A Middle East Bulletin interview with Karim Sadjadpour, associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
This month marks the one-year anniversary of the contested re-election of President Ahmadinejad. How do you read the situation in Iran a year later? What are the internal dynamics?
While the government succeeded in violently quelling the momentum of the opposition Green Movement, the country’s deep internal rifts—both among political elites and between the population and the regime—have yet to be reconciled. The morale of the opposition is understandably low. Their brain trust is either in prison, under virtual house arrest or unable to freely communicate. And for that reason they lack strategy and organization. But the fact that the regime has announced it will mobilize two million security forces to the capital for the anniversary of last year’s election shows that the regime more than anyone appreciates the fact that the political, social and above all economic discontent which sparked last year’s tumult may be out of sight but not out of mind.
One of the criticisms of the Green Movement has been that it has relied on street protests even though it has been repeatedly overwhelmed by government forces. What other tools are available to the Green Movement and are they using them?
It’s an apt criticism in that street protests accentuate the Green Movement’s weaknesses and the government’s strengths. By virtue of the fact that the Green Movement espouses democracy, tolerance and coexistence, green activists are not the type of people who are willing to martyr themselves in the streets, whereas government militia have shown themselves very willing to kill—if not die—to retain power.
If the opposition wants to really challenge the authority of the regime, they will have to go beyond street protests and focus more on ways to bring the country’s economy to a grinding halt. That means trying to mobilize laborers from major industry, government workers, bazaar merchants and oil workers. This is a tall order, for these labor groups are just as unorganized as the Green Movement itself.
The Green Movement leadership also needs to do a better job of articulating to working-class Iranians how a “Green” Iran is in their interest. Democracy and human rights are important concepts for some, but as a friend of mine in Tehran told me several years ago, “You can’t eat democracy and human rights.”
The leadership of the Green Movement needs more technocrats who can talk about how the Iranian economy is being mismanaged and how to fix it, and fewer intellectuals who spend their time rehashing religious and philosophical debates from centuries ago.
What is the economic situation like?
There is endemic mismanagement; in the aftermath of the elections there was a further purge of technocrats from important ministries and budgetary offices, in favor of inexperienced cronies. This compounded the contraction of oil prices and a lack of foreign investment. The key economic indicators—unemployment and inflation—hover around 20 percent (unofficially).
An important flash point in the coming months will be the bill that is being deliberated now in the parliament to eliminate as much as a quarter to half of subsidies on daily staples such as foodstuffs and petrol, and instead dole out cash to people. This could spur rampant inflation and potentially more tumult.
Going back to the post-elections dynamics; one of the things that people focused on was the rifts within the clerical class. How has that played out over the past year?
The rifts among the clergy are worrisome but not fatal for Khamenei. From the onset of Khamenei’s tenure as Supreme Leader, by virtue of his inferior clerical credentials he sought legitimacy in the barracks rather than the mosques. Signs of dissent among the Revolutionary Guards would be far more unsettling to him.
As opposed to Khomeini, who was a bonafide ‘object of emulation’ for the clergy, Khamenei is more like the ‘Godfather’ to them, in the sense that they simultaneously fear him and rely on him financially. They may not like him, but they’re afraid of crossing him.
Is there a relationship between the rifts within the clergy and the effectiveness of the Green Movement?
Though two of the three nominal leaders of the green movement—Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammed Khatami—are clerics, and they’ve also had the support of grand Ayatollahs like Montazeri and Sanei, the seminaries have been mostly quiet up until now.
When and if the clergy sense that the center of gravity is shifting towards the opposition, I can see many of them quickly changing sides. But I don’t think they’re going to be spearheading this movement.
When you look back at the iconic images of the 1979 Revolution, they were images of bearded, middle-aged, traditional men, oftentimes clergy. The iconic images of the Green Movement agitators are images of young, modern, educated women and men.
What about the Revolutionary Guards? As you said, Khamenei’s power, and—to a large extent Ahmadinejad’s—come from the Revolutionary Guard. How has their power shifted or changed in the past year and what is their relationship with Khamenei and Ahmadinejad?
By virtue of the fact that Khamenei is much more reliant on the Revolutionary Guard to maintain order, he has had to cede a lot of influence and authority to them. Yet he’s still their commander-in-chief; he hand picks their top commanders, cultivates them over the years, and changes them frequently. It’s a symbiotic relationship in that they both need the legitimacy of the other. But certainly the balance of power has shifted away from Khamenei since the election.
That said, the Revolutionary Guards are somewhat of a black box as there are many indications that the rank-and-file is more representative of Iranian society at large. They’re not simply a group of 125,000 men who are ready to kill in order to uphold Ahmadinejad’s presidency. Similar to the clergy, the Revolutionary Guards are not a monolith.
Moving onto the international stage; what do you think were the Iranian leadership’s goal in making the nuclear fuel agreement with Turkey and Brazil and how was it received in Iran?
I think the regime’s goals were to get credit for feigning a major concession—which in fact was not that major—in order to accentuate the rifts within in the international community and scuttle any sanctions resolutions
What they didn’t calculate was the fact that Russia and China were not pleased to be upstaged by Turkey and Brazil and had no qualms moving forward on the sanctions resolution.
Ahmadinejad initially agreed to the first agreement that was made with the Vienna group, or his representatives did or appeared to, and then came home and were criticized by everyone. How was this agreement received in Iran?
There are some important distinctions between the Turkish-Brazilian proposal and the October proposition . First, it was six months later so Iran had doubled its stockpile of low enriched uranium. Second, it neither explicitly nor implicitly required Iran to cap its enrichment at 20 percent. Third, there was a provision in the Turkish-Brazilian agreement that would allow Iran to renege on the deal and retrieve all of its uranium if it was not happy.
For the above reasons, the Turkish-Brazilian proposal was seen as a win-win in Tehran. They thought they could undermine the sanctions resolution without having to make any significant compromises. The small victory they achieved was that Turkey and Brazil voted against the resolution.
One and a half years into the Obama administration and one year since the elections, how would you assess U.S. policy towards Iran, both in terms of the nuclear program and in terms of internal opposition?
The irony of Obama’s engagement approach toward Iran is that it failed to do what it intended, which was to moderate Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but it succeeded where it hadn’t intended, which was to catalyze Iran’s democracy movement. I’ve said this many times before but I truly believe that whereas the Bush administration’s hardline approach unintentionally united Iran’s competing political factions against a common threat, Obama’s approach widened Iran’s existing internal divides, both among political elites and between the population and the regime.
Today I think the administration has to tackle several difficult questions: How do you go about reaching an accommodation with a regime that need you as an adversary? How do you engage the Iranian regime without betraying and demoralizing the millions of Iranians who continue to believe their regime is illegitimate? How do you champion democracy and human rights in Iran without tainting the independence of the Green Movement?
These were challenges that we were seemingly able to reconcile during the Cold War, in our policy toward the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc. Iran policy is somewhat different in that it’s not yet a nuclear power, and we’re still feverishly focused on preventing that possibility, rather than thinking about how to expedite political transformation in Tehran.
Another challenge is timing. The leadership of the Green Movement doesn’t have the same sense or urgency as the Obama administration to see political change in Tehran, they’re taking a much more deliberate approach, trying to wear down the regime over time.
Many of the countries in the region are concerned about the possibility of the U.S. and international community accepting Iran as a nuclear state. If that in fact is the direction you think we are moving in, then how do we allay the concerns of countries like Israel and the Gulf States that have great concerns?
That’s a question that people are wrestling with. Israel and the Arab Gulf states are very concerned that the U.S. is going to adopt a containment approach that may implicitly signal to Tehran that it’s okay for them to weaponise and America will acquiesce.
The problem is I don’t think we share identical interests with them vis-à-vis Iran. Arab nations, broadly speaking, don’t want Iran to get the bomb and they don’t want Iran to get bombed. Nor, however, do they want to see a U.S.-Iran rapprochement or the advent of a democratic Iran that would enable Tehran to emerge from its largely self-inflicted isolation and begin to realize its enormous potential.
I think many Israelis would welcome a more democratic Iran because they believe its foreign policy would be less ideological. But despite its own enormous nuclear arsenal, Israel seems to have an even great sense of insecurity vis-à-vis Iran than the Arab world, and is far more willing than the U.S. to consider taking military action that would have enormously negative reverberations around the region.
Aside from the nuclear issue, how has Iran been acting in the region over the past year? How has what happened internally affected its projection in various countries?
Iran’s image in the region was certainly sullied after the election, but as long as there remains popular outrage in the Muslim world about the policies of Israel—such as the recent flotilla incident—I think Iran’s defiant ideology is going to find resonance. Iran is cognizant of the fact that it can be the champion of the region’s down-trodden and alienated, but they can’t be the champion of the region’s upwardly mobile. So it’s actually in Iran’s interest to see continued tumult and disaffection in the region, to deprive it of normalcy.
And would you say that’s true across the board? In Iraq, for example?
A U.S. general once said that Iran offers to help resolve problems which it itself helps to create. If Desiderius Erasmus were alive and a U.S. foreign policy maker, he might reprise his infamous quote about women to read, “You can’t live with Iran, and you can’t live without them.”
Without Iran’s cooperation it’s going to be doubly difficult to bring stability to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Levant and the Holy Land. But at the same time, a peaceful and prosperous region seems inimical to the cynical interests of the Islamic Republic.
