Twitter can now revert to the plan to shut down its Iran services and attend to maintenance work. Twitter goes into recess pleased that it probably embarrassed a resurgent regional power. The US government owes Twitter a grand salute for having done something where other stratagems of war and peace failed in the past three decades.
However, Persian stories have long endings. The Iranian regime shows every sign of closing ranks and pulling its act together in the face of what it assessed to be an existential threat to the Vilayat-e-Faqih system. This was to have been expected. Clearly, the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi was neither a modernist nor a reformer. His appeal was primarily with the middle class who wished that the 1979 revolution would just fade away. Mousavi epitomized their latent frustrations though he acted as a front man also for the conservatives who had a great deal to lose if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pressed ahead with his program of social justice and anti-corruption drive to their logical conclusion.
What got obfuscated is that well-heeled, English-speaking protesters using Twitter do not represent Iran. Unsurprisingly, the protests failed to strike a chord among the masses. The majority of Iranians are poor, observant Muslims who expected the 1979 revolution to deliver justice and dignity to their common lives. They see in Ahmadinejad a ray of hope that the ideals of the revolution can still be revived. That alone explains the massive mandate they gave him. Ahmadinejad broadened the regime’s base during his four-year term as president. He restored the regime’s connectivity with the populist discourse. The masses were getting alienated with a regime that seemed to them to be a clique of self-seeking mid-ranking preachers. The common people felt swindled. Ahmadinejad’s political idiom, swollen with the imagery of piety and probity, reassured Iran’s multitudes of “downtrodden” that all was not lost. He is a smart politician. He knew the resonance of his populism but he also knew where to stop and when to glance over his shoulders. Thus, he hit at many corrupt practices and threatened to bring key figures to justice but stopped short of landing the big catch. It will be fascinating to watch Ahmadinejad as the torchbearer of the revolution in his second tenure where he will also have to carve his legacy in Iran’s history.
To be sure, last fortnight’s power play showed that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s leadership is the sheet-anchor of the regime. Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has publicly voiced his support for the Vilayet-e-Faqih system and his “endless” respect toward Khamenei. Doomsday predictions of a regime break-up turned out to be the stuff of vicious propaganda or wishful thinking, or both.
Of course, Ahmadinejad has been marginalizing the corrupt elements in the establishment from the sinecures of office and the honey pots of the economy, especially oil industry. In ideological terms, a struggle has been going on about the restoration of the moorings of the revolution with regard to social and economic justice, social control over natural resources and national independence and dignity. Without doubt, there is also an external dimension to the turmoil. Several countries in the region and beyond are nervous about Tehran’s growing stature and the inevitable shifts in the regional power balance once Iran enters mainstream Middle Eastern politics consequent upon its engagement with the US. Some of them might even have queered the pitch of the unrest in Iran, hoping to disorient the regime at a crucial juncture in the geopolitics of the region. But on the whole, the regional milieu works to Iran’s advantage. Iraq remains dangerously poised and the US’ fortunes in Afghanistan swing from possible defeat to avoidance of defeat. Turkey has distanced itself from the European stance apropos of the developments in Iran. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan greeted Ahmadinejad’s victory. Moscow followed suit.
Beijing has never before expressed so openly such staunch solidarity with Tehran. True, Syria’s ties with Saudi Arabia improved in the last six months and Damascus welcomes Barack Obama administration’s recent overtures. But Damascus questioned the legitimacy of the street protests in Tehran and underscored the need for the “establishment of a dialogue between Iran and the United States based on mutual respect and noninterference in Iran’s affairs”. Equally, success for Saad Hariri as the newly elected prime minister of Lebanon — and the country’s overall stability — will hinge on his reconciliation with rivals allied to Syria and Iran.
The Obama administration has some hard choices to make. As the distinguished policymaker and commentator Leslie H. Gelb argues in his new book Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy, Obama had a viable option “to use the Libyan model, whereby Washington and Tripoli put all cards on the table and traded them most satisfactorily.” But sustained pressure by networks of anti-Iranian groups and the powerful pro-Israel lobby ensconced within the political class in Washington — apart from quarters within the US security establishment which have an old score to settle with Tehran but have an abominable record of misreading Iranian political ethos — forced Obama to harden his stance. Iran has had a tortuous history, overflowing with what US President Barack Obama in his Cairo speech called “tension...fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies with regard to their own aspirations”. The “red line” for Tehran has always been foreign attempts at forcing regime change. That line has been breached. Therefore, a meaningful US-Iran dialogue anytime soon seems improbable. Washington can take a pause and resume its efforts to engage Iran after a decent interval. In sum, Obama administration stumbled after a magnificent start.
— M. K. Bhadrakumar is a former Indian envoy to Iran
