Fareed Zakaria Interviews Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki

Quote of the Day

“If we show weakness, the future will be even more grim for us."- Friday Prayer leader Ahmad Jannati, urging the continued execution of opposition demonstrators.

22 Bahman is two weeks away.

Forty Days Later

Tomorrow will be forty days since Grand Ayatollah Montazeri passed away. In Shiia Islam, the fortieth day after one's death is a significant day of mourning, and it appears that the holy city of Qom -- the Islamic Republic's "citadel," as some have called it -- and Najafabad (Montazeri's hometown) are preparing memorials marking the late dissident cleric's death.

The governor of Qom has already halted preparations for one memorial, citing "fire hazards." (Hundreds of thousands of mourners filled Qom's streets last month to pay their respects before Montazeri was laid to rest.) Meanwhile, many bazaar stores have been draped in black in preparation for the ceremonies, as the video embedded below shows:

When Life Imitates Satire

This caricature has been circulating online for some time:

But at a ceremony featuring Ahmadinejad yesterday, the upper portion of Iran's tricolour was strangely colored a bluish teal rather than green:

 

When compared to the green found on the Iranian flag in front of the map in this picture (also taken from the same event), it becomes obvious that the green color that should be found on the Iranian map has been altered with:

ATTN: Mr. Democrat

New Information Regarding Physicist's Death Casts Doubt on Regime's Story

There is a report that Ministry of Information agents raided Professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi’s home and confiscated his documents a day prior to his assassination. The prominent university physicist and open supporter of the Green movement was killed in mid-January when a remote-controlled bomb detonated in front of his northern Tehran home. It is also being reported that Ali Mohammadi resigned from all his duties that required involvement with the country's nuclear organizations two weeks before he was murdered.

After Ali Mohammadi's death, the regime hastily claimed he was a nuclear scientist killed by both foreign-funded monarchist elements and the MEK terrorist group. The mainstream media quickly picked up the official state line and began reporting that an Iranian nuclear physicist had been killed.

In reality, Ali Mohammadi was an expert in particle (and not nuclear) physics, and not one of the articles appearing in his extensive publication trail is nuclear-related. He had, however, become recently vocal in his support for the Green movement and had publicly backed Mir Hossein Mousavi in a petition signed before the June 2009 election.

After his death, his funeral procession and coffin were literally hijacked by security and plainclothes forces and turned into an impromptu pro-government rally. Enraged mourners, students and faculty eventually began scuffling and shouting anti-regime slogans back at the forces all while the late professor's family tried to grieve.

It is also being reported that Ali Mohammadi's family was intimidated by intelligence agents to not report the raid on the house. A group of more than 100 scholars have called for an independent investigation into the academic's death.

(h/t Persian2English).

Western Media Misread the Karoubi Quote

I would write a separate analysis of how the mainstream media is completely misreading the quote attributed to Mehdi Karoubi from today (and printed in a publication linked to the Revolutionary Guard, no less), where he is alleged to say that he considers Ahmadinejad's presidency "legitimate," but Enduring America has already done such a wonderful job. As EA relays, Karoubi's statement more accurately reads: "Due to the fact that Mr Khamenei has confirmed and given legal validity to the decree which stated that Ahmadinejad had been elected, I for this reason consider [Ahmadinejad] to be the 'head' of this regime's government."

Lost in the quote is yet another significant tidbit, one which reveals that if anything, Karoubi was actually sharpening his rhetoric. By not addressing Khamenei as "Supreme Leader" or even "Ayatollah," but simply "Mister," Karoubi has implicitly challenged Khamenei himself.

Resilience

"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary." - Mahatma Gandhi

(Credit: مانا نیستانی / Mana Neyestani)

Another Diplomat Says Enough

Abolfazl Eslami, a diplomat stationed in Iran's embassy in Japan, has joined Mohammad Reza Heidari of the embassy in Norway by resigning his post in protest because he could "no longer tolerate the [Islamic Republic's]  violence and oppressio." In a letter to the Tokyo embassy staff, Eslami also urged his colleagues and others to accompany him and follow suit in "join[ing] the people's movement."

As I reported earlier, this may be only the start of a trickle of diplomatic resignations that the Iranian government may come to face.

Run on the Bank?

Last week, in light of new proposed limits on daily withdrawals from Iran's banks, I speculated that a "run on the bank" was all but inevitable. It appears that this is already beginning to happen.

There are reports emerging from Iran that large numbers of people are attempting to withdraw significant sums of cash from their holdings. In particular, the Chahar Bagh and Siyo Se Pol branches of Iran's national Bank Melli witnessed long queues of people form outside their doors, with the latter location even facing cash shortages amidst the sudden demand for hard currency. Security forces were also reportedly present at both banks, and eventually forced waiting customers to leave.

UPDATE: Several people were reportedly fired at and an older man was shot below the waist when a Bank Melli security guard opened fire on customers trying to withdraw their funds at the bank's Ramhormoz branch.

Voice of America has a report on the development (in Farsi), embedded below:

More Economy: The Labor Element

Bill Balderston of Labor Notes interviews Tehran-based labor organizer Homayoun Poorzad (complete interview at Enduring America):

Iran, like other countries, has had an import mania. Bargaining power has suffered, with labor supply far outstripping demand. The Ahmadinejad government has been “bailing out” firms, but the government is running out of money. The situation for labor is at its lowest status since the start of the 20th century, leaving out the years of the two world wars.

[...]

Some people in the U.S. saw Ahmadinejad as a populist; but workers are not fooled; they know it is a police state, with a right-wing ideology. He has a base in small towns and rural areas amongst the poor. The regime gives handouts of money and coupons to such people before the elections.

The Economy (Continued)

First it was announced that foreign investment was down 96%. Then Ahmadinejad declared that three zeros would be dropped from Iran's rial currency, which Khabar Online labels the world's third weakest currency, "only stronger than dobra of Sao Tome and Vietnamese dong."

Meanwhile, the administration and Majlis have been bickering over a subsidy reform bill, which was finally voted on this month. Once implemented, the plan would phase out food and energy subsidies during the next five years as to reflect true market prices for those goods. The plan, which just received the requisite final approval of the Guardian Council, is widely expected to stoke prices and hurt poor and rural communities, Ahmadinejad's (electoral) base of support.

In 2007, when Ahmadinejad tried to implement a similar measure with respect to gasoline subsidies -- resulting in a 25% increase in the price of gas -- 19 gas stations were torched in the nationwide "gasoline riots." The measure was later withdrawn.

And now most recently today, a new limit has been placed on the amount of money that Iranians can withdraw from their bank accounts (150 million rials, $15,000 USD). With inflation well into double-digit figures, one has to wonder whether this measure is an attempt to curb against what may already be an inevitable "run on the bank."

So where is all of that oil money going?

A newspaper tied to current Terahn Mayor Mohammed Qalibaf (a conservative rival to Ahmadinejad) has already reported a $66 billion deficit between the amount deposited in Iran's Central Bank and the state revenues that were reported by the Ahmadinejad's administration. This was on top of an audit Qalibaf's office was already conducting on the Mayor's office between 2003-2005, when Ahmadinejad was in office before becoming president. There is an estimated $300 million dollars missing during those two years.

Add 'kleptocracy' to the ever-growing list of labels that apply to this regime.

Quote of the Day

"We are due to remove zeros...because for some reasons the Rial has depreciated and we should bring its real value back." - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the regime's decision to knock three zeros off Iran's national currency.

As noted yesterday, Iran's economy is in tatters, with inflation and unemployment both at alarming levels. Ultimately, the "reason" Ahmadinejad is looking for to explain the Rial's depreciation is at least partly due to his own administration's incompetence and corruption.

Meanwhile, a number of prominent economists have been forced out of Alameh University, likely due to their sober assessment of the country's fiscal state. And so the charade continues.

At Least He's Going Green...

(No pun intended.) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rides a bicycle in Tehran's Pardisan Park with a group of government officials to commemorate Clean Air Day.

Foreign Investment in Iran Drops 96%

Yes that's 96% -- not a typo. The figure comes from the Commerce Commission chairman of the Tehran Commerce Chamber, and more surprisingly, is printed in the Tehran Times, a publication that can fairly be labeled a regime mouthpiece.

With all of the political and popular pressure the regime is facing, it would not be surprising if it is ultimately the disastrously mismanaged economy that brings Ahmadinejad down. Inflation and unemployment are already through the roof, the central bank has repeatedly reported discrepancies between the amount of money deposited into the bank and the amount of revenue reported by the government, and a highly controversial bill rolling back housing, heating, and food subsidies is set to be implemented in the coming months. As the cost of living is sure to increase suddenly and dramatically, expect more rural and/or apolitical segment of the populace to start voicing their discontentment.

(h/t Enduring America).

Fearing The End?

Earlier this month, news broke that Mohammad Reza Heidari, the Iranian consul in Oslo, had resigned his post and would likely be seeking political asylum in Norway. While Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki is for now "rejecting" the resignation, it is obvious that the regime has suffered at least one diplomatic casualty to the opposition.

But there are signs that Heidari may not be alone. Soon after his resignation, he stated that "many of [his] friends have been in touch and say they are thinking of [also resigning]." Ali Akbar Omidmehr, the Islamic Republic’s former ambassador to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, appeared to confirm this when he revealed in an interview with Voice of America (VOA) that many other diplomats in addition to Heidari had resigned from their diplomatic posts and had sought political asylum in their respective countries. Specifically, Omidmehr identified four asylum seekers as two diplomats in Germany, one diplomat in France, and one diplomat in the United Kingdom. (The total number of diplomats who have sought asylum in the West since June is now put at 27.)

Most startling, however, is that the Kuwaiti Al-Seyassah newspaper is reporting that a handful of members of Iran's Majlis parliament and officers of various intelligence agencies have been similarly seeking asylum in Western countries. Thus far, only Heidari's case has attracted considerable media attention. However, if there is soon to be a trickle of Iranian diplomats resigning their posts and Iranian politicians fleeing the country, the regime is sure to soon reveal itself even weaker on the international stage than it already has.

The Revolutionary Guard, Reexamined

I'm a bit late in posting this, but Ali Ansari, one of the world's leading experts on Iran and a professor at St. Andrews University, has written an excellent expose on the Revolutionary Guard/Basij paramilitary. He finds the argument that the Islamic Republic has transformed from a theocratic state into a military dictatorship as "far too black and white," arguing instead that...

...the IRGC has come to be in bed with a hard-line establishment made up of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and his clique, and even some journalists and clerics, meaning that the Right has coopted the IRGC as much as the IRGC has coopted them. This relationship between the hard-liners and the IRGC is long in the making, though it has been made far worse by Ahmadinejad’s arrival on the scene. We must remember this was started by Rafsanjani, when the moves into the political economy of the country were not initiated by the Guards though they have undoubtedly become enthusiastic participants. But what this means is that the IRGC is not a military junta. The Iranian state does not face a military coup in the traditional sense of the term. A more accurate categorization of Iran might be to call it the securitization of the state around the needs of an increasingly bloated business conglomerate, which confuses its own interests with those of the nation. This was in effect not the garrison state Hajjarian had warned about, but instead a mafia state writ large.

[...]

Yet what remains striking about this repression (to date) has been the unsystematic and eclectic manner in which it has been implemented. The aim appears to have been to inculcate a sense of fear and anarchy rather than order (as evidenced by the widespread destruction of property by security forces), the idea apparently being that a widespread fear of anarchy will itself lead to order as ordinary Iranians grow anxious about the consequences of chaos. But this is not a military strategy born of a disciplined organization. On the contrary, this is a strategy born of paranoia. It is also a tactic which seeks to maximize the real limitations on power through the use of terror. It does not reflect an organization that is either cohesive or united, but one in which pockets of ideological fanaticism exist. Moreover, where this fanaticism has wavered, it has been reinforced by large amounts of money; money which, as on previous occasions, is tied to performance and which can only be paid in times of crisis. This perverse paradox has not gone unnoticed. Such are the realities of the mafia state.

A Disorientated Regime

Nader Hashemi has written an excellent piece in Nation which assess the current state of the Green movement:

The struggle in Iran is akin to a boxing match between a slow-footed, unintelligent and arrogant heavyweight and a more agile, sophisticated and increasingly confident lightweight. The global audience overwhelmingly favors the underdog. Round One is over, and the weaker opponent has defied the odds not only by surviving; the lightweight has demonstrated prowess by striking several important blows that have disoriented and shaken the confidence of its more powerful adversary. Round Two has only just begun, and this championship bout is far from over.

Consensus: The Leveretts Are Wrong

In one of the most poorly researched and biased op-eds the New York Times has published in quite some time, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett label the notion that the Green movement is significant force inside Iran as a "misguided idea." I won't waste time summarizing their arguments, but suffice it to say, the Leveretts have come under enormous criticism for their piece.

This is the same couple who questioned claims that the presidential election was rigged when they authored an op-ed with regime apologist Seyed Mohammad Marandi, the Tehran Professor who has embarrassed by Fareed Zakaria when asked if he worried he would be "seen in history as a mouthpiece for a dying, repressive regime in its death throes." As they wrote back in June, “The protests that broke out in Tehran following Iran’s presidential election on June 12 are, predictably, dwindling….To this day, there is no hard evidence of electoral fraud.” In their latest op-ed, the couple literally use state-propaganda figures to estimate the the size of both opposition and state-sponsored rallies.

Among those who have responded to their absurd claims:

• Daniel W. Drezner, Foreign Policy Magazine: "The Leveretts seem to be cherry-picking their protest numbers -- which makes me seriously doubt the objectivity of the rest of their analysis."
• Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic: "It seems to me that when analysts have a proven track record of being wrong, their next statement - in line with their previous demonstrably false take - should be viewed skeptically."
• Scott Lucas, Enduring America, Professor at the University of Birmingham: "To bolster their argument that the Obama Administration has no choice but to engage with Ahmadinejad, the Leveretts throw out a confetti of unsupported assertions."
• Muhammad Sahimi, Tehran Bureau, Professor at the University of Southern California: "The hallmark of the Leveretts' articles and opinions is their buy-in to the propaganda of Iran's hardliners in order to promote their own agenda for dealing with Iran, which involves ignoring human rights issues and the brutality suffered by Iranians fighting for democracy under the current regime."
• Mahmood Delkhasteh, The Huffington Post: "[The Leveretts'] case is not only divorced from facts on the ground, but based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the present crisis." 

Abbas Miliani's piece in The New Republic, however, merits special praise for its meticulous break-down of the Leveretts' many logical fallacies. He concludes, quite accurately, "In the past, every time the United States has listened to the Leveretts of the day, it has reaped nothing but the wrath of the people and a loss of influence. The same would happen this time."

(h/t Iran Unfiltered).

Iran Faces Down Its Grand Ayatollahs

In my newest piece published in World Politics Review, I analyze the Islamic Republic's confrontation with the clerical establishment:

For the past seven months, countless parallels have been drawn between the current uprising gripping Iran and the events that ultimately led to the demise of the Pahlavi monarchy some 30 years ago. Whether or not the comparisons are accurate, one irony that cannot be escaped is that the regime is facing increasingly vocal dissent from the very clerical class that brought it to power. In fact, as the Islamic Republic deviates more and more from its theocratic roots and transforms into a military dictatorship, it risks alienating the very marjas who have given it legitimacy since its inception.

The article can be found here in its entirety.

Greening the Heartland

In a new piece in the LA Times, the always wonderful Borzou Daragahi provides a glimpse into Iran's rural heartland, where Ahmadinejad's base of support supposedly lies. Documenting the case of a 23-year-old engineering student who before the election only wanted to "go abroad, get rich and have drinks by a pool in Miami," Daragahi's piece reveals that the Green movement may be slowly but surely making inroads into the country's most religious and conservative areas:

"If you asked me last year, I would probably say, 'My dream is to go abroad for my master's degree and try for a foreign passport,' " he said. "But now, my only dream is our victory against the dictatorship, and to gain my own freedom."

[...]

His account of what has happened over the last seven months in Birjand [a city of 160,000 that sits near the Afghanistan border], corroborated by former and current residents of the city, and consistent with reports from other small cities around the country, illustrates how the opposition movement has gained a foothold nationwide.

(h/t Enduring America).

In Implicating Mortazavi in Torture Deaths, the Regime Looks for a Scapegoat – and Reveals Itself Vulernable

After a long, drawn-out investigation, a special investigatory committee of Iran's Majlis parliament has found Saeed Mortazavi as the "main culprit" behind the death and torture of three detainees at Kahrizak detention facility. After it was revealed that Mohsen Rouholamini, the son of a prominent strategist to conservative presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei  was among the deceased, widespread outrage from Iran's political right forced Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to order the closing of the facility.

The committee’s findings come after the judicial branch of the Iranian Armed Forces issued a statement in mid-December classifying the cause of death of the three detainees as "torture," and not meningitis as the regime had previously claimed. While Mortazavi personally ordered the transfer of the respective protesters to the facility on July 9th, only twelve officers below him have been arrested in relation to the deaths thus far.

Mortazavi has a long history of torture in Iran. As a former judge and Tehran’s Prosecutor General, he was responsible for the closure of over 100 newspapers that were deemed threatening to the regime. In his crusade against the Iranian media – which earned him the nickname “the butcher of the press” – more than 600 journalists were arrested, including Saeed Hajarian, a close aide of former president Mohammad Khatami who was also arrested and later released this past summer after making a forced confession in one of several televised show-trials.

In 2003, Mortazavi played a role in the death of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photographer who was arrested (and allegedly raped) for photographing Iran’s notorious Evin prison. A year later, he led a campaign against Iran’s most prominent bloggers, confining at least 20 to solitary confinement in undisclosed prisons for extended periods of time, where they were similarly forced to make coerced confessions implicating themselves in trying to overthrow the regime. Most recently, Mortazavi oversaw the arrest and trial of Roxana Saberi, an American-Iranian journalist who was arrested for espionage. Miss Saberi was also subsequently released.

After the outrage over Kahrizak came to a head, Mortazavi was removed from his post as Prosecutor General by Judiciary head Sadegh Larijani, who was himself appointed in the wake of the Kahrizak controversy. Larijani (brother to Majlis head Ali Larijani) also removed several of Mortazavi’s deputies from their respective posts. Mortazavi, however, was never actually removed but rather “promoted to obscurity” to the post of Deputy Prosecutor General for all Iran. Most recently, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed him as the head of the Office Against Goods and Foreign Currency Smuggling.

While the committee’s finding is the regime's greatest admission of fault since June's rigged election, political calculus is likely behind its disclosure. It increasingly appears that the massive outpouring of protesters during the Ashura demonstrations has rattled the regime. Where protesters (and the Green movement as a whole) were being branded as "foreign agents" only weeks ago, there is now renewed talk of "reconciliation" in the air – this time coming not from the leaders of the opposition, but rather, from more pragmatic conservatives on the right. Mohsen Rezaei, Ali Motahari, and Ali Larijani have all recently weighed in, denouncing "extremism" on both sides of the political spectrum, a not-so-subtle jab at Ahmadinejad and his backers in government.

And so, if the regime is coming to accept that it must make concessions in order marginalize threats to its hold on power, Mortazavi's outing by Majlis' investigatory committee should not be read as it holding the main perpetrator of the protesters' deaths accountable, but rather, as the regime looking for (and needing) a scapegoat to placate popular anger and outrage. It remains doubtful that the move will be enough, however.

The explicit placing of blame squarely on Mortazavi also symbolizes the political fissures that have emerged between so-called "principalist" hardliners and more pragmatic politicians on the right. While Ahmadinejad loyalists have urged for the continued prosecution (or more aptly, persecution) of protesters and those who constitute the Green movement, traditional conservatives appear to be more keenly aware of the dire situation facing the Islamic Republic.

Going forward, the clash between moderates and radicals in the conservative camp may prove just as consequential to Iran's future as the opposition's own showdown with the regime. Will a growing chorus of lawmakers and clerics pressure Khamenei to make concessions to the opposition? Will Ahmadinejad play ball? While what the proceeding months hold in store remains unclear, there is certain to be continued friction between those who are not a part of the opposition. Just as soon as the Majlis committee implicated Mortazavi in the protester deaths, a group of lawmakers rejected the report, branding it as "fabricated, untrue and biased." Such conservative disunity not only continues to dilute the Islamic Republic's once monolithic base of support, but also gives the Greens the open political space they need to press forward with their demands. Time will tell if the regime will listen, if only to ensure its own survival.

Consul to Iranian Embassy in Norway Resigns in Protest

The regime has apparently taken its first diplomatic casualty, as its consul in Oslo has resigned in protest of the regime's brutal response to protests.

Citing the Ashura "massacre" as the last straw, Mohammad Reza Heidari personally handed his letter of resignation to the embassy's charge d'affaires, and remains in Norway. Given the persecution he would surely face upon return to Tehran, Heidari is likely to seek political asylum in the Scandinavian country. "If I go back I don't know what will happen," Heidari has stated, adding "My friends have told me that I will have problems if I go back."

The Iranian Embassy, for its part, refused to comment on the "lies and rumors" surrounding Heidari's resignation. Heydari rebutted those claims, however, telling Agence France Presse in a phone interview, "It's not true. I resigned."

Iranian embassies have been a rallying point for protests of the Iranian diaspora community since the widely-contested June election. Demonstrations have also taken place in front of the Islamic Republic's interests section (housed in the Pakistani Embassy) in Washington D.C.

As Political Fissures Widen, Ali Larijani is Slowly Sealing His Fate

Ali Larijani, Speaker of Iran's Majlis parliament and a political rival to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has long been considered a conservative "wild car" in Iran's political scene. While Larijani is close to Supreme Leader Khamenei, his relatively more pragmatic approach as nuclear negotiator (before he resigned after clashing with Ahmadinejad) and his passion for Western philosophy (he is the author of four books on Emmanuel Kant) have created a belief in some that Larijani is ultimately a rationally acting politician, cut from a different cloth than the fundamentalists of the so-called "New Right" that have come to dominate Iran during the last five years.

This initially gave hope that Larijani would be able to use his clout as a regime-insider to pave the way for reconciliation between Khamenei and the opposition. In fact, Larijani -- apparently unaware of the regime's plans to rig the election -- is said to have called to congratulate Mousavi on his "sweeping victory" on election night, prior to when Ahmadinejad was officially declared the victor. Soon thereafter, Larijani even hinted (ever-so-subtly) that many Iranians questioned the election results. "The opinion of this majority should be respected and a line should be drawn between them and rioters and miscreants," he said. He was also one of the forces said to be behind the now-moribund "National Unity Plan" and also agreed that a special parliamentary panel "should look into whether jail rape allegations are true or false."

Larijani ultimately cowed to hardliners despite convincing evidence that protesters were raped while detained, however, stating that "the issue of detainees being sexually abused is a lie." Since making those comments in August, he has clearly come out and unconditionally backed the regime as the crisis plaguing the country has deepened, likely due to his close affinity to Khamenei (and despite his differences with Ahmadinejad).

Most recently, in the wake of the tumultuous protests that rocked Iran last week on Ashura, Larijani came out even more forcefully against the opposition, seemingly leaving no room for future compromise. Telling members of Majlis that officials should “arrest offenders of [Islam] and mete out the harshest punishments to anti-revolutionary figures with no mercy," Larijani went onto echo the regime's fall-back rebuttal to the massive protests that have become a Tehran-fixture as of late: that they are composed of and funded by Western powers. "US and British officials' disgraceful comments about the sacrilegious events of Ashura are so disgustingly vivid that they clarify where this movement stands when it comes to destroying religious and Revolutionary values," he said.

All of this means that Larijani appears to now be unequivocally putting all of his chips on the table and siding with the regime. This may be out of loyalty to Khamenei in his most beleaguered hour, or it may stem out of a genuine desire to see the reformists in Iran marginalized. Whatever his reason, as the number of fatalities among protesters rise and as the Islamic Republic's chances of survival fall, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the head of Iran's parliament has pledged his allegiance to a dying regime rather than preserving a possible way out of the current crisis gripping the country.

And so, as the Green movement presses on in challenging the authority of an increasingly vulnerable Islamic Republic, and as Larijani continues to lambaste Iran's vibrant opposition as foreign agents and "infidels," history may likely end up placing the supposedly 'enlightened' politician in the same grouping as Ahmadinejad and other hard-right ideologues. Should this come to be the case, Larijani may come to wish that he had lived by the words of Emmanuel Kant, the philosopher he so reveres. "By a lie, a man annihilates his dignity as a man."