Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The Evolving Situation in Iran

Link: 
http://middleeastprogress.org/2009/07/the-evolving-situation-in-iran/
The Evolving Situation in Iran
An interview with Karim Sadjadpour, associate, Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.
What is the current situation on the ground in Iran?
I'd first of all say that we should truly appreciate the magnitude of
this moment. Those who argue this is only a disagreement between
revolutionary elites are patently wrong. The mayor of Tehran, Mohammed
Bagher Ghalibaf, himself a former senior Revolutionary Guard
commander, claimed that over three million people demonstrated in
Tehran. I am not at all predicting a revolution, and in fact people
are not even using the word ‘engheleb' i.e. revolution, but to give
you an idea, in 1978 it took six months before a million people took
to the streets, this time it took place in a matter of days. And the
images and many reports showed how the demonstrations represented an
incredibly diverse socio-economic swath of Iranian society, with women
often being at the forefront.
The scale of the demonstrations has subsided for now, but there's no
indication that people's sense of injustice or rage has subsided. From
what I hear from people in Tehran, the nightly protest chants of
‘Allahu Akbar' are as loud as they've ever been. The main problem the
opposition faces at the moment is that its leadership is either
imprisoned, under house arrest or unable to communicate openly. So you
still have tremendous popular outrage, and you have unprecedented
cleavages amongst the political elite that haven't yet been
reconciled. But if this popular outrage is to be channeled politically
it will require leadership, and at the moment that is lacking.
Who were the people on the street last week, on July 9?
Last week was the tenth anniversary of the 1999 student protests.
Despite the great brutality of the government the last four weeks, and
the fact that people were sternly warned not attend, there were still
over a thousand protestors throughout Tehran. I'm sure that for every
one person out in the streets, there were thousands more at home who
feel solidarity with them.
It's worth underscoring the tremendous courage which people have shown
the last few weeks. While the government claims only a few dozen have
been killed and a few hundred imprisoned, what I've heard from
European embassies in Tehran and independent human rights groups is
that several thousand have been imprisoned and several hundred killed.
The more hardline elements of the bassij militia seem to truly relish
violence. People are up against an ostensibly religious government
that has shown no moral compunction, a government that murders an
innocent 26-year-old woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, and then blames it on
the BBC and CIA. Every time people take to the streets they're risking
their lives, and the fact that thousands continue to do so is not
insignificant.
What is going on beyond Tehran, because we only really hear about
Tehran?
Some of the images I've seen outside of Tehran have been similarly
remarkable. In Isfahan—whose population is more traditional than that
of Tehran—the demonstrators filled up the enormous Nagsh-e Jahan
square, the largest historic square in the world and a UNESCO world
heritage site. In the images of it, you can't see an inch of ground it
is so tightly packed with people. I've seen video footage of other
large protests and nightly chants of Allahu Akbar in important cities
like Tabriz, Shiraz, Mashad and Kashan. There's an incredible video of
Kashan University being overwhelmed by student protestors. In short,
discontent in Iran certainly transcends geographic location.
One problem outside of Tehran, however, is that people are often less
connected to the outside world via the Internet and satellite
television, and have less access to technologies like video phones to
document what's taking place. For this reason there's a lot of concern
that the type of repression and human rights abuses that take place
outside of the capital are much greater than that which has been
documented only in Tehran alone, for outside of major cities the
regime's repressive apparatus can act with impunity, and without
accountability.
There were some interesting reports out today about main opposition
figures. Supposedly Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will lead Friday
prayers, and Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mohammad Khatami will be there.
At the same time, I read that Mohsen Rezaie said something along the
lines of ‘continuation of the current situation will lead us to
collapse from inside,' on his website. So, there are still these
figures out there. What do you think they are up to?
I'm sure Rafsanjani feels torn. On the one hand, this election was a
tremendous personal affront to him. He and his family were publicly
maligned by Ahmadinejad during the campaign, who accused them of being
not only corrupt but also traitors to the revolution. His children
were harassed, and in some cases, briefly imprisoned. I have no doubt
he has tremendous personal disdain not only for Ahmadinejad, but also
for Khamenei. Certainly this has to do with power and greed, but there
are also pronounced differences in their world-views.
On the other hand, the continued survival of the regime has always
been paramount for Rafsanjani. He's always seen himself as one of the
protectors of the revolution and doesn't want to take action that
could hasten the demise of the entire Islamic system. In the past he
has tended to tread carefully in his public statements about domestic
politics, while continuing to operate behind the scenes.
But this Friday is probably the most important speech of his career.
He's nearly 75 years old, and his legacy has always been important to
him. If he complains about personal slights and electoral
improprieties but submits to the will of the Leader ‘for the sake of
the ‘glorious revolution',' history will remember him not only as a
crook but also a coward. I've learned to have low expectations of the
courage and integrity of Iranian officials, and hope that I'll be
pleasantly surprised.
Rezaie is interesting if only because he and individuals like Ali
Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, are tremendous opportunists.
They position themselves in the direction in which the most powerful
political winds are blowing. The fact that both of them continue to
straddle is telling. If Rezaie really sensed that the election dispute
were resolved and a done deal, he would remain quiet. The fact that he
recently said the country could face 'disintegration' absent a
political reconciliation seems to imply that there are important rifts
we may not be privy to.
With regards to Moussavi and Khatami, I think Moussavi has up until
now distinguished himself from Khatami—despite the fact that he
doesn't have Khatami's charisma—by refusing to back down to the
hardliners, the way Khatami did during the 1999 student protests. He
has earned political capital. But the two of them have been somewhat
absent from the events of the last two weeks. If they do indeed appear
publicly at tomorrow's Friday prayer session and Rafsanjani concedes
defeat, it will be a tremendous blow to the millions of people who
took to the streets.
What do you make of the talk that Mojtaba Khamenei has had a very deep
role in the past month's events?
There have been allegations about Mojtaba since the 2005 election.
Mehdi Karroubi, who in 2005 narrowly lost to Ahmadinejad in the first
round, wrote an open letter to Ayatollah Khamenei alleging that
Mojtaba helped engineer Ahmadinejad's victory. Khamenei wrote a
furious letter to Karroubi ordering him to keep quiet. But now Mojtaba
is once again being discussed. People say that he's essentially his
father's henchman—he does his father's dirty work. Though Mojtaba
trained as a cleric, he has grown up amongst intelligence officials
and Revolutionary Guardsmen, that's his coterie. I was told separately
by several informed sources in Tehran shortly after these recent
elections that Mojtaba, among others, played an instrumental role in
making sure that the election results came out in Ahmadinejad's favor.
There are now rumors that he's going to be leading the bassij militia.
Iran's system is so opaque that it's difficult to know for sure.
What are the implications of the silence so far of most of the
clerics? What's going on among the clerical class?
According to the dissident cleric Mohsen Kadivar, only one of twelve
grand ayatollahs in Qom has congratulated Ahmadinejad. What's even
more interesting is how several prominent clerics over the last few
weeks have openly criticized Khamenei.
Ayatollah Montazeri, the most senior grand ayatollah in Iran, recently
issued a fatwa stating that Khamenei is an illegitimate ruler, which
is probably the greatest verbal challenge to Khamenei's leadership in
the last 20 years.
What we've seen in Iran over the last decade, however, is that the
institution of the Revolutionary Guards has eclipsed the institution
of the clergy, in terms of their political and economic clout. So
while the cleavages amongst clerical elite is certainly significant,
what would be a far more fatal blow to Ahmadinejad and Khamenei would
be open dissent amongst the Revolutionary Guard elite, which we
haven't yet seen.
Do you think that the Revolutionary Guards are still behind Khamenei?
The senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guards were handpicked by
Khamenei, they owe their positions to Khamenei, and at the moment at
least I think they're unlikely to challenge him. But there's a lot of
anecdotal and some empirical evidence to show that the rank and file
of the Revolutionary Guards is more reflective of Iranian society at
large. They are not simply 120,000 radicals who are ready to martyr
themselves to retain Ahmadinejad's presidency, as one of the senior
commanders recently alluded.
How would you estimate the costs of the government's actions?
In terms of the political costs, I would argue that over the last four
weeks the legitimacy of the Ahmadinejad government has decreased
rather than increased. Meaning, as time has passed more people have
questioned the legitimacy of the elections rather than endorsed the
results.
This scale of repression is not only politically costly for the regime
but it's also financially costly. To have, essentially, martial law—
tens of thousands of basij militia and Revolutionary Guards patrolling
the streets of major cities in Iran—and to have thousands of people in
prisons throughout the country, and to constantly be filtering the
internet and jamming satellite broadcasts from abroad is very
expensive.
For example, European diplomats have told me that to jam satellite
television broadcasts such as Voice of America and BBC Persian is
exorbitantly expensive, it costs the government thousands of dollars
per minute. Think about those costs over a four-week period. We're
talking about tens of millions of dollars that the government is
spending on tools to repress the population. This may be sustainable
for the next weeks and months, but it's not a long-term option for the
regime. I don't see time being on the side of the hardliners in Iran,
especially if there continues to be a decline in oil prices, which is
really the regime's lifeblood.
What are the long-term implications?
First of all, the idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran is now over. It
has lost any claims of being a ‘republic.' Past Iranian governments
didn't necessarily represent a wide swath of Iranian society, but they
certainly encompassed a fairly wide swath of the Iranian political
elite. Now the country is being run by a small cartel, which I would
argue, reflects not only a very narrow swath of Iranian society, but
also a narrow swath of Iran's political elite. It's a cartel of
hardline clerics and Revolutionary Guardsmen who have benefitted
tremendously from the oil bonanza of the last few years. They made
nearly $300 billion in oil revenue the last four years and don't want
to share power. They are self-proclaimed ‘principlists' but in reality
their only real principles are power and money.
If indeed they do stay in power, I think the implications for Iran are
increased political isolation and economic malaise. This was a
government, Ahmadinejad's government, that even when oil was at a 150
dollars a barrel, Iranians were complaining that their economic
circumstances had deteriorated. The combination of oil at 60 dollars a
barrel and heightened economic sanctions is going to be much more
difficult for the Ahmadinejad government to endure, I think it's going
to require the use of very repressive means to stay in power. And
again, the political and economic costs of this repression are
significant over the long term.
How might this affect U.S. policy toward Iran?
It seriously complicates the Obama administration's engagement
efforts. For the first time ever, I think we shouldn't even be talking
about engaging Iran, we should take a wait and see approach. The
strategic imperative to have relations with Iran will always remain,
but let's wait until the dust settles in Tehran.
When the protests were at their peak, the Obama administration
correctly refrained from inserting the United States into Iran's
internal political battles, for fear that we would hurt those whom
we're trying to help. I think we should continue to adhere to our
policy of non-interference in Iran's internal affairs. By prematurely
calling for engagement I think we run the risk of demoralizing the
opposition and the millions of people who took to the streets and who
continue to reject the legitimacy of the Ahmadinejad government; we
implicitly endorse an election that is still being hotly contested in
Tehran and tip the balance in favor of the hardliners.
While the costs of engagement in the short-term are very high, the
benefits of immediate engagement are negligible. Tehran is still in
disarray and Iranian officials have shown no signs whatsoever that
they're prepared or capable of making the types of compromises
necessary to reach an accommodation with the U.S. when it comes to the
nuclear issue or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
All that being said, I understand the Obama administration has decided
that the nuclear clock is too urgent an issue to delay negotiations.
But we should be clear about something: The problem we have with Iran
has far more to do with the character of the regime than their nuclear
program. The reality is that as long as Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and
company are in power, we're never going to reach a nuclear accord
which sufficiently allays our suspicions—and Israel's suspicions—that
Iran is pursuing a weapons program. Any such accord would not only
require Tehran to significantly curtail enrichment and agree to an
intrusive inspections regime, it will also require them to modify
their hostility toward Israel and alter their relationship with groups
like Hezbollah. The chances of this happening as long as Ahmadinejad
is president and Khamenei is Supreme Leader are very slim.
If indeed Khamenei and Ahmadinejad manage to retain power for the
foreseeable future—which is totally plausible and yet highly
unpredictable—I think our Iran policy will resemble our policy toward
the Soviet Union in its latter days, namely a combination of
engagement and containment. I seriously think Ahmadinejad would
welcome an Israeli strike in order to try and achieve the same outcome
as Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion of Iran—namely to unite disparate
political factions against a common threat and keep giddy Iranian
minds busy with foreign quarrels.
What other countries have a key role to play?
As always, to the extent possible, it's essential that Iran face a
unified international approach. It's essential that European countries
show a strong backbone and keep their political and economic dealings
with Tehran to a minimum. China and Russia are always more difficult
to sway, but when you talk to Russian and Chinese officials in private
it's obvious they are no fans of the Ahmadinejad government. The fact
that Iran has attacked China's treatment of its Muslim minorities I'm
sure irritated Beijing.
But the country that has the greatest potential to influence internal
Iranian affairs in the short term is Saudi Arabia. The Iranian economy
is heavily reliant on oil revenue, and each one dollar drop in oil
prices is nearly one billion dollars of lost annual revenue for Iran.
If Saudi Arabia—whose relations with Iran have deteriorated since
Ahmadinejad became president—were to quietly increase output in order
to provoke a price drop it could prove devastating to Iran, far more
damaging than any sanctions that are now being deliberated.
So what happens to the P5 +1 nuclear negotiation process? Does it just
stop?
I think before the U.S. decides to engage Iran it's a good idea to
have EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana first try and feel out the
Iranians privately. If the Iranians continue to send their current
nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, that means they're not interested in
negotiating or making any compromises. Jalili is simply an apparatchik
who shows up with strictly defined talking points. I'm sure the
Iranians will try to draw the U.S. and EU into negotiations in order
to get recognition for the Ahmadinejad government. But I don't see
them interested or capable of making any deal. In other words they're
interested in the rainbow, but not the pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow.

> sure irritated Beijing.
mah...in fin dei conti il regime iraniano � una 'certezza' sia per la Cina 
che per la Russia...dubito che Mosca e Pechino desiderino un 'cambio di 
regime',direi che non conviene affatto loro. 


Carnage Endowment for International Peace.?
Bassosonante.
Spara cazzate, la piazza di Isfahan non e' la piu' grande del mondo.
Internet e' dappertutto in Iran, questo nel 2002.
Facile gabbare gli ignoranti.
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