'Electoral Engineering' in Iran
Fox News, March 12, 2008
Transcript
Although Westerners are inclined
to think the outcome of an election is something you find
out after the vote, that is not the case in Iran under the
mullahs. There, elections are staged, but sometimes the plot
has a twist. The real story of the parliamentary elections
in Iran this Friday will not be the wholesale defeat of the
so-called "reformists"; it will be the boycott of the
electoral sham by the majority of Iranians, particularly the
youth.
This year's election, while in many ways similar to every
other election held under the rule of the ayatollahs since
1979, has a particular significance. The regime finds itself
in a conundrum: it is in dire need of a show of popular
legitimacy - something it obviously lacks - but it must also
preserve the most radical, belligerent faction at the helm
of power.
The Friday election also coincides with anti-regime protests
and rallies throughout the country, particularly in the
universities of major cities. This upsurge in dissent has
only increased in spite of a state crackdown unprecedented
in recent years. The Washington Times reported from Tehran
on March 7 that more than 3,000 students held
anti-government protests at major universities in Shiraz for
the ninth consecutive day, chanting, "We are men and women
of fighting, dare to fight and we will fight back," and
"This is the final warning. The student movement is ready
for the uprising."
According to the Times, the network of the People's
Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which "also has been involved
in a nationwide campaign urging Iranians to boycott the
upcoming Majlis (parliamentary) elections scheduled to take
place next Friday," had a very active role in the student
rallies.
There are a few fundamental facts one must consider before
delving into deciphering the election news from Iran. First,
there is the regime's obsession with inflated voter turnout
numbers. This does not come from its commitment to
democratic practices and respect for the popular will, but
to its need to create an aura of legitimacy. The more
isolated and illegitimate the Tehran regime becomes, the
more it presses for stupefyingly high turnouts.
Secondly, in true democracies, free elections are a
manifestation of popular sovereignty. In Iran under the
mullahs, however, free elections are intrinsically and
irreconcilably in contradiction with the despotic theocracy,
in which a cleric, the Supreme Leader, has ultimate,
unquestioned power and talk of popular sovereignty is
considered apostasy.
Thirdly, the Friday election, like others before it, is in
many ways simply a barometer to measure the political
balance among the rival factions within the theocratic
regime. In the months preceding the March 14 election,
Iran's political landscape has been the scene of ferocious
factional infighting, known among Iranians as the "fight
among the wolf pack."
The fact is that despite the crushing weight of domestic and
foreign isolation, the ayatollahs' regime has neither the
political nor ideological capacity to change the course of
its rogue behavior at home or abroad. Incapable of
satisfying these pre-requisites to emergence from isolation,
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei views the appalling suppression
at home coupled with escalation of terrorism in Iraq and
beyond, as well as the acceleration of the nuclear weapons
program as his only options.
Backed by his allies in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps (IRGC) and President Ahmadinejad's cabinet, Khamenei
has set about purging all political rivals from the ruling
body at the expense of evermore contraction of the entire
system. After the election, power will be concentrated in
the hands of the most extreme factions of the theocracy,
embodied by the IRGC and Ahmadinejad.
This faction is comprised of Supreme Leader Khamenei, the
IRGC's top brass and the various groups of the political
block known as the "Principlists," which includes
Ahmadinejad and his cabinet as well as other radicals like
former top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, and former IRGC
top commander Mohsen Rezaei.
The faction inappropriately labeled as "reformist" has been
dealt a heavy blow by the faction of Ahmadinejad, et al. Of
course, as this drama plays out, the names have been changed
to protect the guilty. The "reformists" are in fact a who's
who of political figures who, throughout the 1980s and the
16 years of rule by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad
Khatami, had a major role in the atrocities, terrorism and
nuclear weapons program of the ayatollahs' regime.
Prior to the upcoming election, many of the "reformist"
candidates were disqualified by the Guardian Council, the
vetting body of the clerical regime. But the radicals wanted
to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to keep key
"reformist" figures out of the parliament, but not to the
extent that Rafsanjani, Khatami or other heavyweights would
call for an election boycott.
In a political machination known as "electoral engineering"
in the regime's inner circle, the dominant faction put in
place an elaborate scheme to exact maximum benefit from the
elections. According to this scenario, they will de-claw the
"reformist" list of candidates and at the same time keep
enough of them on the ballot to claim the election was
inclusive. The end result is that come Friday, about 60
candidates of the "reformist" faction, albeit insignificant
ones, will probably make it to the 290-seat Parliament
(Majlis). Almost all of the key leaders have been purged,
and in the actual competitions for about 200 Majlis seats,
no "reformist" candidate is on the list.
On Friday, the Iran policy-makers on both sides of the
Atlantic should be listening not to the mullahs' election
reports, but to the voice of millions of Iranians, as echoed
by the students in recent anti-regime rallies. The people of
Iran want real democratic change, and that means regime
change. The international community should coordinate
political and diplomatic efforts abroad in support of the
movement for democracy in Iran.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs
Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and
its terror training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the
existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the
Arak heavy water facility in August 2002.
