If you look at the results of the local council and the 86-member Assembly of Experts
elections in Iran, as they are reported by AP, it may seem as a political equivalent of an earthquake.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suffered an embarrassing blow in local council races, according to partial election results Monday, in voting viewed as a sign of public discontent with his hard-line stance.
The balloting represented a partial comeback for opponents of Ahmadinejad, whose Islamic government’s policies have fueled fights with the West and brought Iran closer to U.N. sanctions.
Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, a relative moderate, polled the most votes of any Tehran candidate to win re-election to a key assembly post.
The biggest victory was for “moderate conservatives,” supporters of Iran’s cleric-led power structure who are angry at Ahmadinejad, saying he has needlessly provoked the West with harsh rhetoric and has failed to fix the country’s faltering economy.
You can see two interesting terms used above: “relative moderate” and “moderate conservative”. So fine is the vision of AP that it is ready to present this whimper as the Big Bang that will signify a watershed event in the history of Iran.
The people who expect a speedy onset of democracy in Iran could stop holding their collective breath. The democracy is not coming, nowhere soon at least. The “embarrassing blow” to Mahmoud the Mad is not much stronger than a mosquito bite. And that even without taking into account the fact that Mahmoud himself is a mere puppet in the hands of the Ayatollahs. Anyone with a bit of curiosity could take a look at the Iranian government structure in Wiki. Truly wondrous architecture and one that will keep the stranglehold of the mullahs on Iran forever, unless destroyed by force:
Without going into an in-depth analysis, it should be clear that the president, his cabinet and the Majlis (parliament) are only a bunch of figureheads, playing at democracy under the ever watchful eye of the clique of mullahs and Ayatollahs, themselves under the ever watchful eye of the Supreme Leader.
The other much touted result of the elections is the win of the “relative moderate” former president Hashemi Rafsanjani in the so called Assemly of Experts. Let alone the fact that “current elections law requires Assembly of Experts candidates to be religious mujtahids, which greatly narrows the potential field.” This could hardly bother AP and its rivals who look for the earthquake. But who exactly is our big winner? Take a close look at this “relative moderate” and make your own conclusions:
Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Hashemi Bahramani born on August 25, 1934, is an influential Iranian politician, and is currently serving as the Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran.
If you wonder what the heck this Expediency Discernment Council could be, here is its definition:
The Expediency Discernment Council of the System, is an unelected establishment in the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran created in 1988. Its purpose is to resolve differences or conflicts between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians, and also to serve as a consultative council to the Supreme Leader.
As of 1998, the council is headed by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. All of the 34 members of this council are directly assigned by the Supreme Leader.
Any questions? So you can see it clearly now, I hope, that our “relative moderate” hero is just one of the old boys and who takes care of his prosperity and his career. And that the whole farce of the elections is just a distraction. It is still worth to take a look at that Wiki entry on our hero:
In 1997, a German court convicted two men of murder in the 1992 assassination of Sadiq Sarafkindi, an Iranian-Kurdish leader, as well as three of his associates, and convicted two others of being accessories to the crimes. Presiding Judge Frithjof Kubsch said the men had no personal motive but were following orders. Without naming names, Kubsch said the gangland-style murders had been ordered by Iran’s Committee for Special Operations, to which Iran’s President and spiritual leader belonged. Prosecutors had contended that Iran’s powerful spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani had personally ordered the killings.
On 25 October 2006, a team of Argentine prosecutors formally charged Iran and Shi’a militia Hezbollah with the 1994 AMIA Bombing in Buenos Aires, accusing the Iranian authorities of directing Hezbollah to carry out that attack and calling for the arrest of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven others. This incident has put Ahmadinejad’s government in the awkward position of defending Rafsanjani, whom they oppose for corruption and being pro-Western. Therefore, this event was seen as a positive development for Rafsanjani during his successful campaign for election as a member of the Assembly of Experts in December 2006.
So you can see now the ugly mug of the “relative moderate” in all its beauty. A wanted moderate, sorry – it should be murderer.
And instead of calling for his extradition to stand trial in Germany and /or Argentine, some Guardian hacks already call for a dialog with the murderers. Sorry, with the “moderates” of one the most oppressive and reactionary regimes in existence.
A travesty, one might say. No, it is worse.
Cross-posted on SimplyJews
Come now, let’s have some mind for context… Iran has a government that pretty well no one likes – this is nothing new – but it is a government which has become decidedly more moderate since its establishment in the 80’s. In judging the press treatment of Iranian electoral politics, I think it is important to remember that many commentators are judging the current president and government against that of Khatami, who was certainly a reformist figure. Ahmadinejad is, from the perspective of pretty much everyone who’s paying attention, a step backwards in Iranian politics. And if we go ahead and compare Rafsanjani to Ahmadinejad, then Rafsanjani is going to come out smelling pretty rosy, regardless of what we think of him.
This is not to be unexpected. Politics is a Sisiphyan endeavour, where one step forward is often followed by two steps back. That’s the nature of compromise: That process by which we find a way to get along to some extent despite the realities of this big old ugly world. When it comes to Iran, the West (read, the US, Britain, Russia) doesn’t have much of a moral high ground to stand on. Discussion and compromise are the only ways that relations with Tehran have any chance of improving, perhaps with a good dose of patience while we wait for the Iranian government to moderate itself, as it has in the past. Iran is no arena for unleashing hyperbole. That’s what has put relations where they are today.
Tom – you confirm my worst opinion of the typical appeaser’s mind. So, when faced with facts, you call not to “unleash hyperbole”?
This mini-speech of yours could have been used for any dictatorship or any regime of the past – from Chenghiz Khan to Pol Pot and everything in the middle, so flexible and accommodating it is. I can hear your predecessors calling for appeasement of Stalin or Hitler or… in the precise same terms.
Now let’s wait for all of them to moderate themselves. Are you waiting?
Tick… tick… tick
You know, there are a few key differences between the people you mentioned and the Iranian government. Systematic slaughter comes to mind, for starters. I tend to believe that Iran had its fill of blood during the Iran-Iraq war, and would have a hard time getting its people behind another such debacle were the leadership to decide to invade Poland or something. But I don’t want to waste too many words on someone who doesn’t understand (or can’t be bothered with) the differences between 1938 and 2006. But let’s inject a few extra facts to the debate.
Iranian history is important to the way we talk about Iran, and important for us to understand. The Iranian government has plenty of reasons to distrust the west: for many years, the US systematically subverted Iranian democracy in favour of British and US oil interests. From the perspective of anyone who wasn’t, say, the Shah in the 1970’s, the West systematically manipulated Iran’s domestic situation from about 1920 to 1979. (A wonderful book on the everyman’s view of politics is My Uncle Napoleon, in which the title character, as he slides into dementia, blames every inconvenience on the secret hand of the British.) There’s a strong argument to be made that the Islamic Republic’s extreme nature was in large part a response to Western meddling under the Shah. Remember ‘Marg Bar Amerika,’ and all that? To this day, relations are defined in terms of historical domestic meddling, and the Iranian right wing defines itself in opposition to the West. As things stand, our policy just reinforces this relationship, and arguably makes the Iranian government stronger as a result.
Is it a monster? Their government isn’t great, but Khamenei is no Pol Pot, and there are far worse things happening in Africa, some of them much easier to fix, if you want to worry about monstrosity. And if it’s simply some deep-seated itch for democracy you’re scratching, well, sorry, we screwed up on that one a long time ago, so far as Iran is concerned.
I imagine what you’re actually worried about is Iran obtaining the Bomb and wielding it over its neighbors to secure regional hegemony. And to that I say, sure, it’s a worry. But with this one, we’re going to have to play with the cards we’re dealt, and no amount of whinging over the direction of Iranian domestic politics is going to make the course any easier. If Iran has a chance at becoming the central regional power, it isn’t by any fault of their own – we set the stage for all of this by breaking our military in Iraq and destabilizing the whole region in the mix. And as a result, there isn’t much to work with at the negotiating table. To pretty much anything we do, Iran will probably say bring it on, and use it to solidify their base, saying, “See? The West really does just want to keep us weak so it can get at our oil! Let’s see what they say when we have nukes!” It’s not happy, but as a realist, you must admit that this is a problem of our own devising…
Dear Tom,
Your last long winded comment only strengthens my first impression. A typical load of head-in-the-sand crap if I ever seen one.
So, let’s try to take some of it apart.
1. “Systematic slaughter comes to mind, for starters.” So let’s wait for the next one, shall we?
2. “I tend to believe that Iran had its fill of blood during the Iran-Iraq war…” That’s one hell of scientific approach.
3. “But I don’t want to waste too many words on someone who doesn’t understand (or can’t be bothered with) the differences between 1938 and 2006. But let’s inject a few extra facts to the debate.” Let me see: would 68 years be the right answer? Now inject. In your normal haughty style, please.
4.”Is it a monster? Their government isn’t great, but Khamenei is no Pol Pot, and there are far worse things happening in Africa…” Should one dignify this with an answer?
5. “I imagine what you’re actually worried about is Iran obtaining the Bomb and wielding it over its neighbors to secure regional hegemony. And to that I say, sure, it’s a worry.” Thank you, really, for descending to the street level to confirm at least one of my worries.
Now let me explain to you the original post again. Its purpose was a) to show that the Iranian elections and their presentation in the quoted article are so much crap; and b) that the main winner in these elections is no more and no less than a wanted murderer.
It seems that these two facts are still not addressed in your long discourse, so you have wasted your time. And mine, which is (of course) much less important.
Do us all a favor: if you want to continue delving into irrelevance, instead of addressing the original post, do not reappear here, OK? Otherwise I shall ask the owner of the blog to deal with your rumblings in a more dictatorial way.