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Ahmadinejad: The second
Rajai
By Mahan Abedin
The surprise election victory of Mahmud
Ahmadinejad in June has been subject to widely
different analyses and interpretations.
Ahmadinejad, who will officially take over the
presidential office on August 3, has been
described as everything from a right-wing
conservative to a closet socialist. But on closer
inspection, Ahmadinejad's elevation to the
presidency is not all that surprising; in fact,
the forces that propelled him into the commanding
heights of government are firmly rooted in the
ideological and social landscape of the Iranian
revolution of 1979.
Western analysts who,
without exception, made the wrong predictions
throughout the presidential campaign, are trying
to compensate for their earlier mistakes by
reading far too much into Ahmadinejad's success.
They now attribute it to his alleged powerful
supporters in the establishment and the
paramilitary Basij forces. Some have even gone
further and joined some Iranian political exiles
in declaring the whole event as stage-managed by
the secretive clerics who allegedly control the
Islamic republic. According to this analysis,
Ahmadinejad - irrespective of his mass appeal
among the poor and the disadvantaged - is the
regime's choice and his elevation to president
must be analyzed in this context.
This argument completely
ignores the democratic component of the Islamic republic
and its uncanny ability to reflect the national
mood at crucial junctures. This was as true in May 1997
- when the reformist Mohammad Khatami was
elected president - as it was in June with the
electoral victory of Ahmadinejad. Despite all
the institutional and cultural weaknesses of Iranian
democracy, there is little doubt that Iran is years
ahead of even enlightened Arab and Muslim countries in
providing real electoral choice to its people and
enabling them to seriously affect the destiny of
their country.
The second Rajai
Ahmadinejad consciously linked
his electoral campaign to that of Mohammad Ali
Rajai, a former Iranian president who was killed in
a bombing in August 1981, claimed by the
terrorist Mujahideen e-Khalq. This symbolism is
acutely important, for two reasons. First, the slain
Rajai was the last non-clerical president of the
Islamic republic, and second, Rajai is the working-class
hero of the Iranian revolution. Indeed, his
pictures still proliferate in Iranian cities and
his words and memory are regularly invoked by
government officials and others who are anxious to
maintain the emotional and ideological ties
between the Islamic republic and the poor and
disadvantaged classes.
Rajai is not only a
hero of the Iranian revolution; his memory
represents an alternative course of development
for the revolution. Had he not been killed, Iran
would likely have looked very different today. It
was Rajai's murder, alongside those of
former prime minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar and
countless other officials killed in the period
1981-1982, that profoundly radicalized the Islamic
republic and forced it to crack down decisively on
all forms of dissent, armed or otherwise. It also
consolidated power in the hands of a narrow circle
of clerics; in short, the killing of Rajai is
directly linked to the empowerment of the
theocratic element of the Islamic republic.
All nations commemorate their fallen
soldiers and heroes, but there is something
uniquely intense about the manner in which Iran
commemorates the memory and legacy of those who
died fighting for its establishment, security and
longevity. Pictures of the "martyrs" of the
1978-1979 revolution and the eight-year war with
Iraq in the 1980s are plastered all over the
buildings of major cities, towns and villages, and
streets and districts are named after them. It is
as if the Islamic republic establishes a personal
relationship with all those who have died in its
name. Nowhere is this intense posthumous
relationship more apparent and overwhelming than
Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery in the south of Tehran,
where many of the "martyrs" of the revolution and
the war with Iraq are buried.
Walking
across this vast necropolis, the visitor is
confronted with the pictures of hundreds of
thousands of young men, mostly of either rural,
working-class or disadvantaged backgrounds, and on
their graves a few short words describe their
devotion to the Iranian revolution and its
founding leader, the late Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini. The words are as genuine, compelling and
intense as the innocent pictures that stand above
them. Those who are interested in understanding
the captivating power of the Iranian revolution
and its ability to continuously reproduce itself
need to visit this unnerving plot of land.
It is highly symbolic and meaningful,
therefore, that Khomeini's resting place is in
Behesht-e-Zahra. The message is clear: the "imam"
rests among his core constituency, and the fate of
the revolution is inextricably tied to its ability
to improve the circumstances of the disadvantaged
social classes who gave their sons to it. Rajai is
also buried in Behesht-e-Zahra, and the creative
sloganeers of the cemetery have put the following
caption above his grave: "For what crime was he
killed"? It is not only the hardcore supporters of
the Islamic republic who have posed this question
to the terrorists who killed Rajai, but judging by
the events of the past two decades, namely the
radicalization of the Islamic republic and the
empowerment of its clerical core, most sensible
people in wider Iranian society have a very
similar query.
It is precisely this
powerful legacy that Ahmadinejad tapped into, and
his phenomenal electoral success largely rests on
his successful manipulation of it. Ahmadinejad has
been propelled into the presidency by a
substantial rural and urban working-class
constituency that wants to take its rulers and the
middle classes into account. This revival of the
Iranian revolution and its egalitarian spirit will
inevitably create tremendous energies that could
potentially make Ahmadinejad's victory the most
consequential event in Iran since 1979. Far from
being the favorite of the clerical establishment,
Ahmadinejad is in fact their most serious
adversary to date, particularly since his
revolutionary credentials are impeccable.
Ahmadinejad is not only a working-class
man from a disadvantaged rural background, he is
also a former senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps (IRGC) officer and veteran of the Iran-Iraq
war. In short, he represents the Iranian
revolution and its history in its entirety.
Ahmadinejad represents the class that has worked
and fought tirelessly for the past 26 years to
consolidate the achievements of the revolution,
usually behind the scenes and certainly without
any public recognition.
It is particularly
dramatic therefore that the candidate that he
defeated in the second (runoff) round of the
elections represented a very different class
altogether, namely the clerical oligarchy that has
amassed a degree of power and influence that is
far beyond its due share. Indeed, Hashemi
Rafsanjani is the clerical oligarch par
excellence. For more than two decades, Rafsanjani
has rode the tiger of clerical supremacy, while at
the same time playing to a receptive Western
audience, promising them a final settlement with
the Islamic republic.
His defeat in the
second round spells the definitive end for his
hopes of once again capturing the center stage of
Iranian politics. Moreover, Rafsanjani's defeat
could potentially spell the demise of the clerical
oligarchy as a whole, thus finally releasing Iran
from its theocratic constraints and enabling it to
live up to the expectations of the revolution that
gave rise to it.
Implications of
Ahmadinejad's victory
Broadly,
Ahmadinejad's victory has two relatively near-term
implications. First and foremost it represents a
catastrophic defeat for the liberal reformists.
The reformist discourse of fundamentally remaking
Iran's political institutions has been eclipsed by
a more parochial and practical concern over the
growing inequalities in society. Ahmadinejad's
landslide victory proves in a dramatic way that
reformist rhetoric in many of its aspects is
mainly an intellectual pursuit without deep
resonance in Iranian society. At a practical
level, the defeat will further deepen divisions in
the reformists' ranks, making them even less
capable of shaping Iranian politics.
This
defeat should force the reformers to contemplate
two very important factors: namely, that they do
not have the support of a substantial number of
people beyond the affluent communities of north
Tehran, and that their institutional approach
toward remaking the Islamic republic is a failure
through and through. The latter point is
particularly important as the reformists set about
changing their strategy and tactics. The
"institutional" approach, as prescribed by Saeed
Hajjarian, the main strategist of the reformists
and the godfather of the Islamic republic's
intelligence services, envisaged the gradual
diminution and eventual replacement of key
theocratic institutions in the Islamic republic.
One fundamental problem with this approach
is that it ignores the vital functionality of
these institutions, particularly the office of the
Velayat-e-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurisconsult)
and the constitutional watchdog body, the
Guardians Council. Without these institutions, the
entire republican apparatus of the Iranian state
becomes vulnerable. This is not an argument in
favor of these effectively non-elected
institutions, but a reminder that in the absence
of properly organized parties (and the regulatory
framework that would accompany such an
arrangement) and an exhaustive debate on the
precise nature and scope of the republic's
"Islamic" dimension, weakening existing
institutions could be destabilizing.
More
broadly, the reformists will have to recognize
that any major political change in Iran that seeks
to ignore the experience of the past 26 years is
doomed to fail, since it will provoke massive
resistance by well-entrenched emotional,
ideological and commercial interests. Regime
change in Iran has always been a fantasy, not
least because the Islamic republic is underpinned
by remarkably extensive and complex socio-economic
and ideological constituencies.
Secondly,
the rise of Ahmadinejad signals a major shift in
power in the Islamic republic. The shift works in
favor of second-generation revolutionaries who
seek to diminish gradually the power of the
clerical nucleus of the regime and distribute
political power more equitably. Indeed,
Ahmadinejad's election is a major blow to clerical
supremacists who now have to contend with the
first non-clerical president since Rajai.
The challenge of second-generation
revolutionaries to the clerical supremacists is
spearheaded by a right-wing coalition known as the
Abadgaran Iran-e-Islami (Developers of Islamic
Iran). Although it is widely assumed that
Abadgaran is a "neo-conservative" coalition with
strong links to the establishment, the grouping is
in fact made up mostly of second-generation
revolutionaries critical of traditional
conservatives who strive to reconcile the values
of the Islamic revolution with Iran's current
realities. Interestingly, Abadgaran refuses to
call itself "right-wing", claiming that it
transcends the reformist-conservative divide
characterizing Iranian politics.
Ahmadinejad's firm footing in the
Abadgaran constitutes another factor behind his
success. Abadgaran is a very large grouping which
can count on the strong support of millions of
one-time revolutionaries with strong ideological
and emotional ties to the Islamic republic and to
the memory of Khomeini. It became a major force in
Iranian politics when it defeated reformists in
both local council and parliamentary elections in
2003 and 2004, respectively.
There is a
disproportionate number of former IRGC and other
security personnel at the core of the Abadgaran,
and this has caused some concern. The concerns
are, however, mostly unfounded since there is
simply no scope for military intervention in
Iranian politics. Iran is refreshingly different
to its Arab, Turkish and Pakistani neighbors
insofar as the military (whether in the form of
the regular armed forces or the ideological IRGC)
has neither the will nor the political wherewithal
to interfere in the political process. But the
presence of former IRGC elements at the heart of
the Abadgaran, and Ahmadinejad's own background in
the IRGC, mean that he will have the support of
this vital institution and its paramilitary arm,
the Basij, which constitutes the grassroots
Islamic movement in Iran. This institutional and
grassroots support complements Ahmadinejad's wider
socio-economic base, thus enabling him to meet the
challenge of the clerical supremacists and their
allies more effectively.
Conclusion
More than a quarter of a century after it
toppled the Shah and sent geopolitical shock waves
across the region and beyond, the Iranian
revolution shows no sign of retreating. The forces
that underpinned the revolution have mobilized to
place one of their own at the apex of the most
important elected institution of the republic.
Much now rests on the shoulders of Ahmadinejad,
who has to prove that he can deliver on his
promises. So far Ahmadinejad has merely engaged in
populism and demagogy; this will have to be
immediately followed with concrete action after he
is sworn in as president.
While much of
the Western media, often manipulated by a handful
of exiles and their US neo-conservative patrons,
has focussed on the alleged past radicalism of
Ahmadinejad (ranging from his possible
participation in the seizure of the US Embassy in
Tehran in 1979 to his alleged role in the
assassination of Kurdish separatists in Vienna),
the people of Iran - the constituency that really
matters - await to see whether Ahmadinejad can
walk the walk, as well as talk the talk.
To make his presidency immediately
meaningful, Ahmadinejad will have to do the
following: first, dispel any lingering doubts that
the turbulent revolutionary decade of the 1980s -
complete with all its gratuitous radicalism - can
be reproduced, and second address the widening
socio-economic gulf in Iranian society in a truly
meaningful manner.
This means empowering
the democratic discourse and impulse that
constitutes yet another strand of the Iranian
revolution. While there is no denying that the
Islamic republic has real and meaningful
democratic institutions and procedures, the
efficacy of these institutions is blunted by
parallel non-elected entities. There is, however,
a complex relationship between the two, dynamics
that were not fully appreciated by the liberal
reformists. Ahmadinejad and his allies will have
to find ways of diminishing the theocratic
component of the system without endangering the
post-revolutionary Iranian state.
Thus far
Ahmadinejad has only spoken of the need to remove
corrupt and incompetent managers and officials.
This is important, but it is far more important to
remember that "corrupt" and "incompetent"
officials are not primarily responsible for the
widening socio-economic gulf in the country. It is
the clerical oligarchy, using corrupt officialdom
as a smokescreen, which is the primary obstacle to
a more equitable distribution of power, wealth and
opportunity in the country.
It is readily
apparent to most seasoned observers - particularly
those with access to the heart of events and
trends in Iran - that socio-economic inequality
and the democratic deficit are inextricably
linked. The reformists had made the same
conclusions, but their paradigm of democracy is
Western-style liberalism, which does not
necessarily guarantee institutional transparency
and accountability in a country like Iran. The
challenge for Ahmadinejad, and his young followers
and advisors, is to find the right solutions to
the democratic deficit, solutions that do not
ignore the experience of the past 26 years.
Mahan Abedin is the editor of
Terrorism Monitor, which is published by the
Jamestown Foundation, a non-profit organization
specializing in research and analysis on conflict
and instability in Eurasia. The views expressed
here are his own.
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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