Iran: Future Unclear

IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is anything but a quitter. After dozens of people died in weeks of unrest following a June election whose validity was questioned around the world, the conservative stalwart remained defiant as he was sworn in for a second four-year term in August.

  He blamed widespread demonstrations against his victory on Western conspirators meddling with Iran’s domestic affairs, and attempted to unite his country behind him, pledging to “protect the official faith, the system of the Islamic revolution and the constitution”.

  “I do not have any incentive other than serving the people and the country, and I do not think of anything but the progress and development of the nation,” he said.

  But while Iran’s political hierarchy may have appeared united in its denunciation of foreign interference, Ahmadinejad’s swearing-in ceremony suggested it was anything but united. Defiant protesters outside the parliament building where the ceremony was being held faced off against hundreds of riot police.

  The incumbent president has been backed, crucially and steadfastly, by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said Ahmadinejad was the rightful winner of June’s poll and that Iranians had “voted in favour of a fight against arrogance, to confront destitution and spread justice”.

  Shia clerics – or mullahs – dominate politics and nearly all aspects of Iranian life. Khamenei selects the six-member Guardian Council, which has powers to pass legislation and can veto would-be election candidates. He also appoints the head of the judiciary, military and media chiefs and influential Friday prayer leaders. Since his appointment in 1989 the former president’s authority has rarely been questioned inside Iran – until recently.

  Many reformist MPs boycotted the swearing-in ceremony, with others reportedly walking out in protest while the president was speaking.

  Tellingly, former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were not in attendance. Rafsanjani, whose son has been accused of instigating some of the post-election protests, leads the influential Council of Experts – an elected body of senior clerics which has the power to dismiss Khamenei as Supreme Leader, although there has been no suggestion this may happen.

  Also missing from the proceedings were the two defeated presidential candidates from June’s election – Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Both continue to dispute the poll results and have called for continued protests against them.

 

Regional power-play

  

  As the ancient nation of Persia, Iran became one of the world’s greatest empires, managing to retain its own language and Islamic Shia religious adherence despite being one of the first countries to be conquered by Islamic Sunni armies from Arabia in the seventh century.

  The country sits in an area of extreme geopolitical significance – wedged between Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it also borders Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Turkmenistan. Mineral rich – the country is home to 10 percent of global oil reserves – and covering a vast 1.65 million sq km, it also borders the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea.

  Iran modernised and secularised under the Iranian army officer cum self-appointed Shah Reza Khan who seized control in 1921, and later passed on power to his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

  Rising religious and political opposition to the Shah’s rule finally sparked widespread unrest in 1978, prompting the Shah to flee the country in January 1979.

  The exiled religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini returned from 15 years of exile to establish a new, theocratic republic guided by Islamic principles. When he died in 1989, the Assembly of Experts chose Khamenei, the outgoing president of the republic, to be his successor as Supreme Leader.

  Iran fought an eight-year war with Iraq until 1988, prompting regional suspicions it was attempting to export its Islamic revolution in the region. Such suspicions were heightened by the country’s support of a plot to overthrow Bahrain’s government in 1981, as well as backing Shia militants who bombed Western embassies in Kuwait in 1983.

  Non-Arab Iran has also sought to extend its burgeoning regional influence by backing Shia militants in Iraq and Lebanon against US-backed governments. Iran’s 70 million-strong population are 90 percent Shia and around 10 per cent Sunni although there is a small Christian community.

  Regional Sunni-led regimes had raised concerns about the destabilizing impact of Iran backing its co-religionists in the region. But the country has seen a thawing of relations with Sunni Saudi Arabia in recent years, which have raised hopes of improving intra-Muslim relations across the Islamic world. Analysts suggest this may be due to Tehran’s concerns about its increasing isolation and the growing demographic imbalance between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the region.

  While Shia Muslims represent the majority in Iraq (some 65 percent) and Iran (90 percent), they only comprise 15 percent of the world’s Muslims, and analysts suggested region-wide sectarian tensions may work against Iranian-backed groups in the long run.

 

The nuclear question

  

  Analysts suggest that part of the reason for Iran’s reassessing its regional ties is the mounting international pressure on its nuclear programme, which critics say is aimed at developing weapons. Tehran has agreed to hold talks in Turkey with the five permanent UN Security Council members (the UK, China, France, Russia and the US) and Germany on 1 October.

  The talks were arranged by Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and representatives from the six powers were expected to raise the UN Security Council’s demand for a suspension of Iranian uranium enrichment.

  The negotiations appeared to be in line with US President Obama’s offer of an ‘extended hand’ to Iran, which has been offered diplomatic and economic incentives if it agrees to suspend uranium enrichment. Obama had given Tehran until the end of September to respond to his overtures or face new sanctions.

  The US severed all diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 following the seizure of its embassy in Teheran by Islamist students, and until recently official communications between the two nations had essentially been limited to mutual recriminations.

  While Tehran insists its nuclear programme is solely intended for generating electricity, misgivings over the country’s ambitions have previously raised the prospect of a pre-emptive American or Israeli attack on the country’s nuclear facilities.

  While Iran offered earlier in September to engage in “comprehensive, all-encompassing and constructive” negotiations with the six powers on a range of security issues, including global nuclear disarmament, its five-page proposal made no mention to its own nuclear programme.

  Although Jalili is expected to be present at October’s talks, Ahmadinejad has said his country’s nuclear programme was non-negotiable and that the talks will focus on global issues.

  Some Western diplomats fear Iran is merely trying to delay the prospect of more economic sanctions being added to those Iran already faces for refusing to end its uranium enrichment programme. This has been under investigation by the UN’s nuclear watchdog (the International Atomic Energy Agency) for the past six years, amid suspicions it is seeking to develop the technology to build a nuclear weapon. The investigation is currently stalled.

 

Votes and violence

  

  In the late 1990s, moderate president Mohammad Khatami attempted to implement a reform programme in Iran, but his ambitions were thwarted by the blocking tactics of conservative politicians.

  Ahmadinejad’s election as president in 2005 completed a cycle of the consolidation of conservative power within Iran’s leadership. An ultra-conservative former revolutionary guards officer and mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad has alienated support internationally with widely condemned comments calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and claiming the Holocaust was a “myth”.

  His leadership has been criticised for its inept policies at home, and stoking religiously-fuelled violence overseas – in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine.

  The outpouring of public anger and weeks of protests that were sparked by his re-election were violently suppressed by Iran’s security forces and the thuggish Basij militia. The official death-toll from the violence stands at 36, while the opposition says double that number died.

  Thousands were arrested in the crackdown, and show trials have been held of around 140 politicians, journalists and activists accused of involvement in what the regime claims was a Western-backed coup-attempt. Critics say the trials lacked all due process and contravene international human rights standards.

  In September, the offices of outspoken presidential challenger Mehdi Karroubi were closed down. He has steadfastly alleged that his detained supporters have been tortured and raped in prison. He has been summoned to retract his claims, which the administration says are “fabricated and aimed at misleading public opinion”.

  Attempting to ease the tensions, Iran’s Supreme Leader made conciliatory noises in September, suggesting that “differences of views should not lead to conflicts”. But Khamenei remained firm on the crackdown, vowing to confront those who threatened national security, warning that “resisting the system” would bring “a harsh response”.

 

Trouble ahead?

  

  As the show-trials continued, Ahmadinejad pushed ahead with forming his new administration. Having urged MPs to approve his choices for cabinet positions that, he said, reflected “real democracy”, the Iranian parliament approved 18 out of 21 of Ahmadinejad’s selection in September.

  While the MPs appeared to have taken a reformist step by approving the first female minister in the republic’s 30-year history, two other women were rejected as nominees.

  And Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, who was successfully nominated to be health minister, is a hard-line conservative who favours a segregated health care policy that would allow patients to be treated only by doctors of the same sex.

  Also backed, by a resounding 227 MPs out of 286, was Ahmadinejad’s choice for defence minister, Ahmad Vahidi, who has been accused of involvement in the 1994 bombing of an Argentinian Jewish centre which killed 85 people.

  The crisis also revealed serious fractures within the country’s political elite. Among the dissenting voices was that of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a leading conservative figure, who used an address on his website to urge fellow clergymen to end their silence over the post-election crackdown.

  “The people are saying if this oppression is against Islam, then how come the marjas (religious authorities), who are the guardians of religion and Islam, are not taking any stance against the wrongdoings? Do you think it is worthy to keep silent when it comes to preserving the religion, Islam and people’s reputation?” he wrote.

  Three members of Montazeri’s family were among relatives of senior clerics arrested after the message was published, in an apparent attempt to silence dissent. But the criticism has continued, with one conservative film-maker, Mohammad Nourizad, going so far as to criticise the Supreme Leader for his handling of the post-election violence in an open letter. Such open, high-level dissent is rare in Iran, and suggests that moderate voices may be gaining strength from the signs of division within the country’s conservative hierarchy.

  Iran’s leadership has tried to put the post-election protests aside: the process of approving his cabinet was part of the president’s attempt to return the country to a state of normalcy. But, while there may no longer be demonstrators thronging the streets of Iran’s major cities, reverberations from June’s political earthquake are still being felt. The opposition has called for continued protests, with demonstrations expected during pro-Palestinian rallies to mark Quds day on 18 September. There may well be more aftershocks to come.