclear engineers who graduated from MIT. They appeared to hit it off from their first meeting. Most of the text of the lengthy agreement is their work—and is almost wholly incomprehensible as it is so technical.
All three Iranian officials were under near constant attack from Majlis hardliners, who didn’t mince words and frequently came close to calling them traitors. One deputy shouted at Salehi that he wanted to bury Salehi in concrete.
As runner-up for the year, the Iran Times named Rafsanjani, who spent the year maneuvering and jockeying—as he has in most years. His main effort this past year was to bring together the 2009 Green Movement Reformists, who are furious at being shoved to the political margins, and the more moderate reformers who have been drawn together under the wing of President Rohani.
And Rafsanjani succeeded when reformers of all different stripes came together, producing one endorsement list for the Majlis elections and winning every single one of the 30 Majlis seats from Tehran,
Rafsanjani personally put together a list of 16 candidates for the 16 seats in the Assembly of experts from Tehran. That list won 15 of the 16 seats, taking great pleasure in ousting from the Assembly Mohammad Yazdi, the current chairman of the Assembly, and Gholam-Hossain Mesbah-Yazdi, an ultra-hardliner known to be close to former President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad.
Oddly, there was very little commentary about the fact that Rafsanjani came in first in the Tehran Assembly elections—a political resurrection few would have thought possible.
In 2000, Rafsanjani ran for a seat in the Majlis and was so distrusted that he could not make it into the winning 30. Reformists came to distrust and dislike him for his non-ideological and very pragmatic approach to all issues. Then, in 2009, when he objected to the harsh crackdown on street protests, he lost the trust of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi. He ended up politically dead.
But in recent years, he has won new respect from Reformists for opposing harsh political crackdowns. And more and more citizens seem to see his pragmatism as a positive in a country where ideology seems to dominate so much of society.
Turning to the Diaspora, the Iran Times named Jian Ghomeshi as the primary Newsmaker. Ghomeshi had a huge following as the host of a daily arts program on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) radio network. His program was also carried on 150 National Public Radio (NPR) stations in the United States. For many people, he was the entry point to everything that was new and interesting in art world in North America. For many, he came to define cool.
Then, a woman stepped forward to charge that he had assaulted her in his apartment. Ghomeshi said he enjoyed “rough sex,” but said it was always consensual. However, when the CBC saw a video of his rough sex, it fired him. The police investigated and he was charged.
His trial was completed last month and he is due to hear the verdict in a matter of days.
As runner-up, the Iran Times has named Naghmeh Abedini, whose life has turned into a soap opera in recent months and left her marriage in tatters.
For the last three years, she has appeared at Evangelical Christian events all across North America pleading on behalf of her husband, who had been jailed in Iran for his Christian advocacy. She was the most-often seen face of the relatives of the Americans jailed in Iran.
Last fall, she stunned supporters by saying she was being harassed by critics among Christians who didn’t like her public appearances. She said she was being criticized for the way she dressed and for allegedly neglecting her children by traveling around the country. Then she announced she was halting her public advocacy, saying she had been abused by her husband in their periodic exchanges of telephone calls.
She quickly regretted her public revelations, which had made news far beyond the circle of Christian publications that had been covering her for years. She said she would return to public advocacy on behalf of her husband.
Then came the surprise announcement that her husband was being released. Unlike the relatives of the others freed, Naghmeh did not rush to Germany to meet her husband. Instead, she filed for a legal separation. It isn’t clear how far efforts at reconciliation have gone. The normally voluble Naghmeh has now gone mute.