| Ander Nieuws week 34 / nieuwe oorlog 2009 |
The National (VAE)
August 1, 2009
Tony Karon
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be confirmed as the president of Iran by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday. Almost two months since his disputed victory in the presidential election, his political fate – and Iran's – remains remarkably unsettled.
Few would have predicted that protesters would still be willing to take to the streets after Mr Ahmadinejad's allies the Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia had made short work of brutally clearing the streets of the hundreds of thousands who cried fraud on the streets in the days following the poll. Nor would anyone have predicted that senior figures in the regime would still be willing to publicly question the election outcome, and the subsequent conduct of the security forces, so long after Mr Khamenei had ordered them to endorse Mr Ahmadinejad's victory, declaring himself a supporter of the president and repeatedly warning the Islamic Republic's clerical and political elite to accept his verdict or face dire consequences.
And who would have dared predict that the supreme leader would find himself in a very open clash of wills with the man for whom he had taken considerable political risk to support, eschewing his neutrality? Yet, all of last week Tehran was buzzing over what to make of the fact that Mr Ahmadinejad had not only very publicly dragged his heels in responding to Mr Khamenei's order to sack the president's chosen deputy Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei; he had then immediately named Mr Mashaei as his chief of staff, sending an unmistakable message of contempt for the supreme leader's edict. He followed that up by sacking the powerful conservative intelligence minister, who had been consulting with Mr Khamenei over the president's head. There may be more cabinet resignations and dismissals to come.
If anything, the regime looks more unstable now than it did in the days after the election when the streets rocked with the sound of protests. And in a traditional Shiite Arba'een this week, the commemoration marking the 40th day of mourning for Neda Soltan – whose murder during a street demonstration against the election result was seen on TV and computer screens all over the world – anger was not only directed at the election result but also at the crackdown that has followed.
That presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, neither of whom has accepted the election result, showed up at Thursday's Arba'een event was another indication of the regime's failure to close ranks around Mr Ahmadinejad. Not only have senior political and clerical figures – many of the pillars of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, such as the former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani – continued to refuse to endorse the election result, they have openly challenged Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr Khamenei to release those detained in the crackdown.
Pressure on Mr Ahmadinejad from conservatives continued to mount last week, as Tehran's conservative mayor Mohammed Qalibaf used the city council as a platform for the mother of a boy killed in police custody to tell her story, implicating the security forces in the sort of thuggery for which the Shah's security police were notorious. And the parliament speaker, an ally of Mr Khamenei, Ali Larijani promised a parliamentary inquiry into the killings and abuse of those in police custody.
The growing dissent among conservative clerics and the showdown between Mr Khamenei and Mr Ahmadinejad may be driven by a perception that the Revolutionary Guards, Mr Ahmadinejad's key political base, were usurping the authority of traditional power centres such as the clergy and the elected bodies of government.
Mr Ahmadinejad approaches his second term amid an unprecedented level of turmoil within the corridors of power in Tehran. Getting his cabinet approved by parliament in which he does not command a majority of legislators will bring a new round of headaches for the president. But help could be on the way, from an unexpected quarter.
The Obama Administration has begun to signal that if Iran hasn't responded positively to its offer of negotiations over the nuclear question by mid September when the UN General Assembly convenes, Washington will move to implement what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls "crippling action" against Iran. They're unlikely to get Chinese and Russian assent for further UN Security Council sanctions, but the US is moving towards using its commercial and financial muscle to force third-country corporations to cut ties with Iran that enable it to trade internationally. The prime goal of these US sanctions is choking off the gasoline imports on which the Iranian economy depends because of its own limited refining capacity. Companies in Europe, India and elsewhere that enable this trade will be targeted for sanctions unless they cut off gasoline supplies to Iran. At the same time, the US is signalling that it's urging the Israelis to wait for diplomacy to play out before they launch military strikes, subtly flicking if not quite rattling a sabre.
Yet, there's a consensus across the political spectrum that Iran is simply not in a position to engage in nuclear talks right now, given the turmoil within the regime. And Washington's own opening demands are still stuck in the Bush era, insisting that Iran forego the right to enrich uranium – a position rejected by all the factions in Iran. It's not hard to see, though, that if this autumn Iran suddenly finds itself facing gasoline sanctions and sabre rattling from Israel, behind demands that it surrender what it sees as its nuclear rights, many of those who are currently challenging Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr Khamenei will change their stance if they perceive the Islamic Republic under external threat. The "crippling action" Mrs Clinton now threatens may finally achieve what Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr Khamenei have thus far failed to do – persuade the key factions of the opposition to close ranks behind the regime.
Tony Karon is a New York-based blogger and analyst who blogs at rootlesscosmopolitan.com
© Copyright of Abu Dhabi Media Company PJSC.
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| Ander Nieuws week 34 / nieuwe oorlog 2009 |