[Peace-discuss] Iran

[Morton K. Brussel]

A view from Asia Times' Pepe Escobar.

	
US-IRAN WALL OF MISTRUST, Part 1
Obama's Persian double
By Pepe Escobar

On Tuesday, Iran celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Islamic  
Revolution. In this year of celebrations galore - from the 20th  
anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall to the 50th anniversary of  
the Cuban revolution - why not also dream of a year zero?

It's September 2009. Barack Obama is the United States president.  
Mohammad "dialogue of civilizations" Khatami is the Iranian president.  
Khatami flies to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. He  
bumps into Obama in the corridors of the UN. With fists unclenched,  
they exchange pleasantries - and retire to a room for some real "face- 
to-face". The 30-year - some would say 56-year - wall of mistrust  
between
the US and Iran finally comes tumbling down.

If current Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad remains a mirror image  
of the departed George W Bush, Khatami could not be a more fitting  
mirror image of Obama. Within the complex parameters of the Iranian  
system, he is a reformist able to reach out to conservatives and  
wildly popular among women, the young and progressives of all stripes.  
He's running for president in the June elections - and he's got what  
it takes to give Ahmadinejad a run for his rials.

Khatami is fluent in German and an avid reader of German philosopher  
Jurgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School of critical theory masters  
(Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer). He is a former minister of culture  
(1989-1992) and was elected president in 1997 with a landslide 70% of  
the vote, with women and young people overwhelmingly behind him, and  
re-elected in 2001.

He was also the man who called for a "dialogue of civilizations". The  
Bush administration snubbed him - as it was entangled in the failed,  
Huntingtonian thesis of the "clash of civilizations".

Years later, one day before the 5th anniversary of September 11, 2001,  
Khatami delivered a landmark speech at Harvard - the temple where  
Samuel Huntington was a professor. Khatami preferred to fight missiles  
with words. He presented his concept to an array of global forums,  
including the UN, which even declared 2001 - of all years - the Year  
of Dialogue Among Civilizations.

US corporate media did not even bother to debate what Khatami had to  
say to Harvard.

Fight the power
This correspondent traveled widely across Iran during the reformist  
Khatami years, in the late 1990s, and then when Iran was already  
included in the "axis of evil" by Bush, along with Iraq and North  
Korea. In Khatami's Iran, the flow towards more personal liberties and  
less repression of mores was glaring, but as glaring as the moves by  
the "system" - embodied by the mullahcracy and the judiciary - to  
resolutely thwart it.

Years later, Ahmadinejad's definitely non-reformist economic policies  
proved themselves to be an absolute disaster. Official inflation  
stands at 24% - and rising. Ahmadinejad, who spends a lot of time in  
countryside tours, may have done some good to the rural masses by  
investing part of Iran's oil revenues on infrastructure - building  
better roads and better schools. But the large Iranian urban middle  
class is hurting - from students and working professionals to those  
who depend on a meager state pension, not to mention farmers in the  
countryside itself.

Much worse is the discontent in the bazaar - Iran is still basically a  
bazaar economy - and that means an organized net of import-export  
bazaaris, shopkeepers, moneylenders and captains of industry  
traditionally very close to the clerical establishment.

So economic recklessness is not a privilege of mullahs - it also  
affects former, non-clerical Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or  
Pasdaran, like self-described "street cleaner of the people"  
Ahmadinejad.

Social justice, wealth redistribution and caring for the downtrodden -  
to the horror of US Republicans - remain central tenets of the Islamic  
Revolution. Thus Khatami has found his opening: he argues that  
Ahmadinejad's economic incompetence undermines the every essence of  
the Islamic Revolution - as defined by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah  
Khomeini himself. Quite a few conservatives - although not the  
hardliners - subscribe to this view.
On top of it, Ahmadinejad is an apocalyptical Mahdist - believing from  
the bottom of his heart in the imminent arrival of the Mahdi, the  
"occult" Twelfth Imam. Most Iranian Shi'ites are not Mahdist.

The US-imposed sanctions over Iran's nuclear program also bite.  
Because of them, Royal Dutch Shell and France's Total dropped out from  
developing stretches of the huge South Pars gas fields - and so far  
they have not been replaced by (inferior) Chinese or Russian know-how.

Khatami for his part remains very popular in Iran. His views are  
eminently moderate. He blasted Ahmadinejad for his childish Holocaust  
denial. He favors a normal relationship with Washington. He favors a  
two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

He offered the ultimate diplomatic olive branch to Washington in early  
2003 via the Swiss ambassador in Tehran - under the general umbrella  
of finally defeating Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Even recognizing  
Israel was on the table. As University of Michigan professor Juan Cole  
indelibly put it, "[Former US vice president Dick] Cheney is said to  
have shot down that initiative quicker than he could shoot a friend in  
the face." Khatami even agreed - in 2004 - for Iran to temporarily  
suspend its uranium-enrichment program.

His enemies, though, are very powerful - the ultra hardcore extreme  
right which controls the exclusive 12-member Council of Guardians, and  
many of the 86-member Council of Experts. For most of these clerics,  
anti-Americanism in itself is a religion, and the "Great Satan", even  
incarnated in Obama's skin, remains very much alive (and deceptive).

What the players want
The key questions from now on are who Khatami will be running against  
- and how not to split the reformist vote.

Ali Larijani, the former nuclear negotiator - later effectively ousted  
by an Ahmadinejad ploy - and currently speaker of the Majlis  
(parliament), might run against Ahmadinejad. Whatever he decides,  
Khatami will certainly attract some or even all of his votes.

Mohammad Qalibaf, another conservative and a former governorof Tehran,  
may also run. In this case he will split the Ahmadinejad vote. And  
Mehdi Karrubi, a relative liberal, may not run, and that would also  
reinforce Khatami's position.

What will Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei do? Khatami's father  
was close to Khamenei. The Supreme Leader has been paying lip service  
to Ahmadinejad's accomplishments. But it's all very inscrutable in the  
top echelons. As much as the system deployed all its might in 2005 to  
elect Ahmadinejad - betting on a pious Khomeinist former Pasdaran  
instead of a cleric - it may consider it is not time for yet another  
reformist push.

Khatami after all will have to face a similar situation to Obama's -  
he will have to face down his hardline Khomeinist foes as much as  
Obama must face down Washington's special interests and the entrenched  
power elite.

And what does Obama really want? Taking the president at face value,  
what he just said at his first White House prime-time news conference  
is that "we can start sitting across the table, face-to-face".

Obama stressed the "mutual respect" between Iran and the US, so  
"openings" will lead to negotiations. But it all comes with  
preconditions attached - such as still defining Iran as a supporter of  
terrorist organizations (this was a thing of the 1980s) and the  
unshakeable - and unproven - belief that Iran is pursuing a nuclear  
weapon.

Literally a few hours after Obama's press conference in Washington,  
Ahmadinejad delivered his response - at the pregnant-with-meaning  
monster rally in Tehran celebrating the 30th anniversary of the  
Iranian Revolution. Sounding very Khatamist, he said the world was  
"entering an era of dialogue" and negotiations. He mirrored Obama's  
words: "The Iranian nation is ready for talks but in a fair atmosphere  
with mutual respect."

Ahmadinejad even laid out an agenda for talks: terrorism; the  
elimination of nuclear weapons; restructuring the UN Security Council;  
and fighting drug trafficking. The US State Department must be working  
after hours decoding the full extent of this offer.

Ahmadinejad also said that changes "have to be fundamental and not  
tactical. It is clear that the Iranian nation welcomes true changes".  
Are Obama's changes "fundamental" or just "tactical"? The US president  
has said "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your  
fist". Well, the fist in Tehran definitely seems to be unclenched.

What is certain is that the Pentagon, the Israel lobby in Washington  
and whoever wins the Israel elections, even Foreign Minister Tzipi  
Livni's Kadima, belong to the clenched fist bunch. They are already  
vociferously pointing out the successful launch last week of an  
Iranian satellite - Omid (Hope, in Farsi) - hammering home that the  
same rocket technology can also deliver warheads.

And most importantly; what does the Supreme Leader think of all this?  
He is, after all, the ultimate decider in Iran. First of all, national  
pride is of the essence. In a meeting this past weekend with Iranian  
air force commanders, Khamenei said, "This revolution has transformed  
the nation of Iran into a nation of willpower, strength and dignity, a  
nation capable of influencing other societies."

His - or the system's priorities - could not have been made more  
clear: "In the past 30 years, world powers have tried everything to  
hinder Iran's progress, but despite the many years of sanctions  
imposed on our nation, we have made achievements, such as the Omid  
satellite, and we have acquired the technology to enrich uranium, a  
technology only a few countries possess."

And as for the Khomeinist credo of an exportable revolutionary idea,  
it seems to remain more alive than ever: "The popularity of the  
message of the revolution can be clearly witnessed in what happened in  
Gaza and before that in the 33-day war in Lebanon. The well-equipped  
Israeli army backed by the US was incapable of defeating a handful of  
besieged youth [Hamas and Hezbollah] and who had nothing but their  
faith in God."

Fasten your seat belts; it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
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