Assessing The Damage In Iran

Post-election ‘tidying up’ continues throughout Iran as the regime reasserts its hold on power slowly but surely. It seems that many important networks hedged their bets until they could see which the wind was blowing.

The influential Society of Scholars of Qom Seminary waited until this weekend to remove its doubts and to throw itself behind the President with a message of congratulations. This is interpreted as clerical determination to place the survival of the Islamic republic above any other consideration.

However, the Financial Times also reports that the reformist Association of Scholars and Researchers of Qom Seminary, representing a minority of clerics, took a different view, questioning the legitimacy of the election.

This story seems to tell us that the regime may be secure but that the ‘reformists’ are beginning to coalesce around a narrative that is not necessarily revolutionary but that is almost certainly determined on change. It may yet come to power in a few years through constitutional means.

We also note the claims (still unconfirmed) that the Iranians plan to put on trial a local British Embassy staff member for allegedly helping to instigate the recent protests. This is the only one of the original nine arrested who is still in custody.

The Iranian authorities also released a Greek journalist: his arrest was for the rather mild matter of exceeding the duration of his visa. With the analyst far from certain to face charges, it is a question whether Western hysteria or Islamic villainy offers the best explanation of recent events.

We detect a sort of sub-racist attitude to Islamic justice based largely on some particularly nasty anti-homosexual and other communal incidents in the backwoods.

This is probably like condemning the US Constitution on the basis of lynching in the Deep South but liberals are determined to label this regime as only one step down from that of the Nazi Party.

Even if Western worries about an Iranian ‘white terror’ have clearly been overdone, the EU, at British request, was placing maximum but ratcheted pressure on Iran, starting with a summoning of Iranian Ambassadors and warnings of tougher measures, including visa restrictions.

However, it is equally clear that there was no stomach in Europe for a few possibly slightly naughty diplomatic auxiliaries to be allowed to derail a dialogue with Iran. The sentiment is likely to be similar amongst high officials in Tehran.

The problem here is that the conspiracy theory about Western interference is like the counter-conspiracy theory of vote-rigging. Both rely on suggestive circumstantial evidence. Neither side has full access to the facts available within the other side’s system.

In a sense, the West started this tit-for-tat in hysteria by shifting from criticism of the handling of protests in the direction of full acceptance of protestors' claims about the implied legitimacy of the regime.

Tehran now has every incentive and perhaps some need to create a show trial in which it can present its case, based on its intelligence data, for Western, specifically British, dabbling in its internal affairs.

From there, it can track back into the Iranians complicit with a plot which they may yet be able to prove (not necessarily as official at all) regardless of the protests of the FCO whose impotence is now out there for all to see.

The targeted individual is a ‘respected political analyst’ who could face a long jail sentence and it does point up the ambiguity when a local analyst offers advice to officials of a foreign power but the whole business does seem to have been over-egged by all sides.

Meanwhile, the Israelis continue to stir the pot with claims that Mossad has advised that, as a result of ‘secret’ talks with Saudi officials, the Kingdom would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over its territory. The Saudis deny talks but Israel is clearly placing a direct attack on Iran back on the agenda.

There is much at stake. The question is not whether the arrested individual is released but whether the release is political despite any British involvement in Iran’s internal affairs in order to keep dialogue with the West on track.

And if the matter goes to trial, the issue becomes whether the trial is fair and fairly reported despite FCO determination to protect its own. This may all be sorted out diplomatically but the underlying questions surrounding the nature of British direct or indirect support for the reform movement remain unanswered.

The Israeli-Saudi reference is important in this context. Decision-making within Iran is taking place under the same perceived atmosphere of external threat that fuelled the turn to terror after the French and Russian revolutions. 

It will take some restraint on the part of the Iranian regime not to be provoked into unnecessarily draconian measures. If the UK and the EU are trying to calm things, the Israelis are clearly trying to fuel paranoia for reasons that are malign and dangerous both to peace and the reform movement.

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On Hysteria Over Iran

The Iranian Elections are obviously top of the news today but we need to take a deep breath and ask what is actually going on here.

Business interests and political consultants hyped up the prospects for reform, mobilised and financed a volatile student population and the frustrated middle classes and yet could not deliver the goods on the day. The Western media were collusive in this and they are now embarrassed.

Western leaders were also collusive and are worse than disappointed – they are having to rewrite their scripts. We certainly called it right on the Iranian Elections in advising caution about accepting at face value the soft power machine trying to create momentum for the reformers.

The strategy of driving reformist votes to the margin at 49%, then claiming fraud, failed abysmally. Could it be that Ahmedinejad is actually the Leader that most Iranians want? Or are we being too harsh on the ‘green revolution’?

Sentiment Is Not Analysis

It is quite possible that there was some rigging of elections but the evidence for it (so far) comes largely from tainted sources and some very doubtful statistical analyses.

It is equally possible that the mass of the population were not persuaded by the arguments coming from the activist class and that they voted against Tehran’s frustrated middle. It is presumptuous to assume that the clerical establishment has colluded in undermining a constitution in which they have a stake.

Just as pictures of pretty girls on Western front pages (which have been leaching back into the country via the web) only tell us that soft power management of events was a player in this particular game, so the pictures of rioting students have suited the agenda of the Western media.

The visiting media, long courted by Embassy officials with their customary dossiers and 'introductions', gave an impression (partly because they were not so welcome in the ‘red’ camp) of 'green' dynamism and revolution that may have been an illusion from the beginning.

Liberals tend to speak unto liberals. In fact, we are now talking about riots by only a few thousands in a country of millions of voters. The commentary of the frustrated English-language bloggers must not be assumed to speak for a nation.

Indeed, it might prove that this was not a revolution but an attempted ‘coup’ and that the clerical establishment might be justified in thinking it was intended, by a few, to be, in effect, an organised revolt (with students rather than soldiers as the mobilized force) against the Islamic Revolution.

Whether you believe this to be a good thing or not, there should be no surprise that a State at threat will, and perhaps should, act decisively. Imagine the BNP mobilizing white workers in the streets of London in late Weimar style. How would the Crown respond?

At a human level, we have to feel deeply sorry for the students and the liberal activists and we can only hope that the Islamic elite can show compassion and understanding - but those who miscalculated must take responsibility for their actions.

Potential For Purge Or Reconciliation

We might now expect exposure of the political techniques of the Moussavi advisers. These might show links to the West that could have dangerous consequences for a ‘bourgeois’ liberalism that may be ‘proven’ to be unpatriotic in the eyes of many Iranians.

The liberal conservatives in Iran may have been damaged for a generation, at least until the youngsters who supported them have developed a position in society on their own account.

Much of the last minute pre-election coverage can be dismissed in this context as propagandistic and self-serving. The ‘we wuz robbed’ strategy is tragic because we get the strong impression that it was pre-prepared on the assumption of a tight and close result.

We saw material fairly early on in the campaign that made patently ridiculous polling claims about support for the reformists. Somewhere along the line, polls as a tool for propaganda and polls as a guide to actual policy got very confused.

Once the result came in as a not-so-tight victory for Ahmedinejad, the strategy came unstuck. Riots took place perhaps because of genuine grievance but also because the activists had been guided into a ‘faith position’ by their own leaders.

Moussavi may even have have lost control of his own campaign at some stage. We have to remember that he was Prime Minister when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister in London. In other words, we might ask questions about his understanding of what his own advisory team were doing.

The question, of course, is just how real the claims of ballot-rigging are. If they are massive and proven, we may be in a revolutionary situation. The clerics will have to come to a view.

If they are claims that are propagandistic or stubborn delusions by over-enthusiastic political activists, the Iranian establishment may be minded to come down on them with full force, damaging relations with the West at a critical time.

The Oddity Of Western Restraint

As things stands though, Ahmedinejad appears to have won decisively on a high turnout and this needs explaining. The fate of the nation now lies in the hands of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He appears to have taken a very strong line in endorsing the result.

The American assumption that any Iranian cleric is a genocidal lying fascist is really not a true picture of decision-making in Iran. The system is authoritarian but self-consciously ‘patriotic’. The Moussavi challenge had turned into a challenge to the country by its closing stages.

The position of the US is pretty clear here and it adds to the problem. Any street-enforced revision of the result in favour of Moussavi will now look like a victory for the United States. To some extent, this always was false expectation.

Moussavi might be seen equally as a patriotic Left candidate who could potentially be a tough negotiator in his own right but the image of being an overseas puppet will persist in some circles. Nevertheless, what is most interesting is the restraint of Washington, London and other capitals.

This restraint in itself is odd. In the past, Western liberal leaders would have been falling over themselves to condemn any and every constitutional practice of a rogue state that came up with a wrong result.

Now, the propaganda effort in the past 24 hours has been shunted down to ex-Ambassadors and to anonymous state department officials while America’s tentative voice, British Foreign Secretary Miliband, has suddenly discovered the virtues of not commenting on the internal affairs of other state.

There are only two explanations for this restraint. The first is diplomatic – no one believes that the reformists have the critical mass to win and Ahmedinejad is the man that the West is going to have to deal with on regional issues.

So why make even more of an enemy of him and the Iranian Revolution than necessary! The second reason may just be embarrassment and fear that the coming days may tell a tale of Western arrogance in trying to mount a soft power coup that failed.

Perhaps the regime will fall (we think not). Perhaps it will engage in a bloody counter-revolution (we hope not, although Western liberals must take their share of the responsibility if it does).

The Western states involved are more concerned about the collapse of a strategy of engagement than with clerical constitutionalism. They have wanted to sell it a share of the global system but the new investors may decide now that they have been offered a stake on a false prospectus.

From today, Iran is strengthened as anti-imperialist survivor. Its own technologies of resistance may be be exported to other states allegedly threatened by the Western system. Its resistance may be further encouraged by rivals to the West.

It will effectively be saying ‘put up or shut up’ to Israel on a pre-emptive strike that could cause a conflagration of near world war proportions.

OR it could just decide to negotiate from strength and the local reformists will be thrown to the wolves by a West desperate to retain its hold over the region.

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