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Ahmadinejad may lose steam
Conservatives opposed to the policies of Iran's president will have a bigger say in the Majlis.
- By Francis Matthew, Editor at Large
- Published: 00:38 March 20, 2008
- Image Credit: Illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
Iran's conservative President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is likely to face more opposition after this week's elections for the parliament, the Majlis. Although the majority remains firmly conservative, a good half of that majority looks set to be made up of conservatives opposed to Ahmadinejad. They will want to see better handling of the economy, and may also favour a less confrontational foreign policy.
The final results have to wait for the second round of the elections, but the main trends are clear. As leading commentator on Iran, Farideh Farhi, points out, the new "pragmatic conservatives" may be able to ally in the Majlis with the reformists against the Ahmadinejad bloc, and "put up more resistance to Ahmadinejad's expansionist economic policies and erratic management".
A leading member of the new "pragmatic conservatives" group is Ali Larijani, the former chief nuclear negotiator who resigned from that post over differences with the Iranian president. He has won his first elected position from the religious centre of Qom with a substantial majority, and he might well be readying himself to run in the 2009 presidential elections against Ahmadinejad.
One indication of Larijani's more open style came up in an interview he gave to usip.org this week, in which he said that if the US administration proposed an international consortium to enrich uranium on Iranian soil, he would be in favour of studying the proposal, a response which stands in stark contrast to Ahmadinejad's complete rejection of such an idea.
The liberal reformists who follow the line of the former president Mohammad Khatami, may well end up with around a quarter of the seats. This small showing is mainly due to many of their candidates being refused by the electoral authorities, and subsequent election "engineering" which has taken several of those who might have won seats out of the contest.
Another more acceptable factor is that some reformist candidates have had to overcome popular resentment from reform-minded voters of Khatami's failure over two presidential terms to deliver very much.
The split structure of power in Iran, means that ultimate power does not lie with the presidency but still rests with the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who has been consistently conservative in the policies and politicians he has favoured.
These shifts in the power structure in Iran pose some interesting problems for the Bush administration. It has seen Iran as a major problem for many years, and has put it on a level with Iraq as a country that needs change and it has said that it would be willing to make that change happen.
It has taken particular issue with Iran's ambitions to have nuclear power, and has not believed the Iranian government when it has said that its nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes and were to develop power plants.
For several years Bush kept up the very easy line that this was not true, and his administration made it clear that it was preparing for military action against Iran. But late last year the US government's own National Intelligence Estimate made clear that Iran has stopped any search for military nuclear capacity in 2003.
Since then Bush has been stuck for a policy on Iran since military action is no longer credible, and any negotiation is too distasteful. As an attempt at an alternative, the US is pursuing forcing further sanctions on Iran through the United Nations, requiring Iran to open up way beyond what is normal in order to prove its credibility.
Very clear
However, Ahmadinejad's administration has been very clear. It has said time and again that Iran sees no need to talk to anyone on the nuclear issue other than the United Nations and its appointed body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
It has been deliberately dismissive of the United States and has made clear that Iran sees the US as having no standing in the discussion that Iran is following with the IAEA. This has naturally had the expected result of infuriating the Bush administration.
However, the Bush administration is running out of time if it is going to do anything about Iran. The November presidential elections are coming up soon, and a new administration will take over in January 2009.
If it is to take any action, it will have to do so in the next few months, but that will expose it to a whole new theatre of conflict, just as it is trying to find a clean exit from Iraq to go to the American public saying that the job has been done. It is far more likely that Bush will let Iran slide despite some ferocious rhetoric and some voting in the United Nations.
Meanwhile, Iran and the Middle East are waiting for the new administration to take over in Washington before any major new initiatives are launched.
The American political strategists in both parties are waiting for the Iranian 2009 presidential elections to see if they have to continue dealing with Ahmadinejad. The next few months will show if this precarious balance of waiting from both sides will be able to last.
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