On Khamenei’s Response to Obama

Farideh Farhi

Juan Cole already has a run down of some of the things Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei said in response to President Obama’s message on the occasion of Iranian New Year and the press coverage of it. I think Juan’s point about the speech not being a rebuff is on the money, but I do take issue with his characterization of the speech being more like a “grumpy old man response to Obama's call for engagement.”

I say this because I think the translations of the bits and pieces of the speech in the news (even the Persian language Farsnews upon which Juan relies) do not do justice to this carefully crafted response intended to set the parameters of US-Iran talks if they are to happen.

For those who can understand Persian, I recommend that you check Khamenei’s website. The Persian language section of the website - the site has translations in 12 other languages – has both the video of his speech as well as the whole text. The English section also has an abbreviated English translation which is decent but still does not relay the feel you get by watching the whole speech.

The speech was quite long, first dealing with domestic affairs and focusing mostly on the need to curb the consumption of resources. But it gets interesting around minute 40 when he explains why his public support for President Ahmadinejad should not be construed as support for him as a candidate in the next presidential election. This is of course a big issue for Iran’s domestic politics and the fact that the leader himself had to address it was significant since Ahmadinejad supporters are working very hard to give the impression that he is his candidate

The move to the subject of US-Iran talks is abrupt and Khamenei makes clear that this is the only external issue with which he will deal, spending more than 20 minutes on it. It is a powerful speech, calmly delivered, and mostly devoid of usual jargon. He does talk about US policies that have harmed Iran and continue to harm it, including sanctions, freezing of assets, support for opposition and secessionist groups, and Baluchi insurgents - communications of whom with US operatives he says the Iranian government has intercepted.

But he mentions these as reasons why mere conciliatory speeches cannot be considered real change in American policy. More significantly, he mentions them in order to explain why the continuation of these hostile policies has to make Iran wonder whether President Obama’s gestures are of any value: “They say they have extended their hands towards Iran. If the extended hand has a velvet glove but under it is an iron cast hand, then this does not have a good meaning.”

This leads to the point: “They say come and talk, come and establish relations, they change slogans. Well, where is this change? Clarify this for us; what has changed? Have you unfrozen the assets of the Iranian people; have you lifted the oppressive sanctions…? We do not have any experience with the new American government and president; we will look and judge. You change, and we will also change our behavior too.”

He also makes a clever play on the usual way the American policy community talks about Iran, turning it against US and saying “I don’t know who really makes policy in the US – the president, Congress or behind the scene players.” But no matter who makes decisions in the US, Iran makes decision "rationally and not based on emotions." The bottom line is: “Our nation dislikes it when you again proclaim ‘talks with pressure’; we talk to Iran while we pressure them as well – threat and inducement. You cannot talk to our nation this way."

Juan Cole interpret complains about US foreign policy as “Iran’s initial bargaining position which include everything but the kitchen sink.” I don’t.

Khamenei’s speech actually shows how attuned he is to debates in Washington. He makes no calls for U.S. apology for past actions. His focus is today. No doubt he wants sanctions to be lifted, assets unfrozen, and attempts to undermine the Iranian government ended at some point as a result of talks with the U.S.

But his concern now is the argument forwarded by powerful circles in Washington that negotiations with Iran should be combined with increased pressure to make sure that Iran will give in at the end. It is this type of what he calls “condescending language, arrogant approach, and patronizing moves” that he rejects.

Clearly from his view, engagement in talks must be accompanied with some concrete steps that show Iran that the United States is interested in a process and give and take and not a process based on “either deception or intimidation.” Deception because the objective remains the same while the softer language is a mere tactical change. Intimidation because talks are combined with further squeeze of Iran.

He leaves no doubt that further squeezing of Iran leading up to talks and during the talks will be seen as a sign that President Obama’s rhetoric of change is a farce. As such the speech should really be seen as a carefully calibrated attempt to shape the debate in Washington on how to go about talking to Iran.





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Iran’s Majles Strikes a Blow to Ahmadinejad’s Economic Plans

Farideh Farhi

While most of the recent Iran news has focused on the prospect of an Iran-US rapprochement, the country's domestic scene has been consumed with a major fight over economic policy. This week the fight came to a head as the whole Majles began deliberating on the country’s budget for the next fiscal year as well Ahmadinejad’s attempt to reform the country’s bloated subsidy system.


The best evidence for how contentious economic policy has become is the fact that only about 10 days left before the Iranian New Year – after which the whole country literally comes into a stand still for a couple of weeks – the details of the budget for the upcoming fiscal year beginning on March 21 are yet to be approved.

The set up for a confrontation began when Ahmadinejad introduced his budget bill to Majles rather late and he did so along with his very ambitious targeted subsidies bill which calls for the suspension of all energy subsidies, their replacement with direct cash subsidies to the lowest 7 income brackets, and sharp prices increases particularly for gasoline and diesel fuel.

Majles deputies, particularly those with a long history of expertise on economic issues, not only found the budget numbers unrealistic, at times even fabricated, but also worried about the connection between the proposed budget and presumed savings generated from ending subsidies and the inflationary impact of the government’s proposed hikes in energy prices.

Economists have been even more critical of government numbers. Mohammad Sattarifar, the former head of the Planning and Budget Organization, went as far as to say that the budget was not even worth analyzing because the administration will be forced to come back to Majles with many amendments and changes. He pointed out that the projected revenues from increasing energy prices does not even take into account the amount of energy consumption by the largest consumer of energy in Iran which is the government itself!

The proposed budget assumes revenues of about $34bn from price hike and subsidy cuts and a distribution of about ¼ of that amount as cash deposited directly to people’s bank accounts immediately after the June election. This time frame was promised to allay the fear that cash subsidies were intended to buy votes.

The large combined Majles committee created to examine the two bills considered government assessment of revenues as exaggerated but, after Ahmadinejad threatened to pull out his targeted subsidies bill in its entirety, agreed to lower the amount of expected revenues while still allocating the government the amount it said it needed to implement the cash subsidies program.

However, by the time the budget bill came to the floor of the whole Majles, prominent economists as well as the Majles Research Center had already voiced concern about the inflationary shock the drastic increase in energy prices would entail. The general outline of the budget was approved in a short session despite significant opposition but today the targeted subsidies component of the budget bill was rejected in its entirety in a 132-102 vote.

It must be considered truly ironic that a president elected on a social justice platform is now being accused by a coalition of prominent conservatives and reformists as the promoter of “shock therapy” that will harm the poor and middle class in significant ways (note the picture on top of this post reproduced from Alef website which is run by Ahmad Tavakoli, a prominent conservative deputy and head of Majles Research Center. It uses a hand to show the need to stop “shock therapy” written in Persian).

Left hanging is the fate of the budget which still needs to be approved in a more detailed fashion. As mentioned, Ahmadinejad's budget numbers are very much linked to subsidy cuts. His administration also took a “take it as is” attitude and refused to address Majles’ concerns about the inflationary impact of sudden price hikes. Now it is not clear how Majles' rejection will affect the budget and whether, as threatened, Ahmadinejad will abandon any attempt to make energy prices more realistic or begin working with Majles to reach a compromise on gradual price increases.

Timing is also a factor because the Guardian Council also needs to approve the budget by the end of the year. Its task is to make sure that - as demanded by the Constitution - all sources of spending are clearly specified. The Council’s spokesperson, Abbas-ali Kadkhodai, has already voiced his concern about the timing, stating that if the budget is not approved by the end of the year, by law the government cannot have any expenses on the first day of the upcoming year unless some sort of temporary appropriation is agreed upon on a monthly basis for necessary current expenses.

It is worth noting that the budget process in Iran is usually messy, quite raucous, and a source of open conflict between Iran’s legislative and executive branches. Even Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, without a doubt post-revolutionary Iran’s most powerful president, was often stunted in his budget plans by Majles. But the lateness and chaos that has characterized this year’s budget process – occurring in the midst of drastic drop in oil prices and global economic crisis - has taken the conflict to another level.

It has also highlighted the difficulty even conservatives have in accepting some of Ahmadinejad’s ideas and his rather aggressive style in dealing with people who worry about the impact of his policies.

Majles’ decisive rejection is a major setback for Ahmadinejad. The manner in which Ahmadinejad manages to work himself back into Majles’ good graces will be important in convincing key conservative players to back his candidacy for presidency. It is hard to believe that the events of this week have made conservative unity behind his candidacy more likely.




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Iranian Revolution at 30

Today Iran began 10 days of festivities marking the 30th anniversary of its revolution.

The Middle East Institue has produced a volume on the occasion of this anniversary in which 53 contributors, including me, reflect on the significance of the 1979 Revolution and its positive and negative ramifications. Short essays dwell on gender issues, education, media, the environment, energy, foreign policy and so on. There is really nothing like it around. Complementing the essays is an extensive resource section of maps, statistics, a timeline, and selected bibliography. The full document can be found here. Read more on this article...

Israel, Gaza War, Return of “Emboldened Iran,” and Obama

Farideh Farhi

A curious pattern characterizes the recent military adventures in the Middle East. Overwhelming and disproportionate force is utilized in the name of at least temporarily popular objective – combating terrorism, preventing WMD proliferation, restoring deterrence, bringing democracy and so on. But once the human costs and efficacy of attacks in terms of stated objectives begin to be questioned, the narrative shifts and the argument for the sustenance of war, refusal of ceasefire, or even the need for “victory” begins to rely on the line that if a certain party or organization in question is not crushed, all the extremist forces in the Middle East led by Iran will be emboldened.



The justification for the continuation of reckless and indefensible violence shifts and the putative objective becomes, above all, to ensure that Iran does not expand its influence in the region as the leader of regional “resistance.” Even if one objected to the initial military foray, it is said, there should be agreement that leaving the mess in the middle and not finishing the job – whatever that means – will lead to the worst of all possible worlds: an angrier crowd that is allowed to survive and cause mischief at the direction of hegemony-seeking Iran. In its latest version, we are told by no less a figure than Israeli president Shimon Peres, “Our goals are clear. We do not want to make Gaza a satellite of Iran.”

I am not going to dwell on the insanity and immorality of violence imposed on a defenseless people based on a future possibility. The callous squander of lives and livelihoods in Iraq, Lebanon, and now Gaza speak for themselves. And, as far as know, no one is claiming that the lengthening of violence in Iraq or Lebanon stopped the presumed process of emboldening Iran.

My bet, like almost everyone else’s at this point, is that whatever the result in Gaza, it will do little to shift the narrative one way or another. There is nothing in the cards that suggest that what has not worked in the past will magically work today.

Hamas as an organization is likely to survive. And in an era in which mere survival against what is perceived to be an uncontrolled Behemoth is considered victory, its fortunes or the fortunes of elements even more bent on “resistance” will rise within Palestinian politics and this will be considered yet another feather in Iran’s – or “the leader of the resistance camp” – cap; a feather Tehran’s bickering leaders will happily or grudgingly accept depending on circumstances and political positions probably with little concern or inability to do much for additional Palestinians who lose lives and are made miserable in their names.

Even if Hamas is dismantled - remember the PLO was also forced to pack its bags once and move to Tunis - there are still others left and a standing, even if presumably weakened Iran, will continue to be a problem. In the midst of an angry region, even the crushing defeat of a foe such as Hamas and sacrifice of a good number of people for the purpose of weakening Iran does not assure a strategic overhaul.

It is true that we are told that such a crushing may help build a better Middle East in which the adversary will be weakened and hence will become more pliant and passive. But common sense tells us that it is difficult for violence to give birth to passivity; not when it is watched in living rooms and squalors alike all over the world and in the Middle East.

But the narrative of emboldened Iran and the need to weaken it by crushing its so-called proxies persists because the picture of a threatening and emboldened Iran is not only necessary for a dysfunctional Israeli polity always in need of leaders showing their martial grit but also for another fight; the fight over how to deal with Iran.

As usual nothing occurs in a vacuum. In all the three countries heavily vested in the drama –Israel, the United States, and Iran – there are folks who for whatever reasons – it really doesn’t matter anymore whether the reasons are justified or not – are ideologically, institutionally, politically, and economically vested in the continuation of animosity.

Call them hardliners, hawks, radicals, demagogues, economic profiteers or ideologues, polarization is to their benefit and each has its own fears, including loss of power. They operate in the midst of societies in which the population is also divided – again for whatever reason - and they are contenders for influence. Theirs is politics of fear, worry, as well as actual and advocated violence. They are not necessarily a united bunch in their respective countries. In fact, in all three countries, the art of bickering has been perfected. But bickering should not be confused with withdrawal and lack of power.

At the same time, in all three polities, there are also a good number of people and leaders who are either tired of ideological thinking or just simply tired of the consequences of never-ending animosity. In Iran, ideologues were set aside for a few years and there is good reason to believe that the kind of politics and foreign policy that was practiced during those years would have had a better chance of lowering tensions in the region after 9/11 had the Bush Administration approached Iran in a more conciliatory manner than it did after the two countries cooperation based on their shared interest in Afghanistan.

But bygones are bygones. What is at hand today is that a reformist or pragmatist is the elected president of the United States backed by a good chunk of American people who have invested in him their hope for re-direction, common sense, and human decency.

For someone like me, an Iranian-American with vested interest in the reconciliation of the two parts of my identity – for mundane reasons such as easier travel and money exchange as well as bigger ones such as fear of a military attack against the rather large family I have left behind - the question is whether trends in the United States will have a better chance at lowering tensions and reducing violence.

The answer obviously rests not in who Obama is - notwithstanding his palpable human decency that has allowed many us to pin our hopes on him - but what he does. It is not the question of goodwill begets goodwill, as George Bush the father once famously said but whether still the most powerful country in the world can lead by setting example and itself becoming less ideological, violent, and insecure at a time of global economic crisis that is bound to get worse; whether the United States can become a more or less competent seeker of solutions or will it remain wedded to and chained by reactive and reactionary institutions and ideas and dysfunctional relationships.

Having watched Iranian politics and foreign policy closely for years, I am convinced that despite all the hurled insults and maneuvering, a change of direction in American foreign policy will impact Iran in significant ways. Iranian leaders of all variety have been sending messages that they are ready to engage in serious conversation about redefining Iran’s role in US’ regional policies. The point they are trying to make is that instead of the attempted pitting of the region against Iran and search for security at its expense, the United States will be better off accepting Iran’s appropriate regional role which should be commensurate with its geographical size, resources, and regional political clout.

Tehran’s reaction to events in Gaza confirm this message and has included a combination of theatrics, genuine expression of sorrow, a bit of diplomacy - much of it with Syria which has a bigger stake in the Israeli-Gaza conflict and Turkey which also has a bigger stake because of its close relations with Israel in the face of a population angered by the Gaza tragedy - and a good dose of wait and see attitude. This is a bed Israelis have made for themselves and they are the ones that have to figure out a way to tidy it. This is why Iran's chief of Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corp (IRGC) rather calmly rules out providing military support to Hamas, saying "Gazan resistance does not need other countries' military help."

Iranian leaders are not stupid. They also worry about Israel being "emboldened.” But generally speaking they think that Israel is digging its own grave by going into Gaza. This is what Iran’s president Mahmud Ahmadinejad means when he says that Israel will wither away in the pages of history; it will fall based on its own contradictions and policies.

Iran's game is one of expression of genuine anger and resentment - it is hard to be from that part of the world and not be angry at what is being seen on television - and playing to the crowd. On this latter front, the real targets are Arab regimes - Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and not Israel per se. The intent is to use the support for Iran's anti-Israeli position in the Arab street as an instrument in preventing the creation of anti-Iranian front by Arab governments. Iran’s leaders would be stupid and delinquent to only play the wait and see game and ignore the possibility that the Obama administration will essentially follow the Bush Administration policy of trying to pit the region against Iran and search for security at its expense.

But playing to the crowds has its limits, at least inside Iran. People were encouraged to demonstrate and volunteer to be sent to Gaza after supreme leader Ali Khamenei declared that anyone dying for the cause of Gaza will be considered a martyr. But after the demonstrations began to entail attacks of foreign embassies, they had to be told publicly by his representative to the universities to calm down and respect international laws and treaties.

And when volunteers for Gaza sat in Tehran airport and angrily demanded from government officials to be sent to Gaza “to fulfill the leader’s command,” again they were told in no uncertain terms by that their task was conscious-raising and moral support. The supreme leader himself acknowledged Iran’s hands were tied while blessing and thanking the volunteers for their dedication in a simple one liner.

The bottom line message: Palestine is not as important to us as you think. It only becomes important for ideological purposes and in response to what we consider to be attempts that are intended to create regime or territorial insecurity. If you don’t believe us, just compare our energetic behavior and policies in Iraq and Afghanistan – countries of high interest for security reasons – to our rather lackadaisical approach to the Gaza conflict.

Another message: We are not about to let excited crowds run our foreign policy.

As is often the case, the Iranian regime may be over-playing its hands and expecting too much. Perhaps the Bush Administration’s support for the continuation of violence in Gaza is intended as a parting gift to Obama. A crushed Hamas, the thought goes, will weaken Iran’s hand in the impending talks with the Untied States and as such must be accepted as an Israeli gift. Surely the people of Gaza are the not first sacrificed at the altar of geopolitics.

Given the added drop in oil prices and the disaster Ahmadinejad’s presidency has brought to the Iranian economy, the Obama Administration may even be tempted to go further and play hard ball, thinking that a weaker Iran is an Iran that will finally say yes to demands that it has said no to throughout the Bush Administration.

Within this frame, Obama’s new Iran policy will just be a variation of the policies that have been going on for many years. In this new iteration, the presumption is that a little more pressure along with more incentives will do the trick. Perhaps! One can never speak in absolute terms about the future.

But if it doesn't, we will be facing an uglier Iran in the future that is bound to be even more restrictive at home and problematic in the region, indeed risking war. In short, a weakened Iran pressured to do what it does not want to do, in all likelihood, will also be an angrier and more hard-line Iran.

Those of us who advocate some sort of compromise with Iran, based on a process of give and take, do so on the premise that such a compromise will be good for Iran, the United States and ultimately the region because it will have to be based on a process in which broad spectrums of the public and elite in both countries end up being okay with the compromise.

Reaching such an acceptance inside Iran is harder because it is the country under pressure to give in on what its broad public considers a right. Even if Iran's leaders buckle under, without such an acceptance, a group of unhappy trouble makers will continue to exist, constantly intent to undermine the new equilibrium which to them will be mainly a concrete and unhappy manifestation of the American will egged by the Israelis. Were these folks an insignificant member of the Iranian society, in terms of numbers and power, I wouldn't worry. But they are not.

The Obama Administration can continue to ignore this domestic predicament and negotiate in order to put Iran in its place in the same way the Israelis and its American enablers have continued to ignore the Palestinian predicament and reality of occupation and have repeatedly pinned their hope on breaking the Palestinian will to resist.

Or, it can change course. It can seriously begin approaching the region with the objective of solving conflicts, rather than picking fights and sides. It will of course not be easy to go against interests that are vested in conflict. But given the disaster that the Middle East has become, no one is asking for a lot at this point; just a sense that a different kind of approach is being contemplated and hopefully tried.



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Student Day in Iran

Today is Student Day in Iran and I am posting below a smart piece I just received from Rasmus Chritian Elling about the student movement and dilemmas it is facing regarding the upcoming presidential elections and its role in politics in general. Rasmus writes for the collective blog of Copenhagen University Middle East and Islam Network that those interested in Iran and the Middle East in general should check regularly.

An addendum to Rasmus’ post is that Iran's minister of higher education had announced last week that Ayatollah Khamenei was going to attend a student gathering at the Science and Technology University (the university Mahmoud Ahmadinejad graduated from and occasionally taught at) for the first time on Student Day. But his plan was suddenly cancelled without any reason given. In all likelihood, concern about protests - even someone shouting something that shouldn’t be uttered or singing a song that shouldn’t be sung - was the reason for the cancellation.

The same worry is the reason for the government not to give most student organizations, with the exception of conservative ones, permission to hold rallies this year.

Former president Mohammad Khatami was also expected to come to the University of Tehran tomorrow but his plans were postponed until next week due to “certain considerations” and in order “to prevent the occurrence of probable interferences and misuse.” His worry must have been that his presence at the university on this particular day would turn into a support rally for his candidacy for president and then get out of control.

Student Day in Iran
by Rasmus Christian Elling

Today, it is Ruz-e dâneshju or ‘Student Day’ in Iran: it is time to reassess the status of and situation for the Iranian student movement.

Revolution, reformism, repression, revival
Since ‘modern’ universities were established in Iran in the 1920s and 30s, they have been key centers of political dissidence, arenas for ideological battles and homes to alternative voices. Universities played central roles in the revolutionary movement that ousted the Shah in the late 1970s and in the reformist movement that brought Khatami to power in 1997. Indeed, during the so-called ‘Tehran Spring’ of 1997-99, it seemed as if a democratic student movement was ready to burst out of university and revolutionize Iranian society.

However, the severe clampdown on students – and in particular, the violent attack on Tehran University dormitories in July 1999 that resulted in widespread riots throughout Iran – curtailed this movement. The repression eventually seemed close to completely wipe out the Iranian student movement through juridical and extra-juridical measures, violence and threats. The state apparatus placed legal obstacles on student groups and partially seized their organizations, harassed and intimidated their spokespersons, and closed down their facilities and newsletters.

However, instead of disintegrating, the key organizations of the movement – the so-called Islamic Student Societies (anjoman-hâ-ye eslâmi-ye dâneshjuyân) and their umbrella organization, The Office to Consolidate Unity (daftar-e tahkim-e vahdat, hereafter DTV) – underwent a painful divorce from the parliamentary reform movement, its institutions and its head, Khatami. DTV succeeded in distancing itself from the waning image of the reformists and has since struggled to transform itself into a platform for a wide variety of grass roots and civil society groups. The aim of DTV today is to reach out beyond the walls of universities and into Iranian society.

While the process of bridging the intellectual and theoretical discourse of a student movement with general discontent in other layers of society has been quite difficult, the greatest challenge came with the election of the neo-conservative hard-liner Ahmadinejad in 2005.

Since this election, government has sought to ‘re-Islamize’ and control universities by discharging critical professors and appointing loyal managers, by segregating facilities in certain universities, by installing CCTV surveillance and by burying ‘martyrs’ of the Iran-Iraq War right on university campuses and thus imposing the militant ideology on students. Student activists all over Iran have faced official and unofficial reprimands, abductions to secret interrogation facilities, mock trials, torture, incommunicado detention and heavy sentences that span from exclusion from university and forced transfer to other universities to fines and jail sentences. Individual students are even given ‘stars’ depending on his/her level of political activity in a ludicrous evaluation scheme aimed at intimidating and punishing student activists.

However, the difficulties facing the student movement are not just political. Students are also confronted with a wide array of problems including the fierce competition for enrollment in prestigious universities, the dwindling quality of teaching and research in Iranian universities, the severe problem of brain drain, social problems such as drug addiction and suicide as well as issues related to everyday student life such as appalling conditions in dormitories, lack of pastime facilities and, of course, the prospect of post-graduation unemployment.

Yet despite all these obstacles and challenges, there is still good reason to argue that student activism is alive and kicking in Iran today. Indeed, students have staged small but vocal demonstrations and sit-ins, and some have even attacked Ahmadinejad’s policies directly. Recently, it seems students have become particularly active. Tensions have been felt as far away as Sistan-Baluchestan on Iran’s southeastern border, where students have clashed with security forces. In the provincial capital Hamadan, students have reported a wave of intimidation and threats by local authorities that are concerned with student activities.

Student Day 2008
Thus, the Iranian student activists are to mark Student Day today – a tradition that dates back to 1953 when 3 students from Tehran University were killed by the Shah’s security forces. This year, students have not limited themselves to Student Day itself but have indeed declared December 2 to 9 a ‘Students Week’. The last month or so, Iranian media have claimed that students are secretly preparing unrest and mayhem around Students Day. A Basiji student group has claimed that ‘violence-seeking’ individuals are ‘planning riots’ on Khajeh Nasir University in Tehran. And on the conservative website Tâbnâk, journalists reported that ‘some domestic extremist groups’ have been planning to provoke unrest, including melli-mazhhabi proponents (Religious-Nationalist, i.e. the domestic opposition of moderate ‘Islamo-nationalists’), who have allegedly called for a student-led riot like that of July 1999. The journalists even claimed that students from ethnic minorities studying in Tehran are planning disturbances to further their ethno-nationalist aims and that DTV has been in contact with opposition activists in exile. DTV denied this report and criticized it together with a series of accusations and rumors published by state-run dailies and news agencies.

With the severe security measures installed by the neo-con government and its cohorts in the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij militias and the police forces in mind, it is difficult to see how students could indeed create such unrest. ”Students are under attack from all sides by the government and the fundamentalist media”, Bahare Hedayat from DTV’s public relations bureau stated recently. Hedayat, who has been imprisoned for her activities several times, argued that “the stored-up concerns and discontent amongst students over the last three years” were the result of “the clampdown by authorities outside the universities” on student activists and “the erroneous [university] management of officials selected by the Ministry of Science”.

According to Hedayat, ‘unrest’ is simply a negative term hyped by media controlled by ruling forces who are afraid of student activism: “The sick minds who cannot tolerate even a student protest gathering in university, are referring to peaceful meetings and protests within the milieu of the university as ‘unrest’”, she stated. Even ISNA – the Iranian Students News Agency, which was founded to reflect the voices of students – has “been turned into a platform for anti-student organizations”, Hedayat argued.

Student activists, in particular those at Amir Kabir Technical University, have reported that pro-government groups, Basiji students and university authorities are coordinating a counter-strike in case of student unrest on or after Student Day. These reports surfaced while DTV a week ago published its call for marking Student Day. In a thinly veiled attack on Ahmadinejad’s government, DTV stated: “[O]nce again, we will rise and sound the call of protest against oppressors who are busy stripping Iran and the Iranians of their national resources, honor and integrity, and whose erroneous policies have resulted in pervasive corruption, widespread poverty, disregard for civic rights, destruction of Iranians’ prestige all over the world, international sanctions, unemployment, and thousands of other problems”. DTV has called for a demonstration in Tehran University tomorrow and Khatami has said that enshâ‘allâh, he will come to speak. Four years ago, students heckled Khatami when he came to Tehran University on Student Day. It could become an interesting moment when Khatami and the students come face to face.

The students and ‘the reformists’
With the 2009 presidential elections looming on the horizon, the so-called ‘reformists’ seems to be looking to the student movement, hoping it could again play a significant role. Indeed, the ‘reformists’ would benefit from a re-activation of the huge potential among Iran’s two million university students. Yet, significant change is needed: since Khatami’s ‘lame duck years’ as president, and in particular, his reluctant and belated response to the state clampdown on students in 1999 and subsequently, the activist milieu has been marked by a profound skepticism towards the ‘reformists’. Indeed, the spokeswoman of the DTV stated that “reformists should know that the students are watching their behaviors and will not forget”. In other words, reformists will certainly have to redefine their ambitions and strategy in order to attract the much-needed votes of Iranian students. It seems the students, despite previous boycotts, have not yet rejected the idea of participating in the elections – so it might pay off for reformists.

However, when evaluating the ‘potentials’ of the student movement, one should keep in mind that since they ‘divorced’ from the parliamentary reformist faction, DTV and its local cells have focused on social, cultural and civil society activities – indeed, DTV declared in 2005 that it would henceforth function as a ‘Civil Society Watch’. In an interview with Roozonline.com two days ago, DTV secretary, Mehdi Arabshahi, stated that the new DTV would not repeat the fault of earlier generations in this organization: that is, to act as a political party and to play the role of opposition within the boundaries of the political system. Thus, we should not expect the students to act as a sort of ‘youth division’ of any political faction, including the reformist, in the future. Indeed, stated Arabshahi, the new DTV would not repeat the old mistake of seeing elections as “a remedy for all the nation’s troubles”.

Yet, at the same time, Arabshahi would not rule out the possibility that the election of a new government could bring about better conditions for social movements. Hedayat, the spokeswoman mentioned earlier, also explained in a separate interview that the situation had changed dramatically since the DTV boycott of the presidential elections in 2005: now, said Hedayat, a fresh analysis was needed. In other words, DTV might not boycott elections. Whatever the DTV chooses to do, Hedayat stated that the organization would strive to have its demands and issues reflected during the elections.

DTV and the student movement in general has been criticized for not participating in the 2005 elections and thereby having contributed to the loss of votes for the reformists and thus, indirectly paving the way for a neo-con victory. However, student activist spokespersons stand by their old decision. The former DTV figurehead, ‘Abdollah Mo‘meni, who is now spokesman for DTV’s alumni division, Advâr-e tahkim, stated in an interview that he would defend the decision and that the failure of reformists to mobilize voters could not be reduced to the role of students. Indeed, said Mo‘meni, the reformists had much graver problems than DTV’s election boycott: the fact that they couldn’t even agree on a single candidate to represent them, that they had made their constituencies disillusioned and that they participated willingly in a ‘commando-election’ – these were more likely the reasons for their failure.

In other words, the reformists will have to ‘deliver’ if they want to have any hope of regaining the confidence of the young generation: they will need a strong and charismatic leader, a clear and resolute program and they will need to address the key issues championed by social movements, the women rights movement and the student movement.

A student movement?
So, the question remains: can we speak of an Iranian student movement today? ‘Ali-Reza Raja‘i, a melli-mazhhabi, recently argued that “the activist atmosphere has been restricted to some extent. However, it is perfectly clear that if there is an opening of the political environment, [the student] movement will take on more visible forms”. In other words, Raja‘i thinks that the student movement right now is not a movement per se, but rather a potential movement waiting for a window of opportunity to become active again and develop into a broad-based movement.

However, the wounds inflicted over the years upon the student movement, and indeed the tormented history of democratic struggle in Iran, has left many pessimistic. Indeed, there is a widespread feeling that it will take more than a new government and more than a student movement to change Iran. “Democratic struggle is eating itself from within”, wrote the renown dissident Taqi Rahmani recently: without an active civil society and without organizations representing, for example, professional, labor or ethnic minority interests, any democratic movement is doomed to failure, Rahmani argued. This is why Iranians are prone to be disillusioned when they see that their votes have not brought about a miracle. This is why the Iranian voters are tired and weary: the constant impediments and numerous obstacles placed in front of democratic movements by the rich and powerful elites throughout history. Only by creating a strong and vibrant civil society can Iran move towards democracy.

While DTV has yet to announce its position vis-à-vis the presidential elections, it is clear that people like Raja‘i are warning the students not to boycott the elections. Indeed, Raja‘i and his ilk – the tolerated ‘opposition’, ‘the reformists’ and ‘the moderates’ – still believe that it is possible to reform and change Iranian politics and society through elections. Even though DTV earlier seemed to reject the possibility of the Islamic Republic reforming in a democratic direction, they have, as stated, not rejected a possible participation in next year’s elections. It remains to be seen what the student activist milieu would do if Khatami – or another key reformist figure – was to run for president again; and it remains to be seen what measures the neo-conservative government and its supporters in the clerical and paramilitary elites would take to obstruct the reformists. No matter what happens, it is too early to rule out a revival of the Iranian student movement. Read more on this article...

Rubin: U.S. and Iran in Afghanistan

An article I wrote with Sara Batmanglich about U.S.-Iran relations in Afghanistan has been posted on the website of MIT's Center for International Studies. It opens:

AFGHANISTAN IS ONE of several contexts in which the long-term common interests of the U.S. and Iran have been overshadowed by the animus originating in the 1953 CIA-led coup in Iran and the Iranian revolution of 1979, to the detriment of the interests of the U.S., Iran, and Afghanistan. This confrontation has served the interests of the Pakistan military, Taliban, and al-Qaida. Re-establishing the basis for U.S.-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan would provide significant additional leverage over Pakistan, on whose territory the leadership of both the Taliban and al-Qaida are now found.

And it ends:

There is, however, a major strategic judgment to be revisited. The military and intelligence agencies of both Pakistan and Iran have systematically used asymmetrical warfare, including terrorism, as a tool of their security policy. Which of them poses a greater threat to U.S. national interest and international peace and security? How should responses to these two threats be balanced? Since the Iranian revolution, the U.S. has overreacted to the Iranian threat and engaged in systematic appeasement of Pakistan, which is now home to the leadership of both al-Qaida and the Taliban (both Afghan and Pakistani). These countries are rivals for influence in Afghanistan and are sponsoring competing infrastructure projects for road transport and energy trade. Iran and India are building a combined rail and road link from the Iranian port of Chah Bahar to Afghanistan’s major highway. Pakistan, with Chinese aid, is building the port of Gwadar in Baluchistan, aiming at a north-south route to Central Asia. “Taliban” regularly attack Indian road building crews in southwest Afghanistan, and Pakistan charges that India is supporting Baluch insurgents from its consulates in Afghanistan.

A reevaluation of the threats originating in Iran and Pakistan should lead to a recalibration of U.S. policy in Afghanistan to tilt away from Pakistan and more toward Iran. Yet it would be wrong and destructive to treat Pakistan with the type of enmity now reserved for Iran. Like Iran, Pakistan’s policy is motivated by a combination of genuine security threats, ideological aspirations, and institutional interest. In Pakistan’s more open political system, it is far easier for the U.S. to engage with allies inside the country against the security services whose covert policies the U.S. finds threatening.

Ultimately, U.S. interests would be best served by supporting efforts to extend and improve governance and security in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, thereby depriving al-Qaida and its epigones of refuge on either side of the border. Using Afghanistan as a base for anti-Iran policies handicaps the U.S. in pressing for Pakistani cooperation, thus undermining one of the country’s most important strategic objectives. Of course, such recalibration will also require shifts in Iranian policy away from the path it has taken. Clearly abandoning any U.S. agenda of forcible regime change in Iran will make such a shift much more likely.

Read more on this article...

Iran’s Presidential Election Takes Off

Farideh Farhi

After enduring almost two years of incessant presidential politics in the United States, I must say that I am not really looking forward to yet another prolonged race, this time in Iran. But the reality is that the campaign for the presidency of Iran, to be decided on 12 June 2009 or a few weeks later if the contest again goes to the second round, has already become heated, even if the picture regarding who and how many will actually end up being candidates is still far from clear.

The fact that Iran is into full presidential mode this early is rather unusual for an election that almost certainly will involve a candidate who is an incumbent running for his second term. Iranian presidents are limited to two four year terms but asides from the two early and very short-term presidents, who were either impeached and subsequently forced into exile (Abolhassan Banisadr) or assassinated (Mohammad Ali Rajai), two term presidencies have been the norm since the presidential election of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s current supreme leader, in 1981.

In fact, Iran’s last three presidents (Khamenei, Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Khatami) were not significantly challenged in their second runs and no one entertained the possibility that they might not be re-elected. Even Khatami, whose candidacy was in doubt for a very short period of time because of his own frustration in pushing his reform agenda, no one really doubted that he would be re-elected in 2001 once he decided to run.

This election will be, and one might even say is already, different. To be sure, few doubt that Ahmadinejad will run and he will be the man to beat. As I mentioned above, even in the short history of the Islamic republic, there are things that have become part of the norm or tradition and as elsewhere traditions are hard to break. At the same time, the extent to which Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement of the economy and his office has become part of the Iranian political discourse, I think, is unprecedented. This is why, for the first time the possibility that a president running for the second term may face serious challenge is openly discussed and contemplated. With the drop in oil prices and the specter of larger than expected budget deficits for the current fiscal year, talks of Ahmadinejad’s wrong-headed policies as well as incompetence are bound to intensify.

So far only one person – Mehdi Karrubi of the National Trust Party - has openly declared his candidacy with the proviso that he might step aside if something like a council of mediating elders among the reformist and centrist forces settles for another candidate deemed more likely to be elected. Few believe that he will do so and his insistence on running may ultimately be the most important card he has in forcing the hand of the reformists to support him at the end.

Given the history of verbal acrimony between the reformists and Karrubi - who as the Speaker of the Sixth Parliament refused to support the sit-in of reformist deputies when they were disqualified by the Guardian Council to stand for re-election - members of the reformist Islamic Iran’s Participation Party and Islamic Revolution’s Mojahedin will undoubtedly be holding their noses if they ultimately decide to side with Karrubi. But this is a decision they will have to contemplate knowing very well that only agreement among centrist and reformist forces over one candidate will enhance their chances.

In a recent and very interesting interview on October 8 with Etemaad Daily, Alireza Alavi Tabar, one of Iran’s most interesting political analysts and a reformist, suggested that in order to win the reformists need to garner at least 5 million more votes than their opponents (about 45 million are eligible to vote and in the first round of the last presidential election close to 30 million voted). According to his analysis, 5 million is the maximum number of votes that can be manipulated in Iran.

It is improbable that this 13 to 14 percent vote manipulation hurdle can be overcome in the likely scenario of only about 50 to 60 percent of eligible voters participating in the election. Improbability however is bound to turn into certainty if reformist and centrist groups enter the election with multiple candidates. Without compromise meager reformist and centrist chances will turn into nil.

But the election is still seven months away and the reformists are not yet in the mood for compromise. Their clamor for the past couple of months has been to convince former president Khatami to run. But he has remained rather coy about his intentions and I personally will be very surprised if he decides to run for a couple of reasons.

Most importantly is the fact that he is not crazy and ambitious enough to put himself through the abuse and obstacles that he will have to face both in running and governing. Someone with a good sense of humor said a while back that the difference between Khatami supporters and Khatami is that they think about the Election Day while he thinks about the day after the election! I think this is about right although the amount of mud which will be thrown at him during the campaign will not be insignificant either.

Khatami has developed something quite rare in Iran: respect as a former statesman who remains politically engaged without holding office and speaks truth to power. Just yesterday he blasted the government by saying “Looking at official slogans, one gets the impression that this is a country of flowers and nightingales in which there are no rising prices, unemployment, poverty, corruption and prostitution.” He went on to say that he considers the most important duty of the president to be the execution of the Constitution; an obvious dig at the current occupant of the office who was just accused on national television, no less, by his own former interior minister and the current head of the government’s audit office to have improperly withdrawn money from Iran’s foreign exchange reserves without the required parliamentary approval.

To make the story short, I think giving up the position of an elder and trusted statesman will be hard for Khatami and his family. He will only do so, as he said publicly, if he receives assurances from a wide spectrum of people, including some well-known conservatives or so-called principlists, that his next attempt at presidency will be different.

Considering that in the chaotic and highly competitive political environment of Iran such assurances are almost impossible to come by, a Khatami candidacy can essentially be considered a non-starter. Of course, in making this assertion I am not totally rejecting the possibility that he may run but essentially echoing the words of the well known Iranian analyst Abbas Abdi who suggested a while back that if Khatami does run he will do so only with the confidence that he will win; a highly unlikely scenario.

Lacking this confidence, Khatami’s second reason for not running is tactical. He knows that the principlists are divided over Ahmadinejad’s presidency. The question of support for Ahmadinejad is not settled for them yet and there are other conservative or center-right candidates – such as Tehran mayor Mohammad Qalibaf, former chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani, and even former interior minister Mustafa Purmohammadi - who are contemplating runs along with perennial presidential aspirants like parliamentary deputy Ahmad Tavakoli and former commander of Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps Mohsen Rezaie. Some principlist politicians, including one hard-line parliamentary deputy, have talked about conditional support for Ahmadinejad provided he retracts from some of his recent policies and appointments. Others have simply said that so far there is no agreed upon principlist candidate. In short, it is not yet clear whether there will be one or several candidates representing the principlist camp.

But if Khatami runs, given his relative popularity, principlist equivocation will probably give way and there will be tremendous pressure on all factions to the right of the political spectrum to close rank behind Ahmadinejad who after all is the current president and, given his name recognition, will have the best chance of winning in a manipulated competition against Khatami.

Even if it is not true, this will be the case Ahmadinejad’s supporters will be making to all principlists from now until the election. The hard-line Kayhan Daily has already gone there in its 16 October editorial, warning all principlists that “the replacement for the current administration, if it has to go, is not going to be a principlist individual but someone outside the [principlist] current.”

The mere fact that Kayhan has to warn the principlist camp about the possibility of reformist revival in order to marshal support for Ahmadinejad is by itself a reflection of the trouble the president is facing in his standing among the Iranian elite. Just to give a few examples, in the past week or so Hassan Rowhani publicly blasted him twice for losing opportunities generated by unprecedented high oil prices and U.S. troubles in Iraq and not buttressing Iran’s foreign exchange reserves in order to cushion against the shock that the Iranian economy will face as oil prices fall.

Furthermore, Ahmadinejad’s Economic Transformation Plan that includes reform of the tax and subsidy systems among other things has been questioned for being at best undeveloped and at worst highly inflationary and disruptive. Even in situations where his administration has really not been at fault, such as the parliamentary mandated implementation of a value added tax on Iranian merchants which was resisted through bazaar strikes, his administration has been criticized for giving insufficient information to merchants who, it was said, would not have opposed the tax had they understood it better.

The Iranian parliament, under the leadership of Ali Larijani, has also already signaled that it will not easily give in to Ahmadinejad’s announced desire to give cash subsidies (somewhere between $40 to $80 monthly depending on income brackets) to the majority of Iranians beginning early next year or right before the June election. Some members of the parliament have deemed the giveaway inflationary while others have been less charitable, identifying it as election bribe.

Larijani, himself, explicitly stated yesterday that he will not run for president. When asked whether he will be willing to do so if called upon to serve, he said “so far there has not been a call to duty and rest assured that there are many others in the arena that will make such things unnecessary.” Despite his avowed lack of interest, however, he did not miss the chance to point out that given the financial troubles of the world which will impact Iran also, Islamic Iran should begin its fourth decade with a new “political logic” that avoids the extremisms of both the left and the right and rely on all the ‘managerial capabilities” that exist in the country among the reformists and principlists.

No doubt this should be considered a statement of dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad who is constantly accused of only relying on a small circle of advisors. But even more generally it should be considered an expression of the yearning for going beyond the extreme divisiveness that has characterized Iranian politics in the past decade but has been particularly fanned during Ahmadinejad’s presidency. In this context, the new “political logic” simply means a logic that creates a space for a less dysfunctional political system.

Ultimately the issue for principlists critical of Ahmadinejad is not dissatisfaction with the current occupier of the office or the current state of affairs - they are clearly dissatisfied, but whether it is possible to dislodge him from office without risking the possibility of a reformist win. For them the best scenario entails the prospect of a crowded field that will open the way for a second round confrontation between Ahmadinejad and a more centrist, and presumably more competent, principlist candidate who will at the end emerge victorious.

Given Iran’s hyper-politicized environment, this scenario is not easy to implement. But the machinations in Iran’s various political camps to devise a game plan that will lead to electoral victory, while being mindful of Ahmadinejad’s concrete failures, will keep the Iranian political dynamics fluid for the next seven months.

This fluidity in turn will keep the business of speculation about who will actually run for the president quite robust until May when the registration deadline for candidacy arrives. Among the candidates discussed none is likely to be vetted but who knows by the time May comes who else might appear on the scene.

These dynamics should be considered part and parcel of a competitive political system that doesn’t have a well or even minimally developed party system and relies on constant negotiations and shifting positions among contending and at the same time intersecting elite factions. It is going to be a long, chaotic, and in all likelihood ugly campaign. Read more on this article...

IAEA Declares a Gridlock with Iran

Farideh Farhi

With the exception of one potentially important nugget about the possibility of Iran drawing on “foreign expertise” in conducting experiments on a detonator suitable for an implosion-type nuclear weapon, the IAEA's September 15, 2008 report offers little that is different from its previous report.

In many ways, it effectively confirms that there is little else the IAEA can do in probing into Iran’s nuclear program or, given the steady progress on the enrichment front reported, of checking it unless there is a breakthrough in the broader negotiations that have been going on between Iran and the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members plus Germany.

The reference to foreign expertise constitutes a mere two-line reference in a 6 page document. The details of the information obtained by the agency have apparently been relayed to Iran whose clarifications, or lack thereof, would presumably constitute a part of the Agency’s next report. Beyond this new information, the report is a testimony to things remaining the same.

First and foremost, this report, like the previous ones, states the Agency’s ability “to verify non-diversion of declared nuclear material and activities.” This is a clear acknowledgment that Iran has remained committed to its Safeguards Agreement in “providing access to declared nuclear material and providing the required nuclear material accounting reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities.” In this regard, the report is a flat denial of recent unsubstantiated claims about the disappearance of nuclear material from Iran’s facilities.

Second, the IAEA continues to be unhappy with Iran’s refusal to implement the Additional Protocol beyond an ad-hoc manner. It wants more intrusive inspections. At times the issue is couched in the language of “transparency measures” that Iran needs to take but the bottom line is IAEA’s desire for Iran to implement the Additional Protocol.

This issue remains part and parcel of IAEA’s catch-22 predicament with Iran. Iran voluntary implemented the Additional Protocol in the past before Iran’s case was referred to the Security Council and has offered in previous negotiations to make it permanent but not until Iran’s case is removed from the Security Council. In short, Iran has remained steadfast in its position that the IAEA will not get what it wants from Iran in order to do its job of inspecting Iran until the Agency becomes the sole judge of Iran’s nuclear program.

A similar dynamic is at play regarding the IAEA’s unhappiness with Iran’s refusal to provide preliminary design information Iran had previously agreed to provide - during the course of negotiations with the EU-3 as a voluntary, non-binding measure - about nuclear facilities it plans to build. On this voluntary commitment, like the temporary suspension of enrichment and voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol, Iran continues to engage in a calculated pull back in protest to the Security Council referral.

As is the case with many other countries, without the Additional Protocol, the IAEA cannot draw a conclusion about the absence of nuclear activities but this is not the same thing as suspecting undeclared activities and material. In fact, as mentioned above, the report is clear that so far the IAEA has not encountered evidence of undeclared activities.

Even regarding the issues related to the alleged studies and “possible military dimensions of Iran’s program,” which from IAEA’s perspective now effectively constitute the only unanswered aspects of Iran’s past activities, the Agency is careful to say has little information “on the actual design or manufacture by Iran of nuclear components of a nuclear weapon or of key components, such as initiators…Nor has the Agency detected the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies.”

Tehran considers the alleged studies found on a laptop a fabrication and has said so to the skeptical IAEA. Being concerned about the ease with which electronic copies can be doctored, Tehran has also insisted that it will not provide further information regarding the alleged studies until Western powers allow the IAEA to provide Iran hard copies of the intelligence for examination.
But the IAEA clearly wants more from Iran, including access to documents and individual scientists and in this report has specified alternative ways Iran and the IAEA can go about clarifying the issue. It is doubtful that Iran will be more responsive in the next round, particularly now that the fate of a new Security Council resolution is up in the air, partly due to US-Russia conflict over Georgia but more perhaps because of the exhaustion of a so far ineffective route.

The only thing the report no longer leaves in doubt is that Iran is making significant progress on developing and improving the efficiency of its centrifuges. It is now running about 3,800 centrifuges, an increase of several hundred in the past four months. It has also boosted the efficiency of its centrifuges, allowing them to be fed more material and face fewer crashes. Iran’s program still cannot be considered fast-paced or based on urgency but does seem to have overcome some of the technical challenges it was facing. As such, the slow pace may suggest more of a choice, perhaps not to alarm Iran’s interlocutors more than necessary.

With an exhausted Security Council process that has so far failed to prevent Iran from its slow and yet steady progress towards mastering enrichment and an inspection process that has effectively reached its end in terms of the further prodding of Iran to do more, it is becoming evident that something else needs to be done to push Iran towards accepting a more rigorous inspection regime. With its September report the IAEA is once again making abundantly clear that this “something else” is beyond its capabilities and will require a transformation in the global political environment within which Iran’s nuclear program can be satisfactorily addressed.

This commentary was originally posted here. Read more on this article...

Iran's Majles Confirms All Three of Ahmadinejad’s Ministerial Candidates

Farideh Farhi

What a strange pandemonium the confirmation hearings for Ahmadinejad’s three proposed candidates for the ministries of interior, economy and finance, and transportation turned out to be. Despite vociferous opposition to two of the candidates, all three were finally confirmed in a session publicly described by one deputy as “Isfahan’s Monday Bazaar” for its lack of order. Left unanswered are questions about what happened, Larijani’s leadership capabilities in maintaining some sort of Majles decorum, and whether the results were influenced by the public announcemnt of Ayatollah’s Khamenei’s preferences.

Majles rejection of ministerial candidates is not unheard of in the Iran. In fact, four of Ahmadinejad’s initial ministers were rejected when he first became president. But it is the combination of public charges made and the eventual confirmation that makes this Majles fracas unusual.

The day began with literally no one speaking in opposition to the proposed candidate for the Ministry of Economy and Finance(217 out 271 eventually supported his candidacy), which is strange given the controversy that surrounds Ahmadinejad’s Economic Transformation Plan. But the candidate’s promise to not rattle the foreign exchange market by increasing the value of Iranian Rial, as was proposed by the previous ministerial candidate, may have calmed some nerves. Majles deputies may have also resigned themselves to the fact that less than a year prior to a presidential election is no time to make a fuss over economic policies that they have very little impact on anyway.

But the debates, which as all Majles proceedings were aired live on the Iranian radio, turned patently bizarre with the discussion over the candidate for the Interior Ministry, Ali Kordan. First the attempt by several conservative deputies to close the session, so that opposition to his candidacy could be voiced frankly, was rejected by Majles Speaker Larijani who was then angrily accused by well-known conservative deputies, such as Ahmad Tavakoli and Elias Naderan, of going against the rules and making decisions on his own.

Then several other conservative deputies held little back and effectively accused Kordan of being a charlatan; that is, someone who has lied about his honorary doctorate degree from Oxford (he has none), received salary from the government on the basis of that degree, and taught law at the university level with a mere associate degree. One conservative deputy and long-standing Ahmadinejad supporter even went so far as to suggest that Kordan “believes that our system is a leader-based system and does not believe in elections,” a serious accusation against a person who is expected to head the ministry in charge of conducting elections. Another conservative deputy identified Kordan as extremely political and partisan: “even if we consider him to be a principlist, he is partial toward a specific group and this is not right for the country.” He went on to say, “I do not say he is corrupt but he may have made mistakes.”

Despite the public airing of all this dirty laundry by very conservative deputies, Kordan, who was previously Larijani’s deputy at Iran’s radio and television broadcasting, was approved by a vote of 169 out of 271 present. It is really hard for me to explain what happened. If the vote was the result of a pre-arranged compromise between Larijani and Ahmadinejad, after the latter’s previous candidates were deemed unable to get through Majles, then why allow the public airing of such damning charges?

Now, it is possible that some deputies thought that it is counter-productive to keep a government without effective ministers for too long and voted on that basis. Perhaps others, as suggested by a couple of conservative websites, were moved by Ahmadinejad’s words relaying Ayatollah Khamenei’s support for Kordan. Still the lack of synchrony between the charges aired and the final vote is bound to cast a pall on Larijani who proved quite inept in controlling his own conservative flank and Ayatollah Khamenei who seemed unable to stay above the fray and was once again dragged into a partisan fight solidly, at least in appearance, on the side of Ahmadinejad, in this case for a minister with serious questions about his honesty.

The only winner, not surprisingly, may be Ahmadinejad. I cannot really remember a public official in Iran ever quoting the leader in support of a candidate as bluntly as Ahmadinejad did in today’s session. There are of course always rumors about who Khamenei supports but the direct reference to his support led at least one member of the parliament to say that he was moved to give support because of what Ahmadienjad said.

At this point, whether Ahmadinejad had the support of Ayatollah Khamenei or not may be irrelevant. His blunt approach is actually quite brilliant politically and will be of great use to him as he runs for his second term as president in June 2008. It is convincing others that he has Khamenei’s support, if not he would not speak in such direct terms.

Whether Ayatollah Khamenei will remain silent on this blatant use of his name for political purposes is yet to be seen. But the editorial by hard-line Hossein Shariatmadari of Kayhan suggests that Ahmadinejad's move did not go unnoticed and even some of his avid supporters have been taken aback. In his editorial, Shariatmadari, based on "reliable and detailed information," accuses Ahmadinejad of distorting Khamenei's words of not objecting to the nominations and turning it into a statement of support. More importantly, he chastizes him for using the leader for political purposes. This verbal distortion, Shariatmadari suggests, questions the legality of the vote taken and necessitates a re-vote!

It could be that Ahmadinejad just went one step too far but unless a re-vote is actually in the cards, one has to give this round to Ahmadinejad, yet again. Read more on this article...

Iran’s Eighth Majles Faces Its First Real Test

Farideh Farhi

In the parliamentary elections that took place in March 2008, the core issue was not whether reformists or conservatives would win – a conservative win was presumed - but whether the new elected Eighth Majles can act in a more effective manner in the face of an executive branch that had learned to play fast and loose with the constitutional requirements of checks and balances, particularly in the budget process where Iran's Parliament has traditionally played an important oversight role.

The previous Seventh Majles, after its first year, had become accused of being weak, repeatedly consenting to Ahmadinejad’s expansionary economic policies and raiding of the oil fund despite qualms and public criticisms, and closing its eyes to the executive branches numerous violations in the implementation of passed legislations. Last year, for instance, Ahmadinejad withdrew $1.2bl from the oil fund for food imports despite Majles’ explicit rejection as a budgetary line item and later went on to say in a television interview that he had received approval from Ayatollah Khamenei to do so.

So, when Ali Larijani was unanimously elected as the speaker of the new Majles, handily beating out the previous speaker, Gholamali Haddad Adel, most observers presumed that his leadership was itself a signal that the era of Majles submission was over, despite hints of a backroom deal between Ahmadinejad supporters and Larijani’s more traditional conservative allies. Larijani had resigned his post as Iran’s nuclear negotiator in an open conflict with Ahmadinejad and this singular act provided the hope for a changed environment in the new Majles when he was elected as speaker

The new Majles has not done much since its convening in late June because it has been mostly been in summer recess. With its return to session, however, the coming week will provide a good testing ground for assessing whether such an expectation was justified. The occasion for this is the confirmation process for three vacant ministries.

Currently there are three ministries – Economy and Finance, Interior, and Transportation - that are being run by caretakers after the firing or resignation of their ministers. The use of caretakers has been Ahmadinejad’s favorite instrument in going around the Majles regarding appointments for which he thinks he will have a hard time receiving approval. But Article 135 of the Iranian constitution is quite clear that the president can only appoint a caretaker for a maximum period of three months.

This is something Ahmadinejad did not do for the all important Ministry of Economy and Finance (and the deadline for the Ministry of Interior is approaching) essentially because he was worried that his caretaker appointee, Hossein Samsami - a rather young Najaf-born economics professor with not much experience in running a government bureaucracy - was not going to be approved by a parliament particularly worried about his newly touted Economic Transformation Plan; a plan whose details have yet to be spelled out beyond the idea of some sort of direct cash payments to the needy as a substitute for untargeted subsidies. A similar situation was brewing at the Interior Ministry where the caretaker, Mehdi Hashemi, is someone whose candidacy for minister of welfare was rejected by the parliament when Ahmadinejad first became president.

Parliamentary complains about the delay was temporarily solved last week by an intervention by Ayatollah Khamenei in the form of a publicly announced but yet unpublished “state order.” Through this order the leader allowed Ahmadinejad to extend the 3-month limit for the Economy and Finance Ministry. What was initially not clear was whether this order extended Samsami’s stay until Majles came back from summer recess (which was last Sunday), as maintained by Majles members, or another three months as claimed by Ahmadinejad’s liaison to Majles.

But it didn’t take long to become clear that support for a longer period and continued constitutional violation was not forthcoming and two days after deputies came back from summer recess, Ahmadinejad hastily introduced his three ministers. Interestingly, though, only the least controversial caretaker, for the Transportation Ministry, was offered as a candidate. For the other two ministries, Economy and Interior, Ahmadinejad was effectively forced to withdraw the names of the caretakers and offer two other candidates.

In the case of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, this withdrawal came after Samsami had a disastrous meeting with the members of the parliament which lasted only 20 minutes. In the case of the Interior Ministry, the withdrawal came after the caretaker had publicly announced that he will probably be the candidate! So there is no doubt that the parliament did manage a pushback.

And despite the last minute changes, Ahmadinejad’s troubles with getting his candidates approved may still not be over. Even Ruhollah Hosseinian, a well-known hard-line deputy from Tehran, is on record saying that he was shocked to hear the names of the candidates and did not see any of them as being effective.

Hosseinian does have a point. Samsami’s replacement is Seyyed Shamseddin Hosseini who seems even more inexperienced in the running of a bureaucracy. His latest portfolio is Secretary of the Working Group for Economic Transformation, which is more of a consultative position. Majles should have at least as much trouble with Hosseini as it did with Samsami unless a backroom deal has been made between Speaker Larijani and Ahmadinejad to ignore Hosseini's inexperience for the sake of trying to overcome at least the appearance of disarray that is plaguing Ahmadinejad’s economic agenda and team. The number of votes received by Hosseini will be a good test for Larijani’s leadership as well as a marker for the extent to which the new Majles is willing to go beyond talks and complains and actually act differently from the previous parliament.

Also to be watched is the vote for Ali Kordan, the candidate for the Interior Ministry. The sudden choice of Kordan is actually quite strange. His name gained prominence last October as someone who might be nominated the head the Petroleum Ministry but, given his low chances of approval, he was never introduced. Instead, despite his lack of experience in the oil industry, he was imposed on the newly approved Petroleum Minister, Gholamhossein Nozari, as his first deputy for human resources and management with rumors abound that he was really the one running the ministry. But Rajanews, which is close to Ahmadinejad, is reporting that his choice was a compromise because he is a friend of Larijani (Kordan was Larijani’s deputy both at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance as well as Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

We shall have to see if there is any truth to all these speculations and whether, if there has been some sort of backroom deal between Larijani and Ahmadienjad, the rest of Majles will agree to the deal. What is not speculation is the reality of Ahmadienjad working with a very limited pool of trusted appointees who are acceptable to both him and the Parliament. What has also been manifestly on display is the dysfunctional relationship Ahmadinejad has developed with the rest of the Iranian political system.

He was able to bully the Seventh Majles by either imposing his will on it or ignoring its legislative dictates on occasions it decided to stand against him. He managed to do it because he has essentially maintained, with quite a bit of righteousness, that there is really no other institution besides the office of the supreme leader that can prevent him from the routine ignoring of the constitutional mechanisms for legislative action and oversight.

Given his brazen attitude, even if the makeup of the new parliament translates into a stronger stance against Ahmadinejad, it will ultimately be Ayatollah Khamenei’s public and explicit orders that will allow Majles' stronger stance to place effective limits on Ahmadinejad’s policies and behavior. Given the record of the past three years, whether he chooses to do so is not at all clear. But this must not be a comfortable position for the supreme leader more used to subtle nudging and ambiguity as a means to maintain the appearance of his office staying above the partisan fray. Read more on this article...

Tehran’s Reaction to Military Threats

Farideh Farhi

Tehran has always been quite strident in its response to the possibility of US or Israeli attack, either identifying periodic rise of reports of imminent attack as part and parcel of “psychological warfare” to intimidate the Iranian leadership into accepting restrictions on its nuclear program (in the words of Iran’s well-known hard-line editor of Kayhan daily, Hossein Shariatmadari, to make Iran “commit suicide out of the fear of death”) or generally asserting Iran’s capability to respond to military attacks in ways that would harm the initiators of such attacks. The first sentiment was once again reiterated by Ali Larijani, Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator and current speaker of the parliament, who pointed out yesterday the routine nature of complementing the “carrot” that Tehran was just offered through the 5+1 package of incentives with the threat of “stick.”

But yesterday’s long interview with General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps (IRGC), with Jam-e Jam daily is noteworthy not because of his confirmation of Tehran’s determination to react to attacks but for the details he reveals regarding the current state of thinking in Tehran about the US and Israeli capabilities, and Iran’s assessment and preparation for such an attack.

The wire services have generally picked up Jafari’s counter-threats regarding what Iran would do in case of an attack by the United States (including missile attacks against Israel, chocking off the Hormuz Straight, and reliance on ideological assets throughout the Middle East). Still quite a bit of nuance has been left out regarding his thinking.

First and foremost are his thoughts about the possibility of US or Israeli attack. On this issue, Jafari deviates from the usual pronouncements and suggests that the next few months are indeed dangerous months in which the threat of military action against Iran has been enhanced by the “impasse” facing the United States. This is how he explains it:

“The analysis of political, security, and defense experts is that that the United States is in a special situation and, because of this, it is trying to implement its threats. If the conditions are really there and it finds an opportunity and it has confidence that its action will at least have a percentage of success, it will implement its threat… The limited amount of time that Bush has until the end of his presidency and also the Republican hopelessness regarding the victory of their candidate have created conditions that have led us at present to take the possibility of a military attack in comparison to other junctures more seriously. Of course, I don’t want to say that military action is certain. But in comparison to the past, it seems that the enemy sees one of the ways of exiting the impasse facing it to be military action.”

The focus on political conditions in the United States is further emphasized in Jafari’s rejection of Israel as the source of military action: “We believe that Israel is much smaller to be able to take action against the Islamic Republic alone. Hence, the axis of threats is the United States. However, this country [the U.S.] will undoubtedly benefit from the Zionist regime’s support.” He further states that this same point - that the US cannot attack Iran without Israeli support – “because of the Zionist regime very high vulnerabilities’ is a deterrent factor.”

The point made is that Iran perceives the difficulties of concealing the Israeli support for the US action combined with Israeli vulnerabilities, both because of its lack of strategic depth as well as “Iran’s external capabilities” in harming Israeli interests, as important deterrent to US military action against Iran (along with other deterrents, including the U.S.’ own particular vulnerability caused by the extensive presence of its forces in the region).

But if military action does come, then Iran’s response will be quick: “We cannot reveal the kind of action we will take. But it can be said that we see our time frame for response to be very short; this is because we see the extent of our enemy’s action to be limited and this limited extent forces us in a short period of time to give swift, decisive, and blunt responses so that they will have impact.” He later adds “unimaginable” to the list of adjectives describing the response.

Bravado and bluster aside, the point made by Jafari directly questions the argument laid out in a recent report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) that, given Tehran’s past moves and history, it will probably employ restraint and rely on a "delayed asymmetric response in a distant theater of operations (using proxies or terrorist surrogates)." Jafari is explicit in this interview that Iran will respond immediately and this immediate and blunt response, presumably begging the subsequent possibility of immediate escalation and further commitment on the part of American forces, must be taken into account in the American calculations of a limited aerial strike against nuclear facilities and/or IRGC facilities.

In short, Jafari is very clear that Tehran is ready to match the Bush Administration’s words and deeds if need arises, even at a time when the Iranian government is taking the possibility of a military attack more seriously than before. Now, to me, this is truly a scary dynamic for both countries as well as the region as a whole.

I am of course still counting or hoping that sanity will prevail in Washington. While some may explain away the US invasion of Iraq as a tragic mistake or miscalculation, nothing short of madness can account for an attack on Iran even if political expediency turns out to be the reason for some to contemplate the attack. Read more on this article...

Who is Making Tehran’s Iraq Policy?

Farideh Farhi

I have to admit that I am quite mystified by the never-ending search for finding the one person that “really” makes policy in Iran. The latest example of this search can be found in David Ignatius’s Washington Post column in which we are informed that it is really not the “bombastic” Ahmadinejad but the “soft-spoken” commander of the Qods Force of Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps (IRGC), Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, “who plays a decisive role in his nation's confrontation with the United States.” Soleimani’s name has in fact been in the news for a while because of his reported role in brokering the cease-fire that restored calm in Basra in March.

Perhaps it is the history of the United States’ dealings with most Middle Eastern countries (Israel and Turkey excepted) and the tradition or habit of dealing with one man as the ultimate decision maker that creates the hope or aspiration to find the one person that holds the key to Iran’s policy making process. Or perhaps it is the tendency, when in doubt or short evidence, to go with the fad of the moment.

I understand that it is now in vogue to talk about the IRGC in general and the Qods Force as the THE power in Iran (with consequential impact throughout the Middle East). I have not found this argument to be very convincing. My take continues to be that the military in Iran has traditionally been and continues to be under civilian control, even if the Guards hierarchy as well as its individual members have and do play an important role in Iranian politics. The birth of the Islamic Republic was inextricably linked to the Iran-Iraq War and as such it should not be surprisingly to anyone that the body and individuals that played important roles in that war continue to be influential. Ironically, to my mind, the comparable country in this regard has always been Israel, another Middle Eastern political system born and bred in war.

In any case, even if there has been a rise in the power of hard-line IRGC men, I find the focus on one individual quite unpersuasive, particularly since the sources that have talked about Soleimani’s key role in Iran are all from outside of Iran (in the case of Ignatius' piece, the source is one “Arab who meets regularly with Soleimani”).

This is not to say that someone like Soleimani has no influence in Iran's decision making process. From what I understand, although I cannot be sure, Soleimani sits in the committee for regional affairs of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council-- consisting of him as well as the chief of intelligence of IRGC, the deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs (who also heads the Foreign Ministry's Iraq Desk), Mohammd Reza Baqer, a team of experts on Iranian-Arab relations and Iran's ambassadors to Arab countries (Hassan Kazemi-Qomi in the case of Iraq). Focusing in particular on developments in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories, the task of this committee is to advise on the appropriate policies to be pursued. But the final decision makers are civilians (some well known because of their institutional positions and others like the head of supreme leader Khamenei's security office, the cleric Asghar Hejazi or his chief of staff Mohammad Golpayegani - also a cleric - wielding less publicized influence).

Furthermore, regarding Iran’s Iraq policy, I just can't believe that Soleimani wields more (or for that matter less) influence or has more input in the decision making process than let us say the current head of IRGC, Mohammad Ali (Aziz) Jaafari, who prior to his current position was in charge of setting up IRGC's Strategic Center, a center tasked with drawing up a new command structure and military strategy, preparing the country for the changing regional environment and the kind of foreign military confrontation it may have to face; or Iran’s Iraq ambassador Kazemi Qomi, reportedly himself a former Qods force member.

These key individuals and many others must be in constant interaction to set and reassess policies that are partially shaped by a long-term interest in a relatively calm Iraq that maintains close political, economic, and security relations with Iran and also developed in reaction to Iraq’s complex domestic dynamics and US plans for that country.

Within this context one does not need to search for a scheming and all powerful individual like Soleimani to figure out that the Iranian leadership as a whole, in all its contentious variety, would have to be engaged in constant conversation and planning (and at times improvisation) about how to stunt plans that would make the US military presence in Iraq permanent or make that country a launching pad for an attack on Iran (rejection of this possibility was by the way precisely the assurance Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was repeatedly giving Iranian leaders in his current visit to Tehran).

One also doesn’t have to be a genius to guess that, hunkered down in a security and paranoid mode due to the escalating economic and political pressures (not to mention military threats) faced in the past couple of years, the Iranian policy makers are trying very hard to convince the Bush Administration, from my point of view hopefully successfully, that an attack on Iran will be costly. Read more on this article...

The Strange Tale of Shiraz Explosion

Farideh Farhi

There are times that trying to make sense of the behavior of the Iranian government is very hard and the way it has handled the Shiraz explosion is one of them. The government initially rejected that it was an act of terrorism but has now arrested a number of people and is suggesting that the United States gave support to them.

This turnabout could of course be explained by government opportunism (an attempted tit for tat for the US charges of terrorism hurled against Iran); except for the fact the initial story of the explosion being an accident was also suspect. So the question of why the Iranian government did not capitalize on the incident at the time it occurred and why now is a relevant one.

The explosion occurred in a crowded religious center in the southern city of Shiraz on April 13, ultimately killing 14 people and injuring about 200 people, mostly young. People, as usual, had gathered to listen to the sermons of a popular local preacher known for his appeal to the youth as well as his anti-Baha’i and anti- Wahabi stance. (video of the moment of explosion can be found here and it is an interesting one to watch for people who only see the Iranian youth as western-oriented and anti-government.

The incident received some attention in the western media but not much because as I said above when it did occur the government immediately announced it to be an accident caused by leftover munitions that were on display in the Mosque or a building next to the mosques as part of an exhibition commemorating Iran's 1980-1988 war against Iraq. This immediate judgment was at the time contested publicly by the preacher who was there giving sermons but his words were essentially ignored, perhaps even hushed.

When explosions like this happens in Iran (and this was the most serious one in terms of fatalities and injuries since the early years of the revolution), the government is faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, highlighting such incidences can allow the Iranian government to suggest that it is actually a victim and not a perpetrator of terrorism. On the other hand, giving too much attention to them may highlight the opposition to or instability of the Islamic regime in front of those, particularly in the outside world, who are always looking for signs of instability.

The latter considerations were perhaps given more attention in April because at the time of the explosion the city of Shiraz was getting ready for a visit by the supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Hence any hint of instability or anti-government activity might have been seen as tied to his visit. Additionally there must have been concerns about publicly contemplating the possibility that the explosion was the work of Wahabi radicals, something Iran has largely not experienced so far and any hint of it will be quite worrisome to the population as a whole.

But almost a month after the incident, the government announced that the incident was indeed an explosion but one set off by an “anti-revolutionary group” that had also plans to bomb Tehran’s book fair, Russian Consulate in the Gilan Province, oil pipelines in the south, and several other educational, religious, and scientific centers. The government also claimed that the immediate identification of the explosion as an incident was an intentional act in order to mislead the perpetrators; an act that the government claims proved useful and led to the arrest of a “network” of 12 people (and death of one in an attempted arrest).

Although the government did not identify the anti-revolutionary group, BBC Persian is suggesting that the characteristics mentioned match those of Monarchy Association of Iran, an association whose leader Foroud Fouladvand in the past resided in north London and initially issued a statement taking responsibility for the explosion(although it denies any connection to the people arrested). The statement reportedly identifies the target of the bombing as “active basiji individuals, Zeinab sisters, and their leaders… who in recent years have actively participated in the forceful suppression of our youth and women, particularly civil resistors.”

If this is so, it is not clear why the Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss charge d’affaires (the Swiss embassy represents US interests in Iran) to relay its objection regarding the “free activities of a terrorist and anti-revolutionary group in the United States,” unless the Iranian government is claiming US support of Fouladvand or tying him to other monarchist groups in the U.S. According the Foreign Ministry spokesman, documents were passed along that show that an opposition group, supported financially by the United States, has publicly taken responsibility for the attack. And on this basis the government of Iran is seeking the extradition of the leaders of this group. Added to the confusion are statements made by the Iran’s prosecutor general Dorri Najafabadi that suggest that those arrested received direction from Israel via Canada.

I seriously doubt that the Iranian objections will get anywhere in Washington or elsewhere. But it may be that the Iranian government has decided that the public statement taking responsibility for an attack that killed 14 people and injured many more provides it with enough leverage to expose what it considers American double standards or hypocrisy regarding terrorism. Read more on this article...