Palestinian rights, the unevenness of geopolitical power, the declining utility of unilateral military force, and a nod to the Leader. But he also put forth a Khatami-like idea for a new campaign of multilateral cooperation: the WAVE. As is becoming clearer with each week, Rouhani is a politician who balances his actions and statements in between previous Iranian approaches.
Although I couldn’t fit this particular quote in my report yesterday, the Atlantic Council’s Yasmin Alem told me that Rouhani was covering the bases he didn’t cover back at home in his Washington Post op-ed last week, which was aimed at an American audience. In other words, one reason why Rouhani’s speech was nowhere near as conciliatory as President Obama’s speech may be because the Iranian president was in large part addressing his supporters and adversaries at home .
I also just spoke with independent scholar and LobeLog contributor Farideh Farhi, currently in Tehran, who kindly provided a sampling of some Iranian reactions:
Political Elites:
The reaction to Rouhani’s speech here has been mixed. I heard one person say that if Rouhani was going to be so timid, he shouldn’t have gone to New York so soon. Others expressed unhappiness with the stilted language of the speech and the disconnect between the harsher first part and the more conciliatory second part. But there are others who are sympathetic to the balance Rouhani was trying to strike. [Political analyst] Sadegh Zibakalam, for instance, said Rouhani “did not do what he wanted but what he could.” The establishment, meanwhile, has been supportive. Former Revolutionary Guard commander Yahya Rahim Safavi called the speech “intelligent.” The head of the Judiciary Amoli Larijani called the speech “polite and logical.”
Average Iranians:
Among the more ordinary folks I have met I would say that they were hoping for more – at least in terms of Rouhani’s performance — particularly after Obama’s carefully crafted, conciliatory, and nicely delivered speech. But in some ways there is also a feeling that going slower is better as it not only allows for a more enduring management of tensions between the US and Iran, but also better management of popular expectations in Iran.
Farideh’s Take:
My own take was that the speech was not the best Rouhani could have given. It was not an easy speech to listen to, was not well written, and addressed too many angles, probably because it was written by too many people. But on the nuclear front, it reiterated his government’s commitment to the resolution of the nuclear issue and acknowledged President Obama’s conciliatory tone. Coming on the heels of the more important decision by Secretary John Kerry to meet with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif within the P5+1 ministerial frame, it was definitely an adequate speech.
Photo Credit: ISNA/Erfan Khoshkhoo
]]>Sociologists sometimes get lucky. In June 2009 I arrived in Tehran for a routine research trip. Over the next several months I witnessed the largest political demonstrations in Iran since 1979. Arising from protests against the results of the June presidential election, which were perceived by many Iranians as fraudulent, these [...]]]>
Sociologists sometimes get lucky. In June 2009 I arrived in Tehran for a routine research trip. Over the next several months I witnessed the largest political demonstrations in Iran since 1979. Arising from protests against the results of the June presidential election, which were perceived by many Iranians as fraudulent, these marches and rallies quickly became known as the “Green movement.”
Social movements serve as a kind of natural laboratory for sociologists. We spend most of our time trying to explain why things don’t change; we study inequality, poverty, conflict, and discrimination. A social movement, however, is all about change — in demands, ideas, actions, and relationships between people. Living through one makes you feel like history is speeding up. Standing in the middle of it all makes you feel like your side will win. But not all, or even most, social movements win. Yet, even if the demands are not met and the momentum dissipates, social movements tend to have effects that extend beyond their brief existence. This was certainly the case for the 2009 Green movement; it continues to impact events in Iran today.
In a recently published journal article for Mobilization, I describe and explain some of the social and political dynamics that led to the Green movement’s rise and fall. Here I want to link my observations to Iran’s upcoming presidential election through the following three points.
1. Pre-election mobilization can lead to unpredictable outcomes
No one anticipated that Iran’s 2009 presidential election, regardless of its winner, would shake up the political scene. The stakes seemed pretty low, just as they do today. Mir-Hossein Mousavi was barely remembered from the 1980s, when he was a skinny prime minister overseeing an economy besieged by the Iran-Iraq war. Yet the few weeks leading up to the election witnessed a massive upsurge in emotional energy from all sides of the political spectrum. Many people made up their minds to vote for a particular candidate in the final few days. Rallies and street parties, which involved more than a bit of fun, pulled in curious onlookers and politicized them.
This escalation in emotional energy underpinned the surge in post-election protest. If you think emotion isn’t important for a social movement, then you’ve probably never been involved in one. Hope turned into anger among those who believed that Mousavi had won the election. But Mousavi’s shift from a mild-mannered retiree to a Gandhi-styled hero didn’t occur simply because he suddenly discovered an inner reserve of charisma. The pre-election mobilizations refashioned Mousavi’s tone on important social issues, and the post-election protests turned him into a symbol for stark political change. Elections matter in the Islamic Republic not because the best candidates are on the ballot — people are used to holding their nose and voting — but because they can sometimes reshape Iran’s social environment.
2. The internet does not equal civil society
The Green movement had little to do with civil society. This term is often used as a substitute for “the people,” but civil organizations such as trade unions, merchant guilds or sports clubs do not amount to a large blob of people that act in tandem outside of pre-existing political interests and networks. Post-election protests in 2009 were organized quite spontaneously and mostly outside of existing Iranian civil organizations.
The internet often confused — as much as it facilitated — events as website rumors about protest locations divided up momentum and online images of violence convinced many that going out was simply unsafe. The organizations that could have corralled and directed the protest upsurge were also the ones that were directly targeted in the first few days after the ballot by the Iranian government, including Mousavi’s electoral network of volunteers and strategists. Yet Mousavi’s network resembled a political body more than a civil one. As we saw in the 2012 re-election of President Barack Obama, bona-fide organizations usually matter more for elections than internet activists, such as those which operate mainly on Twitter; we will learn more about the candidates in 2013 from their organizational power than from their campaign ad promises.
3. The Iranian middle class is not going away
As I discussed in my Mobilization article, Green protesters were mostly middle class, as defined by education and occupation, but that doesn’t mean they were a small elite living in Tehran villas. Given the rapid expansion in universities around Iran, a large portion of young people with a college degree come from families with working class parents. Go to many neighborhoods in Tehran, or any public park, and you will see a mixed class setting. Many of these younger individuals felt deeply alienated from the Iranian government in the wake of the 2009 election, if not before.
Yet it’s a myth that conservatives in Iran solely rely on poor people for their political base. The right-wing put on a good show while being challenged on the street by Green protesters, but within a year, the coalition that had backed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in tatters. Iran’s current president is now widely regarded as the Alfred E. Neuman of the Islamic Republic. As a result, there may be even more candidates running in 2013 than in 2009, unless the various wings of the conservative spectrum make nice with each other. That’s not likely to happen, however, and as the election draws nearer, some of these candidates will appeal to the middle class, especially after a disastrous economic year that saw so many families being hit by inflation and currency troubles. Even without a reformist candidate, Iran’s struggling economy sets the stage for more surprises.
Related to Iran’s economic dilemma is the gorilla in the Supreme Leader’s office: sanctions by the US and EU. More candidates could mean a less predicable election, but a hardline US stance on Iran could also lead to a situation where no single candidate would dare step out of line lest he be accused of being “soft on America.”
But during a trip to Iran late last year, it was easy to pick up any newspaper and read about conservatives ripping into each other. As I recently wrote in The London Review of Books, this means “alliances and enmities are being rearranged yet again.”
The experts will likely tell you that Iran’s 2013 elections are going to be a dog and pony show. While another huge social movement is unlikely, we may all end up, yet again, surprised by Iranian politics.
– Kevan Harris is a postdoctoral research fellow in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.
Photo: Mousavi supporters protesting against Iran’s 2009 election results gathered in Tehran on June 18. By Hamed Saber.
]]>via USIP
What is the state of Iran’s economy in 2013 compared to a year ago?
Iran’s economy enters 2013 significantly worse than a year ago, particularly with higher inflation and unemployment than at the beginning of 2012. The rial also plunged from around 11,000 to the dollar at [...]]]>
via USIP
What is the state of Iran’s economy in 2013 compared to a year ago?
Iran’s economy enters 2013 significantly worse than a year ago, particularly with higher inflation and unemployment than at the beginning of 2012. The rial also plunged from around 11,000 to the dollar at the beginning of 2012 down to between 22,500 and 31,000 at the beginning of 2013, depending on the type of transaction. The past year was probably the most tumultuous economically for Iran since 1994, when an external debt crisis triggered a serious inflationary shock and a recession.
At the outset of 2012, many Iranians expected another economic shock due to the growing array of sanctions on Tehran’s oil sales and financial transactions led by the United States and European Union. In 2013, many now expect the international economic cordon to be further tightened. The 2012 squeeze did not produce a hyperinflationary spiral, but annual overall inflation in 2012 was estimated to hit between 40 percent and 60 percent, according to Iran’s business media. Tehran was forced to limit foreign exchange transactions and the export of strategic goods in response to the effect of sanctions on Iran’s currency market.
Due to sanctions, Iran’s oil exports were also basically cut in half in 2012, from 2.3 million barrels a day at the beginning of 2012 down to around 1 million barrels a day at year’s end, according to the International Energy Agency. The accumulated impact of revenue declines is likely to produce two additional problems in 2013.
First, the national budget deficit is expected to increase to around 30 percent of the current budget (in the Persian year ending in March 2013), which means that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be forced next year to cut spending, raise revenue, and prop up state banks with new cash injections. Iran’s parliament wants to put as much control over the government budget as it can, since many members of parliament contend that Ahmadinejad’s use of revenue is opaque at best.
Second, further changes in subsidies for basic commodities—which date back to hardships during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s—are on hold. Ahmadinejad introduced changes to this subsidy program over 2011-2012, including liberalization of some prices combined with monthly stipends for the entire Iranian population. But he only got through one round of subsidy cuts before Iran’s parliament halted further increases in fuel prices as well as higher stipends. Inflation had whittled away the benefits of both, although the idea is not dead.
Iranian economists are divided about subsidy reforms. Some think the subsidy cutbacks generated an inflationary shock at a time that the domestic economy—both the manufacturing and agricultural sectors—were unprepared for higher production and raw material costs that they then either had to absorb or pass along to consumers. So sanctions were not the only driver of inflation in 2012.
Other economists are more sanguine about the reforms, given the difficulties of enacting any economic policy changes in Iran. The ill-effects are temporary, they contend, and many other developing countries use stipends as part of their welfare programs. A diplomatic solution about Iran’s controversial nuclear program over the next year, they say, would lessen the pain and other subsidies could then be removed.
What is the debate within the government over what to do about the current economic situation?
The admission of economic woes by most of Iran’s political class has opened up space for debate over economic policy. Some officials, including the president, now argue that reducing Iran’s reliance on oil revenues, a byproduct of international sanctions, is a blessing in disguise. Private sector representatives in Iran’s Chamber of Commerce counter that they could manage the economy better than the state does. Both claims are seriously exaggerated, but the rival positions reflect the political impact of the deepening economic crisis in a presidential election year.
A viable solution may depend less on economic policy than on the outcome of Iran’s negotiations on its nuclear program, several Iranian officials have admitted publicly. Iranian officials are now gearing up for talks with the world’s major powers—the so-called P5+1—from the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. Iranian negotiators want sanctions relief in exchange for any concessions limiting its nuclear program.
How much influence does the economic situation have on the presidential election due in June 2013?
The economy will clearly be one of the main issues in the election. Unlike many developing countries, however, Iran does not have a large external debt. It has a porous, open economy, which helps the country’s 79 million people deal with the negative effects of financial sanctions. So the situation is not yet dire. But people may vote for a candidate who they believe can actually get something done in the economic arena.
Many candidates will likely run against Ahmadinejad—notably his economic policies—even though he is not allowed to run again under a constitutional limit of two consecutive terms. Across the political spectrum, Ahmadinejad’s administration is now widely associated with failed policies and gross mismanagement. In 2012, most conservative media blasted the president and his staff for Iran’s growing economic woes.
Indeed, Iran’s economic policy debate has often served as a cover for political criticism since the 1979 revolution. The 2013 presidential election will almost certainly follow the same pattern, given growing economic woes and the linking of their alleviation with a resolution of the nuclear issue.