It’s hard to see through the dust clouds and make sense of the present turmoil inside Iran, but a number of data points are worth considering. This is NOT an incipient color revolution, a democrats vs. dictators, moderates vs. neanderthals, good guys vs. bad guys contest. It is a nasty fight among sections of the mullahcracy that has had the unintended consequence of drawing out the demoralized, enraged, and hopeless youth of Tehran.
1) Hossein Moussavi was the candidate sponsored by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani
2) Rafsanjani is one of the fathers of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. According to Con Coughlin’s recent book Khomeini’s Ghost (as reviewed by Amir Taheri), ”Khomeini personally ordered the launch of the nuclear program after some of his commanders, backed by Hashemi Rafsanjani, a businessman-cum-mullah who acted as the ayatollah’s advisor at the time, argued that they needed the bomb to win the war against Iraq as the first phase of a grand plan to conquer the Middle East.” On May 30 a Rafsanjani-linked institute attacked Ahmadinejad, alleging that “Ahmadinejad has played down his predecessor’s role in the development of the country’s nuclear program, which was launched during Rafsanjani’s term in the 1980s.” In other words, the complaint of the Moussavi camp is that Ahmadinejad doesn’t give them enough credit for having initiated the nuclear weapons program.
3) Some Iranian commentators believe that Moussavi will take a harder line against the US, while Ahmadinejad is in danger of being “duped” by the US. Mahan Abedin wrote in the Asia Times May 28:
But a more long-term challenge for Mousavi is how to deal with the threat of US President Barack Obama and his deceptive strategy of engagement. It is a damning indictment of Ahmadinejad’s personality (if not of aspects of his foreign policy) that he seeks a face-to-face meeting with Obama, a move that would spectacularly undermine the Islamic Republic’s long-standing policy of non-engagement with the United States.
More broadly, Mousavi has the potential to emerge as a true reformer in the long term, thereby fulfilling the empty promises of former president Khatami. His uncharismatic style notwithstanding, Mousavi’s ability to appeal to every key constituency in Iranian society bodes well for the future. But he will need to present a strong relationship – and be prepared to alienate some people – lest he attract the same type of supporters that Khatami did; namely elements who are more interested in bringing down the Islamic Republic than gradually reforming it according to set of rational and consensual objectives.
Abedin portrays Moussavi as the candidate of the middle class, which has suffered under Ahmadinejad’s populist, subsidy-driven economic management.
4) Ahmadinejad ran as the anti-fraud candidate, offering to make public the name of Iranians who had defrauded the state. Moussavi warned that making the names public would create “economic insecurity.” Rafsanjani is the biggest swindler in Iran, and the country’s richest man.
5) Some people in the region see Ahmadinejad as a revolutionary seeking to empower the masses, against Rafsanjani, the leader of the traditional mullahs. In today’s Asia Times, M.K. Bhadrakumar, a former Indian ambassador to Turkey, writes:
If Rafsanjani’s putsch succeeds, Iran would at best bear resemblance to a decadent outpost of the “pro-West” Persian Gulf. Would a dubious regime be durable? More important, is it what Obama wishes to see as the destiny of the Iranian people? The Arab street is also watching. Iran is an exception in the Muslim world where people have been empowered. Iran’s multitudes of poor, who form Ahmadinejad’s support base, detest the corrupt, venal clerical establishment. They don’t even hide their visceral hatred of the Rafsanjani family.
Alas, the political class in Washington is clueless about the Byzantine world of Iranian clergy. Egged on by the Israeli lobby, it is obsessed with “regime change”. The temptation will be to engineer a “color revolution”. But the consequence will be far worse than what obtains in Ukraine. Iran is a regional power and the debris will fall all over. The US today has neither the clout nor the stamina to stem the lava flow of a volcanic eruption triggered by a color revolution that may spill over Iran’s borders.
Bhadrakumar is a bit off the rails here, but in essence he is saying something similar to what I argued in my “Spengler” column earlier this week: that the Iranian election ultimately is about Iran’s regional role with respect to Iraqi, Pakistani and other Shia.
6) Iran is a society suffering from terminal pathologies, including the fastest decline in fertility ever measured, and the highest rates of drug addiction and prostitution in the world.
America’s interest does not lie in a victory by Moussavi or Adhmadinejad. There is no good outcome for Iran, no way to get there from here. Seeking stability makes America a fixed target; the next best thing is instability among our enemies, and that is what we should promote, silently, unpredictably, and ruthlessly.
June 19th, 2009 |
One of the things that middle class Iranians resent the most about Ahmadinejad, pointed out recently in an essay by Amir Taheri, is that he has turned Iran during the last 4 years into an imitation of an Arab state. He has made the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into one of Iran’s most important issues, even though most Iranians do not care about it. He has elevated the success of Hezbollah to greater importance than Iran’s social and economic development, an ordering of priorities not shared by most Iranians.
Distracting one’s citizenry from internal corruption, mismanagement and brutality, with foreign adventures and engineered crises is precisely the policy platform pursued for most of the last 60 years by almost all Arab dictatorships? What do they have to show for it? Military failure on the battlefield and social/economic decay internally combined with brutal suppression of their own citizens.
Iran’s middle class does not want its country to be like an Arab country. Taheri makes the point that historically Iranians have had better relations with Jews, internal and external to Iran, than their Arab and Babylonian neighbors to the West. Ahmadinejad is an embarrassment to Iran’s sophisticated urban middle class as well as the main obstacle preventing Iran from pursuing a course of development that will make it a successful, modern state. Regardless of what internal scheming goes on between the mullahs, it’s hard to see how a regime that seems hell-bent on imitating the failed Arab model is going to survive in Iran.
June 19th, 2009 |
Lovely. Thank you, David. First coherent article I’ve read on the subject. And the conclusion is vintage “Spengler,” right on the money.
June 19th, 2009 |
The west’s foreign policy in Iran should be destabilization. The longer they go at it, the better for the rest of the world, including the Middle East. If you notice, they’re way too busy to cause any additional mischief.
June 19th, 2009 |
Thanks, Spengler (when it comes to Iran, you’ll alawys be “Spengler” to me).
Caroline Glick has an interesting take, claiming a rare win-win opportunity for Israel (and qouting Pepe Escobar of AToL!):
[url=http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0609/glick061909.php3] “Israel’s Rare Opportunity”[/url]
. . .
The fact of the matter is that with each passing day, Mousavi’s personal views and interests are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Whether he realized it or not, Mousavi was transformed last Friday night. When Khamenei embraced the obviously falsified official election results as a “divine victory” for Ahmadinejad, Mousavi was widely expected by Western observers to accept the dictator’s verdict. When instead Mousavi sided with his own supporters who took to the streets to oppose their disenfranchisement, Mousavi became a revolutionary. Whether he had planned to do so or not, a week ago Mousavi became an enemy of the regime.
The significance of Mousavi’s decision could not be more profound. As Michael Ledeen from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies wrote, last Friday night Mousavi tied his personal survival to the success of the protesters — and pitted his life against Khamenei’s. In Ledeen’s words, “Both Khamenei and Mousavi — the two opposed icons of the moment, at least — know that they will either win or die.”
For their part, by the end of this week, the protesters themselves had been transformed. If last week they were simply angry that they had been ignored, by Thursday they had become a revolutionary force apparently dedicated to the overthrow of the regime. This was made clear by a list of demands circulating among the protesters on Wednesday. As Pepe Escobar reported in Thursday’s Asia Times, the protesters demands include Khamenei’s removal from power, the dissolution of the secret police, the reform of the constitution under anti-regime Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri who has been living under house arrest for the past twelve years, and the installation of Mousavi as president. These demands make clear where the protesters are leading. They are leading to the overthrow of one of the most heinous regimes on the face of the earth and its replacement by a liberal democracy.
As far as Israel is concerned, this is a win-win situation. If the protesters successfully overthrow the regime, they will have neutralized the greatest security threat facing the Jewish state. And if they fail, Israel will still probably be better off than it is today. For if the mullahs violently repress the pro-democracy dissidents, the Obama administration will be hard-pressed to legitimize their blood bath by embracing them as negotiating partners.
. . .
June 19th, 2009 |
Thanks, Spengler (when it comes to Iran, you’ll always be Spengler to me).
Caroline Glick has an interesting take on this in a Jewish World Review piece today, “Israel’s Rare Opportunity”, which in part relies on reportage from Pepe Escobar at Asia Times Online.
June 19th, 2009 |
Sir, your final sentence should be adopted as the West’s mantra. “Instability to our enemies” should be tattooed to our foreheads and run as crawlers on our TV screens 24/7 for the next 20 years. Thank you for such clarity and conciseness.
June 19th, 2009 |
Ellen:
Good point. Had Iran escaped Arabization and Islamification of its culture, it would have been a France or Germany on the world stage. A Zoroastrian remnant — the Parsees [Persians] — escaped the Arab conquest to Hindustan, and are the most economically succesful group per capita on the planet, not for nothing known as the Jews of India. Instead The Islamic Republic of Iran is a Persian version of Saudi Arabia, a tribe with a flag. The Iranian mullahs are the world-class poster boys for Arabo-Muslim Stockholm Syndrome, a very deadly disease that will inexorably result in the complete annihilation of the rich pre-Islamic Persian culture and what is still left of the once-advanced Persian Civilization, if it is not reversed, and soon.
So, yes, Spengler is right on the money: “imitating the failed Arab model” is the road to national self-destruction. But Persian Twelver Shi’ites love death even more than Sunni Arabs, so this is a tough one to call.
June 19th, 2009 |
We are in a situation of “a plague on both your houses”.
As to the debris falling, well I am all for a dismemberment of Iran based on ethnicities…
June 19th, 2009 |
Too bad Obama, unlike the shrewd Eisenhower, lacks the cojones to allow the CIA to exploit this unstable situation. Obama, given his naive and moralistic stance, will most probably crouch in righteous splendor watching the parade go by.
We may hope that Netanyahu will give the Mossad some scope here.
June 20th, 2009 |
Thanks, David.
This answers a lot of questions. Most of what I have heard in the mainstream has only raised more questions in my mind. Seems that place is a real mess over there.
Now my only question is how does the US
“… promote, silently, unpredictably, and ruthlessly…” the instability?
Is this a call for Covert Operations, or something more passive? And how would such a policy be expected to derive from a man like Obama?
June 21st, 2009 |
[...] segundo motivo por el cual los clérigos iraníes están dispuestos a llegar tan lejos es una pura y simple lucha de poder. Ahmadineyad llegó al poder enarbolando la bandera de la lucha contra la corrupción, y prometió [...]
June 21st, 2009 |
David,
Although there may be little there to make one prefer Mousavi to Ahmadinejad, it is premature to assume that’s all the June 12th struggle is or will be about. We could very well see a profound upheaval in Iranian society (both Persians and minority groups), and while much of what might happen may be bad, some of it may be good.
June 23rd, 2009 |
America’s interest does not lie in a victory by Moussavi or Adhmadinejad. There is no good outcome for Iran, no way to get there from here.
This is why the U.S. should just stay out of it. There is no benefit for us to involve ourselves in the affairs of Iran.
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