Forced Migration of Iranians from Their Homeland and the Deceptive, Repetitive Promises of the Ruling System for Return
The issue of “migration” of Iranians abroad in the decades following the establishment of the Islamic Republic system in Iran has been one of the main challenges for Iranian society and the ruling system. “Brain drain,” “self-imposed exile,” “exodus of human capital,” “forced migration of athletes,” “emigration of artists,” and similar concepts are terms that have entered the everyday vocabulary of Iranian society over these past few decades.
The question is: what is the primary cause of the increasing number of Iranian citizens who want to continue their lives anywhere but their homeland at any cost? Political and security threats and pressures, economic and cultural constraints, the lack of suitable conditions for many social, artistic, cultural, and economic activities, and uncertainty about Iran’s economic future have forced various segments of society to pack what they had in their homeland in a suitcase and embark on migration. Citizens whose numbers appear set to increase if current conditions persist. Another aspect of the migration of Iranians is the question of the return of those who left their homeland in past decades. The officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran claim that the path of return is available and ready for all Iranians, and they insist that there will be no problems for Iranians living abroad in traveling to and from Iran. However, security and legal treatment of many dual-nationality citizens in recent years has increasingly revealed that the consequences of returning home can fundamentally differ from what officials describe. It appears that the ruling system’s approach to both migration and return to the homeland converges on one fundamental point: deepening the rift between citizens and the ruling system, or in other words, fueling the concept of “us” versus “them” by forcing citizens into forced migration or accusing dual-nationality citizens of cooperation with security and espionage services of Western countries. A narrative that has served as a cover for the open discrimination exercised by the ruling system against citizens for over forty years, and consequently for the rising desire of Iranians to migrate.
Successive Migration of Iranians from Their Homeland; Necessity of Time or Failure of Governance?
Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, recently claimed in a meeting with a group of young elite and outstanding scientific talents of the country that “in some universities there are elements that encourage young talented people to leave the country. I say explicitly: this is betrayal, this is enmity toward the country.”
The narrative of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding the migration of Iranian elites and linking the wave of elite migration to the efforts of “enemies of the system” has a long history in the Islamic Republic. Shortly after the revolution in 1978, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution’s leader, introduced the concept of “brain drain” for the first time. In the fall of 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini had explicitly defended “brain drain” and said “let them flee. What a good riddance when these brains flee! These were not scientific brains; these were treacherous brains.” The newly empowered leader at the time explicitly stated that there was “no place for them to live” and they “must flee.”
It can be said that the continuation of this view toward the scientific and academic community and consequently the launch of the university purge project of professors and students during the Cultural Revolution caused the migration of the first group from the scientific community and elites of the country after the revolution. A migration that continued until the mid-1980s within the university and scientific community of the country. The overarching approach of the ruling system toward the issue of elite migration in all the years following Ali Khamenei’s rise to power was also based on and generalized from this same approach. In contrast, the wave of migration of the country’s elites became more widespread after the end of the eight-year war with Iraq and especially in the late 1990s. In the early 2000s, the publication of a report in Shargh newspaper indicated that “more than 62 percent of the country’s Olympic medalists migrated from Iran between 1993 and 2007.”
In the early 2000s, Ali Khamenei, in a meeting with a group of selected participants in olympiads and nationwide exams, while claiming about “foreigners’ efforts to steal human talents and other countries’ real wealth,” said “this issue forms a very negative aspect of the departure of some elites from the country, and it is also undesirable if a smart young person abandons their homeland solely for a more comfortable life abroad.”
Just a few years before the Supreme Leader’s remarks about comfortable and better living conditions abroad, a bus carrying top students from Sharif University of Technology returning from the city of Ahvaz fell into a ravine, and six elite mathematics students from Sharif University who were among the selected participants of domestic and international olympiads lost their lives. One of the survivors of this accident was Maryam Mirzakhani, a professor of mathematics at Stanford University in America. She was the one who emigrated from Iran shortly after that disaster and later became the first and only woman in the world to receive the “Fields Medal,” the highest award in mathematics in the world.
There is no doubt that the number of Iranian university and scientific elites who migrated from Iran in the 1980s and 1990s is incomparable to previous decades. Various statistics rank Iran highly in recent years among countries facing the “brain drain” problem. In the “Iran Migration Yearbook 1400 [2021],” it states that Iran’s “student sending” ranking worldwide is nineteenth. Of course, it should be noted that the basis of this statistic is the population of Iranian students living outside the country in 2018.
In a broader perspective, it can be said that the ruling system’s approach to the issue of elite migration throughout all the past years stems from the same view that is based on and implemented according to the narrative of the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A narrative that highlights concepts such as “betrayal of the homeland” or “cooperation and collusion with the enemy” and on the other hand increases the desire to migrate among elites and specialists.
The publication of a note in Sobh-e Sadegh weekly, the organ of the Sepah’s Political Office, is a clear and precise example for explaining the ruling system’s macroscopic view of the brain drain issue. A note dated November 23, 2021, and precisely after Ali Khamenei’s claims about elite migration, stated “Westerners conspire against us by creating opportunities for a better life than life in Iran.”
In the analysis of Sobh-e Sadegh weekly, one of the most important government publications, it was claimed that elite migration is part of the “mission of Western embassies in Iran” and called for the involvement of security institutions in the matter. According to the analysis of Sobh-e Sadegh weekly, the “elite migration scenario” with “providing incentives such as job offers and suitable income, desirable academic positions, etc., overall creating an opportunity for a better life than what exists in Iran” has been the goal of Western embassies.
According to the author of this note, emigrant sending is a sinister conspiracy that has been operating for years and is being pursued by elements in academic-university circles.
The loss of hope for the future among elite students and the devaluation of knowledge and scientific capability in the face of rental relationships and the extent of dependence on power leave no prospect other than increased desire among the academic elite community to migrate. A look at how the ruling system and security agencies in power treated Ali Younesi and Amir Hossein Moradi, two young elite students at Sharif University, and the infliction of the harshest physical and psychological torture on these students solely because they refused to comply with the unjust demands of security agencies for forced confession, is a clear example of the ruling system’s view of the value of elites.
Politicization of Migration; From Forced Displacement of Champions and Artists to the Sufferings of Citizens’ Refugee Status
The migration of human capital from Iran has in many cases occurred on the basis of a type of “coercion”; coercion that is precisely the result of open discrimination by the ruling system. The implementation of strict and discriminatory laws against athletes and the existence of censorship and numerous restrictions for many artists, cultural figures, media personnel, and civil activists have caused us to witness the migration of many of these individuals in recent years. Since the practice of discriminatory treatment by those in power is evident behind all these forms of migration, the ruling system deliberately creates a context for discrediting these figures. In other words, it once again insists on continuing the policy of creating a rift between elites and specialists with society, because otherwise it would be forced to account for the exercise of discrimination against the country’s human capital.
In recent days, Alireza Firouzja, an Iranian chess player who emigrated to France from Iran not long ago, became the vice champion of Europe and the second-ranked player in the world ranking with the French national team. One of the main reasons for his migration to France was the problems that arose for him due to the deprivation of Iranian athletes from competing with athletes from Israel while he was playing for the Iranian national team. Earlier, Kimia Alizadeh, holder of an Olympic bronze medal, after emigrating to Germany, competed under the refugee flag at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The interpretations and reports by the Islamic Republic’s media and especially television about Kimia Alizadeh’s confrontation with an Iranian team athlete at the Olympics and these media’s attempt to damage Alizadeh’s image is a striking example of the implementation of the ruling system’s policy in dealing with this form of forced displacement of sports elites. This manner of treatment is also seen with other segments of society such as artists or cultural and media activists. Some time ago, Asghar Farhadi, the renowned Iranian filmmaker and two-time Oscar winner, in response to a statement by the director of the documentary group “Narration of Victory” who had called Farhadi a filmmaker close to the government, wrote: “How do you attribute me to a government that has repeatedly sent the message: ‘It is better that Farhadi not return to Iran’?
The point that Asghar Farhadi referred to actually demonstrates that a faction within the ruling system welcomes the migration of artistic and cultural figures such as Asghar Farhadi and essentially insists on emptying all cultural and artistic arenas of prominent figures. It appears that the methods of narrowing the scope of artistic and cultural activity and exercising discrimination against activists in these fields are varied; from security pressures to issuing unjust prison sentences. Pressures that force many activists to migrate.
The departure of Mehdi Hajeiti, former representative of the Shiraz City Council, and Masoud Massaed, journalist, from Iran under difficult circumstances and enduring numerous hardships and bearing the sufferings of illegal migration are recent examples of this type of migration that is specifically the result of issuing unjust judicial rulings against these individuals.
This form of migration that had forced some activists to emigrate from Iran in recent decades has in recent years expanded not only among university elites but also among broader segments of Iranians including lawyers and journalists. From tearing out and abandoning everything they had planted and possessed and resorting to forced, albeit legal, migration, to finding sometimes very dangerous ways to seek refugee status in other countries, these were all decisions that have brought unforeseeable sufferings and hardships for many Iranians. In a recent report by The Times, prepared based on new data from the UK Home Office, more than a quarter of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats are Iranian. A very dangerous route that sometimes means risking one’s life.
According to statistics from the Iran Migration Observatory, administered under Sharif University of Technology, the number of Iranian asylum seekers (those awaiting the result of their asylum application) was 77,217 and the number of Iranian refugees (those whose asylum requests have been accepted) was 134,776 at the end of 2020.
If leaving the country for Iranian refugees is above all equivalent to abandoning everything they had in their homeland and starting an unknown and vague new life, for a large group of other Iranians, “migration” is equivalent to “transferring” all the capital that they may have accumulated over years of work and savings in their own land and now, to save their capital from being destroyed in Iran’s unstable economy, they invest it in other countries. With the significant increase in investment by many affluent Iranians in various countries around the world over the past four decades, a large volume of material capital that could have played an important role in Iran’s economic cycle was invested in other countries. Perhaps the latest example of this was the dramatic increase in property purchases in Turkey by Iranians, which even prompted a reaction from Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic.
It can be said that if previously having some material capital was the main obstacle to the migration of small and large capital owners from the country, now these same classes desire to migrate to preserve their capital.
Return to the Homeland; A Significant Gap Between the Narrative of Officials and Existing Reality
The approach of the officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran in dealing with the issue of Iranian migration and their insistence on inverting the truth has always followed a predetermined and specific path. The officials’ effort to demonstrate their interest in the return of Iranian emigrants also took a more serious form and a new course in the 2000s.
The formation of the Supreme Council of Iranian Affairs Abroad in late 2004 was one such measure. An institution that is a subsidiary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran. An institution that throughout its years of operation has claimed to facilitate the return of Iranians living abroad to the country.
A few days after Ali Khamenei’s claim about the “betrayal” of some elements in encouraging students to emigrate and the reopening of discussion about migration and the exodus of human capital from the country, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while emphasizing that “the issue of Iranian dual citizens must be resolved once and for all,” said “this issue should be addressed at the level of legislation in the parliament.” Iran’s Foreign Minister announced the launch of “a system in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs” that would guide and inform Iranians who had concerns about returning to the country whether they would face problems in “entry and return” or not. The Foreign Minister claimed that if “a problem arose after inquiring through this system, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible and we guarantee this issue.”
The claims of the Foreign Minister of the Ebrahim Raisi administration come even though the Foreign Ministry fundamentally has no “legal authority” to guarantee the issue of entry and exit of individuals. However, insistence on the availability of conditions for return to the homeland for Iranian emigrants has also been heard in recent months from other ruling system officials. An insistence that is in no way consistent with existing reality and the Islamic Republic’s experience in dealing with those who returned to the country eager to work and be active but ended up in prison and detention.
Some time ago, Keyvan Samimi, a political prisoner held in Evin Prison, wrote in his Telegram account the story of a young elite prisoner named Alireza Golipour whom he met in detention. The story of a gifted student who received his high school diploma in mathematics at age 14, graduated from Sharif University of Technology in electronics, and then began a doctoral degree in telecommunications in Germany, and before defending his thesis returns to the homeland at the insistence of Iranian scientific officials to help sensitive telecommunications projects. According to Keyvan Samimi’s account, Alireza Golipour’s refusal to cooperate with security institutions faces him with espionage charges, and he has now been in prison for more than 9 years. This is despite the fact that even the Ministry of Intelligence “officially informed the prosecutor that his case is not espionage.”
One can confidently say that the conflict of interests of security and intelligence institutions in the files of dual-nationality citizens or Iranians living in other countries who have returned to the country and been arrested is clearly evident better than anywhere else. Looking at the files of dual-nationality prisoners arrested in recent years, one can clearly find the fingerprints of security institutions such as the Sepah Intelligence Organization or the Sepah’s Tharallah Headquarters. Institutions whose influence in the judicial system and especially in such cases not only makes fair legal proceedings impossible but also transforms the promises and imaginary red carpets of the Islamic Republic officials into cold, dark prison corridors for a large group of Iranians abroad.
Source: Iran Human Rights Campaign
