|
RSIS presents the following commentary Iran’s New President: Averting a
Popular
Revolt by James M. Dorsey. It is also available online at this link. (To
print it, click
on this link).
Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS
________________________________________
No. 109/2013 dated 18 June
2013
Iran’s New President: Averting
a Popular Revolt
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
The election of Hassan Rouhani as Iran's new president signals a possible
change in
direction in Iran’s foreign policy. It also underscores Supreme Leader
Sayed Ali
Khamenei’s apparent move to avert a popular uprising.
Commentary
THE ELECTION by a clear majority of cleric Hassan Rouhani as Iran's new
president
on 15 June 2013 has secured for Supreme Leader Sayed Ali Khamenei the
most
moderate of candidates. Rouhani’s landslide victory, his endorsement by
reformist
leaders barred from running, and the high voter turnout, all signalled
the depth of
discontent and desire for change among the majority of voters. In his
inaugural press
conference, President-elect Rouhani promised a path of moderation and
offered a
conciliatory approach with the West.
Supreme Leader Khamenei’s prime goal in the election was to have a high
voter
turnout that would lend it legitimacy, while the fervour of the campaign
suggested
that the slate of candidates was geared towards a conservative and
loyalist victory.
In urging voters to go to the polls, Khamenei - the ultimatte authority
in Iran - made
clear that turnout was more important to him than which of the six
candidates
would emerge victorious. In so doing, he sought to avert a repeat of the
popular
uprising of 2009 that was driven by widespread belief of a fraudulent
election.
Ensuring some degree of change
Campaigning was initially dominated by the hardline rhetoric of Saeed
Jalili, a
devoted Khamenei acolyte and Iran’s nuclear negotiator, whose electoral
programme, based on a hard line in nuclear talks with Western powers and
vague
Islamic solutions to the country’s economic woes, effectively promised to
reinforce
Iran’s international isolation. A closer look at the slate of candidates
suggests
however that Iranians were in fact offered a choice of varying degrees of
change –
and the candidate with the greatest promise of reform emerged on top.
In many ways, Jalili’s role in the election campaign may well have been
that of a
scarecrow – the man whose proposed policies would be frightening enough
to
persuade voters who may otherwise have boycotted the election to go to
the polls,
just to prevent him from winning.
Former foreign minister and Khamenei foreign policy adviser Ali Akbar
Velayati
held out the prospect of a president with significant international
exposure who
chided Jalili for defining diplomacy as being tough and stubborn rather
than as a
process of give-and-take. Velayati effectively blamed Jalili for the
hardening of
sanctions designed to persuade Iran to compromise on its nuclear
programme. He
also suggested that he would roll back to some degree the role of the
Revolutionary
Guards in public life by calling for an end to political interference in
sports.
Similarly, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a former Revolutionary
Guard
air force commander, who emerged a far second in the election, is widely
believed
by militant conservatives to be a closet technocrat. Qalibaf campaigned
on the
platform of respect for those imprisoned for their political beliefs. As
a mayor he
reformed public service and introduced budget transparency despite being
an
outspoken critic of the reform movement and social liberalisation.
In short, Khamenei may well have engineered this election to ensure that
Iran’s next
president and the Islamic republic’s face to the outside world would
embody some
degree of change away from the provocative foreign policy and devastating
economic
populism of outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with whom the supreme
leader was increasingly at odds.
A win-win situation
The challenge now for Rouhani, a former nuclear negotiator and national
security
adviser, is to demonstrate amid high public expectations that he will be
able to
bring about change. Reducing economic hardship that has sent inflation
and
unemployment spiralling entails negotiating a deal with Western powers
that
ensures Iran’s right to enrich uranium while assuring the international
community
that its intentions are exclusively non-military. It also means reversing
Ahmadinejad’s policy of handing out cash to the poor and ignoring
budgetary
guidelines.
Further, it suggests a loosening of security that in Ahmadinejad’s last
year in
office had become omnipresent with a sharp increase in the numbers of
journalists
imprisoned and a crackdown on access to the Internet. The country will be
watching to see if Rouhani will be allowed to loosen the tight grip on
society and
release political prisoners.
High expectations on Rouhani’s first year in office could well be compounded
by the
combustible combination of widespread discontent and soccer fervour if
Iran
qualifies for the 2014 World Cup this week (June 18) when it plays a
decisive match
against South Korea. Celebrations of a 1997 World Cup qualifier sparked
protests
barely a month after reformist Mohammad Khatami took office as president.
Fans
chanted twice within a matter of months “Death to the Mullahs” while
thousands of
women stormed Tehran’s Azadi stadium.
Need for wise leadership
A soccer defeat four years later prompted protests against a backdrop of
disappointment with Khatami’s failure to achieve change. Khatami’s
younger brother,
the then deputy speaker of parliament, warned at the time that the
protests reflected
popular frustration with unemployment and low standards of living and a
rejection of
the regime’s “excessive interference in people’s private lives.”
Rouhani’s victory offers Khamenei and the regime’s middle-aged
revolutionaries as
well as Iran’s Western detractors an opportunity to achieve their goals.
Rouhani is
certain to project a very different image to the outside world from that
of Ahmadinejad.
To achieve his goals of achieving a resolution to the nuclear issue that
will lift punishing
sanctions, turning Iran’s crippled economy around and reducing intrusive
repression,
Rouhani needs not only Khamenei’s endorsement but also Western
interlocutors who
can convince Iranians that their goal is a mutually acceptable deal
rather than regime
change.
It’s a win-win situation for all but it will take wise leadership willing
to grab the bull by
the horns.
James M. Dorsey is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies,
co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture,
and the author of
The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.
________________________________________
Click here
for past commentaries.
Due to the high number of publications by our RSIS Centre for
Non-Traditional
Security Studies (NTS), RSIS maintains a separate subscription facility
for the
Centre. Please click here
to subscribe to the Centre's publications.
|
Comments
Post a Comment