Satellite Racket

By Paul Iddon

One of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards many ways of harassing and bullying civilians while remaining immune from any scrutiny.



Azar Nafisi's brilliant written and insightful memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran is certainly a must read for anyone interested in a well written insider critique of what it is like to live (as a woman in this case) under the Islamic theocracy in Iran which like the protagonist in the novel Lolita Nafisi asserts is guilty of the "crime of solipsizing another person`s life."

One of the darkly humorous incidents Nafisi describes in her book is one involving possession of a satellite dish in the household she lived in. One day five armed strangers started a gunfight with a neighbour from their garden and a group of Revolutionary Guards sought to use their property to apprehend these assailants. The worries of the inhabitants of Azar's home are mind boggling, she describes how they didn't fear for their lives because of the five or so gunmen, but they were in fact worried because they like a lot of normal Iranian citizens had something to hide, something they were visibly guilty over, that being the crime of possessing a satellite dish.

Today the Revolutionary Guards have a number of ways in which to confiscate or destroy peoples satellite dishes, sometimes even posing as electricity or water maintenance men to get people to let them into their apartments under the guise of letting them check their water meters etc, to then only have them burst in and neither confiscate their dishes or smash them and proceed to fine or (in some rumoured cases) arrest the owner, I've even heard that Revolutionary Guards have on some occasions abseiled down from rooftops of apartment blocks to smash satellite dishes that residents placed on the outside windows or balconies of their flats.

These said Guards have self-evidently come a long way from their conception around the onset of the Khomeini reign as Supreme Leader, today there is an estimated 220,000 of them and apart from being just a branch of the Iranian military and controlling the paramilitary Basij militia (the thugs who mercilessly beat peacefully demonstrating protesters with batons) the Revolutionary Guards have a multibillion dollar empire and do in some regards operate as if they are a state within a state, and virtually have impunity from the law with regards to consequences for a variety of actions which they undertake. They've also maintained a monopoly on smuggling operations in and out of Iran, as they arrest any form of competition. Therefore giving themselves control over the alcohol and opium rackets and other the black-markets, this brings to light a very disturbing question, are there Revolutionary Guard cells who are providing these satellite dishes the government deems to be illegal to civilians through the black market they control, and then later coming back to harass those who unknowingly brought their dishes off those same Guards in the first place?
And furthermore is this kind of activity not merely tolerated by the government but actually sanctioned by it?
With what we know and the ruling regimes reputation for constantly lowering the depths to which they will sink I somehow doubt the answer to these two questions would be “no”.

Another question that arises is what is it exactly the regime doesn't want the Iranian people to see?
One of the most successful television shows aimed at the large amount of discontented young Iranians is Parazit (Persian for static, which is an allusion to the fact that the Iranian regime has tried to jam foreign satellite transmissions) the satirical news show started by two Iranian expatriates living in Washington D.C. whose works have become very popular in Iran, viewers and fans there access it through those illegal satellite dishes (which the show is broadcast to via Voice of America), the internet or bootleg DVD's, the show regularly pokes fun at the Iranian politics and some of the absurd cultural aspects that are embodied in the Islamic Republic.

In a heart-warming and delightfully amusing interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (of which Parazit is modeled after) one of the creators in response to Jon Stewart asking how they can successfully rip on the Iranian regime on a weekly basis answered his question with this priceless statement:

“Ahmadinejad came to Columbia, one of the most respected schools of all time and he stood in front of the whole world and said there are no gays in Iran, that's all you need to have, from then on you have a show!”

This clearly sums up the regime in a nutshell, it doesn't take itself seriously, so with this in mind one wonders why we pay heed to their hateful pronouncements and sinister piffle.

Editor’s Note: Paul Iddon is one of the authors of Uskowi on Iran. His weekly columns appear here on Wednesdays.