insideIRAN

Iran’s Hardliners Pressure Rafsanjani: Children Charged with Organizing Protests

insideiran — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:40:42 +0000

Arash Aramesh

According to IRNA, the Islamic Republic’s News Agency, the Iranian justice system has filed cases against Faezeh and Mehdi Hashemi, two children of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. In an interview with IRNA March 10, Alireza Avaie, the highest ranking judicial official in the province of Tehran, announced that cases have been filed in the General Court and in the Revolutionary Court to address accusations against Mehdi and Faezeh Hashemi.

Mr. Avaie said that these actions are in the interest of the regime and no one should be above the law. Earlier, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ezhei, Iran’s chief prosecutor, had said that Iran’s courts would investigate any cases against Rafsanjani’s children if there are any complaints filed against them.

Mehdi and Faezeh Hashemi are accused of fomenting riots in Tehran following the disputed June 12 election. Faezeh Hashemi participated in a few anti-government demonstrations and she was briefly detained by unknown security forces for a short period of time. Mehdi Hashemi left Iran last summer, shortly after the government accused him of supporting Mir Hossein Moussavi’s campaign. Mehdi Hashemi is also accused of having played a role in organizing what the government calls “riots” in Tehran—a reference to the ongoing protests.

Some analysts believe that pro-government forces in the judiciary with close ties to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are uneasy about Rafsanjani’s recent rapprochement with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It is believed that Ahmadinejad and hardliners in the IRGC fear that a close partnership between Khamenei and Rafsanjani would jeopardize their political power; therefore, these hardliners seek to discredit Rafsanjani and his family by charging two members of his family.

Ayatollah Rafsanjani has not taken a position on the judiciary’s recent statement regarding his children, but at an event in Mashhad two months ago, Mr. Rafsanjani asserted that his son had nothing to worry about and would return to Iran if he was summoned by the courts.

Taking the Temperature in Tabriz

insideiran — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:43:16 +0000

Mohammad Khiabani

Tabriz, Iran—Iranian politicians are always quick to praise Tabriz’s revolutionary credentials. During a November 2009 visit to the city, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recalled, “the people [of Tabriz and Iranian Azerbaijan] are pioneers of the pro-constitution movement, repelling the aggressors and acts of mischief and defending the supreme ideals of the Islamic Revolution.” The uprising of 29th of Bahman (February 19, 1978) in the city was a key continuation of the forty-day cycles of protest that spurred the Iranian Revolution forward. Further back, Tabriz, due to its closeness to Turkish and Russian intellectual circles, was a vanguard of intellectual agitation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1891 Tobacco Protest and the 1906 Constitutional Revolution to the 1946 Autonomous Azerbaijan’s People’s Government, Tabrizis have a long lineage of rebelliousness. How does this history resonate in the current, still-simmering political crisis centered in Tehran?

Unlike many of Iran’s ethnic minorities, Iranian Turks have two things that are important in politics: numbers and money. It is estimated that between a quarter to a third of Iranian’s 73 million citizens are of Azeri decent. Iranian Azerbaijan historically has been a center of trade and commerce in the region, ensuring that a large cohort of merchants and industrialists throughout Iran’s history were Turkish. This wealth translated into intellectual and political influence, and as Turks migrated to all corners of Iran’s territory, from Abadan to Mashad, they did not end up on the bottom rungs of the social ladder. Nor do Iranian Turks sit solely on one side of the regime’s politics. While most outside of Iran are unaware, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are both Turks (although Khamenei was born in Mashhad).

Tabriz also featured some of the largest Green Movement protests outside of Tehran during the post-June election crisis. According to the official (and disputed) results, Ahmadinejad won the city with 57 percent of the vote. While Tabriz is no Tehran, the results surprised many, given that many of its residents are similar in disposition to the capital’s large middle class. Today, however, with the “new chill” in Green activities after the Revolution Day rallies on February 11—both because of increased repression as well as the internal debate on tactics and strategy within the opposition—it appears that the city’s life has returned to normalcy, even if temporarily. The huge bazaar is teeming with pre-Eid shopping, as Tabrizis get ready for the celebrations of the Persian New Year. Hawkers are selling fireworks in the city center, and the night is filled with pops and explosions of a decidedly nonpolitical nature.

One business owner near the bazaar recounted, “Lots of the young people here liked Mousavi. They of course don’t remember him from his days as Prime Minister. But they saw him as a way to get more social freedoms.” He estimated that 70 percent of the Tabriz youth probably identified with Mousavi after the election, though far less of them took part in any demonstrations. This number—as good as any in the absence of reliable polls, studies, or even foreign journalists who travel to Tabriz—should not be taken as permanent support. Young people recently interviewed in the city—a soldier conscript, a taxi driver, and a clothing store clerk—all professed little interest in the recent political drama.

Instead, a different sort of shift seems to be pulling Tabriz today. After relations between the governments of Turkey and Iran improved, the requirement for visas for travel between the two countries was waived. Tabrizis used to travel to the landlocked province of Nakhchivan (belonging to the government of Azerbaijan but mostly separated by Armenia) for their “taste of luxury.” But because of requests by the Iranian government, Azerbaijan removed the bars, brothels, and discos that catered to Iranians in the region. Now, with the waiving of visas, and the absence of language barriers, Iranian Turks travel with ease to Istanbul and other Turkish vacation spots, taking advantage (for now) of the overvalued Iranian rial.

This is a two-way street, though. Tabriz and its outer environs are filling with cross-border Turkish investment. Boutiques in the wealthiest neighborhood of Tabriz feature signs in both Persian and in Turkish. Joint ventures between Turkish and Iranian owners (foreign ownership is limited to 49 percent of any firm) are in the daily business news, producing products both for the domestic and Turkish markets. Turkish businessmen donning sharp suits and Italian ties fill the city’s hotels. Though the economic pressures on Tabriz are similar to other places in Iran, the regional economic integration that is taking place may ameliorate them compared to more isolated Iranian provinces.

Politics never can be reduced to simple ethnic ties. “Iranian-ness” has proved to be a powerful salve in past times, and the Green Movement was no doubt one of these historical examples of deep Iranian nationalism. Yet one cannot forget that individuals always are members of multiple communities, and that they respond to the opportunities—political and economic—which are presented to them.

Q&A: Ali-Akbar Mousavi Khoeini: Khamenei Seeks Return of Moderate Conservatives to Preserve Islamic Republic

insideiran — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:26:31 +0000

Mr. Mousavi Khoeini is a former member of the Iranian parliament and a visiting scholar at Stanford University. He spoke with insideIRAN.org from Washington, D.C..

Q: How do you interpret Supreme Leader Khamenei’s recent statements? Do you think he is welcoming moderate conservatives back into the fold? What do you think is his view now of Hashemi Rafsanjani?

Q: There is a deep rift in the Iranian government as a result of pressure exerted on the government by the people over the past several years. Every once in a while, the society exerts some pressure on the core centers of power, such as Ayatollah Khamenei and military/security organizations. In order to repel an immediate threat, they show a harsh reaction, but after awhile, they realize that if this harsh reaction continues, this would jeopardize their hold on power.

This is what has happened in the past nine months since the June 12 election. First, there was a harsh crackdown that followed that epic demonstration. The government was not prepared for such a move, so it suppressed it very harshly. Now, after a few months, the government has a better understating of the situation and feels less threatened and that is why they are bringing back people like Rafsanjani to the game.

The Supreme Leader began allowing moderate conservatives back in the fold after the February 11 demonstration in which the government declared victory. But he also drew new boundaries and said Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi can no longer be in the system. This means that they can no longer run in future elections because the [Guardian Council] will reject their legitimacy and qualifications. Former President Mohammad Khatami fits in this category as well. People like Moussavi have no representation in the government. And this segment of society is without representation.

Q: Why would Rafsanjani forget all these personal attacks made against him and his family and make peace with Khamenei? What is his goal?

A: Mr. Rafsanjani’s goal is to reform Iran’s election laws. I think he has had some coordination on this with the Supreme Leader Khamenei. It has been brought to Mr. Khamenei’s attention that after Rafsanjani, the security/military apparatus will go after eliminating him and he will no longer be able to have any independence. This will make him step on the brakes in order to save the entire regime.

Q: How do you assess the stability of the state? Do you think Khamenei will make political compromises with the opposition even though he says he will not?
In terms of stability, I think the government is not fully stable until they meet some of the basic demands of the people. Economic difficulties will show themselves in the future.

Q: When you left Iran eight months ago, did it seem that there was an opposition movement? Did the movement truly form a short period before the election, or would you say that the election was simply the catalyst and that Iranian society is truly prepared to fight for political reform?

A: I think this movement was the continuation of reforms that started in 1997. The reform movement had a heart attack after eight years of Khatami and when Ahmadinejad was elected. Many NGOs tried to express the demands of the society. There were many social movements, such as the student movement, that had existed already. There were other movements, such as the labor movement and the women’s rights movement.
These movements practiced the art of organization and how to gather and assemble peacefully.

In the June 12 election, these movements joined hands and created a large coalition. Security forces were trying to prevent this. They were afraid that this might turn into a velvet revolution; although Iran’s social and political structure is not conducive to a velvet revolution.

The missing link here was the lack of faces that could represent the collection of these demands and utilize the potentials of this movement in the framework of the constitution. This missing link, someone who was accepted by all groups, turned out to be Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Both men came from backgrounds known to people, and they had defended their views when they held positions in the government.

Q: Do you believe Ahmadinejad’s claims that gasoline sanctions will have no negative impact on Iran?

Sanctions affect both the people and the government. The question is, who will hurt more? The government is not going to suffer much; rather, it is going to be the middle and the lower classes who will suffer. Sanctions have cut off people’s access to certain technologies, while the government has been able to acquire them through various means. This in effect has helped the Iranian government.

I think these restrictions about information technology on the Iranian people should be lifted. As long as people are not informed, there will be no major change. These restrictions must be lifted so people can use them. Hillary Clinton’s remarks about free access to information were nice, but there are legal challenges and restrictions in implementing this vision.

Return of Moderate Conservatives Could Help Greens

insideiran — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:57:20 +0000

Babak

TEHRAN– After almost seven months of political hegemony for the hardliners, orchestrated by and centered around the political command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the moderate conservatives are now back at center stage of Iran’s political scene.

The powerful return of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani to the realm of policymaking may seem unfathomable to some observers, since Rafsanjani’s unofficial resignation from the post of Tehran’s Friday prayer leader and the intensity of attacks against him waged by the hardliners. These attacks had seemed to have damaged him beyond the point of no return. Analyzing Rafsanjani’s pattern of political behavior, however, would make us believe that such a return is certainly possible.

His return revolves around those recommendations he introduced at that controversial Friday prayer in Tehran last summer, when he outlined solutions to the crisis in the country. He called for releasing prisoners, many of whom were detained because they were demonstrating against the government, and freeing the media. At this Friday prayer, Rafsanjani also emphasized that the republic needed to be preserved, which was a criticism of the lawlessness that the state had engaged in to create order. He also talked about how Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s founder, respected ordinary people, compared with Khamenei, who is willing to use any degree of force and violence against Iranian citizens. (This was an unflattering swipe at Khamenei.)

Rafsanjani’s apparent return to the fold enjoys the full backing of significant conservatives, such as Ayatollah Mahdavi-Kani, an influential cleric and political figure; Ali-Akbar Nategh-Nouri, former interior minister and presidential candidate in 1997; Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani; and Mohsen Rezai, former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Rafsanjani also enjoys the support of scholars and Grand Ayatollahs in the holy Shiite city of Qom.

Rafsanjani’s old and very close friendship with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his political wisdom made it possible for him to push back the hardliners in an environment that is no longer stricken by crisis. The crisis itself had created the best environment for the hardliners to thrive. Rafsanjani is now returning to lead the moderate conservatives at a time when the country is in a calmer situation.

Since the Green Movement has reformist qualities, its very survival is tied to peace and tranquility in society. The return of conservatives would pave the way for addressing the grievances of the protestors regarding the disputed June 12 election, which in turn might lead to reforming the political structure in Iran.

But if this indeed happens, the process will be long. It must be noted that the Islamic Republic is still facing a problem of legitimacy, despite the fact that, at least for now, the street demonstrations have subsided. And it must also be noted that all the coercive apparatus in the country are in the hands of the hardliners. These hardliners believe the answer to Iran’s problems can only be found through more repression. Therefore, structural reforms with the goal of ending the crisis will face harsh opposition of the hardliners in the highest levels of the government.

Babak is a political activist in Tehran.

IRGC Joins Move Towards Cultural Revolution

insideiran — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:49:56 +0000

Arash Aramesh

Major General Yahya Rahim-Safavi, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said yesterday, “Universities are not in a good condition. The presence of those who care for the revolution, the elites loyal to Imam Khomeini, the Supreme Leader, and the constitution is missing [in universities].”

In an event called the “Gathering of IRGC’s Cultural Elites,” Safavi, who is now Ayatollah Khamenei’s senior military adviser, said, “The purpose of a soft war is to change cultures, values, and the beliefs of the youth.” He asserted, “We are vulnerable in the cultural debate and our enemies have realized this. Therefore, we can fight this aggressive culture and defeat it through soft cultural power.”

Safavi’s comments came a few days after Iran’s Minister of Science, Research, and Technology who had called on university presidents not to hire secular and disloyal faculty. This time, however, one of Iran’s highest ranking military officers accused members of the academia of disloyalty to the regime and to the supreme leader.

Safavi did specify which domestic actors were behind this soft threat but many analysts believe that the soft cultural threat Safavi was referring to are the members of Iran’s academia, including university students. The tense relationship between the government and Iranian students is evidence that the hardliners are dissatisfied with the status quo and seek an ideological and political cleansing in Iran’s centers of higher learning.

During the “Gathering of IRGC’s Cultural Elites,” Ali Saidi-Shahroudi, Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative to the IRGC, said, “The cultural elite of the IRGC have an important role in the cultural revolution,” strengthening suspicions that a cultural revolution is underway to cleanse Iran’s centers of higher learning from students and faculty members who are not regime loyalists.

According to Sepah News, the official website of the IRGC, Saidi-Shahroudi said, “[implementing] cultural revolution is time consuming and tiring but once successfully implemented, it will guarantee the stability of a monotheistic revolution.”

In recent weeks, the Research Deputy for the Supreme Leader’s Representative’s Office in Iran’s Universities created a new bureau on Iran’s major campuses called “The Office of the Supreme Leader’s Demand,” through which cultural and religious reforms demanded by the Supreme Leader will be implemented.

Iran Intensifies Crackdown on Academia

insideiran — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:07:35 +0000

Arash Aramesh

Since coming into office in the summer of 2005, the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has implemented a number of measures restricting the activities of critical student organizations and professors.

Ahmadinejad government’s tense relationship with members of academia in Iran has gotten worse in recent years. Many professors have been either fired or forced into early retirement. A significant number of student activists have been suspended, expelled, or even jailed for taking part in anti-government activities.

In recent years, pro-government organizations on Iran’s campuses, such as the Basij, have received additional funding and support from the government. Ahmadinejad’s critics accuse him and his supporters of seeking a cultural revolution in Iran, through which university campuses would be cleansed of undesirable elements and anti-government activities.

Kamran Daneshjoo, Iran’s Minister of Science, Research, and Technology said on March 4: “Professors who are unable to adapt to the will of the people must move aside.” According to Fars News, a news agency with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Daneshjoo told a group of Basij students from Iran’s northern provinces that the country needed professors who truly loved the students and did not view them as “foot soldiers.”

Daneshjoo warned Iran’s academics that the country did not need their expertise if it were not accompanied with religious piety and added, “We will bring in so many [pious] experts to universities so those people in the minority [secular academics] who think they are much better than the rest realize that they are no different.”

Daneshjoo, who is in charge of Iran’s higher centers of learning, asserted, “Presidents of universities do not have the right to recruit anyone unless they are committed to the constitution. If they do otherwise, we will deal with them through legal means.”

Daneshjoo added, “A person who reaches the highest levels of accomplishment is [like someone] who is wearing a shield [and that shield] is his acceptance of Velayat Faqih.”

On August 31, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei expressed concern about the contents of the curriculum taught to humanities students and said, “Many of these humanities courses are based on materialism and lack the belief in God and teaching such course will lead into a lack of belief in Islam and Islamic teachings.” He asked the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology; the Supreme Council on Cultural Revolution; and the parliament to address this issue.

The relationship between the Iranian government and students has deteriorated in recent years. Many student activists have been arrested and their student organizations, some of which had years of presence on Iran’s campuses, were declared illegal by the government.

In the months leading up to the June 12 election, university students played a major role in supporting Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi. After the election, and during unrest in Iran’s major cities, Iranian security forces targeted student dormitories and campuses. In recent weeks, a few students were arrested inside classrooms. This led a number of Iranian academics to write letters to Ayatollah Khamenei and the government protesting the actions of the security forces.

Many observers believe that the government’s lack of trust for Iran’s academy will result in a major overhaul of the country’s higher education system through terminations, suspensions, and a much more selective admission process based on students’ ideology and their perceived loyalty to supreme clerical rule.

Obama’s One-Year Anniversary of Outreach to Iran Shows Need for Realpolitik

insideiran — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:48:24 +0000

Riccardo Redaelli

COMO, Italy—If proper “timing and tuning” are essential during negotiations, over the past decade, neither Washington nor Tehran has managed to tune their political mood into the same wavelength. When the Islamic Republic was ready to enter into negotiations, the White House was not, and vice-versa.

For years, I criticized the United States’ attitude towards Iran, in particular its inability to understand the Iranian threat perceptions and sense of isolation. During the Bush administration, the mantra was “we do not speak with the devil,” as then-Vice-President Dick Cheney dismissed any direct negotiation with Tehran. The U.S. policy of refusing direct talks with Iran, and its unrealistic and dogmatic stance on its low enriched uranium (LEU) program contributed to the disastrous results of the E3-EU (France, Germany and Great Britain) negotiations of 2003 to 2006. The refusal of the spring 2005 offer by the Iranian nuclear chief negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, has proven to have been a huge mistake: today, we could have had an Iran implementing the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and running a few dozen centrifuges. Instead, we find ourselves frantically looking for an agreement with a radical government that possesses thousands of them and that no longer implements the Additional Protocol.

In brief, U.S. containment strategies have failed in the past and have had huge geopolitical costs in the region, which indirectly led to a consistent Iranian foreign policy not in the United States’ interest, rather than a policy that would have weakened Iran’s ultra-conservatives. The result has created huge difficulties for Iranian reformists and pragmatic conservatives domestically as well as internationally.

The New U.S. Policy toward Iran and the Green Movement

The new U.S. administration, therefore, decided to offer Tehran direct negotiations without preconditions (always perceived as an intolerable humiliation to national pride by Iran’s post revolutionary political elite). President Obama’s message on the occasion of the Nowrūz festival almost exactly a year ago was an unprecedented move, aimed at overcoming the standstill in nuclear negotiations. Unfortunately for Obama, the Iranian electoral crisis exploded shortly after his offers had been made. Massive electoral fraud deprived Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the main reformist candidate, of millions of votes, as is easily demonstrated by a detailed analysis of the turnout figures. In the Islamic Republic, such an alteration of the electoral results represented an unpleasant and shocking degeneration of the Islamic Republic’s power mechanisms.

This was the main reason behind the rise of the so-called Green Movement, with pacific public protests and gatherings asking for new elections and the removal of an illegitimate president. The government reacted in the usual way, with a mixture of violent response from its security forces, arrests, harassment and threats. The electoral fraud had also polarized the Islamic Republic to an unprecedented degree, with its political elite deeply fragmented and with mass protests occurring that recall those of the 1970s against the Pahlavi monarchy.

The Present Mistake

For the international community, the dilemma was whether to back the popular protests or not. The West—and Washington in particular—decided to maintain a very low profile regarding Iranian domestic troubles, with the idea, as cynical as it is naïve, that a weakened regime might have been softer on the nuclear negotiations. The result was the meetings in Geneva and Vienna in the autumn of 2009, when Iran initially accepted the idea of a swap of its LEU stockpile to Russia and France, in exchange for already processed LEU at 20 percent for its research reactor. To the West’s discomfort, Tehran eventually refused the compromise, after confused and still unclear domestic debates.

During the past months, the hope that, following the domestic electoral turbulence, the Iranian government was ready to seriously engage with the Obama administration and that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was able to reach a compromise and deliver it at home (that is, getting the consensus of the rahbar and of the obscure Iranian “nuclear inner circle”) did not materialize, probably due to domestic political divisions. According to less benevolent interpretations, these diplomatic moves were simply another Iranian bluff: Tehran needed time to deal with the chaotic domestic situation. The offers made in Geneva and Vienna in Fall 2009 were part of a scheme for avoiding international pressure while the regime was cracking down on the protesters.

In fact, the West kept a very low profile on the issue for months. A commonly held view in Western political circles was that the reformists could easily be sacrificed on the altar of a nuclear compromise. The gamble did not, however, pay off: we did not get any agreement.
The harsh reality is that, in the meantime, the radicals in Tehran had increased the level of repression and brutality, with thousands of members of Iranian civil society arrested, threatened, raped, or tortured, and several people killed or sentenced to death by an increasingly overconfident, oppressive regime.

Break the Vicious Circle of Always Offering Ahmadinejad Something More

These events oblige the international community—and the West in particular—to reconsider their strategy. For instance, President Obama is facing growing opposition in Washington toward his policy of engagement, and the nuclear negotiations with Iran cannot be allowed to distract us from what is happening in Iran. First of all, it is crucial to prevent our declarations against the repression from being counterproductive, since the Iranian government is already accusing the reformists of being “fifth columnists” of enemies of the Republic. However, there are ways and means of making Tehran understand that the West is not looking for a regime change, but cannot tolerate such a level of domestic violence.

In other words, since Ahmadinejad and the pasdarans have deeply polarized the Iranian political scenario, we should carefully send messages to the Rahbar that Ahmadinejad represents a much greater risk for the Islamic Republic than the reformists, and that we are ready to negotiate with Supreme Leader Khamenei, but we will adopt a tougher stance (at every level, nuclear negotiations included) if he lends his support to such bloody repression. Some of the main religious and political leaders, such as Rafsanjani and, to a certain extent, Mohammad Khatami himself, are attempting the same, trying to de-polarize the domestic political spectrum in the hope that the Rahbar might decide to rebalance the system, adopting a more moderate position. It is probably the last chance Khamenei has to avoid a dramatic transformation of the Islamic Republic and far more severe international isolation.

At the same time, it is time to end our obsession with the uranium enrichment conundrum: it is clear that the only way to keep Iran latent at the nuclear weapon level is through verifications and political confidence, not merely technical solutions, such as the recent proposed swap with Russia, France, Turkey, or elsewhere. Without decreasing the level of mistrust, resistance to a comprehensive agreement will be insurmountable.

For years I backed track-2 programs with Iranians, and I still believe they represented a useful tool of communication, taking into account the antagonistic postures of Washington and Tehran. But the current scenario is radically different: the technical package offered in Vienna and Geneva to Iran represented an honorable compromise, based on the best diplomatic effort of recent years. The package is still on the table, and some minor amendments might be made in order to give extra guarantees to the Islamic Republic’s obsessions. However, we should resist the idea of acquiescing to new Iranian requests or looking for other, smoother “technical solutions” for convincing Iran. The offer is already favorable: it has been almost accepted, almost refused, renegotiated, reneged, and all other degrees of unclear response. In the meantime, Iran continues with its paranoid policy of repression and intimidation of reformists, intellectuals, professors, students, women’s’ rights activists, and simple citizens. And the West continues to stick to its past policy of ambiguous silence over it.

Lack of credibility was one of the main failures of the past U.S. administration’s policy toward the Middle East, since its rhetorical insistence on democratization was a far cry from an ambiguous policy of double standards. We should now avoid the risk of embarking on a pathetically weak new form of realpolitik .

Riccardo Redaelli is the Director of the Middle East Program at LNCV and Professor of Geopolitics at the Catholic University of Milano. He has participated in Track 2 talks with Iran.

National Elections Commission: Are Moderate Conservatives Making a Comeback?

insideiran — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:30:22 +0000

Babak

TEHRAN –The comprehensive elections bill will be discussed in detail on the floor of the Expediency Council in the next two weeks. The discussion about reforming election laws in Iran is not a new one. In the past, and in particular during the years of reform, efforts were made to reform the existing laws, but it faced fierce resistance from the Guardian Council and thus it remained in the background.

This discussion has entered a new phase as a result of the Supreme Leader’s order to the Expediency Council to look into the current law and propose appropriate reforms. The Supreme Leader issued the order almost one year before the June 12 election. This order is significant for two reasons.

First, this bill is being developed in the Expediency Council, and once approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will serve as the general policy guidelines of the Islamic Republic regarding all elections. Therefore, deliberating the important elections bill at the Expediency Council can be viewed as the mighty return of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the chairman of the Council, to the political scene and diminishing influence of hardliners after the last seven months of aggression. This process began when Rafsanjani reacted harshly to frequent attacks by Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the vice chairman of the Assembly of Experts, against him. Since Rafsanajani threatened Yazdi, saying he might reveal information about his past positions, the cleric has been silent.

Second, the Islamic Republic will face new challenges and developments for the first time in almost thirty years if this bill turns into law. This would significantly reduce the powers of the Guardian Council, which have been under Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati’s personal control since the beginning of the revolution. The Guardian Council is also the command and control center of the totalitarian forces in Iran, especially during election cycles. The Guardian Council, however, will still retain its monitoring responsibilities, but it will lose one of its most important roles, which is approving the competency of potential candidates, to the new National Elections Commission.

The proposed composition of the new National Elections Commission can demonstrate the political leanings of the authors of this bill. The bill aims to significantly reduce or even eliminate the role of the Guardian Council and the administration in regards to elections. The National Elections Commission will be composed of three representatives from the administration, two from the parliament, two from the judiciary, one from the Expediency Council, one from the Guardian Council, and the director of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Broadcasting (IRIB). The representative of the Guardian Council cannot vote in the Commission. Such composition shows that the proposed bill is aimed at providing a platform for moderates to oversee the election process in Iran.

On the other hand, harsh attacks by ultraconservatives such as Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor in chief of Kayhan, against this could be seen as evidence of the importance of this bill in limiting the influence of totalitarian forces in Iran and increasing the democratic potential of the Islamic Republic.

Meanwhile, the final version of the bill must be approved by the Supreme Leader. If passed, this will be viewed as the Supreme Leader’s personal effort to reduce the powers of the hardliners and bring back moderate conservatives in order to reduce deep divisions in the Islamic Republic.

Turkey’s Domestic Controversy Unfolds Amidst Increasing Ties with Iran

insideiran — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:58:09 +0000

Shayan Ghajar

Events the past few weeks in Turkey indicate that a sea change is occurring in the nation’s domestic politics. Prime Minister Erdogan’s maneuvering against the traditionally untouchable military marks a new phase in Turkey’s history. This shift in Turkey’s domestic politics follows a more gradual but no less relevant shift in its foreign policy, and likely indicates even greater changes to come. Mutual trade, investment, and tourism are growing between Turkey and Iran, and the two nations are increasingly in accord on three of the regions biggest security issues, namely the Middle East peace process, Iran’s nuclear program, and Kurdish separatism.

Simultaneously, American policy has been increasingly out of step with Turkey’s vision for its future. The recent American congressional vote to declare the Armenian deportations and relocations a genocide will certainly have damaged Turkish-American relations for the foreseeable future, and will be yet another factor in Turkey seeking alternative allies in the region.

Diplomatic contact between Iran and Turkey has increased in frequency and intensity in recent months, starting with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s visit to Iran in October 2009. Concurrently with Erdogan’s visit, Iran announced that Turkey was investing $4 billion into Iran’s South Pars gas field, which holds one of the largest gas reserves in the world. Shortly after Erdogan’s visit, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that there are “no limitations to increasing ties” with Turkey. Since then, a plethora of meetings at all levels of government have occurred between the two nations, marking a significant increase in bilateral agreements on political and economic issues.

Many of these meetings have focused on economic cooperation and strengthening the financial interdependence of the two nations, especially in recent weeks with the inaugural meeting of the Developing 8 (D-8) economic consortium in Tehran. The D-8 consists of eight developing nations with largely Muslim populations—Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Turkey—and is intended to foster greater economic ties and facilitate development of vital industries, especially in the energy and manufacturing sectors. The next meeting, in 2011, will be held in Turkey.

On March 3, Iran and Turkey signed a “memorandum of understanding” during the D-8 meetings in Tehran. The memorandum of understanding pledges cooperation in numerous manufacturing fields, specifically “auto-manufacturing and supply of spare-parts, construction industry, agricultural machinery and equipment industries and wood and paper industries,” Fars News reports.

The strain in Turkish-Israeli relations since the Gaza offensive that ended in January has only deepened with Erdogan stating in February that any Israeli strikes against Iran’s nuclear program would be a “disaster of unpredictable consequences.” The Iranian media have been delighted with Erdogan’s stance on Israel, and his quotes condemning the situation in Gaza frequently appear in the state news agencies.

Turkey has largely sided with Iran on the nuclear issue against its American ally as well. Turkish officials have repeatedly made statements supporting Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program, the latest coming from the Turkish Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Ali Shahin. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 4 that Washington is finding it increasingly difficult to make any headway urging Turkey to support sanctions against Iran, receiving the same rejoinder from Erdogan that Israel’s nuclear weapons should be investigated as much as Iran’s every time the subject is broached.

Iran and Turkey also share security concerns regarding the large presence of Kurds in the border areas between the two nations and Iraq. Both nations have been engaged in military campaigns for decades against Kurdish separatists. Sahar Zubairy of Foreign Policy Blogs alleges that Iran and Turkey have collaborated in their military efforts against these Kurdish groups.

A final consideration for the ties between both nations, and perhaps one of the most significant, is the instability of the ruling parties’ positions domestically. Erdogan has pitted all his political assets against the military, Turkey’s most powerful traditional establishment. The ultra-conservative Iranian newspaper Kayhan wrote an article (Farsi language) describing protests in Istanbul against the alleged military coup plot in heroic terms, and all of Iran’s state-run news agencies have almost daily carried articles in the past few weeks praising more arrests of conspirators against Erdogan.

Similarly, the Turkish news service Taraf—the same agency to which documents were leaked incriminating the Turkish military in the alleged coup plot weeks ago—carried an article (Turkish language) stating the Iranian people had demonstrated their support for the Islamic Republic on February 11, Revolution Day in Iran, contrary to Western-backed dissident groups.

This mutual moral support against domestic opposition groups demonstrates that the insecurity of both regimes in the face of home-grown dissent has increased their need for regional allies more than ever before. And at a time when America and Turkey drift farther apart, Iran seems a more appealing regional ally than ever.

Rafsanjani Makes First Public Appearance with Ahmadinejad to Demonstrate Renewed Political Power

insideiran — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:03:35 +0000

Arash Aramesh

High-ranking Iranian officials and a number of foreign diplomats met with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei March 4 in a ceremony held to celebrate the birth of Prophet Mohammad. For the first time since the disputed June 12 election, both Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the chairman of the Expediency Council, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared under one roof.

For the past nine months, Ahmadinejad has refused to attend the Expediency Council meetings chaired by Rafsanjani. Meanwhile, Rafsanjani did not appear at Ahmadinejad’s inauguration this past summer and has shied away from any high-level government ceremony in which Ahmadinejad was present.

During his presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad accused Rafsanjani of being the leader of organized efforts against him and claimed that Mir Hossein Moussavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and former President Mohammad Khatami worked around the Rafsanjani nucleus. Ahmadinejad’s supporters have waged one of the most intense rhetorical campaigns against Rafsanjani and his family in the past nine months. Pro-government sources accuse Mehdi Hashemi, Rafsanjani’s oldest son, and Faezeh Hashemi, Rafsanjani’s fourth child, of having organized “illegal” demonstrations in the aftermath of the June 12 election.

Last week in an interview with Fars News, a pro-government news site with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Morteza Bakhtiari, the minister of justice, said that the Ministry has finally filed cases for Rafsanjani’s children to investigate their alleged involvement in post-election unrest in Tehran.

On February 25, Ayatollah Khamenei met with members of the Assembly of Experts, chaired by Rafsanjani. Many observers interpreted Rafsanjani’s affectionate gestures towards Khamenei as a sign that a backdoor deal has been reached and moderate conservatives led by Rafsanjani were returning to the fold. Rafsanjani’s appearance today strengthens suspicions that he has reached a rapprochement with Khamenei and the Supreme Leader is willing to allow moderate conservatives to have a more significant role in running the country.

For instance, Rafsanjani has started deliberations on a significant and controversial piece of legislation in the Expediency Council which would reduce the powers of the Guardian Council in regards to elections. According to Rafsanjani, the Supreme Leader asked the Expediency Council to address shortcomings in the existing law, therefore giving him the prerogative to handle this issue.

It appears that the Supreme Leader is wary of the increasing political influence he granted to the pro-Ahmadinejad faction and the IRGC. In order to create a balance of power in Iran, Khamenei is now seeking to include moderate conservatives in the game while striving to eliminate the reformists and the Green Movement represented by Moussavi and Karroubi.