An editorial from Pakistan:
Editorial: Iran must put house in order
Iran is passing through a crucial stage in its history. It is facing internal turmoil on the one hand and external danger on the other. The internal turmoil is the result of a reverse socio-political revolution that has been brewing in Iran since the mid-nineties and which has manifested itself in the political landslide for President Mohammad Khatami in two elections. The external threat emanates from the United States that has Iran in the crosshairs on the issue of Tehran’s alleged nuclear ambitions. The smoking gun on the nuclear front is Iran’s fairly advanced intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) programme of which Shahab III stands as a proud emblem, and Iran’s efforts to develop the nuclear facility at Bushehr, which it says is for energy purposes, a somewhat feeble excuse for a country awash with natural gas and oil. Intriguingly, on the nuclear issue, Iran evinces a nationalistic streak that cuts across the ideological divide between progressive and retrogressive camps. What adds to the complexity of the situation is the fact that the ruling dispensation is increasingly losing its legitimacy which could undermine Tehran’s efforts to negotiate with the outside world.
The past three months have seen many street protests in Iran. Just the other day, hundreds of Iranian pro-democracy students, hard-line Islamic vigilantes and the police fought three-way pitched battles in and around Tehran University on the anniversary of the 1999 student protests in that country. The police faced a tough task of controlling pro-democracy students on the one hand and Islamist zealots on the other and preventing the two groups from clashing violently. There is also something to be said about another dimension of the ongoing protests by the reformists. While initially the reformists, politically, were identified with President Khatami and helped him win the general elections twice, the social backlash to the revolution is now increasingly expressing itself independent of that political support. This is partly owed to the inability of the reformist politicians to break through the controls enshrined in the constitution that concentrate massive coercive and judicial powers in the person of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his capacity as “supreme leader”. Despite the electoral wins the reformists have failed to break the monopoly of power of the hard-liners.
The failure of new social expression – essentially a failure of affirmative action through political channels – has now forced the youth to take the challenge directly to the streets. This is why in June Iranian intellectuals called on Ayatollah Khamenei to relinquish his status as Iran’s “supreme leader” and abandon the principle of being God’s representative on earth. The statement was signed by academics, writers and some clerics. Earlier, in May, in a bold initiative, reformist Iranian MPs appealed to the entrenched conservative camp to allow reforms and normalise relations with the outside world. They warned that Iran could face Iraq’s fate if the realities were not heeded. The appeal, made through an open letter signed by 153 deputies in a 290-seat Majlis (parliament), recognised that Iran faces ‘a critical situation’.
The problem springs from the competition between the earlier social revolutionary situation and the new social expression that craves democratic freedoms. The utopia of 1979 has lost its charm. But the new social thought is hampered by the politico-coercive tools of what has become blasé and which is legalised through the anomalies built into the constitutional structures thrown up by the 1979 revolution. In a manner of speaking, the 1979 revolution and its entrenched interests are ancien regime for the new revolutionaries. Banning newspapers, jailing editors and intellectuals and generally going against the rising tide of reforms, among other things, are acts that provide the fillip to the new thought. Most observers had thought that the new revolution would be bloodless since it slowly expressed itself through parliamentary structures. But the backlash from the conservative camp threatens to shrink the space for a democratic, peaceful transition to the new phase. That is as big a danger to Iran as that from the outside.
On the “outside” front, we have the US and also the European Union pressing Tehran to scuttle its nuclear programme. Last Wednesday, the IAEA director, Mohammad El Baradei was in Tehran to convince Iran to agree to a tougher inspections regime. While Iran has agreed to consider the proposal, it is unlikely that it will relent on what it is doing. The circumstantial evidence is pretty strong. Countries do not develop IRBM capability without the complementary capability to drop a strategic warhead thousands of kilometres away. Also, Iran does not need nuclear energy because it sits atop huge oil and gas resources.
Of course, the argument itself can be plugged into the larger debate on nuclear arms control and disarmament. There is always, also, the argument about Israel’s capability. But there is also a catch here. Israel, India and Pakistan, unlike Iran and North Korea, never signed the NPT. They objected to the whole concept from the start and then went ahead to develop the capability by hook or by crook. But Iran did sign the NPT and is hemmed in by that legally. Of course, it can use the withdrawal clause and get out of the NPT but that would mean coming clean on what it wants to do or is trying to do. However, it is debateable whether this is the right time to do that.
If Iran wants to negotiate the twists and turns it faces today, including circumventing the United States, it, at the least, needs to set its house in order and close ranks. That is why its domestic situation is untenable. Indeed, given the national consensus on the nuclear question, it would be in Iran’s interest if the conservatives could make space for the reformists.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_11-7-2003_pg3_1