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Written Off - Ahmadinejad's Exaggerated Demise

Daniel Berman warns us not to celebrate Ahmadinejad's demise too early.

By Daniel Berman

26 Sep 2011, 15:35

Western Observers have a long history of getting Iran wrong. Few foresaw the fall of the Shah, and even after he left the country at the end of 1978, most still hardly believed that Khomeini would succeed him. The extent of the protests that followed the 2009 Presidential election surprised even me, at the time studying for a Masters in Iranian studies. But the same applies in the other direction. The fall of the Islamic Republic has been “just around the corner” for three decades, yet it never quite happens.

So it makes sense to take with a grain of salt the editorials that have appeared in American newspapers heralding the doom of the Islamic Republic as its President arrives in New York to Address the United Nations. Ray Takeyh, a well respected Iran hand, probably goes farthest rhetorically in the Washington Post, in a piece entitled “End of an Era”, in which he declares Ahmadinejad “an inconsequential emissary of a regime uneasily heading toward the dustbin of history.” Proclaiming that the rise of the Green Movement has destroyed the moral foundations of the regime in Tehran, he concludes that this moral vacuum will lead inevitably to its rapid collapse.

Leaving aside the fact that the Iranian hardliners have been dwelling quite comfortably in a moral vacuum at least since Khatami’s election in 1997 when they began a spate of extra-judicial killings, there is no clear line drawn as to how this moral discredit will bring down the regime. In other pieces mentions are made of the Arab Spring revolts, hopeful signs surely, but there are few protestors on the streets now, and the most that editorial writers can cite is the horse-trading between the President, the Majlis, and the Judiciary over who gets paid off for releasing the American Hikers imprisoned for espionage. This conflict is certainly far less of a direct threat to the survival of the Islamic Republic than a similar feud in 1980 between President Bani-Sadr and the Majlis over the fate of a different set of American Hostages. It is also better seen as a continuation of the fight that broke out this spring over control of the Intelligence Ministry, and despite the rumors Ahmadinejad’s impending impeaching that appeared even in respectable papers like the Guardian, equally about the distribution of patronage.

Iran, like most authoritarian states in the Middle East and Africa, is on one level a Mafia writ large. Forget Ayatollahs, Supreme Leaders, and Presidents. The real power is held by a professional bourgeois of paramilitaries, government bureaucrats, executives of government linked business, and their associated children and hangers on. The people at the top bid for loyalty from this middle management in a patronage-based structure, using the institutions under their control to provide payoffs, and it’s no surprise that the major conflicts of Ahmadinejad’s recent tenure have come over the Oil, Interior, and Intelligence Ministries. Between them, they control a vast portion of the legal economy, namely oil, as well as the trade in nominally illegal hi-tech goods, for which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, nominally charged with their confiscation, is in reality the largest distributor. The Revolutionary Guards control a shadow economy estimated at over $30b a year, made possible by the very sanctions that US Administrations hope to use to pressure the government to make changes. This is not to say that this whole group is opposed to change on the contrary. They are quite willing to support social opening, and an open conflict with Israel or the United States would be catastrophic. But they are opposed to anything that threatens their economic interests, whether it is free elections and an independent judiciary at home, or full entrance into the world market on the international side. They also are conscious of anyone looking to upset the apple cart by destabilizing the whole system.

That is precisely why the Iranian President got in trouble earlier this year. Ahmadinejad’s political problems have come largely from his successes rather than his failures. Namely he got greedy. In order for the authoritarian structure to work, no one faction or patronage structure must be allowed to become too powerful. Just as a mafia family experiencing a too rapid rise would lead to other crime families uniting against them, so too it has been this year in Iran. Over the last three years, Ahmadinejad has managed to oust the Ministers of Oil and the Interior and replace them with his own men despite complaints from Khamenei and the Majlis. The latter is extremely important as it vets candidates for elected office, a power Ahmadinejad has not been loath to use. In recent years, the Guardian Council, once a bane of reformers for disqualifying their candidates, has taken to reinstating candidates instead. The Intelligence Ministry, with control of the security forces, was too big a prize coming after the Interior, and Ahmadinejad’s power grab united everyone against him. Their goal was not to destroy him – that would create a vacuum which the Green Movement or someone else might fill, not to mention alienating his whole network. Rather they wanted him to play his part cooperatively in mutually beneficial system.

Which in effect is what he is doing this weekend; Ahmadinejad’s real achievements, to the extent they exist, come in the field of foreign affairs. This does not refer to his calling out of the American-Zionist-Illuminati conspiracy, but rather significant efforts to expand relations and trade with Latin America and Africa, as well drawing Iran closer to Russia and China. His Nuclear defiance, while perhaps not as beneficial, is an achievement in itself as he has effectively told the world to butt out and they have done exactly that. Iran’s influence in the region, even if it can be termed negative, is higher in places like Lebanon and Iraq, both of which now feature Iranian proxies in their government, than at any time in recent memory. Even the Saudis, during George Bush’s term the leading proponents of resisting Iran, have expressed interest in a modus vivendi.

As for the opposition, foreign policy is not their strong point. They would much rather talk about domestic corruption or economic problems, ironically the very talk which terrifies the regime the most. Most Iranians want to open up to the United States, but not at the costs of the political gains they have made in the region, definitely not if other concessions are not forthcoming in exchange. Their critique of the nuclear program was not that it was wrong, but that it was foolhardy, counterproductive, and certain to lead to war. By effectively ignoring the issue and taking military action off the table, Obama has unwittingly removed a major, in some sense the only major argument domestic moderates had. Unfortunately this is not the least of the opposition’s problems.

On the domestic side, the opposition remains off the streets. Wikileaks claims that Rafsanjani and the Green leadership abandoned protests in favor of an effort attempting to make him the next Supreme Leader. If so they are fools. Rafsanjani’s odds of achieving that office, never good given his unpopularity and record of betraying practically everyone over the last two decades, probably disappeared completely when he was ousted as head of the Assembly of Experts charged with elections to that office.

Whether true or not, the story illustrates a major problem with Western coverage of Iran. Both the Western media, and, at least judging from Wikileaks, the US State Department have an extremely limited number of sources in Iran that seem increasingly to boil down to Rafsanjani, members of his family, and close allies of the former President. This was already apparent during the 2009 Protests when virtually every story noted his position in the Assembly of Experts and speculation about his actions featured in almost every wire report. If anything, the situation has worsened since then, potentially due to the role his money is playing in keeping the opposition afloat.

While Rafsanjani-related theorizing and conjecture is fun, it has its limits as demonstrated by the ease with which he was removed from his most important position, the one vital to his future plans. It’s also potentially fatal to the opposition. The great attack on them was that they were dupes, and becoming a subsidiary of Rafsanjani inc. does not help that impression. It does not matter if they have in fact abandoned an open struggle in favor of advancing the former President’s career interests. What matters is that in the absence of any system of information distribution within the country, they are dependent on outside media sources being broadcasted back into it. Positive western coverage is not helpful if it’s reduced to procedural maneuvers irrelevant to the vast majority of Iranians.

There are definitely challenges facing the current Iranian leadership, and Ahmadinejad has not had a good year. But the government is far from collapse, and we should not rush to write its obituary.