Page 2 of
2 How
under-the-gun Iran plays it
cool By Pepe
Escobar
Supreme Leader in public. Even more
startling, yet evidently with the leader's
acquiescence, he then sacked Larijani and replaced
him with a longtime friend, Saeed Jalili, an
ideological hardliner.
4. A velvet
revolution is not around the corner:
Before the 2005 Iranian elections, at a secret,
high-level meeting of the ruling ayatollahs in his
house, the Supreme Leader concluded that
Ahmadinejad would be able to revive the regime
with his populist rhetoric and pious conservatism,
which then seemed very appealing to the
downtrodden masses. (Curiously enough,
Ahmadinejad's campaign motto was: "We can.")
But the ruling ayatollahs miscalculated.
Since they controlled all
key levers of power - the
Supreme National Security Council, the Council of
Guardians, the Judiciary, the bonyads
(Islamic foundations that control vast sections of
the economy), the army, the IRGC (the parallel
army created by Khomeini in 1979 and recently
branded a terrorist organization by the Bush
administration), the media - they assumed they
would also control the self-described "street
cleaner of the people". How wrong they have been.
For Khamenei himself, this was big
business. After 18 years of non-stop internal
struggle, he was finally in full control of
executive power, as well as of the legislature,
the judiciary, the IRGC, the Basij, and the key
ayatollahs in Qom.
Ahmadinejad, for his
part, unleashed his own agenda. He purged the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of many
reformist-minded diplomats; encouraged the
Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Culture and
Islamic Guidance to crackdown on all forms of
"nefarious" Western influences, from entertainment
industry products to colorful made-in-India
scarves for women; and filled his cabinet with
revolutionary friends from the Iran-Iraq war days.
These friends proved to be as faithful as
administratively incompetent - especially in terms
of economic policy. Instead of solidifying the
theocratic leadership under Supreme Leader
Khamenei, Ahmadinejad increasingly fractured an
increasingly unpopular ruling elite.
Nonetheless, discontent with Ahmadinejad's
economic incompetence has not translated into
street barricades and it probably will not; nor,
contrary to neo-con fantasy land scenarios, would
an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities provoke a
popular uprising. Every single political faction
supports the nuclear program out of patriotic
pride.
There is surely a glaring paradox
here. The regime may be wildly unpopular - because
of so much enforced austerity in an energy-rich
land and the virtual absence of social mobility -
but for millions, especially in the countryside
and the remote provinces, life is still bearable.
In the large urban centers - Tehran, Isfahan,
Shiraz and Tabriz - most would be in favor of a
move toward a more market-oriented economy
combined with a progressive liberalization of
mores (even as the regime insists on going the
other way). No velvet revolution, however, seems
to be on the horizon.
At least four main
factions are at play in the intricate
Persian-miniature-like game of today's Iranian
power politics - and two others, the revolutionary
left and the secular right, even though thoroughly
marginalized, shouldn't be forgotten either.
The extreme right, very religiously
conservative but economically socialist, has, from
the beginning, been closely aligned with the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmadinejad is the
star of this faction.
The clerics, from
the Supreme Leader to thousands of provincial
religious figures, are pure conservatives, even
more patriotic than the extreme right, yet
generally no lovers of Ahmadinejad. But there is a
crucial internal split. The substantially wealthy
bonyads - the Islamic foundations, active
in all economic sectors - badly want a
reconciliation with the West. They know that,
under the pressure of Western sanctions, the
relentless flight of both capital and brains is
working against the national interest.
Economists in Tehran project there may be
as much as US$600 billion in Iranian funds
invested in the economies of Persian Gulf
petro-monarchies. The best and the brightest
continue to flee the country. But the Islamic
foundations also know that this state of affairs
slowly undermines Ahmadinejad's power.
The
extremely influential IRGC, a key component of
government with vast economic interests, transits
between these two factions. They privilege the
fight against what they define as Zionism, are in
favor of close relations with Sunni Arab states,
and want to go all the way with the nuclear
program. In fact, substantial sections of the IRGC
and the Basij believe Iran must enter the nuclear
club not only to prevent an attack by the
"American Satan" but to irreversibly change the
balance of power in the Middle East and Southwest
Asia.
The current reformists/progressives
of the left were originally former partisans of
Khomeini's son, Ahmad Khomeini. Later, after a
spectacular mutation from Soviet-style socialism
to some sort of religious democracy, their new
icon became former president Mohammad Khatami (of
"dialogue of civilizations" fame). Here, after
all, was an Islamic president who had captured the
youth vote and the women's vote and had written
about the ideas of German philosopher Jurgen
Habermas as applied to civil society as well as
the possibility of democratization in Iran.
Unfortunately, his "Tehran Spring" didn't last
long - and is now long gone.
The key
establishment faction is undoubtedly that of
moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former two-term
president, current chairman of the Expediency
Council and a key member of the Council of Experts
- 86 clerics, no women, the Holy Grail of the
system, and the only institution in the Islamic
Republic capable of removing the Supreme Leader
from office. He is now supported by the
intelligentsia and urban youth. Colloquially known
as "The Shark", Rafsanjani is the consummate
Machiavellian. He retains privileged ties to key
Washington players and has proven to be the
ultimate survivor - moving like a skilled juggler
between Khatami and Khamenei as power in the
country shifted.
Rafsanjani is, and will
always remain, a supporter of the Supreme Leader.
As the regime's de facto number two, his quest is
not only to "save" the Islamic Revolution of 1979
but also to consolidate Iran's regional power and
reconcile the country with the West. His reasoning
is clear: he knows that an anti-Islamic tempest is
already brewing among the young in Iran's major
cities, who dream of integrating with the nomad
elites of liquid global modernity.
If the
Bush administration had any real desire to let its
aircraft carriers float out of the Gulf and
establish an entente cordiale with Tehran,
Rafsanjani would be the man to talk to.
5. Heading down the New Silk
Road. Reformist friends in Tehran keep
telling me the country is now immersed in an
atmosphere similar to the Cultural Revolution of
the 1960s in China or the 1980s rectification
campaign in Cuba - and nothing "velvet" or
"orange" or "tulip" or any of the other
color-coded Western-style movements that
Washington might dream of is, as yet, on the
horizon.
Under such conditions, what if
there were an American air attack on Iran? The
Supreme Leader, on the record, offered his own
version of threats in 2006. If Iran were attacked,
he said, the retaliation would be doubly powerful
against US interests elsewhere in the world.
From American supply lines and bases in
southern Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz, the
Iranians, though no military powerhouse, do have
the ability to cause real damage to American
forces and interests - and certainly to drive the
price of oil into the stratosphere. Such a "war"
would clearly be a disaster for everyone.
The Iranian theocratic leadership,
however, seems to doubt that the Bush
administration and the US military, exhausted by
their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will attack.
They feel a tide at their backs. Meanwhile the
"Look East" strategy, driven by soaring energy
prices, is bearing fruit.
Ahmadinejad has
just concluded a tour of South Asia and, to the
despair of American neo-cons, the Asian energy
security grid is quickly becoming a reality. Two
years ago, at the Petroleum Ministry in Tehran, I
was told Iran is betting on the total
"interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf
geo-economic politics".
This year, Iran
finally becomes a natural gas-exporting country.
The framework for the $7.6 billion
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the
"peace" pipeline, is a go. Both these key South
Asian US allies are ignoring Bush administration
desires and rapidly bolstering their economic,
political, cultural, and - crucially -
geostrategic connections with Iran. An attack on
Iran would now inevitably be viewed as an attack
against Asia.
What a disaster in the
making, and yet, now more than ever, Cheney's
faction in Washington (not to mention possible
future president John McCain) seems ready to bomb.
Perhaps the Mahdi himself - in his occult wisdom -
is betting on a US war against Asia to slouch
towards Qom to be reborn.
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