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Iran's lamed leader and powerless
president
By Safa Haeri
PARIS - The political maelstrom that rocked
Iran's leadership amid festivities marking the 25th
anniversary of the Islamic Revolution has ended with no
winner, instead leaving two main losers: the powerless
President Mohammad Khatami and Iran's supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Iranian analysts.
"The only
absolute loser of the day is Mohammad Khatami, whose
pusillanimous presidency was crowned by dereliction of
duty in the dark hours of the nation. He will secure
the distinction of being the most cowardly leader in
Iran's long history," Ahmad Sadri, a professor of sociology
at Lake Forest College in the US states of
Illinois, wrote in the Lebanese English-language newspaper
The Daily Star.
In fact, from a zenith of
popularity that almost matched that of Dr Mohammad
Mosadeq, the former prime minister who nationalized
Iranian oil industries and, as a result, was toppled in
a coup staged by the US Central Intelligence Agency in
1953, and that of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the
leader of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 during a
relatively short period before the victory of the
movement and the few months after, Khatami saw his star
coming down progressively until today: now considered by
the majority of Iranians as a sellout.
Criticism
of Khamenei is not in short supply either, with analysts
claiming that the Supreme Leader neglected his duty to
serve Iran in the best interests of its people. "By
firmly supporting the Guardians Council [GC], Ayatollah
Khamenei made himself the leader of the conservative
wing ... and a lame and fragile leader for that matter,
instead of being the guide of all Iranians," noted Ali
Keshtgar, editor of the Paris-based Mihan (Homeland)
monthly.
The crisis takes shape
The
unprecedented dispute began after the GC, a 12-member
conservative-controlled vetting body of which Khamenei
appoints six senior clerics, announced on January 11
that it had rejected some 3,500 candidates running for
the legislative elections due on February 20, most of
them reformists, including more than 80 reformist
deputies seeking re-election, on the grounds that they
did not respect Islam, the constitution or the system
based on Velayat-e Faqih - the absolute rule of
the leader.
To protest
the decision denounced as "illegal and undemocratic",
the reformists who control the majlis
(parliament) immediately staged a sit-in
and the cabinet announced it would resign en masse, but
Khatami, who, leaning once again toward the position of
the leader, abandoned both the lawmakers and the
ministers by agreeing to hold general elections as
planned, with the Iranian News Agency (IRNA) reporting
on Friday that Khatami wrote a letter to Khamenei,
saying the government has agreed to the February 20
elections only because of the supreme leader's ruling
that the vote proceed as scheduled.
"By doing
so, Khatami, once again, not only confirmed his
allegiance to the system of Velayat-e Faqih, but
also broke rank with all reformists, those who share the
leadership as well as with those who ask for true
reforms, sounding the tocsin for the so-called official
reformists he leads," commented Hasan Shari'atmadari
from the Iranian Nationalist Republicans based in
Hamburg, Germany.
In an effort to defuse the
crisis, Khamenei at first instructed the GC to "revise"
its decision, but then, citing the mass resignation of
the reformist faction of the parliament protesting the
disqualifications, he cautioned them against provocative
political action, hinting that anyone who disrupted the
electoral process would face criminal prosecution. "One
is not authorized to shun his duty because of his
objection to a method or an event," Khamenei said.
"Refraining from fulfilling a task in the form of
resignation is haram [forbidden on religious
grounds]," he said, ruling that elections would be held
on time, regardless of the resignations.
For its
part, the GC, while declaring that the leader's demand
was "duty-bound", went its own way by reinstating some
of the less "obvious" disqualified members of the
majlis, while at the same time adding more to the black
list, including the "undesirable" figures such as
Khatami's younger brother, Dr Mohammad Reza Khatami, the
first deputy speaker and the leader of the Islamic Iran
Participation Front, the country's largest political
formation that also controls most of the seats in the
preset majlis.
"The result of this standoff was
that not only the sixth majlis,
but also the
Guardians, both challenged the leadership of Khamenei as the
leader of the Islamic Republic," observed Mehdi Khalaji,
a senior commentator for Prague-based, Farsi-language
24-hour radio station Radio Farda, sponsored by the United
States.
Both Khatami and the Speaker of
parliament, Hojjatoleslam Mahdi Karroubi, may have bowed
to pressure, but in their letter to the leader they also
observed that the GC had failed to carry out the supreme
leader's orders, which under Iranian systems is meant to
be mandatory. At the same time, Khatami instructed
Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mussavi-Alari, who was
adamantly defying the GC by insisting that in the
present explosive and volatile political situation it
was better to postpone the polling, to obey the council.
"The
announcement put an end to speculation that other organs
might intervene to hold the election, which has been
marked by a row over large-scale disqualification of the
aspirants," IRNA said, reminding that the daily
Jomhuri-ye Eslami, considered the official voice of the
leader, on Saturday had quoted "informed circles" as
saying that "in case executive officials in charge of
the majlis
election do not
announce their readiness to hold the poll by today,
certain measures will be taken to hand over the task to
other organs".
But while
the conservative-controlled press reserved a cautious
welcome to Khatami's position, pro-reform media blamed
him for the demise of the reformists. "At the start of
the crisis, Khatami seemed to standing firm on reformist
demands, but as days passed, he became tame, sliding to
the conservative's side, as did the Speaker of the
majlis
," Javad Tale'i, European correspondent for the
Sahrvand monthly published in Canada, was quoted as
saying by Iran Emrooz, an online newspaper based in
Germany.
Meanwhile, hardline voices, both
clerics and militaries, launched a coordinated campaign
of insults and threats against the reformers: the
spokesman of the Revolutionary Guards dubbed them as
"political dwarfs" and Hossein Shariatmadari, an
intelligence officer specializing in the interrogation
of dissidents and the hardline editor of the evening
daily Keynan, urged the GC to "boot them out" of the
majlis
and put them on trial for anti-revolutionary
activities.
Hamid Reza Taraqqi of the Islamic
Associations Party, the shadowy group believed to
control the regime from behind the scenes, said half of
the lawmakers barred from elections support secularism -
as opposed to the religion-based Iranian political
system - and accused them of acquiring money for
foreigners while Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the secretary
of the GC, stated that "the Great Leader of the
revolution, with his highly wise speech, punched the
mouth of American arrogance and its local enemies of
Islam and the Islamic Republic".
"Corruptors on
Earth", "fighting God", "puppets working for foreign
interests", etc, were some of the charges one heard
against the protesting lawmakers.
Speaking
at a rally last Wednesday, reformist Ali Akbar Mousavi
Khoeni said that any conservative effort to overhaul
the Islamic republic would ultimately fail. "If some
people have decided to restore despotism in Iran, they
should know that it will be for a very brief period," IRNA
quoted him as saying.
"Taking part in the
elections is haram," objected reformist deputy
Jalal Jalaizadeh, and Dr Khatami stated that elections
for the seventh majlis are "illegal and undemocratic",
hence the mass resignation of 125 reformist lawmakers
and the Islamic Iran Participation Front's decision not
to go to the polls.
But though the reformists
had lost the electoral battle, mostly because of a
"chieftain that was not", meaning Khatami, some Iranian
analysts reckoned that what the protester lawmakers did,
although "late and not bold enough", was not "without
merit".
"The reformists have lost a crucial
battle, but at the end of the day, their courageous
protest led to an awakening of the international
community to Iranian realities, making it realize that
not only the ruling conservatives have no legitimacy but
also that they are utterly unpopular, that despite
lacking popular support, they cling to power at all
costs. It also heard that what the Iranians want is a
referendum for changing this regime and that the coming
elections are nothing but a farce, a selection," argued
Mas'oud Behnood, a veteran Iranian journalist based in
London.
What's next for
Iran?
Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the
maverick former president who, as the chairman of the
Assembly for Discerning the Interests of the State
(Expediency Council), may hold the key to Iran's future,
as he sits between the lamed leader and the powerless
president and is considered by the majority of Iranians
as "the ultimate fixer".
"The next
majlis would
be a combination of moderate and independent forces of
both sides, as both leading wings in the past have been
unsuccessful, resulting in people's despairing from
them," he told the daily Jame Jam, edited by the
leader-controlled Voice and Visage (Radio and
Television) of the Islamic Republic. "Deceived by
extremists from both sides, the voters are looking to
moderate personalities independent from the existing
wings," Rafsanjani added, referring to the Party of
Builders of which he is the spiritual mentor and is led
by his younger brother, Mohammad Hasehmi.
"Bowing to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy
Agency] on the controversial nuclear activities, dubious
trips to Europe by [the powerful secretary of the
Supreme Council on National Security] Hasan Rohani,
secret deals with Washington on taming Iraqi Shi'ites
and the active role Iran played in the prisoners
exchange between Hezbollah and Israel with German
mediation has placed the conservatives in a positive
position on the international scene, introducing its
main figures like Rohani, [former foreign affairs
minister Dr Ali Akbar] Velayati, [Mohammad Javad]
Larijani, etc - all close friends and aides to Hashemi
Rafsanjani," pointed out Hasan Hashemian, journalist and
university professor.
But the younger generation
of Iranian reformers aren't ready to concede defeat just
yet, with several hundred students - often seen as the
barometer of the country's political mood - taking part
in a boisterous rally over the weekend in which they
called for a boycott of the February 20 elections,
Khatami's resignation and a referendum to overhaul the
constitution that gives hardliners their massive vetting
powers.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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