Page 1 of 2 Iran ill-prepared for reformists
By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - The world is already bracing for the upcoming presidential elections
in Iran, the 10th in the country's republican history since 1979, which will be
held next June and which once again see the country divided into reformist and
conservative camps.
All those wishing to run for parliament, the elections for which will be at the
same time, will have to resign from their executive posts six months prior to
the elections. The Arab and Iranian press are abuzz with speculation on who
will lead post-Mahmud Ahmadinejad Iran, if indeed he does not get a second
term.
The obvious candidate is Ahmadinejad, who is backed by the
Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and who, according to the Iranian constitution,
is eligible for another term. In September, Khamenei set the pace by endorsing
Ahmadinejad, "Do not think that this year is your final year. Work as if you
will stay in charge for five years. In other words, imagine that in addition to
this year, another four years will be under your management, and plan and act
accordingly."
The battlelines are being drawn in Tehran, as the country divides into
reformist and conservative camps, just as was the case in 2005.
The reformers
Reformist candidates who have already expressed their desire to replace
Ahmadinejad are Mohammad Reza Aref, a vice president under Mohammad Khatami,
and Mehdi Karroubi, a former speaker of the parliament (Majlis).
Efforts are underway to get Khatami to run, but he has declared that if
Karroubi is running for president, then he would support him and decline the
nomination. There is talk in Tehran that Khatami has not completely written off
his presidential ambitions, especially after last week, when he unleashed a
salvo at Ahmadinejad.
Khatami, the philosopher-turned-president, who won the elections of 1997 with
over 20 million (70%) of the votes, noted, "Aggressive and sharp slogans play
into the enemy's hands to hurt the country and the system. Fighting the
arrogance of [the United States] should not mean increasing the costs of
running the country."
The chances of Khatami's comeback, however, after having already served for two
terms as president, are slim. It was difficult enough to get him to run for a
second term in 2001. True, national duty and the pressure of friends and fellow
reformers might soften the charismatic and soft-spoken leader, but he would
need the approval of the grand ayatollah before making such a move.
Given the current honeymoon between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, it is unlikely
that the grand ayatollah would support the ex-president, and Khatami, a proud
man by all accounts, would never ask and be turned down or nominate himself
without being endorsed by higher authorities. It is more likely that he would
prefer to stand back, and support the reformers as something of a "godfather"
figure or chief ideologue for Iranian change-seekers.
His camp includes:
Mohammad Reza Aref (67), currently a professor at the Engineering
Department at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. A veteran academic who
served as chancellor of the University of Tehran in the 1990s, he was chosen as
vice president by Khatami during his second term - 2001 to 2005.
A Stanford-trained electrical engineer, he also served as minister of
communications in 1997-2000. A cosmopolitan man with strong exposure to the
Western world, he teaches cryptography and coding theory at Sharif, and pledges
to right all the wrongs done to the Iranian people as a result of Ahmadinejad's
confrontational approach to the US since 2005.
Mehdi Karroubi (71), a cleric and hardliner turned reformist
statesman produced by the Iranian revolution of 1979. He served as speaker of
parliament from 1989 to 1992, and then again, under Khatami in 2000-2004. He
ran for parliament in 2004 and withdrew his candidacy, and nominated himself
for president in 2005, losing to Ahmadinejad.
Karroubi walks a fine rope and stands a much higher chance than Aref, since he
is close to both Khatami and the Khamenei. He is also marketing himself as a
loyal disciple of the founder of the republic, grand ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini. He served as an advisor to Khamenei, who appointed him a member of
the Expediency Discernment Council.
After he lost the elections of 2005, Karroubi accused a network of mosques,
members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and paid agents of
conservative politicians of orchestrating Ahmadinejad's victory.
His words were echoed by ex-president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was
also defeated for presidential office in 2005. In a fit of fury, Karroubi
explicitly named Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the supreme leader, as involved
in a conspiracy. Showing just how close he actually was to Khamenei, despite
the tension on the surface, he was neither dismissed nor persecuted for his
views.
Rather, the grand ayatollah wrote him a letter, saying that such accusations
were "below his dignity". Still enraged, Karroubi resigned from all posts to
which he was appointed by Khamenei, in a public letter, run in all reformist
newspapers in Iran. The move was seen as going beyond acceptable red lines.
The state responded by shutting down the newspaper that originally ran his
letter, and halting the distribution of others that reprinted it. Orders were
given by the prosecutor-general of Tehran, Said Mortazavi. But Karroubi is a
respected man who carries weight in Iranian society, which explains why nobody
has vetoed his candidacy today, and why it is none other than Khatami who is
supporting him for president.
Considered by many to be a fine and true Iranian patriot, Karroubi advocates
the most pragmatic approach to relations with the US, saying, "With regard to
America, I must say that American statesmen should stop their current ways of
intimidation and approaches vis-a-vis Iran. If this happens, then I will not
oppose relations with America." His candidacy will split the reformers in half,
with some voting for him and others voting for someone like Aref - which in
effect will serve the interests of nobody but the conservatives.
Other potential candidates for the reformist list include Hossein Kamali, a
parliamentarian and ex-minister of labor; Mohsen Mehralizadeh, an ex-vice
president; Mohammad Ali Najafi, an ex-minister of education; and Hasan Rohani,
an ex-secretary of the Iranian National Security Council.
Rohani, a mid-level cleric, is backed by the Moderation and Development Party.
It is a political coalition that tries to gather moderates from all political
groups in Iran, aimed at bringing down Ahmadinejad, or preventing his
re-election. Of the entire lot, however, the ones with the highest chances,
after Karroubi and Aref, are Mehralizadeh and Najafi.
Mehralizadeh (52), who also ran and failed in the elections of 2005, was vice
president and head of the National Sports Organization under Khatami. Because
of his reformist views, his candidacy had been turned down by the Guardian
Council which vets candidates in 2005, only to be accepted by Khamenei himself.
He ranked among the seven presidential hopefuls then, securing about 4% of the
vote.
Mohammad Ali Najafi (56) , like both Karroubi and Ahmadinejad, is an academic
and university professor, with long-held presidential ambitions. He, too,
studied at Sharif University of Technology, and then went to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology for a PhD in mathematics, only to drop out when the
Islamic revolution broke out in 1979.
Najafi taught at the Isfahan University of Technology and became minister of
culture and higher education while still in his early thirties, during the
Khomeini years in 1981-1984. In 1988, be became minister of education under
Rafsanjani, then vice president to Khatami in in 1997. His name surfaced in
2005 as a potential candidate for the reformers, but he backed out and
supported Rafsanjani, having his eyes set on the vice presidency.
The conservatives
In addition to Ahmadinejad, whose candidacy is supported by the supreme leader,
other hardline politicians likely to run are Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the mayor
of Tehran and former chief of police; Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri and Gholam Ali
Haddad-Adel, two ex-speakers of the Majlis.
Rafsanjani is no longer eligible to run, because of his age, being over 75.
With the exception of Haddad-Adel (63) and Qalibaf (46), none of the
conservatives carries any real weight when compared to Ahmadinejad.
Haddad-Adel, however, is close to Khamenei, both politically allied and
family-related. His daughter is married to Khamenei's son, explaining the
privileged status he has in the upper echelons of power in clerical Iran,
although he himself is not a cleric.
A graduate of the University of Tehran, he also studied philosophy at the hands
of veteran Islamic scholars, including Morteza Motahhari. He served in
mid-management government posts in the 1980s, then became head of the Iranian
Academy of Persian Language and Literature, then director of the Islamic
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
