Iran is a strong country economically and can withstand sanctions. Its diversified economy and strong manufacturing base mean that it is virtually immune to the United States-led sanctions that its presidents, including Barack Obama, have tried to impose to their great embarrassment. This is according to Iranian-American academic Dr Hooshang Amirahmadi whose insights on Iran, in many ways unique given his frequent trips to the country, are likely to quash several misconceptions one might have. For example, despite US and Western claims that the country's nuclear project is unpopular, Amirahmadi tells Weekend Review that the overwhelming majority of Iranians support their country's nuclear energy programme and insist they have a right to it.
It is through Gulf News that Amirahmadi is announcing his intentions to run for president of Iran in June 2013. And unlike most Iranian presidential candidates, he has put together an election manifesto which includes details of why he is the right candidate for Iran and how he will overcome the country's main challenges. While he is realistic about his chances of participating, let alone winning, he hopes that his campaign will help create better conditions in the country.
Iran today faces a number of strategic and conventional problems. "Its strategic problems include unfriendly relations with the West and the polarisation of domestic politics," Amirahmadi says. Its conventional problems are mainly "mismanagement and those economic in nature, including economic growth, youth unemployment, inflation and poverty".
Perhaps its most visible problem, its strained relationship with the West, especially the US, is one to analyse. Amirahmadi says the situation can be defined as a "spiral conflict", meaning one in which both parties for any excuse escalate each other's extreme positions to new heights based on a mixture of fact, fiction, mistrust, misperceptions and misunderstandings. It therefore becomes nearly impossible to have sound diplomacy and avoid ideological discussions as each side becomes increasingly obsessive and even "delusional", he says. This ultimately prevents Iran and the US from any serious engagement.
Amirahmadi feels he has an advantage over other presidential candidates because of his experience working as a middleman between Washington and Tehran. In 2008, he began an intensive "shuttle diplomacy" between the two countries and presented a policy paper to both governments as a roadmap for engagement. He believes the paper, which was commented on by both governments, "constituted the foundation for President Obama's 2009 overture to Iran for a ‘new beginning'". This is because he says Obama's speech and letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were in some form already proposed in his paper. Shortly after these developments, the Iran-ian government involved Amirahmadi in a series of consultation meetings where he mainly dealt with one question: Can Iran trust Obama? He says despite his attempt to always be positive in his assessments, he failed to convince Tehran. Iran saw Obama as a leader surrounded by "pro-Israelis".
Iranian distrust of the West is not new. Iran has a long anti-Western tradition that Amirahmadi says dates back to Persian-Greek wars 2,500 years ago. Of course, the turning point came in 1953 when Britain and the US ousted the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh through a military coup. For the next 26 years, until the Islamic Revolution, the US replaced Britain as the dominant power in Iran and supported the Shah's repressive measures. "It is no wonder that the Islamic revolution should adopt fierce anti-American slogans and follow up with anti-American actions, including hostage taking," Amirahmadi says.
Perception of the West
But one cannot generalise and refer to Iranian society as strictly anti-Western. According to Amirahmadi, it varies significantly across social classes and factions. For example, the Iranian elite have since the mid-19th century been divided into Anglophile, Russophile, Francophile, Americophile, and now even Chinophile. There are also similar divisions within the middle-class Iranians and between the modern and traditional factions. Generally, the more modern groups support closer ties with the West and reforms, while more traditional groups are generally anti-Western and support the status quo, controlled by the conservatives. It is among the first group that we find the so-called pro-American Iranian youth who dislike the many restrictions imposed on them by the theocracy.
As for the younger generation, it is easy to classify them into either modernists or traditionalists, Amirahmadi says. Taking the Green Movement as an example, he contends it comprised the middle and upper-middle classes who had "modern and Western tendencies". As for the more traditional middle-class groups, the poorer among them in particular who largely reside in smaller cities and villages, they support the regime and its conservative ideas and have largely remained anti-American.
Nuclear programme
One thing all Iranians agree on is their country's right to a peaceful nuclear energy programme. The Rand Corporation, among many other American think-tanks and policy institutions, has found in a study that nearly 98 per cent of Iranians believe that uranium enrichment is their right and more than 80 per cent support their uranium enrichment programme for civilian use, including energy production. Support for a nuclear bomb is much less, Amirahmadi says, but still significant, as high as about 65 per cent. What worries him is that it is assumed by Western pundits or policy ideologues that Iranians are either divided or don't necessarily agree on this issue. This is because of the West's failure to assess properly the Iranian society's views, relying instead on Iranian expatriates who generally oppose the regime to get a perspective on the matter.
As for Iran's intention with its nuclear programme, it remains a contested issue. There are Iranians who reject both the nuclear energy programme and the military capability exercise and those who want both. Then there are those who want their country to acquire the nuclear bomb. Amirahmadi says it was Khamanei's fatwa intervention on the issue of acquiring a nuclear bomb in 2004 that basically eliminated the bomb-building position.
At present, enrichment for energy and capability are both on the table in Tehran. Which of the two positions will ultimately win will depend on whether Iran and its nuclear-armed nemesis can find a resolution to their dispute, Amirahmadi says. Given the geopolitics of nuclear ambitions in the region, the US pressure policy, and the Islamic regime's security fears, it is very likely that Iran will in the end settle for building a military capability. Only through eliminating or mitigating the influences of these factors can the US and its allies persuade Tehran to stop enrichment sometime before military capability.
If we fast-forward five years from now, where can we expect Iran's nuclear project to be and would we have experienced either an attack on Iran or an intensification of war of incidents? Amirahmadi says the future will depend on a host of highly unpredictable factors including presidential election results in the US and Iran's domestic political situation. One thing is clear, however, for the academic: "The dispute is cancerous and unless it is cured in time, it will lead to murder!"
Amirahmadi adds that US pressure tactics aren't likely to succeed. This is mainly given Iran's sense of national pride and prominent culture of resistance to coercion. That Iran has linked uranium enrichment to national dignity means backing down on the nuclear programme could lead to the Islamic Republic's "collapse", he argues.
One mistake Iran has made is to assume that the US is not in a position to wage another war because of the economic challenges it faces and the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Crippling economic sanctions
Amirahmadi views Iran's economic situation quite positively, despite the reputation his country has acquired over the years that it is crippled by sanctions and even about to collapse. He says his country's economic problems include slow growth, youth unemployment, inflation and poverty, to name a few.
But he adds that Iran is a rich country of talented people, huge underground resources and vast markets. "Iran has one of the most diversified economies in the region and the perception that it is an oil-dependent economy is almost 30 years old," he says. Moreover, Iran also has a vast underground and informal economy that is not reported in any statistics.
Interestingly, Amirahmadi says Iranians habitually complain about everything including their economic plight. For the base classes, economic problems are real. However, for the people in higher-income categories, the problem is mainly one of rising expectations.
"The average Iranian used to drive a Peykan under the old regime; now they drive a Peugeot," he points out. A cousin of his in Iran recently asked him to buy him a Nokia mobile phone. The cousin was disappointed when Amirahmadi handed him the Dubai-purchased phone. Apparently, he wasn't up to date with the latest technology and had gotten him a fairly old phone by Iranian standards.
Changing face of leadership
With Ahmadinejad on his way out, there is some doubt about whether Iran's religious establishment will maintain its grip on power at the same level it enjoys today. Amirahmadi says the opposition is disunited and incapable of garnering enough support. "These opposition groups demand political democracy, civil liberty and socio-cultural freedom, but for these demands they are hardly prepared to sacrifice their lives," he adds. As is the case with other Middle Eastern countries, the Iranian opposition lacks a unified and powerful leadership. In that light, the only serious threat to the regime is external, in the form of a war that will destroy its command and control centres. And even if that happens, Amirahmadi predicts a civil war will ensue as no individual or group can fill the vacuum that will be created.
Yet, the 2013 elections are set to mark a turning point in the life of the Islamic republic. Domestically, conditions for economic growth, political development and social justice are not good. Internationally, rejectionist foreign policies in the face of animosity from the West have led to crippling sanctions, and danger of a war with the US or Israel looms over the nation. "Unless the present management and policies change for better, the situation can only worsen, with far-reaching consequences both for the Iranian people and the international community," Amirahmadi warns. The only way forward for the country is through free and fair elections.
Meddling in Arab affairs
Iran's foreign policy has also garnered criticism; Tehran has recently been accused of meddling in Arab affairs, in hotspots such as Syria and Bahrain. And well before the so-called Arab Spring, Iran was knee-deep in its neighbour Iraq's affairs, where today, it holds the most external influence on Al Maliki's government.
Amirahmadi says it is a lot more complicated than it seems. Iran was required to develop multiple approaches to its regional foreign policy because of its complex nature. It had to tackle the Middle East's diverse ethnic groups, religious affiliations and players and on top of that, ongoing issues such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, its stand-off with US-Israel, and the Sunni-Shiite division, among others.
"To navigate safely through this hazardous maze of actors and issues has not been easy for Iran, a lone Shiite-Persian state, seeking to play an active and influential role in a complex region," Amirahmadi says, adding that to understand Iran's present foreign-policy approach, one has to factor in its recent history. The 1979 revolution further complicated Iran's regional policy as rivals began reacting to its new Islamic radicalism. But the Islamic Revolution was not just radical but also popular at home and abroad. "This radicalism and popularity led its leaders into thinking that they can monopolise power at home and export the revolution to neighbouring states," he argues.
Against this backdrop, problems with the US were exacerbated by the hostage crisis and the first Gulf War. And it is this, Amirahmadi says, that marked a turning point in the "threat perception" of Iran as it saw its survival at stake and designed a defensive-offensive policy to counter what it saw as threats. The role of the Quds Force, a special unit of the country's Revolutionary Guards, cannot be underestimated either, according to Amirahmadi: This force was formed to defend the revolution and the system (nezam) from foreign "enemies". This was to be achieved by propagating radical Islamic views, exporting the revolution, and expanding the republic's "strategic depth" by making alliances with radical regional states and forces.
GCC-Iran
"The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] formation itself is a part of the reaction to Iran's threat perception. It was primarily formed in 1981 to counter the new Iranian threat," Amirahmadi says.
But the edgy relations between Iran and the Arab world in general, and the GCC states in particular, are rooted in more than just the post-revolutionary developments. Persian and Arab nationalism have not been hospitable towards each other: The Shah's regime supported Israel, then the enemy number one of the Arabs, and there are territorial disputes between Iran and Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. However, the revolution and the introduction of radical political Islam were the game changers in Iran-Arab relations, according to Amirahmadi.
A second important factor, he says, has been the conflict between Iran and the US, particularly the nuclear dispute. Caught between the two, "the GCC has tried to stay on the sidelines but has been often driven into the conflict zone against its will and interest". A good example is the US invasion of Iraq and Iran's subsequent intervention there in support of Shiite groups, a policy that has instilled fear among Sunni Arabs, significantly complicating Iran's relations with Saudi Arabia.
Amirahmadi points to the Saudi support for Bahrain's leadership and for the opposition to Bashar Al Assad of Syria as recent manifestations of the Arab fear of the Iranian "Shiite" threat.
"The Arab Spring and its uncertain final stop, the civil war in Syria; the Shiite-Sunni struggle over the political control in Iraq; and the territorial dispute between Iran and the UAE are other instances of an Iran-Arab gap that might grow wider in the near future," he says. Complicating this picture is Iran's uncompromising animosity towards the Jewish state and its conflict with the US over the nuclear issue and other regional matters. Unfortunately, the parties to all these conflicts are applying a win-lose, rather than a win-win, strategy, making a perilous Middle East environment even riskier.
What lies ahead
So where can Iran go from here? Iran has several challenges ahead: its dispute with the US, its economic mismanagement and domestic political polarisation. Amirahmadi says these are all interconnected and together they have created a set of internal and external threats to the country.
The US pressure tactics on Iran are "disrupting the country's short-term economic operations, causing inflation and unemployment and curtailing the country's long-term investments in productive sectors, oil and gas in particular," Amirahmadi warns.
On the internal front, the factional and monopolistic politics are the key threats since, he says, they reduce political legitimacy and stability. The following factors are relevant: economic mismanagement, uncompromising position towards the West, exclusion of technocrats and experts from strategic decision-making, infringement on citizens' privacy, restrictions on freedom of speech, widespread financial corruption, widening wealth and income gaps between the very rich and the rest, and polarisation of the modern and traditional forces.
To move forward to a better future, the Islamic Republic must "promote national reconciliation, improve economic management by including experts and technocrats in strategic decision-making, and resolve disputes with its foreign nemeses through win-win compromises, particularly concerning the nuclear dispute". Amirahmadi insists the last threat must be immediately addressed, otherwise other threats will intensify. Thus, an immediate resolution of the conflict with the US must top Iran's priorities. Coupled with this, Iran must also, in the meantime, work hard to improve relations with its neighbours, the Arab world in particular.
Presidential bid
Amirahmadi's election manifesto, which goes to great lengths to explain his suitability for the position of the president of Iran, is only one part of the story. He is more than aware that he most likely won't qualify as a presidential candidate because of his US residency and possibly dual nationality, although he doesn't rule out his chances given Iran's present domestic situation. He tells me he is doing this to show Iranians that candidates must have a plan for the nation. But aren't Iranian voters aware of the shortcomings of the system and the role of the religious establishment?
He says Iranians often know what they do not want but often do not know what they want. Moreover, as of today, he says he has not seen a single constructive blueprint proposed by either the government or the opposition to address the shortcomings. His election plan would move the nation forward in the direction of a more prosperous future. While serious institutional and practical obstacles exist, victory is possible. And by "victory" he doesn't necessarily mean becoming president but using the elections as an opportunity to introduce an unprecedented constructive political-economy discourse.
If he is disqualified, Amirahmadi plans to look into the possibility of forming a coalition with a candidate who is acceptable to his campaign. At the very least, he says, his attempt at running for president will have left an impact on Iranian society and the country's national discourse.
