Coins Up to 25 Phrases a Week : Iran’s Czar of Slogans Rallies Masses

Few Iranians have ever heard of Hajji Mahmoud Mortezai-Far. He has no official post and no salary. But nearly everybody knows his voice: He is the unofficial “minister of slogans.”

He coins rhyming chants and exhortations for just about any official occasion. Used for school assemblies, troop motivation and even murals, they have become keynote sights and sounds of Iran since the 1979 revolution.

Short in stature, quick to smile, Mortezai-Far stands each week before tens of thousands at Tehran University’s mass Friday prayers, shouting new slogans for the crowd to learn, old favorites for them to relish.

Communicating With Poor

Slogans are the clerical government’s most effective means of communicating its doctrines to the poorer mass of Iranians, who form the groundswell of support for supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Mortezai-Far, 51, known even to Khomeini as the minister of slogans, said recently in his small office by the Tehran bazaar that he coined the most powerful of the postrevolutionary slogans: Jang, jang ta pirouzi (War, war to victory).

Five years later, this simple chant still brings thousands to their feet, stabbing fists into the air in time with the rhythm. It is the reflex response of many Iranians when asked about the war.

Mothers teach it to their babies as a nursery rhyme.

Keeping People Happy

“One of the fundamental parts of any meeting is shouting slogans. There may be no speech, but there must be slogans. It’s that important,” Mortezai-Far said. “If there were no slogans, the people would be unhappy.”

He says his calling requires 100% commitment behind the microphone to keep the people on track. He stalks the breadth of the speakers’ platform, using his arms like an orchestral conductor, skillfully mixing dramatic whispers with passionate shouts.

“If you give 100%, you get a 50% reply. If you give 80%, you only get 30%,” he said.

His method, so successful, is copied by revolutionary slogan leaders throughout Iran. Some call him for advice and for new slogans. He invents up to 25 a week at peak periods of political activity.

‘Poetry Is Easier’

“Poetry is easy compared to slogans. Slogans must transmit a message. For the whole week, I watch the news from all over the world. . . . On Friday (prayers), I give the answer,” he said.

Mortezai-Far said it is even more important to take the speeches of Khomeini and top officials and distill the core of their message into “a slogan that can be acted on.”

As an example, he cited Khomeini’s recent call for all able-bodied men to rally to finish off the 5 1/2-year-old war with Iraq. His slogan: “Men who can bear arms, of any station, forward to the front for salvation.”

“The difficulties of the slogans are in the rhymes. . . . It takes a lot of thought,” Mortezai-Far said.

Kisses Khomeini’s Hand

He said he frequently meets Khomeini “to kiss his hand. He blesses me. Thanks be to God, everyone is satisfied with what I do. . . . In general, Khomeini says to make sure the slogans are based on intellect, not empty hot air.”

Mortezai-Far said this “intellect” is what sets his work apart from other slogan-wielding political systems, like that of the Soviet Union, Iran’s northern neighbor.

“The Soviet Union sees itself as the protector of the downtrodden masses. I want to know, does a Soviet worker have the same life as (leader Mikhail S.) Gorbachev? These senseless slogans are to deceive the people.

“But take our slogans: We said Khuzistan (the province partially occupied by Iraq in 1980) must be freed. We went and liberated it. We act on the slogans we give.”

‘To the End of Evil’

Iran also has some heady slogans that may seem impractical to an outsider, such as, “War, war, to the end of evil in the world.”

Mortezai-Far conceded that this would take time, but he said the slogan is still valid because it is a close adaptation of a verse from the Koran.

The Muslim holy book is a frequent source of slogans, as is the huge body of Shia Muslim tradition that grips the imagination of many Iranians.

Mortezai-Far traces the power of slogans to roots in the Shia passion chants for the martyr Hossein. He said they were first used in 1963, for political mobilization, in early clashes between the late Shah of Iran and fundamentalist religious opposition.