“There’s Zarif on Clubhouse!”. Late Wednesday, the call spread quickly and with amazement among Iranian users of the audio conversation app that is becoming a political phenomenon in Iran, where social media like Twitter and Facebook are censored. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif suddenly showed up in a virtual room – a chat room – and talked for almost two hours about the Iranian nuclear deal and the agreement just signed by Iran with China, about a pasdaran tv series not very commendable with his figure and his political future – “I’m not going to run”, he reiterated speaking of the presidential elections in June. All with almost 8 thousand people listening to him.
The minister appeared relaxed and open to questions, even though the organizers had banned some media like the BBC Persian to make it – the broadcaster is very opposed by the Iranian regime. However, Zarif replied to users and journalists and even allowed himself a joke about the technology gap: “I have an Android, I’m not rich like the rest of you and I received the beta software that allows Android to use Clubhouse just two hours ago” he said.
Dissidents and Pasdaran: the unusual mix of Iranians on Clubhouse
Clubhouse is an iPhone-only application for now. Most users in Iran use Android operating systems, Apple phones are not very popular because they are expensive and due to the limits that there are on imports and use of Western software due to sanctions, yet thousands of users in the country are already enter the social network that works on call – you must be invited to be able to access. In the virtual rooms mainly activists, journalists, politicians, analysts, researchers meet, but the conversations are open and lively and are becoming an important tool for discussion in view of the presidential elections next June, in a country where social media are filtered, censorship is pressing and public debate is monopolized by the state-controlled media.
Not only that: on Clubhouse the Iranians seem to find a unity – or at least, a plural interaction – unprecedented for the public debate of the country: human rights activists and dissidents discuss together with nostalgics of the Shah and supporters of the Islamic Republic, reformists and Pasdaran, critics in exile and hard pieces of the regime.
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Zarif spoke for two hours to a mixed audience, as happened on March 29 during another conversation with Rostam Qasemi, commander of the IRGC – the paramilitary body of the Pasdaran that is the backbone of the conservative establishment in Iran. Some consider him a potential presidential candidate, in the Clubhouse chat he found himself answering questions from an exiled journalist and a very critical dissident with the Islamic Republic. The moderator stopped the questions when they started to get too insidious, but a small border had been crossed.
Freedom of speech or surveillance?
ìHolly Drages, an Iranian analyst from the Atlantic Council, recounted one of the conservations she took part in on Clubhouse: “A member of the Khomeini clan, a women’s rights activist and a hacker walk into a room. the beginning of a joke, but in reality this is what happened recently in a Clubhouse chat room where it was discussed whether or not the hijab should remain mandatory in Iran. “
Since its inception in April last year, Clubhouse has rapidly spread to several countries in the Middle East and the Gulf, allowing for open discussions on social and political issues usually affected by censorship or reserved for private conversations between trusted people, even if different. experts and organizations for digital rights have warned against the risk that it also turns into a control tool by authoritarian regimes. The app has several security and privacy flaws.
According to the data reported by Middle East Eye , “between October 14, 2020 and March 2, 2021, Saudi Arabia recorded 220,486 downloads of the app, while the UAE recorded 51,127 downloads and Kuwait 18,479”.
The role of social media on Iranian politics and the economy
There is no data on Iranian users of the app, but the impact it is having on the political debate is visible. On the other hand, social media has also played an important role in other important moments in Iranian political life in the last decade. In 2009, the protests of the Green Wave movement were also coordinated via Twitter, which was then filtered by the authorities. In 2017, the government tried to suspend Telegram, following other street protests, but the application is so widespread among merchants and entrepreneurs that the economic impact of its closure would have been unsustainable to face: about 40 million Iranians have installed Telegram on their smartphones.
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For now, the government does not seem to want to get its hands on Clubhouse, conservative and reformist politicians use it to make propaganda or to debate, conservative clerics are confronted with liberal activists. At least until the elections.
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