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Ahmadinejad takes over Iran's hottest
seat
By Safa Haeri
PARIS - Islamic Republic Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has officially confirmed
new, but already-embattled, President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, who took office Wednesday with his
country facing a serious crisis of confidence in
the international community as well as political
insecurity and social troubles at home.
A
gunman on a motorcycle on Tuesday shot dead Hassan
Moghaddas, the judge who was in charge of the case
of Akbar Gani, an outspoken journalist who is
openly calling for the removal of Khamenei from
office. And several provinces are in turmoil over
cultural rights, notably in the Kurdish northwest,
the oil-rich Khouzistan in the southwest, and
Sunni-dominated Sistan and Balouchistan bordering
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The new
president has no experience in politics except for
a few years as governor of a remote province and
more recently as Tehran mayor, a position he won
with only 12% of the vote. Despite his relative
inexperience, the 49-year-old Ahmadinejad will
have to juggle several potentially explosive
situations, starting with the controversial
nuclear issue that has quickly developed into a
major international crisis since last week. Tehran
surprised the world, particularly the United
Kingdom, France and Germany (the so-called EU-3)
by suddenly announcing it will resume operations
at its Uranium Conversion Facility. Activity there
was suspended last year as the EU-3 and Iran tried
to work out a deal to end the country's
non-peaceful nuclear programs.
The
reaction from the EU-3 was blunt. "The Iranian
nuclear issue is very serious and may trigger a
major international crisis," French Foreign
Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy warned a day after
Iran's move. He added that if the country did not
go back on its decision, then "Iran will be, I
would say, in a purely unilateral position. We are
proposing, we Europeans, an extraordinary meeting
as soon as possible of the International Atomic
Energy Agency's board of governors to ask the
international community to say and to spell out
very strongly and firmly to the Iranians that they
have to return to the negotiating table."
French Prime Minister Dominique de
Villepin echoed those feelings, telling an
independent French radio station that Iran must
abide by the deal with the European Union's Big 3
to suspend its nuclear program or face UN Security
Council sanctions.
"Iran must honor the
commitments it has made," he said. "These
commitments are commitments suspending all
activity, conversion, treatment and enrichment of
uranium. The international community will be
forced to draw conclusions ... with consensus,
with dialogue. And the Security Council will be
called on if Iran refuses to comply."
He
took a similar position to that of the United
Kingdom, the current chair in the revolving
presidency of the 25-member European Union, which
earlier advised Tehran to avoid "unnecessary
measures" that would trigger a major crisis "at a
time that we are near to a positive conclusion".
The response from Tehran was ambiguous,
insisting that it would open the Uranium
Conversion Facility, situated near the central and
historic city of Esfahan, but with the presence of
international inspectors. The inspectors are
required to install new monitoring devices, a
process that would take at least a week, according
to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), which was officially informed
Monday of Iran's intentions.
At the core
of the standoff between Tehran and the EU-3 is the
Iranian complaint that the Europeans had promised
to offer by the end of July a "final and
comprehensive proposal" of incentives in return
for Iran ceasing non-peaceful nuclear activities.
Aware of new President Ahmadinejad's
political handicaps, his detractors describe him
as a "dangerous fascist extremist", leading the
Western media to brand the him an "ultra
conservative". The decision to resume some nuclear
activities just two days before he took the oath
of office and before the end of the mandate of the
outgoing president Mohammad Khatami seems to have
played into his detractors' hands.
In his
confirmation speech, Ahmadinejad, who once
presented himself as the "street sweeper of the
nation", avoided mention of the nuclear
controversy, reiterating his electoral campaign
promises to "be the servant of the people and
Islam, fight injustice, responding to most urgent
needs of the poor and safeguard interests of the
nation". Those were the very populist slogans that
on one hand helped him defeat predicted election
winner Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
while on the other frightening many Iranians,
particularly women and the youth who feared he
would slash the limited social and cultural
freedom they enjoyed under Khatami.
Ahmadinejad, Iran's sixth president, was
supported during his electoral campaign by many
hardline clerics as well as the elite
Revolutionary Guards and Basij militias. An
austere, simple-living and faithful Muslim civil
engineer who fought on the front lines during the
devastating eight-year war against Iraq, he takes
office at a time of increasing instability.
In his short statement, Ahmadinejad
refrained from attacking any country directly,
even Israel, which ruling Iranian ayatollahs have
said must be eradicated from the earth. He instead
called for a "world free of weapons of mass
destruction".
Supreme Leader Khamenei,
meanwhile, did not hesitate to lambaste the "Great
Satan of America", saying Iran "would not pay
tribute to any power". "The arrogant Americans say
they do not accept our democracy. Our answer is
that we too, we do not like their democracy, which
is tied to international Zionism and capitalism."
Dr Mansour Farhang, an Iranian scholar and
former diplomat teaching international politics at
New York University, summed up Ahmadinejad's
challenge: "All along his electoral campaign, the
new president insisted that he would restore
Islamic justice, fight corruption and solve
people's most urgent needs, meaning food and jobs
for millions of unemployed, mostly the young and
despaired generation, but he never provided any
concrete program explaining how he would inject
blood to an economy paralyzed by odd communistic
regulations, that survives thanks to the billions
generated from a booming oil prices."
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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