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Iran: International Pressure and Internal
Conflict
By Mehdi Khalaji
May 24, 2006
As the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany
consult today about what measures to take to influence Iran’s decisions
about its nuclear program, it is worth evaluating what impact outside
pressure would have on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration and
its ability to overcome internal political and economic challenges.
International pressure has already increased tensions between different
factions within the Islamic Republic and laid bare the contradictory
aspects of the president's political and cultural management.
Economic and Social Tensions
In his presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad promised the Iranian people that
he would bring oil revenues to each citizen’s dining table. When
Ahmadinejad’s term began in August 2005, the price of crude oil was just
above $55 per barrel. That price has risen rapicly since then, partially
because of the Iranian nuclear crisis, and now exceeds $70 per barrel.
Rising oil prices have increased the pressure on Ahmadinejad to deliver,
and the public perception is growing that rising state oil revenues have
not improved the lives of average citizens. In the face of rising
pressure, Ahmadinejad has denied his televised promise and claimed that he
said no such thing. Last month, in a press conference, Gholamhossein
Elham, head of the president’s office, joked that oil has a disgusting
smell and therefore does not belong on the dining table.
On May 1, observed in Iran as Labor Day, workers demonstrated in Tehran
and across the country, denouncing the government’s economic policy.
Demonstrators also asked for the release of workers who had been jailed
for past protests. Some even called for the resignation of the minister of
labor and social affairs and condemned the government’s intervention in
the internal affairs of the labor syndicates. Ali Rabii, the former top
intelligence agent and a member of the Central Council of Worker’s House
(the most important worker's syndicate in Iran), accused the government of
attempting to eliminate civil institutions and nongovernmental
organizations and of orchestrating violent confrontations with workers.
The economic problems of the Ahmadinejad government are due overwhelmingly
to the poor policies his government is following and to the appointment of
incompetent people to important economic posts. At the same time,
international pressure is making the president’s problems worse. The
continuing fall in prices on the Tehran stock market, the continuing
stagnation in the real estate market, the record demand for gold (the
traditional refuge in unsettled times), and the rumors of massive capital
flight are all signs of nervousness over the fallout from the nuclear
issue. Economic discontent will lead to mistrust of Ahmadinejad among
people who voted for him hoping that he would fulfill his promises to
fight corruption and improve the lives of common citizens.
Meanwhile, the Ahmadinejad government continues to exacerbate problems
with Iranian minorities. The last year has seen violent unrest in the
Kurdish, Arab, and Baluch areas. Last month, Iranian police airplanes
attacked the Sistan and Baluchestan areas in order to crack down on the
mostly criminal Jondollah group that killed forty people, including police
officers. Some members of parliament asked for the impeachment of the
interior minister, accusing him of failing to provide security in the
province of Sistan and Baluchestan, as well as neighboring Kirman
province.
Much more challenging to the regime would be disquiet in the Azeri areas,
given the many millions of Azeris in Iran and their important role in
economic, political, and clerical life (unlike other minorities, Azeris
are overwhelmingly Shiites). It will be important to follow whether the
substantial demonstrations among Azeris in the last week are an isolated
episode—they were touched off by a cartoon published in the state-run Iran
newspaper—or the beginning of more serious problems. Government news
agencies acknowledged campus protests in Ardabil, Hamedan, Tabriz, Tehran,
Urumieh, and Zanjan. Some Tabriz demonstrators carried radical
anti-Persian signs. The government has since shut down the Iran newspaper.
Parliamentarians from Iran’s two Azeri provinces and other
Turkish-speaking provinces have called for the impeachment of the minister
of culture and Islamic guidance, whose ministry runs the Iran newspaper.
Already two of Ahmadinejad’s ministers have become targets of impeachment
not for political reasons but because of mismanagement.
In this context of these signs of popular unhappiness with the government,
it is interesting to note that the Interior Ministry recently decided to
combine two elections—municipal elections and those for the Assembly of
Experts (the body that chooses the supreme leader)—into one November
ballot. The elections had been scheduled to be held two months apart.
Voter turnout in the last municipal and Assembly of Experts elections was
very low. Combining the ballots may allow the government to claim that
turnout was higher this time, and indeed many Ahmadinejad supporters may
turn out to vote if the election is presented as a de facto referendum on
the government. However, reformists and even some traditionally
conservative factions oppose the simultaneous elections because of concern
about voter fraud. In the last presidential election, two prominent
candidates—former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karrubi in the first round
and Expediency Council head Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the second
round—claimed dramatic changes in the election results through fraud and
the intervention of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij
militia. If turnout in the combined election is as low as in the past but
fraud is used to inflate the figures, the result could be victory for
Ahmadinejad supporters and the claim that the populace actively supports
the government rather than being turned off by all politicians. Reformists
also wonder if the two elections were combined so they will not have
enough time both to campaign and to challenge the disqualification of
their candidates by the Guardian Council.
Tensions within the Elite
Radicalizing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear policy, which was
Ahmadinejad’s strategy from the beginning, and increasing the pressure on
Western countries (especially the United States, Britain, France, and
Germany) has generated many internal doubts about his policies. Some
political conservatives, especially those close to Rafsanjani, are
actively and publicly criticizing Ahmadinejad’s confrontational policies
towards the West.
Rafsanjani, in his recent meeting with Qatari ruler Sheikh Hamad bin
Khalifeh al-Thani, said that one of the ways to resolve the Iranian
nuclear crisis is for both sides to refrain from “any provocative
statements.” On May 1, Mohsen Rezai, secretary of the Expediency Council
and the former commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, said in an
interview with journalists, “There is evidence that Iran and the United
States are going at each others’ throats. To break the impasse, we should
be involved in serious negotiations and diplomacy.” Rezai, who was a
candidate for president in 2005 before dropping out of the race, added,
“If I were president, I would change the model of Iranian simplistic
diplomacy; we need cooperation in our diplomacy. In our struggling
situation, negotiation is a kind of revolutionary diplomacy.”
In addition to criticism of his foreign policy, Ahmadinejad has attracted
criticism for his cultural policy from top clerics. Much of candidate
Ahmadinejad’s popularity was based on his Islamic fundamentalist cultural
policy. Since taking office, he has allocated a hefty budget to religious
institutions throughout the country but particularly in Qom, the center of
Shiite authority. Last month, while attending a press conference with
foreign journalists, Ahmadinejad tried to correct his image as a fanatical
fundamentalist by announcing that he would invite women to attend major
men’s soccer games; he then asked sports authorities to renovate men’s
soccer stadiums to accommodate women and families with special facilities.
Four marjas (Shiite religious authorities) who support
Ahmadinejad—Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, Ayatollah Mohammad Fazel
Lankarani, Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi and Ayatollah Javad Tabrizi—responded
with a fatwa (religious edict) forbidding the presence of women in
stadiums and in public places in general. Even Mohammad Taghi Mesbah
Yazdi, an extremist cleric who supports Ahmadinejad, said that the
president’s decision was a mistake and should be reversed. Javad
Shamaghdari, Ahmadinejad’s cultural advisor, tried to justify the
president’s decision; he noted the tradition that when the Hidden Imam
returns, he will face opposition from many clerics whom he will have to
behead. This statement generated a huge negative reaction from the
seminaries. It is indicative of Ahmadinejad’s approach to politics that he
did not retreat until the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered
the government to respect the jurists’ fatwa.
Opposing the fatwa of a marja could have bitter implications for
Ahmadinejad, depriving him of support from a faction he has relied on from
the very beginning. He added to his problems with the clerics with his
ideological letter to President Bush. Even pro-government clerics in Qom
criticized his missionary tone; Ahmadinejad seemed to be writing as a
cleric or an Islamic prophet, which he is not. The exception was Ahmad
Jannati, secretary of the Guardian Council and a fanatical fundamentalist
cleric who supported Ahmadinejad. In his Friday sermon on May 12, Jannati
said that Ahmadinejad’s letter was “inspired by God” and that he was
following in the footsteps of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who wrote a
letter to Mikhail Gorbachev. Karrubi responded with an open letter roundly
criticizing Jannati’s description of Ahmadinejad’s letter as well as the
letter itself. Karrubi wrote that a letter written by an engineer like
Ahmadinejad is not comparable to a letter written by a spiritual leader
like Ayatollah Khomeini. Further, some parliamentarians from Ahmadinejad’s
faction, such as Imad Afrough, criticized not only the content of the
letter to President Bush but the notion of sending such a letter at all
and said that direct negotiation does not need correspondence. Some
Iranian newspapers, such as Sharq, also criticized Ahmadinejad’s letter
and played down its content. Many critics in Iran believe that Ahmadinejad
has lost a great opportunity to resume direct and public communication
with the United States and to resolve its problems through negotiation.
Conclusions
Controversy over Ahmadinejad’s diplomacy and his internal policies is so
widespread that even his supporters have begun criticizing his
simpleminded and rash decisions. The Kayhan newspaper—controlled by the
supreme leader and strongly supportive of Ahmadinejad—on May 3 published a
commentary by Mehdi Mohammadi saying that Ahmadinejad’s government has
failed to communicate with the elite. He added that the Iranian government
needs to have good think tanks and to consult experts—the implication
being that the Ahmadinejad government has not been consulting widely and
has not adopted wise policies.
International pressure on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program,
especially serious UN involvement in the crisis, could exacerbate the
tension among Iranian leaders and encourage political groups outside the
regime to use the fragility of the government to accelerate their efforts
for democratic change.
Mehdi Khalaji is a
visiting fellow at The Washington Institute.
Source: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/
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