Perhaps Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has enjoyed considerable foreign-policy success because of his adroit handling of international pressure about his country’s nuclear program, his support through Iran’s ally, Syria, of Hezbollah and Hamas and the quiet intervention of Iranian diplomats in Iraq’s ever more chaotic and bloody affairs. Iran is making its voice heard and counterbalancing the great and blundering weight of Washington’s interference in the Middle East.
But to what end and at what ultimate cost to Iran? It has always been wrong to consider the country as a monolithic political entity. Within the Islamic republic, there exists a diversity of views but these are rarely aired publicly unless there has first been the subtlest of nods from the religious leadership within a very complex structure of elected and unelected individuals.
The growing criticism of Ahmadinejad’s presidential performance is, therefore, unlikely to be spontaneous. Somewhere in the spiritual leadership, whether from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, or perhaps from the six members of the powerful Guardian Council which he appoints, there appears to have been approval for a modest campaign against the country’s president. Criticism from Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri of both Ahmadinejad’s domestic shortcomings on the economy and his confrontational approach to the international community over the uranium-enrichment issue — this week banning IAEA inspectors from entering Iran — are perhaps not so surprising. The 85 year-old dissident’s past outspokenness is believed to have lost him the opportunity to succeed as supreme leader. But the censure is broader. Normally quiescent newspapers have begun to question the wisdom of challenging Washington and the UN and have expressed concern about the sanctions which Ahmadinejad has dismissed as unthreatening. The problem for the president is that the economy is weak, the weaker for his failure to implement the privatization of the 85 percent of the economy that has rested in state hands since the time of the Shah. Despite its oil wealth, life is hard for ordinary Iranians, particularly for the “Bazaari” merchants who were key opponents of the Shah during the revolution. There is therefore a groundswell of frustration because of the president’s economic neglect.
A bellwether of the change taking place may be the surprising decision by the Iranian Parliament to effectively foreshorten Ahmadinejad’s term of office by a year. In choosing to hold the four-yearly parliamentary and presidential elections at the same time, legislators have cut the present president’s incumbency to three years. He will need to stand for re-election in 2008. There is no suggestion that Ahmadinejad’s position is under threat, but it does seem as if others in authority have chosen to shoot arrows across his bow. Meanwhile Washington would be well-advised to resist trying to meddle in Iranian affairs at this time. Seeking to add to Ahmadinejad’s problems may actually lessen them.
