With only days to go before the August 6 inauguration of President-Elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad, early indications suggest that the domestic and foreign policies of Iran's new presidential administration may defy initial expectations.
Iran's nuclear program, that most controversial of Iranian foreign policy issues, has grabbed headlines for now, but Ahmadinejad's agenda on this front appears to be the exception rather than the rule for future policies. The accumulation of social and economic problems inherited from past governments, rivalry among various political and military groups, declining interest in the ideals of the Islamic Revolution, as well as the threat of fresh foreign crises promise to dictate that pragmatism rather than radicalism characterize the Ahmadinejad administration.
Both the new president and his patron, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, are fully aware of these challenges. Early signs are that they are proceeding with great caution, preferring to consolidate their hold on power before the enactment of any major policy changes, which could take years.
Nonetheless, where Iran's nuclear program is concerned, the new president appears willing to eschew his customary caution and take bold steps. In part, this could be a nod to the hardline security, intelligence and military structures that supported Ahmadinejad's June 24 election. Both Ahmadinejad and the power bloc that is now in control of Iran believe that the nuclear program can enhance Iran's global status, deter future threats, and has already consumed too much of the country's resources to be discontinued. Ahmadinejad has said on several occasions that he wants a foreign policy that "maximizes the Islamic Republic's power and prestige" in the world.
With that goal apparently in mind, on July 31, Iran announced that it planned to resume work on its UFC nuclear power plant in Isfahan after several months of inactivity, as stipulated by an agreement signed with Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Formally, Iran had a pretext to go ahead with the decision since all parties had earlier conceded that a new agreement would be reached by this date. Iran, however, refused European demands for a delay before it resumed uranium enrichment, and has since, in fact, used the request as a pretext to resume its suspended enrichment activities.
A leaked report that appeared in two Iranian newspapers and was later confirmed by the National Security Council further illustrated the hardening of Iran's position on nuclear energy. According to the report, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently invited outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, State Expediency Council Chairman and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mirhussein Mossavi, prime minister during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, and Ahmadinejad to his house for a private discussion. This unusual gathering was interpreted as a clear sign that Ayatollah Khamenei intended to secure an endorsement from the heads of previous administrations for a major policy decision before Ahmadinejad formally takes office.
If so, many international observers worry that that decision could only deepen the divide between Iran and Europe and the US over its nuclear program. On August 2, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy announced that France, Germany and the UK would call for an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Association's council of governors to discuss Iran's decision to restart enrichment activities at Isfahan. Depending on the outcome, news wires reported Douste-Blazy as saying, a proposal could be put to the United Nations Security Council for sanctions to be imposed on Iran.
The news may do little to sway Iran's course. An individual close to a top aide to Ahmadinejad told EurasiaNet that in Ahmadinejad's? first face-to-face meeting with Hassan Rouhani, Iran's point-man on the nuclear issue, the president-elect had said that being referred to the Security Council is a small price to pay for completing Iran's nuclear program.
Recent events increasingly point to such a stance. Ali Larijani, an outspoken critic of the Khatami administration's nuclear policy, has been named as a possible pick for foreign minister. Larijani has characterized Khamati's nuclear policy as too accommodating to France, Germany and the UK and spoken strongly in favor of resuming the country's nuclear program. In an apparent attempt to drum up popular support for such a move, Iran's national television and radio stations have been running programs over the past two weeks that highlight the benefits of nuclear energy.
Nonetheless, other foreign policy decisions appear more reminiscent of a delicate balancing act. The Iranian and Israeli press, for instance, recently reported that he plans to meet with leaders of the Iranian Jewish community in New York City in September when he will attend the UN General Assembly.
The 49-year-old leader is seen as a confirmed believer in the Islamic social and political policies associated with the late Ayatullah Khomenei, leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
On social questions, he is known to stand for an expanded role for local mosques and religious charities as substitutes for non-governmental institutions and other civil society groups. Involving the government in the education of the masses is seen as the best tactic for combating behavior that deviates from the moral code established under Khomeini.
On the economic front, he advocates using populist-style policies to reduce the growing economic gap between Iranians and thereby assure that they have a stake in the resolution of pressing socio-economic problems.
Political circles in Iran are also pointing to a subtle but potentially significant shift in the next government's economic policies, as suggested by recent changes among Ahmadinejad's top advisors.
According to several leaked reports, Ahmadinejad has removed two prominent parliamentarians associated with policies of economic isolation and heavy government regulation -- Ahmad Tavakoli and Mahmood Khoshchehreh and replaced them with two supporters of relatively liberal economic policies, Farhad Rahbar, an academic, and parliamentarian Dawood Daneshjafari. Both men are advocates of a smaller government and economic liberalization.
The close personal associates of the president-elect who make up his inner circle, centered largely around the Abadgaran faction in Tehran's city government, reportedly played the guiding role in choosing candidates for Iran's new cabinet.
These changes have reportedly already created considerable tension with older and established power centers like the Militant Clergy Associations and the bazaar-based Islamic Motalefeh. Even some close hard-line allies of the president-elect are said to be irritated by his appointments.
Aside from the president's own inner circle are two power centers likely to figure heavily in any future political calculations: the Issargaran ("Those who make sacrifices"),individuals with backgrounds in intelligence, security and the Revolutionary Guards; and the Abadgaran parliamentary faction, a group that heavily favored Ahmadinejad's rival in the presidential elections, economic crime tsar Mohammed-Bagher Ghalibaf, and is tied to an organization called the Islamic Engineers Association. [For background see the Eurasianet Insight archive].
Yet such opposition in no way indicates any slackening in Ahmadinejad's conservative worldview. As he commented in the run-up to his June 24 election, "We did not have a revolution to have democracy."
Editor's note:
Kamal Nazer Yasin is a pseudonym for a freelance journalist specializing in Iranian affairs.
