Obama and the Iranian elections

Favored by American elites

Last night NBC Dateline devoted an hour to an extraordinary tour of Iran by Ann Curry that can be viewed online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/31156080#31156080.

Wearing a hijab, she spoke to dissidents and supporters of the government alike. The most important aspect of the production was its willingness to combat stereotypes of Iran, including most importantly the idea that it is anti-Semitic or holocaust-denying. She spent a considerable amount of time talking to one of Iran’s most important Jewish leaders who denied that his people were being persecuted. During a fairly lengthy interview, former Iranian President Khatami took pains to distinguish this point of view from that of President Ahmadinejad whose views on the Judeocide were described as those of a “private citizen”. Little doubt was left during the course of this program that NBC favored the election of Ahmadinejad’s rival Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a member of Khatami’s party.

The Dateline show follows in the footsteps of a series of articles written by NY Times op ed contributor Roger Cohen, who has written things like this:

For all the morality police inspecting whether women are wearing boots outside their pants (the latest no-no on the dress front) and the regime zealots of the Basiji militia, the air you breathe in Iran is not suffocating. Its streets at dusk hum with life – not a monochrome male-only form of it, or one inhabited by fear – but the vibrancy of a changing, highly-educated society.

This is the Iran of subtle shades that the country’s Jews inhabit. Life is more difficult for them than for Muslims, but to suggest they inhabit a totalitarian hell is self-serving nonsense.

One Iranian exile, no lover of the Islamic Republic, wrote to me saying that my account of Iran’s Jews had brought “tears to my eyes” because “you are saying what many of us would like to hear.”

For his part, Obama has demonstrated an ability to get past the mouth-breathing “rogue state” language of the Dubya years:

The third source of tension is our shared interest in the rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons.

This issue has been a source of tension between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians. This history is well known. Rather than remain trapped in the past, I have made it clear to Iran’s leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward. The question, now, is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build.

Obama’s statement that the U.S. played a role in overthrowing Mossadegh is a striking departure from the Washington foreign policy consensus. On Chris Matthews’s Hardball talk show, there was a clear understanding that Obama’s speech was calculated to entice Iranian voters to reject Ahmadinejad as this exchange between the host and ultrarightist Pat Buchanan would indicate:

OBAMA: None of us should tolerate these extremists. They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths, but more than any other, they have killed Muslims. Their actions are irreconcilable with the rights of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam. The holy Koran teaching that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind.

MATTHEWS: There he is, Pat, pretty blunt.

BUCHANAN: He`s saying, We are embracing Islam, but it is not an embrace that includes this element of Islam, and that these we cut out. They`re outside, but we want to embrace the rest of you. I think it`s a necessary presupposition to what he was going to say. Once we get those outside the equation with you, we can work.

And Chris, he was forthcoming on Iran. He said — virtually said, they can maintain their peaceful nuclear program if they demonstrate to us that they are not moving to nuclear — clandestine nuclear weapons. If this fellow Mousavi wins on June 12th, which he could, over Ahmadinejad, I think you`ll see an entente of sorts…

MATTHEWS: Yes.

BUCHANAN: … between the United States and Iran…

MATTHEWS: Well, that would be — that would be a bell ringer for this speech, if this president of ours had in some way helped win…

BUCHANAN: I think he has done that…

MATTHEWS: … the battle against Ahmadinejad in Iran.

BUCHANAN: He`s done that by pulling back and saying, We believe you are entitled to peaceful nuclear power. But not pushing hard on him, he didn`t help Ahmadinejad.

MATTHEWS: Well, I think he allowed them to get some national prestige out of having a nuclear capability by saying, But you`re not going to get the weapons.

BUCHANAN: That`s their right.

A détente with Iran would make perfect sense from a foreign policy realist perspective. It would use its influence to the West on Iraq in order to keep a Shi’ite government from becoming too unruly. It would also use its influence in Afghanistan to isolate and punish the Taliban as the Boston Globe reported on December 31, 2001:

The United States was desperately short of on-the-ground intelligence in Afghanistan. So, in addition to Pakistan, the United States turned to an unlikely partner, Iran. For many years, Iran had been an archenemy of the United States, having taken American embassy workers hostage two decades ago and encouraged anti-American sentiment. But the relationship had improved slightly in recent years, and Iran had long supported the Northern Alliance.

Iranian intelligence, supplied to the United States through third parties such as the Northern Alliance, included information about how many Pakistanis were crossing the border to join the Taliban and the frequency of airplane flights filled with Arab fighters landing in Kabul.

“This was clearly a case where Iranians had an interest in Afghanistan,” said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA’s former counterterrorism chief. “They hated the Taliban. We got information from the Iranians. They did it very quietly.”

Given the eventual winding down of U.S. military presence in Iraq to the point where it will be restricted to the powerful bases currently under construction, it will be more necessary than ever to rely on an Iraqi army under Shi’ite control. Given the close ties between Iraqi and Iranian Shi’ites, there would obviously be some concern in Washington that it might have to contend with a major radical nationalist bloc that would collaborate with Venezuela in making OPEC less obedient to imperialist demands.

There are also worries over Iran’s influence in Lebanon and Gaza, where Hezbollah and Hamas remain staunchly anti-Zionist. If the goal is to neutralize Palestinian radicalism, then perhaps it makes more sense to offer a deal to Iran rather than to confront it at every turn.

The reformist party in Iran appears to be more than willing to adopt a more “sensible” foreign policy in exchange with a relaxation of tensions with the U.S., including an end to sanctions.

Today the N.Y. Times reported on the supposedly unprecedented free-wheeling character of the Iranian elections:

The leading candidates are accusing each other of corruption, bribery and torture. The wife of the strongest challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened to sue him for defaming her. And every night, parts of the capital become a screaming, honking bacchanal, with thousands of young men dancing and brawling in the streets until dawn.

The presidential campaign, now in its final week, has reached a level of passion and acrimony almost unheard-of in Iran.

In part, that appears to be because of a surge of energy in the campaign of Mir Hussein Moussavi, a reformist who is the leading contender to defeat Mr. Ahmadinejad in the election, set for Friday. Rallies for Mr. Moussavi have drawn tens of thousands of people in recent days, and a new unofficial poll suggests his support has markedly increased, with 54 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him compared with 39 percent for Mr. Ahmadinejad.

But many Iranians say the campaign’s raucous tone is due largely to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s unexpectedly fierce rhetorical attacks, which have infuriated his rivals and their supporters, and drawn some blistering ripostes.

“This campaign is a watershed in the history of Iran,” Sadegh Zibakalam, a political analyst at Tehran University, said. “We’ve had debates before, but nothing like this. Ahmadinejad is accusing everybody of corruption — he is basically saying the same thing the counterrevolutionaries have been saying all along.”

With respect to “the wife of the strongest challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” threatening to sue him for defamation, you can see the origin of this dispute in the debate between the two candidates that is accompanied by an English-translation at: http://irannegah.com/Video.aspx?id=1214. I would urge you to listen to the entire debate, but for those who have an aversion to mud-slinging, you can go straight to the 70 minute point and see Ahmadinejad hold up a dossier on Moussavi’s wife. Apparently she entered a graduate program without taking the entrance exam and was implicated in other petty violations of university policy. From what I see in the higher education trade journals on a daily basis, Mrs. Moussavi was a minor offender by comparison:

Louisville Says Doctorate Earned in Semester Is Legit

The University of Louisville has concluded that a much-questioned doctorate it awarded — for one semester of study — was legitimate, The Louisville Courier-Journal reported. The doctorate was awarded to John Deasy in 2004 — and appears to violate university rules about residency requirements. Deasy, as a school superintendent, had given money to a research center headed by the then-dean of Louisville’s education college, who then went on to chair Deasy’s dissertation committee, leading to questions about the legitimacy of the degree. But the university found that the “totality of the circumstances” indicated an appropriate process. At the same time, Louisville announced that it is tightening the procedures about exemptions from normal procedures for doctorates. The former dean, Robert Felner, was for years popular with administrators even as he angered many professors. In October, he was indicted on 10 counts of mail fraud, money-laundering and income-tax evasion related to charges that he fraudulently obtained grants for Louisville and the University of Rhode Island. He has denied wrongdoing.

Despite the ferocity of the campaign rhetoric, it would be misleading to consider the Iranian election as democratic. In a real sense, the differences between the two candidates take place within the context of the Shi’ite permanent government. The Guardian Council is an unelected body that sits above parliament and chooses who can run in the elections. Ruled by Ali Khamenei, it is totally unaccountable to the Iranian people who must choose between a “conservative” like Ahmadinejad who promotes a relatively anti-imperialist foreign policy and a “reformist” like Moussavi who would certainly be more amenable to American interests in the region.

For the most astute analysis of the Iranian version of our own staged elections, I recommend Reza Fiyouzat’s “The Spectacle of the Iranian Elections”  that appears in today’s edition of Counterpunch. Fiyouzat, who blogs at http://revolutionaryflowerpot.blogspot.com/, has the temerity to reject both politicians:

Searching for and finding similar instances of political brand making committed in wildly different settings and situations can be instructive. Followers of things Iranian may have noticed a couple of parallels between the campaigns of Iranian presidential candidates for the June 12 elections and those of the U.S. presidential elections past.

Most definitely, these are superficial likenesses, but they could also point to deeper parallels. For one, both political systems protect and prolong the rule of an absolute minority. Another deep similarity is that in both political setups, exclusively for the participation of the ruling elites (no matter how many factions they come in), a certain level of ‘democracy’ (meaning here, tolerance) is institutionally allowed/required.

Now to the superficial similarities. In these presidential elections, Iranians have a  ‘candidate of change’ (yes, literally the same slogan) in the person of Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Now, this is very interesting, since Mir-Hossein Mousavi, currently a member of the ‘reformist’ camp, was the prime minister (when the post existed) from 1981 to 1989. Back then he was a member of the ‘left wing’ due to his advocacy for a state-run economy. Nowadays, he has changed indeed and supports all manner of privatization (as do all ‘reformers’).

Mousavi’s premiership coincided with the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), during which his economic management carried the country through very rough times. Among other innovations, he introduced the coupon system that made sure everybody received the minimum ration of needed nutrients during those hard times.

He was also deeply involved in the arms-for-hostages deals with the Reagan administrations in the1980s, and was close to Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, one of the central figures in the arms-for-hostages deals.

Ahmadinejad does not come off much better:

Another trend that has traveled well across the oceans is the ‘Anybody But’ phenomenon. This year, it finally reached our shores, and we now have the much awaited, ‘Anybody but Ahmadinejad!’ In many ways, he is Iran’s George W. Bush. Just as much as Bush was hated by all but the most dedicated American right-wingers, Ahmadinejad is hated by all but the most dedicated Iranian right-wingers (the Basiji’s and the Revolutionary Guards).

And just like George Bush Jr., Ahmadinejad is un-liked so thoroughly that he has split the Iranian conservatives. There are as many (if not more) conservatives against him as there are for him; hence, the decision by another conservative, Mohsen Rezaee, a former Revolutionary Guards chief commander, to run for the presidency in these elections. Some other bigwig conservatives who have chosen to distance themselves from Ahmadinejad include: Ali Larijani (former chief nuclear negotiator), Mohammad Reza Bahonar (first deputy speaker of Majles), and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (current Tehran mayor).

Indeed, Ahmadinejad is so not-liked by some conservatives, that he has driven some to the ‘reformist’ camp, presumably to assure Ahmadinejad’s ouster. According to reports, “some major figures in the conservative/principlist camp, led by Mr. Emad Afrough, the Tehran deputy to the 7th Majles (the parliament), announced the formation of a committee in support of Mr. Mousavi,” (The Hard-Liners in a Panic; ).

In short, just like Bush Jr., Ahmadinejad is too much of a divider, does not play well with others, is an anti-unifier of first degree, and that has become a source of deep worry in the Iranian elite establishment.

In 1968, just a year after I joined the Socialist Workers Party, we launched a highly ambitious election campaign with Fred Halstead and Paul Boutelle running for president and vice-president. Time after time, Fred and Paul reminded their audiences that whoever won the election that year, the American people will be the losers. You can say the same thing about the Iranian elections. If Moussavi wins, the elites will push to privatize industry and slash social spending while at the same time making it easier for women and students to enjoy personal expression. If Ahmadinejad wins, there will be a bit more resistance to Obama’s plans to reestablish American imperialism as an unchallenged hegemonic power in the Middle East and Asia.

If I were running a propaganda campaign as an Iranian version of Halstead and Boutelle, I’d support resistance to anti-working class austerity programs, solidarity with Venezuela and other nations standing up to American imperialism, and the right of citizens to express themselves culturally, politically and spiritually without interference from the state and the clerics. In Iran, such a campaign would likely be crushed because of its potential for support in an increasingly restive society polarized around class and entitlement. For the time being such campaigns are tolerated in the U.S. but in years to come, as the financial crisis drags on, we might have to operate under increasingly restrictive circumstances as the Democrats and Republicans try to keep dissent bottled up in the two party system. Courage and dedication will be required, but the possibilities for thorough-going social and political change will motivate us to face whatever difficulties stand in our path.