Coming in harder: Iran’s new president

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Hello, and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. In Bangladesh, too many young women are trafficked, ending up condemned to lives of indentured servitude in the country's sprawling brothels. Our correspondent meets a remarkable woman who first came to one at age 12 and ended up in charge of it. And in the track and field events at the Tokyo Olympics, world records have not just been broken, they've been smashed. That may well be partly down to the high tech shoes some competitors are wearing. We ask how they work and whether it's fair. But first, Iran's new president, Ebrahim Raisi, was sworn in yesterday after winning a rigged election in June. The conservative cleric was hand picked by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who's increasingly been consolidating power in the hands of hardliners. At the ceremony, Mr. Raisi spoke of countries protecting their interests of balanced foreign policy. The handover of power comes after two assaults on international shipping in the past week, widely suspected to be the work of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's military force often implicated in the region's proxy battles. All this puts pressure on efforts to constrain Iran's Nuclear ambitions, which have steadily expanded as talks to revive a moribund nuclear deal have stalled. Yesterday, American officials urged Mr. Raisi back to the negotiating table. But it's not clear whether his conservative connections will prove a help or a hindrance.

The new President of Iran, Ibrahim Raisi, he's a hardline cleric and he sees isolation and staunch religious nationalism as the best way to preserve the Islamic Republic.

Nicholas Pelham is our Middle east correspondent.

He's a narrow and suspicious view of the world and of the west in particular. And he's replacing Hassan Rouhani, a cleric who's often been seen as more of a reformist. And so the change in the administration is likely to have implications for Western diplomatic efforts with Iran in the sense.

That you think Iran will be taking a more confrontational, anti west approach.

Now already we're seeing a sort of uptick in tension. There have been two recent incidents. On July 29, a drone laden with explosives was flown into the merchant vessel Mercer street, an oil tanker off the coast of Oman, which was managed by an Israeli owned firm. And there are two crew members, a British national and a Romanian national, who were killed in that assault. And America, Britain and Israel blamed Iran, although Iran denied involvement. Inside. Khatibzadeh, who's an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, accused Israel of creating instability, terror and violence and warned that whoever sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind threatening another round. And indeed, there was a second incident. Earlier this week, government boarded a second ship, the merchant vessel Asphalt Princess, and tried to move it towards Iranian waters. It wasn't clear who seized the ship, but analysts suspected Iranian forces. Ned Price of the American State Department commented earlier this week, we can confirm.

That personnel have left the Panama flagged Asphalt Princess. We believe that these personnel were Iranian, but were not in a position to confirm, confirm this at this time.

And the Asphalt Princess is owned by a Dubai based firm that had one of its vessels hijacked two years ago by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's the kind of Praetorian Guard, that's Iran's most powerful military force.

So what do you make then of that spate of attacks and the resulting blame game that's going on here?

This is all part of a pattern of escalating attacks and a sort of shadow war between Iran and Israel. Israel. There have been multiple vessels that have been attacked. Each side blames the other. Israel has also struck Iranian positions in Syria repeatedly and it's also accused of attacking important facilities in Iran. And perhaps most dramatically of all, there was an attack earlier this year on Iran's main uranium enrichment complex in the Tanz, which did significant damage to Iran's nuclear program. So if it is confirmed that the irgc, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is behind the attacks on shipping, it's going to come as no surprise that Iran and its proxies have exchanged attacks not just with Israel, but also with America, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in recent years. And so I think all of this points to the prospect of a growing showdown, and analysts are increasingly concerned as to whether it can be contained.

And do you think it can?

Certainly. When it comes to Iranian politics, few Iranian presidents have succeeded in curbing the Guards. Their workings are murky, and they often seem to pursue a policy at odds with that of a weak, elected government. And it's not Even clear if Mr. Raisi himself is going to even try to rein them in, because if the Guards answer to anyone, it's to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah ali Khamenei. And Mr. Isi was handpicked by Mr. Khamenei and is widely considered to be his yes man. So I expect that under the new administration, Iran is going to be significantly more assertive.

And what does a more assertive stance mean for the Iran nuclear deal? Where do things stand now?

There is widespread concern that the change in the administration is going to complicate efforts to revive the nuclear deal. That deal was signed in 2009, 2015, by Iran and six world powers, and it had Iran curb its nuclear program and agree to rigorous inspections in return for the lifting of some international sanctions. But then America abandoned the deal in 2018. Iran, in turn, began breaching parts of it. And it was only with the election of Joe Biden as American president that there was really talk of this deal coming back to life, provided, of course, that Iran came back into compliance. And there is still major disagreement on timing. In an address in early August, Mr. Raisi said his government would take steps to lift what he called tyrannical sanctions imposed by America. But a sixth round of indirect negotiations to revive the nuclear deal ended in June. There's been no date set for a resumption of talks. And meanwhile, Iran has continued to significantly step up its nuclear activity. It's enriching uranium beyond the levels required for civilian use, and it's no longer cooperating with inspectors.

And looking inward a bit here, what about the domestic challenges that Mr. Raisi will face?

This isn't going to be a smooth honeymoon period. Iran is still grappling with the pandemic it's the worst hit country in the region. It's recorded record numbers of new cases in recent days and the theocracy is struggling to provide vaccines. On top of that, you've had electricity blackouts and then you've got protests over some of the worst water shortages that Iran has seen in decade. There's also intense anger over a sense in which the authorities are diverting scarce water resources away from the periphery to industrial projects. In the heartland of Iran, you've got rising inflation, sanctions are having an ever greater toll. And so all in all, Iranians are facing a really tough time. And it's hard to imagine how a new Iranian president could be taking office at a time of greater despondency.

Nicholas, thank you very much for joining us.

Jason, it's always a pleasure. Thank you.

For more analysis like this from our international network of correspondence, take out a subscription to the Economist. Get a great introductory deal@exterator.com intelligenceoffer. The link is in the show Notes. On the edge of a textile town northwest of Bangladesh's capital capital Dhaka, lies Kandapara, the country's oldest brothel.

Kandapara is one of 11 of these so called brothel villages in Bangladesh.

Corinne Redfern writes for Our Sister magazine 1843 and the Fuller Project, a non profit journalism organization reporting on issues affecting women worldwide.

It really looks like a town in its own right. You walk through one of three gates and enter a labyrinth of corrugated metal and bright pink cinderblock buildings which house hundreds of bedrooms and more than 50 shops, beauty salons and tea stalls. And this is home to more than 600 women and girls and frequented by up to 3,000 customers every day. And this is where Manawara Begum lives. She's a 44 year old woman who was trafficked into the brothel when she was about 12 years old and today she's in charge. I really started reporting this story four years ago when I teamed up with a Bangladeshi journalist called Aliasan and together we spent several weeks with Manawara in Kandapara brothel. Every evening we'd sit together on upturned plastic buckets and she'd chain smoke cigarette after cigarette while remembering the past. And then when Covid broke out last year, Ali and I reached out to Manawara again to find out how she was coping. And over the course of dozens of interviews, she began to tell us her life story in all its complicated and difficult truth. The story of how Manawara came to the brothel goes back more than three decades. Her parents died when she was a child and when she was 12 years old. Her relatives arranged for her to get married to a man more than twice her age. He raped and beat her every day, and then he invited his friends to do the same. And after several months, Manawara escaped to her uncle's house. But then he tried to rape her as well. So Manawara decided to run away again. She'd heard about this village near the town of Tangail, an hour away, where women and girls lived alone and men visited only to pay them, although she wasn't sure why. But she took a rickshaw anyway, across town to Kandapara, and upon arrival, an older woman named Sufia welcomed her to stay and told her that she could sleep in her bed. On her fourth day in the brothel, Sophia told Manawara that a man had come to meet her. Manawara, who was still just 12 years old, refused. But Sophia wouldn't take no for an answer. And when she remembers that day, Manawara recalls pain and humiliat. She told us that what happened made her feel like she was dying of shame. Later, when the man left, Manawara asked Sufia for the money that he had paid to rape her. But the older woman told her that that money had already gone towards paying her rent. Prostitution is legal in Bangladesh, but in theory, local officials certified that everyone working in a brothel is over 18 and fully consents. But I met girls as young as 12 or 13 who had been trafficked into the sex industry. And typically, these girls are bought by wealthier older women, known in Bengali as sardurnis. And they then have to earn back the amount of money that was paid for them, which can often take years. Manawara's case was slightly different, because nobody had actually sold her into the brothel. After eight months under Sophia's control, she found a police officer and made a plea to stay at the brothel but continue working independently. She had stopped trying to escape because experience had taught her that life outside the brothel could be even more dangerous for a teenage girl. Things really began to change for manawara in around 1996, when she was approaching her early 20s. At this time, the women who lived in Kandapura were forced to publicly identify themselves as sex workers whenever they went into town. Most humiliating of all, they weren't allowed to wear shoes. One day, Manawara attended a workshop organized by a charity. She wanted to look smart for the occasion, so she and two other women decided to take the risk and wear shoes anyway. But when they returned to Kantapara, their chief, Sardony, tried to fine them for breaking the rules. Manawara and her Friends were outraged and decided to stage a protest. Eventually they organized a meeting with the local police who to their surprise, decided they were actually in the right. So from now on, the sex workers could dress however they pleased outside the brothel. And for Manawara, it was the first time in her life that she had set out to achieve something and won. So she immediately wanted to do it again. A year later, she and her friends attended a conference in India for sex work workers rights. Manawara told us that she was struck by the realisation of how much power sex workers in Bangladesh could have if they were only united. Upon their return to Bangladesh, the three women were inspired to form an organization that would look after the Kandapara sex workers interests and campaign for their rights. They called the organization Nari Mukti Sanga, which means Women's Liberation. The most important role of the organization was to ensure human rights for the hundreds of women and girls inside the brothel. By offering loans, free condoms, medical supplies. And in providing such support, the organization and its founders became more more and more powerful. By the time she was in her 30s, Manawara was one of the brothel's most high profile figures. She no longer saw customers herself. Instead she took a cut of the rent she collected on behalf of the land owning Sir Ernes. She only had one rule, that she would never buy a trafficked girl herself. Today, Manawara's feelings about Kandipara are complicated. For hundreds of women and girls, it's still a site of violence, rape and abuse. But in a society with so few opportunities for women, it also protects them from destitution. She said that sometimes she does dream about what would have happened if she'd had a good marriage to a good man. If she'd had children to cook for and eat with. And she thinks life would have been so happy. But then she pictures the violent man who she was forced to marry when she was 12 years old. And she thinks how lucky she is to be here and how lucky she is to be free.

On the track at this year's Olympic Games, world records have fallen left and right.

I cannot believe what we've just seen.

In the men's 400 meter hurdles, Norway's Karsten Warholm shaved off a huge 3/4 of a second to take gold. And in the women's 400 meter hurdles, American Sydney McLachlan came in 44 seconds under the record. Even the two people who came second in those races beat the prior world's best. An unusually bouncy track may have something to do with it, but there's already plenty of controversy about some unusually bouncy footwear.

The shoes that the athletes are wearing are very high tech and help them run faster than anyone's run before.

Tim Cross is the Economist's technology editor.

These go back to 2016, when Nike released a shoe called the Vaporfly. And it's very distinctive. It's a road running shoe, but it's got a massive, chunky heel that almost looks like a platform shoe from the 1970s. And that's all made of a special sort of very springy foam, and it hides a carbon fibre plate inside it. That technology has spread into the spiked track shoes that the athletes use inside the Olympic stadium, and we're starting to see the effect there as well.

How much of a difference can different shoes make at this sort of elite level?

Well, we're not sure exactly. It slightly depends on how you define performance. But people have tested these things in labs and it seems that they make about a 4% improvement to an athlete's running efficiency, which means the amount of oxygen they use to run a given distance will be about 4% lower in one of these things than it would otherwise be. The trick is that that doesn't necessarily translate directly to running 4% faster. You know, you're potentially looking at something on the order of 1 or 2%, which may sound pretty tiny and pretty insignificant, but if you compound that over a marathon distance, say, you'd be looking for an elite male runner at maybe 2 1/2 minutes difference, wearing the shoe versus not wearing it.

And so what's actually going on here to increase efficiency and indirectly, I guess, speed? How do they work?

Well, the sports scientists that I spoke to aren't quite clear on all the details, but I think the broad outline is that it's partly down to the foam and partly down to the carbon fiber plate. These aren't the first shoes to have fancy foam in them. They've been in running shoes for quite a while. But this is the latest generation of fancy foam, and the basic idea is that when you run, the foam gets compressed with each foot strike and then springs back and so imparts quite a lot of the energy back into your next stride. And it's here that they've managed to improve things, because this newest foam is the springiest yet, essentially. And then with the carbon fibre plate, I think researchers are a little bit less sure about exactly what this does, but it seems to alter an athlete's gait slightly. So the biomechanics with which they run in a way that also makes the running even more efficient.

So at what point does bouncy foam and carbon fiber plate amount to an unfair advantage if these things are clearly so successful at what they're trying to do?

Well, for some people, it amounts to one. Already, I think we've seen phrases thrown around like technological doping or the shoe that ruined running. I think ultimately it's a sort of cultural question, because different sports have different levels of tolerance for technology. If you look at cycling, say, building frames out of carbon fibre instead of aluminium, or using solid wheels instead of spoked ones, all that is kind of welcomed and it's seen as a natural part of the progression of the sport. For whatever reason, running is a bit more on the sort of Puritan side, and people like to think of it as some sort of elemental human activity that ideally, technology should interfere with as little as possible. The sports governing body has tried to split the difference, so they've introduced rules that limit how big the foam padding can be, I think in an effort to basically fend off an arms race between the manufacturers. And the shoes that you see on the track are less strikingly weird than the ones that you see on the road. But it's definitely an interesting question where physics becomes kind of too much and starts to overshadow the human performances that we all like to think sport is about.

Thanks very much for your time, Tim.

Thanks, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors this week are Kim Gittleson and Chris Impey. Our sound engineer is the beloved and acclaimed Daniel Lloyd Evans. Our senior producers are Hannah Mourinho and Sam Colbert. Our producers are Stevie Hertz and William Warren. Assistant producers, Jason Hoskin and Abasoye Ocean Dairo, with extra production help this week from Dan Ashby, Kevin Kaners, Elna Schutz and Lucy Taylor. We'll all see you back here on.