The children of Iran’s revolution still want to go West

Economist

The children of Iran’s revolution still want to go West

The Economist-June6th2024

Growing up, iran’s aghazadehs, the children of the elite, chanted death to America each morning at school. But as soon as they had finished their education, they set off in search of the American dream. Iran touts its pivot to Russia and China, but the aghazadehs of the Islamic Republic still want to go West.

Among them are close relatives of two of the front-runners in Iran’s presidential election on June 28th, Ali Larijani and Mohammad Qalibaf. They have settled in Britain and Canada. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has several family members in Britain and France, including his nephew, Mahmoud Moradkhani. Grandchildren of the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, have settled in Canada. According to one outraged former minister, 5,000 aghazadehs live in America, the Great Satan, alone.

How many go to bury the regime and how many to praise it is hard to gauge. Mr Khamenei’s nephew calls for the death of his uncle. By contrast, Maasumeh Ebtekar, who was a spokesperson for the students who seized the American embassy in 1979, says she moved to Canada to lambast her enemy better (and her son went to America). Some fill Iran’s Islamic centres in Western capitals and spread the Islamic Republic’s teachings. Others allegedly bust sanctions, for instance by setting up gambling websites to launder money. Still more move in search of knowledge. Mr Larijani’s brother lectures in cyber-security at the Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. Most come simply for the opportunities they lack at home. Freed from their parents’ scrutiny, they post scenes of their sybaritic lifestyles online.

They may yet become an election issue. The Guardian Council, a quango of clerics and lawyers, will vet all 80-odd candidates. Mr Qalibaf has strong regime credentials. Related to Mr Khamenei, he has commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and was the chief of police and parliament’s speaker. But he is dogged by stories that his son declared he had funds of $150,000 available to him in support of his application for permanent residency in Canada. (It was initially declined.)

The Paydari (or stability) Front, a bloc of religious hardliners with growing clout in Iran, cries betrayal. But it is far from immune, too. Its favourite cleric, Morteza Aqa-Tehrani, got a green card when he ran Iran’s Islamic centre in New York. If only, notes a wag in Tehran, any senior official with personal ties to the West could be barred. “They would have to disqualify our supreme leader, too.”