Iran gets tough on nuclear
'traitors' By Breffni O'Rourke
During more than two years as Iranian
president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad has made his share
of provocative statements. In October 2005, he
famously cast doubt on the Holocaust. And in New
York in September, he claimed that no homosexuals
lived in Iran. But until this week, the hardline
president had never publicly called his own
internal critics "traitors", including those from
his own conservative party in the government of
the Islamic Republic.
Ahmadinejad, in a
speech this week at Tehran's Science and
Technology University,
denounced what he called "traitors" to Iran's
nuclear program. He threatened to name and shame
these critics unless they ended pressure to change
Iran's nuclear policy. The harshness of his attack
points to a serious rift within the establishment
about how Ahmadinejad's hard line is driving Iran
into international isolation.
Given the
connotations of the word "traitor" and the
traditional fate that awaits them, the accusations
were grave. And consequences have followed
swiftly. Iran's Intelligence Ministry announced on
Wednesday that Hossein Musavian, a former senior
nuclear negotiator, had been charged with passing
classified information to foreigners, including
the British Embassy, the semi-official Fars news
agency reported.
In recent weeks, Musavian
had appeared to be part of a rising wave of
internal criticism aimed at the president's
handling of nuclear policy. Some of it has come
from traditional dissidents such as students,
journalists and former leaders of the Islamic
Revolution of 1979, who have long since turned
critical, such as the Freedom Movement of Iran.
More significantly, however, mounting
opposition to Ahmadinejad's nuclear policy has
appeared to emanate from former senior officials
such as Musavian, former president Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's predecessor,
Mohammad Khatami, as well as Hassan Rohani, head
of Khatami's nuclear negotiating team.
Radio Farda, citing Iranian media reports,
has quoted Ahmadinejad as suggesting in his speech
that internal critics were encouraging the West to
intensify their sanctions on Iran. He offered no
names or proof, but said, "These are traitors, and
on the basis of the pact we have made with the
[Iranian] people, we will not retreat and sit by
and watch." If they do not stop, he added, he
would reveal their identities to the nation.
The first name revealed, it appears, is
Musavian. "The world community wants Iran to
employ moderates in the [nuclear] negotiations,"
Hassan Fathi, a Tehran-based pro-reform
journalist, told Radio Farda on November 12. "If
Mr Ahmadinejad claims to want to name names, then
in the final analysis the clues lead to these
[above-cited] individuals, who time and again, in
both blunt and subtle ways, have made clear their
[negative] assessment of the current nuclear
policy."
Policy's style, substance
criticized Analysts say their criticism
focuses both on the style and substance of
Ahmadinejad's nuclear negotiating strategy. They
say that from reformers such as Khatami to
traditional conservatives such as Rafsanjani,
there is a belief that Iran must tone down the
fiery, provocative rhetoric heard from
Ahmadinejad, but also must strive for compromise
in its nuclear talks - one that can satisfy
Washington but also save face for Tehran.
The latest inside critic to voice concern
is Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the powerful
conservative mayor of Tehran who is seen as a
likely contender in the 2009 presidential
elections.
In remarks reported by Iranian
media on November 13, Qalibaf called for more
"maturity and intelligence" in Iran's foreign
policy, and warned the government to act more
prudently amid rising tensions over the Iranian
nuclear program. "Government officials must pay
attention to the grave situation where Iran finds
itself on the international scene," Qalibaf said,
one day after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
for the first time, publicly floated the idea of
imposing sanctions on Iran's oil industry.
A traditional conservative, Qalibaf likes
to portray himself as a technocrat who works with
people across the political spectrum. "We could
have achieved our objectives for a lesser cost,"
he said. "We do not need to impose an additional
cost on society, because of certain methods and
declarations, to reach the just demands of the
people."
There has been high-level
exasperation over Ahmadinejad's brushing-off of
United Nations sanctions as "pieces of paper" and
his refusal to acknowledge a possible US military
attack. Rafsanjani, contradicting the president,
has said the threat of a US strike "exists and is
very serious". The powerful former Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander,
Mohsen Rezai, has also said the threats of Iran's
foes should not be taken as "jokes".
In a
speech On October 10, Rohani offered his own
revelatory critique. He said Iran now faces more
international threats than ever before. And he
criticized what he called the failure of Iranian
diplomacy on the nuclear issue, saying that to
succeed in diplomacy means preventing enemies from
becoming allies with other countries - an apparent
reference to recent moves by Germany, France and
even China to more directly confront Iran over its
nuclear program.
A similar criticism came
from Mohsen Mirdamadi, the head of the reformist
Islamic Participation Front. Mirdamadi, apparently
referring to Ahmadinejad's nuclear policies,
cautioned that "dangers" could arise due to
"alarming" and "adventurist" behavior. His remarks
on October 26 came after the US imposed unilateral
sanctions on major Iranian banks as well as on the
IRGC and its elite Quds Force, which it labeled as
a "terrorist organization".
Widening
rift Another key sign of discord over the
nuclear policy came when the head of the nuclear
negotiating team, Ali Larijani, resigned suddenly
in mid-October without giving a plausible reason.
Showing his disapproval with the change,
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei immediately assigned
Larijani to be his personal representative to the
international nuclear talks. Also, a group of
reform parliamentarians sent a letter to
Ahmadinejad, saying he should have acted with
"more tolerance and thought" rather than replacing
Larijani at such a critical moment in Iran's
negotiations with the world community.
Ahmadinejad replaced Larijani with a close
ally, Saeed Jalili, prompting concerns abroad that
the Iranian negotiating line would turn even
harder. Pro-reform journalist Fathi says internal
Iranian critics believe that such a change will
not lead to success.
"We should accept the
fact that the international community would never
give us a concession unless it gets a concession
from us [in return]," he says. "If we imagine that
without giving a concession we could gain a
concession, we either are not familiar with the
international diplomatic process or we are under
the impression that we are the world's superpower
and everyone should pay us tribute."
In a
final note of dissent, the Freedom Movement, which
is made up of former leaders of the 1979
revolution who turned critical of it, issued an
extraordinary statement on its website calling for
an overhaul of Tehran's nuclear negotiations. In a
clear reference to Ahmadinejad, the November 13
statement urged Iranian leaders to refrain from
"provocative comments" and to take external
"military, economic and political threats" very
seriously.
"All criticism or action that
is not in line [with the government], and which is
made at all levels of society, is suppressed by
using the label 'insurrection'," the statement
said. "But [officials] are unaware of one basic
point, and that is that the source of the disease
and cure lie in themselves: they themselves are
providing the pretext of their downfall or
insurrection, yet they don't know
it."
Breffni O'Rourke is an
RFE/RL correspondent based in Prague.
(Radio Farda's Mosaddegh Katouzian
contributed to this report.)
Copyright
(c) 2007, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the
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