Javanfekr has the unenviable job of being President Ahmadinejad’s top press adviser, as well as his most senior official spokesman. He doesn’t work in the presidential press office, and doesn’t sully his days with routine and tedious requests, or with the details of the president’s press schedule. But from his large office with views of the towering pine trees in the compound, he ponders the big picture—public diplomacy, if you will, for a boss who seems to have little comprehension of the concept. He is also the president’s chief propaganda adviser, which is a concept his boss
does
have a natural instinct for. A little-known figure in Iranian politics (like many of the president’s other top advisers, who wisely, it seems, prefer to stay in the shadow of a president who demands top billing everywhere he goes), he is someone who issues statements only rarely and only on very serious matters, such as his denial that the British servicemen and service-woman who endured thirteen days of captivity in the spring of 2007 were in any way tortured and, in a clever propagandist moment, his announcement that they were free to tell their stories to the Iranian press after they were barred from doing so in England by the British government. 5
Mr. Javanfekr is a slight man with a standard-issue Ahmadinejad government haircut—thick short black hair parted to one side and partially covering the forehead—and the obligatory, but in his case quite full and quite white, beard. He was examining some faxes when I stepped into his office, but he turned and greeted me in a soft voice. “Please,” he said, “have a seat.” In Iranian offices, one is never asked if one would like tea or coffee or any other beverage: it is assumed one will drink tea, and usually within seconds the office tea man will arrive with a fresh glass and a bowl of sugar cubes.
Javanfekr sat down beside me on an ugly leatherette couch; he was dressed in navy blue trousers, a white shirt, and a navy cardigan, and with his soft voice and quiet, gentle demeanor he appeared more as a college professor than a top aide to someone who has been likened to, at least in some of the Western media, Hitler. I couldn’t help but notice his footwear: he was wearing the ubiquitous plastic sandals that are found by the doors of Iranian homes (for the vast majority of Iranians remove their shoes before entering a house) but not often in offices, and certainly not in important government offices. But Mr. Javanfekr was clearly comfortable in them, as comfortable as the tea man was in his identical pair when he entered the room with a tray balanced on one upturned palm of an outstretched arm. The office tea man, only one rung above a janitor on the personnel ladder, was dressed just like his boss, save the cardigan, and it struck me that the more socialist aspects of the Islamic Republic, indeed Islam itself, were on full view in this quiet and shabby corner office at the heart of the republic’s power center. The Islamic Revolution had promised, in 1979, to do away with class and more particularly with any royalist,
taghouti
(which implies class structure) trappings in government and society, and in Javanfekr’s office at least, it had succeeded. It was not theater; Javanfekr did not strike me as one to affect a style, as it were, nor was I someone, say, a foreigner, whom the presidential office wished to impress with its overt dismissal of both Western and sometimes Persian pomp and airs. No, Javanfekr and his tea man were simply comfortable with who they were; a generation ago upper-class Iranians would have called them both
dahati
, “peasants,” for their appearance. Today some Iranians still do, both inside the country and in exile, and usually with an air of absolute disgust. But it just doesn’t matter anymore.
What I wanted to know most from the president’s top media adviser was who among the top echelon of government officials had thought, other than
does
have a natural instinct for. A little-known figure in Iranian politics (like many of the president’s other top advisers, who wisely, it seems, prefer to stay in the shadow of a president who demands top billing everywhere he goes), he is someone who issues statements only rarely and only on very serious matters, such as his denial that the British servicemen and service-woman who endured thirteen days of captivity in the spring of 2007 were in any way tortured and, in a clever propagandist moment, his announcement that they were free to tell their stories to the Iranian press after they were barred from doing so in England by the British government. 5
Mr. Javanfekr is a slight man with a standard-issue Ahmadinejad government haircut—thick short black hair parted to one side and partially covering the forehead—and the obligatory, but in his case quite full and quite white, beard. He was examining some faxes when I stepped into his office, but he turned and greeted me in a soft voice. “Please,” he said, “have a seat.” In Iranian offices, one is never asked if one would like tea or coffee or any other beverage: it is assumed one will drink tea, and usually within seconds the office tea man will arrive with a fresh glass and a bowl of sugar cubes.
Javanfekr sat down beside me on an ugly leatherette couch; he was dressed in navy blue trousers, a white shirt, and a navy cardigan, and with his soft voice and quiet, gentle demeanor he appeared more as a college professor than a top aide to someone who has been likened to, at least in some of the Western media, Hitler. I couldn’t help but notice his footwear: he was wearing the ubiquitous plastic sandals that are found by the doors of Iranian homes (for the vast majority of Iranians remove their shoes before entering a house) but not often in offices, and certainly not in important government offices. But Mr. Javanfekr was clearly comfortable in them, as comfortable as the tea man was in his identical pair when he entered the room with a tray balanced on one upturned palm of an outstretched arm. The office tea man, only one rung above a janitor on the personnel ladder, was dressed just like his boss, save the cardigan, and it struck me that the more socialist aspects of the Islamic Republic, indeed Islam itself, were on full view in this quiet and shabby corner office at the heart of the republic’s power center. The Islamic Revolution had promised, in 1979, to do away with class and more particularly with any royalist,
taghouti
(which implies class structure) trappings in government and society, and in Javanfekr’s office at least, it had succeeded. It was not theater; Javanfekr did not strike me as one to affect a style, as it were, nor was I someone, say, a foreigner, whom the presidential office wished to impress with its overt dismissal of both Western and sometimes Persian pomp and airs. No, Javanfekr and his tea man were simply comfortable with who they were; a generation ago upper-class Iranians would have called them both
dahati
, “peasants,” for their appearance. Today some Iranians still do, both inside the country and in exile, and usually with an air of absolute disgust. But it just doesn’t matter anymore.
What I wanted to know most from the president’s top media adviser was who among the top echelon of government officials had thought, other than
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