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June 14, 2009World Record: Iran Edition
I asked a few Iranian analysts and experts - on the record - to provide some feedback on the situation in Iran this weekend:
Friday’s election in Iran was beyond an engineered election, with large-scale manipulation as we have become used to in recent years; it was a unique military coup led by the office of supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to keep Ahmadinejad’s government - backed by the Revolutionary Guard - in power for the next four years. Vice President Biden’s comment on Sunday that “monitors and officials do not yet have enough information to gauge whether the results are accurate” may seem true, and the election office in the Ministry of Interior maybe did count the cast ballots right. But there is much evidence that the government simply disregarded the votes and announced the numbers regardless of actual counts. The common practice in previous election was first the official announcement of the election’s final result by the ministry of interior, then its approval by the Guardian Council, and finally the official statement of the supreme leader. This time, even before the interior ministry’s final announcement, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a statement calling the election a “divine miracle," a “people’s epic” and a “completely fair and free one."On June 4, in his keynote speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, Barak Obama admitted the U.S. government's involvement in the 1953 coup which led to the overthrow of “a democratically elected Iranian government." Since recent developments in Iran have been widely seen as a military coup under the cover of election, recognition of Ahmadinejad’s government would be interpreted by a majority of Iranian people as the U.S. support for another military coup in Iran.
The current events in Iran do not only impact domestic policy, they also have regional ramifications. The country which stands to gain most from the current public animosity against Ahmadinejad is Israel. Owing to his denial of the Holocaust and his calls for the elimination of Israel, Jerusalem, over the last number of years has been trying to isolate Ahmadinejad.The recent walkout by 30 European countries during Ahmadinejad's speech at the Durban conference was one achievement. However, the very fact that Ahmadinejad's election has created such a domestic backlash is a more notable accomplishment. This is especially true since tax payer's money from Iran has been used to finance support for Hamas and Hezbollah. This was demonstrated recently when during the recent Israel war against Gaza, Iranian cell phone users were charged a nominal fee as assistance to the people of Gaza. They were given no choice about it. There is also the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah have both backed Ahmadinejad's election and congratulated him. This will undoubtedly make them more unpopular in Iran.
However, if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not push forward with the peace process, he will find that these achievements will be short lived.
The recent defeat of Hezbollah at the polls in Lebanon, and the backlash in Iran against Ahmadinejad's election and extremist policies have provided Israel with a golden opportunity to better relations with the PLO. Such a policy will further weaken extremist elements in the region, and more importantly, would improve Israel's own position in the region and with its most important ally, the United States of America.
Elections in the Islamic Republic are neither fair nor free, but unlike Iraq under Saddam Hussein the Iranian leadership usually manages to manipulate the elections in a very sophisticated and elegant way in an attempt to portray itself as an Islamic democracy. The 2009 presidential election however was not an exercise in sophistication and elegance. The final election result - 85 percent voter turnout and Ahmadinejad victory with 62.63 percent of the total vote and a modest 33.75 percent of the vote to the closest contender Mir-Hossein Mousavi - not to mention ridiculously low number of votes of Rezai and Karrubi – shows that the Iranian leadership couldn't be bothered to produce an elegant fraud. Unlike earlier elections there is still no detailed data on breakup of the vote in the provinces, but allegations of lack of voting forms in constituencies supporting Ahmadinejad’s rivals, prohibitions against the presence of representatives of the rivals at many voting stations, and election results from native villages and towns of Mousavi, Karrubi and Rezai most surprisingly showing more than a 90 percent vote for Ahmadinejad, demonstrate rather clumsy rigging tacticsThe question is why all the clumsiness? Why the demonstrative fraud insulting the intelligence of the electorate? Why beat up elderly women and young students in Tehran demanding to know what has become of their vote? And why the brutal repression of dissent in front of the entire foreign press corps? The Islamic Republic may consider this sickening theater a demonstration of power, and the drama may reveal the new rules of the game in a regime changing very fast. Ahmadinejad is indeed a candidate of change and during his presidency the trend towards the militarization of Iran has grown faster. Once ruled by the clergy and guarded by the Revolutionary Guards, the Islamic Republic under Ahmadinejad is developing into a military regime, ruled and guarded by the Revolutionary Guards. Four more years with Ahmadinejad will provide more change you can believe in. Whether it is change to the better or worse is another question.
Reporters and academics interact disproportionately with reformists and intellectuals in Iran, most of whom are as horrified of Ahmadinejad as we are in the West. U.S. analysts therefore regularly underestimate the appeal of the Principalists in the provinces and among the poor and dispossessed. Mir-Hossein Mousavi understood Ahmadinejad’s appeal, and so urged massive turnout. It appears his calls were heeded. It also appears that the powers-that-be threw the election. The Iranian people may be outraged, but ultimately the brazenness of the fraud suggests two immediate conclusions:1) Sovereignty in the Islamic Republic comes from God. To the regime’s leaders, it does not matter what the people think. To muddle through reform is a fool’s dream. If and when change comes in the Islamic Republic, it will come as it did in Ceausescu’s Romania, when the security forces revolt.
2) We should be extraordinarily cautious about diplomacy. The Supreme Leader clearly disdains both process and law. It will be far easier to undercut an agreement reached with “The Great Satan” than it will be to disenfranchise millions of Iranians.