TEHRAN - The fact it was the former
president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who announced
Iran's readiness to talk on the "country's nuclear
dossier without any pre-condition" rather than his
hardline successor, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, offers a
glimmer of hope for reconciliation with the West
on the key nuclear and oil issues.
When
Rafsanjani, who now wears the hat of chairman of
the shadowy, but powerful State Expedience Council
(SEC), announced Saturday that "Tehran is ready to
begin dialogues for transparency on the nuclear
dossier," it was a sign that the reformists were
once again calling the shots in Iran despite their
shock defeat in the June presidential elections.
It is another matter that Hamid Reza
Asefi, a Foreign Ministry
spokesman, said Sunday that
Tehran would not comply with a demand by the
International Atomic Energy Agency that it stop
uranium conversion at its Isfahan facility and
fall in line with the key European Union condition
for resumption of talks.
Asefi told
reporters the freeze on uranium conversion was
made voluntarily and Iran reserved the right to
make fuel for its reactors as signatory to the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Talks
between Iran and the EU-3 (Britain, France and
Germany) broke down in August, when Iran rejected
a deal that offered trade and other incentives for
a full cessation of fuel-cycle work, the focus of
fears that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons.
But the unexpected intervention by
Rafsanjani, regarded as a pro-Western politician
who also has the ear of Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, is a sign that the days ahead may
see a softening of Tehran's approach and a
dilution of Ahmadinejad's authority.
Much
would depend on what exactly the powers of the SEC
are, to which Rafsanjani was appointed on October
3. He in turn appointed another former pro-West
president, Mohammad Khatami, to the body's
decision-making high council.
After his
election in 1997, Khatami began a process of
reform and reconciliation aimed undoing the
isolation of Iran after the 1979 ouster of the
Shah of Iran and the installation of an Islamic
republic.
Curiously enough, the powers of
the SEC were recently expanded with Speaker
Gholamali Haddad-Adel mounting a defense of it in
parliament, saying it was in the interests of
greater discipline. According to Haddad-Adel, all
macro-level policies could only be made after
consultations with the SEC, which is also now
charged with supervising the execution of those
policies.
In other words, say critics,
this virtually amounted to the creation of
parallel authority.
For his part,
Rafsanjani has tried to play down his role and
said the SEC does not have any contact with the
executive. "The SEC used to have a supervisory
role but now this role is with the supreme leader
and we report any wrong-doing to him," he said at
a recent public function.
According to the
secretary of the SEC, Mohsen Rezaee, Khamenei had
delegated some of his own powers to the SEC, which
would now supervise the affairs of the judiciary,
executive and the legislature.
The new
development has prompted cynical analysts to say,
"Money and the members of the Iranian elite,
Hashemi Rafsanjani himself, will now have the
final say in Iran's day-to-day socio-economic and
political lives."
For those who
overwhelmingly voted for Ahmadinejad, the
empowering of Rafsanjani after the humiliating
defeat in the election, is a blow but there has
been no backlash so far except for some murmuring
in parliament.
The acid test for the SEC
is how much of a say it would have in the
appointment of ministers to the key portfolios of
oil, education cooperatives and social security
and welfare - vacancies that Ahmadinejad has not
been able to fill in so far.
Ahmadinejad,
who claimed his electoral victory was nothing
short of a "second revolution" after the creation
of the Islamic republic in 1979, has railed at
"gangs" with vested interests preventing
appointment of an oil minister, and many said the
reference was to Rafsanjani and his yet-powerful
networks within and outside the country.
"We are a newly founded private
engineering and consulting company seeking
oil-fields development projects in which the
government is the major client," Ahmad Tofanian,
an engineer, told IPS. "As far as we are
concerned, the lack of appointments means that it
will be difficult to decide on tenders."
Ahmadinejad has packed most of the other
key jobs with hardliners, including the
governors-general who administer provinces. But
many believe these adherents of Islamic values
could spoil relations with countries that border
the provinces they administer.
For now the
concern is mainly the effect the adherents are
having on the economic front and also on the
diplomatic side where their lack of experience in
handling international affairs is beginning to
show.
"All this has a great impact on
[the] economy of the country and slowed [it] down,
particularly [in the] stock market and private
sector as everything [is] in limbo," said Hasan
Shbazian, an accountant in a civil-engineering
company.
"A few weeks before the new
government took over, the Tehran Stock Market had
begun to drop and since Ahmadinejad formed his
[incomplete] cabinet, the indices have kept on
nose-diving," a stockbroker said.
Iran,
the stockbroker continued, has been kept afloat so
far by "the magic of petro-dollars and with
oil-selling at over US$50 a barrel, the
government-run companies have continued to do well
since they are operating within an oil-exporting
economy."
Hussain Kadkhodaee, an economist
and expert on Tehran Stock Market, shares the
cynical view regarding the role of petroleum.
"About 70% of the Iranian Stock Market is in the
control of the state-run companies, governmental
investment firms - particularly those affiliated
to the state-run banks," he said.
Masoud
Nili, an economist close to the defeated
reformists, wrote in an editorial in the Shargh
daily on September 24, "The oil revenue is going
to reach around $50 billion by the end of this
year [Iranian calendar, ending March 21] but it
may not bring fortune."
The new
government, while trying to "bring the fruits of
surging oil price to the table" of ordinary
Iranians, had better brace for fighting with the
highly probable gallant inflation", Nili opined.
It is in this context that Khamenei may
have decided that it is best to temper
Ahmadinejad's zeal with the practicality of
Rafsanjani and also give him a hand to steer Iran
through its present crisis with the West over the
nuclear-recycling issue.
