[Peace-discuss] Phil Wilayto: "Some Observations on the Iranian Presidential Election and Its Aftermath"

[Stuart Levy]

Phil Wilayto, who spoke here about Iran a few months ago,
said some illuminating things at the time -- including that, as Iran's is
a very class-stratified system, you couldn't understand a comment
by an Iranian about their society without considering the status of the speaker.

[Of course that applies no less to the US.  It's just tempting for us
as outsiders to fall into thinking that there is one Iranian reality
which any Iranian, big fish or small, would see in the same way.]

I've had this in mind a lot over the last few days.  As when hearing
the flat statement on NPR yesterday, by an Iranian in the US, that
no one could believe that the Iranian people could possibly have
voted for Ahmadinejad after seeing how badly the country had been run
over the last few years.  (We could've said the same about Bush in 2004.
That election may well have been stolen, but despite what we
might have hoped of our fellow Americans, it was no landslide.)


Anyway, Wilayto has an interesting piece on Truthout.org today.
Excerpts below, but please see the full article too.

    http://www.truthout.org/061909R

    Some Observations on the Iranian Presidential Election and Its Aftermath


[...]

The dominant view among Western commentators, as well as some progressive
members of the Iranian diaspora, is that Mousavi is a "reformer" who
favors loosening restrictions on civil liberties within Iran, while being
more open to a less hostile relationship with the West.  Ahmadinejad,
on the other hand, is described as a "hardliner" who demagogically
appeals to the poor, while making deliberately provocative statements
about the United States and Israel in order to bolster his standing in
the Islamic world.

In my opinion, both of the above characterizations are superficial. The
fundamental contradiction between the two leading candidates has to
do with their respective bases of support and, more importantly, their
different approaches to the economy.

Ahmadinejad, himself born into rural poverty, clearly has the support
of the poorer classes, especially in the countryside where nearly half
the population lives. Why? In part because he pays attention to them,
makes sure they receive some benefits from the government and treats
them and their religious views and traditions with respect.  Mousavi,
on the other hand, the son of an urban merchant, clearly appeals more
to the urban middle classes, especially the college-educated youth.  This
being so, why would anyone be surprised that Ahmadinejad carried the vote
by a clear majority?  Are there now more yuppies in Iran than poor people?

Why is there so little discussion of the issue of class in this election?
Is it because so many professional and semi-professional commentators
on Iran are themselves from the same class as Mousavi's supporters, and
so instinctively identify with them?  Myself, I'm a worker, and a former
union organizer.  When I watched the videos and viewed the photos of the
pro-Mousavi rallies in Tehran and other cities, I didn't feel elated -
I felt a chill. To me, this didn't look like a liberal reform movement,
it felt like a movement whose real target is a government that exercises
a "preferential option for the poor," to use the words of Christian
liberation theology.

How about the economy?

A big issue in Iran - virtually never discussed in the US media - is how
to interpret Article 44 of the country's constitution. That article states
that the economy must consist of three sectors: state-owned, cooperative
and private, and that "all large-scale and mother industries" are to be
entirely owned by the state. This includes the oil and gas industries,
which provide the government with the majority of its revenue. This
is what enables the government, in partnership with the large charity
foundations, to fund the vast social safety net that allows the country's
poor to live much better lives than they did under the US-installed Shah.

In 2004, Article 44 was amended to allow for some privatization. Just
how much and how swiftly that process should proceed is a fundamental
dividing line in Iranian politics. Mousavi has promised to speed up the
privatization process.  And when he first announced he would run for
the presidency, he called for moving away from an "alms-based" economy
(PressTV, 4/13/09), an obvious reference to Ahmadinejad's policies of
providing services and benefits to the poor.

In addition to their different class bases and approaches to the economy,
Ahmadinejad presents an uncompromising front against the West,
and especially against the US government. This is a source of great
national pride and has produced some positive results. For example,
President Obama has now actually admitted, at least in part, that it was
the US that in 1953 overthrew the democratically elected government of
Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh.

[...]

Further, there's the nature of Mousavi's election campaign. Obama called
it a "robust" debate, which it certainly was, and a good refutation of
the lie that Iran has no democracy. But it is also a political movement,
one capable of drawing large crowds out into the streets, ready to engage
in street battles with the president's supporters and now the police.

Is it possible that the US government, its military and its 16
intelligence agencies are piously standing on the sidelines of this
developing conflict, respecting Iran's right to work out its internal
differences on its own? Could we expect that approach from the same
government that still maintains its own 30-year sanctions against Iran,
is responsible for three sets of UN-imposed sanctions, annually spends
$70 to 90 million to fund "dissident" organizations within Iran and,
according to the respected investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, actually
has US military personnel on the ground within Iran, supporting terrorist
organizations like the Jundallah and trying to foment armed rebellions
against the government?

The point has been made that US neocons were hoping for an Ahmadinejad
victory, on the theory that he makes a convenient target for
Iran-bashers. But the neocons are no longer in power in Washington. They
got voted out of office and are back to writing position papers for
right-wing think tanks. We now have a "pragmatic" administration, one
that would like to first dialog with the countries it seeks to control.

I think what is important to realize is that Washington wasn't just hoping
for a "reform" candidate to win the election - it's been hoping for an
anti-government movement that looks to the West for its political and
economic inspiration. Mousavi backer and former President Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani is a free-market advocate and businessman whom Forbes magazine
includes in its list of the world's richest people. Does Rafsanjani
identify with or seek to speak for the poor? Does Mousavi?

What kind of Iran are the Mousavi forces really hoping to create? And why
is Washington - whose preference for "democracy" is trumped every time by
its insatiable appetite for raw materials, cheap labor, new markets and
endless profits - so sympathetic to the "reform" movements in Iran and
in every other country whose people have nationalized its own resources?

[...]

The days ahead promise to be challenging ones for all those who oppose
war, sanctions and interference in the internal affairs of the Islamic
Republic of Iran. As we pursue that work, it would be good not to get
caught up in what is sure to be a tsunami of criticism of a government
trying to resolve a crisis that in all likelihood is not entirely homegrown.