Iran’s Challenge to its Neighbours and the World
Patrick Seale Al-Hayat - 30/06/05//
Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad’s landslide election victory as President of Iran is a welcome development in a Middle East region profoundly disturbed by unresolved conflicts, corrupt elites and violent foreign intervention.
When he is sworn in on August 4, his performance and style of government will be closely watched to see how he intends honouring his ambitious pledge to make Iran a ‘role model of a modern, advanced and powerful Islamic society.’
His unexpected victory – which took all Iran-watchers by surprise – could provide a healthy stimulus to Iran’s Arab neighbours, as well as challenging the United States to rethink its Iran policy, long held in thrall by the American embassy hostage crisis of 1979.
The first thing to note is that the Iranian election campaign gave the region an example of vigorous, authentic democracy, years ahead of what passes for elections in most Arab countries and very different from recent elections held under American or Israeli occupation. It is true that Iran’s Council of Guardians whittled down the presidential candidates from 1,000 to just seven, and that there were suspicions of vote rigging in some areas, but this was no reason for the U.S. to denounce the elections as ‘sham’ and ‘illegitimate’. Washington may yet have to eat its words.
Indeed, the United States has done itself a disservice by its churlish response to the Iranian elections. Laughable remarks by the State Department that Iran ‘is out of step with the rest of the region and with the currents of freedom and liberty that have been so apparent in Iraq and Afghanistan…’ do nothing to enhance America’s battered reputation.
When Stephen J Hadley, President George W Bush’s National Security Adviser describes Iran as ‘the number one state sponsor of terrorism’, adding that ‘Iran’s policy is to get rid of Israel’, he strikes a blinkered, out-dated and propagandist note. Such statements may play well with fervent neo-conservatives but they are unsuited to today’s realities.
They tend to confirm the view of many analysts that, not for the first time, the United States is missing a chance to correct its aim in the Middle East.
Ahmadi-Nejad’s campaign themes were social justice for the poor, the redistribution of Iran’s oil wealth, a crackdown on corruption in high places and a return to the traditional values and the ‘spiritual purity’ of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. His website was called mardomyar – ‘friend of the people’.
If he can implement it, his radical programme is in stark contrast to the situation in several Arab countries, where the state is all too often reduced to a hollow shell by the greed of a privileged and corrupt elite, which dominates the economy and operates largely above the law and out of the control of state institutions and the state bureaucracy.
Standing up to America
Iran also provides a challenge to the Arab world by its proud and self-confident nationalism, so different from the defeatism and shabby compromises evident in many parts of the Arab world. Determined to resist foreign – and especially American -- dictates, Iran wants to deal with the rest of the world on the basis of equality and mutual respect.
Although he has little experience of foreign affairs, President-elect Ahmadi-Nejad has made clear that he wants to improve Iran’s standing in the world. This is not to suggest that he is more anti-American than his predecessors – on the contrary, he may be ready for a serious dialogue with Washington -- but he will show no tolerance for the threats and insults which have been the staple fare of American discourse about Iran.
The high oil price, which is expected to net Iran close to $50 billion in the year to March 2006, and its strategic relations with both China and Russia, are factors which are expected to stiffen Iranian resistance to American demands.
Ahmadi-Nejad has said he wants closer ties with Iran’s Arab neighbours. His election is therefore good news for the survival, even the strengthening, of the Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis, which has emerged as the main obstacle to American and Israeli regional hegemony, and which, for this reason, has come under fierce attack from Washington and Tel Aviv.
Syria, in particular, sometimes considered the ‘weak link’ in the axis, will be anxious to see what added support it can get from Tehran. Bush administration officials have accused Syria of stoking the violence in Iraq and Lebanon and of backing militant Palestinian factions against Israel, while U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has mounted a campaign to isolate Syria diplomatically.
Neo-conservatives in Washington and Israeli hawks have made no secret that their aim is ‘regime change’ in Damascus, on the argument that this would bring about the collapse of the entire Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis.
Indeed, had Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president, won the presidential election -- as was widely predicted -- he might have been inclined to sacrifice ties with Syria and Hizballah in the interest of a deal with the United States. Such speculation has now been ruled out.
This month, the European Three (E3), Britain, France and Germany, are due to resume negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme. They are expected to present a ‘final offer’ of economic, financial and technological benefits in exchange for an Iranian commitment to put a final end to all uranium enrichment. The United States has already expressed scepticism over the possible outcome of the negotiations.
Ahmadi-Nejad, an engineer by training, is very keen to promote Iran’s technological progress. He has said that ‘nuclear energy is a result of the
Iranian people’s scientific progress,’ and that no one will be allowed to block Iran’s further technological development.
While committed to pursue Iran’s efforts to master the uranium fuel cycle for the peaceful purpose of electricity generation, he has declared that nuclear weapons were ‘against Islamic values.’ It would be wise for the United States and Israel to take him at his word, rather than to seek to browbeat him with the threat of military intervention.
America’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said recently that the U.S. ‘will not accept a nuclear-weapons capable Iran,’ and that ‘military action is an option if Tehran fails to take ‘necessary steps.’’ With the United States trapped in the Iraqi quagmire and militarily over-stretched, such belligerent talk seems unrealistic and needlessly provocative.
Son of a blacksmith
In spite of his modest appearance and humble background, Ahmadi-Nejad is clearly a considerable person. Born in 1956, he graduated with a BSc and MSc in engineering from Iran’s University of Science and Industry, played a role in the take over of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and later earned a PhD in transportation engineering, which helped him reduce the traffic chaos on Tehran’s streets, when he served as the city’s mayor in the past two years.
He joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, saw action during the Iraq-Iran war, and rose to be chief engineer of the 6th Army. He then served as governor of the provinces of Maku and Ardabil until 1997.
As mayor of Tehran he is said to have been the best mayor the city has ever had. He is known for his integrity, personal piety and Spartan lifestyle.
Will he succeed where his predecessors failed? Iran politics since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini have been marked by struggles between different factions and power centres. In Ahmadi-Nejad’s favour is the fact that, with his election, the various organs at the top of the state – the Presidency, the Expediency Council, the Council of Guardians, the Majlis, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei himself -- will be more ideologically coherent than in the past. In theory at least, they are all in the hands of more or less enlightened conservatives. It would be wise for the world to wait awhile before passing judgement.
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