In recent months, Iran has been conducting a campaign of harassing and intimidating members of its diaspora world-wide—not just prominent dissidents—who criticize the regime, according to former Iranian lawmakers and former members of Iran's elite security force, the Revolutionary Guard, with knowledge of the program.
                — Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2009

Rock stars are worshipped by their fans, so are movie stars, famous authors, and even political analysts—or so I once thought. I had at least one fan while working in Copenhagen from 1988 to 2009. My fan was a bearded gentleman who showed up at all my public presentations on Iran. Regardless of the venue, season, and time of the day, this gentleman would find his way to each event and sit in the first row, dressed in the same suit, recording each word I spoke in his little notebook. The fourth time I saw the gentleman, I approached him and after elaborate exchange of Persian formalities I asked who he was. “I work in the cultural section of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he responded flatly; and down tumbled my world of vanity. His presumed devotion was less due to the power of my arguments or eloquence of speech, but evidently because he was employed to do so, and because the Islamic Republic wanted me to know that the embassy keeps an eye on Iranian scholars abroad.

Confronted by the rare opportunity to engage with someone from the Iranian Embassy, I couldn’t resist the urge to ask him a question I had thought about for years: “Sir, could you please tell me how many spies you have in Denmark”? The bearded gentleman laughed and answered: “My dear Mr. Alfoneh, we don’t need spies! Iranians show up and denounce each other at the embassy in such great numbers that we don’t even have the administrative capacity to register their information”!

Those brave students using the December 7 Student Day demonstrations to protest against the regime serve as role models for each and every Iranian, and indeed any pro-democracy activist in the world.

The bearded gentleman was partially right. Iranian exiles tend to hate one another more than they do the distant regime in Tehran. And thanks to decades-old political disagreements, petty personal conflicts, and jealousies, we denounce each other not for personal gain but for the delight we derive in harming our co-exiled Iranians. But the bearded gentleman may have forgotten to mention the new tactics his embassy uses to control the Iranian population outside Iran. Rather than continue to crudely assassinate Iranian citizens abroad, which proved a constant irritant between the Islamic Republic and host countries, the Islamic Republic has developed much more sophisticated mechanisms to control its exiled population.

First and foremost, the Islamic Republic has managed to pacify great numbers of the expat Iranian population by returning confiscated real estate, land, and savings in Iranian banks. Indeed, by encouraging business, the Islamic Republic has managed to increase economic ties between the Iranian community outside of Iran and the motherland. This includes those Iranians politically or culturally opposed to the Islamic regime. But every once in a while, tales emerge of confiscated passports, interrogation, and imprisonment. While few in number, these cases spread fear among Iranians and temper their involvement in opposition activities abroad.

The Islamic Republic Ministry of Intelligence and Security uses cultural institutes in foreign countries as covers to provide Iranians abroad with the opportunity to engage in community activity within a regime-controlled environment.

The bearded gentleman must also have forgotten to mention activities of the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security in Europe. We Iranians may have our difficulties in convening a soccer team or hosting a poetry reading without the team or poetry group dissolving into Monarchist, Marxist, and Islamist factions and smaller feuding sub-factions fighting each other tooth and nail. But agent provocateurs of the Islamic Republic also do their best to infiltrate these cultural realms, instigating their eventual implosions. In a parallel process, the Islamic Republic Ministry of Intelligence and Security uses cultural institutes in foreign countries as covers to provide Iranians abroad with the opportunity to engage in community activity within a regime-controlled environment. After obstructing formation of independent soccer teams and poetry circles, regime-controlled mosques and centers for studying Persian remain some of the only outlets for playing soccer or participating in poetry evenings.

Sometimes manipulations by the Islamic Republic Intelligence Ministry are so successful that exiled Iranians with a taste for politics have had no alternative to the sectarian Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO). In the 1990s the Intelligence Ministry itself organized opposition groups abroad to keep Iranians from joining the armed struggle of MKO against the Islamic Republic. The parties managed initially to unite Iranian activists, but the success did not last long and the very same hands which had created those party formations also dismantled them to avoid a political alternative to the leadership in Tehran.

Iranian exiles tend to hate one another more than they do the distant regime in Tehran.

The post-election crisis in Iran has managed once again to unite Iranians of conflicting political viewpoints against the Islamic Republic. As the protesters inside Iran show ever greater courage in challenging the regime, exiled Iranians also gain courage. Fearless demonstrations against the regime in Iran have catalyzed demonstrations abroad despite various attempts by Islamic Republic embassies to intimidate demonstrators in countries such as Germany and Sweden by visibly photographing them from inside the embassy premises. Those brave students using the December 7 Student Day demonstrations to protest the regime serve as role models for each and every Iranian, and indeed any pro-democracy activist in the world. This is indeed encouraging, but there are tougher challenges ahead. Iranians both inside and outside of Iran must learn to peaceably develop civic culture while resisting regime provocations.

Ali Alfoneh is a visiting research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He regularly writes for The Enterprise Blog.

FURTHER READING: Alfoneh recently explained “Who Is Mir Hossein Mousavi?” in an article detailing the revolutionary Iranian leader. He and AEI’s Danielle Pletka explored “Iran’s Hidden Revolution.” Michael Rosen also discussed how “Twitter Takes Tehran” during this year’s Iranian protests.

Image by Darren Wamboldt/Bergman Group.