From: asianconflictreport <asianconflictreport@yahoo.co.uk>
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Sent: Saturday, 20 June, 2009 19:28:44
Subject: [afro-asiareport] IRAN: "Humanitarian Rhetoric and U.S. Imperialism in Iran" [9 newsclippings]
June 19 - 21, 2009
Humanitarian Rhetoric and U.S. Imperialism in Iran
The Electoral Façade
By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO
http://www.counterp unch.org/ dimaggio06192009 .html
It is worth reflecting on one central question regarding Iran: why does the recent election enjoy so much attention in the U.S.? My research on Iran suggests that Americans' attention to Iran revolves around two issues. More superficially, much of the Iran focus is motivated by the conflict over the country's nuclear power program. Without American officialdom' s fixation on the Iran "threat," it is unlikely that the election would receive sustained attention. But why is there such an obsession over a program that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and U.S. National Intelligence conclude is geared toward domestic energy production, and which ended its weapons development six years ago? To answer this question, we need to move beyond the superficial reason for coverage - Iran's nuclear program - and address the substantive reason for America's Iran fixation: U.S. imperial power.
I have spent much of my intellectual career tracing the U.S. official policy record justifying its motivations for using military force in the Middle East. The stated reason provided by the State Department, National Security Council, and U.S. Presidents (in their National Security Strategies) is consistent across all administrations: a concern with maintaining dominance of Middle Eastern oil. I explore this rich policy record in detail in my forthcoming book, When Media Goes to War (forthcoming in February 2010 from Monthly Review Press), so I will not spend time here rehashing that analysis. However, it is worth analyzing how America's neocolonial motivations are obscured by the mass media and political officials' emphasis on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons development.
I refer to the fixation with Iran as "faith based," in that it is not in the least based on rational consultation with the intelligence record. Rather, it is driven by a dogmatic repetition of simplistic and propagandistic assumptions that Iran is a threat. This mindset is reflected in a June 2009 statement from Obama - which merely repeats the conventional view in Washington - that the U.S is "going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood [of the Middle East] and is pursuing nuclear weapons."
A review of the media's record on Iran is helpful in documenting this faith-based approach. Media framing of Iran as a threat dates back to at least 2002, when coverage of Iran's nuclear power program increased dramatically after the Bush administration' s labeled Iran part of the "Axis of Evil." Bush's attempt to link Iraq and Iran - one a secular dictatorship and the other a religious theocracy - was a grotesque propaganda and fiction considering the two countries were bitter enemies since the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). Nonetheless, media outlets responded kindly to the administration, consistently portraying Iran as a threat. My analysis of NBC Nightly News Programs mentioning Iran's nuclear program (from March 2003 through July 2007) found that the network's reporters were four times as likely to claim Iran was or may be developing nuclear weapons than to claim it was not or may not be developing such weapons. Similarly, my analysis of the Washington Post's reporting on Iran's program (from June 2003 through June 2007) found that journalists were more than twice as likely to suggest Iran was or may be developing nuclear weapons than to claim it was not or may not be developing them.
Hysterical over-reactions to Iran's nuclear power program continued beyond the period I analyzed above. A review of print newsstories from 2008 and 2009 demonstrates this beyond a doubt:
1. An update on Iran printed in the New York Times on November 20, 2008 cited a report from global nuclear inspectors at the IAEA documented "Iran's progress" in enriching "1,390 pounds of low-enriched uranium." The uranium, the Times conceded, could not be used to develop nuclear weapons, since highly enriched uranium is required for this task. However, the article went on to uncritically cite "American intelligence agencies [that] have said Iran could make a bomb between 2009 and 2015." The article failed to cite any specific report or agency, and the "finding" directly contradicted the New York Times' own admission that the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded in 2007 that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program.
2. One story from the New York Times on February 20, 2009 reported that U.S. "officials declared for the first time that the amount of uranium that Tehran has now amassed - more than a ton - was sufficient, with added purification, to make an atom bomb." Similarly, the Los Angeles Times reported on the same day that "Iran has enough fuel for a nuclear bomb if it decides to take the drastic steps of violating its international treaty obligations, kicking out inspectors and further refining its supply" [emphasis added].
3. Even international inspectors are not beyond being co-opted into this propaganda system. IAEA head Mohammad ElBaradei, for example, received prominent coverage in the New York Times when he shared his "gut feeling" that Iran's leaders wanted the technology to build nuclear weapons "to send a message to their neighbors, to the rest of the world: don't mess with us." The IAEA's actual conclusions - that there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program - seemed at a disadvantage when competing with ElBaradei's "gut." The standard operating procedure in such stories is clear: promote worst case scenarios - while conceding a complete lack of documented evidence - that Iran is a dire threat to the United States. While this approach may not have anything to do with empirical reality, it has the single advantage of pleasing American officials who demand sycophantic media coverage.
4. A final example reported in the New York Times appeared on May 21, 2009, when Iran "test-fired an upgraded surface-to-surface missile with a range of about 1,200 miles," which "would put it within striking distance of Israel and of American bases in the Persian Gulf." The familiar canard that Iran will not stop until Israel is wiped off the map only gains wide acceptance because of these kinds of reports.
Editorializing from the elite press is no different in its demonization of Iran, as reflected in various editorials over the last year. Op-ed writer John Hannah, for example, wonders in the Washington Post whether Obama's diplomatic engagement [can] persuade Iran to cease its efforts to develop nuclear weapons." Similarly, the editors at the New York Times contend that "the amount of uranium that Tehran now holds is sufficient to make an atom bomb," while a Boston Globe editorial claimed in February of 2009 that Iran's launching of a satellite into orbit "ostentatiously foreshadows the capability one day to deliver nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles."
The falsified "evidence" of Iran's nuclear threat serves as an effective cover for obscuring America's imperial interests in Middle Eastern oil. After consuming media propaganda on Iran, Americans become preoccupied with a manufactured threat, rather than with longstanding U.S. goals of dominating petroleum resources through military force. One 2006 study by the Pew Research Center found that perceptions of Iran's threat increased by double digits from late 2005 to early 2007. Large numbers of Americans feel that, if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons, it will undertake military attacks against Israel, the U.S., and Europe. The Pew study finds a close link between media consumption and beliefs that Iran is a threat. Survey respondents who "heard a lot" about Iran's nuclear program in the news were more likely to view Iran as a threat than those who "heard a little" or heard "nothing at all." Similar results are documented in my book, When Media Goes to War, which concludes that consumption of both liberal and conservative mainstream media (such as MSNBC and Fox) are closely associated with perceptions that Iran is a threat.
The recent obsession with Iran's nuclear "threat" and the 2009 election is advantageous for American leaders. Sustained attention to them allows officials to project their concern with national security and humanitarian issues, rather than discuss their addiction to war and material gain. The public, however, will not be well served by discussion of Iran until we realize the bait and switch that is taking place. Humanitarian concerns may motivate many average Americans, but such concerns serve more as a rhetorical weapon of U.S. leaders against the weak and downtrodden of the world.
Anthony DiMaggio is the author of the newly released: Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Understanding American News in the "War on Terror" (2008). He teaches American Government at North Central College in Illinois, and can be reached at: adimag2@uic. edu
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Is a new Iranian revolution brewing?
By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star staff
Saturday, June 20, 2009
http://www.dailysta r.com.lb/ article.asp? edition_id= 10&categ_ id=5&article_ id=103268
The ongoing street protests and other political events in Iran have generated massive amounts of speculation in the Middle East and abroad about the real nature and significance of what is taking place. Learned scholars, experienced diplomats, and others with little knowledge of Iran or the region have made their views known, usually on the basis of assumptions rather than clear facts reflecting access to Iranians who are driving the events on the ground. Never mind, historic developments are large political barns, accommodating a wide range of beasts.
What is happening in Iran today is profoundly important, if still imprecise in its outcome. This is uncharted territory to a great extent in the context of Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It is perfectly routine behavior, though, in the wider context of human beings who do not like being treated like idiots by their own government, and will resist that when it takes place. Over and over, in lands around the world, human beings who are grossly mistreated by their own government eventually stand up and refuse to take it any more.
The phenomenon of hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in defiance of their government's orders has occurred in many places in recent decades, like Iran, the Philippines, Indonesia, Ukraine and other lands where dictators were forced to leave office by popular demand. The latest manifestation of this in Iran is linked to the widely contested results of the presidential election. But that is incidental, just the trigger that shoots us into a wider world of political action. Everyone knows that the Iranian president is not the seat of power, and whoever wins the election for president is of little real consequence in Iran's controlled system.
The protests are not primarily about the election results per se, but rather about the indignities that ordinary men and women feel at the hands of their own government. The Iranians who are protesting are mostly younger people who were born after the 1979 revolution, so they do not always share the reverence for the revolutionary elite that continues to dominate the centers of power in the country.
Younger Iranians are the latest generation of Middle Easterners who are demanding that they be treated as citizens who have rights and as human beings with a sense of dignity. They do not particularly care what the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says, and so they will likely keep protesting what they believe was government heavy-handedness in announcing the results of the presidential election in a manner that treated them like simpletons and chattel. They were made to feel that they participated in a farce, and normal human beings generally do not like to be humiliated like that.
The levers of economic, military, ideological, bureaucratic, and police power are very tightly controlled by the existing elite in Iran, which makes the protests all the more remarkable. The potential for significant ramifications in Iran and the wider Middle East is great, given the role that Iran plays throughout the region. Of the two most significant events that impacted on the entire Middle East in the last two generations - the Arab loss in the June 1967 war and the Iranian revolution - the latter has probably had wider and greater impact in the long run. Iran impacts on many parts of the region, because of its ideological influence and logistical support to Islamist movements in the Arab world, combined with its leadership of the "resistance front" of regional forces that defy and challenge the United States, Israel and conservative Arab regimes.
If Iran once again sets the standard for mass political protest or even revolutionary change, the impact throughout the Middle East is likely to be enormous. Arabs will not feel comfortable seeing the Iranian people twice in 30 years fearlessly challenging their own autocratic regimes, while the people of the Arab world meekly acquiesce in equally non-democratic and top-heavy political systems that treat their own people as unthinking fools who can be perpetually abused with sham elections and other forms of abuse of power.
The particulars of the Iranian situation these days are specific to Iran's political culture, where a secretive ruling elite seems to suffer serious ideological rifts, and a major generation gap is also coming into play. The spontaneous mass defiance of the ruling power structure, though, is not Iran-specific. If this turns out to be a serious challenge to the very legitimacy of the Islamic Republic's system of government, rather than a narrow protest about the presidential election, we should not be surprised to see the Iranian precedent spilling over into other, Arab, parts of the Middle East, in a way that the 1979 revolution did not.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice-weekly by THE DAILY STAR.
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Ahmadinejad Re-elected: Israel and Obama's Iran Puzzle
June 20, 2009 By Ramzy Baroud
http://www.zmag. org/znet/ viewArticle/ 21750
The election victory of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is likely to complicate US President Barack Obama's new approach to his country's conflict with Iran. The reason behind the foreseen obstacle is neither the US nor Iran's refusal to engage in future dialogue but rather Israel's insistence on a hard-line approach to the problem.
Iran's presidential elections on June 12 were positioned to represent another fight between Middle Eastern `moderates' vs. `extremists' . That depiction, which conveniently divided the Middle East - according to the prevailing US foreign policy discourse - to pro-American and anti-American camps was hardly as clear in the Iranian case as it was in Palestine and most recently in Lebanon.
Ahmadinejad' s main rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi served as Iran's Prime Minister for 8-years (between 1981-1989) during one of Iran's most challenging times, its war with Iraq. He was hardly seen as a `moderate' then. More, Moussavi was equally adamant in his country's right to produce atomic energy for peaceful means. As far as US interests in the region are concerned, both Ahmadinejad and Moussavi are interested in dialogue with the US, and are unlikely to alter their country's attitudes towards the occupation of Iraq, their support of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine. Neither is ready, willing or, frankly, capable of removing Iran from the regional power play at work in the Middle East, considering that Iranian policies are shaped by other internal forces beside the president of the country.
This is not to suggest that both leaders are one and the same. For the average Iranian, statements made by Ahmadinejad and Moussavi during Iran's lively election campaigns did indeed promise major changes in their lives, daily struggles and future. But yet again, the two men were caricatured to present two convenient personalities to the outside world, a raging nuclear-obsessed man, hell-bent on `wiping Israel off the map", and a soft-spoken, learned `moderate' ready to `engage' the West and redeem the sins of his predecessor.
Unfortunately for the Obama administration, the first negative image - tainted as such by mainstream media, and years of image manipulation by forces dedicated to the interest of Israel - won. The election outcome in Iran presents the young Obama with a major challenge: if he carries on with his diplomatic approach and soft overtures towards Iran, ruled by a supposed Holocaust-denier, he will certainly be seen as a failed president, who dared to perceive Israel's interests in the region as secondary; on the other hand, Obama cannot depart from his country's new approach towards Iran, a key player in shaping the contending forces in the entire region.
In some way, Ahmadinejad' s victory was the best news for Israel. Now, Tel Aviv will continue to pressure Obama to `act' against Iran, for the latter, under its current president is an `existential threat' to Israel, a claim that few in Washington question. "It is not like we rooted for Ahmadinejad, " an Israeli official told the New York Times on the condition of anonymity a day after it was clear that Ahmadinejad won another term in office.
But considering Israel's immediate attempt to capitalize on the outcome of the elections makes one wonder if the defeat of Iran's `moderate' camp was not a best case scenario for Israel. Iran will continue to be presented as the obstacle in future peace in the Middle East, allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to avoid any accountability as far as the `peace process' is concerned. In fact, with an `existential threat' not too far away, few in Washington would dare challenge Israel's settlement policies in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, or its deadly siege on Gaza, or in fact its confrontational approach to Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the latter seen as an `Iranian-backed militia.'
Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom was one of the first top officials in Israel to exploit the moment on June 13. The results of Iran's elections, he said, "blow up in the faces of those who thought Iran was built for a genuine dialogue with the free world on stopping its nuclear program." Ostensibly, Shalom's message was directed at a small audience in Tel Aviv, but his true target audience, was in fact Obama himself.
Obama's overtures towards Iran were not necessarily an indication of a fundamental shift in US foreign policy, but a realistic recognition of Iran's growing influence in the region, and the US' desperate and failing fight in Iraq. It was Obama's pragmatism, not a moral-shift in US foreign policy that compelled such statements as that made on June 2 in a BBC interview: "What I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations. On the other hand, the international community has a very real interest in preventing a nuclear arms race in the region."
For Israel, however, Obama's rhetoric is a deviation from the past US hard-line approach towards Iran. What Israel wants to keep alive is a discussion of war as a viable option to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions and to eliminate a major military rival in the Middle East.
Senior fellow at the pro-Israeli American Enterprise Institute, John R. Bolton expressed the war-mongering mantra of the pro-Israel crowd in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled: "What if Israel Strikes Iran?": "Many argue that Israeli military action will cause Iranians to rally in support of the mullahs' regime and plunge the region into political chaos. To the contrary, a strike accompanied by effective public diplomacy could well turn Iran's diverse population against an oppressive regime."
Ahmadinejad' s victory will serve as further proof that diplomacy with Iran is not an option, from the point of view of Israel and its supporters in the US. Whether Obama will proceed with his positive rhetoric towards Iran is to be seen. Failure to do so, however, will further undermine his country's interests in the Middle East, and will prolong the cold war atmosphere of animosity, espoused by a clique of neoconservative hard-liners throughout the Bush administration of past years.
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud. net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle. com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London)
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Running coverage & commentary:
http://shooresh1917 .blogspot. com/
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'Suicide blast' hits Tehran shrine
http://english. aljazeera. net/news/ middleeast/ 2009/06/20096201 32947283202. html
At least one person has been killed after a suspected suicide bomber reportedly blew himself up near the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Two other people were wounded in the explosion in Tehran, the Iranian capital, local news agencies reported on Saturday.
"A terrorist detonated his explosive vest in the Imam Khomeini shrine ... [causing] damage in one section of it," Hossein Sajedinia, Iran's deputy police chief for operations, told the Mehr news agency.
Al Jazeera's Teymoor Nabili, who recently returned from covering the Iranian presidential election, said that many people would believe the explosion was "a government conspiracy".
"The official media is widely distrusted ... so irrespective of who really carried out that bombing, I am sure that the protesters on the street will feel that the government has simply engineered something to blame them for something else," he said.
'Forced confrontation'
But he said that it was possible that the People's Mujahidin of Iran, a group which calls for the overthrow of the Islamic republic, could have carried out the attack.
"They have dwindled in number and they have certainly dwindled as far as credibility is concerned, but you can't write off the fact they may still have some capability," he said.
Mehrdad Khonsari, a former Iranian diplomat, told Al Jazeera: "We have to wait and see who instigated that blast ... but the whole point is the regime has forced a situation whereby there is a confrontation.
"They have tried to intimidate the protesters from not coming and not embarking on the course which they have. That has apparently failed. So the question is, how much more can this situation escalate?
"If this blast has led to the death of a number of people, this will infuriate the masses and it will propel them to want to engage. This is how revolutions happen."
The explosion took place as police fired tear gas and water cannon at thousands of protesters gathered in Tehran to protest over the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.
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20-June-2009
Will Iranian Dissidents Defy Ayatollah Khamenei?
By B. Raman
http://www.southasi aanalysis. org/%5Cpapers33% 5Cpaper3263. html
In an address to a Friday congregation at the Tehran University on June 19, 2009, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, again changed his position on the legality of the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the President of Iran at the elections held on June 12, 2009.
2. After having endorsed the re-election in the initial days of the protest against it, he then gave the impression of taking a neutral stance by suggesting that as laid down in the Constitution, the matter should be left to the Guardian Council to decide as per the procedures laid down by the law.
3. As this did not have any impact on the anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrations all over the country, he has reiterated his original endorsement of the validity of the re-election without waiting for the report of the Guardian Council, which is enquiring into over 600 complaints received against the election and is to examine the defeated candidates on June 20, 2009. He has thus sought to pre-empt any adverse ruling by the Guardian Council. Khamenei also expressed his support to the foreign policy and pro-poor economic policies followed by Ahmadinejad.
4. He has rejected indirectly, but definitively the demands of the protesters for the annulment of the election results and for a fresh poll and expressed his strong support for the continuance of Ahmadinejad as the President. He has warned against the continuance of the street protests, which, according to him, could be manipulated by outsiders and could lead to violence.
5. His speech was an indication of his belief that any seeming neutral stand of his could aggravate the situation and that the time had come to remove any impression of softness which might encourage more demonstrations. It was also a green signal to the Basij militia and the security agencies to start dealing with the protests more firmly even at the risk of some adverse external reactions. His message was clear: Thus far and no further.
6. The clear-cut stand taken by the Ayatollah in support of Ahmadinejad and in endorsement of the validity of his re-election creates a dilemma for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated reformist candidate, and his supporters who have been demonstrating in their thousands. Till now, they have been projecting their protests as directed against Ahmadinejad and against what they allege to be his rigged victory. They have taken care not to give the impression of their protests being also against the Ayatollah and the Islamic system.
7. The continuance of the protest movement after ignoring the intervention of the Ayatollah could bring them into an undesired confrontation with him and the Islamic system. The Islamic revolutionaries, who came out into the streets in their thousands in 1978-79, were protesting against the arbitrary rule of the Shah of Iran, who was viewed by them as a stooge of the US. By continuing with their demonstrations in spite of the appeal for restraint from the Ayatollah, the present protesters would be unwittingly projecting themselves as opponents of someone (Ahmadinejad) , who is widely viewed as standing in the way of a re-imposition of the US hegemony in the region and over Iran.
8. How to keep the protests focussed against the rigged elections without making it appear as directed against the post-1979 Islamic rule in Iran? That is the dilemma facing Mousavi and the protesters. Mousavi was himself a product of the Islamic revolution and had held office as Prime Minister in the initial difficult years of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. He was in the forefront of the war effort which frustrated the efforts of Saddam Hussein's Army to have the Islamic Government overthrown, with the tacit backing of the US. How can he now be seen as weakening the foundation of the Islamic system, which could play into the hands of the Americans?
9. The answers to these questions will decide the future course of the protest movement. The immediate reaction of the protesters after the address of the Ayatollah was not to relent in their protest movement and to keep it going till they have achieved their objective of a fresh election.
10. For the present, Mousavi and his supporters are going ahead with their plans for two demonstrations on Saturday and Sunday despite the refusal of permission by the Government, which is planning to suppress them. They have also appealed to the international community to demonstrate in their support on Sunday. If the Government with the help of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia succeeds in suppressing the demonstrations without many casualties-- --the situation could take an unpredictable turn---more violence or a collapse of the movement.
11. The Revolutionary Guards and the Basij seem to be confident that once they get the green signal for action from the Ayatollah, they should be able to put down the protest movement. Some more Tweets which have come out of Iran after the Ayatollah's speech are given below. An examination of these Tweets would indicate that the protesters are concerned that the Ayatollah's public intervention in support of Ahmadinejad has made the situation very complex calling for a careful handling of it.
Mousavi - confirmed - show support for Sea of Green from balcony starting 9pm to midnight tonight -
Mousavi - Confirmed - calls for ALL the nation to stand on balconys TONIGHT and show support with 'Allah Akbar'.
Ebrahim Yazdi has been released by Gov due to poor health.
Shahab Talebani has been arrested today.
Unconfirmed reports - Revolutionary Guard has been mobilised to secure Tehran.
The situation in Iran is now CRITICAL - the nation is heartbroken - suppression is imminent.
The Gov has refused to issue a permit for Sea of Green march at 4pm on Saturday in Tehran.
Confirmed - Mousavi calls on people of the world to march on SUNDAY in support of Sea of Green.
Confirmed - Saturday Sea of Green rally - Enghelab Sq - 4pm - Mousavi, Karoubi and Khatami will attend -
Now is dawn - we must go - location not safe - thank u for supporting Sea of Green.
NEVER log on to any proxy posted on twitter - u will be traced .
Advice - travel in groups - always tell someone where u are going - dont go out unless needed .
Political situ in Iran is v/complex - for every decision there are reasons - some we cannot mention here.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@ gmail.com
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June 19, 2009
Khamenei: The Speech
[by Gary Sick]
http://garysick. tumblr.com/ post/126777856/ khamenei- the-speech
Iran's Leader, Ayatollah Khamene`i, gave everyone a piece of his mind in his Friday speech. Here are my reactions:
* First, and perhaps more important than the words themselves, was the fact that Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani did not attend. This is extraordinary. Khamene'i and Rafsanjani were fellow revolutionaries in 1978-79. They have been associates – sometimes close colleagues – for more than 50 years. Many believe that Rafsanjani was instrumental in getting Khamene'i his position as Leader. Rafsanjani today heads the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for monitoring the performance of the Leader, among other things. This was possibly the single most fateful speech by Khamene'i in his 20 years as Leader of the Islamic Republic. How could Rafsanjani not attend? Did he simply boycott the event? Was he under house arrest? It probably didn't help that several of Rafsanjani's children were arrested in the previous 24 hours. We have never had such a graphic demonstration of political differences within Iran's ruling elite.
* Another non-attendee, presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, whom I regard as an almost accidental leader, now faces some of the most fateful decisions in at least the past twenty years of the Iranian revolution. He decided to run for president as a relatively unknown and uninspiring candidate who could offer solutions to some of Iran's more pressing problems, especially on the economic side. His greatest attribute was the fact that he was "anybody but Ahmadinejad. " But his appearances with his charismatic wife, often holding hands, and the invention of the "green wave" struck a chord in the Iranian body politic. Then the extraordinary revulsion at the regime's electoral numbers left a leadership void. He stepped in, rather tentatively at first, and filled that role. Two days ago he told the crowd that he was "willing to make sacrifices." He realizes that there is zero tolerance by Iran's rulers for anyone suspected of leading an opposition movement. His top supporters and associates have already been jailed, and he could face the same fate – or worse.
* Khamene`i `s words were stark and simple. To paraphrase: the election is over, I fully support the person (Ahmadinejad) who won, it was fair, Iranians all trust their Islamic leaders, there will be no annulment, get over it and get off the streets or there will be harsh consequences, and besides it is all the work of outside agitators, especially the United States and Britain.
* Tonight the streets of Tehran rang out with cries of allahu akbar and "death to the dictator," suggesting that opposition has not vanished. A major demonstration has been announced by Mousavi for Saturday. If it proceeds and is substantial in numbers, it will be the first open flaunting of opposition to the Leader, with the support of a number of key regime leaders, in more than twenty years.
Iran has always had the capacity to surprise. There are frantic decisions being made right now in the top leadership of the Revolutionary Guards, in the Leader's office, in Mousavi's team, and in kitchens and living rooms across the country as Iranians decide what they are going to do next. They don't know how this will work out, and neither do we.
We do know that what they decide will be very important to the future of Iran, to Middle East politics, and to American policy. President Obama today went as far as he could prudently go by declaring:
I've said this throughout the week, I want to repeat it, that we stand with those who would look to peaceful resolution of conflict and we believe that the voices of people have to be heard, that that's a universal value that the American people stand for and this administration stands for. And I'm very concerned, based on some of the tenor and tone of the statements that have been made, that the government of Iran recognize that the world is watching. And how they approach and deal with people who are — through peaceful means — trying to be heard will I think send a pretty clear signal to the international community about what Iran is and is not… . this is not an issue of the United States or the West versus Iran; this is an issue of the Iranian people.
But what he didn't say was that it directly affects his policy of engagement. As long as the crisis persists, there is no chance that he can initiate meaningful negotiations with Iran.
He is also under immense and growing pressure – largely from people who deeply opposed the concept of engagement from the start – to take sides. And the pressure will grow, especially if there is a bloodletting by the regime in Iran. Obama's statement today strikes me as typically precise and about as far as he can go without sliding into partisanship that will inevitably lead to escalating confrontation.
Despite the siren calls to give full vent to American outrage, short of widespread carnage he should recognize that such statements will not assist the beleaguered opposition in Iran. On the contrary, it will increase their vulnerability, raise false hopes of U.S. physical intervention, and will provide an excuse for the regime to carry out the kind of brutal repression that they are threatening, all in the name of fighting imperialism.
Shouts of outrage are fine by folks like me on the web, but the U.S. government should never forget that its primary task is to do no harm. It may be hard to hold your tongue, but then nobody ever said foreign policy was easy.
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ANALYSIS: 'Mousavi's stance will be crucial' (FT)
Written by Henry Adams and Randy Talbot
Friday, 19 June 2009
http://www.ufppc. org/content/ view/8759/ 35/
Analyzing the mood of crowds in Iran, the Financial Times of London said Friday that "For a youthful, educated population, it appears a wall of fear has been shattered, releasing them from years of bottled-up frustration." [1] -- "But whether the crisis will provoke a larger protest movement that shakes the power structure more deeply, or a total consolidation of power by hardliners, as Mr. Khamenei hinted yesterday, is difficult to judge," said Roula Khalaf, Najmeh Bozorgmehr, and Anna Fifield. -- Although "[t]he regime has been working hard to ensure that the rallies will peter out, as fear of violence and retribution spread," the protest may be hard to quell. -- "[U]nlike the unrest of 1999, the last serious crisis in Iran that involved a student uprising, tougher repression today carries a much higher cost, as it would have to target so many segments of the population, all of which have relatives in the security forces." -- Though some portray the "real" political struggle in Iran as one that pits Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei against former President Rafsanjani, Khalaf, Bozorgmehr, and Fifield see Mousavi as the key figure in the crisis: "The stance of Mr. Mousavi, torn between his supporters' demands and the consequences of widespread repression, will be crucial. 'Will Mousavi end up standing with the régime and deciding to end this, or will he follow his troops and stay with them? Will he become more radical and challenge the regime even more?' asks a Western diplomat." -- Knowledgeable about the dynamics of revolutionary situations, "[t]he fear in Tehran is that the régime's actions will turn the peaceful demonstrators, now still focused on a demand for a rerun of the vote and reform of the system, into a more radicalized opposition that wants an end to the Islamic system itself." ...
1.
Comment
Analysis
IRAN: AT A TURNING POINT
By Roula Khalaf, Najmeh Bozorgmehr, and Anna Fifield
Financial Times (London)
June 19, 2009 (1901 BST -- 2232 Tehran time -- 1101 PDT)
http://www.ft. com/cms/s/ 0/c26949ae- 5cf9-11de- 9d42-00144feabdc 0.html
[PHOTO]
They are outraged and they are desperate for change. But look at the faces of many of Iran's protesters, and they appear cheerful. Despite the deaths of the past week, the arrests and the beatings, they have kept a smile on their faces as they raise their hands in a victory sign.
As the crisis over the disputed presidential election result has unfolded -- posing the biggest challenge to the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979 and taking the world by storm -- hopes for a move towards a more reformist, tolerant Islamic regime have rested on the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets. Many of them are young and ambitious for their country, demanding above all that they be respected.
In a country not known for displays of happiness -- it was a novelty in the late 1990s to have a president (the reformist Mohammad Khatami) who smiled -- the outcome of the election eight days ago, which declared hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner, is seen as one affront too many by those who voted for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate. "They took us for fools," is a common refrain.
For a youthful, educated population, it appears a wall of fear has been shattered, releasing them from years of bottled-up frustration. Mohsen Rezaei, a conservative candidate in the presidential election, has spoken of a "phenomenon" in this election. "People valued their votes so much as if it was their honor," he says.
No one doubts the crisis is a turning point. The country, says Gary Sick, an expert on Iran from Columbia University, has entered "an entirely new phase of its post-revolution history." The one characteristic that has always distinguished it from other authoritarian regimes of the Middle East, he says, "was its respect for the voice of the people, even when that voice was saying things that much of the leadership did not want to hear."
But the shift will be tumultuous. The regime has no intention of giving in to demands for a new vote and no appetite for compromise. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader, made clear in an address yesterday that the election result would not be altered and protests would not be tolerated.
"Even if this fire is extinguished, the government will lack a popular base and people will obstruct its policies," warns one political activist in the country.
The real size of Mr. Moussavi's support is impossible to gauge, and the president retains popularity -- particularly among religious radicals, the poor, and the rural population, whom he has assiduously courted with his populist policies. But the divisions in society so starkly illustrated this week will not go away, and they have been mirrored within the régime itself.
Mr. Moussavi is no secular politician. He was an active participant in the 1979 revolution. His candidacy had attracted backing from Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful former president, and other conservatives, including segments of the clerical establishment. Strongly behind him, too, was the reformist camp, which believes that in order for the revolution to survive, its system -- part theocracy and part democracy -- must re-engage with society, giving it wider freedom and accountability.
Some commentators have described the election as a palace coup, engineered by the hardline wing of the régime, represented by the military establishment that backs Mr. Ahmadinejad, and supported by the supreme leader, who is the ultimate authority in the country. The aim, say these commentators, was to destroy the reform movement and either control and manage any opening up to the U.S., now that President Barack Obama is seeking engagement with Iran, or thwart it altogether.
The passionate protests, and their style, have conjured up images of 1979, but their outcome need not be the same. The silent, solemn marches; the cries of Allahu Akbar ("God is Great") from rooftops at night, used in 1979 to notify the authorities that no one is above God and symbolically reminding today's régime of that time; and the lashing out of the authorities -- all remind Iranians of the revolution. The organization of rallies, too, has gone back to the primitive ways of the revolution, amid unprecedented restrictions on high-technology media such as Twitter, the social networking service. "We've been sending motorcycles to the streets to tell people about the rallies, we have to transfer information face to face," says one person involved in the protests.
But whether the crisis will provoke a larger protest movement that shakes the power structure more deeply, or a total consolidation of power by hardliners, as Mr. Khamenei hinted yesterday, is difficult to judge.
Just as there are similarities with the revolution, there are also stark differences -- not least that the Western world is cheering not for the shah but for the demonstrators.
As the political activist who took part in the revolution says, it was led by a charismatic religious leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had an extraordinary ability to mobilize segments of a fractured society while in exile. He was relentless in both method and ambition for an overthrow of the shah. "But now there is no leader," says the activist, "and Moussavi wants to lead protests peacefully."
Mr. Moussavi, out of the political establishment since he served as prime minister in the 1980s, has been surprisingly bold in his statements in the past week. So far he has appeared to be led by the street, which has mobilized for protests even when he issues a statement postponing a rally. At least some support, moreover, is less for him than against Mr. Ahmadinejad, seen by large parts of the educated middle class as having destroyed both the foundation of the economy, provoking rampant inflation, and its image abroad.
The main target of protesters this week has been Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has a popular support base and is not, in any case, the real decision-maker in the country. Although few doubt that the authority of the supreme leader remains solid, some analysts say that even he may not be in full control of his troops, not least the powerful Revolutionary Guard. Clearly taken by surprise by the intensity of the unrest, which spread to other parts of the country, the regime has been scrambling for ways to damp the protests, lashing out with arrests, beatings, and attacks.
During much of the day Tehran has looked normal, with residents going about their daily business. But it has been gripped by rally fever in late afternoons. Most evenings, particularly in the north of the city, home to the élite who turn out in force, the tensions have been at their highest.
Plain-clothes Basiji, members of the feared Islamic militia, holding shields, and wielding batons, deploy in the streets, sometimes setting up checkpoints. Their task seems to have been to chase and punish protesters as they dispersed from rallies and return home. The government says eight people have died in the past week; Amnesty International puts the death toll at 15.
The regime has been working hard to ensure that the rallies will peter out, as fear of violence and retribution spread. Yesterday's speech by the supreme leader, warning people to stop their protests and portraying any domestic unrest as playing into the hands of the enemy, was the most dramatic move to silence the streets.
Analysts and diplomats, however, say that, unlike the unrest of 1999, the last serious crisis in Iran that involved a student uprising, tougher repression today carries a much higher cost, as it would have to target so many segments of the population, all of which have relatives in the security forces.
The stance of Mr. Mousavi, torn between his supporters' demands and the consequences of widespread repression, will be crucial.
"Will Mousavi end up standing with the régime and deciding to end this, or will he follow his troops and stay with them? Will he become more radical and challenge the regime even more?" asks a Western diplomat.
The fear in Tehran is that the régime's actions will turn the peaceful demonstrators, now still focused on a demand for a rerun of the vote and reform of the system, into a more radicalized opposition that wants an end to the Islamic system itself. With society divided, part of it deeply wounded by the election, and the régime under strain, the country could face a prolonged period of unrest. The dispute over the election could bode ill for Western governments hoping to curb the fast-progressing nuclear program, and at least delay U.S. intentions to engage.
"With his speech, the leader has put himself against the people," says one young Iranian who has participated in daily protests. "The régime does not understand that this wave is driven by people, not by politicians."
"The regime has taken a big hit," notes the Western diplomat. "But the hardliners also think any concession would be the beginning of their end."
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June 19, 2009
Jon Lee Anderson: Understanding The Basij
http://www.newyorke r.com/online/ blogs/newsdesk/ 2009/06/jon- lee-anderson- understanding- the-basij. html
Thirty years ago, during the demonstrations that led to the Shah's downfall, one of the dominant images was scenes of uniformed soldiers firing live ammunition at protesters. This week, Iran's clerics seem determined, at least, not to repeat that historic mistake. They remember that the daily news coverage of the Shah's soldiers shooting and killing unarmed protesters precipitated the collapse of the regime.
Instead, bearded plainclothes militiamen have been attacking and harassing the demonstrators in Tehran this past week. These are Basijis, members of a civilian paramilitary organization founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. It was conceived of as a civilian auxiliary force subordinate to the Revolutionary Guards, and so it has functioned over the past three decades. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, fervent Basijis volunteered to serve on the front lines. For a time, very young Basijis were encouraged to offer themselves for martyrdom by clearing minefields with their bodies in what became known as "human waves"—literally walking to their deaths en masse so that more experienced soldiers could advance against the enemy. An Iranian friend of mine who is a war veteran described the Basiji boy martyrs as having played a tragic but significant role in the war, by providing Iran with a "flesh wall" against Saddam Hussein's vastly superior Western-supplied military technology.
In peacetime, the corps lets the Islamic regime employ violence as a form of social control while retaining some plausible deniability; scruffy bearded men in civilian clothes are not, after all, uniformed soldiers. The Basij is now said to have some 400,000 active members nationwide, with perhaps a million more reservists; in some ways, their relationship to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is also their commander in chief, recalls the one between Nicolae Ceausescu and the loyalist miners trucked in from the Romanian countryside to strong-arm pro-democracy protestors. From 1997 to 2005, during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, the Basij showed its usefulness again, by attacking students at demonstrations. Some students were killed. The protests died out.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who I wrote about for The New Yorker in April, is a Basiji, and the organization has always been an important part of his power base. During the past four years, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president and the reform movement dormant, the Basij has not been needed as shock troops. Instead they have made their presence felt by periodically throwing up traffic barricades on the streets of Tehran and stopping cars to smell the breath of drivers for evidence of illegal alcohol consumption, or to question couples about their marital status. These Basijis are usually scruffy working-class men, and thus bring an element of notional "class struggle" to the otherwise pragmatically lived lives of the citizens of the Islamic republic. Not surprisingly, among more educated and affluent Iranians, they are almost unanimously despised.
In the mass demonstrations that have taken place this week, the modus operandi of the Basijis has been brutal and predatory. They have used the same tactics as packs of African wild dogs worrying a herd of wildebeest. They choose their targets at the edges of the crowds, going for the vulnerable and unwary stragglers, and moving in as a group to reduce them with violence. Last Monday, the men who fired guns at demonstrators from the rooftops of buildings were almost certainly Basijis. They killed seven demonstrators at their leisure, and it also seems likely that they hoped this display of lethal intent would so intimidate the protesters that they would give up and go home. Clearly, that did not work, and it is probable that they were ordered to tone down such public displays of violence, at least for the time being. But they have continued to attack surreptitiously and in terrifying ways, jumping demonstrators as they return home on darkened streets at night. On Wednesday, there were reports that men who appeared to be Basijis had come onto theTehran University campus and had stabbed students with knives.
On a trip I made to Iran in 2006, a year after Ahmadinejad assumed the presidency, I met a Basij official, Dr. Mahdi Araby, who worked at the Tehran City Hall. In the late nineteen-nineties, Araby had been one of Ahmadinejad's engineering students at the Iran University of Science and Technology, where Ahmadinejad was studying for his Ph.D. in traffic management. In 2003, after Ahmadinejad's appointment as mayor of Tehran, he had asked Araby to come and work with him. Araby described Mayor Ahmadinejad as a man of pure heart and missionary zeal. "His original aim was not political," explained Araby. "He just wanted to serve people."
Araby pointed to a beige windbreaker that was hanging on a hook on the closed door of the room. I remarked that it appeared to be exactly like the jacket the president usually wore. He smiled proudly and said it was his. "It is the jacket of the Basij." he said.
He then told me the following story. One night during Ahmadinejad's time as mayor, Araby had been driving home when he saw an elderly couple standing by the side of the road and looking as though they were in distress. They were holding up a jerrican to show that they had run out of gas, but no one had stopped to assist them. Araby did. He instructed the old man how to siphon some petrol from his car, but the man had explained that he was asthmatic, so Araby did it himself. The old woman had wanted to pay him, but he had refused, telling them, "I am a Basiji. It is our duty to help." Araby accidentally swallowed some of the petrol and had begun spitting up blood, so he ended up in hospital for three weeks. He explained that he had a lung problem from a chemical-weapon attack during the Iran-Iraq war. He smiled; his wounds, like his Basij jacket, were a badge of honor.
Next, Araby told me a story he had heard about Ahmadinejad while he was mayor. The story was that Ahmadinejad had been dressing up as a streetsweeper at night and going out with a work crew for an entire month, to understand what their life was like and decide how to pay them a fair wage. Araby had confronted Ahmadinejad about the story and asked if it was true. "He asked where I had heard it from, and he smiled," said Araby. To him, Ahmadinejad's reaction was a confirmation of the rumor. "Ahmadinejad is a true Basiji," he said approvingly.
It was that same spirit that propelled Ahmadinejad into the presidential race, Araby believed. "I can tell you that, up to two months before the presidential election in 2005, he was undecided about running. But our people were fed up with the promises being made during the presidential campaign, and we realized that the middle-class people, and the people at the lower rungs of society, were not satisfied either." Araby said, "He hadn't planned to become president. We pushed him to do it."
The Basij also connects Ahmadinejad to his spiritual mentor, Ayatollah Mesbah-e-Yazdi, a conservative hard-liner who is extremely hostile to the West and has frequently called for a stricter interpretation of Iran's Islamic revolution, which he believes has strayed from the path set out for it by the late Imam Khomeini. Yazdi has frequently endorsed the use of violence against critics of the regime. In 2005, he openly and controversially encouraged his followers to vote for Ahmadinejad. Yazdi does not like Western journalists, but one of his aide's, Hojestaleslam Gharavian, spoke to me on his behalf. We met in an office on a nondescript residential backstreet of southern Qom.
Gharavian, a teacher of Islamic studies, wore black and white robes and a black turban. He explained that it was he who had first brought Ahmadinejad to Yazdi's attention, and that it had come about by a quirk of destiny. The ayatollah had been in the habit of speaking to the university professors' Basij organization once a week, but once, when he was unable to attend, and Gharavian had stood in for him. He had met and been impressed by Ahmadinejad, who was a prominent member of the group. Afterward, he told Ayatollah Yazdi about him, and introduced them. "What was it that impressed you?" I asked Gharavian. "I saw that he had a true Basij culture," he said approvingly. "And that, like Imam Khomeini, he was especially resistant to foreign cultural influences."
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06/19/09
Electoral Coup in Iran: How Ahmadinejad won
By Saeed Rahnema
http://www.payvand. com/news/ 09/jun/1203. html
Shock, disbelief, despair, anger, street riots, tire burning and confrontations with police brutality have engulfed Iran, following the presidential elections that reinstalled Ahmadinejad through a claimed landslide victory in the first round of voting. Everyone predicted at least a runoff. Many believed that with the massive electoral participation of about 82 per cent, Moussavi would eventually be the winner.
How did Ahmadinejad manage to win this election? First, the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, and the circle around him came to the final decision that he should stay in power. Ahmadinejad has proven that as a lackey of the Leader, he would unquestionably carry out Khamenei's orders. In a show of support for Ahmadinejad Sobh-e Sadeq, the official organ of the Representative of the Supreme Leader in the Islamic Guard Corps, announced on June 8 that "we should make sure that individuals who want to submit to the West would not be elected."
On the basis of the Leader's decision, the regime's electoral machine, mosques, religious foundations, the militia and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards began mobilizing their blocs of voters. These religious institutions have millions of people on their monthly payrolls and the regime has always counted on their votes.
Ahmadinejad was also able to rely on his own trustworthy "machine." Among the first decisions he made when he became President in 2005 was the removal of provincial and sub-regional governors, mayors and even village headmen, replacing them with his cronies mostly from the military and security establishments. He regularly travelled to various towns and villages with sacks of money that were distributed among his supporters. The massive increase in oil prices during his presidency provided more opportunities for him to spend generously. During the days leading up to the elections, the parliament's Accounts Bureau revealed that over $1 billion were unaccounted for. Benefiting from these free handouts, local officials and mullahs in rural areas and small towns could easily mobilize voters in favour of Ahmadinejad.
Despite all these preparations for vote collection, however, Ahmadinejad and the military/security establishment and the conservative clerical clique were taken by surprise at the mass mobilization of the educated urban middle classes, women and youth, who in the absence of a better candidate, rallied around Mir Hussein Moussavi. As the days of the elections got closer, the anti-Ahmadinejad movement became larger and bolder in its demand for change. In many rallies, particularly in the universities, Ahmadinejad was jeered, booed and faced with a chorus of "liar, liar." He had to cancel several of his speeches and in some cases had to hurriedly jump into his car to escape from demonstrators.
The scale of the pro-Moussavi movement was so large and gaining such momentum that the establishment realized that in the case of runoff elections, Ahmadinejad would definitely lose and civil society would gain more ground and make more radical demands. Alarmed by the probability of losing the vast majority of votes in large urban areas, the Ahmadinejad camp began preparation for rigging and "engineering" the vote. The main mechanism for this was the Ministry of Interior under Sadeq Mahsooli, his crony and confidante. In the absence of any independent observers, the Elections Bureau could easily manipulate the votes. They boldly decided that Ahmadinejad should be declared the winner in the first round, and with a large enough margin to eliminate any doubt; the bigger a lie, the better its believability!
The establishment was also prepared for the crackdown in case of revolts. A couple of days before election day, the Head of Political Department of the Islamic Guards Corps announced that they would "crash any attempt for a velvet revolution." In addition to its already massive array of repressive apparatuses – the Islamic Guards, the regular army and police, the Basij militia, and Special Forces – the regime also recruited a sizable number of young men through recruiting stations in large cities, providing them with mopeds and cellular phones. These gangs are on-call and any time there is a demonstration or anti-regime gathering they are dispatched to attack protestors. Some of the motorcycles burnt by the supporters of Moussavi in the street protests belonged to these gangs.
What the regime had not anticipated was the massive reaction of the voters following the release of the concocted election results. It's also worth noting that the continued confrontations of the two main factions of the regime reached a critical point when candidates recklessly exposed each other's embezzlements, corruptions and fake degrees during the debates. This further polarized the clerical regime and the open conflict between the two main factions within it. The support from one faction of the ruling bloc made the suppression of the revolt by the disgruntled electorate and protestors more difficult.
Both factions are now faced with a complex impasse; if Moussavi backs down, this would be political suicide for him, turning him into another compromising figure like former President Khatami. If Ahmadinejad' s side backs down, the legitimacy of the military-security establishment and the Supreme Leader would take a further (and near irreparable) blow.
There are some key and difficult questions at this critical political moment: Which faction will back down? If the "reformist" camp persists, and public revolt expands, will the regime resort to an even more bloody and total suppression? In this case, would the street demonstrations be elevated to a revolutionary movement with the aim of toppling the whole Islamic regime, or would it retreat and dissipate? In the case that the "reformist" movement does back down, would the public revolt also die down, or will some elements separate themselves from the rest and follow a more radical and independent path in confronting the regime?
It should be noted that both factions of the regime are afraid of an uncontrollable escalation of tensions and civil disobedience, and it is quite possible that they reach some sort of middle ground concessions. If this happens, it will no doubt have a negative impact on the movements within civil society. Some groups will accept the compromises, some will be disappointed and depoliticized, and others will continue their resistance independently. However, even though the post-election events might appear as a new revolution, the protest movement is not in a position and does not have the organizational means to challenge the Islamic regime in its totality in a direct assault.
Nonetheless, whatever the results of this election and the factional conflicts, this is the most critical turning point in 30 years of the Islamic Republic. The remarkably vibrant civil society led by the women's movement, youth, teachers and workers, acted cautiously and shrewdly. They entered the election process with specific demands and cast their votes against the favoured candidate of the establishment.
If they had boycotted the elections, for fear of legitimizing the status quo, the regime would not be in the disastrous mess it now finds itself in. With a lower participation rate, Ahmadinejad would have won the majority of the votes, the regime would not have needed to resort to the shameful rigging, they would not be facing the mass disgruntlement and street riots, and the regime would not have had to savagely suppress peaceful street demonstrations, making itself even more disgraced in the eyes of Iranians and the rest of the world. The regime, in a sense, succeeded in declaring its favoured candidate the winner, but itself became the loser in the process. Iranian civil society is moving step-by-step towards establishing its democratic and secular counter hegemony.
About the author: Saeed Rahnema is a professor of political science at York University and media commentator on the Middle East.
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For the first time in its political history, Iran finds itself thrown into an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy
by Rami Jahanbegloo
18-Jun-2009
http://www.iranian. com/main/ 2009/jun/ text-tehran- street
Ever since the first days of the Islamic Republic there have been two sovereignties in Iran, a divine and a popular. The concept of popular sovereignty, which is derived from the indivisible will of the Iranian nation, is inscribed in Article I of the constitution of the Islamic Republic. And the divine concept of sovereignty is derived from God's will, which, through the medium of Shi'ia institutions of an Imamate, is bestowed on the existing 'faqih' as the rightful ruler of the Shi'ite community, a perception which forms the foundation of the doctrine of the 'Velayat-i-Faqih' . Increasingly, the divine sovereignty has been less about religion than about political theology. As for the popular sovereignty, it has found its due place in the social work and political action of Iranian civil society. The presence of these two incompatible and conflicting conceptions of sovereignty, authority and legitimacy has always been a bone of contention in Iranian politics, often defining the ideological contours of political power struggle among the contending forces. The advocates of civil and democratic liberties in Iran have tried to give the popular conception its due place in the framework of Iranian social and political institutions.
The present crisis in Iran following the Iranian presidential elections is rooted in the popular quest for the democratisation of the state and society and the conservative reaction and opposition to it. Furthermore, there is another factor distinguishing the current political crisis from the previous instances of political factionalism and internal power struggle in Iran. This is a crisis over a deep-seated ideological structure inherited from the Iranian Revolution.
On the one hand, those like Moussavi and Karubi, who have been among the architects of the Islamic regime and the challengers for the presidency in Iran and who believed that the Islamic nomenclature allowed scope for reform and renewal, find themselves at the head of a pro-democracy and pro-reform movement that continues defying beyond the results of the presidential election the very essence of illiberalism and authoritarianism in Iran.
On the other hand, there is another and equally important factor which must be taken into consideration. Most of the demonstrators who have been questioning the entire legitimacy of Iran's electoral process in the past week are not, unlike their parents, revolutionaries. They belong to a new generation who did not experience the revolution of 1979 and want another Iran. Most of them were not around or were too young to remember the revolution, but they made up one-third of eligible voters in the Iranian presidential election. These youngsters are a reminder of the fact that a monolithic image of Iran does not reflect necessarily the mindset of 70 per cent of its population who are under the age of 30. After all, the young Iran's quest for democracy has presented serious challenges not only to the status of the doctrine of the 'Velayat-i-Faqih' and questions of its legitimacy, but also to the reform movement and its democratic authenticity.
Having said this, one needs also to add that Islamic Iran is more divided than at any time since 1979, a divide between traditionalists and modernists that has been deep in Iran since the Islamic Revolution. But in this election the divide has become deeper than ever before between the state and the nation. It also created a gap between those who believe that normal economic and political relations with the West are vital to Iran's future and those who disdain such relations as violations of the Islamic Revolution's ideals.
Clearly, the outcome of the ninth presidential elections, which led to Ahmadinejad' s election, was already indicative of an internal crisis at the heart of the Islamic Republic's political framework exemplified by the conflict between popular sovereignty and authoritarian rule. The current conflicts between pro-reform and pro-Ahmadinejad groups after the re-election of the former president represent in fact a political struggle between the republican essence of Iran and its clerical oligarchy. The republican gesture pays attention almost exclusively to the legitimacy of the public space, but the clerical establishment refuses to grant any legitimacy to the judgment of the public space.
At moments like this, it should not be forgotten that each time democracy is intimated, silenced and postponed for another day by a show of force in a country like Iran, it is a loss of credibility for those in charge and a crisis of legitimacy for the entire political system. Should street violence in Iran escalate, it also spells the possibility of an escalation of violence in the Middle East. This could also complicate international efforts to deal with Iran on issues such as the nuclear one, Iraq's future or Afghanistan.
The American president has made it clear at different occasions that he would like to engage Tehran in diplomacy. But the re-election of Ahmadinejad would add to the fears of the Israelis and Saudis regarding the security of their countries and their citizens living close to a hostile Iran. The US would have hoped for the victory of the reformists. These hopes have been belied and the US would have to make do with Ahmadinejad. It is true that the American president counted on Ahmadinejad' s defeat to justify his administration' s decision to punt on the nuclear issue. However, it is highly doubtful that the Iranian unrest would somehow blossom into a flame that burns away Ahmadinejad and his group.
But we should not forget that for the first time in its political history, Iran finds itself thrown into an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy. This is a turning point in Iran's domestic and foreign policies that the world cannot ignore. In short, letting the genie of democracy out of the bottle in Iran is like opening a Pandora's Box that the Iranian regime is clearly fearful it won't be able to close.
AUTHOR
The writer, former head of the Contemporary Philosophy Department of the Cultural Research Centre in Tehran, has written more than 20 books including Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity. This piece was first published in The Indian Express.
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Iran's Ayatollah under threat?
By Farzad Agah
http://english. aljazeera. net/news/ middleeast/ 2009/06/20096192 3416905779. html
Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared runaway winner of the presidential election last week, Iran has seen a daily wave of opposition demonstrations, police crackdowns and violence.
Not since the 1979 Islamic Revolution when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the shah has Iranian society been so rattled and divided.
According to the Iranian constitution, the Guardians of the Constitution are supposed to monitor and sign off on election results.
After the votes have been counted and the winner announced by the interior ministry, the Guardians have the responsibility to endorse the result within 10 days if there are no complaints from the defeated candidates.
The president-elect is then confirmed and later sworn in by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
But last week's election did not follow these procedures.
Despite complaints by Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaei, the opposition candidates, Ayatollah Khamaenei congratulated Ahmadinejad in a public speech and pointed out that he had got 14 million votes more than the first time he was elected president four years ago.
Opposition anger
Mousavi and his supporters say the election was rigged [AFP]
The pronouncement, together with a self-congratulatory victory rally in which Ahmadinejad branded the supporters of the defeated candidates as "floating bushes", infuriated opposition supporters and they took to the streets in Tehran and other major cities.
The establishment backed by militias and special forces beat demonstrators and arrested scores of prominent opposition figures, journalists, students and lawyers.
Khamenei maintained his silence for two days before urging the opposing sides not to anger each other by making explosive comments at a private meeting of the candidates' representatives.
He asked the opposition candidates to lodge their complaints to the Guardians of the Constitution for consideration - an indirect admission that the correct procedure had not been followed following the election.
The Guardians of the Constitution later announced they would consider the complaints and admitted a partial recount of the election results may be necessary.
Observers believe the moves by the conservative Guardians of the Constitution, who are known to support Ahmadinejad, were just to calm down anti-government supporters.
Still, they have promised to meet all the defeated presidential candidates on June 20 and take all their complaints into consideration.
Many moderate clerics, some of whom are believed to be members of the powerful Assembly of Experts, have questioned the wisdom of Khamenei in hastily endorsing Ahmadinejad' s "victory".
The Assembly, which selects the country's supreme leader, is chaired by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani who is considered by many as one of the pillars of the Islamic Revolution.
He was the man behind the election of Khamenei as supreme leader soon after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni in 1989.
In theory at least, the Assembly has the constitutional right to question and even replace the supreme leader.
'Not impartial'
Khamenei and Rafsanjani appear to be locked in a power struggle for influence in Iran [AP]
Some influential moderate clerics privately admit that Khamenei has not done "justice" to the presidential candidates and has not treated them with impartiality.
This behaviour, they believe, could jeopardise his position as leader since one of the main qualities required of the supreme leader is "justice".
Rafsanjani is also the chairman of the Expediency Council which is a body charged with the power to resolve differences or conflicts between parliament and the Guardians of the Constitution, but its true power lies more in its power to oversee the supreme leader.
It is a well-known fact that there is a lot of bad blood between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani whom the president accuses of corruption and aristocratic behaviour.
Ahmadinejad angered Rafsanjani when in his presidential television debate with Mousavi, he alleged that all the three opposition candidates had been put forward by Rafsanjani to defeat him.
He further accused Rafsanjani of unlawfully accumulating massive wealth over many years and putting his cronies in the way of the president.
The allegations prompted Rafsanjani to write a highly critical open letter to Khamenei, which the supreme leader ignored.
Public rift
The result has been serious public rift within the establishment and many observers believe Rafsanjani may be encouraging the ferment among supporters of the opposition presidential candidates.
Mohammed Khatami, the former Iranian reformist president, has also been serving in the ranks of the "green movement" of Mousavi, who together with fellow candidate Karroubi, have been calling for the annulment of the election which they believe was rigged by Ahmadinejad supporters.
All this leaves Khamenei in a very difficult situation.
He is unlikely to either accuse the opposition supporters of being mercenaries of "foreign powers" as Ahmadinejad supporters have done.
Nor is he likely to agree to their demand that the election result be cancelled or to have an impartial election fact-finding body set up.
Instead, Khamenei, who is to give a sermon after Friday prayers at Tehran University, is likely to invite both sides to unite and accept the results of the votes or risk jeopardising the Islamic revolution and state.
But Mousavi and his supporters are just as unlikely to stop their protests until they have achieved their goal.
The deep frustration and disillusionment of the mainly urban supporters of Mousavi, together with the establishment rifts now out in the open, are posing a serious threat to Khamenei's authority.
That may benefit Rafsanjani, who aspires to become the next supreme leader, and rumours abound that he is trying to muster support among some influential clerical members of the Assembly of Experts to take Khamenei to task.
This may prove difficult, however, considering that there is still the well-armed and powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard – that some say are the country's de facto rulers - to contend with.
Farzad Agah is an Iranian journalist and analyst living in London. The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.
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VIEW: Leave Iran alone —Rafia Zakaria
http://www.dailytim es.com.pk/ default.asp? page=2009\06\20\story_ 20-6-2009_ pg3_4
"We're all neo-cons now", announced a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal on June 18, 2009. The article reiterated what has become the Republican Party's refrain following the tumult of the Iranian presidential elections: President Obama needs to take a stronger stance in support of the protestors demonstrating against President Ahmadinejad.
"Obama's timidity on Iran leaves him increasingly isolated," the piece announced, insinuating that even the president's own staff, like Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden, were dissatisfied with his lack of overt support for Mir Hossein Moussavi's supporters, risking arrest to take to Tehran's streets.
Indeed, American neo-conservatives within the Republican Party finally have something to harp on about. After years of an unabashed hate-fest against Iran, neo-cons previously used to championing the obliteration of Iran have spent the past week appearing on American news channels in paroxysms of delight over the darling democracy-loving Iranian public.
One prominent neo-conservative columnist, Jonah Goldberg, went as far as to exhort President Obama to "Do it...please President Obama. Take the side of democracy". In the same essay, the previously bomb-worthy terrorist masses of Iran are now the "huddled masses of Iranians yearning to breathe free and think hope and change" urging the realisation of democratic dreams while the new American colossus stands silent.
Not once in the past several months of President Obama's presidency has the world had more occasion to celebrate the end of Bush than over this current cataclysm over the Iranian election. While the Obama administration takes pause to measure its words and recognise how the inevitable malign of American intervention may impose on Moussavi's supporters, the neo-conservative has suddenly awakened with heretofore-unseen concern for the Iranian people. Sudden recognitions of the "advanced" nature of Iranian society have emerged from mouths who had just months earlier refused to recognise the barest humanity of the Iranian people.
It is early yet to judge whether the coming of the Obama administration and the change in rhetoric, towards reconciliation rather than confrontation, marks a change in the global discourse that has marked the first decade since 9/11. The first few months of the Obama administration have seen markedly adventurous overtures between the US and Iran. What Obama started as a controversial campaign promise to engage adversaries without pre-conditions was taken further into a Nauroz message delivered by the president, and significant mention in the historic address to the Muslim world delivered in Cairo.
It is undoubted that the substantive impetus for Moussavi's supporters in Iran is indigenous and local. As many experts on Iran have pointed out in recent days, the devastation of the Iranian economy during the Ahmadinejad years and growing concerns over militarisation have all produced a public weary of an establishment whose claim to "revolutionary" credentials is becoming increasingly remote. Add to this the division between the ruling clerical elite and the fact that while Ahmadinejad is supported by Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani supports and in turn gives legitimacy to Mir Hossein Mousavi.
However, without minimising the crucial role of domestic dynamics in the Iranian election, some note must also be taken of the change in global dynamics. Mere days before the Iranian election, President Obama exhorted the Israeli government to stop building new settlements on occupied Palestinian lands. Moreover, the friendly overtures made by the Obama administration marked by the visible changes in rhetoric and willingness for dialogue created a notably different global climate around the Iranian election.
It is rumoured that the dismissal of Special Envoy to Iran Dennis Ross was also motivated by the desire to appoint someone more appropriate, given Ross' connection to Israel. The gist of developments can be summarised as a marked changed in political weather that may have made it harder to sell Ahmadinejad' s populist fiery rhetoric, which directed hatred toward the United States and deflected attention from Iran's own problems.
In optimistic terms then, the emergence of a visible opposition movement in Iran may well signal a shift away from the fire and brimstone rhetoric of hatred that had defined both the United States and Iran in recent decades. Both Bush and Ahmadinejad relied on the verbiage of hatred, on the convenient political trick of focusing attention on an enemy that is without rather than within.
Obama's America is waking up to confront the wreckage of many internal problems ignored, and if Moussavi's Iran ever comes to fruition, it may well find itself confronted by similar ailing and ignored sores festered into fatal wounds.
Yet these are hopeful words whose promises lie in a tenuous future punctuated by an overwhelming array of contingencies and qualifiers. Before they are entertained, the reality of Iran and the ignominy of American involvement in it must be contended with. The memory of previously betrayed democratic movements, de-legitimised and quashed, will require more than the recent salve of recalcitrant speeches to wipe away.
American hands, at least where Iran is concerned, are still dirty hands and stand to stain what is otherwise a sincere and awe-inspiringly brave political uprising. Iranian human rights activists like Akbar Ganji and Shirin Ebadi, who have been walking on the tightrope of critiquing the Iranian establishment whilst maintaining the crucial distance from the United States, are evidence of the de-legitimising force of the United States.
So despite the cacophony of mock-solidarity echoing from all echelons of the US neo-conservative establishment, when it comes to doing what's best for the Iranian people and indeed for the world, the US must do nothing at all. The lessons of history and the vagaries of memory say the same thing: for this once, leave Iran alone.
Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@ gmail.com
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Saturday, June 20, 2009
Crunch Time in Tehran;
Karroubi says Protests will Go On;
And, What Khamenei Said
http://www.juancole .com/2009/ 06/crunch- time-in-tehran- karroubi- says.html
Reformist presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi said Saturday morning that the 4 pm GMT rally on Saturday against the alleged stealing of the presidential election in Iran would go ahead. This despite the threats made by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in his Friday prayer sermon to crack down on "chaos." Karroubi, a cleric, is not a wild man and his determination to forge on shows that Khamenei did not succeed in laying the issue to rest. Moroever, there are popular constituencies with genuine grievances who are doing grassroots organizing. (For the role of women in the protests, see here.
Khamenei's speech on Friday underlined that Iran was under siege from abroad. He implied that Britain and the United States were sponsoring counter-revolutiona ry fifth columns aimed at overthrowing the regime. He said that Israel and its supporters were plotting against Iran. He depicted the righteous, pious, just and upright Islamic Republic of Iran as virtually alone in the world, at risk of being toppled by the wicked, oppressive global powers dedicated to the iniquitous hegemony of consumer capitalism, which corrupts morals and punishes the poor.
It is for this reason, he said, that everyone must pull together. He was careful to depict the crisis as a split among old comrades in arms. He acknowledged that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had gone too far in his television debates with rivals, having impugned the integrity of the Islamic Republic in the 1980s through the present, having accused members of the Hashemi Rafsanjani family of getting rich from corrupt dealings with the government, and having slammed the son of Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri (former speaker of the house and failed presidential aspirant in 1997) for embezzlement from state coffers. Khamenei praised the frankness and openness of the televised presidential debates but warned that if they descended too far into personal accusations and bickering they would become counter-productive.
Khamenei praised the contributions to the revolution of Mir Hosain Mousavi, whom he depicts as the runner-up in a fair election, and of Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mehdi Karoubi and Mohsen Rezaie, the latter two candidates having been awarded only a few hundred thousand votes each by the electoral commission. But, he said, given the severe menaces to Iran from abroad, they must bury the hatchet with Ahmadinejad and move on.
Khamenei seemed to me to explain one thing I had not understood, which is why the regime felt compelled to allege that Ahmadinejad had won in such a landslide, of 63% to Mousavi's 32%. I still don't find that assertion plausible. But Khamenei gave as one reason for which there could be no challenge to Ahmadinejad' s victory that a margin of 11 million votes was unassailable. It would have been more plausible if Ahmadinejad had squeaked out a victory, but I now see that the down side for the regime would have been that a narrow win for the incumbent, despite being more believable, would have emboldened the challengers and put pressure on the supreme leader for a genuine recount. This way, Khamenei can just shoot down such demands. But what he does not realize is that although he has made it easier to resist a recount, he has completely undermined faith in the system on the part of millions of Iranians, who, as he said, were system insiders, not outsiders. Whether or not Khamenei succeeds in quelling the current unrest, I don't think the regime will be left untouched by this debacle in the future.
Khamenei dismissed carping from the US and the UK about Iran's authoritarian system as mere hypocrisy. The US, he said, has killed thousands in an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, and is bombing people in Afghanistan. Even domestically, he alleged, the US does not permit freedom of dissent, as shown by the Clinton administration' s siege of the Branch Davidian sect at Waco, Tx., which ended with large numbers of people being immolated. [Khamenei conveniently leaves out that this was an armed group engaged in firearms violations and child abuse; as if such an armed cult would be tolerated by his government in Iran! Though it is true that many religion specialists believe the Reno approach was heavy-handed and counter-productive. ] He also found laughable British protestations against Iran's system in light of the current scandal in the UK over the members of parliament using public funds to fix up their houses, buy houses, or pay mortgages on alleged houses that did not actually exist. (This scandal has angered the British public like nothing I've seen in 40 years of visiting the UK, and has profoundly undermined public trust in government; I doubt most Americans, who mainly get their news from television, even know about it, since corporate mass media in the US encourages the public to cocoon and ignore the rest of the world where possible. But Khamenei's point may resonate with some Britons.)
The tropes of British and American conspiracies against Iranian sovereignty are so well ingrained in Iranian consciousness that Khamenei only had to allude to them. There are odd idees fixes in the Iranian public about British power in Iran that go back to the Victorian age when British India neighbored the Qajar empire and asserted its south as a British sphere of influence during the Great Game with tsarist Russia over Central Asia. Me, I wonder if MI6 even has more than a handful of field officers and local agents in Iran.
This paranoid style in Iranian political discourse (which has its counterparts in the US) was being deployed to damn the protesters as witting or unwitting tools of nefarious imperial designs on the Iranian state. Khamenei heavily implied that the protesters would be cracked down on brutally if they continued, and would be depicted and treated as traitors.
At the end of the sermon, Khamenei prayed to the hidden Twelfth Imam, the Shiite messiah, to whom, he said, true sovereignty over Iran belonged. This way of speaking seemed to me to be a concession to Ahmadinejad, who sees the Islamic Republic as the manifestation of the will of the hidden Imam, a view mainstream Shiite clerics find blasphemous. Shiites believe that after the Prophet Muhammad's death, he was succeeded by his son-in-law and cousin Ali, and then the latter's descendants (also the Prophet's descendants through his daughter Fatimah, Ali's wife). The Twelver branch of Shiism in Iran and Iraq believes that the Twelfth Imam disappeared as a small child into a supernatural, immortal dimension. Some sayings have him walking hidden among us, others speak of his location in a distant mystical geography (the mountain of Jabulsa' e.g.) But Shiites believe he will one day reveal himself, or return. In his absence, there can be no truly legitimate government, since the descendant of the Prophet or Imam should rule by secret divine knowledge. Khomeini alleged that in the Imam's absence, the seminary-trained clergy could rule in his stead, though Khomeini did not maintain that the clergy had certain knowledge of the Imam's will; the best they could do was an educated conjecture (zann) based on scripture and holy sayings, but since that was the best they could do, they would be forgiven if they got anything wrong. That is a different stance from Ahmadinejad' s which sees the hidden hand of the Imam working through the theocratic state. Khamenei did not endorse the latter view explicitly, but he did seem to me to imply that the protesters were rebelling not just against a mortal government but against the will of the Hidden Imam himself.
It now seems only a matter of time until there are high-level arrests and then an intervention against the protesters by the security forces of a quite brutal sort. Only if Mousavi backs down (and thus possibly demoralizes the crowds) can this outcome now be averted.
The real question is whether this is 1963, when the shah managed to put down a rebellion led by Ruhollah Khomeini, or whether it is 1978-79, when he failed to do so. The answer lies in the depth of support for the protests among the population, and in the stance of the various armed forces toward the latter. In 1963 the military was willing to crack down hard on the protesters. In 1978, they started refusing to fire on them. The air force officers actually went over to Khomeini, which was decisive. Precisely because the opposition is from within the ruling circle, we cannot know what the Revolutionary Guards and the regular armed forces are thinking. Mousavi helped get Iran's military act together during the Iran-Iraq War. Rezaie is a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's national guard. If the armed forces hesitate or split, Khamenei could be in real trouble. If not, the protesters could end up being crushed. (See also here on the military dynamics.
http://americanmohi st.blogspot. com/2009/ 06/iran-time- for-embassy. html
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Friday, June 19, 2009
Lyons: Khamenei's Past Power Play against the Clerics May Weaken him Now in Confronting the Reformers
http://www.juancole .com/2009/ 06/lyons- khameneis- past-power- play-against. html
Jonathan Lyons writes in a guest op-ed for IC:
As the latest political drama unfolds in Iran, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may yet come to rue the day, in 1999, that he sought to muzzle one of the nation's most important constituencies – the handful of most senior clerics who provide spiritual and personal guidance to millions of pious Shi'ites. The attention of the world is rivetted by events in the streets of Tehran, Shiraz, and other urban centers, but much of the real battle is taking place, unseen and unremarked, in the seminaries, popular shrines, teaching circles, and extended clerical households that make up the holy Shi'ite city of Qom. Here, some of the Shi'ite world's most senior theologians, the marja-e taqlid, or sources of religious-legal authority for the laity, zealously guard their independence from a state that claims to act in the name of Islam. These grand ayatollahs and their legions of aides collect religious taxes from individual believers worldwide, and then use these funds to run seminaries, carry out good works, oversee global media operations, propagate their views, and provide their networks of followers with religious rulings to guide their daily lives.
Despite its formal name – the Islamic Republic of Iran – the political system now overseen by Ali Khamenei has few supporters among the recognized grand ayatollahs and their large circle of clerical fellow-travellers. In traditional Shi'ite thought, legitimate political authority may be exercised only by the line of the Holy Imams, the last of whom went into hiding to escape the agents of the rival Sunni caliphs and has not been heard from since 941. The return of the Hidden Imam, which will usher in an era of perfect peace and justice on earth, is eagerly awaited by all believers. Until then, all political power is seen as corrupt and corrupting by its very nature, and as such it must be avoided whenever possible.
Historically, this has served the Shi'ite clergy well, forging a close bond with the people, as intercessors with the state authorities at times of acute crisis, a privileged and influential position only rarely achieved by their Sunni counterparts. Yet, it stands in direct opposition to Ayatollah Khomeini's radical religious notion of direct clerical rule and has been the source of underlying tensions within the clerical class for three decades. The dirty little secret of the Islamic Republic is the fact that it is seen as illegitimate by huge swathes of the traditional Shi'ite clergy.
Khomeini's personal charisma and his own religious standing, as well as the revolutionary exigencies of the early days of the Islamic Republic, drove much of this religious opposition into the background. So did harsh repression of the few senior religious figures who dared to stand up to him, including his one-time political heir, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. What's more, the powerful quietist tradition in Shi'ism reinforced the tendency of many theoligians to withdraw into their seminaries and to carry on their religious work outside the structures of a state system that they reject. All that began to change with the designation in 1989 of Ali Khamenei, a mid-ranking cleric with no real religious standing or intellectual credentials, to succeed Khomeni as supreme leader.
Khamenei's rise also saw the rise of the "political mullahs" for whom political power easily trumps Shi'ite religious thought and practice. To strengthen his hand, Khamenei was summarily "promoted" to the senior rank of ayatollah, competely disregarding the traditional system of clerial advancement based on learning and popular acclaim. Second, the constitutional role of supreme leader was redefined: he was no longer required to be recognized as a marja-e taqlid, an honor the plodding Khamenei could never hope to achieve. Most important of all, other constitutional changes further centralized executive power in the hands of the leader, weakened the role of the elected president, and eliminated altogether the position of prime minister. Thus, the stage was set for the clerical dictatorship that Khamenei has successfully forged for himself and his allies, a position now put into play by the latest events.
Still, the supreme leader has not always had his own way, and the traditional clergy remain a potentially powerful adversary should they sense that the time has come to throw their support behind a popular movement in its struggles against an illegitimate state. Ten years ago, Khamenei shocked the clerical establishment when he sought to interdict the enormous financial flows that sustain the independence of the grand ayatollahs and demanded the diversion of the religious taxes and other contributions to a centralized state fund under his direct control. The proposal was shot down, as was an earlier, ham-handed attempt to see Khamenei included in this elite circle as a recognized marja-e taqlid.
But the bad blood between the ruling political mullahs and the main body of clergy in Qom remains, and it is this influential constituency, not the green-clad demonstrators in the streets, that holds the long-term danger for Iran's ruling elite. In a recent statement on his Web site, the highly-respected Montazeri, a founding father of the Islamic Republic turned leading dissident, denounced the election results as a sham [for more, see this link].
Among Montazeri's long-standing critiques of the regime is its use of religious authority to enforce its political will and secure its own political power. This is often seen in the regime's use of the draconian charge of "fighting against God," a religious offense punishable in theory by death, brought against its political opponents.
In this way, the revolutionary grand ayatollah and the more traditional clerics share the same essential view: political power has corrupted the clergy and destroyed its vital link to the people. In Montazeri's eyes and those of his numerous allies, Khamenei's inability to obtain the level of learning, popular acclaim, and scholarly recognition required of a marja-e taqlid has removed any trace of the popular legitimacy that lies at the heart of a true Islamic democracy. So, too, does his direct intervention in the political affairs of the nation. Instead, Montazeri and others have argued, the supreme leader should be elected from among the grand ayatollas by his fellow senior clerics, and he should provide moral and spiritual leadership to the nation rather than exercise executive power. This would restore to the Shi'ite clergy the respected role it has played for centuries.
Iran's large clerical class, of course, cannot be neatly slotted into any one, single category, and clearly some of them are supporting the status quo, in the forms of Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Others are likely taking a wait-and-see attitude, while still others remain deeply committed to their quietist roots. Likewise, fissures among the political mullahs themselves have also appeared, most notably around former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose differences with Khamenei have broken out into the open.
With the supreme leader's address to Friday prayers in Tehran affirming the election result and warning protesters to stay off the streets, it is hard to see how the protests can end in anything but a violent crackdown. Any move in that direction will certainly increase the pressure on President Obama, now chiefly from the neo-cons but likely to spread, to "do something" to support the protesters. In the current circumstances, however, any White House response is virtually certain to backfire and will only entangle the United States in a struggle it cannot see or fully understand. The West must not allow itself to be so destracted by the political street theatre in Iran that it falls back on its default position – that the end of clerical rule is at hand.
Still, Khamenei and his circle cannot hope emerge from the traumas of the present upheaval without taking into account the mood and opinion of that large segment of the Shi'ite clergy that is increasingly dismayed at the turn of events over the last two decades. To do so would only postpone the inevitable day of reckoning as Iran struggles to resolve the riddle posed by Khomenei with his creation of the Islamic Republic: is it a republic accountable to the people, or an Islamic state beholden to one particular interpretation of the faith?
Jonathan Lyons, Reuters Tehran bureau chief from 1998-2001, is the co-author of Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in 21st-Century Iran. His latest book, The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization, was published earlier this year by Bloomsbury Press. More details here .
http://www.juancole .com/2009/ 06/www.jonathanl yonsportfolio. com
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