The Daily - Friday, Jan. 5, 2018

Episode Date: January 5, 2018

After eight days, the largest protests in Iran in years appear to be winding down, calmed, at least in part, by the government. But a closer look at what ignited the outrage in the first place suggests that the country’s president may have lit the match. Guest: Thomas Erdbrink, the Tehran bureau chief for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, after eight days, the protests in Iran seem to be dying down, snuffed out in part by the government. But a closer look at what ignited the outrage in the first place suggests that it may have been the country's

president who lit the match. It's Friday, January 5th. Iranians protested outside the UN last night against what they believe was a fraudulent election victory by Iran's President Ahmadinejad. He is against the whole world. He's against everything. There was stone's throw, there was garbage cans set on fire, and the people were shouting, death to dictatorship. They were shouting, Musavi, get my vote back for me.

My election was a great victory, won completely fairly. The words of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his first public appearance since his resounding re-election. He was speaking at the end of a day of unprecedented protests in parts of the capital Tehran. Thousands of young opposition protesters spilled out onto the streets in a spontaneous outburst of anger against what they said was a rigged election. Okay, so picture this. It's 2013 and the Iranians have just gone through eight years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This almost evil hardliner that, in Tehran at least, really everybody was sick and tired of in the end. Thomas Erdebrink is the Tehran bureau chief for The Times.

And there suddenly, out of the blue, comes this new candidate, a cleric. But a cleric with new promises and fresh ideas. Hassan Rohan. Now, he is actually more of a politician than a cleric. He calls himself a moderate. And okay, we can debate about what that means inside an Islamic republic to be a moderate, but he is someone who is constantly at least promising his people that he will give them more freedom, a better life. He really starts reaching out to Iran's urban middle classes, people who want to see change, who want to see a new Iran, people who want to engage with the world. And those are exactly the slogans that Hassan Rouhani is picking. He says, I will solve all our problems with the

outside world. I will have the sanctions that are imposed against Iran over its nuclear program lifted, and I will start negotiations with, and that was the big thing, the great Satan, the United States. He promised freedom of speech. He promised freedom of press. He promised freedom of gathering. He promised a relaxation of the strict social rules. And all those things are a big deal in Iran, because if you've grown up here in the Islamic Republic, and if you're now around 35 years old, all your life, people from teachers to policemen to clerics have been telling you what to do, how to live, how to cut your hair, what kind of music to listen to, how you should interact with the other gender.

And here suddenly came a man who was saying, well, you know what, I'm going to relax all these things a little bit for you. And people went mad for him. In the last days of his campaign, he had this massive gathering in a basketball stadium right here in downtown Tehran. And I'll never forget the faces of the people who were there. Young people, women, all filled with hope and all chanting for Rouhani, hoping that he would be the one that would give them a new future. And then he won. It's a major surprise.

People go out, they dance on the streets. You probably recognize that popular Yes We Can music video from President Obama's 2008 campaign. To date, it's gotten 25 million YouTube views. But now, a strikingly similar video has appeared online, this time with Iranian-speaking and singing words from Hassan Rouhani's first speech as Iran's president. But after a couple of days, he has to get to work. First thing he does is completely rearrange the foreign ministry and prepare everything for nuclear talks with the United States and other world powers. And it takes him two years. It's a hard and complicated process. Just now, I spoke on the phone with President Rouhani of the Islamic Republic of Iran. President Obama on the other side of the aisle and Foreign Secretary John

Kerry play a massive role in this. But in the end, the Iranians and the Americans and the other world powers, they get their nuclear deal. Today, after two years of negotiations, the Iranians and the Americans and the other world powers, they get their nuclear deal. Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not. A comprehensive, long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iranians are, again, super happy they go out on the streets. And one of the most interesting things he's done is probably the least noticed one, and a rather surprising one. Hassan Rouhani as a cleric has increased the speed of Iran's internet. Now, you might say, okay, so what?

But Iran's internet was really, really, really crappy. And because of this decision, people now can use smartphones, not only in the city, but also in places with weaker coverage. And because of that, people can follow all the political and social news inside Iran and outside of Iran. And that made actually a pretty big change in this country. Then it's May 2017. There's another round of elections.

Hassan Rouhani wins by a landslide. Nearly 60% of Iran's voters pick him over the hardline candidate. Now, the people who powered his re-election were the same people who powered his first election. Iran's middle class, people who for nearly 15 years have been seeking change, who have slowly, under the influence of satellite TV, internet, cheap foreign travel, have changed this society. This man made a nuclear deal. So naturally, they're hoping that he can also deliver on his other promises. But as the middle class continues

to support him because they're hoping for more social freedoms. Hassan Rouhani has a new problem. Iran's economy is tanking. With 30 percent unemployment among young people, it's clear that Iran's economy needs a major boost. President Rouhani is pinning his hopes on foreign businesses to bring investment and jobs to the country. The economy here is stagnant. Unemployment is very high, especially amongst young Iranians. People's purchasing power has gone down and the price of goods has gone up. And this affects Iranians across the board, whether you're rich or poor. Now, many well-to-do middle class Iranians... He has made a lot of promises to improve the economy. He said, if this nuclear deal will come, then our economy will improve.

People will get more money. But people in smaller cities were starting to feel the pain. For instance, I visited the city of Babel, a city almost right on the Caspian Sea in Iran's more northern, greener areas. more northern, greener areas. And when I was there, a lot of people came up to me talking about how much trouble they had making ends meet. And actually, they were saying how dissatisfied they had become with Hassan Rouhani. They told me, Mr. Rouhani is only there for people in the cities.

He's only there for people with money. And actually, corruption has really increased during his years in office. And I started to get the sense that things were a little bit wrong over there. We'll be right back. So what happens? How do we get from this frustration over the economy to these protests all over Iran? A month ago, the proposed federal budget was released. And there was a lot of bad news for ordinary Iranians in that proposal. Fuel prices would be hiked.

Cash subsidies that are handed out here on a monthly basis were canceled for 30 million people. So you can imagine that people weren't very happy about that, right? And then as they started reading more and more into this budget, they saw that religious institutions, certain sections of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, a guy who would upkeep the library for his Ayatollah grandfather, were all getting more money than before. For instance, the guy who was upkeeping the library, he would get like something like $30,000 a month. So you can imagine that on one hand, ordinary people were supposed to pay more and they were seeing that these religious institutions were actually getting more money. So yeah, people were upset. So how do Iranians react to this news of this budget? There is a

lot of talk on Telegram. And this is like the social media app that every Iranian is on. 48 million people use this app. and people start sharing pictures of the budget on Telegram. And it goes from Tehran to bigger cities, to smaller cities, to villages. Anger starts to build. There's a lot of chatter

online. And then suddenly, a week ago, people start protesting. In Mashhad, a city in the east of Tehran, A week ago, people started protesting. In Mashhad, a city in the east of Tehran, hundreds of people come out on the street and start shouting slogans like Death to Rouhani! Death to the president! We want our economy back! That's the first time that people actually take to the streets

in order to protest against a bad economy. Back to Iran! Back to Iran! Back to Iran! Back to Iran! How did Iranians come to find out about this misspending in the first place? That sounds like exactly the sort of information that leaders in Iran would keep hidden and wouldn't want to show up in the budget. Absolutely. And this is the weird thing. Iran's budget is like really an enigma. But there are parts of the budget that traditionally

are never publicized. And Hassan Rouhani, he published it all for everyone to see. So when people saw that, they were like, what the hell is this? Wait, why would Rouhani do that? Why would he release damning information about his own government spending? Well, he definitely wanted to point out that he is forced to spend money on things that perhaps his constituency would not be that happy with. So he made the conscious choice to say, well, Iranians, I'm forced to do this. I'm forced to spend this money. But why would Rouhani be forced to do anything? Well, you could say that, okay, Rouhani can just cut costs for religious institutions and other things. But that's, of course, not how the Islamic Republic works. There is a president who is

elected by the people every four years and the supreme leader who technically can veto everything this president does. A lot of people would think that Hassan Rouhani being more pragmatic and making all these promises for a relaxation of Islamic rules, that he would be at odds with the Iran supreme leader. But when you look at practical decision making for all the big decisions, Hassan Rouhani needs the approval of Ayatollah Khamenei. And then when it comes down to, for instance, the nuclear compromise, Ayatollah Khamenei had to sign off on that. And he did. Why do I know that? Well, because otherwise it wouldn't have happened. The same goes, for instance, for Iran's economic outreach to Western countries. Iran's hardliners don't like to have Westerners around here in this country. They prefer the country isolated. But Iran also needs money. Hassan Rouhani went out. He's trying to bring in these investors. And who signed off on that? Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

So in releasing the budget, Rouhani's essentially revealing to people that despite all the talk of reform and democracy, even his own talk of reform and democracy, this is still a theocracy, and he doesn't have all that much power. Well, he's handing out information to his supporters and to actually everyone else to see. And if they're upset over that, then, you know, they can show it. I don't think he saw all these protests coming.

I think it was just his intention to provide some kind of transparency, transparency that the Iranians hadn't had in all those decades. And these protests, well, no one saw those coming. But the fact of the matter is, the entire Iranian establishment, supporters of Hassan Rouhani or hardliners, they now have to deal with what happened here over the past week. So why would Iranians believe that he could actually make good on some of these promises for change that he was making, knowing that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is really the ultimate authority? Why did they believe that he would really be an agent of change. Well, I agree that it might sound a bit naive for outsiders, but if you have very

few influence on the way your country is run, you really try to focus on the moments that you have some influence. So they try to make change within the space that they have. This just feels very confusing. Is this just a really complicated situation? Because I'm trying to make sense of a president revealing the misspending in his own national budget with the intention of showing his supporters how the system actually works and them reacting by taking to the streets against him.

It's hard to kind of come full circle on it. Look, Mike, this is a country that's like 2,500 years old. Things are complex. Things are not black and white. And in order to survive in a political system that is dominated by clerics and military commanders and politicians, you need to play a political game. And by releasing that budget, Hassan Rouhani played a political game. He was trying to get more leverage over his opponents. But he was still trying to work within the system. He wasn't trying to bring the system down. No way. He wasn't trying to bring the system down. No way.

He will never try to bring the system down. He just wants to increase his own influence inside the system, his own power, his own leverage. And for now, things haven't gone exactly the way maybe they planned. It also shows the inner workings of Iran's political system. I mean, I think a lot of people in the West would think that, oh, there's so many differences between him and the theocracy. But Hassan Rouhani is part and parcel of Iran's theocracy.

He just doesn't agree with what some other factions in the theocracy want and do. But still, he will defend this theocracy till the very bitter end. And if he fails, you know, he's just another former icon of the Islamic Republic of Iran and other people will take over. So are we learning here that any changes in this society, at least for now, will be pretty modest and within the confines of a theocracy? I mean, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been around for like 40 years.

Many times people have predicted its demise. I'm sure it will not live forever. But these protests, without leadership, without agenda, that are dwindling down, they are a big indication that things are not okay. But they're not this determined, broad-based movement

that brings down an entire system. Thank you, Tomas. Thanks, Mike. Here's what else you need to know today. Marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized. It ought not to be minimized. That it's, in fact, a very real danger. On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions granted U.S. prosecutors greater authority to enforce federal marijuana laws in the six states where the drug has been legalized. The surprise move ends a policy put in place by President Obama that had discouraged such prosecutions and threatens to undermine the movement to decriminalize marijuana at the state level.

Now, perhaps the Department of Justice didn't think this would be a big deal. I understand Jeff Sessions, Attorney General Jeff Sessions' opposition to marijuana. I opposed the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, but this is about a decision by the state of Colorado, and we were told that states' rights would be protected, and not just by the Attorney General. Sessions' decision infuriated several members of his own party, including Colorado Senator Cory Gardner. Thousands of jobs at risk, millions of dollars in revenue, and certainly the question of constitutional states' rights,

very much at the core of this discussion. And the Times reports that the special counsel's Russia investigation has uncovered several new incidents involving President Trump that raise questions about whether he obstructed justice. In March, Trump instructed the White House's top lawyer, Don McGahn, to stop Jeff Sessions

from accusing himself from the Russia investigation, in the hope that Sessions would protect him from the potentially embarrassing probe. Despite McGahn's lobbying, Sessions recused himself, a decision that inflamed the president and prompted Sessions' aides to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel. Finally, a day after threatening to sue Steve Bannon for his participation in an unflattering new book about the administration, President Trump is now threatening legal action

against the book's author and its publisher and calling for a stop to the publication of the book. But on Thursday afternoon, the publishing company announced that in response to growing public interest, it would speed up publication of the book, originally scheduled for next week, to today. The Daily is produced by Theo Balcom, Lindsay Garrison, Rachel Quester, Annie Brown, Andy Mills, Christopher Wirth, Ike Srees-Kanaraja, Claire Tennisgetter, and Paige Cowett, with editing help from Larissa Anderson.

Lisa Tobin is our executive producer. Samantha Hennig is our editorial director. Our technical manager is Brad Fisher, and our sound engineer is Peter Sale. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick and McKaylee Bouchard. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you Monday.