Will Khatami's Withdrawal Spoil Obama's Iran Plans?
The rapidly changing political scene in the Middle East is presenting kaleidoscopic challenges to President Barack Obama as a policy-maker.
It is of some moment who wins the June, 2009, presidential election in Iran. Former President Mohammad Khatami has just pulled out of the race, fearful that the three liberals in the race would split the liberal vote and hand victory to the conservative/ populist Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Khatami's decision was spurred by the entry into the race of Mir-Hossein Moussavi, who had served as prime minister during the 1980s (when he was himself a hardliner; he has now moved to the left).
It is important, in trying to understand Khatami's decision, to note that Iran typically has run-off elections after the first ballot, among the two top vote-getters. If all three liberals had run, they might have prevented any candidate from getting enough votes to meet the threshold for a run-off, thereby just handing the election to the hardliners.
Khatami, moreover, had the reputation during his two terms, 1997-2005, of being a "dagger without a haft," i.e. lacking the ability to implement his ambitious agenda of greater individual and cultural freedom. It is not at all clear that he could have won a third term, in any case. The youth like what he says, but are disappointed at his inability to take on the hardliners. (The youth vote is especially important since, although the legal voting age was raised from 15 to 18 in 2007, the age group from 18 to 29 are fully a third of the population). Another former two-term president, Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, ran and lost in 2005.
Obama may make and end run around the uncertainties of the presidential election by
writing directly to the supreme theocrat, Ali Khamenei, to whom Ahmadinejad reports. I think this move would be brilliant and would immediately give the Americans the upper hand in follow-up governmental contacts.
Some of Ahmadinejad's harshest internal critics focus on his mismanagement of the economy, as Farideh Farhi points out. The president has run inflation up to as much as 29 percent, deeply hurting students, the elderly and others on fixed incomes.
For challenges for Obama in the east, in Iran's neigbor Afghanistan, see this essay at Tomdispatch.com
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/18/2009 12:49:00 AM
|
Facebook
4 Comments:
Dear Mr. Cole,
you say that the voting age is 15 in Iran. That's an interesting point, which I cannot help but relate to demographic structure. Do you know of reliable figures, or sources thereto, on Iran's demographic trends ? I have been told that Iranian women have one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, but figures seem to be sketchy at best.
Hi Juan,
Thanks as always for your informative and insightful posts.
One small note--if I'm correct, the voting age in Iran was changed to 18 in 2007.
I remember when the pro-Israeli lobby undermined Khatami's efforts to reach out to the US by claiming that Iranian presidents were nobodies and should not be taken seriously. And yet when Ahmadinejad came into office, suddely the same people claimed everything he supposedly said was absolutely important. The bottom line is that the biggest challenge to Obama is dealing with Iran comes from the pro-Israeli lobby who will always find some excuse or another to prevent an US-Iran rapprochement, which they see as contrary to Israeli interests and ambitions.
Why do you and other "progressive" observers continue to frame foreign policy as an arena where Obama is a passive player beset by "challenges", as if he had no hand in the dynamics leading to those challenges? I know you aren't dumb or anything. I know you see what is going on. Why don't you call it? For example, on Iran, Obama could have chosen to notably reduce the heat of the anti-Iran rhetoric. Instead he has chosen to lard his administration with hardliners, to essentially lie about US government assessment of the Iranian (nonexistent) nuclear weapons program, and to effectively draw a line in the sand that virtually commits him to attacking Iran ('Iran will never aquire nuclear weapons capability on my watch'), while continuing Bush's policy of declaring that the 'military option' is always on the table (even though this is against international law, human decency and subverts any pretense of diplomacy - it ain't diplomacy when you have a loaded gun pointed at the other person's head). I think that if Obama had walked back Bush's hard line on Iran some, Ahmadinejad would have virtually no chance at winning. But by continuing to essentially insist that Iran surrender its sovereignty by surrendering to US demands, Obama has (in my view) virtually assured that Ahmadinejad will win. Or at least that he still has a very good chance, despite the horrendous economy. And, just as importantly, Obama has virtually no way to climb down at this point without completely losing face. He has tied himself to a peg and that peg is the lies about how dangerous Iran is, yet another version of the story about how America's latest 'enemy' is the greatest threat to civilization since Genghis Khan.
Let's take Israel. We keep hearing about how the victory of the fascists there makes things harder for Obama. No one EVER talks about how Obama's relentless hard line against the Palestinians and Hamas has played into the hands of the hard right in Israel. The logic Obama has helped create is absolutely clear. Outrageous violence and oppression might be counterproductive, but it will never face any immediate consequences. None. Total impunity for the hard right. But any soft policies DO face potential consequences. Peacemaking always entails risk. The other side MAY not act in good faith.
In Israel, as in America, a political system where the hard right never faces consequences creeps to the right as a whole. Obama COULD have chosen to throw some resistance Israel's way and that could have been quite a disincentive for voters in Israel to go right. He could have give the people a bit more to the left, running on the claim that they could work better with Obama, a bit more traction, AND it would have been the correct policy. Instead, Obama has chosen to follow the principle of impunity for Israel's hard right.
So he's helped create the "challenges" he's faced and we need to start recognizing that.
Post a Comment
<< Home