- (june 2009)
"Marg bar diktator!"
"Marg bar diktator!" ("death to the dictator") is the unifying cry around
Iran these days. As usual, the West may be missing the message. Many in the
West insist that real power lies with the
"supreme leader", ayatollah Ali Khamenei, because that's what the Iranian
constitution says: the president is supposed to be only a figurehead.
In the Middle East the prevalent view is different, though. Russia and China
too seem to treat the president of Iran as the real leader of the nation.
The West may be stuck with a traditional view of the "Islamic" republic
that is no longer current.
First of all, there is little question that the 2009 elections were rigged.
There is evidence that even the 2005 elections were rigged, although
Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad might have won a lot of votes (if not the outright majority)
of the 2005 runoff. The evidence that he did not win in 2009 is overwhelming
though, starting from the fact that he is not asking anyone to recount. Had
he really won, he would go out of his way to ask independent observers to
recount all the votes. The news media hailed his election even before people
had finished voting, which is odd enough given that all those million votes
must be counted (and doublechecked) by hand in Iran.
The "supreme leader", ayatollah Ali Khamenei, congratuled the winner before
the election was over, another highly unusual fact.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was given with more votes than any candidate in Iran's
entire history; not bad for a president who is widely unpopular both in
the cities and in most of the countryside.
He won in all 30 provinces, including ethnically diverse places. He won
among all age categories, despite the fact that young people seem to be
overwhelmingly opposed to his rule.
His three rivals were humiliated by losing even in their own hometowns.
In retrospect, one wonders if
ayatollah Ali Khamenei's long congratulatory press release, hailing
Ahmadinejad's "historic victory" even before the votes were counted, was
his own idea of someone else's idea.
It looks more like the gesture of someone who follows order than the gesture
of someone who issues orders.
The West might underestimate how much power the military establishment has
accrued during the Ahmadinejad years. The vast majority of ministers under
Ahmadinejad are former members of the Pasdaran (the "Islamic Guard")
or of the Basij, the
two militias that maintain order in Iran. In theory none of them can disobey
the "supreme leader" but in practice the "troops" take orders from them, not
from Ali Khamenei. The supreme leader can issue a statement that is broadcast
to the entire country, but he does not communicate directly with the ministers
nor with the militias. The ministers, on the other hand, do communicate directly
with the militias on a daily basis.
Order in Iran is maintained by four groups of security forces: the police, the Basij (about three million men strong), the Revolutionary Guards (120,000 strong, but with its own army, navy and airforce, led by Mohammad Ali Jafari, a specialist in guerrilla warfare), and the army, the Artesh (430,000 strong, but these are conscripts who are only in charge of protecting the borders).
The man who is now in charge of persecuting (not just prosecuting) protesters
is Saeed Mortazavi, who is famous mainly for his methods of torture.
If one looks at Iran's hierarchy, there
are now military figures in just about every provincial and central department.
Even much of the Iranian economy is now run by former members or associates of
the army or militias (the Basij, that in theory should take care of chores such
as enforcing the headscarf on women, is directly involved in the lucrative
oil economy). Corporations like Khatam al Anbiya are run by the military
apparatus. The Revolutionary Guard run natural gas fields and railways.
When in 2005 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the elections, power began to shift from
the clerical elite to the military elite. The language of the elite became, in
fact, more and more similar to the language of the Soviet Union and Mao's China
(the revolution vs the counter-revolution) and less and less "Islamic".
The elections themselves are the business of the Ministry of Interior, whose
boss is Sadeq Mahsouli, a general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. All these
military and paramilitary organizations are very close to
Ahmadinejad. If they wanted to rig the elections, they would not need any
approval or help from Khamenei.
There is a chance that Khamenei's power and role has been vastly overrated in
the west, and that in reality Iran is now being run by the military elite,
whose spokesman is Ahmadinejad.
Khamenei might be aware of the vote rigging, or he might honestly not know
what happened.
Much has been said about the inability of the Islamic leaders to reform Iranian
policies. However, there are many influential clerics who favor moderation and
reforms: Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammed Khatami and now Hossein Mousavi.
They all belong to the old guard who should wield a lot of power.
For example, Rafsanjani is the chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which has
the power to call for Khamenei's resignations. They are not just figureheads.
They are cogs in the complex machine of the Iranian constitution. The idea
that Khamenei and a faceless "Supreme Council" can obliterate their will might
be a bit far-fetched.
After all, Khamenei has been traditionally focused on Iranian matters.
It is Ahmadinejad who has upped the ante with his vision of Iran as a
superpower and a leader of the Islamic world.
Khamenei has not displayed the urge to address the Sunni world the way
Ahmadinejad does.
It might not be Khamenei who calls the shots, but the military establishment
lined up behind Ahmadinejad, and therefore it might be this establishment, and
not the ayatollahs, that is incapable of and unwilling to reform itself.
Foreign policy shows a pragmatic approach that is more typical of military
dictatorships than of ideological ones. Iran used to support Islamist movements
(for example, Hezbollah and Hamas), but now is silent about the plight of
the Chechens in Russia and of the Uighurs in China: Iran's priority is to
get weapons and know-how from Russia and China, not to defend the Muslims
in those places.
If this is true, then Iran just underwent a second bloodless revolution, from
Islamic republic to military dictatorship. The Iranian masses to no shout
"down with the clerics" but "down with the dictator". They might be more
accurate than the Western governments.
As the USA retreats from Iraq and is losing in Afghanistan, as the USA has
de facto announced that it won't bomb Iran's nuclear program, and as the USA
president Obama offers to talk despite Iran's arrogance, Ahmadinejad is entitled
to feel that he has won against the USA and that he can
both set the conditions for the future and expand his sphere of influence.
In his mind Iran is not a small and poor regional power: it is a rising empire
that will eventually conquer the world.
The facts might have rewarded his vision, strengthened the hand of the military
and weakened the power of the ayatollahs.
Now there emerge two kinds of opposition to the new military regime. The first
one is, quite simply, the ayatollahs who are faithful to the original Islamic
revolution, and these include almost all of the so called "moderates", starting
with Moussavi himself: if the
West thinks that any of these clerics wants to abolish the Islamic Republic and
usher in real democracy, the West is delusional as usual. The other opposition
is led by people like Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard, who gave the most
inflamatory speeches and is probably responsible for her husband's sudden
emergence as a true opposition figure (before may Mousavi had not excited the
masses at all with his lame speeches). This second type of opposition represents
the real hope for the USA, because it includes the millions of young Iranians
who are exasperated with the tight Islamic lifestyle imposed by the regime and
who are probably eager to befriend the USA. For the time being one opposition
needs the other one: Rafsanjani, Khatami and Mousavi would not go anywhere
without the mass demonstrations, while the mass demonstrations would be buried
in blood if these powerful men did not restrain the military apparatus.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (may 2009)
Obama's divide and conquer strategy.
When George W Bush classified Iran in the "axis of evil", he achieved two main
(unwanted) goals:
1. He united all Iranians (whether because they feared a USA invasion of the kind that destroyed Iraq or because they felt their 5,000 year-old civilization had been insulted by an illiterate cowboy from Texas); 2. He motivated the Iranian leadership to speed up the nuclear program.
The fact that the Bush administration entertained friendly (almost brotherly)
relations with just about any crazy Arab dictator of the region did not help:
the biggest massacre of Iranians was carried out by one of those dictators,
Saddam Hussein, during a lengthy war that started in 1980 with the blessing
(and the technological cooperation) of USA's president Ronald Reagan.
Ideologically, it convinced all Iranians (regardless of their sentiments towards
their leaders) that the USA cannot be trusted: George W Bush was ranting against
the tyrants of Iran while sleeping with the (much worse) tyrants of Egypt,
Saudi Arabia and even Libya.
Bush's policy towards Iran was a disaster. It was a double disaster if one
thinks that Bush's wars destroyed the two enemies of Iran (Saddam Hussein in
Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan) thus enabling Iran to emerge more powerful;
and at the same time more anti-USA than ever.
The vast majority of Iranians don't like their regime but they were united in
supporting the regime's nuclear program (why can't Iran have the nuclear weapon
if Israel has it?) and in supporting the regime's support for the fellow
Shiites in Iraq.
The new USA president, Barack Obama, has turned the tables on the Iranian
regime by doing the exact opposite of what Bush did: he has called for dialogue.
This has been a blow to the very unity that enabled the regime to get stronger.
Now the majority of Iranians is eager for normalization of relations with the
USA, and even many in the top echelons of the regime are calling for better
relations. On the other hand, the hard-liners keep repeating that the USA is
Satan. This internal debate represents de facto the first significant blow
that the USA has dealt to the Iranian regime in a decade.
Now Obama is about to strike again. He has chosen Cairo (Egypt) as the place
to deliver his message to the Islamic world. Egypt has long been in a delicate
situation. It is the only major Arab country to make peace with Israel,
but the result has been that the whole Islamic world considers the Egyptian
regime not as the leaders but as the cowards that betrayed the Palestinians
(or, worse, sold them in exchange for USA military and eocnomic aid).
Egypt has paid a huge country for believing in the USA-sponsored "peace process"
(that never achieved anything, let alone peace), while Iran has reaped the
benefits of supporting the militias that fight Israel (Hamas in Palestine
and Hezbollah in Lebanon). Most of the one billion Muslim praise Iran for
standing with the oppressed and despise Egypt for standing with the oppressor.
Egypt's peace with Israel basically created an opportunity for Iran to
assert more influence in the region.
Over the last few months (particularly before and during the Israeli invasion
of Gaza) the Egyptian regime has been publicly bickering with the Iranian
regime, one accusing the other. Egypt has been the only Arab country to openly
blame Hamas (that is backed by Iran) for the Israeli invasion.
Obama's speech in Cairo is meant to assert the influence of Egypt on the
whole Islamic world. For a few hours, Obama will be viewed a sort of modern
prophet, who has chosen Egypt as his holy land. Obama will probably announce
some long-overdue pressure on Israel to improve the conditions of Palestinians,
and the whole Islamic world will realize that Iran's support for warfare has
only made things worse for the Palestinians while Egypt's stance has finally
paid a dividend. Indirectly, it will be another blow to the Iranian leadership,
this time not aimed at the Iranian public opinion
but aimed at the entire Islamic world.
Obama is not only undoing the harm that Bush caused, but also putting the
Iranian regime on the defensive. Bush was right on one thing: the best defense
is to attack. But Bush had in mind John Wayne's western movies, where the first
one to pull out the gun wins. Obama lives in a more complicated world,
where the first one to pull out the gun doesn't find any enemy to shoot
and in any case makes more enemies than can kill them.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (april 2009)
The magic word.
In 1979 few would have believed that the Islamic revolution in Iran was going
to survive for over 30 years. The reasons it survived have probably more to do
with external ones than internal ones. First of all, the war started by
Saddam Hussein (with more or less covert help from Ronald Reagan's USA and
Israel) united the Iranian people at the very time when the nation could have
had a serious debate with still enough freedom to oppose the hardliners.
Secondly, Reagan's demonization of Khomeini (whom most USA citizens came to
view as a sort of Adolf Hitler) ended up doing the same: there was just too
much exaggeration and distortion in the Western media, that ultimately
humiliated the Iranian people instead of stirring them against the regime.
Then over the years there has arisen a sense of distrust for foreign democratic
regimes that change all the time, and cannot therefore be trusted. Witness,
for example, how Obama is doing the opposite of Bush: same country, very
different attitude. And nobody knows what the next president will do.
Democracies are inherently unreliable.
Internally the regime of the ayatollahs is widely disliked, especially by
the younger generations, but it is now too late to hope that internal dissent
alone could cause regime change. The regime has created so
many centers of power that a popular insurrection is unlikely.
The mistakes of the Reagan era have produced longevity for the very enemy
that Reagan was trying to destroy.
In fact, there is a real danger that the Revolutionary Guard may become for
Iran what the Islamic extremists became for Pakistan: an armed center of power
that, fortified by the fight against external enemies, is now in a position
to assert itself internally and even hijack decisions on foreign policy.
Furthermore, dissent against the regime does not equate with love for the USA.
The USA is certainly guilty of serious crimes against the nation of Iran:
1. In 1953 the CIA and Britain's intelligence services overthrew a democratically elected government to install a friendly dictator; 2. In 1988 a missile fired by a USA warship downed an Iranian civilian plane and killed all 290 passengers aboard; 3. In 1980 the USA helped Saddam Hussein's Iraq start a war against Iran that killed about one million people; and (to add insult to injury) 4. In 2001
USA's president George W Bush lumped Iran in the "axis of evil".
Apologies are long overdue. That's the magic word that the USA can never quite
utter: "sorry". That's precisely the only thing that could win the hearts and
minds of millions of Iranians.
The average Iranian is painfully aware that Iran (as imperfect as it may be) is
more democratic and tolerant than all of the Arab countries of the Middle East,
most of which are allies of the USA. The USA has no sanctions against the
brutal and racist dictatorship of Saudi Arabia (that funded the terrorists
that attacked the USA in 2001) but has 30-year old sanctions against Iran.
In fact, the USA (the same country that talks to North Korea)
doesn't even have a diplomatic representation in Iran. The USA entertains
friendly relations with Mubarak's Egypt and has an embassy in Myanmar/Burma,
but does not even talk to Iran, a country that has the largest population of
Jews in the Islamic world (how many Jews are tolerate by Bush's friends in
Saudi Arabia?) and a country where the majority of university students are
females (girls are not even allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia). The paradox
might not be obvious to history- and geography-impaired USA citizens, but is
painfully obvious to the average Iranian.
The USA should focus on what is popular in Iran. The nuclear program is
popular because it boosts Iranian pride (there is little else Iranians can
be proud of these days) and because it is clearly unfair that the USA sits
down with North Korea (a country that already tested a nuclear weapon) and
even allies with Israel (a nuclear power) but
refuses to even talk to Iran (a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons).
Shiite Iraq is popular because of Shiite brotherhood
(Iran is no longer the only country where Shiites are in power). There is
certainly an anti-USA sentiment, although not the "death to America" kind
of sentiment: it's a widespread recognition that the USA committed all those
crimes and never apologized for them. There is a general understanding that
Israel is a Western invention: few deny that the holocaust took place, but
most Iranians (just like most Arabs) are puzzled that the holocaust happened
in Europe but then the homeland of the Jews was created in the Middle East
(imagine if someone decided to give a piece of your backyard to the victim
of a crime that had not been committed by you or anyone related to you).
Finally, and many see this as the best news, the Western lifestyle is very
popular in Iran, especially among the younger generations that constitute
more than 50% of the country's population.
Denying or ignoring the other popular facts, though, is a fatal mistake.
Iranians also have a vague understanding that their country is
surrounded by unstable war-torn countries (Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan)
and the USA shares with Iran an interest in creating stability in the region.
Unfortunately the USA has never quite invited Iran to help. By labeling it
a member of the "axis of evil" it did just the opposite: it signaled that Iran
was next to be invaded after Iraq. The Iranian regime's response (to wreak as
much havoc as possible in Iraq while accelerating its nuclear program) was not
totally illogical. The average Iranian sees the contradiction (that the USA and
Iran have common interests and common enemies, but the USA basically preempted
Iran from helping).
Ultimately, this is yet another Reagan mess
(See The 13 most feared words in the English language) that won't be easy to undo.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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