Sweet Scent Of Service Sours For Citizens

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"Partial returns from Friday’s Iranian elections suggested today that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had experienced a major setback barely over a year after his own election.

The victory of a pragmatic politician, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, over a hard-line candidate associated with Mr. Ahmadinejad gave one strong indication that voters favored more moderate policies. Mr. Rafsanjani won almost twice as many votes as the hard-liner, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, for a position in the 86-member Assembly of Experts. The Assembly has the power to replace the supreme religious leader.

Final results for the Assembly of Experts showed that more than 65 candidates close to Mr. Rafsanjani were elected. Mr. Rafsanjani lost out to Mr. Ahmadinejad in the 2005 election runoff for president. The voter turnout was over 60 percent — much higher than in previous years."

What the Times describes as a "major setback" for Ahmedinejad, the BBC calls a blow, and the Financial Times a "bloody nose". The FT analysis is worth quoting in more detail, since it seems strangely familiar:

"Just 18 months after the landslide election of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran, the bloody nose delivered to his government at the weekend suggests Iranian politics is entering a new and volatile stage in which voters deliver swift verdicts on their leaders.

“Of course the results are a strong message for the president, just as mid-term elections in the US were for [George W.] Bush,” said a former senior official. “It’s a sign that changes need to be made and that radical policies should be revised in fav our of greater pragmatism.” (...)

“There is going to be a rethink at the top, and this is the real importance of the election,” said Mostafa Tajzadeh, a leading official in the reformist party Mosharekat.

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s decision to run his own Pleasant Scent of Service list independent of other conservatives has been seen as illustrating a general failure to build political bridges – even to fellow fundamentalists – that has alienated many former allies.

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad has attempted to distance himself from the list’s relatively poor performance, claiming that only the “foreign media” saw the poll as a test of his government.

Nonetheless, doubts remain about whether Mr Ahmadi-Nejad is temperamentally capable of moderating his policies. “I don’t think it’s in his personality to change course,” said Nasser Hadian, politics professor at Tehran University and friend of the president."

And yes, Ahmedinejad's list is called the Sweet (or Pleasant) Scent of Service.

I'm not wild about Rafsanjani. If memory serves, he's thought to be corrupt and somewhat unresponsive, so the idea that he won on a reform platform is somewhat bizarre. But at least he's not Ahmedinejad.

***

Note: I was reading this analysis by Nadezhda, who writes that the Iranian President is not responsible for foreign policy. This doesn't particularly surprise me: I normally think of Iran as a country that (oddly enough) has two governments, not one, and no stable division of power between the two, so peculiar divisions of labor are (I think) to be expected. Nonetheless, I had seen this claim before but never gone to the trouble of seeing whether or not it is true. (Not that I don't trust Nadezhda -- quite the contrary -- but I like looking things up.) It's rather difficult -- all the main Google terms, like 'Iran' and 'foreign policy' and 'President', are the sorts of terms that yield huge numbers of unrelated stories. However, just in case anyone else has been wondering whether this claim is true, some cites to spare you the trouble of tracking them down. First, the Council on Foreign Relations:

"Who sets Iranian foreign policy?

The Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), currently headed by Ali Larijani. Larijani doubles as Iran's top negotiator on nuclear issues and enjoys close relations with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say over all SNSC decisions. "Decisions in Iran are made by consensus rather than decree" says Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group. "Ayatollah Khamenei rules the country much like a CEO." The SNSC is composed mostly of top officials from the ministries of foreign affairs, intelligence, and interior, as well as military leaders from the army and the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's main security apparatus formed in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. (...)

What is the role of Iran’s president in foreign relations?

Ahmadinejad has some influence over foreign policy—he appoints the cabinet and the head of the SNSC—but power remains mostly in the hands of the SNSC and the Supreme Leader. "[Ahmadinejad] is a small piece of the puzzle and can be influential on the fringes, but certainly not [by] steering Iranian foreign or nuclear policy," Sadjadpour says. Experts say Ahmadinejad's controversial statements calling for Israel's elimination should not be construed as official foreign policy. "He's sort of a bull in a china shop and neophyte in foreign affairs," says Samii. "He does not have great input on [Iranian] foreign policy. But he hasn't been president six months and he's managed to alienate most of the international community." Two days after his anti-Israel comments, Khamenei came out publicly to say Iran's official policy was one of nonaggression toward all members of the United Nations. "He made it very clear: enough of this talk," Sadjadpour says. Older generations in Iran, particularly centrists like Rafsanjani and former president Mohammed Khatami, have been particularly critical of Ahmadinejad's hard-line foreign policy, as well as his "wholesale replacement of state officials," says Samii."

Second, Global Security:

"In practice, the control of foreign policy, nuclear policy, and the main economic policies were already within the power of the supreme leader. From the beginning, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei wanted Ahmadinejad to be the next president because he did not want an equal partner or rival as president. The presidency was the last holdout of Iran's reformists, and the victory of Ahmadinejad gave total control of Iran's state institutions to hard-liners. Khamenei controlled the Parliament, the judiciary, the army, radio and television, and now he will be able to control the presidency as well. The conservative political establishment made a decision late in the campaign to support Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad, more closely tied to Khamenei than either Rafsanjani or Khatami, is unlikely to challenge the Guardian Council, particularly given the alleged Guardians Council support for his presidential bid."

Good news, I think.

Comments

[Jackmormon]

This is a fairly helpful visual guide to the various decision-making institutions in Iran.

[fleinn]

..Whatever would we all do if the major news- outlets didn't manage to shoehorn every election held, in any country, into a lite- version of elections in the US..

[liberal japonicus]

JM's link had some flotsam attached to the end, here it is cleaned up.

*waves*

[cleek]

cool. so, when do we invade ?

[cleek]

... invade Libya, that is.

[Jay C]

Re fleinn's comment at 2:24: What would we do? Probably (like hilzoy) go and check out different sources and actually try to learn something about how the world outside the US actually works.

(The implications of the US Media having to impose this onerous burden on the citizenry make it obvious why they don't!)

Oh, and btw, hilzoy; I think Nadezhda is a "he" (?) - thanks for the link to American Footprints, anyway - an excellent (IMO) FP blog.

[hilzoy]

Jay C: really? Live and learn. Anyways, I love AF.

[nadezhda]

hilzoy -- Thanks for doing the extra research. I tend to take for granted that our readers know stuff that people like, hey, uh maybe, say the average US Congresscritters don't know. So I've been surprised by the links to my post that seemed to take as "news" the fact that the President doesn't control foreign policy.

What I found more interesting was just how competitive the elections were. Granted, Khamenei rigs the process from the start by determining who can run, especially for the Council of Experts. As the Pepe Escobar article I quoted said, Khamenei seems to be "politicizing the religious system non-stop, to the point of the Islamic Republic nowadays being neither a democracy nor a theocracy: rather, it's a clerical autocracy". But there's a pretty wide range of both ideology and power groups at play, and the fighting is clearly intense because they seem to be playing for meaningful governance stakes.

Agree about Rafsanjani. Hey, the Iranians themselves call him the Shark. But he certainly seems to have nine lives politically. He was written off for dead two years ago as a corrupt has-been, rejected by the voters.

I was also interested in one of the parallels with our own elections. The importance of turnout -- one assumes low turnout is just "the base," so if the anti-Ahmadinejad forces were to do well, they had to get the "swing" voters who may have supported Ahmadinejad in the Presidential but are disenchanted.

And Jay C, just for the record, nadezhda is indeed a pseudonymn (it means "hope" in Russian). But I'm emphatically not male. Not that there would be anything wrong with that...

[Jay C]

nadezhda:

My apologies: I was aware of the etymology of your pseud: the error in gender was, AFAIR, a misremembering of a comment you'd posted on the old LaT blog a while back.

Anyway, it's no difference to me: quality blogging (as hilzoy proves about a dozen times a week) is quite obviously, NOT gender-specific!

[John Thullen]

"The Assembly has the power to replace the supreme religious leader."

That's a great sentence.

P.S. Jackmormon, how goes it?

[Seth Edenbaum]

Nadezhda, never underestimate the ignorance of the american people. And none of this was surprising. Ahmedinejad was elected in a protest vote, not because of a sudden return to theological and moral rigor on the part of the Iranian electorate. It only makes sense that they turned back to the stability and well managed corruption Rafsanjani represents. And most Iranians are in favor of proceeding with nuclear research so that's not going to change.

Iran is not a boogeyman, though that's all we seem capable of imagining of outsiders.

[Jackmormon]

Ok, John, thanks for asking. I need to get back to writing, I know.

[David Schraub]

Rafsanjani has also been implicated in the 1994 JCC bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 85. Argentinian prosecutors have requested an arrest warrant..

[Jonathan Edelstein]

The Iranian constitution (which, for all the IRI's autocratic tendencies, is generally followed) creates a division of labor with respect to foreign policy. Article 110 gives the Supreme Leader "command of the Armed Forces" and authority over "declaration of war and peace," and article 176 gives the SNSC general authority over external threats and security policy (including defense and intelligence). On the other hand, appointment of ambassadors and conduct of diplomacy are presidential prerogatives. So it's probably fair to say that the leader, either directly or indirectly through the SNSC, has the final say over military and national security policy, while the president can conduct foreign policy in areas such as trade and cultural exchange.

[Anarch]

(Not that I don't trust Nadezhda -- quite the contrary -- but I like looking things up.)

Man. You can take the girl out of academia...

...no, wait. You can't even do that!

[Anarch]

I need to get back to writing, I know.

Slacker!

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I strongly object to the idea that Rafsanjani is a 'moderate' leader. He simply was not and shows no indication whatsoever of being one now. This represents a reconsolidation of power (as if they needed it) for the Council of Guardians and the Expediency Discernment Council. Rafsanjani isn't a moderate leader so much as he is an extremist leader closely allied with the two most important Councils as opposed to an extremist leader not closely allied with the Councils (Ahmadinejad).

[Seth Edenbaum]

Sabo, you don't follow Iran much do you?

[hilzoy]

For the record: the best commentary I've seen on the Iranian elections, which regrettably I hadn't seen when I wrote this (and why not? I usually check his site every day; why didn't I check it this day?) is Jonathan Edelstein's.

And my sense is that Rafsanjani is what passes for a moderate in Iraq. Since I respect Seb, I;d be interested in hearing why he doesn't.

[Josh]

And my sense is that Rafsanjani is what passes for a moderate in Iraq. Since I respect Seb, I;d be interested in hearing why he doesn't.

I won't speak for Sebastian, but I've seen plenty of other people ignore the "in Iran" (I'm presuming you mean Iran not Iraq) when discussing the Iranian elections. This is something that Abu Aardvark has hammered on for a while: "moderate" is relative, not absolute.

[hilzoy]

Yikes: yes, Iran.

One data point: he is, as I noted, widely regarded as corrupt. People who can be bought, and not just a little but enough to acquire a widespread reputation, tend not to be the same people who are willing to go down in flames for their principles. (There are, of course, exceptions.)