Iran: A Preview of Tomorrow's Presidential Election

Related Post: Iran Elections - Will the Results Be Accepted by All?
Related Post: Iran Elections - Mousavi on US/Israel, Nuclear Programme, Dress Code
Related Post: Iran's Election - Summary of Ahmadinejad's Final TV Message (10 June)

In Enduring America on 12 February, Chris Emery evaluated the announcement of former President Mohammad Khatami that he would stand in June's election. He wrote, "[It is] an error...to link Khatami’s entry to the tentative prospect of normalised relations between Iran and the US," and focused on internal dynamics of Iranian politics: "It had been widely reported that Khatami would not run if former Prime Minister Mir-Hussein Mousavi chose to....So all Iranian eyes will now watch if Mousavi, another popular reformist, is now the one to withdraw."

Three months later, and 24 hours before Iranians cast their votes in the first round of the Presidential election, I read Chris' piece with pride. He was half-right on the issue of the potential challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad --- it was Khatami who withdrew, leaving Mousavi in the race --- but months before many "Western" journalists and analysts noticed the campaign or dismissed it out-of-hand (only yesterday Thomas Friedman cast it aside as a "pretend election"), Chris saw its significance. This would not be a procession for the re-election of Ahmadinejad or a charade for Supreme Leader Khamenei to hand-pick a winner but a political space for Iranians to consider their political and economic present and future. Equally important, he got to the core of the issues that would shape the outcome: "It will be over presidential legacies and broken promises."

Yet, with respect, not even Chris could forecast how dynamic --- and potentially important --- this campaign has become.

From the moment that the field of major candidates was settled in March --- Ahmadinejad, Mousavi, former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezaei, and former Speaker of the Parliament Mehdi Karroubi --- it was clear that the President faced a very real challenge. Two words should have made this clear: The Economy.

When he took office in 2005, Ahmadinejad promised an uplift of Iran's people, especially its poorer people, through distribution
of state revenues and advances in technology, investment, and production. Generally speaking, that has not happened. There have been repeated conflicts between the President and his leading economic ministers and advisors, investment in key sectors has not progressed, and the over-reliance on oil income has tied re-distribution in part to the vagaries of the international market. (Of course, US-led sanctions have continued to constrict Iranian development, but these alone cannot account for Ahmadinejad's handling of the economy.)

Continuing difficulties do not doom the President. He still appears to retain a solid base of support amongst many voters who still the prospect of an improvement in their economic status, and Ahmadinejad --- normally a shrewd speaker and campaigner --- could overlay the power of his office with the appeal of nationalism. That in part explains why, far from US-Iranian relations and President Obama's "engagement", Ahmadinejad has ensured the appearance of Tehran as a front-line actor on the world stage, with setpieces such as his speech to the World Conference Against Racism and his recent summit with Afghan and Pakistani leaders. (It also probably explains in part why there have been high-profile test-firings of new Iranian missiles.)

However, as Ahmadinejad broadened the campaign beyond the economy, so did his opponents. Rezaei called for more accountability, Karroubi appealed for wider social rights, and Mousavi argued for meaningful change to ensure representation of and response to the populace's concerns. And, doing so, they (perhaps unexpectedly) opened the gates for an extraordinary escalation in the political process.

"Reform" has always accompanied the Islamic Revolution in its political discourse. President Khatami promised changes in his 1997 victory (and, arguably, was undone because he failed to deliver in his eight years in office). Ahmadinejad promoted reform in his surprise rise to the top in 2005. Lest it be forgotten, he ran as the outsider against the "establishment", defeating former President Hashemi Rafsanjani in the second round.

The convergence of economic concerns and repeated disappointment with the lack of political and social reform can lead to resignation that there will never be improvement. However, that convergence also carries the potential for moments of great change. (Forgive my one moment of a superficial jump from Iran to a "Western" analogy, but think USA 2008.) And, from my outsider's perspective, that moment may have occurred this year in Iran.

Symbolically, the catalyst appears to have been the Presidential Debates. The mere announcement that there would be, for the first time in Iran, head-to-head discussions between the four major candidates raised public interest. However, it was the second of the debates, between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, that lit the touchpaper. Thousands of people came onto the streets to watch the big-screen broadcasts. Politics turned into political theatre as Ahmadinejad --- again trying to stay off the ground of the economic situation --- levelled charges of corruption against not only Mousavi but also former Presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani but impropriety against Mousavi's wife and, equally importantly, as Mousavi overcame initial nervousness to put an effective case against the President's four years in office.

What does it means tomorrow? Any prediction of a victor would be not only fool-hardy but premature. After all, this is only the first round of the election when, unless anyone captures an unlikely majority of the vote, four candidates are narrowed to the top two. (I really do not believe many Western journalists, in their simplified renditions of the campaign, have noticed this.)

Those top two --- although this should not diminish the efforts of Rezaei and Karroubi --- will probably be Ahmadinejad and Karroubi. So, once more on the narrow but important ground of the pragmatic, there will be assessments of whether Karroubi will endorse Mousavi and his voters will follow (probable) and whether Rezaei will express any second-round preference, publicly or privately (uncertain). Ahmadinejad will likely re-double his paradoxical effort to portray himself as the "outsider" running, after four years in office, against the corrupt establishment of political figures such as Rafsanjani, although this may be curbed by the increasing disquiet not only of many voters but also of politicians and clerics over the tactic. Mousavi will turn the President's tactic around, portraying Ahmadinejad as not only the insider but the leader who has frittered away his mandate, and the good of the Iranian people, since 2005.

But what will happen tomorrow and even in the second round does not capture the ongoing importance of these recent months.

On my visits to Iran, and afterwards in correspondence with friends and colleagues, I have learned about and been reminded often of the "third generation", those Iranians who came of age after the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Quite often, the third generation was characterised as detached from the Revolution, disillusioned, dissatisfied. In recent weeks, however, the third generation --- and more than a few other Iranians --- have been in rallies, on the streets (on Monday, there was the largest outside gathering in more than a decade), and, yes, even on Facebook with excitement and some expectation.

I don't know if this constitutes a "Gradual Revolution", another phrase that I have frequently heard. I certainly would not twist and misrepresent it with the politically-loaded "Velvet Revolution". But, again as an outsider, there has been an opening of debate and thus of political space which could be significant not just for this election but for years to come.

Put simply --- and anticipating Western headlines after Friday about "The Obama Effect" in Iran, about "moderates" v. "hard-liners", about reinforcement or downfall of an Axis running from Iran to Syria to Lebanon's Hezbollah to Palestine's hamas --- these events first and foremost are not about the US. They are not about a clash in the Middle East, in nuclear arsenals, between civilisations.

These events are about Iranians: their concerns, their hopes, their ideals. And, whatever the outcome tomorrow and in the second round, they should be respected as such.

Obama's Strategy in the Middle East: Resetting with Rhetoric One More Time

One useful way of considering tomorrow's grand Middle Eastern speech by President Obama is to recall that it was supposed to be delivered three or four months ago. Soon after the election, Obama's advisors briefed the press that the new President, within weeks of the Inauguration, would be addressing the world from Cairo. His high hopes for a new region, with the vision that long-term enemies could live and progress together, would be followed by talks fostered by US representatives.

Israel's invasion of Gaza ruined that plan, so the Obama White House went to Plan B. Obama's special envoy, George Mitchell, and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made high-profile trips to the region; there were specific missions by diplomats, such as Jeffrey Feltman's and Daniel Shapiro's trip to Damascus. Middle Eastern leaders --- Abdullah of Jordan, Netanyahu of Israel, Abbas of the Palestinian Authority --- came to Washington.

The only hitch is that, after all the travel and photo opportunities, there has been no notable advance. Israel, now led by the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu, has not only balked at any prospect of talks that would lead to a Palestinian state or a headline measure such as a freeze on settlement expansion in Jerusalem and the West Bank. And, with Tel Aviv making no movement, Arab governments have pulled away from the symbolic advance of "recognition", for example, by allowing overflights of their countries by Israeli commercial planes.

So Obama takes the podium in Cairo, after talks in Saudi Arabia today, empty-handed. Speaking to the Israeli Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly slapped down the American demand on settlements --- his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, is in the US offering the "compromise" of "dismantling unauthorized settlement outposts", which does nothing to address the American concern about legally-authorized construction. Obama, rather weakly, told the BBC that he would look to Arab States to offer some measures for a regional peace process, knowing (I suspect) that there is no prospect of that. Saudi Arabia wants some signal from Tel Aviv that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, launched by Riyadh, is a starting platform. Damascus, with Israel not even creeping towards a resumption of indirect talks, plays a waiting game.

What, oh what, can this President do? Well, he will do what he has done best so far. He will by-pass the specific difficulties with the clarion call to engagement based on mutual respect and interests. It worked in his Inaugural Speech, it worked in the Al-Arabiya television interview in January, and it worked in his address in Ankara (which is now our #1 story in the last eight months and continues to be in the Top 5 on most days). Obama's rhetoric may be derided by some domestic critics for its refusal to situate Islam as subservient to "American values" and for his "apologies" for past actions in US foreign policy, but it has succeeded with many overseas listeners precisely because it recognises those listeners, rather than demanding adherence first to an American position.

That is why, in recent days, Obama and his advisors have shifted from discussion of particular elements in a "peace process" to the general statement, repeated on two occasions by the President in his interview with National Public Radio on Monday, that it is "early in the process". The President will undoubtedly mention (according to McClatchy Newspapers, "forcefully endorse") a Palestinian state, but he will set out no timetable or specific steps towards that state. He will cite "areas of mutual interest" with Arab and Islamic countries but will be more concrete in his suggestions on defeating "violent extremism" than on negotiations toward political and economic agreements.

One could argue, of course, that is still quite an achievement after 4+ months in office, especially as every US President since Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 has pursued an Arab-Israeli settlement and none --- with the notable exception of Jimmy Carter --- has had a lasting success. And it looks like Obama will wow his observers in the American media (with the exception, of course, of ardently pro-Israeli outlets and of Bush Administration supporters who cling to the fiction that "democracy promotion" was the primary aim of that President's eight years in office). The working consensus is "a brave and possibly historic effort" with "an evenhanded approach", and Obama's rhetorical power is likely to sustain that praise.

(Beyond well-meaning support for the President, there are the more troubling hurrahs of self-serving sycophancy. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, after preening that he told Obama a joke during their 20 minutes of phone time, offers without further awareness or reflection: "The president has no illusions that one speech will make lambs lie down with lions. Rather, he sees it as part of his broader diplomatic approach that says: If you go right into peoples’ living rooms, don’t be afraid to hold up a mirror to everything they are doing, but also engage them in a way that says ‘I know and respect who you are.’ You end up — if nothing else — creating a little more space for U.S. diplomacy. And you never know when that can help.")

The issue, however, is whether Obama's audience in the Middle East and beyond will settle for feel-good but abstract advances. US supporters of the President are exalting his forthright stance on Israeli settlements, but the fact remains that Tel Aviv has been equally forthright so far in rebuffing Obama. If that intransigence continues, Washington's Plan B is vague, limited so far to talk of not guaranteeing an American veto in defence of Israel in the United Nations Security Council (and not even mentioning, as the George H.W. Bush Administration did, withholding of US economic and military aid).

And, of course, the settlements are only Tel Aviv's first line of defence against an attack for a two-state Israel-Palestine resolution. If Washington gets its way, there will then be the issue of the Israeli wall cutting across the West Bank, and then the issue of the status of Jerusalem, and then the Palestinian civilian "right of return" to the lands they lost in 1948, and then the Israeli military's "right of return" to the West Bank if it perceives a security threat, and then the small matter of a place called Gaza.

One might respond that Israel-Palestine is only one issue in the complexities of the region. True, but it is a touchstone issue (rather than, for example, Israel's preferred option of Iran). Symbolically, the failure to get a resolution that accords not respect but a meaningful economic and political status for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will be held up by others, whether for the benevolent reason that they see it as an essential case of justice and rights or for the less-than-benevolent reason that they want to divert attention from issues in their own communities and countries or the very malevolent reason that they want to justify hostile and often violent action against perceived enemies.

But, for those who want a context beyond Israel and Palestine (or, rather, Israel and the West Bank of the Palestinian Authority), Obama has set himself even bigger problems. There are the questions of how Obama can walk the tight-rope between support for political freedom and US alliances, powerfully demonstrated by the location of the President's speech, with far-from-democratic regimes. A less noted but just as significant difficulty with "local" politics emerged in a question from National Public Radio:

You’ve mentioned the — many times, the importance of reaching out to Iran with an open hand; trying to engage that country. Are you also willing to try to engage with Hezbollah or Hamas?

Obama responded with a pretty firm "they can just shove off":

Iran is a huge, significant nation-state that has — you know, has, I think, across the international community been recognized as such. Hezbollah and Hamas are not. And I don’t think that we have to approach those entities in the same way.

The President might as well have said "illegitimate". When the NPR questioner persisted, "Does that change with [Hezbollah's] electoral gains?", Obama refused to grant the political party --- which is likely to be a significant, if not dominant, entity in Lebanon's ruling coalition after this month's elections --- any status:

If — at some point — Lebanon is a member of the United Nations. If at some point they are elected as a head of state, or a head of state is elected in Lebanon, that is a member of that organization, then that would raise these issues. That hasn’t happened yet.

There was a bit more flexibility --- but only a bit --- with Hamas, as Obama said "the discussions...could potentially proceed" if Hamas accepted the conditions of the US-UK-EU-Russia Quartet.

The danger for the President is that, for all his talk of respect and equality, many will see him continuing rather than renouncing the US priority of getting the "right" governments. Vice President Joe Biden's trip to Beirut in the midst of the electoral campaign did not go unnoticed by Lebanese observers. There are suspicions, after a West Bank firefight that killed two leading commanders of Hamas' military wing, that the US is supporting (and possibly prompting) the Palestinian Authority's crackdown on its rival for power. Maybe, in the context of a grand speech, these are just troubling and tangential details. In the absence of an American strategy that offers concrete measures as well as rhetoric, however, the details can take on significance.

I'm not sure that I want to share Robert Fisk's dark vision of tomorrow's events: "I haven't met an Arab in Egypt – or an Arab in Lebanon, for that matter – who really thinks that Obama's 'outreach' lecture in Cairo on Thursday is going to make much difference." On the other hand, I am just as unsettled by talk from the White House that they are "re-setting" the Middle East.

Because, as any gamer knows, you don't hit the Reset button when you are doing well. And while that might bring a change in fortunes, if you keep hitting Reset (the Inaugural Speech, the Al-Arabiya talk, Ankara, now Cairo), an observer may begin to think that no one ever wins.