Iran's Election Charade
Human Events, June 12, 2009
Foreign Affairs Analyst and Iran Expert
Today Iranians are expected to
go to the polls to choose the next president in a highly
orchestrated and vetted event courtesy of the ruling
clerics. Four candidates have been ordained by the Guardian
Council- the body of clerical elders which blesses all
manners of critical decisions in the country- to run for
this election: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mir Hossein Moussavi,
Mohsen Rezai, and Mehdi Karoubi.
The first is the loud-mouthed current president, who was
previously an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC)
commander and a teer-a-khalas (coup de grâce) specialist.
The second was Tehran’s prime minister during the tumultuous
war years of the 80's, under the administration of the
"pragmatic" ("we only need one atomic bomb to destroy
Israel") Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - he clearly does not
subscribe to or understand Mutually Assured Destruction. The
third is a founding member and the former chief of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, who is on the run from
the Interpol for complicity in the 1994 Argentinean Jewish
community center bombing. The last, and certainly the least,
is the lone certified cleric, a former speaker of the Majlis
(parliament) who was an early and rabid supporter of
Khomeini's call for the head of the British novelist Salman
Rushdie.
Further forensics may help to clear the political fog. Much
is known about the current president Ahmadinejad, so we
dispense with (most) of the gore. Ahmadinejad, by his own
admission, was part of the quintet of the Central Committee
of the Office of the Unity which led and operationally
oversaw the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. He
was the special operations officer in the 6th special corps
of IRGC’s Qods Force, responsible for sabotage and
cross-border missions. In his current hat, he oversees his
government's expanding drive to perfect the nuclear fuel
cycle and acquire the ultimate weapon.
Mir Hossein Moussavi is the current reincarnation of the
moderate political animal in Iran. He was a founding member
of the Islamic Republic Party- think of it as the mullahs'
Third Reich. Among honors on his resume, he lists: 144
extraterritorial assassinations during the premiership, the
massacre of nearly 30,000 political prisoners on the eve of
the signing of the 1988 UN Iran-Iraq cease-fire accord, and
the 1983 embassy and marine barrack bombings in Beirut.
Mohsen Rezai ranks high in the pantheon of terror. He
commanded the IRGC during the disastrous war with Iraq, with
ultimate responsibility for sending tens of thousands of
under-aged adults to their death in the battle fronts as
human mine sweepers, many of whom were shrouded in
army-issued blankets to prevent their body parts from
splattering. Rezai played a decisive role in coordinating
and directing the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires, for which he
was implicated by an Argentine court and for whom, in 2007,
Interpol issued an arrest warrant.
Mehdi Karoubi is the least consequential. Nevertheless, he
occupies a special place among the regime hierarchy. For, he
is a permanent member of the Expediency Council, chaired by
former president, Rafsanjani.
So, where are we now? A bit of chronology brings us home.
When faced with the hostage takings by the mullahs in the
80's, the world blinked. The Iranian regime was rewarded
crucially with time; time to suppress dissent at home, and
to spread its gospel of hate and warmongering in the Middle
East and around the globe. When faced with its drive to
build a nuclear bomb in the 90's and 00's, the West decided
chiefly that it must "engage" the mullahs in dialogue. We
were bombarded with group acronyms: EU-3, then EU 3+2
(referring to the big EU countries, plus China and Russia),
or P5 + 1 (that is the permanent five + Germany). "Freeze
for dialogue" (a pre-condition for suspending nuclear
enrichment in exchange for negotiation), "freeze-for-freeze"
(freezing enrichment for freezing sanctions) became mantra
for the regime's calculated strategy of freezing time. It is
time which it wants, and which the world has so little of.
Clearly, the mullahs are not suckered. “Bigger sticks and
bigger carrots” work if (only and only if) the other side is
receptive to an orderly and rational chain of events: faced
with a looming threat, it responds by accepting the offer of
peace. The Iranian mullahs have distinguished themselves in
at least one crucially important fashion: when offered a big
carrot, they counter by requiring an even bigger carrot, and
then an even bigger carrot. Their rational is clear- at
least to some; time is purchased and attention is deflected
at the expense of a world and a Middle East in desperate
need of peace and crisis resolution.
Among its many faces, the current election charade is
emblematic of a constant in the regime tactics. With a
strict electoral vetting process, in which "too" anything
distasteful to its strategy and ambition is rejected, the
Iranian regime prefers very much that the West becomes
preoccupied with the absurdity of the June election process,
not minding that western nations fret ad nauseam about the
winners and losers of this election, while at the end, and
at last, it has bought yet more time. More time to perfect
how it makes the bomb and more time to repress its citizens
and those of other nations.
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.
