Iran's failed cultural diplomacy in Syria

The daughter of a German diplomat, Nadia von Maltzahn was born in Damascus. She grew up mainly in Algeria, Bonn and London, but never forgot her city of birth.

She went back to Damascus for the first time while studying Arabic literature and history at Cambridge University, spending 2003-4 in the old city. “I loved it and felt at home from the beginning,” von Maltzahn told Tehran Bureau in an interview in Beirut, where she is research associate at the Orient-Institut.

“I was living close to the shrine of Sayida Ruqayya [literally, ‘the descendent of the prophet Muhammad, Ruqayya’, the infant daughter of Imam Hussein, the 7th century Shia Muslim leader] just behind the Omayyed mosque. Every day on my way to language classes at the French Institute, walking through the old town, I passed plenty of Iranians.”

Fate drew Von Maltzahn closer into the relationship between Syria and Iran. Firstly, her father Paul was appointed ambassador to Tehran in 2003, and she seized the opportunity to visit her parents.

Secondly, she had a chance conversation with an Iranian on a plane. “He was an engineer, who’d been to Damascus to the Canadian embassy for immigration papers or somesuch. We were just chatting and when I asked what he thought of Damascus, he said, ‘Oh, I just went for my papers, the problem with Arabs is that they don’t have a culture’. How could he say that when he had just been to one of the oldest cities in the world? Damascus is full of culture!”

Shocked, Von Maltzahn wondered how Iran and Syria could have such strong political relations with such poor cultural understanding, and thereby found a subject for her doctorate at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and for her book The Syria-Iran Axis: Cultural Diplomacy and International Relations in the Middle East, published in 2013 and just issued in paperback.

“This idea of the Arabs without culture is widespread in Iran,” Von Maltzahn told Tehran Bureau. “But Iranians can have a particular image in Syria too, because Syrians see a certain group [conservative Iranians] on a particular mission, that is religious pilgrimage. This is building new stereotypes that are not entirely representative. So I was interested in what the two states were doing on the cultural level, how they were working on their image.”

Von Maltzahn followed Joseph Nye, the American politics professor, in defining cultural relations as “an instrument that governments use to mobilise resources – resources that arise from values a country expresses in its culture – to communicate with and attract the publics of other countries”.

Iran and Syria signed a friendship treaty as far back as 1953, seven years after Syria’s independence from France. But efforts to improve cultural relations depended on “enthused individuals”, and were not helped by the Shah’s worries over Syrian interest in pan-Arabism.

Von Maltzahn writes:

From independence in 1946, until the beginning of the Asad era [Hafez al-Assad became president in 1971], Syrian governments changed frequently and subsequent leaders were preoccupied with domestic politics and Arab nationalism, which was at its height in the 1950s and 1960s. Syrian foreign policy in general was more concerned with hard power than propagating ideas...the Syrian side cooperated with the Iranian government in theory, mainly by agreeing to...the idea of expanding cultural ties, but did little actively to introduce its culture to Iran ...

In 1979 Iran’s revolutionaries called on the ‘oppressed’ (mostazafin) to rise against their ‘oppressors’ (mostakberin) and for international Islamic revolution. Yet from the early days of the Islamic Republic, Iran’s policy towards Syria was based not on seeking close ties with the main Sunni Islamist group Ikhwan (the Muslim Brothers) but with a state led by the avowedly ‘secular’ Baath party. Significantly the Baath shared Iran’s antipathy to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which invaded Iran in 1980, and both sides also stressed support for the Palestinians in what came to be called the ‘axis of resistance’.

These factors were more important than any relationship between mainly Shia Iran and the Alawi, a sect making up around 12% of Syria’s population but well represented in the regime and its leading members, including the Assad family. But in 1973 the Lebanese cleric Musa Sadr had given a religious judgement that the Alawi were coreligionists of the Shia, and over time this slowly gave an additional layer to Iran-Syria relations.

The overall result has been a complex mix where any kind of policy – cultural or otherwise –might require subtlety. Has Tehran shown finesse?

“The Iranians are very strategic about their foreign relations, including cultural relations,” said Von Maltzahn. “It’s not driven entirely by ideology, you can see they are pragmatic. It’s striking how much they think about the cultural side of relations with other countries.”

Iran’s cultural centre in Damascus opened in 1983, first in the well-to-do area of Mazzeh, close to the embassy, but later, as Von Maltzahn writes in the book, “situated in the heart of Damascus, right next to Martyrs Square and in walking distance to the shrines of Sayida Ruqayya and the Umayyad Mosque in the old town... [where its] central location makes it very accessible to anyone”.

So what does the Iranian cultural centre in Damascus try to achieve? Its goals revolve around expanding culture, scientific, religious and artistic relations between the two countries ... Introducing Iranian Islamic culture, stressing the importance of Islamic unity and promoting Persian language and literature feature strongly, as does the need to increase academic interaction by organising university exchanges on the student and teacher level. These goals...aim at building lasting relationships between the people and bringing Islamic Iran’s culture and values closer to the Syrian people.

Von Maltzahn categorises the articles in the centre’s quarterly journal, Islamic Culture, published between 1985 and 2006. Topping the list are Islamic themes – law, philosophy, the prophet Muhammad – but there are also poetry and literature, and ‘women and family affairs’. As part of her extensive research, she also looks at cultural weeks, film festivals, seminars and conferences, and at Iranian students in Syria.

Iran has also worked to promote Farsi teaching, its cultural centre cooperating with the four main Syrian state universities, in Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia and Homs. Von Maltzahn’s book includes a warm profile of Muhammad al-Tounji, the pioneer of Farsi teaching whom she met at his home in Aleppo. Tounji studied in Tehran in the 1960s, and until retirement in the 1990s taught both Arabic literature and Farsi in Damascus and Aleppo universities.

“He was one of the first students sent to Iran, and developed his passion for Iran and its language and literature through his studies,” said von Maltzahn. “He was part of the whole evolution of Persian teaching in Syria, and of the real link between the two cultures.”

But after 1979, Tounji was somewhat discouraged. Von Maltzahn writes:

At the beginning of the revolution, cultural cooperation started off well. In his view it soon emerged, however, that the Islamic Republic wanted to teach Persian not to those who liked literature, but to those who had an inclination to Shi’ism...According to Tounji, the Iranians mostly did not teach real Persian literature anymore: it was all propaganda for the Islamic revolution. Tounji himself taught Persian, but not Iranian propaganda – he has also taught Hebrew for instance, but had no connection whatsoever to Israel: the one was unconnected to the other.

In her examination of cultural diplomacy, Von Maltzahn looks briefly at its relationship with ‘soft power’, with the Europeans developing structured programmes between the world wars, followed lately by China, but with few Arab countries taking the practice seriously, other than recently through satellite television channels.

Compared to Iran, Syria has had little desire to propagate its culture abroad. Iranians already commonly studied Arabic and Assad’s Syria, writes von Maltzahn, had no wish to promote a revolutionary message:

Arab nationalism was at the roots of Syrian policy and at the core of its Ba’thist ideology...Promoting one’s national culture abroad would act against this particular pan-Arab vision...the activities of the Syrian cultural centres focused on the themes of resistance and anti-imperialism...

Syria did not open its Syrian-Arab culture centre in Tehran, just off Jordan Street, until 2005. Its first director spoke no Farsi, and both he and his successor were former economics professors. Nonetheless the centre, Von Maltzahn found during her research in Tehran, became popular with students already studying Arabic as a place to improve their language skills.

Von Maltzahn is convinced cultural diplomacy works best when done with passion, and with subtlety. Many would see a good example in Germany’s own Goethe- Institut, which is funded by the foreign ministry, federal states and private sponsors and operates in 98 countries including Iran and Syria.

“The Goethe support young artists, but there is usually some German element,” she said. “The [Berlin] government doesn’t say ‘Do 1, 2, 3’, but there are certain guidelines. This [the flexibility] means they’re more successful. The idea isn’t propaganda, but to introduce something, and it’s more convincing if it’s something you love.”

Perhaps the most loving and popular aspect – at least on the Iran side – of the Iranian-Syrian relationship is the Iranian religious tourism that Von Maltzahn noticed as a young student. The most visited Shia shrine in Syria is Sayida Zaynab, the mausoleum of the sister of Imam Hussein, in a south-west Damascus suburb. There are other shrines of companions of the prophet Mohammad and members of his family in Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo. Von Maltzahn points out in the book that cultural diplomacy encouraged pilgrims from Iran in the 1980s, especially as the Syrian shrines offered an alternative for Shia Iranian unable to visit shrines in Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

But even the growth of religious tourism has had a limited effect in broadening cultural relations:

Of over 360,000 Iranians coming to Syria in 2008, more than 333,000 were tourists...The example of Iranian pilgrims going to Syria emphasises the limits of interaction. Communication between pilgrims and Syrians was largely confined to those that were involved in the tourist industry or trade. While Iranian religious tourism did introduce Syrians to Iranians and their traditions...it did not contribute to bridging the cultural divide between the two peoples. Quite on the contrary, it created an impression amongst Syrians that all Iranians were...religious, of modest background and conservative, which did not persuade many Syrians to visit Iran...Non-religious tourism between the two countries remained as good as non-existent.

Iran has since the 1979 Revolution aided the renovation and expansion of the shrine complexes, including those of Sayida Zaynab and Sayida Ruqayya. The architecture is distinctive, said Von Maltzahn: “The Iranian style is so recognisable. You see it in Syria, because the Iranians were so involved in renovating some shrines. They have these elements, I’m thinking of the domes, the turquoise tiles. Inside [the shrine of] Sitt [colloquial] Zaynab is very shiny.”

Iran also played a role after 1988 restoring the far less well-known shrines of two of the prophet’s companions, Uways al-Qarani and Ammar bin Yasir, situated in Raqqa, the city in eastern Syria now the centre of operations of Daesh, the so-called Islamic State (Isis). Von Maltzahn wrote of them:

The architectural style is clearly typically Iranian and stands out from its surroundings. Since their completion, the shrines cater to Iranian pilgrims...the new mausoleums are largely ignored by the local authorities and population who had previously used them for local rituals and practices. Instead, they have become a symbol of Syrian-Iranian cooperation: for Syria, they serve as a political symbol of their close ties to Iran; for Iran, they represent a manifestation of Shi’i presence in Syria.

And not a welcome symbol for Isis, which set off explosions in the shrines in 2014, apparently reducing them to rubble and then bulldozing the site.

Such destruction, amid more general violence, raises many questions.

Does the partly sectarian nature of the Syrian war – with Iran supporting a regime composed disproportionately of Alawi against mainly Sunni rebels, including virulently anti-Shia groups like Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra – reflect the failure of Syria-Iran cultural diplomacy?

Might it even suggest that Syria-Iran political and cultural relations helped sour sectarian relations and so contribute to the war?

Von Maltzahn finished her book in 2012, just as Syria’s war was intensifying, and remains non-committal as an academic over these matters. But she is clearly distressed at the agonies of the country where she was born, in whose language she is fluent, one of whose citizens she has married, and to whose future she is committed.

In 2010, von Maltzahn visited the Iranian cultural centre established four years earlier in Latakia, the ‘capital’ of the Alawi heartland:

According to a study undertaken by ICRO [the Iranian government’s Islamic Culture and Relations Organisation], Syrians from the coastal region and the mountains surrounding it – areas mostly associated with Alawis – are more open to Iran’s cultural efforts than in other parts of Syria, which is why Iran concentrates a large amount of its regional activities in those areas...Since it was not in Iran’s interests to underline an Iranian-Alawi bond, the director of the Iranian cultural centre in Latakia at the time, Ali Hosseini, denied it was mostly Alawis frequenting the centre – ‘all kinds of Syrians come to us’, he asserted, ‘we also have Christians coming here for instance’...

The atmosphere at the centre seemed more relaxed than at the centre in Damascus. While talking to the director, several people came and went...When I observed that it was a busy morning, Hosseini replied that it was always like that, people came and went, and afternoons were even busier when there were language classes. The Iranian cultural centre in Latakia thus seemed to be appreciated as a place to study Persian and inquire about subjects connected to Iran.

Nadia von Maltzahn The Syria-Iran Axis: Cultural Diplomacy and International Relations in the Middle East, IB Tauris paperback, 2015

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