The Uprising Is Working

I'm seeing a connection between this...

A group of Iranian clerics has issued an anonymous letter calling Iran’s supreme leader a dictator and demanding his removal, the latest and perhaps strongest rhetorical attack on him yet in the country’s post-election turmoil [...]

Last week a group of former lawmakers issued their own letter calling his qualifications into question. A day earlier, a member of the state body empowered to dismiss Ayatollah Khamenei called for an “emergency meeting” to address criticisms.

And this:

Iranian state television first reported that Iran's ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog agency in Vienna said that Iran is ready to talk with Western powers about its nuclear program without preconditions and based on mutual respect, before reporting that the ambassador said he was quoting from an Iranian letter to the United Nations, wire reports said Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, news wires monitoring Iranian state television reported: "(Ambassador Ali Asghar) Soltanieh announced Iran's readiness to take part in any negotiations with the West based on mutual respect." [...]

Iran experts have described Soltanieh as a technocrat being directed in his statements by political leadership in Tehran.

"He is a technocrat not considered to be part of any particular faction," Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council told Foreign Policy Tuesday. "Nor is he known to freelance foreign policy, on the contrary. So this statement represents what [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and indirectly [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei want to do."

Iran's political leadership is under internal attack. The protests and riots have sapped at their legitimacy. They know the reformers are tired of their belligerent tactics on the world stage. So to preserve their power, they seek dialogue on the nuclear question with the West.

This probably won't appease the reformers - Mir Hossein Mousavi has created a new grassroots movement and will certainly continue to press at the street level - but the new flexibility on the nuclear issue shows that the ruling class isn't secure in their position.

The Long War In Iran

We've hit the attrition stage in the Iranian election uprising. The protests have become more sporadic, but can the regime risk isolation from the rest of the world? Mir Hossein Mousavi wants to form a new political party dedicated to curbing the power of the mullahs and promoting democratic reform, but can he stay out of jail? The regime has been able to put down protests to this point, but could they possibly stop a general strike? And how will the statements of the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom affect the outcome?

An important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult.

“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”

This dovetails with Mousavi's release of documents detailing the fraud at the polls, including the printing of millions of extra ballots before the vote; as well as past statements from clerics that many Iranians are "unconvinced" about the poll results. It chips away at the legitimacy of the Supreme Leader, and even in dictatorial societies, you need legitimacy.

It's interesting that, in the midst of an internal crisis, Ahmadinejad wants to hold talks with President Obama, perhaps to buttress his own standing among his people. In this war of attrition, who would have thought that sitting at a table with an American President would aid an Iranian one in crisis?

A Win For Repression In Iran

The Iranian protests are, it's fair to say, at a low ebb. The media has largely moved on, and the lack of bearing witness has emboldened the ruling regime to crack down further against demonstrations. There's even a report that some Mousavi supporters were hanged in the city of Mashhad. Worst, leading cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, thought to be controlling the protests behind the scenes, is now deferring to the Supreme Leader:

Rafsanjani referred to the recent incidents after the results of the presidential elections, saying: "The incidents were the results of complicated plots by obscure sources with the aim of creating separation and differences between the people and the system. And with the aim of making the people distrust the Islamic system."

He said Ayatollah Khamene'i's expedience in extending the deadline by the Guardian Council for a better study of the issues and providing convincing explanations and clearing any doubts was a very valuable measure. He added: "In my opinion, the recent order by the leadership was one of the very valuable decisions he made. That is he asked the Guardian Council to extend the legal time, which was over, to study the complaints. And a group was appointed to help the Guardian Council with this regard."

Rafsanjani said: "We should all make a step with cooperation and solidarity to remove the obstacles and solve the problems." He also said: "We should always end the election results with solidarity. If every election would result in discord - we have an election once a year - and there would be hatred and fighting, then there will be nothing left."

Rafsanjani, a billionaire and a member of the establishment, has gamed this out, presumably, and realized that the reformers could not currently win. So he's backing off. Mir Hossein Mousavi is not, and he's probably in line for jail time shortly. The regime is too repressive and too in control to really radically break through right now. It took the 1979 revolution a year or more of planning, so this entire situation is in the early stages. But the ruling regime has clearly won the first battle.

Repression and the Long Game In Iran

Iranian paramilitary and security forces broke up another peaceful protest in Iran yesterday, reportedly using tear gas and clubs. The Guardian Council, which oversees the elections in Iran, certified the results today, making Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner and setting off more scattered protests. And many are asserting that the events amount to a military coup by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.



Clearly, there are competing loci of power. The ruling regime seems to be maintaining control through the IRGC and the Basiji and asserting a much greater role for them - close to a military dictatorship - while the opposition is trying to leverage the old clerisy that came to power in the 1979 Revolution. In the short run, those with the guns (as Fareed Zakaria says) are likely to win out. You can have all the defiance of women fighting for their rights, and all the admiration from throughout the Arab world, but ultimately, repressive states can hold power in the short term if they control the communications apparatus and deploy the security apparatus. Which is how Iran holds power today, and we're starting to see a consolidation of that control.

With the opposition visibly weakening in Iran amid a government crackdown, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters have begun to use his disputed victory in this month's election to toughen the nation's stance internationally and to consolidate control internally.

In recent days, they have vilified President Obama for what they call his "interventionist policies," have said they are ready to put opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's advisers on trial and have threatened to execute some of the Mousavi supporters who took to the streets to protest the election result [...]

The actions reflect the growing power of a small coterie of hard-line clerics and Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, Iranian analysts say. Revolutionary Guard members, in particular, have proved instrumental to the authorities since the June 12 election, and analysts say their clout is bound to increase as the conflict drags on.

The emerging power dynamics leave Mousavi with tough choices. Confronted with increasing political pressure over what supporters of the government say is his leading role in orchestrating riots, he can either acknowledge his defeat and be embraced by his enemies or continue to fight over the election result and face imprisonment.

"Everything now depends on Mousavi," said Amir Mohebbian, a political analyst. "If he decreases the tension, politicians can manage this. If he increases pressure, the influence of the military and security forces will grow."

I don't know if that analysis is quite right. Mousavi's only ally is time. The cycles of mourning dictate that discontent and unrest will continue to have outlets into the future, and the full face of repression has been made clear to too many people for it to credibly turn back. While the regime has the upper hand in the short term, Mousavi - and actually, the demonstrators, who have driven this process more than he has - can allow the anger to simmer and use targeted, timely actions to continue that boiling. The crisis in Iran is one of legitimacy, and using clubs and tear gas doesn't exactly put that genie back in the bottle. Repressive societies can only keep control for so long.

Mousavi's Long Game

Mir Hossein Mousavi has not given up the fight in Iran.

Iran protest leader Mir Hossein Mousavi says he holds those behind alleged "rigged" elections responsible for bloodshed during recent protests.

In a defiant statement on his website, he called for future protests to be in a way which would not "create tension."

He complained of "complete" restrictions on his access to people and a crackdown on his media group.

A BBC correspondent in Tehran says the statement is a direct challenge to Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

It's important to recognize that the 1979 Iranian revolution began in 1978. And Mousavi was among the revolutionaries who brought that about. He, and Rafsanjani and some of the other reformists, have played the long game before.

Meanwhile, the regime continued their crackdown yesterday, detaining hundreds of protestors, including possible Mousavi's wife. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, silent in this uprising for the most part, lashed out at President Obama and compared him to George Bush for daring to question his authority or legitimacy.

As usual, Nico Pitney has the best coverage.

Either Over, Or Starting. Crack Analysis!

The ruling regime in Iran has given their blessing to the June 12 election, and are now planning to swear in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for another term by August. They've arrested a good portion of the leadership of the street protests, and even opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi is reportedly under a 24-hour guard and possibly house arrest. Tehran has been quieter in the past couple days in the midst of a repressive crackdown. The regime has restored order.

At least that's one reading of recent events. The other reading is that a quiet coup is in the works, as Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has control of enough members of the Assembly of Experts to oust Khamenei and call for a new election. This sense that Khamenei has lost his legitimacy among the political establishment is only bolstered by the appearance of clerics in the anti-government protests. Add to that the cycle of mourning for those who have lost their lives on the streets, which will restart the protests in waves, and the inspiring defiance of women - "When they want to hit me, I say hit!" - which really chips away at the moral authority of the regime, and you have the alternative reading that the battle for power in Iran has only begun.

Meanwhile, almost as interesting as the violence and protest in Iran is the overall effect on Iraq, where America still has 140,000 soldiers. The Shi'a clerics in the holy city of Najaf, the spiritual home of the faith, have remained silent. Iraqi leaders have expressed worry at the instability that could easily spill over the 800-mile border.

Iraqi officials say it is impossible to predict how -- and to what extent -- the unrest in Tehran will affect their country.

In interviews, several politicians said they hope the crisis will make it harder for Iran's government to meddle in Iraqi affairs in coming months. Iraq is gearing up for a national election and is asserting more control over security as U.S. troops continue to draw down.

"All their energy is diverted to how to deal with the situation," Kurdish lawmaker Tanya Gilly said. "I think this is keeping them busy with their own affairs, rather than getting involved with other people's affairs. Maybe we'll have some quiet."

A senior Shiite leader from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party said he was concerned because Iran has a history of fueling conflicts abroad to divert attention from its domestic problems.

"Iranian influence in Iraq has many faces," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Iraq has enough violence and sectarian struggle of their own to contend with, but this adds a layer of worry, for unrest in Iran can easily destabilize a region where America already fights two other wars.

Consent of the Governed

Iranian state-run media is trying to suggest that Mir Hossein Mousavi and his followers are criminals and terrorists. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's daughter and four other relatives have been arrested. Media, like the BBC's main correspondent, have been expelled. The crackdown has escalated, and yet the protests continue. And the arrest of the relatives of Rafsanjani shows the split among the clerisy. Even Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has asserted that a majority of the public questions the election results. And you're hearing open talk about an alternative leadership structure.

Fareed Zakaria makes an important point:

Fareed Zakaria: One of the first things that strikes me is we are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy.

CNN: Do you mean you think the regime will fall?

Zakaria: No, I don't mean the Iranian regime will fall soon. It may -- I certainly hope it will -- but repressive regimes can stick around for a long time. I mean that this is the end of the ideology that lay at the basis of the Iranian regime.

The regime's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, laid out his special interpretation of political Islam in a series of lectures in 1970. In this interpretation of Shia Islam, Islamic jurists had divinely ordained powers to rule as guardians of the society, supreme arbiters not only on matters of morality but politics as well. When Khomeini established the Islamic Republic of Iran, this idea was at its heart. Last week, that ideology suffered a fatal wound.

CNN: How so?

Zakaria: When the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "divine assessment," he was indicating it was divinely sanctioned. But no one bought it. He was forced to accept the need for an inquiry into the election. The Guardian Council, Iran's supreme constitutional body, met with the candidates and promised to investigate and perhaps recount some votes. Khamenei has subsequently hardened his position but that is now irrelevant. Something very important has been laid bare in Iran today --- legitimacy does not flow from divine authority but from popular support.

We weren't sure that the "consent of the governed" meant anything in an Islamic theocracy, but what we're seeing in the streets show that it in fact does.

Smoldering Iran

Roger Cohen's article in the New York Times is truly amazing, particularly the opening set piece:

The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”

A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.

Please read the rest. It's an incredible piece, and Cohen is really making a name for himself in all of this, particularly because he is one of the few international journalists left in Tehran, and perhaps the only American one, if not one of few. Cohen says that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has lost his mojo:

Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.

He has taunted millions of Iranians by praising their unprecedented participation in an election many now view as a ballot-box putsch. He has ridiculed the notion that an official inquiry into the vote might yield a different result. He has tried pathos and he has tried pounding his lectern. In short, he has lost his aura.

The taboo-breaking response was unequivocal. It’s funny how people’s obsessions come back to bite them. I’ve been hearing about Khamenei’s fear of “velvet revolutions” for months now. There was nothing velvet about Saturday’s clashes. In fact, the initial quest to have Moussavi’s votes properly counted and Ahmadinejad unseated has shifted to a broader confrontation with the regime itself.

Precisely. I've noticed the moving of Ahmadinejad to the side for days now. This has become about toppling the regime now. Yes, the stolen election was the impetus, and amid new statistical evidence pointing in that direction (it's pretty neat, check that out), the protestors appear to be correct. But that just set off the lid of a boiling stew from this young, educated, wired population yearning for more legitimacy, more democracy, more self-determination.

The regime is in a tough spot. To hundreds of thousands if not millions in the streets they lack legitimacy. The brutality of the Basiji eats away at that both domestically and internationally. They're trying to balance themselves on a wire, not killing multitudes en masse but trying just to crack down enough to hopefully put this thing behind them. But I don't see that happening now. Mousavi has basically openly defied the regime, and so it must end with either him or Khamenei out of the way. I don't see a third option. In the end, if those with the guns move toward the demonstrators, we'll have a full-fledged revolution.

Before The Deluge

Tomorrow is likely to be a very sad day. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's speech at Friday prayers basically gave a warning today, essentially vowing violence if people went out into the streets tomorrow. The regime may not do it in public; they may use the Basiji Guard militia to round up the protestors at night after the protests during the day. That's certainly plausible in an environment where the world has its eyes trained on Iran - the protests diminish because everyone slowly gets rounded up, and the remaining protestors become demoralized, and the regime can plausibly say they petered out on their own accord.

But this doesn't exactly sound like someone who thinks he needs to do his business under cover of darkness:

Street challenges after the elections are not the right thing to do. This is, in fact, challenging the principle of elections and democracy. I want everyone to end this sort of action. If they do not end it then the consequences of this lie with them (street protestors).

The consequences of this lie with them. If they break the law they must suffer the consequences, in other words. And at this point, Khamenei has put his own credibility on the line. In a post at the Foreign Policy blog, Karim Sadjadpour says:

The weight of the world now rests on the shoulders of Mir Hossein Mousavi. I expect that Khamenei's people have privately sent signals to him that they're ready for a bloodbath, they're prepared to use overwhelming force to crush this, and is he willing to lead the people in the streets to slaughter?

Mousavi is not Khomeini, and Khamenei is not the Shah. Meaning, Khomeini would not hesitate to lead his followers to "martyrdom", and the Shah did not have the stomach for mass bloodshed. This time the religious zealots are the ones holding power.

There are scattered reports that the young people coming out in the streets day after day now how crucial tomorrow will be. This is completely heartbreaking:

I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! [...] My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…

More like this at Nico Pitney's liveblog. It's all very dramatic.

In an interview released today, President Obama went slightly further than he has in the past, saying that "the world is watching" and "we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a peaceful way." Reiterating that we are watching is perhaps the best hope to end what seems to be coming tomorrow. Because I'm afraid of what we'll see.

10,000 Foot View On The Iran Protests

A sampling of cable media last night - and yes, it was cable, but these were generally pretty knowledgeable scholars, like Reza Aslan and Joseph Cirincione and Abbas Milani - suggested pretty much en masse that Iran had reached a tipping point from which they cannot return, and that the regime has been dealt a fatal blow by a week's worth of protesting. I think we have to step back for a minute and process this. As Jim Sleeper, a journalist informed by one of his former students living in Iran right now, notes, this revolution is in no way understandable in an American liberal/conservative sense. Aslan touched on this tonight as well. It's a group largely made up of precisely the people who kicked off the 1979 Iranian Revolution - Mousavi, Rafsanjani, Medhi Karoubi, the top cleric Montasevi who reportedly broke with his colleagues - using similar tactics to take down specific actors in the regime in the name of "redeeming" the revolution. Mousavi himself is a former Prime Minister and classic insider, a protege of the Ayatollah Khomeini who could be motivated simply by animus toward the Supreme Leader Khamenei. Seeing someone so close to Khomeini lauded by conservatives is quite a laugh. That does not mean figures like Mousavi are irreconcilable:

Although he has long had an adversarial relationship with Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his insider status makes him loath to mount a real challenge to the core institutions of the Islamic republic. He was an early supporter of Iran’s nuclear program, and as prime minister in the 1980s he approved Iran’s purchase of centrifuges on the nuclear black market, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Yet like many founding figures of the revolution, he has come to believe that the incendiary radicalism of the revolution’s early days must be tempered in an era of peace and state-building, those who know him say. Some have seen a symbolic meaning in his decision to make Monday’s vast demonstration in Tehran a march from Enghelab (revolution) Square to Azadi (freedom) Square.

“He is a hybrid child of the revolution,” said Shahram Kholdi, a lecturer at the University of Manchester who has written about Mr. Moussavi’s political evolution. “He is committed to Islamic principles but has liberal aspirations.”

Indeed, to see a thoroughly Islamic revolution matched with greater openness and individual freedoms would be a rethinking of Islam itself and highly desirable.

It's also worth understanding how this has completely bypassed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, almost ceasing to be about him at all, and instead has to be viewed through the lens of the desires of the Supreme Leader. The election itself has become almost besides the point, as thirty years of frustration with the shift of the Islamic Revolution, or possibly even just frustration with the personality of Khamenei himself, bubbles to the surface. This is a really good analysis:

However, his support for Ahmadinejad before and after the elections, together with what many believe to be overwhelming election fraud that he has sanctioned, is almost out of character for Khamenei. Such moves are very sudden and extreme, unlike the punctilious way in which he has maneuvered around important issues and decisions in the past. They are also very provocative, not just for supporters of reformists, but because they are clearly efforts to isolate other powerful figures. These leaders include Rafsanjani and Karroubi, both of whom have vast business connections and are politically well-connected.

One possible reason for Khamenei’s recent decision is that he realized that unless he intervened, the reformists would win the elections. What concerned the Supreme Leader even more is the fact that the clergy, both right and left, were turning against the president, and ultimately, against him. Recently, for instance, the Society For Combatant Clergies, a powerful conservative group belonging to the clergy in Qom, decided “not to support any candidate in the presidential elections.” This was a politically correct way of saying that they would not support Ahmadinejad. As someone who has supported Ahmadinejad throughout his career, Khamenei took their decision as a rebuff against his own political ambitions.

A victory by the reformists, in cooperation with the clergy and Rafsanjani, would have created a powerful front against Khamenei. Instead of being loyalist soldiers like Ahmadinejad, they would have challenged his views in important areas, such as dealing with the United States. With Khamenei already viewing Obama’s positive overtures as a threat, any more internal dissent would have boosted Washington’s position against Iran in the negotiations.

It's worth noting that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani heads the Assembly of Experts, the religious body which chooses - and can depose - a Supreme Leader. The clerics have said almost nothing throughout this week of protests, but Rafsanjani has been alleged to be masterminding this whole spectacle. The fact that some protestors are targeting Khamenei personally lends credence to that. Rafsanjani and "moderates" like him have backed down before, but the presumed stolen election is a more powerful lever with which to play out the palace intrigue. Viewed this way, we can see these protests as a high-stakes jockeying for power among different sects from the original Islamic revolution, a far cry from some democratic uprising for freedom. I don't think that's the motivation of everyone in the streets, but what they don't know won't hurt them.

A huge protest is scheduled for tomorrow in mourning of the reportedly 32 protestors who have died in the struggle so far - something pulled right from the playbook of 1979, when the mourning rallies were used to demean the brutal regime of the Shah. But the government has fairly successfully cracked down on communications to the outside world, and the Revolutionary Guard and its militias, for the most part, appear to remain firmly in the camp of the current rulers, although there are some cracks in that armor. When the people with the guns start to don green shirts and fold into the crowds, then things may change. Until then, we're as likely to see a repeat of Tiananmen Square as a revolution of any kind. As Steve Coll says:

All of the opening source evidence since the last round of counter-revolutionary street protests suggests that there has seen no particular strengthening of the urban and merchant forces who constitute the backbone of “reform” in Iran. If anything, the Defenders of the Revolution seem stronger now, since their militias, conservative foundations, and overseas networks have been strengthened by the money flowing from expensive oil. Yes, the economy is in trouble, and yes, the urban reform forces can make a lot of noise in the streets, since they live and thrive in the cities. This, however, a counter-revolution does not make. The Obama Administration has banked on engagement with the “real” Iran. Surely the Administration is right to lay its long-shot bet on the protests—morally, and otherwise. But let’s not kid ourselves about how the roulette wheel is most likely to spin.

(I don't know that Obama has banked on much of anything - they were perfectly willing to engage whoever ran the country before the elections.)

I have been following Nico Pitney's minute-by-minute reports with interest, and I think that this is an interesting moment in the history of Iran. Those using nonviolent resistance techniques should be commended for their bravery. But perspective is highly sought. This isn't so clear-cut.

More from Juan Cole, translating primary sources, here.

Obama's Needle Threading In Iran

Pete Hoekstra's Twitter FAIL is symptomatic of a larger trend of conservatives wanting to use the allegedly stolen election in Iran as a means to reveal their greater glory of an Arab spring. At first they expressed pleasure at Ahmadinejad's survival because extremists need one another to start wars, and now they seek Obama's direct confrontation into an election in a foreign country. They've kind of been all over the map.

[F]ringe actors like al Qaeda and the neocons or Ahmadinejad and Bibi need each other for political survival. The relationship isn’t even antagostic, it’s a symbiotic mutualism. Intractable, crazy antagonists legitimize the position of extremists who oppose them.

Fortunately, we have in the White House someone who understands that his words matter. His White House seeks a focus on human rights and peaceful resolution rather than wading into the election itself, which is clearly the right policy.

A senior Obama administration official who did not want to be identified or quoted explained that the president was deeply conscious of appearing not to favor any side in the election. Officials had ruled out calling for a recount or a revote out of a concern for undermining the Iranian opposition. The official said it was important to have a policy toward Iran that advanced the administration’s desire for liberalization and human rights in Iran, not one that merely vented American outrage at Ahmadinejad.

If and when Obama speaks about the violence in Iran over the coming days, the official predicted, he will emphasize the need for respecting human rights in Iran and for Iranians to reach their own solution. Potential multilateral efforts at calling attention to electoral improprieties and the resulting violence were said to be on the radar of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. No administration official mentioned recognizing the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s proclaimed victory at this point as a policy option under consideration, in keeping with Biden’s call for further “analysis” about the true election result, despite the fact that the European Union’s presidency, currently held by the Czech Republic, recognized Ahmadinejad as the victor despite noting “irregularities” in the vote.

The President himself said it best - we have a history in meddling in the foreign affairs of Iran (as well as many other nations), and overt calls for recounts or revotes at this point would enable Ahmadinejad and the hardliners to marginalize what appears to be real dissent in their country as the work of American puppets. It's the right policy, one of engagement without engaging. As Bush's former ambassador to Iran said, the President is threading the needle correctly:

In an interview today with NPR, (Nicholas) Burns praised Obama’s handling of the crisis, and said that a more aggressive response would actually play into the hands of President Ahmadinejad.

“President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to see a very aggressive series of statements by the United States that would try to put the U.S. in the center of this,” Burns said. “And I think President Obama is avoiding that quite rightly.”

“This is not a dispute for the U.S. to be the center of,” Burns said at another point. “It’s up to Iranians to decide who Iran’s future leaders will be. He said he respects Iran’s sovereignty. I think it was important to do that.”

Without Americans driving the discussion and seeking the spotlight, the Iranian resistance has advanced the ball. The mullahs had to offer a limited recount but it has failed to stop the protests in all the major cities. A senior ayatollah has now come out against the election, reflective of a real split inside the ruling class. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is being forced to address the issue at Friday prayers this week. Even the Iranian soccer team wore green armbands yesterday during a nationally televised match, in solidarity. The reformers are doing just find without America trying to put their thumb on the scale. Obama should take the lesson and apply it to the rest of the world, too.

Electoral Theft In Iran

I left kind of a flip Twitter message about how, unlike in Iran, here in the US we never have stolen elections and irregularities at polling places, but this disputed election and the subsequent protests in the Islamic Republic is actually a bit more serious than that. You could see this coming a mile away - wildly divergent polls, an expected high turnout, a country known for at least limiting their elections, though they are probably more free than other countries in the region. It set the table for the unrest we see:

Supporters of the main election challenger to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with police and set up barricades of burning tires Saturday as authorities claimed the hard-line president was re-elected in a landslide. The rival candidate said the vote was tainted by widespread fraud and his followers responded with the most serious unrest in the capital in a decade.

By nightfall, cell phone service appeared to have been cut in the capital Tehran. And Ahmadinejad, in a nationally televised victory speech, accused the foreign media of coverage that harms the Iranian people. There was more rioting at night and fires continued to burn on the streets of Tehran.

Several hundred demonstrators — many wearing the trademark green colors of pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign — chanted "the government lied to the people" and gathered near the Interior Ministry as the final count from Friday's presidential election was announced.

The Supreme Leader closed ranks around Ahmadinejad's victory as a "divine assessment." Meanwhile Mousavi denounced a regime based on "lies and dictatorship." I think it's clear we're going to see more protests and, in all likelihood, violent clashes with the Revolutionary Guard, which has vowed to "crush" any popular movement.

Juan Cole lays out the evidence, in compelling fashion, that the hardliners and conservatives stole the election. He doesn't think the protests will eventually have much of an impact:

The public demonstrations against the result don't appear to be that big. In the past decade, reformers have always backed down in Iran when challenged by hardliners, in part because no one wants to relive the horrible Great Terror of the 1980s after the revolution, when faction-fighting produced blood in the streets. Mousavi is still from that generation.

My own guess is that you have to get a leadership born after the revolution, who does not remember it and its sanguinary aftermath, before you get people willing to push back hard against the rightwingers.

So, there are protests against an allegedly stolen election. The Basij paramilitary thugs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will break some heads. Unless there has been a sea change in Iran, the theocrats may well get away with this soft coup for the moment. But the regime's legitimacy will take a critical hit, and its ultimate demise may have been hastened, over the next decade or two.

My only hesitation would be that more attention is being paid to Iran now than in the past, and sustained effort would receive support outside the country. But that's quite a burden on the reformers, even if, as alleged, they represent a majority in Iran. And anyway, the White House is cautiously hedging away from lending support to the reformers, mindful that any words from the West could easily be used by hardliners as proof that the infidels are trying to overthrow the government. This spokesman for the Iranian resistance explains:

Robert Gibbs' White House statement may not fully capture the depth of the crime committed against the Iranian people. "But I think it's wise for the U.S. government to keep its distance," Ghaemi says. The White House can and should "show concern for human life and protesters' safety and promote tolerance and dialogue." But to get any further involved, even rhetorically, would "instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the U.S., whether under Bush or under Obama, and there's no reason to give that unfounded allegation" any chance to spread.

Ghaemi continues to say that the international community should present a united front that gives "no legitimacy" to the election. In particular, he wants U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to express "serious grievances" about how the election was conducted. "Sanctions and military threats, all these things are counterproductive," Ghaemi says. The initiative has to be expressed and promoted by the Iranians themselves, particularly from Mir Hossein Moussavi and other exponents of popular Iranian outrage. "It very much depends on what leading reformers, including Moussavi, ask them to do, and how much responsibility do they take for exposing them to danger. If they put their tails between their legs and walk away, it will be very sad."

Ultimately, the President of Iran holds less power than assumed. But the Supreme Leader Khamenei's assent of this apparent fraud is a bad sign for future engagement with the Obama Administration. The hardliners are consolidating power.

Everyone's A Winner In Iran

Both Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have declared victory in the Iranian elections before the polls have even closed. That raises the possibility of an Orange Revolution scenario, especially if the hardliners hand victory to Ahmadinejad, where a popular revolt in the streets forced the ruling party to succumb. Not to be alarmist, but I can see it happening.

Meanwhile, what few seem to be saying is that, with four contestants in the race, it's unlikely that anyone will get the 50%+1 required for victory, and Ahmadinejad and Mousavi will probably go to a runoff.

If he does lose, Ahmadinejad will make wingnut history as the first fascist dictator to lose an election and leave office.

Iran's Choice - Rejecting Confrontation

I've been fascinated by Iran's June 12 election over the past couple days, in particular because the result could genuinely surprise, as four years of Holocaust denial and high-profile rhetorical bomb-throwing have possibly threatened Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's chances for re-election. I say possibly because it's so hard to tell: while one "secret poll" reported by Newsweek has the Iranian President trailing Mir Hossein Mousavi by 2-1, a more recent public opinion survey has Ahmadinejad ahead by the same ratio, albeit with 27% undecided. It appears unlikely that either candidate, or the two others, will reach the 50% + 1 necessary to avoid a runoff. Record turnout is expected,with campaign rallies shutting down Tehran, so perhaps the modeling is bad, producing the wildly divergent results. Is there an Iranian Nate Silver?

Certainly Iranians have cause to find fault with their President, who I like to point out is not their leader - that would be the Supreme Leader, who blasted the President for his completely bizarre debate performance a few days back:

In the most significant development, Ahmadinejad appeared to have irked the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over his performance in Wednesday night's debate with Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main opponent in next week's presidential election.

"One doesn't like to see a nominee, for the sake of proving himself, seeking to negate somebody else," Khamenei said in a speech commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of the Iranian revolution's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. "I have no problem with debate, dialogue and criticism but these debates must take place within a religious framework." [...]

Apparently trailing in the opinion polls, Ahmadinejad attempted to link Mousavi – the main reformist candidate – to the past governments of Rafsanjani and the reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatam, which he said had been guilty of widespread graft. Among others, he singled out Rafsanjani's sons as well as Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, the current head of the supreme leader's inspectorate.

Khamenei's criticisms echoed those of Mousavi, who told Ahmadinejad during the debate: "This is a sin. We are Muslims, we believe in God. We cannot name people like that and accuse them."

It's not just the Supreme Leader (who still has endorsed Ahmadinejad) who have reason to call out the incumbent for criticism. Reformers who boycotted the last election after Mohammed Khatami failed to make meaningful inroads with his agenda are coalescing around the little-known Mousavi, particularly the young, who are completely turned off by the President's confrontational style. The poor economy has cut off Ahmadinejad from his rural base, who are angered by his policies of driving up inflation and rewarding political friends. And even the conservative elite has turned away from Ahmadinejad, who they find counter-productive.

Powerful reformists and conservatives within Iran's elite have joined forces to wage an unprecedented behind-the-scenes campaign to unseat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, worried that he is driving the country to the brink of collapse with populist economic policies and a confrontational stance toward the West [...]

They have used the levers of government to foil attempts by Ahmadinejad to secure funds for populist giveaways and to permit freewheeling campaigning that has benefited Mousavi. State-controlled television agreed to an unheard-of series of live debates, and the powerful Council of Guardians, which thwarted the reformist wave of the late 1990s, rejected a ballot box maneuver by the president that some saw as a prelude to attempted fraud.

Some called it a realignment of Iranian domestic politics from its longtime rift between reformists and conservatives to one that pits pragmatists on both sides against radicals such as Ahmadinejad.

"Some of the supporters of Mousavi like his ideas; others don't want Ahmadinejad," said Javad Etaat, a professor of political science and a campaigner for Mousavi. "They've decided that preserving the nation is more important than preserving the government."

I don't think we can know for sure what the results will be, but there certainly are signs that Ahmadinejad's belligerence played better in the "Arab street" abroad than at home. Regardless of who is elected in Iran, the hardline clerics who actually run the country seem determined to continue nuclear energy production which contains the genesis of the entire conflict with the West (although nobody has reasonably explained what has changed from the most recent NIE on Iran, which said that they had not restarted nuclear weapons development, and today). But if Ahmadinejad is defeated on the 12th, it will truly signal that hardliner belligerence can be as much a hindrance for a politician as a help. And that's a good thing.

But I'm more interested in seeing our American Taliban's head spin around at the prospect of seeing the supposedly fascist dictator of Iran defeated in a peaceful election.

Irandecision '09

Iran may not have listened intently to the Obama Cairo speech. Because another political drama is playing out on their streets. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is up for re-election, and while he does not control the military arsenal or responsibility over much of the lawmaking in Iran - that's reserved for the Supreme Leader - the elections, which are more free than other parts of the Muslim world, represent a good way to sort of take the temperature of the Iranian people. And the results have been, to this point, quite remarkable:

I don't know whether you have been reading the various press accounts of the election campaign in Iran. I know that the candidates' list is fixed, but I can also see democratic spirit when it is bang in front of me. There appears to be a genuine fight for votes; and the images from the Mousavi rallies look more like Obama rallies than assemblies in a totalitarian state. Notice how young these people look, and how unafraid.

Now check out this video of a public clash between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi supporters in the streets of Tehran. It's vivid, electrifying stuff - not a sign of a brutal totalitarian regime. I know we have to be cautious and I know who holds the military power. But we should not be blind to change when it emerges. Ahmadinejad has discredited himself in the eyes of many Iranians. They are looking for change they can believe in. This is the target audience for Obama this Thursday. He needs to reach out to the democratic forces in that country and remind them that America is their ally.

Sullivan has some residual "Arab Spring" issues to deal with, but there's no question that the democratic impulse is robust in Iranian society right now. "Mousavi" is Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former Prime Minister and reformist candidate with the support of former reformist President Mohammed Khatami. Their debate the other night was pretty remarkable:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main rival in the June 12 election, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, held a remarkably frank debate Wednesday night that exposed deep differences among Iran's leaders and presented voters with two completely opposing views.

During the 90-minute debate, which was televised live, the candidates openly delved into topics in a way never seen in the Islamic republic, touching on foreign policy and corruption. In addition, Ahmadinejad raised questions about the academic credentials of Mousavi's wife, a former professor.

The candidates represent two factions in Iran's system of Shiite clerical government. In the debate, Ahmadinejad, in a beige suit and surrounded by stacks of papers, portrayed his opponent as a pawn of Iran's political elite, which he said was corrupt and weak in the face of Western pressure.

Mousavi, a painter and architect, said Ahmadinejad's controversial international and domestic policies were a danger to Iran's future. He accused the president of driving the country toward a "dictatorship" and acting as if he owned the truth. "You think you are higher than all," he told Ahmadinejad.

A large part of the debate centered on foreign policy. Mousavi said Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust had cost Iran much international standing. "Tell me, who are our friends in the region?" he asked the president. Mousavi said the country had became internationally isolated.

These are open debates that Iranians can access and engage with. It puts the lie to the conservative idea of Iran as a monolithic society of America-haters. And the results should be extremely interesting.