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Iran, United States

Ten reasons why the Iran sanctions Senate bill is policy malpractice

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Iran nuclear talks: Kerry and Zarif meet at the UN

Iran is quickly moving to the front of the ever-shifting foreign policy agenda in Washington at the end of this week, with 59 members of the US Senate, including 15 Democratic senators and the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, supporting the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013.Iran Flag IconUSflag

The bill would impose additional sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran in the event that the current round of talks fail between Iran and the ‘P5+1,’ the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia), plus Germany.  US president Barack Obama met with the entire Democratic caucus in the US Senate Wednesday night to implore his party’s senators not to support the bill.  Senate majority leader Harry Reid opposes the bill, and he hasn’t scheduled a vote for the new Iran sanctions — and even some of its supporters may be backing off as the temporary six-month deal proceeds.

But with 59 co-sponsors, the bill is just one vote shy of passing the Senate, and it would almost certainly pass in the US House of Representatives, where the Republican Party holds a majority.  In the event that the Congress passes a bill, Obama could veto it, but the Senate is already precariously close to the two-thirds majority it would need to override Obama’s veto.

The Obama administration argues that the bill is nothing short of warmongering, while the bill’s supporters argue that the sanctions will reinforce the Obama administration’s hand in negotiations.  Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister (pictured above with US secretary of state John Kerry), has warned that the bill would destroy any chances of reaching a permanent deal, and it’s hard to blame him.  Under the current deal, reached in November, the P5+1 agreed to lift up to $8 billion in economic sanctions in exchange for Iran’s decision to freeze its nuclear program for six months while the parties work through a longer-term deal.  The deal further provides that Iran will dilute its 20% enriched uranium down to just 5% enriched uranium, and the P5+1 have agreed to release a portion of Iran’s frozen assets abroad and partially unblock Iran’s oil exports.

So what should you make of the decision of 59 US senators to hold up a negotiation process that not only the Obama administration supports, but counts the support of its British, German and French allies?

Not much.

And here are ten reasons why the bill represents nothing short of policy malpractice.   Continue reading Ten reasons why the Iran sanctions Senate bill is policy malpractice →

Iran, United States

Obama-Rowhani call a historic first step in securing better US-Iranian relations

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Today, for the first time since 1979, the leaders of the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran held a bilateral discussion when US president Barack Obama called Iranian president Hassan Rowhani to discuss a potential solution to the international stalemate over Iran’s nuclear energy program.USflagIran Flag Icon

It wasn’t the handshake that everyone thought might have been possible earlier this week in New York at the United Nations General Assembly, but it’s still a remarkable step — and could result in real movement between Iran and the ‘P5 + 1’ countries over the future of the Iranian nuclear program and crippling UN sanctions.

It’s important to remember that there’s a long history of misfires on US-Iranian relations, with former Iranian presidents like Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami making overtures to the United States that went unrewarded — everything from Iranian assistance to Bosnian fighters in the 1990s to Iranian assistance to bring the Northern Alliance to support the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Even Rowhani, as Iran’s first nuclear negotiator in 2003, was burned when he offered a moratorium on further Iranian enrichment.  That concession led to nothing but the empowerment of anti-American hardliners, who came to power with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in 2005.

It follows a relationship that, even before the 1979 revolution that brought Shiite ayatollahs to power in Iran, was troubled — Iranians, even today, haven’t forgotten the role that the United States played in toppling former Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and boosting the repressive regime of the Iranian shah through the 1979 revolution.

As I wrote shortly after Rowhani’s staggering election as president in June 2013:

The Obama administration’s challenge is to forge a strategic path with Iran’s new president that undermines the hardliners in both Iran and in the United States.  Whether Iran likes it or not, it has to demonstrate to the world that it’s not pursuing clandestine nuclear weaponry.  But whether the West likes it or not, it must ultimately acknowledge that Iran — a sovereign nation of 75 million people — has a right to its own nuclear energy program on terms that respect the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic, and Obama will have to back up his weekend olive branch with substantive alms that show the United States is serious.

The discussion follows a potentially even more historic meeting between US secretary of state John Kerry and Iran’s even more moderate, English-speaking foreign minister Javad Zarif (pictured below) over a potential breakthrough in the standoff over Iran’s nuclear energy program.

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One telephone call between presidents and one meeting between foreign ministers doesn’t exactly mean that Iran and the United States will have solved all of their issues.  Rowhani’s reluctance to meet with Obama in New York earlier this week demonstrates that, while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (who remains the most powerful leader in Iran) may have blessed Rowhani’s diplomatic initiatives, strong opposition remains within the Islamic Republic, including within the conservative ‘principlist’ camp and from within the Revolutionary Guards.  The Obama administration will also face opposition — from its Middle Eastern ally Israel (which boycotted Rowhani’s largely conciliatory speech to the UN on Monday) and from neoconservative hawks from within the Republican Party in the United States.

But there’s a deal here: the United States doesn’t want to go to war with Iran, Iran doesn’t necessarily want nuclear weapons (and it especially wants Israel to give up its not-so-secret nuclear weapons) and Iran desperately wants an end to the sanctions that have harmed its economy.

This week’s diplomatic advances also follow the surprisingly moderate response from Iran over the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, even as the United States was considering a unilateral strike Bashar al-Assad’s regime at the time:

Although Iran has become a pariah state in recent years over its nuclear energy program (and the corresponding US and European fear that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapons program as well), many Iranians were the victims of the last major chemical weapons attack in the Middle East when Iraqi president Saddam Hussein deployed mustard gas and sarin against Iran during the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s — with the knowledge and acquiescence of the United States, which wholeheartedly supported Iraq in the 1980s.

Rowhani made clear through his presidential Twitter feed this week that he condemned the use of chemical weapons, in Syria or elsewhere.

Rowhani, a former Rafsanjani aide who united both the moderate camp and Khatami’s more liberal camp (including the ‘Green movement’ supporters from the contested 2009 election), was elected in large part for the perception that he could negotiate an end to international sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.  He handily defeated five other challengers to win a first-round victory in the June election, including two principlists — Iran’s former hardline nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and populist (and popular) Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf:

Continue reading Obama-Rowhani call a historic first step in securing better US-Iranian relations →

Iran, Syria, United States

The big news on Syria this weekend? Iran’s surprisingly mellow reactions to US military plans

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As the administration of US president Barack Obama begins to close ranks to secure the support of both houses of the US Congress, today’s big news on the escalating international crisis over Syria’s civil war didn’t come from the United States — it came from Iran.freesyria Syria Flag IconIran Flag IconUSflag

That’s because former president Hashemi Rafsanjani all but admitted that the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (pictured above left, with Rafsanjani, right) was responsible for unleashing a chemical attack on his own people.

Even as US secretary of state John Kerry took to Sunday’s television news shows to announce that the United States had determined from hair and blood samples the presence of sarin gas in the chemical attack 10 days ago on the eastern outskirts of Damascus, a conclusion that United Nations weapons inspectors seem likely to confirm early this week, Rafsanjani’s admission (even if inadvertent) goes a long way in confirming that the Assad regime is indeed culpable.

As originally reported by the Iranian Labour News Agency, Rafsanjani all but indicated that blame lies with Assad and the current Syrian government in remarks that otherwise sympathized with the plight of Syrians after over two years of increasingly sectarian fighting and civil war:

‘The people have been the target of a chemical attack by their own government and now they must also wait for an attack by foreigners.’

‘Right now America, the Western world along with some of the Arab countries are nearly issuing a clarion call for war in Syria – may God have mercy on the people of Syria,’ he said. ‘The people of Syria have seen much damage in these two years, the prisons are overflowing and they’ve converted stadiums into prisons, more than 100,000 people killed and millions displaced,” he added.

A later version of the story slightly revised Rafsanjani’s quote, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Rafsanjani was conceding Assad’s culpability.

Iran remains one of Syria’s top allies, both regionally and globally, largely because the Assad family are Alawite (a small mystical sect of Shi’a Islam) and have since the 1970s prevented the rise of a Sunni Arab state on Iran’s Western border, instead providing a reliable ally to Iran’s predominantly Shiite Islamic Republic.  Even as Obama pushes for support within Congress, he is also likely to look for additional support from other Middle Eastern nations — Turkey’s patience with Assad ran out long ago, and the predominantly Sunni Arab kingdom of Saudi Arabia also backs a US military strike.

Rafsanjani, who served as Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997, is a relatively moderate voice in Iranian politics.  Although Iran’s powerful Guardian Council disqualified him from running again in the recent July presidential election, Rafsanjani is very close to Iran’s newly inaugurated president Hassan Rowhani, who is also an Iranian moderate and has urged reconciliation with the United States and other Western countries.

While there’s no doubt that Iran, like Russia, will continue to support Syria, Rowhani’s remarks about potential US military action in Syria have been relatively tame.  That’s great news for the Obama administration, given that Rowhani’s election two months ago provided the United States its best opportunity since 2002 (when former president George W. Bush included Iran in his ‘axis of evil’) to improve a tortured relationship with the Islamic Republic.

Although Iran has become a pariah state in recent years over its nuclear energy program (and the corresponding US and European fear that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapons program as well), many Iranians were the victims of the last major chemical weapons attack in the Middle East when Iraqi president Saddam Hussein deployed mustard gas and sarin against Iran during the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s — with the knowledge and acquiescence of the United States, which wholeheartedly supported Iraq in the 1980s.

Rowhani made clear through his presidential Twitter feed this week that he condemned the use of chemical weapons, in Syria or elsewhere:

Iran gives notice to international community to use all its might to prevent use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world, esp. in #Syria

Javad Zarif, Iran’s new foreign minister, went even further in an English-language Facebook post (!) yesterday condemning the use of chemical weapons as well, while also pleading for the United States and its allies to work through the channels of international diplomacy and the United Nations: Continue reading The big news on Syria this weekend? Iran’s surprisingly mellow reactions to US military plans →

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Did Rowhani’s support in Iran outperform the potential of a Rafsanjani candidacy?

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Hassan Rowhani’s runaway first-round victory in Iran’s June 14 presidential election was unexpected after many U.S. commentators had disregarded Rowhani’s chances when Iran’s Guardian Council refused to permit former president Hashemi Rafsanjani to run.Iran Flag Icon

Before the Guardian Council’s decision, Rafsanjani was thought to have been the stronger candidate for Iran’s presidency, though by no means did anyone suggest Rafsanjani would be a shoo-in for victory.

It may well ironically turn out that Rowhani — and not Rafsanjani — proved to be the stronger candidate all along.

Rowhani, moreover, ultimately won election with the backing of the same coalition that Rafsanjani was expected to mobilize — moderates like Rowhani himself, more liberal reformists and followers of former president Mohammed Khatami, the ‘Green movement’ supporters who backed Mir-Hossein Mousavi, unsuccessfully, in the 2009 presidential race, and other who have become disenchanted with the outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over Iran’s stumbling economy, stringent international sanctions over Iran’s nuclear energy program, and political freedoms.

Of course, we’ll never know whether Rafsanjani (pictured above, right, with Rowhani) would have been able to attract even more than the 18.6 million votes that Rowhani won in the election.

But it seems likely that Rowhani could have actually overperformed a hypothetical Rafsanjani candidacy (assuming that Rowhani would have dropped out of the race in deference to Rafsanjani).

In many ways, the Rowhani campaign offered all of the benefits of a Rafsanjani candidacy without any of the drawbacks.

Rowhani has been a strong Rafsanjani ally since the 1980s and the earliest days of the Islamic Republic, when Iran was locked in a fierce, decade-long border war with Iraq.  When Rafsanjani became Iran’s president in 1989, he appointed Rowhani as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, putting Rowhani at the head of Iran’s regional security as the Iraq war wound down.  Khatami, upon assuming the presidency in 1997, retained Rowhani in that role, and he appointed Rowhani as the country’s first negotiator over Iran’s nuclear energy program in 2003, a position that Rowhani relinquished when the more hardline Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005.

As such, Rowhani’s victory is seen as somewhat of a victory for Rafsanjani, who is expected to return to influence as a guiding role in Rowhani’s administration:

“Rafsanjani was really the only choice to re-energize reformists,” said Rasool Nafisi, an Iranian affairs analyst at Strayer University in Virginia. “Rowhani only got their support because he is seen as Rafsanjani’s man and a vote for Rowhani was a vote for Rafsanjani.”

This deep connection between the two men could give a potential Rowhani presidency a dual nature: Rowhani as the public face and Rafsanjani behind the scenes as its powerful godfather and protector.

Although all key policies such the nuclear programme are directed by the ruling clerics, the alliance with Rafsanjani may give Rowhani more latitude to put his stamp on Iran’s negotiation tactics with world powers after four rounds of talks since last year have failed to make any significant headway.

But three weeks ago, it was not entirely clear which of Iran’s eight approved presidential candidates would emerge as the clearest voice of change — the runner-up in the presidential vote, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, came to the race as both a conservative ‘principlist,’ but also as a strident Ahmadinejad critic with a substantial base of support as Tehran’s mayor since 2005, a role in which Qalibaf has been viewed as a relatively effective executive by boosting Tehran’s green spaces, public transport and benefits for its poorest residents. Continue reading Did Rowhani’s support in Iran outperform the potential of a Rafsanjani candidacy? →

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Moderate cleric Rowhani wins stunning first-round victory in Iran presidential election

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Hassan Rowhani, the moderate cleric and former Iranian nuclear negotiator, has won a first-round victory in Iran’s presidential election, a stunning development that, despite evidence of Rowhani’s surge, no one predicted even 24 hours ago.Iran Flag Icon

The victory was so stunning over a divided field of more conservative ‘principlist’ candidates that it calls into question the strategy of leading principlists to have remained in the race so long, thereby dividing conservative support and prohibiting the emergence of a single principlist standard-bearer.

With all of the votes counted, Iran’s ministry of the interior reports a turnout of just over 72% in the race, and Rowhani’s 50.71% support is sufficient to avoid a runoff with Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf on June 21:

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It’s no surprise that Qalibaf finished in second place, given the fact that he has a strong base of supporters in Tehran, where he’s served as mayor since 2005 and has been twice elected by the city council, and that he’s long been a critic of the administration of outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

 

The two candidates most associated with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and longtime former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati — did even worse, despite reports that proclaimed Jalili a ‘frontrunner’ in the campaign.  Jalili, with just over 11% of the vote, only narrowly outpaced third-time candidate Mohsen Rezai, the former head of the Revolutionary Guards who’s popular with rural Iranian voters.  Velayati finished far behind in fifth place with just 6.18% of the vote.

Meanwhile, Rowhani has consolidated the support of three main groups in Iran: reformists, moderate conservatives, and voters disillusioned with the outgoing Ahmadinejad’s failures on economic growth and international relations.  Continue reading Moderate cleric Rowhani wins stunning first-round victory in Iran presidential election →

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Voting wrapping up in Iran’s presidential election

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It’s only 10 a.m. on the U.S. east coast, but that means we’re approaching nighttime in Tehran — it’s now 6:30 p.m. and voters are finishing a day of voting to select a new president.Iran Flag Icon

All of the candidates, plus Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (pictured above), have cast their ballots in what is expected to be just the first round of the election.  With eight candidates originally approved to run by Iran’s Guardian Council and with six candidates remaining in the race today, it seems unlikely that any single candidate will win the 50%-plus support required to avoid a runoff of the top two vote-winners next Friday, June 21.

Polls showed that the most likely runoff would be between moderate cleric Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s former nuclear energy negotiator, and conservative ‘principlist’ Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, though I have argued that the race is so fluid that any of the top five candidates could wind up in the runoff, including current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and the former head of the Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezai.

The winner will replace outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, himself the former mayor of Tehran, whose populist focus on economic issues swept him to power in 2005 and to reelection in 2009, though his relationship with the Supreme Leader has frayed in recent years and many of the current candidates have blamed him for Iran’s economic woes and the international sanctions and diplomatic isolation that Iran suffers today.

Despite initial disappointment at the Guardian Council’s refusal to permit former president Hashemi Rafsanjani to run, the race has turned out to be incredibly competitive, and the six candidates represent a relatively wide diversity, as far as Iranian elections go.  Candidates come from both the ‘founding’ generation of the 1979 revolution that led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic and the younger generation that came of age during the brutal war with Iraq in the 1980s.  Candidates also come from both the principlist camps and the moderate/reformist camps.

Far from boycotting the race, Rafsanjani and former president Mohammed Khatami have urged voters to back Rowhani, and Khatami’s vice president, Mohammad Reza Aref, dropped out the race earlier this week in favor of Rowhani, and former supporters of the 2009 presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the ‘Green movement’ are likely to back Rowhani as well.

I’ll have additional thoughts when the winner(s) of the race become clear.  In the meanwhile, you can follow all of my coverage of the Iranian election here.

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Rowhani, Qalibaf appear to lead polls to top Friday’s vote, advance to June 21 runoff

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Polling is an inexact science in Iran, so most polls should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Iran Flag Icon

But the field poll data coming from the U.S.-based Information and Public Opinion Solutions is more reliable than most, even though it’s not based in Tehran, because it conducts daily telephone interviews with a sample of over 1,000 potential voters within Iran.

The bottom line is that a runoff seems increasingly likely and, although that runoff seems likeliest to be a faceoff between conservative Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and moderate Hassan Rowhani, that’s by no means a certainty.  I continue to believe that any of the five leading candidates could ultimately wind up in the runoff, especially if former longtime foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati withdraws from the race in the next 48 hours in favor of Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, which remains a possibility, given that both candidates are viewed has having the closest ties to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader since 1989.  That’s especially true if you believe that the 2009 presidential vote was subject to massive electoral fraud — in such case, it seems possible that Rowhani could be excluded through chicanery.  But despite the fact that he’s the most reformist of the six remaining candidate, Rowhani is the only cleric in the race, he has a solid relationship with Khamenei.

The latest results show Rowhani moving for the first time into the lead with 26.6% of the vote at the same time that former presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami have endorsed him.  Rafsanjani, a political moderate, had registered to run for president in the election, but he was disqualified by the Guardian Council, a 12-member body close to the Supreme Leader that certifies candidates to run for office in Iran.  The reformist Khatami, who had supported Rafsanjani’s presidential bid, indicated his support for Rowhani after his former vice president Mohammad Reza Aref dropped out of the race on Monday in favor of Rowhani.  Rowhani’s support has steadily increased from a poll last week that showed him with just 8.1%.  (Online polls have shown Rowhani and Aref with much wider support, but those seem skewed toward wealthier, more urban voters likelier to support more liberal candidates like Rowhani and Aref).

For the first time in an IPOS poll, the more ‘principlist’ conservative mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, has slipped into second place.  Despite Qalibaf’s position as a conservative, he’s been a relatively popular mayor and is expected to do well among voters in Tehran, which is home to over 12 million of Iran’s 75 million people.  Last week, however, Qalibaf held a much wider lead with 39% of the vote, though his lead seems to be shrinking as more undecided voters (57% of all voters last week) ultimately choose a candidate to support:

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The third-place candidate, according to the poll, is Mohsen Rezai, whose support seems to be incredibly stable — 16.3% today and 16.6% last week.  Rezai, the former head of the Revolutionary Guards, is seen as a more independent-minded conservative, and he pulls much of his strength from rural Iran and from within Iran’s military forces.  Continue reading Rowhani, Qalibaf appear to lead polls to top Friday’s vote, advance to June 21 runoff →

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The incredibly shrinking president: Ahmadinejad’s subdued role in Iran’s presidential race

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disappearingahmadinejad

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has never been one to shrink from a political battle — not during his breakthrough 2005 presidential campaign to his heated, not in his routine, over-the-top attacks against the United States and Israel, and not in his more recent fights with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei over personnel and other policy disputes.Iran Flag Icon

Ahmadinejad is limited to two consecutive presidential terms and therefore is not eligible to run for reelection in this month’s presidential race, so it was always certain that he would fade somewhat to the background as the race focuses on the six candidates hoping to succeed him.  But it’s staggering to note just how minor a role Ahmadinejad has played in the campaign, especially in light of the fact that he was very recently attempting to boost Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, his chief of staff, to the presidency, thereby giving Ahmadinejad a key role in Iranian affairs even after his own administration ends.

But the Guardian Council refused to permit Mashaei, to run for president earlier in May when it also disqualified former president Hashemi Rafsanjani as well.  When Ahmadinejad tried to make Mashaei Iran’s first vice president in 2009, Khamenei made a rare and direct intervention into domestic politics to overrule the decision and ordered Ahmadinejad to replace Mashaei.  Since his reelection four years ago, Ahmadinejad’s growing rift with principlists loyal to Khamenei have increasingly isolated him within Iran’s domestic political sphere.

One of the reasons why Mashaei is believed to be such a unique threat to the Supreme Leader is that he’s been willing to champion a form of Persian nationalism that harkens back to the time before Shi’a Islam took root in what’s now modern-day Iran.  Mashaei’s ties to Ahmadinejad were forged three decades ago, when Mashaei served in the Revolutionary Guards and in Iran’s intelligence ministry during the 1980s war with Iraq.  He joined Ahmadinejad’s city government when Ahmadinejad became Tehran’s mayor in 2003, and he held a key advisory role during Ahmadinejad’s first presidential term.

But there are other reasons why Khamenei and his conservative ‘principlist’ allies have been wary of Mashaei, including conciliatory comments towards Israel — he once remarked that Iranians are friends of Israelis.  Furthermore, in a country where presidents are required to have religious as well as political credentials, religious conservatives have called Mashaei a ‘deviant’ due to Mashaei’s relatively relaxed views on matters such as the role of music and dancing in Iranian life to the wearing of the hijab.  Ahmadinejad responded to Mashaei’s disqualification by claiming that Mashaei was ‘wronged,’ adding that he hoped Khamenei would intervene and call upon the Guardian Council to reconsider its decision, but those calls have been met with silence from both the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council.

Since then, however, Ahmadinejad has remained uncharacteristically subdued, in a way that mirrors the relatively quiet role that the unpopular former U.S. president George W. Bush — a longtime Ahmadinejad foil — played in the 2008 presidential election.

Although critics of Iran’s political system have charged that the eight candidates approved by the Guardian Council are all conservatives (the field has now whittled down to six after two hopefuls dropped out earlier this week), they nonetheless represent a fairly wide range of generational, clerical and ideological diversity.  Moreover, Ahmadinejad’s turbulent eight years in office have as been the target of much criticism throughout the election campaign, including as to his handling of Iran’s sputtering economy, growing inflation, widespread unemployment, and the way in which he’s isolated Iran’s position internationally, which has led to economic sanctions that have only exacerbated Iran’s economic woes.

None of the candidates in the race seem incredibly inclined to embrace Ahmadinejad.

The one potential exception is Saeed Jalili, Iran’s current negotiator with the P5+1 international powers over Iran’s nuclear energy program.  Heralded as a frontrunner by the Western and Iranian media alike, Jalili is the closest thing to an incumbent in the race, and he’s absorbed criticism from both principlist candidates (such as Ali Akbar Velayati, a top international adviser to the Supreme Leader) and reformist candidates (such as Hassan Rowhani, who took a more conciliatory tone as Iran’s nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005). Continue reading The incredibly shrinking president: Ahmadinejad’s subdued role in Iran’s presidential race →

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And then there were six: the dwindling Iranian presidential field

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It’s been a fast-paced 36 hours in Iran’s presidential election, with two of the eight approved candidates exiting of the race following Friday’s third and final presidential debate. Iran Flag Icon

Monday brought news that Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel would drop out of the election, reducing the number of conservative ‘principlists’ competing for votes in the first round of the June 14 presidential race.  Haddad-Adel, who served as the speaker of Iran’s Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles) from 2004 to 2008, and whose daughter is married to the son of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, did not specify an endorsement for any particular candidate, though he previously belonged to the ‘2+1 Principlist’ coalition that included former longtime foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and his exit from the race will likely mean fewer votes spread among Velayati, Qalibaf and Iran’s current top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili (pictured above preparing for a recent presidential debate).

Today brings the news that Mohammad Reza Aref will also drop out in favor of moderate candidate Hassan Rowhani, which gives moderates and reformists a chance to unite behind one candidate.  Aref, who served as communications minister and vice president under former reformist president Mohammed Khatami, allegedly ended his presidential bid after Khatami asked him to step down.  Khatami has now endorsed Rowhani, who is seen as more of a moderate than a reformist.  Rowhani is very close to former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was controversially disqualified in May to stand as a candidate in the current election by the Guardian Council.  It’s a development that wasn’t entirely unexpected, and to the extent reformists and moderates don’t boycott the election entirely, it is very good news for Rowhani, who can try to unite to reformist and moderate camps in the hours ahead of Friday’s vote.

So where does that leave the six-candidate field?  Realistically, it’s a five-man race.  Though he remains a candidate, it’s hard to believe that Mohammad Gharazi could win.  Although he served as Iran’s oil minister from 1981 to 1985 and as communications minister from 1985 to 1997, he’s a leftist in the mould of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who served as prime minister in the 1980s before his resurrection as a reformist presidential candidate in 2009.  He’s run a campaign focused largely on economic management and controlling inflation.

The remaining five — three principlists, another independent conservative and a reformist/moderate — are not so much vying to win outright on Friday so much as vying to win one of two spots in a runoff that will be held on the following Friday, June 21 in the event that no candidate wins over 50%.  If that happens, as seems likely, there’s really no way to know who will emerge in the top two spots.  Though polling is not incredibly reliable in Iranian elections, a recent telephone poll by the U.S.-based IPOS indicates 57% of Iranians have not yet decided but, among those who have, Qalibaf has a wide lead of around 40% against the remaining four candidate essentially tied for second between around 10% and 20%.  That generally corresponds to other field polls, though Rowhani has led other similar polls.  Rowhani has led the lion’s share of unscientific online polls since the campaign began in earnest, but those are even less reliable indicators of true support.

So what are the chances for each of those five candidates?  Here’s a look at the pros and cons of each candidate, and how each would shape up in a potential runoff.  Continue reading And then there were six: the dwindling Iranian presidential field →

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What will Mohammed Khatami do?

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Despite the fact that many U.S. commentators have written off Iran’s upcoming presidential election as somewhat of a bore with the rejection of the candidacy of former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, there’s still plenty of intrigue.Iran Flag Icon

If the first step of the Iranian presidential election was the ‘pre-qualification’ phase, and we’re currently in the second phase, the third and final phase is likely to be the whittling down of the current eight remaining candidates to just one or two major conservative frontrunners (perhaps Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili) and one moderate candidate.

Rafsanjani’s exit from the campaign doesn’t mean that reformists don’t have options, and one of the key questions is whether reformists (and moderates like Rafsanjani) will unite behind a single candidate and, if so, who they will support and how strongly they will support him.

No one is more central to that question that another former Iranian president, Mohammed Khatami, who succeeded Rafsanjani in 1997 as a surprising dark-horse presidential candidate.

Khatami is by far the most liberal of the four major presidents of Iran’s Islamic Republic — the conservative Ali Khamenei has been the country’s Supreme Leader since 1989, Rafsanjani has always been a middle-of-the-road, moderate conservative in Iranian politics, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been a stridently conservative president, even if he’s clashed with the Supreme Leader and even though he’s been more populist than his predecessors.

Although Ahmadinejad has, in some ways, proven more successful in clawing more power for the presidency, Khatami wasn’t wholly ineffective as president.  He oversaw a period of looser restrictions on freedoms in Iran, deeper engagement among Iranian civil society groups and, while U.S.-Iranian relations were not necessarily good during the Khatami era, he promoted what he called a ‘dialogue among civilizations’ between the Islamic Republic and the West.

Khatami, who openly supported Rafsanjani’s now-aborted presidential campaign, has been coy about his favorite among the eight remaining candidates.  For his part, Rafsanjani has also been quiet.

But there are essentially just two candidates that either Khatami or Rafsanjani are likely to support: Mohammed Reza Aref and Hassan Rowhani. Continue reading What will Mohammed Khatami do? →

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Why Iran is not a totalitarian state

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I normally enjoy Juan Cole’s blog Informed Comment for his often brilliant insights into the Middle East. But today, he’s frothing in an over-the-top attack on the Iranian government for the Guardian Council’s rejection of Hashemi Rafsanjani (pictured above) as a potential presidential candidate in the June 14 election.  His comments seem anything but informed:
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Their exclusion is a further step toward authoritarianism and perhaps totalitarianism in Iran…

A major challenge for the remaining 8 presidential candidates will to get anyone to care about an election conducted on a vary narrow basis, which might well be fixed anyway.

OK, let’s deconstruct this.

Anyone with a passing familiarity with Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism will realize that the current Iranian government falls pretty far from the two traditional examples of 20th century totalitarianism — Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union.  To throw around the term ‘totalitarianism’ this way only serves to disrespect the memory of those who suffered under the truly horrific Nazi and Stalinist regimes and to amplify the heated rhetoric over Iran.

No one disputes that the rejection of Rafsanjani’s candidacy is pretty far afield from what we’d expect from a free and fair democratic election.  It’s obviously, as far as most observers can tell, a reaction from the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to reject a potential president who might challenge his primacy as the Supreme Leader.  That’s an institutional fight that Khamenei has been waging for some time — it’s in many ways not so dissimilar to the ways that the American system spent its first decades settling.   Continue reading Why Iran is not a totalitarian state →

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A look at the eight presidential candidates approved by Iran’s Guardian Council

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Provided that the Guardian Council’s decision stands and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani is not permitted to run for president in the June 14 election, who are the eight remaining candidates from which Iranian voters will choose? Iran Flag Icon

Despite the rejection of the candidacies of both Rafsanjani, the current chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, chief of staff to incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Guardian Council approved eight candidates that include both conservatives and liberals, including two figures who were part of the administration of reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

So if Rafsanjani and his supporters ultimately accept the outcome, the race won’t necessarily lack for drama or intensity.  With eight candidates in the race, at least initially, the election could well go to a runoff on June 21 if no candidate wins over 50% of the vote, though there’s reason to believe some of the candidates will fall aside as conservatives in particular unite around one or two candidates.

Without further ado, here’s a look at each of the eight approved candidates and their chances to become Iran’s next president. Continue reading A look at the eight presidential candidates approved by Iran’s Guardian Council →

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Rafsanjani, Mashaei both disqualified from running for Iranian presidency

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Iran’s Guardian Council has spoken — it has announced a list of eight presidential candidates for the June 14 election.Iran Flag Icon

As expected, the list doesn’t include Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a key advisor and chief of staff to incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But the list also doesn’t include Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the original leaders of post-revolution Iran and himself a former president from 1989 to 2007, chair of the Expediency Discernment Council, and a former presidential candidate in 2005 as well.  Rafsanjani’s rejection wasn’t exactly unexpected, but it  has the potential to make the 2013 presidential election already as politically explosive as the 2009 presidential election, when Ahmadinejad won a victory that supporters of his opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former Iranian prime minister in the 1980s, who ran as a reformist candidate with the support of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

The Guardian Council is a 12-member council that vets presidential and parliamentary candidates and otherwise serves as Iran’s final constitutional interpretative body.  Its decisions are widely seen as a means of extending the interests of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei (pictured above), given that half of its members are appointed by the Supreme Leader and the other half are appointed by the Iranian parliament, which is dominated by Khamenei’s conservative (or ‘principlist’) supporters.

While Rafsanjani himself wasn’t part of the ‘Green movement’ that challenged the election results, Rafsanjani gently chided Iran’s regime for its harsh and sometimes lethal crackdown, which included jailing many activists and journalists, curtailing freedom of assembly, speech and the press, and resulted in the house arrest of both Mousavi and another reformist presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi.  Although Rafsanjani lost the chairmanship in 2011 of the Assembly of Experts, he remained the chair of the Expediency Council.*

Rafsanjani, a sometimes-ally and sometimes-rival to Khamenei, dominated Iranian politics in the 1980s alongside Khamenei.  Rafsanjani was the speaker of Iran’s parliament when Khamenei was president.  When Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989, the Assembly of Experts chose Khamenei to succeed him, but Rafsanjani quickly won the first of two terms as president, therefore extending their dual dominance of Iranian politics through the end of the 1990s.  Given that Rafsanjani is the most powerful politician in Iran after Khamenei, he would have had the credibility and legitimacy as Iran’s president to challenge the principle authority of the Supreme Leader.

There are essentially three potential outcomes from here:

Rafsanjani accepts the decision, reformists back another candidate.

Rafsanjani could simply accept the Guardian Council’s decision, call on his supporters to back another candidate, and the election will proceed without Rafsanjani.  Given his relatively cautious and conciliatory past, this may well be the most likely outcome, especially if Rafsanjani, Khatami, Mousavi and others rally around one of the remaining candidates approved by the Guardian Council, not all of whom are necessarily conservatives.  Although five of the eight candidates are ‘principlist’ conservatives who are clearly loyal to the Supreme Leader and unlikely to challenge Khamenei’s imperative, the Guardian Council approved Rafsanjani’s former communication minister, Mohammad Gharazi, as well as the chief nuclear negotiator during the Khatami administration, Hassan Rowhani.  The Guardian Council also approved Khatami’s former vice president, Mohammad Reza Aref, who will be the most pro-reform candidate of the eight.

Rafsanjani appeals for Khamenei’s intervention.

Rafsanjani could initially challenge the Guardian Council’s decision and call upon Khamenei to step in to allow his candidacy.  That’s not unprecedented — in 2005, Khamenei intervened to request the Guardian Council approve two reformist candidates that it had previously rejected.  If Rafsanjani does go to  Khamenei, and Khamenei ultimately assents to the request, it would allow Rafsanjani to run while also demonstrating in a very public way Khamenei’s dominance.  If the presidential drama plays out this way, it wouldn’t be surprising at all — Rafsanjani remains a candidate, but he’ll owe his candidacy to the goodwill of the Supreme Leader.

Rafsanjani’s supporters boycott the election — or take to the streets.

If Rafsanjani or his supporters don’t accept his rejection, however, it could become very difficult very quickly for Khamenei.  If reformers and moderates boycott the election, it would be a significant setback to a regime that hopes to turn the page from the 2009 election, its violent aftermath and the antics of the Ahmadinejad administration.  If Rafsanjani’s supporters take to the streets in a way that’s even vaguely reminiscent of the 2009 ‘Green movement,’ it would be difficult for Khamenei to effect another election-related crackdown, especially against Rafsanjani, who was one of the leading figures of the revolution’s first generation.  Khamenei lost credibility both in Iran and abroad with the 2009 crackdown, but to take on Rafsanjani would amount to nothing less than a street war between Iran’s two top revolutionary figures at a time when Iran’s economy and its position in the world hang precariously in the balance.  Continue reading Rafsanjani, Mashaei both disqualified from running for Iranian presidency →

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Iran awaits Guardian Council decision on Rafsanjani, other presidential contenders

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In less than 24 hours, Iranians will know who will be clear to run in next month’s presidential election, the first since the June 2009 race that led to the ‘Green Movement’ that attracted global attention.Iran Flag Icon

That’s because within Iranian democracy, the Guardian Council, a 12-member body of clerics and attorneys that advises the Supreme Leader on constitutional matters, also functions as a gatekeeper for presidential and parliamentary candidates in Iran.  In theory, the Guardian Council approves only those candidates who meet the criteria to run for the presidency.  In reality, it means that minor, independent, secular, liberal, and/or female candidates, or anyone who appears too radical a threat to the current system or simply deemed unacceptable by the Supreme Leader, can be excluded from the race.  It also means that the Guardian Council can shape the contours of the race by determining the number of relative conservatives and reformists.

As such, although 686 presidential candidates — including 30 women — have registered to run in the June 14 presidential race, just a handful are expected to be confirmed to run.  In the 2009 election, for example, the Guardian Council approved just four candidates out of 476 initial hopefuls; in the 2005 election, the Guardian Council approved just six candidates from among 1,014.

But the question on everyone’s mind is whether the Guardian Council will approve Hashemi Rafsanjani (pictured above), widely seen as the most powerful politician in Iran after the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.  Rafsanjani, who served previously as Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997, is as the current chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, a 34-member body that mediates between the elected Iranian parliament and the Guardian Council.  He placed first in the first round of the 2005 presidential election, but ultimately lost widely in the runoff to the more conservative and populist Tehran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  As Khamenei’s contemporary, Rafsanjani was a political rival in the 1980s when Khamenei was Iran’s president (before his 1989 elevation as Supreme Leader), and that makes him a potential president with the profile and support base to potentially challenge Khamenei as Supreme Leader.  On the other hand, Rafsanjani is someone Khamenei knows well, even if they’re not best friends, is somewhat of a consensus-builder, and would be unlikely to unleash the kind of erratic leadership that Ahmadinejad has embraced.

In light of the controversial aftermath of the 2009 election, during which ‘Green movement’ supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi took to the streets in opposition to the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s reelection, the regime’s crackdown left many reformists, journalists and others killed or in jail (Mousavi and others remain under house arrest even today).  As a result, many of the movement’s backers have settled upon Rafsanjani as their preferred candidate.  That includes former president Mohammad Khatami, who served as president from 1997 to 2005 as a strong advocate for liberalization in both domestic and foreign affairs, though he wasn’t necessarily effective at enacting reform.

Rafsanjani himself didn’t openly support the ‘Green movement’ in the wake of the 2009 election, but he made some remarks indicating, ever so gently, his preference for the right to open speech, free assembly, and greater press freedom, and his opposition to the harshness of the crackdown.  Though he’s certainly not as reformist as Mousavi and Khatami, he’s never been a full-throated conservative either, which makes him in many ways a great compromise choice in light of the post-2009 battles.  At age 78, he was Iran’s president at the end of the war with Iraq in the 1980s, so he’s far from the kind of fresh face who would push for rapid change.  But for all the reasons above, he’d start the race with the support of Iran’s reform movement and he has the personal platform to push through reforms that Khatami could not a decade ago.

But Rafsanjani’s disqualification, given his status as a former president, would be unprecedented in Iranian politics, and could well lead to the kind of widespread protests that followed the 2009 election. His opponents in the Guardian Council may well be looking to Rafsanjani’s advanced age as an excuse to disqualify him, according to Iranian new reports today:

Iran’s Guardian Council Spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei says the body may consider the physical condition of presidential hopefuls in its approval process. If an individual, who is supposed to carry out a macro executive task, can work for only a few hours a day, he cannot be approved, Kadkhodaei said in an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language al-Alam news network. The Guardian Council may take physical condition into consideration in its vetting of presidential hopefuls but no discussion has been held yet regarding the issue, he added.

Given that Khamenei is just five years younger than Rafsanjani, I’m not sure that’s such an incredibly useful precedent, and I’m not sure that it will ultimately be the reason for his disqualification, if it happens.

So what happens if Rafsanjani isn’t permitted to run?

Continue reading Iran awaits Guardian Council decision on Rafsanjani, other presidential contenders →