Ahmadinejad should watch his back
Firing off missiles may make the hardliners feel better, but Iran's mood is broodingly uncertain, defensive and self-accusatory
Simon Tisdall guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 September 2009
In the uproar following last week's exposure of a clandestine underground nuclear plant near Qom, little has been heard from Iran's domestic opposition leaders and their supporters. But Tehran's brusque rejection of "ludicrous" western criticism conceals another tense secret: continuing regime nervousness about a loss of political support, a possible repeat of June's street uprisings and the unpredictable impact of the "crippling" sanctions threatened by the US and its allies.
The idea that the Iranian "nation", always a difficult concept in a country as ethnically, religiously and linguistically diverse as Iran, is wholeheartedly united behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's pursuit of its "nuclear rights" is even less persuasive than it was a few months ago. The summer's violently disputed presidential election has left ugly wounds unhealed. The international spotlight has shifted elsewhere, partly because of a crackdown on reformist newspapers and websites and a de facto ban on western reporters. But internal inquests continue all the same.
State-run radio confirmed this week that the Majlis (parliament) committee appointed to investigate post-election ill-treatment of hundreds of detainees would publish its findings next week. The news coincided with a warning by Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem-Shirazi, at a meeting of clerics in Shiraz, that officials must "act wisely" to settle election-related disputes, the Mehr news agency reported. "Nobody is allowed to add fuel to the fire and divisions should be healed through negotiation," he said, adding that Iran already faced serious cultural and economic problems such as 40% youth unemployment.
Several proposals for electoral and political reform are under discussion. Mohsen Rezai, a defeated presidential candidate, suggested creating a national election committee "so that the government is barred from involvement in election affairs". The committee should also have retrospective power to "correct flaws" in the June poll, he said. Even the devious Hashemi Rafsanjani, who backed Mir Hossein Mousavi against Ahmadinejad, has hinted that the assembly of experts, which he chairs and which has constitutional oversight of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, may yet take up "current issues".
All of this may yet come to nothing. But it does not fit the stereotyped image of a totalitarian dictatorship beating a subject population into silence. In fact, this apparently irrepressible, very public domestic argument, notable even by Iran's disputatious norms, is extremely unsettling for Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and his cronies as they struggle to hold the line in their homemade battle with the west. Ali Larijani, a former chief nuclear negotiator, claimed Iranians were the victims of a "new western propaganda offensive" ahead of Thursday's pivotal talks in Geneva.
Firing off a few missiles, as they did again today, may make the hardliners feel better. But such defiant gestures seem to have little impact on a national mood that appears broodingly uncertain, defensive and self-accusatory.
Conservative newspapers such as Keyhan are stubbornly maintaining the rhetoric of confrontation. "What has happened so far was the first phase of the 'soft war' adopted by Iran's enemies ... The night of the soft war is still young and there are more difficult days ahead ... We have to be aware that enemies have targeted not the government but the whole system," it said this week.
But Jaam-e Jam, another conservative paper, was in more reflective mood. "In the current sensitive situation a review of the constituent foundations of the Islamic Republic is absolutely necessary," it said in an editorial. Hemayat warned against a possible "confrontation between the people and revolutionary politicians". The reformist paper Arman meanwhile urged the government to heed the advice of "prominent figures" (a likely reference to former president Mohammad Khatami) on returning "peace and calm to society".
On the nuclear dispute, Arman warned its readers that even the US president, Barack Obama, was now talking about military options. "Iran's main objective in its foreign policy should focus on the prevention of the issuance of another [UN sanctions] resolution against the country," it said. "Iran should do its best to take its dossier back to the International Atomic Energy Agency" – and by co-operating fully there, avoid additional punishment by the UN security council.
While none of this political and media ferment amounts to domestic insurrection, the fact that it is continuing despite the harsh post-election crackdown is significant. So, too, is the defiance exhibited by tens of thousands of protesters who returned to the streets of Tehran and other major cities on 18 September, after an enforced break of two months, to express their contempt for the regime.
The hardliners won the first post-election round. But as a weakened Ahmadinejad prepares for the next bout of political fisticuffs with the west, he must increasingly watch his back.