Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Ahmadinejad reelection next year grows increasingly unlikely

The Age
David Blair, Tehran
August 11, 2007

OUTSIDE the old American embassy in Tehran, garish murals depict the Statue of Liberty as a grotesque skeleton and banners proclaim “Down with the USA”.

This display of anti-American iconography, where 52 US diplomats were held hostage for 444 days, might appear to symbolise Iran under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s belligerent rule.

Yet nothing could be more misleading. Far from glorying in their President’s defiance of the superpower, Iranians are turn- ing against him in ever greater numbers. The first stirrings are now visible of political change that could hasten his departure and dramatically change the country’s direction.

The President is best known abroad for denying the Holocaust and threatening to wipe Israel “from the pages of history”. Iranians, however, associate him with hardship and repression.

At a time when high oil prices should be causing an economic boom, inflation has risen to about 40 per cent, hitting the living standards of millions. A country with 130 billion barrels of proven oil reserves has imposed petrol rationing.

“Ahmadinejad is the first president in the history of the Islamic Republic to lose his popularity so quickly,” said Mohammed Atrianfar, a leading reformist politician. “He has ruined the hopes of Iranian families for their future and made them pessimists.

“Ahmadinejad has a large amount of self-confidence. Either self-confident people are well informed and knowledgeable or they are absolutely ignorant about everything. Unfortunately, the President is in the second category.”

Mr Ahmadinejad’s bellicose foreign policy has bolstered his popularity across the Muslim world — but not inside Iran. At home, he stands accused of playing into America’s hands making it easier for Washington to marshal a coalition against Iran.

“The President does not understand the complexity of the international situation in the post-Cold War era,” said Ebrahim Yazdi, who was foreign minister in the first government after the revolution of 1979.

“He has brought up issues which do not have anything to do with Iran’s national interest, such as the Holocaust. Why he brought that one up, nobody knows.”

Since taking office in 2005, the President has cracked down on dissent. Three reformist newspapers have been closed and demonstrators are routinely arrested and beaten.

But there is still a degree of freedom of expression. Public criticism of Mr Ahmadinejad is tolerated and other papers that oppose his policies still appear.

“Freedom of expression is needed to supervise all the arms of the Government,” said a leader in Etemadamelli, a reformist daily. “But President Ahmadinejad still intends to revive the old order. He thinks the nation is stupid.”

Politics in Iran moves along a spectrum from liberal reformers to hardline conservatives. While loyal to the Islamic state, reformists want Iran to enjoy political and economic freedom.

They would also restore diplomatic ties with America, end the confrontational foreign policy and try to ease tensions in the Middle East.

When Iranians are given the chance, they vote for the reformists. The young are a vital constituency in a country where the voting age is only 16 and about two-thirds of the population of 70 million is below the age of 30.

On the streets of Tehran, young Iranians proclaim their devotion to Western fashion, films and music. English-speaking Iranians even tend to affect US accents. Asked which country he would most like to visit, one 27-year-old gave an emphatic answer: “America. They have freedom in America.”

This yearning to break Iran’s isolation and join the modern world helped give Mohammed Khatami, the liberal cleric who was the previous president, two landslide election victories. In 2000, the reformists won an outright majority in the Majlis, or parliament. But their victory was not repeated in the last parliamentary elections in 2004.

The Council of Guardians, a powerful body dominated by hardline clerics, disqualified most reformists from standing.

This allowed conservatives to recapture parliament. And when Mr Khatami stepped down in 2005, Mr Ahmadinejad completed the hardline resurgence.

Yet the pendulum might now be swinging in the opposite direction. Parliamentary elections are due in March, and Mr Ahmadinejad has become so unpopular that a political realignment is under way.

Moderate conservatives have become so dissatisfied that they are discussing an electoral pact with their former opponents among the reformers.

If a new alliance can be established, it will probably result in a parliamentary majority opposed to the President.

If so, the President will suffer a blow that could hasten his departure. If he faced a hostile majority in parliament, few observers in Tehran expect him to serve a second term.

But ultimately, the biggest decisions in the Islamic Republic are made by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader.

The ayatollah, 68, does not travel outside Iran and has never met a Western ambassador. Although he is believed to have health problems, his condition is not life-threatening.

For as long as he wields authority, reformers and conservatives may compete over the parliament and presidency, and policy may change at the margins. But observers say no fundamental overhaul of the Islamic Republic will take place.