Iran’s June 14 presidential election, only about a month and a half away, will get ample attention — and more than a dose of speculation — from everyone interested in the big picture items: whether there will be an actual choice of candidates, whether the result will have an [...]]]>
Iran’s June 14 presidential election, only about a month and a half away, will get ample attention — and more than a dose of speculation — from everyone interested in the big picture items: whether there will be an actual choice of candidates, whether the result will have an impact on the way the nuclear file will be approached, whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will go out quietly, and so on. But smaller, parallel events are fascinating because they reveal the kind of dilemmas the country’s political class faces as it tries to manage the strange institutional hybrid that it oversees.
Let’s take the case of the Guardian Council, which is in charge of vetting candidates for the presidency. This body of six clerics appointed by Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and 6 lay jurists suggested by the Judiciary head (himself appointed by the Leader) and approved by the Majles, effectively has complete leeway in deciding who can run and considers its task to be a closed affair. It doesn’t explain the reasoning behind why a particular candidate is disqualified because it doesn’t have to. As such, it’s justifiably accused of disqualifying candidates with points of view that differ from those held by its current conservative members.
This year, however, the Council may face a dilemma in vetting candidates simply because of the large number of conservative candidates who will likely apply. I would love to be a fly on the wall and listen to the reasoning behind choosing one candidate over another when they are essentially clones of each other. This was less of a problem in previous elections because there weren’t that many candidates with some sort of name recognition.
To be sure, a large number of candidates registering and even running is not new. In the Islamic Republic’s first election — when there was no vetting mechanism — 96 candidates ran. Frontrunner Abolhassan Bani Sadr won in the first round before he was booted out of office and the country in a year and a half.
In the 2005 election, the last time there was no sitting president running for reelection, the number of registered candidates topped one thousand! The Guardian Council disqualified all but 6, presumably because the overwhelming majority of them did not meet the constitutional requirement of being among the “political and religious elite” endowed with “managerial capability and prudence”; “a good past-record”; “trustworthiness and piety”; and a “convinced belief in the fundamental principles of the Islamic Republic.” Later, upon the Leader’s prodding, the Council re-qualified two Reformist candidates it had rejected. One candidate eventually dropped out and the contest among the seven candidates went to a second round among the top two candidates — a first in the Islamic Republic. In the 2001 election, ten candidates were qualified out of over 800 registrants, but a popular president, Mohammad Khatami, was re-elected overwhelmingly in the first round.
The large number of past government officials announcing their intent to run makes this election a bit different. The competition is promising as many as 20 conservative or centrist registrants with some sort of ministerial or parliamentary background, hence qualifying them as among the elite or prominent personalities, and few political reasons for disqualifications. The parliament did try to bring some order to this unwieldy process by introducing age limits and educational requirements to the eligibility criteria. But the Guardian Council, in wanting to maintain full control over the qualification process, declared the parliamentary legislation unconstitutional.
Despite this, the Council does seem concerned. Its spokesperson Abbasali Kadkhodai said it’s in the process of developing internal guidelines regarding qualifications. Another council member, Hosseinali Amiri, said the Council is trying to clarify the exact meaning of “political elite” in terms of past experience. For instance, can a minister who has been impeached by the parliament be qualified? What level of government service is representative of sufficient managerial experience (minister? deputy minister? lower?) It’s not yet clear if any of these clarifications will be made public to set precedent for future elections.
Kadkhodai also said the Council is mulling the idea of interviewing potential candidates for their plan of action or presidency program. This is totally new and if it happens, one could call it a direct result of the “Ahmadinejad effect.” The question of whether the Council members are themselves qualified or astute enough to assess through interviews a candidate’s preparedness for running the country — it took the Iranian political class about 8 years of Ahmadinejad’s presidency to reach a consensus about his lack of competence — was not addressed by Kadkhodai.
Less new is the Council’s decision of requiring more than mere acceptance of Iran’s constitution for assessing a candidate’s commitment to the Islamic Republic. According to Kadkhodai, it’s not sufficient for a president to say that he will implement the constitution because it is the law of the land. He must also be “attached” to it and “deeply believe” in it. Kadkhodai did not elaborate on how hard it may be to figure out someone’s true beliefs and feelings in a country where pretending to be a deeply pious believer is a requirement of all government jobs. Based on this criterion, everyone is suspect.
Of course, the Guardian Council can continue to maintain the tradition of only disqualifying candidates with politics it does not approve of and qualifying everyone else with the hope that the majority will drop out in favor of candidates who are more likely to be successful. Or it can decide to live with the risk of another second run election. But as of now, it appears to be scratching its head while trying to figure out new ways to disqualify even committed believers of the Islamic Republic.
As usual, improvisation remains the name of the game in trying to manage the conflicting impulses of a system that seeks to be both Islamic and a Republic, at least in appearance.
]]>For Iran, 2012 will go down as the year of economic woes. The mantra of the “enemy’s psychological war against Iran” will no longer be blamed more than internal mismanagement even by the most ardent supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Leader, Ali Khamenei. The “resistance economy” against the “economic war [...]]]>
For Iran, 2012 will go down as the year of economic woes. The mantra of the “enemy’s psychological war against Iran” will no longer be blamed more than internal mismanagement even by the most ardent supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Leader, Ali Khamenei. The “resistance economy” against the “economic war unleashed against Iran” has become the name of the game. Several years of expansionist fiscal and monetary policies — underwritten by high oil prices and government spending and accentuated by liberal import policies — clashed directly with the ferocious sanctions regime imposed by the United States and its allies. Highly contested politics continued to reign as well. A nationwide election — the first after the contested 2009 election — was held; domestic and international objections regarding the government’s treatment of Iranian citizens continued; the attempt to delineate the qualification and age limit of presidential candidates failed. I am not particularly good at ranking events based on importance, but upon Jasmin Ramsey’s request, here are my top 10 picks for Iran in 2012.
1. The Rial’s Freefall
The gradual drop in the value of Iranian currency, the rial, begun at the end of 2011 and continued until about September when the bottom literally fell off, registering a 50 percent drop in one month. The government eventually cracked down on the unofficial market, which as economist Djavad Salehi-Isfahani pointed out, is a limited currency market, and created a foreign exchange center for importers and exporters based on a managed floating system. It also continued to maintain a much lower fixed rate for the import of critical goods such as medicine and some foodstuff. By the end of the year, the foreign exchange rate stood a bit below 25,000 rials per dollar (in comparison to about 15,000 rials per dollar in the unofficial market in January 2012 and about 10,000 a year before).
The cause of the deprecation consumed much public commentary. Some accused the government of cynically manipulating the market in order to sell its dollars at a higher rate and using the generated money to cover its budget deficit. Others lamented the Central Bank’s incompetence while Ahmadinejad blamed unknown market manipulators as well as US-led measures despite his previous dismissal of sanctions as nothing but “torn paper.” But no matter who or what was at fault, the rial’s drastic drop was the most significant event of the year, not necessarily because of its economic impact, but because all the government’s talk about everything being dandy despite sanctions could no longer be listened to with a straight face. Of course, many outside observers’ predictions that the rial’s crash would lead to the collapse of the Iranian economy did not materialize either. Ultimately, the rial devaluation showed that the Islamic Republic is hurting, but far from dying.
2. Sanctions, Sanctions, and Even More Sanctions
Since its onset, the Islamic Republic of Iran has faced sanctions, including some imposed by the United Nations and unilaterally by various countries. However, 2012 should be marked as the year that the US-led and promoted sanctions regime went after the Iranian economy’s jugular. In January, US pressures led the EU to impose an oil embargo on Iran and the freezing of Iran’s Central Bank’s assets. In March 2012, all Iranian banks identified as institutions in breach of EU sanctions were disconnected from the world’s hub of electronic financial transactions, SWIFT. This was followed by the EU placing sanctions on Iran’s best technical university, Sharif, in December.
The EU seems determined to prove Ahmadinejad’s 2007 claim that “In addition to the closure of our country’s nuclear centers, they were after the closure of universities and research centers connected to peaceful nuclear research, including classes in physics and mathematics and they had announced this officially.” At present, both EU and US institutions look like bodies filled with what can only be described as sanctionholic politicians and bureaucrats desperately in need of a 12-step program. Unable or unwilling to offer Iran a nuclear package that it can accept, they act like people who cannot help themselves because they are addicted to just one thing.
In Iran, sanctions began to bite not only because oil exports dropped significantly (by about 40 percent) but more importantly because banking restrictions prevented the transfer of currency into the country. People are complaining that even vital drugs — not on the sanctions list — have become difficult to import because of payment restrictions. There is, meanwhile, little evidence that Tehran is reconsidering its position or that it’s willing to accept a nuclear deal that it previously rejected. Perhaps 2013 will be the year that the Iranian leadership will finally crack and cry uncle, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
3. The Parliamentary Elections
Elections for the 9th Islamic Consultative Assembly or Majlis were held on March 2 with a second round on May 4 in the 65 districts where candidates did not receive 25 percent or more of the votes cast. Stricter qualification criteria saw fewer candidates registering than in previous elections. Still, more than a third were disqualified by the Guardian Council, leaving about 3,400 candidates to run for the 290 seats that represent Iran’s 31 provinces. This was the first election held since the contested 2009 presidential election and much was made of it being an eventless event which nevertheless registered a respectable participation rate for the legitimacy of the Iranian state. Posters exhorted people to vote as a means to prevent military attacks and displayed emphatic declarations by Khamenei that in this “critical” election, high turnout would be a “slap” in the face of the enemy.
Official figures showed a 7 percent increase in voter turnout compared to the last parliamentary election in 2008 — from 57 to 64 percent – but many doubt the veracity of this figure. Participation rates in parliamentary elections have ranged from 51 to 71 percent and, given the disaffection of many voters after what happened in 2009, the likely turnout was probably on the lower end. Turnout in large cities such as Tehran has historically been much lower. Despite the failure of more than 65 percent of sitting MPs to return to the new session (the incumbency rate is historically low in Iran and only between 30 to 35 percent), the election was mostly a competition between conservatives and ultra-conservatives wherein the latter did not do as well as the more traditional conservatives. This outcome assured the re-election of Ali Larijani as Speaker along with deputy speakers who are also traditional conservatives. Historically, parliamentary elections held right before the president’s second term is over have been harbingers of trends for the next presidential election. So, although Iranian presidential elections have proven unpredictable the last few times, a lackluster election with slim pickings will likely be the name of the game for June 2013. Still, even disgruntled non-voters will probably be hoping for a move away from the radicalism and erratic conduct of the current president.
4. The Majles Questions, Ahmadinejad Mocks
After weeks of wrangling, in a first for the Islamic Republic, President Ahmadinejad was called to the Majles in March to answer questions regarding his refusal to implement legislation passed by the Parliament, controversial cabinet appointments, and a tense relationship with Khamenei. Ahmadinejad’s responses turned out to be both evasive and dismissive; they were performed by a man safe with the knowledge that he would not be impeached. Members of parliament complained that he insulted and mocked their questions but did nothing given the costs of bringing him down during the midst of all the external pressures Iran is under. A second attempt in November to question Ahmadinejad regarding the devaluation of the rial was suddenly halted by Khamenei, who once again expressed his wishes for the president to finish his term without too many disturbances. Still, nothing is over until it is over and Khamenei and the whole country will have to endure much more heartburn in 2013 before Ahmadinejad leaves his post by August. Given the support he has given to Ahmadinejad’s presidency, Khamenei deserves the stress, but the country doesn’t.
5. The Suspension of the “Great Economic Surgery”
The Parliament was manhandled by Ahmadinejad on many occasions but did manage to strike back at the heart of his economic program. Fearing greater inflation than the official 25 percent, and concerned about the unauthorized use of foreign exchange to cover the budget deficit, the Parliament suspended the second phase of the Targeted Subsidies Reform Act of 2010 — the center-piece of Ahmadinejad’s “Great Economic Surgery” — in November. This suspension halted more public utility price increases and further rises in monthly welfare cash payments to households, as was planned by the Ahmadinejad Administration. The parliament also voted in a new law which explicitly states that “all money received from the sales of oil and gas proceeds at new higher exchange rates is part of the government’s general revenue, and no part of it can be used to raise monthly cash payments.”
6. Death and Resistance in Iran’s Prisons
This year forcefully disproved the assumption that imprisoning political and civil society activists and critics silences them and fixes the Islamic Republic’s dissident problem. Former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi remained incarcerated in their homes (the former along with spouse Zahra Rahnavard) without being charged and remained mostly without any kind of access to the outside world. But letters written by political prisoners about prison conditions and solidarity among prisoners — as well as the woeful state of the country’s politics — made it out of the prisons and were sufficiently covered by external news and activist outlets for many inside Iran to become aware of them.
Beyond letters, prisoners also staged hunger strikes. Of particular note was the 49-day hunger strike by Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer serving a sentence for “acting against national security.” She ended her strike after judicial authorities acceded to her demand to lift a travel ban imposed on her 12-year old daughter. Her mistreatment and courage was widely reported outside of Iran (Sotoudeh and filmmaker Jafar Panahi were awarded the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought), but also received publicity inside Iran. The dynamic between prisoner resistance inside the country and the persistent coverage of government mistreatment by Iran-focused non-governmental organizations outside of Iran — such as the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) — has proven effective in keeping civil rights at the center of the country’s political discourse. Sadly, this did not prevent the death of Sattar Beheshti, a working class blogger who reportedly died soon after he was beaten by members of the cyber police. His mistreatment was immediately reported in a letter written by 41 fellow prisoners that was smuggled out of prison and his death created an uproar leading to the dismissal of the chief of the cyber police and a parliamentary investigation. In the words of the ICHRI’s Hadi Ghaemi, the Beheshti case marked a milestone in showing that ordinary Iranians risk much harsher treatment by security services than those with name recognition. But the publicity also showed that “the culture of human rights is really taking root in Iran – that they can’t cover it up and run away like they did before.”
7. The UN and Human Rights in Iran
The year of 2012 was also a bad year for Iran’s human rights record at the United Nations. The UN Human Rights Council renewed the mandate of the special rapporteur on Iran that it had established in 2011 (it was the first country-specific rapporteur established by the Council since its inception in 2006). UN actions this year included two damning reports by the Special Rapporteur, Ahmad Shaheed, a rebuke of Iran’s rights record by the UN’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, and a call by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for Iran to release a prominent human rights activist from detention. The year ended with a rebuke at the General Assembly, which condemned human rights violations including arbitrary detentions, the persecutions of minorities, efforts to interfere with the freedom of expression, and inhumane conditions in Iran’s prison system where torture and cruel punishments have been used. Tehran charged that the GA resolution was politically motivated. Politically motivated or not, Iran’s troubles at international forums intensified with its leadership caught in the paradox of wanting to be a respected member of the international community while protesting the alleged manipulation and bullying of international institutions in the same community by bigger powers.
8. The NAM Showcase
It must be considered pure fortuity for the Islamic Republic of Iran that the decision to hold the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran was made three years ago in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Although the previous summit took place shortly after Iran’s contested 2009 presidential election, it’s unlikely that anyone could have predicted the significance of the summit in light of systematic Western efforts to squeeze and isolate Iran. The extraordinary effort put into the event by the government was intended to showcase Iran’s global role and offer concrete evidence that the US-led initiative to isolate Iran has failed — but it did not go as smoothly as was hoped. The unpopularity of Iran’s support for the Syrian government became evident when the Iranian television mistranslated Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s denunciations of the tragedy in Syria.
The summit did, however, have some positive aspects for the Iranian leadership. For instance, the large economic contingent that accompanied Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit underscored the reality that while the opportunity costs of the sanctions regime are huge for Iran, the country’s location and resources are countervailing forces that cannot be ignored. Quite a few countries look at Iran’s economic strangulation as a prospect for positive gains. This dynamic is likely to continue as the US actively tries to impose new ways of restricting Iran’s trade while other countries collude with Iran in finding ways to get around them.
9. No More Birth Control Policy
In a major reversal in August, with what was considered one of the most successful post-revolutionary plans, the budget for the national birth control program was eliminated. The Health Ministry will instead get funding for “fertility health” with a focus on the health of mothers and children to come. According to Farzaneh Rouhi:
Iran has stood out for lowering its fertility in a short time without coercion or abortion. The fertility rate dropped from 6.6 births per woman in 1977 to 2 births per woman in 2000 and to 1.9 births per woman in 2006. The decline was particularly striking in rural areas, where the average number of births per woman dropped from 8.1 to 2.1 in a single generation. (European countries took about 300 years to experience a similar decline.)
But Iran’s population is now aging rapidly. The latest census figures show that only 23.4 percent of the country is under 14 (a steep drop from 44.5 in 1986) and the median age has increased from 17.4 in 1976 to 27. The policy reversal unofficially began a couple of years ago when the Ahmadinejad administration began to give financial incentives for child birth. But the official abandonment of birth control policies occurred without parliamentary action and upon the words of Khamenei, who said that he had made a mistake in supporting the policy for too long. Reversal may nevertheless be hard to implement in practice. In Rouhi’s words, “Iran may not be able to reverse public practices, in part because small family size is now enshrined in the psyche of both men and women. The public is now used to having control over reproductive rights and may continue to do so, whether through government-sponsored health services or the private sector.”
10. Threats of War and the Ongoing Nuclear Soap Opera
It would have been easy to place the continuing conflict over Iran’s nuclear program at the top of this list. It certainly was the most reported news regarding Iran. But “ongoing” is the operative word here. Yes, there were three rounds of talks in Istanbul, Baghdad and finally Moscow. Yes, these talks were described by Hillary Clinton as “perhaps a last chance to demonstrate a way forward” that can satisfy the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. Yes, there was another report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) detailing how Iran used the summer to double the number of centrifuges installed deep under a mountain near the holy city of Qom, while allegedly cleansing another site — Parchin — where suspicions persist about past explosive experiments that could be relevant to the production of a nuclear weapon. And yes, there was a lot of war talk, underwritten by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to use the US presidential election to pressure the Obama administration to establish a red line of intolerance for Iran’s nuclear activities.
From Iran’s standpoint, though, what happened was business as usual: lots huffing and puffing in order to sell sanctions as an “alternative to war.” Indeed, the business of selling alternatives to war became so prolific that even the covert war of sabotage and cyber warfare was sold as a substitute without any hint of irony or discomfiture. In reality, all the discussions of red lines and deadlines revealed more about the state of politics in both Israel and the US than in Iran. Netanyahu’s speech at the UN — armed as he was with a Roadrunner cartoon of a nuclear bomb — matched Ahmadinejad’s past craziness and signaled the extent to which radicalism has become the norm in Israeli politics. Meanwhile, in the US the limited appetite or outright distaste for yet another attack on a Middle Eastern country was clearly revealed along with much harder to deny distortions from lobbies backed by Israeli hardliners which have been inserted into the US foreign policy making process. (This tale continues with the frenzy surrounding former senator Chuck Hagel’s possible nomination for Secretary of Defense, because, in the words of Elizabeth Drew, “Iran more than any other single issue is at the core of the opposition.”)
The year of 2012 began with hopes for change in the battle over Iran’s nuclear program. It ended with more of the same and would have remained so even if the pressure on Iran was substantially increased. We begin the coming year with a keen understanding that more of the same may not be sustainable for too long. But the question of when there will finally be a change in this trajectory — and if so, whether it will be for better or worse — remains elusive, with the answer residing in Washington as much as it does in Tehran.
Cartoon: Peter Schrank, the Economist
]]>Sadeq Zibakalam, University of Tehran professor and the closest the Islamic Republic has to an intra-systemic gadfly, has written an interesting commentary in the new daily Arman regarding the current state of Iranian politics. The article’s title, “End of the Deviation current,” refers to the excuse hardline conservatives in Iran have [...]]]>
Sadeq Zibakalam, University of Tehran professor and the closest the Islamic Republic has to an intra-systemic gadfly, has written an interesting commentary in the new daily Arman regarding the current state of Iranian politics. The article’s title, “End of the Deviation current,” refers to the excuse hardline conservatives in Iran have relied upon to maintain their support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The “deviation current” was imaginatively concocted to blame a small clique of presidential appointees for leading Ahmadinejad astray.
Last week, Zibakalam states, proved that such a posture was no longer possible. The public interchange of letters between Ahmadinejad and the head of the Judiciary, Sadeq Amoli Larijani, ended the pretense that Ahmadinejad and his views are not the problem.
What happened last week was essentially this: Ahmadinejad’s sudden transformation into the defender of the “people’s rights”, through his public letter to the Judiciary head that in his capacity as the “implementer of the Constitution” he has the right and responsibility to visit Iranian prisons, was met with Amoli Larijani’s rather humiliating public lashing that a president’s visit is allowed only after the head of the judiciary’s permission. And, Amoli Larijani went on to say, the Judiciary does not think that it is in the “interest of the system” (maslehat) for the permission to be granted. End of conversation.
Zibakalam notes that after this exchange, even hardliners are no longer talking about the deviation current. In effect, Ahmadinejad has managed to lose every single constituency that coalesced to bring him to power in 2005 against the centrist former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The hardliners, who continue to call the 2005 election epic for heralding a discourse (goftoman-e sevom-e khordad) — at the heart and soul of which was Ahmadinejad who embodied simple living, justice-oriented policies, service to the poor, a challenge to the “aristocratic way of life,” a revolutionary stance against the West in the global arena, and the export of revolutionary values — can no longer avoid the reality that their hero is no longer one of them (or at least is acting as though he is no longer one of them).
The hardliners’ separation from Ahmadinejad does not merely lie in Ahmadinejad’s betrayal of their values and his new liberal fondness for “universal human values” and accommodation-oriented foreign policy. They are aghast at Ahmadinejad’s blatant effort to enhance his standing among the urban middle classes. To them, there is nothing wrong with Ahmadinejad trying to maintain popularity so that he can continue to play a role in Iranian politics after his term ends by August 2013. Conceivably, Ahmadinejad’s popularity can be a boon for the hardliners next presidential candidate. But Ahmadinejad’s assessment that it is the urban middle classes which need to be wooed through a liberal posture is hard to swallow. This is a problem for hardliners because it is a public abandonment of their cherished discourse, as well as a clear statement that the country’s mood is not hardline.
Ahmadinejad’s new posture is observed with quite a bit of amusement and ridicule by many who in 2009 voted for his reformist opponents, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, despite Ahmadinejad’s claim that he has been calling for their release from house arrest a couple of times. But this adds to the hardliners’ uncertainty in finding another carrier for their “discourse”, one who is both trustworthy and electable.
To be sure, so far the Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stepped in to make sure that the “justice-centered and resistance” discourse does not vanish with Ahmadinjad’s troubles. The question of whether the Leader’s abode will try to manipulate the 2013 election in order to maintain his position as an effective executive officer (along with being the Leader) is also a real one (even if this is not as easy as many imagine it to be given the fact that the body in charge of elections is the Interior Ministry, which is still run by Ahmadinejad’s appointees, and that Iranian presidents have shown a tendency to eventually object to the office of the Leader’s interference regardless of their political orientation).
At this point, the hardliners in Iran are left with no other choice but to elevate the Leader into a God-like figure who knows everything about what is best for the country with the hope that by doing so, he may be even more likely to remain on their side. Just this week Khamenei’s chief of staff, Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani said, “if one day it becomes necessary and the commander in chief [khamenei] wills it, sacred defense will again be repeated.”
However, the fear that Khamenei will eventually be forced (or connived by centrist forces) to acknowledge the same societal forces that have pushed Ahmadinejad to feign liberalism, is also there. Whether he will do so is the million dollar question in Iran, and the answer remains to be seen. (In North Khorasan a couple of weeks ago, Khamenei gave a tiny nod to the popular mood by calling for a more flexible approach to the appearance of women who don’t wear their veil properly but “are still believers.”)
But showing flexibility towards certain social conducts along with continued political repression has been an old trick in the Islamic Republic and does not represent a turn. Unless something drastic happens — such as Ahmadinejad resignation or removal — we will have to wait for the June 2013 presidential election to see whether there is a move away from the hardline discourse and which part of the electorate will be given a better chance to have its say.
Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad himself is turning into an interesting figure to watch in terms of the fate that awaits him.
The Islamic Republic has treated its past three presidents differently. One past president is the current Leader due to behind-the-scene machinations that have now turned sour for its prime architect, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Former president Khamenei continues to have a constituency, particularly in the provinces and among the lower ranks of the state and multiplicity of popular or militia-based welfare organizations and networks.
Former president Hashemi Rafsanjani has lost power but still holds a position as the chair of the Expediency Council and maintains quite a bit of clout, particularly in the business community and state-run technocracy through his advocacy of anti-hardline domestic and foreign policies.
Finally, former president Mohammad Khatami has been completely cut off from access to power, but despite all the complaints about his indecisiveness, he remains a popular man in Iran at least within a certain constituency. I have no way of knowing for sure, but there are people in Iran who insist that a real poll would show that he is still the most popular politician in the country.
In other words, Iran’s past three presidents, for all their faults, each have their own constituency. Ahmadinejad will be the first past president who will leave office with hardly any significant constituency and few political instruments to rely upon. His sudden shift toward some of the concerns of the urban middle classes suggests even he knows that once his access to state coffers is cut off, verbal populism will be of no use in maintaining a constituency that relies on state largesse.
Since the flight of Iran’s first president, Abolhassan Bani Sadr, from the country in the 1980s, all of Iran’s significant leaders have chosen to stay in Iran and precisely because of this continue to represent a voice even after they leave office because they have remained influential, each in their own way, even if purged from power and under house arrest.
Ahmadinejad stands alone, at least for now, because his confrontation with Khamenei has robbed him of support from the right of the political spectrum without any accrued benefits from the other side. In the next few months he will continue to try, as he has done in the past couple of years, to distribute as many resources among his friends as he can — even placing them in secure tenured university positions — in order to maintain some sort of political relevance after the election. But his options are limited.
Even if nuclear talks go somewhere after the US election, Ahmadinejad will not be the beneficiary of his pivot towards being a promoter of talks with the United States. He will continue to be framed as someone who, through mismanagement and bluster, brought about the enhanced sanctions regime, with Khamenei eventually taking charge and fixing the mess. He will have a hard time swallowing this reality and few believe that he will accept his checkmated predicament quietly.
But whatever Ahmadinejad does pales in comparison to what he has already done, which is to make clear, publicly, that even he is aware that public sentiments have drastically moved away from what they were in 2005 when his populist, justice-oriented platform won the day.
Ironically, this awareness was also the motivation behind the Mousavi and Karroubi campaigns in the 2009 election, and it must be quite disconcerting for those who put their reputation on the line to support Ahmadinejad’s reelection to watch him place value in public sectors that are disenchanted with his management of the economy and want a less confrontationist foreign policy.
]]>The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has released a brief report emphasizing that Iran continues to move toward nuclear weapons capability and the international community must halt further progress. ISIS’s latest concern centers around Iranian lawmaker Mansour Haqiqatpour’s October 2 comment that Iran could enrich uranium to 60 percent [...]]]>
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has released a brief report emphasizing that Iran continues to move toward nuclear weapons capability and the international community must halt further progress. ISIS’s latest concern centers around Iranian lawmaker Mansour Haqiqatpour’s October 2 comment that Iran could enrich uranium to 60 percent if diplomatic talks fail. From Reuters:
“In case our talks with the (six powers) fail to pay off, Iranian youth will master (the technology for) enrichment up to 60 percent to fuel submarines and ocean-going ships,” Haqiqatpour said.
The powers should know that “if these talks continue into next year, Iran cannot guarantee it would keep its enrichment limited to 20 percent. This enrichment is likely to increase to 40 or 50 percent,” he said.
The US and international community should prepare for an official Iranian announcement of such high-grade enrichment, warns ISIS, adding that Iran has “no need to produce highly enriched uranium at all, even if it wanted nuclear fuel for a reactor powering nuclear submarines or other naval vessels, or for a research reactor”. The move would also “significantly shortens Iran’s dash time to reaching weapon grade uranium,” the report said.
ISIS’s conclusion:
Taken in this context, any official Iranian announcement to make highly enriched uranium should be seen as unacceptable. Many will view such a decision as equivalent to initiating a breakout to acquire nuclear weapons, reducing any chance for negotiations to work and potentially increasing the chances for military strikes and war. Before Iran announces official plans to make highly enriched uranium, the United States and the other members of the P5+1 should quietly but clearly state to Iran what it risks by producing highly enriched uranium under any pretext.
No details are provided as to what exactly needs to be done to make Iran understand that such a move would be “unacceptable”, but we are informed that Iranian enrichment of high-grade uranium would increase the chances for military conflict.
The fact that Iran is still years aways from being able to test a device, and according to US and international official assessments has still not made the decision to do so, is also absent from ISIS’s report. Indeed, according to the bipartisan Iran Project report on the benefits and costs of military action on Iran (emphasis mine):
]]>After deciding to “dash” for a bomb, Iran would need from one to four months to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear device. Additional time—up to two years, according to conservative estimates—would be required for Iran to build a nuclear warhead that would be reliably deliverable by a missile. Given extensive monitoring and surveillance of Iranian activities, signs of an Iranian decision to build a nuclear weapon would likely be detected, and the U.S. would have at least a month to implement a course of action.
The International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) has published a useful brief aptly subtitled “Killing them softly” about the impact of sanctions on the lives of ordinary people who live in Iran, particularly women and other vulnerable groups such as Afghan refugee women and children. I recommend [...]]]>
The International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) has published a useful brief aptly subtitled “Killing them softly” about the impact of sanctions on the lives of ordinary people who live in Iran, particularly women and other vulnerable groups such as Afghan refugee women and children. I recommend it to everyone who thinks that sanctions can be potential instruments for positive change in Iran.
To be sure, most individuals and organizations that push for “crippling” sanctions do so in the name of Israeli security and/or non-proliferation with little or no regard for the resulting impact on the Iranian population and civil society. In a world where economic warfare is considered diplomacy, more sanctions will apparently be the name of the game “until Iran begins to negotiate seriously” or “chooses a different path” — whatever that means. Pretensions or hope regarding the utility of blunt and wide-ranging sanctions for changing the way the hardline leadership in Iran treats its population, or, even better, for bringing about a change of regime in a “peaceful” way, are also out there.
The ICAN brief, while using the words of activists in Iran, does a good job of explaining how draconian sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union ultimately harm Iranians who are caught in the middle of a battle that has very little do with their dreams of living decent lives and impacting their government’s policies through civil activism.
This is not to suggest that the Iranian government has escaped the impact of sanctions unscathed. The leadership is held responsible for the mishandling of an economy which, by all accounts, is faced with both stagnation and hyperinflation. And, if we take at face value the words of parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, 20 percent of Iran’s current problems can be attributed to sanctions that have limited Iran’s access to the foreign exchange needed for the import of strategic goods from abroad due to the reduction of oil exports and Iran’s inability to acquire exchangeable currency for the exported products. Larijani attributed the remainder of the problems, mostly related to rampant inflation, to the poor implementation of a subsidy reform plan that did not give enough attention to production in both industry and agriculture.
The right or wrong belief that better economic management can help Iran overcome the impact of sanctions perhaps explains why internationally imposed draconian pressure has not led to a change in the leadership’s calculations regarding the nuclear program. In fact, according to Iran’s Leader Ali Khamenei, Western governments
…openly say that it is necessary to force the Iranian government officials to revise their calculations by intensifying pressures and sanctions, but looking at the existing realities causes us not only to avoid revising our calculations, but it also causes us to continue the path of the Iranian nation with more confidence.
In other words, instead of a recalculation on the part of the Iranian government, the Iranian population is going to have to get used to a “resistance economy”. What does that entail? Mr. Khamenei’s answer:
Putting the people in charge of our economy by implementing the general policies specified in Article 44 of the Constitution, empowering the private sector, decreasing the country’s dependence on oil, managing consumption, making the best of the available time, resources and facilities, moving forward on the basis of well-prepared plans and avoiding abrupt changes in the regulations and policies are among the pillars of an economy of resistance.
Considering how these objectives have been in the books since at least 2006 when privatization, empowerment of the private sector and efficiency became official policy — and produced little in the way of concrete results — it’s not clear what an administration that is working through its last year can achieve beyond perhaps “managing consumption.”
A few steps have already been taken towards that goal. This week, several economy-related ministers as well as the head of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) met with members of parliament in a closed session. Parliamentary meetings are by law open and publicly broadcasted. Article 69 of the Constitution only allows for closed sessions under “emergency conditions, if it is required for national security”. This closed meeting and Khamenei’s words clearly suggest an understanding of the emergency situation that Iran is facing.
The first decision that resulted from this meeting was the CBI’s elimination of what is called “travel currency”. Until now, Iranians could get $1,000 a year at the lower government exchange rate of 12,260 Rials per dollar for their trips abroad (the lower $400 per year for pilgrimage travel to Iraq and Saudi Arabia was maintained). According to the head of the Majles’ Economy Commission, Arsalan Fathipour, the $10 billion worth of travel currency that leaves the country every year has no economic justification and has been halted. Travelers now have to rely on an unofficial, but not illegal, floating market rate that has hovered between 19,000 and 20,000 Rials per dollar during the past couple of months.
The lower official exchange rate will remain for the import of basic and strategic goods from abroad in order to limit spiraling inflation. But everything else will probably be imported at the higher rate. As pointed out by Virginia Tech economist Djavad Salehi Isfahani, this multiple exchange rate system, despite inefficiencies, makes some sense when a country is being denied access to global markets, provided action is also taken to:
…minimize misallocation and corruption, for example by publishing a complete list of all official foreign exchange sold to private importers along with the list of the items they import. The alternative, which is to sell all currencies at the rate set in the parallel market, is to give too much influence to sanctions and to sentiments that underly capital flight.
Whether these steps will also be taken is yet to be seen. Another announcement after the close of the Majles meeting was that some sort of command center comprised of representatives from of all branches of government has in effect been created for the resolution of economic problems and will soon gain implementation powers through legislation. According to Donyaye Eqtesad, the country’s most influential economic daily, the push by some influential MPs is for this command center to have “special powers so that in the coming year it can take the necessary steps for the implementation of the strategy of resistance economy.”
To my mind, this also means that there is not much confidence among the Iranian political class in the Ahmadinejad Administration’s ability to steer the country in a positive direction during the last year of its tenure. This political class holds President Ahmadinejad responsible for his incompetent handling of the country, but due to the urgency of the escalating sanctions regime, no longer considers challenging him and his ministers a useful way of expending their energy. Talk of “working together” and “unity” has permeated the language of the conservative and hardline politicians who are currently running Iran. This language is not meant to extend to the reformist and even centrist politicians and technocrats who have been essentially purged since the 2009 presidential election, but does indicate a closing of ranks among an even narrower circle of politicians in the face of adversity and in the name of resistance.
If ICAN’s analysis is accurate, it also foretells harsher economic realities for the most vulnerable elements of Iran’s population, a harsher political environment for those agitating for change, and a more hostile setting for those who have tried to maintain historical links between Western societies and Iranian society.
Sanctions impact calculations, but usually not in the intended fashion.
]]>Iran watchers are no doubt aware that recently Iran’s “Shabake-ye Khabar” news network of the Islamic Republic’s official “Seda va Sima” television and radio network, conducted an internet poll regarding Iran’s nuclear programme.
Respondents were asked whether Iran should cease uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. [...]]]>
Iran watchers are no doubt aware that recently Iran’s “Shabake-ye Khabar” news network of the Islamic Republic’s official “Seda va Sima” television and radio network, conducted an internet poll regarding Iran’s nuclear programme.
Respondents were asked whether Iran should cease uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. 58% of respondents called for the cessation of uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. A screen shot can be found here.
In a screen shot posted on Radio Free Liberty in any article by Golnaz Esfandiari, the percentage against nuclear enrichment exceeds 60%. No doubt due to the respective sites taking their screen shots at different times. According to Ms. Esfandiari, Radio Free Liberty took the screen shot shortly before the poll’s removal.
As the news site realised its bungle, and the story was picked up by international outlets, it replaced the nuclear internet poll, with another one, asking respondents whether they would support the Majles plan to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to the EU oil embargo. 89% of respondents stated that they were against the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Here’s the relevant screen shot.
After this second gaff, the network steered clear of the nuclear issue and sanctions altogether and instead posted a poll relating to Iranian football.
This wasn’t a scientific opinion poll, and according to the news site about 2,000 people participated. Iranian state media later and rather bizarrely accused BBC Persian service of hacking their site and doctoring the opinion poll. BBC Persian firmly rejected this charge.
That being said, I would not be surprised if many Iranians are questioning the wisdom of the current nuclear policy. Many are under immense pressure because of the currency crisis, rampant inflation and many other economic ailments, all exacerbated by economic and financial sanctions.
In Iran there has not been a genuine, frank and open discussion of the nuclear file and the costs involved with the government’s programme in the face of several UNSC resolutions and extreme pressure from the US and its European allies. If a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis were placed before Iranians in the public area, it would be most interesting to see and hear what they might conclude. That being said, we very rarely, if ever, see foreign, national security and nuclear energy policy considered in accordance with Iranian public opinion. Another debate for another time, no doubt.
–Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi is an Iran researcher at the Oxford Research Group and a third year doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on Iran. His latest with Paul Ingram and Gabrielle Rifkind is “Iran’s Nuclear Impasse: Breaking the Deadlock”. Follow him on twitter: @essikhan
]]>Let’s get caught up with [...]]]>
Let’s get caught up with Iran: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sacked Manoucher Mottaki — widely seen as a political figure — on Monday in a surprise move. The outgoing FM, who had long been known to be at odds with Ahmadinejad, was quickly replaced in the interim by the now-former head of Iran’s nuclear agency, Ali Akbar Salehi. Salehi, who was partly educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is known as a technocrat.
Laura Rozen at Politico does Iranian “Kremlinology” with analysis from experts in D.C.. Trita Parsi told Rozen:
“The fact that Salehi, a longtime hand in the nuclear program, replaces [Mottaki] may indicate the nuclearization of Iranian foreign policy,” Iranian analyst Trita Parsi said. “While Mottaki was never central to the nuclear program, the person replacing him and taking over the entire foreign policy machine is a person that for decades has been instrumental to the program.”
“This may indicate, if not renewed seriousness on the part of the Iranians, at least a recognition that the parties recognize that they are close to crunch time and they are fielding their best players as a result,” he said.
I reached out to Iran expert and University of Hawaii professor Farideh Farhi, an expert on Iran’s byzantine politics, who told me both the sacking and the new hire remain a mystery to her. She emphasized that the appointment is an interim one, so Ahmadinejad could have simply put off a more controversial pick that would have aroused opposition in the Majles, or Iranian parliament. We don’t yet know, however, what the pick means for Ahmadinejad’s relationship with the Supreme Leader. Farhi (the links are mine):
Some people are speculating that it may have something to do with [this month's Iran-P5+1 talks in] Geneva and the portrayal of success by the negotiating team inside Iran, giving Ahamdinejad the confidence to do this. One other analyst in Tehran suggested that the presidential advisor [Esfandiar Rahim] Mashaie’s visit this week to Jordan and King Abdullah’s positive response to Ahamdinejad’s personal letter might have given Ahmadinejad motivation to do this. There is indeed a possibility that Ahmadinejad sacked Mottaki the same way he sacked Ali Larijani as nuclear negotiator, without prior approval from [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei. If this is the case then it bespeaks a confident Ahmadinejad since, as I mentioned above, it was merely a month or so ago that Khamenei supported Mottaki by name. If indeed Ahmadinejad did this without Khamenei’s prior approval, it means the game is not yet over.
It sounds like, once again, with Iran and the U.S. inching closer together, uncertainty will hang over the proceedings. If the U.S. comes through on hints, a confidence-building measure could be in the works, so the U.S. will likely be busy no matter what.
“Between now and January,” wrote Robert Dreyfuss on his Nation blog, “the United States is going to have to engage in some spirited, behind-the-scenes talks with Iran to make the negotiations work.” Dreyfuss noted, and focused on, that amid all the the action in Tehran, the U.S. seems to be ready to offer up a fuel swap agreement that, for the meantime, would allow centrifuges to keep spinning in Iran. It’s just the sort of “first step” deal, as Rozen noted, that Salehi hammered out with the Brazilians and Turks in the run-up to the last round of U.S. led UN Security Council sanctions.
Julian Border, at the Guardian, has a good piece covering the optimistic take on Salehi. Just after he pulls a few WikiLeaks docs to show several takes of Western diplomats on Salehi — he speaks good English and is a preferred interlocutor, but seems to not wield much influence in the halls of power — Border summed up the ever-ambiguous “Western diplomat” reaction:
Western diplomats, however, are generally cheered by the appointment because it might mean that their contacts with the foreign ministry will now have more substance. During the prolonged sparring between Mottaki and Ahmadinejad, the ministry increasingly became an empty shell, bypassed over major decisions, and irrelevant on the nuclear dossier.
Rozen, again, has a great observation, via Suzanne Maloney from the Brookings Institution, that Salehi is subject to an EU travel ban. Earlier, it had been reported that Salehi was named in the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution, but apparently this was not right (though the agency which he formerly headed was). Had the UNSC bit turned out to be true, my reaction was that the move could be a provocation. Given that it’s only an EU ban and, as Rozen points out, it gets waived for higher-ups in foreign governments, I don’t really think so.
As I said, could it mean something for nuclear negotiations? Looks like we’ll have to wait for next month’s talks to find out.
Late-breaking: Inside Iran‘s Arash Aramesh has the take of a recent Iranian diplomatic defector. It’s worth checking out for the opinions of someone who was very recently, indeed, on the inside.
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