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Author Topic: Iranian Bi-Partisanship?
Free_Radical
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12633

posted 16 January 2007 10:31 AM      Profile for Free_Radical     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ahmadinejad's stand criticised - Both sides of political divide take aim at leader's nuclear diplomacy

quote:
The Toronto Star

Conservatives and reformists are openly challenging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hard-line nuclear diplomacy – an unusual agreement across Iran's political spectrum, with many saying his provocative remarks have increasingly isolated their country.

The criticism comes after the UN Security Council voted unanimously last month to impose sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment. Some critics view the sanctions as an indication that Iran must change its policy.

After a year of silence, reformists are demanding that Iran dispel fears that it is seeking to build atomic weapons, pressing for a return to former president Mohammad Khatami's policy of suspending enrichment, a process that can produce the material for either nuclear reactors or bombs.

"Resisting the UN Security Council resolution will put us in a more isolated position," said the largest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front.

. . .

Even some conservatives warn his confrontational tactics are backfiring.

"Your language is so offensive ... that it shows that the nuclear issue is being dealt with a sort of stubbornness," the hard-line daily Jomhuri-e-Eslami said in a recent editorial.

Some politicians on both sides of the political spectrum are considering impeaching Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki if the Security Council approves more resolutions against Iran.

Despite the criticism, Ahmadinejad has remained defiant, escalating Iran's nuclear standoff with the United States and its allies.

He has repeatedly refused to suspend enrichment, even under pressure from its trade allies Russia and China. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, denying allegations from the United States and its allies that it is secretly trying to build a bomb.

. . .

Ahmadinejad has also distanced some of his conservative base by calling for the Israeli government to be "wiped off the map" and hosting a conference last month that cast doubt on the Holocaust.

Many feel he has spent too much time defying the West and too little tackling Iran's domestic issues.

"The sanctions imposed on Iran are believed to have been partly due to Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel rhetoric and the Holocaust conference," said political analyst Iraj Jamshidi.

The president's tactics, Jamshidi said, have turned Iran's nuclear program from a source of national pride to a hotbed of dispute.

"Ahmadinejad made two major claims in his presidential campaign: to bring oil revenues to the kitchen of every Iranian family and to protect Iran's nuclear achievements. He failed in both," he said.



Part of me says that this looks like good news - not only does it put pressure on Ahmadinejad to drop any ambitions to pursue nuclear armaments, but it displays - to a degree - that Iranian democracy, and especially the reformist movement, is still alive and having some effect.

But part of me wants to say "Christ, now Bush will try to claim that his hamfisted threats and intimidations actually worked"

[ 16 January 2007: Message edited by: Free_Radical ]


From: In between . . . | Registered: May 2006  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3276

posted 19 January 2007 07:47 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The Iranian president’s reaction to his election defeat is combining with a more assertive United States policy towards Iran to make early 2007 a moment of great regional danger, say Dariush Zahedi & Omid Memarian:
quote:
The humiliating defeat of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's allies at the hands of moderate conservatives in Iran's municipal and Assembly of Experts elections on 15 December 2006 might in principle have been expected to constrain the rhetoric and behaviour of the hardline president. Instead, it seems to have had the opposite effect.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected in June 2005 by tapping into the frustrations of Iran's large underclass. A populist campaign platform of redistributing oil wealth, fighting corruption, and creating jobs allowed him to outflank rivals such as former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and secure victory. Eighteen months on, it has long become clear that the former Tehran mayor has shattered the raised expectation of the (mainly) poor Iranians who voted for him.

Ahmadinejad's ill-advised economic policy - injecting large amounts of petrodollars into the economy, deficit spending, and raising liquidity to unstable levels - has backfired. Official Iranian statistics reveal the rate of inflation on basic items to have risen to 20%, while rents have increased by 30%. The Iranian economy is reeling from endemic capital flight, inability to attract much-needed investment, and declining real-estate and capital markets. The deteriorating climate of uncertainty has taken its toll on Iranians' living standards.

At least as significant is that conservatives (both old and new generations) - who along with their relations control much of the economy - are increasingly weary of the president's rule and policies. A younger generation of pragmatic neo-conservatives forms a significant proportion of the ruling elite. Many of them, like Ahmadinejad himself, have a background in the security agencies, and together they control most seats in the majlis (Iran's parliament). But they are deeply disaffected with their president, and especially repulsed by his monopolistic and go-it-alone impulses. The rigid president refuses to consult, and has replaced virtually all of Iran's bureaucratic, diplomatic, governmental, university, and banking officials by ideological purists who share his outlook and are personally beholden to him.

The absence of valid and reliable polls on the popularity of the president meant that many among the Iranian elite - though becoming more lukewarm towards Ahmadinejad even before the December elections - were ready to give him the benefit of the doubt. Now, with his image deeply frayed, criticism of his policies in the parliament will become louder, and he will find it more difficult to enact his legislative agenda.

Moreover, as in the United States, various committees in the majlis will begin to delve into misdeeds that have occurred under his watch - including the misappropriation of $300 million during Ahmadinejad 's period of service as Tehran's mayor (2002-05). In short, Ahmadinejad will find it increasingly difficult to govern.

But Ahmadinejad's temperament and political character mean that he is most unlikely to go gently into the night. In this light, his ratcheting-up of international tensions by intensifying anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric is an attempt to regain the political initiative and deflect attention from his inability to deliver on his promises to the electorate.

On the one hand, Ahmadinejad and his militant faction of allies (which received an embarrassingly small share of the popular vote in the elections) is attempting to gain an advantage in the intense power struggles that characterise the regime. On the other hand, the decision by Iran to ignore the demand of the United Nations Security Council that it halt its nuclear enrichment programme risks prompting the United States president and administration, congress, and public opinion to coalesce around the idea of pursuing a military solution to Iran's quest for nuclear-weapons capability.

This, then, appears to be Ahmadinejad's calculation: that an exacerbation of tension in the security environment surrounding Iran will play into the hands of his clique by galvanising the Iranian public and compelling the country's fractious ruling elite to close ranks behind the most militant and radical elements in the Tehran regime.

The terrible danger of this approach is that, combined with the interests and objectives of its strategic rivals the United States and Israel, it will bring closer the prospect of pre-emptive assaults on Iran's nuclear installations. Iran's decisions to accelerate its nuclear programme in defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the unfolding US predicament in Iraq as the presidential election of 2008 approaches, are crucial factors in this perilous mix.

Indeed, the next American president, unencumbered by the current administration's false utterances about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, may find it easier to attack Iran. Both John McCain and Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Republican and Democratic frontrunners, seem to agree that the only thing worse than launching strategic attacks against Iran is an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be smiling all the way to paradise. But the interests of stability and security in the middle east and beyond, the democratic movement in Iran, and America's image in the Muslim world, all require a change of course on both sides before disaster strikes.



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 19 January 2007 08:07 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE do not reproduce entire articles on babble.

Please.


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3276

posted 19 January 2007 09:42 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Michelle:
PLEASE do not reproduce entire articles on babble.

Parts of 12 paragraphs from a 16 paragraph article -- say, half the article, which was more than I had intended to copy, but it was hard not to lose the context. Is there a rule against more than 1/3? What's the limit?

[ 19 January 2007: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 19 January 2007 09:44 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh, sorry. I counted the paragraphs and thought they were reproduced in full, which would have meant almost the entire thing. My bad.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged

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