21 March 2006
Iranians today celebrate the first day of their new year with rituals of regeneration and renewal marking Noruz, the onset of spring.
Families have bought new clothes and cleaned their houses. And last Tuesday many people jumped seven times over outdoor fires to ward off decay and malice.
The seasonal optimism of Noruz coincides this year with fresh hopes for overcoming Iran's international problems centred on the country's referral to the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme.
Many Iranians warmly welcome the announcement from Ali Larijani, the top security official, that Iran is ready for talks with America over common interests in neighbouring Iraq. "This is good news, and we wish for a positive US response," said a 44 year old man in north Tehran.
Iran News, the English language newspaper, hoped negotiations could break "the taboo of no dialogue" and so help "the two countries . . . iron out differences". Nasser Hadian, assistant politics professor at Tehran university, said the logic of an agreement "goes beyond Iraq, and can bring huge benefits for both sides across the region, in Lebanon, the Persian gulf and central Asia".
On Sunday, Mosharekat, the reformist party led by Mohammad-Reza Khatami, brother of the former president, called for Iran to resume "voluntary suspension of all nuclear fuel cycle work to resolve this crisis and re-establish confidence".
But for most Iranians, any sense of historical breakthrough is less urgent than the preparation of the Noruz table of haft seen, seven items beginning with the Farsi letter seen - wild rue, apples, garlic, vinegar, malt grain, greens and sumac.
Noruz has prehistoric roots that go back long before organised religion. But like many things in Iran, the festival has often been politicised. Murals at Persepolis, the ruined ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid dynasty (550-330 BC), show peoples from across the Persian empire bringing Noruz gifts for the king.
In the years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, some clerics tried to play down or abolish a festival seen as pagan. But Noruz has become widely accepted as part of the country's heritage. Many haft seen tables have a Koran next to painted eggs and goldfish in a bowl.
Iran's intellectuals, dismayed by the populism of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, received good news for Noruz with Friday's release of Akbar Ganji, a dissident journalist, after six years in jail.
Mr Ganji who helped expose the role of senior clerics in the killings of intellectuals in the 1990s and who has also directly criticised Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader promised on release to continue speaking out.
But ethnic unrest may be of greater concern to the authorities in the new year. The past month has seen further riots in Iran's Kurdish areas, where autonomy in neighbouring Iraq has emboldened illegal Kurdish parties demanding self-rule.
Last Friday, 22 Iranians, mainly officials, were killed in the eastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan after militants in police uniforms flagged down their vehicles. A claim of responsibility was made to al-Arabiyya television by Jundallah, which last year released a video of the al-Qaeda style beheading of an Iranian soldier.
Both Kurds and Baluchis are Sunni Muslims, a minority in mainly Shia Iran. But Khuzestan, the Arab and mainly Shia province in south-west Iran, has seen at least 20 people killed since last June in bombings blamed by the authorities on Arab separatists. Sectarian strife in Iraq has alarmed many, as Iran's ethnic make-up is far more complex than its western neighbour's.
In a Noruz statement issued yesterday, former President Mohammad Khatami appealed for unity among Sunni and Shia, Jews and Zoroastrians, and among the various ethnic groups. He called on all Iranians "in the name of God and for the sake of freedom, progress and justice . . . to deal with darkness, violence and fanaticism".
By Gareth Smyth
Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2006. Privacy policy.
