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US looms large in Iran's
elections
By Kaveh Afrasiabi
BERLIN - As the clock winds down in the
final week of the short campaign for presidential
elections on June 17, the question of US-Iran
relations appears to have become a defining, and
perhaps to some extent determining, element of
Iran's elections.
While there is no
official poll to indicate the front runners, one
can safely assume that the liberal candidate
Mostafa Moin and the centrist Ayatollah Hashemi
Rafsanjani are ahead of the pack - of eight
candidates sanctioned following screening by the
Guardians Council of a crowded field of more than
1,000. Both these candidates have prioritized the
issue of future relations with the US, hoping to
galvanize young voters interested in the
normalization of relations with the Western
superpower nowadays considered Iran's "new
neighbor" in control of Iraq and Afghanistan.
In his first press interview after
formally announcing his candidacy, Rafsanjani, a
former president and current head of the
Expediency Council, offered an olive branch toward
the US and stated his desire to improve the
climate between the two countries. He has said
that if the US released Iran's frozen assets in
the US, he would be ready for dialogue. Moin, on
the other, hand has been even more blunt in
stating his desire to end the diplomatic
estrangement of the past quarter of century,
irrespective of the stern opposition by the
hardline candidates still beating the drum of
anti-Americanism for their mass of constituency.
But the hardline, often referred to as the
right wing, candidates are not united on this
particular issue. With their disunity serving as a
major handicap diminishing their individual
chances, this faction suffers from a degree of
disjunction between a militant anti-Americanism
and the system-maintenance prerogative of a
modus vivendi with the US power casting a
large shadow on Iran's national security. One of
those candidates, Ali Larijani, the former head of
the state-owned, conservative-controlled Radio and
Television Organization, is considered a pragmatic
realist who favors dialogue with the US.
No matter what the outcome of the
elections - and Rafsanjani may well turn out the
winner as expected by most Iran watchers - the
mere fact that the old taboo has been broken and
the candidates freely ignore the official line of
not talking about the US is welcome news
portending the breaking of significant ice in the
tumultuous US-Iran relations since 1979.
Later this month, US and Iranian diplomats
will sit around the same table in Luxembourg
discussing Iraq's reconstruction. Already, a
quid pro quo for Iran's extension of its
freeze on nuclear fuel activities, Washington has
dropped its opposition to Iran's accession to the
World Trade Organization. And in various policy
circles in the US, one can discern a greater
willingness than in the past to give credit to
Iran for the strides it has taken in Afghanistan,
Iraq, against narcotics traffic, etc.
Of
course, this does not mean that everything is
rosy. The US is officially still intent on taking
Iran to the United Nations Security Council for
sanctions if Iran resumes its nuclear programs,
and occasionally accuses Iran of harboring
al-Qaeda terrorists, overlooking, however, that
Iran has turned over many terrorists who have
crossed into the country, and that scores of other
terrorists have been arrested. Iran says it has
arrested more than 5,000 terrorists in the past
three years and has deported them to their home
countries. Using them as bargaining chips with
Washington, Iran's intention is less engaging in
terrorism and more serving its own geostrategic
interests in a region dominated by the US.
Any qualitative improvement of US-Iran
relations depends to some extent on the security
dialogue between the two sides, and here the
troubled Iran-Europe talks may prove to be an
effective catalyst. Per the latest round of talks
in Geneva, the European Three (EU-3 - Germany,
Britain and France) have promised to present Iran
with a concrete proposal before the summer is
over.
The recent setbacks on the European
constitution, casting doubts on the future of the
European Union, will not be without negative
impact on the ability of the EU-3 to conduct a
common foreign policy toward Iran, even though the
new French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is
one of the original minds behind the nuclear talks
with Iran. On the other hand, the related news
that the US has rebuffed Germany's bid to become a
permanent member of the Security Council spells a
bad omen for the future of US-German cooperation
on Iran, and may lead Germany to adopt a more
independent posture vis-a-vis Iran, at least
tactically in order to sway the US back in favor
of Germany's request at the UN.
One of the
"working committees" in the talks between Iran and
the EU-3 centers on security cooperation and, in
light of Iran's quest for a guarantee of
non-intervention by the US, it could culminate in
concrete proposals for, say, a meaningful
Iran-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
dialogue and, perhaps, a NATO-Iran council
modelled after the NATO-Russia council. Given
Iran's participation in the past couple of summits
of NATO, NATO's recent eastward expansion, and
Iran's concern for the future of Persian Gulf
security, there is no reason to exclude this
possibility.
Simultaneously, a similar
Iran-OSCE (Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe) can be initiated, with a
large purview encompassing cooperative security in
both the Persian Gulf, as well as the Caspian Sea
region, notwithstanding Iran's participation in
recent OSCE conferences on Caspian environmental
security.
Unfortunately, the US Congress
is busy conducting a more one-dimensional, hostile
foreign policy toward Iran by entertaining a new
bill that in the name of establishing a democratic
system in Iran violates Iran's national
sovereignty. If enacted, this bill will tie the
hands of the George W Bush administration on Iran,
precluding meaningful progress in US-Iran
diplomacy.
For now, however, with
Washington learning new sobering lessons from Iraq
about the tough realities of the Middle East
political landscape and an Iranian Islamist
democracy showing aspects of political pluralism
in action, the stage is set for a major
breakthrough and the onset of a new, propitious
chapter in US-Iran relations - one just hopes that
this new opportunity on the horizon will not be
frustrated as it has on so many occasions in the
past.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is
the author of After Khomeini: New Directions
in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and
"Iran's Foreign Policy Since 9/11", Brown's
Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with former
deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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