by Ali Reza Eshraghi
Following the phone conversation between Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani, the atmosphere in Iran has taken a happier turn while remaining surprisingly calm. Contrary to predictions made over the past week and during Rouhani’s trip to the UN, it appears the Iranian president has little problem in [...]]]>
by Ali Reza Eshraghi
Following the phone conversation between Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani, the atmosphere in Iran has taken a happier turn while remaining surprisingly calm. Contrary to predictions made over the past week and during Rouhani’s trip to the UN, it appears the Iranian president has little problem in dealing with Iranian hardliners on his diplomatic approach with the USA. What exactly is happening here?
Upon arriving at Mehrabad airport in Tehran, a huge crowd of the president’s supporters welcomed him by slaughtering a sheep — a religious and cultural ritual of thanking god for the safe and successful return of travellers. They chanted, “Rouhani, Rouhani; thank you! thank you!” But, a few miles further down the road, a group of young hardliners known as Basijis or Hezbollahis stopped his car by chanting “Down with USA.” They accused Rouhani of crossing the regime’s redlines by negotiating with America and threw shoes and eggs at him.
In Iranian news media this unpleasant incident was reported only as a gathering of a hundred young protestors, an indicator that hardliners have lost their political influence in Iran for now. Only a few individual radical bloggers and hardline websites such as Rajanews, which is affiliated to the Paidari (Perseverance) Front and backed former chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili’s presidential bid criticized Rouhani for talking to Obama.
Unsurprisingly, Hossein Shariatmadari, the managing editor of the hardline Kayhan, described Rouhani’s action as “bad and evil.” Kayhan wrote that Rouhani hasn’t gained anything from the US “except a bunch of empty promises and an old Persian artifact which was stolen” — referring to the 2,700 year-old silver drinking cup which was returned to Iran last week.
Many Iranian political analysts consider Shariatmadari the mouthpiece of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. One of my colleagues, for example, sarcastically calls him the Supreme Leader’s Thomas Friedman.
But Kayhan was the only newspaper that criticized Rouhani on its front page while other Iranian dailies, even Javan — affiliated to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and Resalat run by orthodox principlists — were mute.
Shariatmadari would probably be very happy to be known as the Supreme Leader’s voice to the public, but he is not alone. Khamenei has different mouthpieces with different functions and neither one represents his views precisely and completely.
For example, the former speaker of the Majlis, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, whose daughter is married to the Supreme Leader’s son and ran against Rouhani in June’s presidential election, called Rouhani’s speech at the UN General Assembly smart and didn’t criticize his phone conversation with Obama, saying instead that “it can create an atmosphere for Iran to become more active in the international arena.”
To interpret the systematic reaction to Rouhani’s diplomacy with the US one should refer to the Friday prayer sermons across Iran, which were delivered only a few hours prior to the phone call. It is the Supreme Leader who directly appoints Friday prayer leaders and the political part of their sermons are dictated by an institution called the “Friday Prayer Leaders’ Policymaking Council,” also directly supervised by Khamenei. All Friday prayer leaders have unanimously praised the positions declared by the president during his New York trip.
The Friday prayer leader in the city of Mashahd, Ayatollah Ali Alamolhoda — known as a diehard hardliner — considered Rouhani’s words an example of “heroic leniency,” (an expression coined by the Supreme Leader). In legitimizing Rouhani’s actions Alamolhoda explained, “This administration has been successful in balancing its two responsibilities of safeguarding the honor of Islam [read the Iranian regime] and safeguarding the interests of Muslims [read the Iranian nation].”
Yet, one must not be surprised to hear “Down with USA” still being chanted at the same venue in which the lmams of the Friday prayer expressed their support for Rouhani. This paradox simply shows that contrary to what Iran experts say, the phone call will not suddenly end Iran’s domestic propaganda against America.
A considerable number of Iranian members of parliament, which is currently dominated by Principlist lawmakers, have supported Rouhani. This includes Mohammad Hossein Farhangi, a member of the Presiding Board who described the phone conversation “in line with national goals and interests and [in line with] the values of the Islamic revolution.” On the other hand, the powerful lawmaker Ahmad Tavakkoli warned that one should not become irrationally overexcited about this incident because “overexcitement is not in the interest of the Iranian nation and will reduce the bargaining power of Iranian authorities.”
The same goes for the Revolutionary Guards. Their commander, Major General Mohammad Ali Ja’fari, and the commander of the Qods Force (the international branch of the IRGC,) Qasem Soleimani, both have supported Rouhani’s diplomacy. On Saturday, the Sobh-e Sadeq weekly, which belongs to the IRGC, published its latest edition one day after the headline-making phone call. It had a very positive tone with regards to Rouhani’s behavior and described Rouhani’s op-ed piece in the Washington Post as “useful.” It also stressed that the IRGC will cooperate with Rouhani’s administration.
The IRGC’s positive reaction might force many analysts who believe the political and economic interests of the IRGC are against reducing tensions with the US to reconsider their positions. One must not forget that IRGC commanders have a behavior similar to the current Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, who — despite initially warning against the dangers of US intervention in Syria — ultimately defended Obama’s strike proposal during a Senate hearing earlier this month.
Interestingly, both Iranians and Americans are asking the same question about the Rouhani-Obama phone conversation: who requested it? The Iranian side says the US was the one to initiate the call while the American side argues the opposite. This highlights the fundamental kinship between the two old adversaries in their mode of politicking.
The debate also extends to another issue that some Americans, such as Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, believe: without sanctions, none of this would have happened. On the other hand, Iranians like Ahmad Tavakkoli believe it was Iran’s resistance against international pressure that has forced the US to enter talks with Iran.
Such debate seems ceaseless. But as of today it appears that Obama will have a more difficult time in convincing Congress to accept talks with Iran than Rouhani will in convincing Iranian hardliners. In a letter written in the the late 1980s to Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — who was Rouhani’s boss at the time — called for an end to the taboo of talks with the US. “Treading this pass will be difficult after you[r demise],” he wrote.
Now, twenty-four years after Khomeini’s death, Iranian politicians are smoothly treading this pass. It is wrong to think that Iran’s current Supreme Leader has suddenly made this decision. Just a year ago, around this time, Khamenei’s official website published commentary by Ayatollah Haeri Shirazi — the Supreme Leader’s former representative in the city of Shiraz — tacitly implying that supporters of the Supreme Leader must not be surprised by his decision for peace: “This is a test for the nation [to determine their] submission to the Leader.”
Except for a few figures who autonomously criticized Rouhani for his phone call with Obama, in the lower levels of Khamenei’s constituency all other supporters have taken to their social media networks to discuss the right or wrongfulness of this incident. Usually these discussions end with the justification that for the time being, they must remain silent and wait for the Supreme Leader’s explanation. As one famous Hezbollahi ring leader writes, “the most important things is following the “order of our master [Khamenei] whatever it may be.”
– Ali Reza Eshraghi was a senior editor at several of Iran’s reformist dailies. He is the Iran Project Manager at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) and a teaching fellow in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
– Photo Credit: Roohollah Vahdati/ISNA
]]>by Farideh Farhi
This Washington Post article about Iran and Hezbollah building networks in Syria in the event of Bashar al-Assad’s fall is certainly eye-catching. It’s also suggestive of Iranian shrewdness in trying to make the best out of every situation they face in the region.
Assad’s turmoil was supposed [...]]]>
by Farideh Farhi
This Washington Post article about Iran and Hezbollah building networks in Syria in the event of Bashar al-Assad’s fall is certainly eye-catching. It’s also suggestive of Iranian shrewdness in trying to make the best out of every situation they face in the region.
Assad’s turmoil was supposed to have been a dream come true for those who consider Iran as the source of all troubles in the Middle East. If Syria could be peeled away, a weakened Islamic Republic would either implode or be feeble enough to give in to Western demands. Now, a couple of years into the Syrian tragedy — fueled by the urges of all sides that hope to turn the democratic aspirations of a population into a proxy war — we are informed by US officials that Iran has long-terms plan to protect its interests in Syria in the event of Assads departure and the country’s fracturing into ethnic and sectarian enclaves.
How can we confirm this? According to a “senior Obama administration official”, the evidence can be found in the words of the Iranians themselves, of course! Citing “Iranian claims that Tehran was backing as many as 50,000 militiamen in Syria,” the official said. “It’s a big operation… The immediate intention seems to be to support the Syrian regime. But it’s important for Iran to have a force in Syria that’s reliable and can be counted on.” To boot, a senior Arab official agrees that Iran’s strategy has two tracks, “one is to support Assad to the hilt, the other is to set the stage for major mischief when it collapses.”
I am naturally intrigued. An Iranian official has “claimed” that Tehran was building a force of as many as 50,000 militiamen in Syria, and this hasn’t made headlines in Iran (or in the always-on-the-lookout BBC Persian, Radio Farda and Voice of America Persian, for that matter!). So I began searching (one can also use Google in Persian) and I couldn’t find the statement anywhere. Not that there isn’t any reference to Jaysh al-Sha’bi. There are indeed a few references to Jaysh al-Sha’bi as a popular militia, as well as the claim that since its creation, it has been able to engage in pushback against the rebel forces.
One person, identified as a “political expert for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the province of Semnan,” goes as far as to suggest that perhaps Assad has decided to use the “model” of the Iranian popular militia — the Basij — in Syria. He ends the interview that Mehr News conducted with him this past August by stating that the Islamic Republic should relay its experiences with the Basij — which, he says, was the most useful instrument for fighting the war against Iraq in the early 1980s — so that the Syrian government can “liberate itself from the trap set for it by superpowers.” The Basij model, he argues, does not work everywhere, but can be tried in order to draw from popular energy.
Another “expert on political issues” tells the Iran Student News Agency (ISNA), during an interview at a book fair of all places, that the Basij indeed serves as a “model” for Jaysh al- Sha’bi.
Then there are the direct words of the commander of the IRGC from a September press conference. In response to a question regarding Iran’s involvement in Syria, he explicitly states first that Hezbollah’s decision-making process and relations with Syria are independent of Iran: “if they decide to help Syria or not, depends on them,” he says. And second, that Tehran assesses that Damascus does not need external support for its security since its “50,000-strong popular forces known as Jaysh al Sha’bi… is active” on the side of the Syrian military.
Apparently the mixing of these various statements is good enough for the Treasury Department to release a statement noting that “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard commander” has said that Jaysh al Sha’bi was “modeled after Iran’s own Basij,” which it described as “a paramilitary force subordinate to the IRGC that has been heavily involved in the violent crackdowns and serious human rights abuses occurring in Iran since the June 2009 contested presidential election.”
This is all the evidence that’s mustered to delineate Iran’s effort to build its Syrian militia networks. The rest of the article is speculative analysis regarding what might happen in Syria if Assad falls. After all, Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick want us to know: “Iran has a history of profiting from chaos, even without control of the government ostensibly in power. Hezbollah arose out of the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s (sic), when Iran was able to exploit the grievances of that country’s Shiite population, a pattern it also followed in Iraq during the chaos that followed the U.S. invasion.”
Setting aside the glaring error of attributing the rise of Hezbollah to the 1970s Lebanese civil war and not even mentioning the 1982 Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon (the Iranian revolution did not even occur until 1979!), and the fact that Jaysh al-Sha’bi’s roots go back to pre-uprising Syria, there is a problem with the formulation of Iran as an all-knowing and all-conniving power — and the only one at that — in the region. To be sure, it’s not very hard to imagine that Tehran is trying hard not to “lose Syria”, particularly given the way that the Syrian tragedy and fall of Assad has been framed by a host of regional and extra-regional powers as a “loss” for Iran. It’s also not difficult to imagine that, given Iran’s longstanding presence in Syria, its relationships may extend beyond Assad, providing Iran with the opportunity to salvage something even if Assad falls. Whether Tehran can actually pull any of this off is another question that’s certainly not answered by the flimsy evidence and stretched speculation that we’re provided with.
What is most bothersome about reports like these — which highlight Iran’s shrewdness and sinister designs in benefitting from every situation that the US finds unable to address or control — is the full regurgitation of the US government position. Not to mention the failure to challenge the core paradox that exists in the elevation of the Iranian threat while consistent policies deal with Iran as mostly a nuisance, open to pressure, and certainly not worthy of treating with adequate respect for its leverage in the region.
In their book, The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor provide a perfect example of how this paradox works out in practice. They point out that General David H. Petraeus rejected overtures of cooperation in Iraq from Iran’s lead man in the country, General Qasem Soleimani, and saw him as “a truly evil figure.” But according to the authors, Soleimani’s wickedness did not prevent Petraeus from having back-channel interactions with him through intermediaries. Indeed, apparently Petraeus became convinced that being able to send messages to Soleimani was useful, but that meeting with the Iranian general, even secretly, would have elevated the Iranian’s stature and reinforced his notion that he was entitled to have a say over Iraq’s future.
Iran’s power is then a useful reference when trying to explain away the failures of US policies. Syria’s imbroglio can be blamed exclusively on Iran’s clever and devious hands and not the premature and unreflective policies that under-estimated the staying power and will of the Assad regime to dish out violence in order to survive. At the same time, Iran’s alleged extended reach does not make it a sufficiently entitled or significant player in the region. The contradiction that exists at the core of US policy towards Iran is exposed when Iran’s presumably formidable power and options in the region are highlighted for political purposes while the premise that it can be pressured into submitting to something willed by extra-regional players continues to reign supreme.
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