Guardian Editorial--Iran: Time for cool heads
Monday 9 January 2012
This would be a good time for the US and Europe to decline the ayatollah's kind invitation to be his faction's re-election agent
The following three propositions are all true: in March, Iran is facing one of the most crucial elections in the history of the regime; it is doing so in an atmosphere which has become militarised, not just externally, but internally too – the Revolutionary Guards control Iran's oil industry, key business interests, the nuclear programme and the oil and gas infrastructure; and the more militarised the election gets, the more it will benefit the hardliners around the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He himself has called the vote a potential security challenge. Given this, why are the US and EU about to impose oil sanctions, which even if they do not go as far as Ron Paul's "act of war" will squeeze the source of 60% of the regime's revenue?
Ayatollah Khamenei's reaction to the forthcoming sanctions has been to breathe fire. On Monday he said Iran would not falter in the face of the western-imposed sanctions and, to reinforce the point, Iran announced it had begun uranium enrichment at the Fordo plant, a bunker built into 90 metres of mountain rock near the city of Qom. If the recent sabre-rattling over the Straits of Hormuz had not been enough, Iran said it intended at Fordo to enrich uranium to the highly sensitive 20% enrichment level, regarded in the industry as the technical threshold for bomb-grade material. The ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guards appear to be going out of their way to provoke a western response.
The moderates in this forthcoming election, a relative term at the best of times, are President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei and the "deviant group" around them. Whether these men have taken over the banner of reformism within the elite is debatable. But outside it, the opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who turned the last poll in 2009 into a major domestic crisis, are languishing under house arrest, and a campaign to boycott these elections will be easy for the regime to ignore. The Guardian Council, a conservative body of clerics and lawyers, will this week publish the names of those candidates who have been approved by the regime. Faced with the overwhelming superiority of the Revolutionary Guards, Ahmadinejad has got three cards to play: he is unpredictable, he claims to have compromising information on his political opponents, and the ministry of interior will hold the elections.
Given the stakes, this would be a good time for the US and Europe to decline the ayatollah's kind invitation to be his faction's re-election agent in Iran. Fordo remains under IAEA inspection. No tanker is being prevented from passing through Hormuz. Another round of nuclear talks with Iran could be in the offing. This is a time for cool heads.
This would be a good time for the US and Europe to decline the ayatollah's kind invitation to be his faction's re-election agent
The following three propositions are all true: in March, Iran is facing one of the most crucial elections in the history of the regime; it is doing so in an atmosphere which has become militarised, not just externally, but internally too – the Revolutionary Guards control Iran's oil industry, key business interests, the nuclear programme and the oil and gas infrastructure; and the more militarised the election gets, the more it will benefit the hardliners around the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He himself has called the vote a potential security challenge. Given this, why are the US and EU about to impose oil sanctions, which even if they do not go as far as Ron Paul's "act of war" will squeeze the source of 60% of the regime's revenue?
Ayatollah Khamenei's reaction to the forthcoming sanctions has been to breathe fire. On Monday he said Iran would not falter in the face of the western-imposed sanctions and, to reinforce the point, Iran announced it had begun uranium enrichment at the Fordo plant, a bunker built into 90 metres of mountain rock near the city of Qom. If the recent sabre-rattling over the Straits of Hormuz had not been enough, Iran said it intended at Fordo to enrich uranium to the highly sensitive 20% enrichment level, regarded in the industry as the technical threshold for bomb-grade material. The ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guards appear to be going out of their way to provoke a western response.
The moderates in this forthcoming election, a relative term at the best of times, are President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei and the "deviant group" around them. Whether these men have taken over the banner of reformism within the elite is debatable. But outside it, the opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who turned the last poll in 2009 into a major domestic crisis, are languishing under house arrest, and a campaign to boycott these elections will be easy for the regime to ignore. The Guardian Council, a conservative body of clerics and lawyers, will this week publish the names of those candidates who have been approved by the regime. Faced with the overwhelming superiority of the Revolutionary Guards, Ahmadinejad has got three cards to play: he is unpredictable, he claims to have compromising information on his political opponents, and the ministry of interior will hold the elections.
Given the stakes, this would be a good time for the US and Europe to decline the ayatollah's kind invitation to be his faction's re-election agent in Iran. Fordo remains under IAEA inspection. No tanker is being prevented from passing through Hormuz. Another round of nuclear talks with Iran could be in the offing. This is a time for cool heads.
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