Ahmadinejad’s successor
Since 1987, when the Imam [qss] ordered the dissolution of the Islamic Republican Party established by Ayatullah Muhammad Husseni Beheshti, there have been no formal political parties run along Western lines there are only loose ideological factions that supposedly provide platforms for candidates without engendering opposition in society. The powerful Islamic Republicn Party itself later […]
Since 1987, when the Imam [qss] ordered the dissolution of the Islamic Republican Party established by Ayatullah Muhammad Husseni Beheshti, there have been no formal political parties run along Western lines there are only loose ideological factions that supposedly provide platforms for candidates without engendering opposition in society. The powerful Islamic Republicn Party itself later split into two somewhat confusing tendencies—the Usul Garan or Conservatives and the Eslah Talaban or Reformists. And since that dissolution, every election in Iran has been a struggle for supremacy between these two tendencies.
The occasional infiltration by Western-inspired gangs can give the outside world a semblance of instability or disunity, but the undeniable truth is that the Islamic system has come to stay, despite unrelenting opposition from the United States of America, doctrinal propaganda by Saudi Arabia and affiliates. While the main issue in this election will be the management of an economy against the backdrop of US-inspired Western sanctions, a far more important issue for Iran will be the struggle for the soul of Palestine currently underway between Islam, aided by Iran, and Zionism aided by the United States and Saudi Arabia. In this struggle, Syria becomes crucial only because Iran cannot reach Hamas without using Syrian territory. And if Hamas is taken out of the equation, Arab states will then be able to impose the American peace they have been coveting since Israel was established on Islamic lands more than 60 years ago.
Whoever is elected in Iran on June 14 will inherit this and other gargantuan challenges. Of the two or three groups that will be going into the election, the most important group is the United Principlist Front, the new name for the splintered Conservatives, with Velayati, Qalibaf and Gholam-Haddad Ali as the principal flag-bearers. In the absence of Larijani, Jalali is emerging as the man to beat; and if the three step down for him, as they will most probably do anytime from now, he will be unbeatable. If they don’t, the battle will be between him and Qalibaf. Davoud Ahmadinejad, a brother of the incumbent president who, until last week, was in the race, had dropped out in favour not of the Mashaei that his brother is promoting, but for Jalali.
Then there is the so-called Perseverance front, a group of hard-line supporters of President Ahmadinejad, who are out to oppose him only on his choice of Mashaei. Their objective is to prevent the president’s choice from winning, to win and continue with each and every policy of the president. They also believe Ahmadinejad is planning to come back Putin-style; and while they have no objection to that, they have no intention of allowing Mashaei anywhere near power. They believe he follows ways of deviation. The third group is that of the Reformists, the radicals of whom wish to bring back former President Khatami; and their moderates wish to bring in former vice president Mohammed Reza Aref.
So far, a total of 686 candidates had registered with the Ministry of the Interior, which then handed over the list to the Guardian Council. The 12-member council, under the leadership of revered former close aide to Imam Khomeini [qss] Ayatullah Ahmad Jannati and comprising of six leading ulama and six legal experts, is responsible for approving the candidature of those to stand in the election. Though it has been much criticised as an abbreviation of democratic rights, its function is no different from that of primaries in Western-style elections. The council vets, prunes and weeds out people from the overpopulated presidential electoral train.
It is not required to give any reasons for its actions and its decisions cannot be challenged; but it is expected to take a number of issues into consideration before reaching them. These issues include the candidate’s character, his technical competence, his socio-political skills and his commitment to the ideals of the Islamic Revolution. The 578 candidates turned down included former Speaker of Majli and former President of the Islamic Republic Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose only objective seems to be to seek to mollify some of the more ebullient of Ahmadinejad’s anti-Americanisms; and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, an aide to President Ahmadinejad and head of the Secretariat of the Non-Aligned Movement, whose rejection letter gave two reasons for his disqualification: not believing in Wilayat al-Faqih, the ‘Guardianship of the Jurisconsult,’ and not being committed to the Iranian constitution; and former foreign minister Manoucher Muttaki.
The eight cleared by the Guardian Council included: Dr. Ali Akbar Velayati, former foreign minister, adviser on international affaies and close aide to the Supreme Leader; Dr. Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a former Speaker of Iran’s Majlis; Dr. Saeed Jalali, secretary of the Supreme National Defence Council and current Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator;Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Expediency Council and former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps;Mohammed Baqir Qalibaf, successor to Ahmadinejad as Mayor of Tehran; Hujjatul Islam Hassan Rohani, the polyglot president of Expediency Council’s Centre for Strategic Research; Mohammed Reza Aref, a former First Vice President of the Islamic Republic; and Mohammed Gharazi, a former minister.
The man to beat would in fact not be running at all: someone who had earlier on been favoured to win the election would not even be on the list now: and he is Dr. Ali Larijani. And he would not have been short on qualifications, being a former overall deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the one-time powerful head of the Voice and Vision of the Islamic Republic, former minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, member and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, security adviser to the Supreme Leader, and from one of the socially, religiously and intellectually most distinguished families in Iran.
Larijani, son of Ayatullah al-Uzma Hashem Amoli, is married to the daughter of Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari. A member of what has been called the radical right, he would have run a presidency as anti-Western and committed to Imam’s Line as Ahmadinejad’s—but with its mouth shut! He said he differed with Ahmadinejad not on ideological ground but only in style. In his 2004 confrontations with then President Mohammad Khatami and Hojjatul Islam Mehdi Karroubi, Larijani lashed out at the concept of reform by Iran’s reformists. “If reforms are not undertaken for the sake of religion, justice and morality, they do not constitute reforms,” he said.
On his election as Speaker in October 2005, Western hope that the Iranian Majlis might be used as a bulwark against the presidency of Ahmadinejad was quickly disappointed. After his first speech, an official in Washington summed the matter up. “Whether he and Ahmadinejad get along is irrelevant. He is fully supportive of all their policies with which we disagree,” he said.
Even though all the conservatives are committed to the Islamic order and are, to a man, dismissive of the West, some of them may be expected to attempt to bring the finesse which many in the West see lacking in Ahmadinejad’s conduct; but which many millions in the Muslim World see as an echo of the manner and conduct of Mohammed Ali Raja’i, an earlier, anti-Western, equally popular Iranian president, who was killed by a bomb planted in his office by Western agents in 1981.
After this election, the fight against the lie of the Holocaust will probably fall silent, not least because many in Iran do not see its relevance to domestic governance; but it will be unfortunate if that happens. This is a cry that no business as usual head of state in the world dares raise; but it si something the world needs to hear. But whether the Holocaust takes the back burner or not, Israel should not expect that a friend will ever be elected in Tehran, not when the Imam [qss] has told all policymakers in Iran that the battle with Zionism and the recovery of Muslim land is the number one agenda of the Islamic Republic; and even if everything in Iran changes, this will never change.
So, when the 48 million people registered to vote in three weeks’ time in the nation’s eleventh presidential election since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, they will be making a choice between a former Islamic revolutionary guard, a former aide to the Supreme Leader or a nuclear negotiator—or, indeed, all these rolled into one. And it will most likely be Dr. Jalili, who has been described by Western journalist as someone who seeks an aggressive policy abroad and limited political openness at home—a hard-line Islamic scholar who lost his right leg in the war imposed by Saddam on Iran. In other words, very little is going to change in Iran, despite the sanctions.