Beckstein befürchtet iranische Provokationen bei WM

TEHRAN That was rock and roll blaring from the boom box, "We will, we will rock you!," as thousands of men - only men because women are forbidden - paraded into Azadi Stadium late last month to watch a friendly soccer match between their national team and visitors from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As Iran's team prepares for only the second time since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to step onto the field of the World Cup, the soccer fever gripping the country reveals many of the pressures reshaping Iranian society. While Iran confronts the West over its nuclear program, and its president promotes Holocaust denial, the country is also struggling with something far more fundamental: how to have fun together in public.

It is a challenge that has forced Iranians to try to sort through the intersecting strands of their identity, to confront decades of clerical rule that has emphasized traditions of mourning, and to accommodate a population increasingly dominated by young people who are far more aware of the world beyond Iran's borders.

"We do speak about this problem: How can we have a happy society?" said Behrouz Gharibpour, director of the main cultural center in Tehran. "We are in the center of trying to change, to find a good and accepted way to be happy when we want to be happy."

Soccer, it turns out, has been one of the catalysts propelling that effort.

"As a people, we have this very sad streak in us," said Mansoureh Ettehadieh, a publisher and historian in Tehran. "Most of our music is sad. The Shia color is black."

But soccer, she said, has tapped into something else entirely.

"People need to go out and shout, to celebrate and to identify together," she said of the street parties that break out after victories on the soccer field, parties that would normally be broken up by Iran's Basiji morality squads.

Iran, long a powerhouse in Asian soccer, will play its first World Cup game Sunday, against Mexico. While Mexico is favored, Iran is considered skilled enough to pull off an upset, just as it did in 1997, touching off wild celebrations in the streets.

The Iranian team is carrying a lot of responsibility, and baggage. German officials have been under pressure to ban President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because he has labeled the Holocaust a myth; denial of the Holocaust is a crime in Germany. But officials have said that under the rules of FIFA, which organizes the World Cup, they could not ban a head of state.

Ahmadinejad sidestepped the issue by delegating his vice president, Mohammad Aliabadi, to attend. But even with the president staying away, the players themselves said they felt pressure to win as a way to confront the West in its bid to block Iran's nuclear program.

"There are pressures on our country, false propaganda, due to the nuclear program," said Muhammad Nosrate, a member of the team. "We want to prove who we are in sports."

Should the team prove successful, even just in the first round, the police in Iran have already braced themselves for dancing in the streets and on top of cars.

"If they win, all of the people will express their emotions, 100 percent, and there will be no power to prevent them from doing this," Ali Mudi, 44, said as he sat soaking his feet in a trickle of a stream running through Laleh Park in Tehran.

His friend, Ahmed Maghail, 82, said he relished the idea of such a celebration: "All of the happiness and celebrations in my life were before 27 years ago."

Individually, Iranians certainly know how to have fun. They are expert at shutting their doors and laughing in the privacy of their homes. But there are virtually no collective celebrations. And while young people have pressed for more cultural activities, like rock concerts or art shows, such gatherings are relatively few in number.

Since the Islamic Revolution and the rise of clerical rule, Iran's governing mullahs have restricted acts of public celebration, promoting instead acts of public mourning. For many people, rituals surrounding mourning have taken on the same role as cheerful activities in other societies.

Last week, in anticipation of the 17th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's death, for example, Muhammad Salari and his family packed into a car and drove 16 hours from their home in Kerman, in central Iran, to the Khomeini shrine just outside Tehran. They pitched a tent on a small field in the middle of a parking lot and made a vacation of it.

"Let me put it this way," Salari said as he stood beside his tent. "It is a sad day, but we love this day."

Historians say Persians have based their traditions on sadness and mourning at least since the adoption of Shiite Islam as the state religion in the 16th century. The most important Shiite holiday, Ashura, is centered around a monthlong mourning period to commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of Muhammad, who died in battle in 681. Even during Ramadan, when other Muslims celebrate after fasting all day, most festivities are banned here.

"It is a macabre mentality," said Ettehadieh, the historian. "Death is not celebrated, but it is taken very, very seriously. It is a sort of preoccupation of ours."

But the joy of victory sneaked up on Iranians in the 1997 playoff. Iran's soccer team had last been in the World Cup in 1978, one year before the overthrow of the shah. And then came the triumph, over Australia.

The memory produces a breathless joy in many Iranians and sends a chill up the backs of hard-line conservatives. The streets all over Iran went wild, people dancing, women removing their headscarves in public, all as wary morality police stood by, powerless to intervene.

Since that day, soccer has become the property of the people, not the clerics, and with that has come an unwritten rule allowing, or at least tolerating, collective joy in the face of a World Cup victory.

The Iranian government has recognized that, and while it has said it is prepared for anything, it has also tried to co-opt the celebration.

Recently, for example, it honored the team members in a sectarian ceremony featuring symbols of Iranian identity: a huge mural of the ancient city of Persepolis; hand-woven Persian rugs; and, of course, flowers, including roses, which are mentioned throughout the verse of the 14th-century poet Hafez. There was a pounding beat of techno- music and flashing, swirling lights, even if the lyrics were more traditional and a bit depressing.

A few days later, the Iranians stepped onto the field to play Bosnia. With two huge portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, staring down from the edge of the stadium, spectators bopped to the rhythm of Iranian rap:

He's going to get the ball

And throw it on the field.

In Persian, it all rhymed, and it felt almost as good as the score: 5 to 2, Iran.

Jere Longman contributed reporting from Munich.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/09/sports/wciran.php

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