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USADI Commentary
A Lose-Lose
Outcome for Tyranny Ruling Iran
Regardless of the outcome in
tomorrow’s second round of presidential elections in Iran, the
electoral farce marks a grave defeat for the ruling tyranny and
a huge win for Iran’s democracy movement that is seeking
fundamental change in Iran.
The first round last Friday
unmasked the utter failure of the clerical regime as a system of
governance and revealed the deep infighting within the ruling
clique. Charges of rigging leveled by influential regime’s
insiders against the Supreme Leader sent deadly ideological and
political tremors within the regime.
The sham election, the litmus
test of the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, was a disaster.
Already tainted as a travesty of the democratic process, the
election suffered from a nationwide boycott. Fraud, inflating
the final vote tally, and staging–managing at a few polling
stations to impress foreign journalists failed to overshadow the
boycott.
The mullahs’ obsession with
high turnout proved that elections, as every other such
exercise, are more about giving an illegitimate regime the
appearance of legitimacy. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei echoes as
much when casting his vote: ''When we come to the polling
stations to cast our votes…, it means we are voting for the
Islamic system." It was not without reason that the only issue
all eight candidates agree upon before the vote was the need for
a huge turn out.
The election’s most
significant result with huge policy ramification for the United
States and the European capitals is perhaps the fact that it
revealed how futureless and severely fractured the regime is
along its factional fissures. The fragile factional balance has
been shattered.
When the supreme leader Ali
Khamenei becomes the subject of direct public attacks by the
most influential establishment figures, the whole regime is
undermined. Therefore, no matter whom wins this Friday’s second
round of elections, the damage done is irreversible and the
factional divisions will only grow fiercer in the next four
years.
By painting Ahmadinejad as a
bogyman, many in the West are urging Iranians to vote for
Hashemi Rafsanjai, because they consider him as being the
“lesser” of the “two evils.”
They should be reminded that for all his vices, Ahmadinejad was
a petty functionary of the policy of liquidating dissent in and
out of Iran, put into effect under Rafsanjani’s watch in the
1990s.
The choice between a cunning
terror-master like Rafsanjani and a ruthless terrorist like
Ahmadinejad, truly epitomizes the futility of elections as a
means to achieve change in a theocracy that is an anathema to
change. It also makes a strong case for reaching out to the
democratic opposition that has been striving to bring about
fundamental change in Iran.
In Iran presidential
elections are meaningless in terms of being the manifestation of
popular will. The resultant political balance among various
factions, which lacks any semblance of partisan rivalries in
multi-party systems, sets the political course in the country
and not the elections. Therefore, the EU would be wise not put
its money on Rafsanjani.
Last week, President George
W. Bush strongly and appropriately denounced the sham election
in Iran. “Today, Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at
home and spread terror across the world. Power is in the hands
of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral
process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy”, he
said.
Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice added, "The appearance of elections does not
mask the organized cruelty of Iran's theocratic state. The
Iranian people are capable of liberty. They desire liberty. And
they deserve liberty. The time has come for the unelected few to
release their grip on the aspirations of the proud people of
Iran.”
The election dealt a
crippling blow to Trans Atlantic’s justification for appeasing
the clerical regime, giving urgency to the need in Washington to
formulate a viable policy that would include recognizing the
organized democratic opposition in Iran.
(USADI)
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The Baltimore Sun
June 23, 2005
Radical rebound in Iran
THREE YEARS ago, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was a relative political unknown in Iran. But now,
the 49-year-old hard-liner - a former commander in Iran's
universally feared clerical army, the Pasdaran, and more
recently the mayor of Tehran - has become one of the Islamic
Republic's most recognizable faces.
In Friday's presidential
election, the gruff, unpolished Mr. Ahmadinejad leapfrogged
ahead of five more prominent candidates - including former
Science and Education Minister Mostafa Moin, the favorite of
Iran's reformist camp - to secure a spot in the presidential
runoff set for tomorrow.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's rise was
almost certainly stage-managed by Iran's clerical leadership,
led by the country's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
At least two other presidential candidates, including former
Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi, have alleged widespread fraud
and governmental interference in the elections. Nevertheless,
Mr. Ahmadinejad's ascendancy is deeply significant since it
mirrors a deeper political shift taking place within Iranian
politics…
Signs of this re-entrenchment
are everywhere. After the resounding victory of regime
conservatives during Iran's hotly contested February 2004
parliamentary elections, nearly one-third of Iran's 290
parliamentary deputies now have links to Iran's military complex
and 42 are directly affiliated with the Pasdaran…
The Pasdaran's agenda is
global in scope, and so is its reach. Over the past 25 years, it
has served as the shock troops of the Islamic revolution,
training terrorist organizations in Iran and in specialized
training camps in places such as Lebanon and Sudan. It similarly
has provided assistance to radical movements and terrorist
proxies throughout the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia.
But the Pasdaran occupies
another role as well: guardian of the regime's strategic
programs. Following its final test in June 2003, Iran's premier
ballistic missile, the medium-range Shahab-3, was handed over
with great fanfare to the Pasdaran by the Defense Ministry.
Iran's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs are
similarly in the hands of the clerical army. (Indeed, the
prestige of the Pasdaran has grown exponentially as a result of
Iran's drawn-out diplomatic jockeying with the United States,
Britain, France and Germany over its nuclear ambitions.)
Since the Pasdaran serves as
the regime's principal point of contact with terrorist groups
such as Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, this
nexus raises the alarming possibility that Iran's nuclear and
ballistic missile advances could eventually translate into
substantial terrorist gains…
But regardless of who
ultimately ascends to the presidency, Mr. Ahmadinejad's breakout
performance is alarming proof of the Pasdaran's rising power and
that the radical principles underpinning Iran's Islamic
revolution are getting a new lease on life.
Excerpts from an article by Ilan
Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy
Council in Washington and author of the forthcoming Tehran
Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States
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The Boston Globe (Editorial)
June 23, 2005
Iranian travesty
Iran's presidential
elections, which are scheduled to culminate in a decisive second
round of voting tomorrow, are being denounced by some of the
candidates themselves as a travesty of electoral politics. The
manipulations attributed to hardline forces in the military and
the clerical establishment reflect a determined drive by those
archconservatives to monopolize all power centers in Iran.
Iranians longing for genuine
democracy, pluralism, and equal rights for women will have to
work out their own ways of outlasting the corrupt, repressive
clerics ruling over them. Perhaps the soundest way for the
outside world to show solidarity with Iranians thirsting for
true democracy is to emulate their refusal to be duped by the
ruses of the theocrats who hoard all true power in Iran's
Islamic Republic.
Hardliners in the entourage
of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Guardian Council, and the
Revolutionary Guards have been castigated by reformers for
rigging vote counts in last week's first round of balloting. The
result of their flagrant cheating was to elevate the mayor of
Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardline loyalist of Khamenei and
former Revolutionary Guard commander, from also-ran to
second-round challenger of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani…
This is the age-old voice of
the absolute ruler. Whether Khamenei and his cronies are
scheming to place Ahmadinejad in the presidency or are using him
to frighten people who distrust Rafsanjani into voting for the
former president as the lesser of two evils, the most
retrogressive forces in Iran are stamping out the popular hope
for democratic reform...
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