PARIS
- Barely one month after the ruling Iranian
conservatives secured the control of the 290 seats in
the majlis, or parliament, the result has been political
chaos, an increase in crackdowns on the population,
mostly youngsters and dissidents, a visible comeback of
pressure groups, and a harder line in foreign policy.
Before being "selected" by the leader-controlled
Guardian Council, the body that vets all candidates to
all elections in the republic, the candidates who found
their way to the new majlis had been told not to try to
"waste" their time in "futile" political debates, the
"trade mark" of the outgoing parliament that was
dominated by reformers and considered as one of the
country's most dynamic and democratic parliaments.
Instead, the new legislators were advised to be more
concerned about people's real problems, such as jobs for
the millions of unemployed, security, fighting
corruption and social injustices.
But despite
these recommendations, the seventh majlis started its
work with shouts of "Death to America" during its
inaugural session, followed by statements from some
hardline deputies urging the government to emulate North
Korea by getting out of the nuclear Non Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), amid threats of not approving the
Additional Protocol to the NPT, thus raising tensions in
the dispute between Iran and the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) - the United Nations' nuclear
watchdog - that accuses Tehran of not fulfilling
promises made last October to Britain, France and
Germany on suspending uranium-enriching activities and
providing the UN full and complete reports on its
nuclear programs and projects.
"If the majlis
feels that the Additional Protocol serves the interests
of the nation, it will ratify it. If not, it will reject
it and the government has to abide by the decision," Dr
Qolamali Haddad-Adel, the new Speaker - and the first
ever not being a cleric - said in a session broadcast
live on state radio, adding, "Iran's majlis does not
take orders from foreigners."
His comments
followed those of Mehdi Kouchakzadeh, a staunch
anti-American lawmaker, who urged the authorities to
stop cooperation with the IAEA and withdraw from the
NPT. "If the IAEA gives in to US pressure, we will react
strongly to defend Iran's national interests ... as a
lawmaker, I think Iran has to stop cooperation with the
IAEA and seriously consider withdrawing from the NPT,"
he said. Kouchakzadeh, a former member of the elite
hardline Revolutionary Guards, drew public attention
when he chanted "Death to America" during the opening
session of the majlis last month.
"These people
are hand-picked by the Guardian Council and the
conservatives and they have to respond to what the
ruling hardliners expect them to do," commented Sho'leh
Sa'di, a lawyer and former member of the majlis,
predicting more difficult times ahead for Iranian people
and in Iran's relations with the international
community.
At the same time, some once "dormant"
Islamist ideologues with the Revolutionary Guards and
pressure groups controlled by the conservatives, such as
the Ansar Hezbollah, have started giving public
statements denouncing US and Western "hegemony" over the
Muslim world, calling for the creation of a "common
Islamic front" to boot the "miscreants" and the
"infidels" out of Iraq and other Muslim lands.
"We must follow a strategy of terrorism in order
to frighten the Americans. Such terrorism is sacred. The
modernity, a Zionist and Western phenomenon, was
implemented with violence, we must retaliate on them
using the same methods," Dr Hasan Abbasi, an ideologue
for the Revolutionary Guards and driving force behind
the the so-called "Center For Recruiting Suicide
Volunteers" said recently in an address to basiji
units, or volunteer militias.
As the name
suggests, the center organizes Muslim volunteers to
fight American and other "infidel" forces in Iraq and
elsewhere in the Muslim world by means of suicide
operations. According to Abbasi, the center has already
listed "thousands" of volunteers and aims at recruiting
"at least 4 million, ready to go to the battlefront the
moment [Supreme Leader] Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei
decides".
Abbasi says that the center has
designated 29 objectives, including some in the US. "The
list of the targets has also been passed on to other
[terrorist] organizations around the world and they
could be hit by the suicide volunteers. We have
pinpointed America's Achilles Heel, and given [the list]
to all the world's guerrilla organizations in order to
cut down the roots of the Anglo-Saxon race for good,"
said Abbasi, while also threatening Persian Gulf
emirates like Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar "not to become a
base for enemies of Islam or you will be washed out by
our bullets".
Attacking liberal democracy,
Abbasi said, "We have to uproot liberal democracy from
the face of the world to prepare the ground for the
return of Mahdi [Shi'ite Muslims' 12th and last imam who
went into hiding more than 1,000 years ago at the age of
eight].
Observes Sho'leh Sa'di, "Such statements
demonstrate the regime's desire and tendency to renew a
policy of generalized antagonism. By giving a free arena
to new hardline voices connected to the ruling
conservatives, the regime is returning to its former
demons of the beginning of the Islamic Revolution
[1979], saying goodbye to the era of detente initiated
by President Mohammad Khatami," he told the Persian
service of Radio France International (RFI).
"With the reformists out of the race and
President Khatami becoming a virtual yes man of the
conservatives on the one hand, and the clouds getting
darker over the head of the Islamic Republic, the regime
is facing serious challenges and threats from both
outside and inside," Sho'leh Sa'di added.
According to Alireza Noorizadeh, an independent
journalist and an analyst of Iranian affairs based in
London, the picture has begun to change since the recent
parliamentary elections, when the Guardian Council
banned or prevented the participation of more than 2,800
reformist candidates to prevent a repeat of what
happened four years ago when the reformists obtained
full control of the parliament.
"At the same
time, 47 Revolutionary Guards officers entered the new
parliament, and additionally a Revolutionary Guards
colonel, namely Ezzatollah Zarqami, was appointed by
Khamenei to head the Broadcasting and Television
Authority," Noorizadeh noted.
"The aim of
Khatami's policy had been to reduce tensions with the
outside world; his achievements in establishing good
relations with neighboring countries, the European Union
countries, and the Arab world provided him a large
measure of independence. The Iranian leaders and the
conservatives always sensed the importance of Khatami's
role in distancing the threats and dangers lying in wait
for them, and therefore they had left the sphere of
foreign relations to Khatami," Noorizadeh pointed out.
This appears to have changed now.
Pointing out
the recent harsh resolution approved by the board of
governors of the IAEA on the initiative of Britain,
France and Germany and the Dublin-sponsored statement by
the 25-members of the European Union "deploring" Iran's
lack of clearcut and full cooperation with the IAEA and
the worsening condition of human rights in Iran, Sho'leh
Sa'di warned that "by taking wrong decisions and making
wrong policies, the hardliners have laid down the bed
for foreign menaces. Seemingly, this is what they are
after, now that they have no more friends anywhere in
the world."
"Statements by people like Abbasi
are part of the new policies adopted by the
conservatives. They are part of the carrot and stick, as
seen with the IAEA. On the one hand, and considering
that Abbasi and company are connected to the hardliners,
they send messages to world leaders. But at the same
time, they can always retreat, saying the threatening
declarations are made by independent people with no
official responsibilities," Sho'leh Sa'di commented.
Dr Ehsan Naraqi, a prominent Iranian
intellectual, says that since the conservatives secured
control of the majlis, the political order that had
prevailed in the Iranian establishment between the
reformists and the hardliners had collapsed. "There is
no more order. The reformists are out of the political
theater and the conservatives are not yet fully
reorganized. The result is chaos," he told Asia Times
Online.
One telling example of this state of
chaos was offered to the world when a naval unit of the
Revolutionary Guards, which on Monday seized three
British patrol boats and their two officers and six
soldiers who had strayed into Iranian waters off the
Aravand Roud (the Iranian name of the Shat el-Arab River
that runs between Iran and Iraq before flowing into the
Persian Gulf) refused to obey orders from both their
high command and the government to release the captures.
The incident then became a major diplomatic
incident after al-Alam Television, the 24-hour Arabic
service of Iranian Radio and Television, showed shots of
humiliated British soldiers walking blindfolded in the
blazing sun or sitting in an interrogation center, with
confiscated weapons and equipment said to be spying
gear. The captives were finally freed on Thursday after
top-level British government intervention.
"The
incident was full of messages," Masoud Behnoud, an
Iranian journalist, told Asia Times Online. "One
[message] was addressed to Iraqi public opinion in
particular and the Arab world in general, saying, 'see
how the very men who have occupied your land and are
ruling over you as masters behave like sheep in our
hands, humiliated and defeated'. The other message is
addressed to the British and the Europeans, telling them
no matter your hard line at the IAEA and on human
rights, we don't want to retaliate."
"However,
the more the Iranian authorities increase oppression and
crackdowns, the more they antagonize the world outside,
the more they get unpopular at home and the more
isolated abroad, hastening the countdown to their own
demise," Behnoud concluded.
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