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KEENE VALLEY — Home a few days from reporting in Tehran, Robert F. Worth gave his neighbors insight to consider.
He described how it felt watching the Iranian people rise up and be suppressed under murky political circumstances.
Based in Beirut, Worth is the Middle East correspondent for The New York Times. He traveled Iran on a 10-day visa to cover the June 12 presidential election.
"I got there to see an incredible enthusiasm in the streets; it was a wild sort of Brazilian street-carnival atmosphere. By Iranian standards, it was like an orgy," said the newsman, leaning on a table in the Keene Valley Library.
His talk gathered about 50 interested friends and neighbors.
When polls closed in Tehran, the streets fell eerily silent.
"There was this sense from people that, well, we have a shot at winning this. Many thought (candidate Mir-Hossein) Moussavi had it in the can."
Results instead hailed the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by implausible margins in numbers that came too early and too out of sync with popular view.
"The mood in the street flipped 180 degrees to this deep sense of betrayal," Worth said.
"It was weird. I remember thinking, 'Are people going to just accept this?'"
Young people, led by a burgeoning women's movement, had hoped democratic forms — with attendant freedoms of press and speech — would work to effect peaceful change.
"Iran has always been different than other Arab countries; it's a very dynamic place, people speak much more freely," Worth said.
After the election came distinct and insidious signs of repression.
"Now they are going back to traditional methods of beating the hell out of everybody."
Following election results, the Basij, the government militia, strolled the streets in green uniforms ahead of gunfire, violence and unwarranted arrest.
"What happened was incredibly sad and discouraging."
Worth was not ordered to leave Iran, he said; his visa simply ran out.
The 10-day visa for journalists traveling in Iran is usually automatically renewed, but not this time. Not wanting to be blacklisted, Worth left.
Even after the United States' 2000 presidential election, "there was still a fundamental belief in the process," Worth said.
In Iran, and in most Arab nations, there is no distinct separation of church and state. There's also no higher court to settle contested presidential elections.
"You ask people what's the law, and they can't conceive of anything other than (religious) law," Worth explained to the Keene gathering.
It is a system of government overseen by a religious leader, really translated as a "guide," the Ayatolla Ali Khamenei.
"And they run things," Worth said.
As for the strain of democracy at work in Iran, Worth observed some form of its function.
"It is real enough that it's not predictable," he said.
Keene residents spent almost 30 minutes asking questions about change in the Middle East.
They wondered how Iranians view Americans.
"I never got the slightest negative energy from people gathered around me," Worth said.
E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com
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