Iran: Rouhani’s unenviable challenge

S P SETH

While the 2009 Iranian elections posed a serious challenge to the country’s political system, and were interpreted by the ruling clerical hierarchy as a foreign-inspired, if not instigated, conspiracy, the recently held elections, on the other hand, passed off peacefully. The election result was conclusively in favour of the 64-year old cleric Dr Hassan Rouhani as the country’s new president, effective from August 3. His outright victory, though, was a surprise because there was a general view that he would have to fight it out in a second round, being unlikely to pass the 50 per cent mark.

There are two challenges awaiting Rouhani, at home and internationally. Internally, the ruling hierarchy is divided between moderates and conservatives/hardliners. It is not a division that challenges the existing system. It is, in some ways, like the Democrats and Republicans in the United States, with a common commitment to the political system. This is not to equate the two systems. The big difference is that in Iran the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the ultimate power; appointed to the position by Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of Iran’s 1979 revolution. He can, if he chooses, make and break president’s power. The 2009 Green Movement, unlike the Rouhani-led moderates, sought to challenge the system and was crushed. Rouhani is part of the system, with relatively pragmatic and flexible approach to accommodate the changing times at home and abroad. For instance, Rouhani would like to be more flexible to the changing modes of women’s dress code and respond to the desires of the country’s youth and middle class for greater freedom.

Will this put him into confrontation with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini, and his Guardian Council? Not necessarily. There was admittedly some tension when Mohammad Khatami was president and was not allowed to push forward moderate reforms. Which created a lot of disappointment and frustration among the middle class and the country’s youth. These frustrations further built up under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, finally bursting out in the 2009 Green Movement challenging the country’s political system. It was crushed to give Ahmadinejad another term. His second term has been an even bigger disaster at home and abroad.

Against this backdrop, one hopes that the Supreme Leader and the clerical hierarchy around him would give Rouhani enough latitude to fine tune the system for changing times. And if that were to happen, Rouhani might give the system a new legitimacy for new times. The fact that the elections, that makes Rouhani the new president (effective August 3),  were free and fair without interference from the clerical hierarchy and its militia, would seem to suggest that this time Iran might see a managed switch to moderation in its internal and external politics.

Another reason for a moderate shift is that the tough talk by the conservatives so far has brought considerable pain to the Iranian people from massive international sanctions that are crippling Iran’s economy. The sanctions are the result of Iran’s nuclear program. The world, by and large, doesn’t believe Iranian protestations about the peaceful nature of their nuclear program, even though, by most accounts, Iran doesn’t have any active program of making a nuclear bomb. This distrust is as much due to Iran’s opaque nuclear program as the harsh and aggressive tone of Iranian diplomacy on the subject, particularly rhetorical utterances of President Ahmadinejad.

Dr Rouhani, as Iran’s new president with his nickname “the diplomat sheikh”, hopes to change that. Which doesn’t mean that Iran is likely to abandon its nuclear program. What it means is that under Rouhani it is likely to become more transparent, possibly with a low enrichment target, to defuse bomb-making accusations. In return, the incoming Rouhani administration might ask for progressive lifting of international sanctions. Will it work?

This is the big question; because it didn’t work when as Iran’s nuclear negotiator in 2004, Rouhani played a key role in voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment. The US was not satisfied as it wanted Iran to abandon its nuclear program altogether. One might hope that this time, with Rouhani as president, the US might be inclined to explore more seriously Iran’s claims about peaceful uses of its nuclear program. And if the US response were to be as negative as under the Bush administration, intoxicated at the time with its initial military successes in Iraq, it could once again push Iran into a radical Islamic mode and even national mobilization against a perceived US-Israeli attack on its nuclear installations.

Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel has already started his aggressive campaign threatening unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear installations to put pressure on the United States. It might be worth recalling that Iran, even when its revolution was in its infancy, fought off a US-inspired and aided Iraqi attack under Saddam Hussein to a standstill and to see him eventually overthrown by its former benefactor, the US. Of course, the new Iranian middle class might not be willing to undergo the same sacrifices to maintain their nuclear independence but that would remain to be seen.

The nuclear issue aside, Iran is also a serious thorn in the US side with its commitment to stand by the Bashar al-Assad regime and its support of the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria is Iran’s only Arab ally, and both the Assad regime and Hezbollah are receiving considerable military and financial assistance from Iran, including possibly some Iranian Revolutionary Guards fighting in Syria against the rebels. Iran believes, as does the Hezbollah in Lebanon, that if the Syrian regime were toppled, the rebels and their regional Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others, would go after them. Therefore, for Iran, Syria would appear like its forward base to ward off a bigger enemy.

As it happens, the need to topple the Assad regime has created strategic convergence between the US, most Arab states and Israel; because it would break the crucial political and strategic nexus with Iran and thwart its regional ambitions. And they are also are opposed to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Iran’s newly elected president Rouhani has the unenviable task of convincing the US and its allies that its nuclear ambitions are not weapons-related, and that it has a legitimate role in the region that is not disruptive. And at the same time to be pursing a reformist agenda within the country without provoking the ire of the Supreme Leader. It is going to be difficult but not impossible as long as the US and its allies are not bent on Iran’s virtual surrender.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au