Misconceptions Meet Reality In Iran: Now What?

Thirty years ago, in 1979, Americans were assured that the then Shah of Iran would survive despite President Carter’s harebrained approach.. Last week Americans were assured that - to some extend due to Obama’s support - Mousavi would be elected in Iran. Both estimates were dead wrong.

A Stratfor report points out that “Americans and Europeans have been misreading Iran for 30 years.” It says “Even after the shah fell, the myth has survived that a mass movement of people exists demanding liberalization-a movement that if encouraged by the West eventually would form a majority and rule the country.”

 ”(T)his outlook fails to recognize (1.) Iran is a country that is poor, pious and (2.) content on the whole with the revolution forged 30 years ago.

Those who think otherwise “are to be found among the professional classes in Tehran, as well as among students. Many speak English, making them accessible to the touring journalists, diplomats and intelligence people who pass through. They are the ones who can speak to Westerners, and they are the ones willing to speak to Westerners. And these people give Westerners a wildly distorted view of Iran. They can create the impression that a fantastic liberalization is at hand-but not when you realize that iPod-owning Anglophones are not exactly the majority in Iran. ”

Like Carter, Obama was deceived perhaps because both wished it were so. It simply is not so. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected with about two-thirds of the vote.

Supporters of his opponent, including Obama, were stunned that they had been bamboozled.  A highly suspect poll predicted former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi would beat Ahmadinejad.  But, it was wrong - dead wrong. Afterall how could you conduct a poll in a country where phones are rare, clustered in liberal urban areas where Mousavi probably did win. But outside Tehran, and beyond persons easy to poll, the numbers turned out quite differently.

Western media, especially among the U. S. main stream media are drum beating.on the theme of a stolen election. Though not impossible that is frankly unlikely because tens of thousands of people would have to be complicit and nobody has offered even a speck of evidence which is itself very unlikely.

Stratfor also contends the following:

• 1. Ahmadinejad enjoys widespread popularity. He doesn’t speak to the issues that matter to the urban professionals, namely, the economy and liberalization. But Ahmadinejad speaks to three fundamental issues that accord with the rest of the country.
• 2. Ahmadinejad speaks of piety. Among vast swathes of Iranian society, the willingness to speak unaffectedly about religion is crucial. Though it may be difficult for Americans and Europeans to believe, there are people in the world to whom economic progress is not of the essence; people who want to maintain their communities as they are and live the way their grandparents lived. These are people who see modernization-whether from the shah or Mousavi-as unattractive. They forgive Ahmadinejad his economic failures.
• 3. Ahmadinejad speaks of corruption. There is a sense in the countryside that the ayatollahs-who enjoy enormous wealth and power, and often have lifestyles that reflect this-have corrupted the Islamic Revolution. Ahmadinejad is disliked by many of the religious elite precisely because he has systematically raised the corruption issue, which resonates in the countryside.
• 4. Ahmadinejad is a spokesman for Iranian national security, a tremendously popular stance. It must always be remembered that Iran fought a war with Iraq in the 1980s that lasted eight years, cost untold lives and suffering, and effectively ended in its defeat. Iranians, particularly the poor, experienced this war on an intimate level. They fought in the war, and lost husbands and sons in it. As in other countries, memories of a lost war don’t necessarily delegitimize the regime. Rather, they can generate hopes for a resurgent Iran, thus validating the sacrifices made in that war-something Ahmadinejad taps into. By arguing that Iran should not back down but become a major power, he speaks to the veterans and their families, who want something positive to emerge from all their sacrifices in the war.

Perhaps the greatest factor in Ahmadinejad’s favor is that Mousavi spoke for the better districts of Tehran-something akin to running a U.S. presidential election as a spokesman for Georgetown and the Upper East Side. Such a base will get you hammered, and Mousavi got hammered. Fraud or not, Ahmadinejad won and he won significantly. That he won is not the mystery; the mystery is why others thought he wouldn’t win.

For a time on Friday, it seemed that Mousavi might be able to call for an uprising in Tehran. But the moment passed when Ahmadinejad’s security forces on motorcycles intervened. And that leaves the West with its worst-case scenario: a democratically elected anti-liberal.

Western democracies assume that publics will elect liberals who will protect their rights. In reality, it’s a more complicated world. Hitler is the classic example of someone who came to power constitutionally, and then proceeded to gut the constitution. Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s victory is a triumph of both democracy and repression.

What will happen next?

• 1. Ahmadinejad to consolidate his position under the cover of anti-corruption. He wants to clean up the ayatollahs, many of whom are his enemies. He will need the support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
• 2. This election has made Ahmadinejad a powerful president, perhaps the most powerful in Iran since the revolution.
• 3. Ahmadinejad does not want to challenge Khamenei, and Khamenei will not want to challenge Ahmadinejad. A forced marriage is emerging, one which may place many other religious leaders in a difficult position.

Hopes that a new political leadership would cut back on Iran’s nuclear weapons program have been dashed. The champion of that program has won, in part because he championed the program.

We still see Iran as far from developing a deliverable nuclear weapon, but certainly Obama hopes that Ahmadinejad would either be replaced-or at least weakened and forced to be more conciliatory-have been crushed.

Interestingly, Ahmadinejad sent congratulations to Obama on his inauguration. We would expect Obama to reciprocate under his opening policy, which U.S. Vice President Joe Biden appears to have affirmed, assuming he was speaking for Obama. Once the vote fraud issue settles, and it soon will we will have a better idea of whether Obama’s policies will continue. (We expect they will.)

What we have now are two presidents in a politically secure position, something that normally forms a basis for negotiations. The problem is that it is not clear what the Iranians are prepared to negotiate on, nor is it clear what Obama are prepared to give the Iranians to induce them to negotiate.

• Iran wants greater influence in Iraq and its role as a regional leader acknowledged, something the United States doesn’t want to give them. Unless Obama is very deft Iraq will erupt in civil war soon after Obama quits it, and either he goes back into a bloody new war or cuts and runs.
• The United States wants an end to the Iranian nuclear program, which Iran doesn’t want and frankly has little reason to to give up.

On the surface, this would seem to open the door for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Former U.S. President George W. Bush did not-and Obama does not-have any appetite for such an attack. Both presidents blocked the Israelis from attacking, assuming the Israelis ever actually wanted to attack.

So, Iran’s  election appears to have frozen the status quo in place. Neither the United States nor Iran seem prepared to move significantly, and there are no third parties that want to get involved in the issue beyond the occasional European diplomatic mission or Russian threat to sell something to Iran and now its courtship of Israel.. In the end, this shows what we have long known: This game is locked in place, and goes on.

This article is adapted  and edited from from a Stratfor report. Strafor is a private intelligence company delivering in-depth analysis, assessments and forecasts on global geopolitical, economic, security and public policy issues.