Brookings: Topics - Middle East and North Africa

Building New Democracies: Institutional Reform after the Arab Spring

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 22, 2013
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM AST

Doha Ritz Carlton, Doha, Qatar

This panel discussion of the Doha Forum, hosted by the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center, discussed the challenge of institutional reform in the newly democratic countries of the Arab Spring. As these countries work to reshape the state – including its security, economic, and administrative apparatuses – how should they deal with the pre-revolutionary state and how can they best define their reform goals? How can these countries balance the demand for revolutionary change in state ministries with the need for continuity and stability? Can they introduce new blood to state institutions while retaining those with actual knowledge of how the state functions? And how should they prioritize accountability for old regime elements against the requirements of an inclusive process of reform? The panel discusses the tension that may exist in these transitioning states between revolutionary demands for ground-up reform and the kind of practical moves needed for economic recovery and a functioning state.

Participants

Moderator

Salman Shaikh

Director, Brookings Doha Center
Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

Panelists

Ambassador Nabil Fahmy

Dr. Rafik Abdessalam

Dr. Yassin Said Noaman

Dr. Bernardino Leon

Michael Posner

Nikolay Mladenov

Obama’s National Security Speech and Pakistan

Bruce Riedel — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:22:00 -0400

On Thursday, President Obama plans to deliver a speech on national security and counterterrorism issues. The speech comes at a particularly awkward time in Pakistan, the epicenter of the global jihad for more than a decade. Nawaz Sharif has just been elected for an unprecedented third term in a nation extremely unhappy with America's counterterrorism policies, especially the drone war fought in its skies from bases in Afghanistan.

President Obama faces the challenge of defending his policies and explaining why they are needed. He must do this without further alienating an angry Pakistan and its newly elected civilian government which is struggling to find its own way to deal with the terror Frankenstein that threatens the world and Pakistan itself. It may be mission impossible. Despite years of drone attacks and the death of Osama bin Laden, Pakistan remains the base for the top three most wanted terrorists on the U.S. Most Wanted list: al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri, Taliban chief Mullah Omar and Lashkar e Tayyiba (LeT) boss Hafez Saeed.

In fact, Omar and Saeed enjoy the patronship and protection of Pakistan's army. More global terror plots have originated in Pakistan than anywhere else since 9/11. Without the drones, there would be little or no pressure on the terror infrastructure in Pakistan. Despite over $25 billion in American economic and military aid since 9/11, the Pakistani authorities cannot be relied on to fight the danger posed by al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, or LeT. Obama recognized that fact when he sent the SEALs to kill bin Laden without telling any Pakistani official that we had found him hiding inside the highly secure Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

But Pakistan is also a victim of the terror monster it has coddled for decades. Over 45,000 Pakistanis have died in terror-related violence since 9/11, and dozens more died in the election campaign just ended. Sharif has pledged to seek a political solution to the violence. He has campaigned against the drones and faces a national consensus that wants them to end. His main opponent Imran Khan promised to shoot them down if elected (probably with American supplied F-16s).

Obama significantly expanded drone attacks in 2009 and many dangerous terrorists have been eliminated by them. The price has been to further alienate the Pakistani people. His speech this Thursday is not likely to please many in Pakistan. The already very difficult U.S.-Pakistan bilateral relationship is at a crucial juncture with the first ever transition from one elected Pakistani civilian government to another in the country's history after a full term in office. Reconciling our counter-terror mission with our interest in promoting democracy in Pakistan will not be easy. If it is impossible, then the fate of U.S. relations with the most dangerous country in the world is headed toward an even more deadly outcome.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Image Source: © Larry Downing / Reuters

Lessons from America’s First War with Iran

Bruce Riedel — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:35:00 -0400

President Barack Obama has committed the United States to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran seems determined to acquire them. As the United States and Iran approach confrontation and possible war to halt Tehran’s nuclear program, it is useful to remember that America has already fought one war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. During the late 1980s, President Ronald Reagan intervened in the Iran- Iraq War in support of Baghdad and Saddam Hussein, ultimately leading to an Iraqi victory. The United States engaged in an undeclared yet bloody naval and air war, while Iraq fought a brutal land war against Iran. The lessons of the first war with Iran should be carefully considered before the United States embarks hastily on a second.

In hindsight, the central lesson of the war in the 1980s is that it is easy to start a conflict with Iran and very difficult to end it. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not easy to intimidate and is likely to retaliate asymmetrically. Another key lesson is to beware the advice of your allies, both Arabs and Israelis, who are prone to give irresponsible recommendations on how to deal with Tehran.

The Toll of the Iran-Iraq War

The Iran-Iraq War was devastating. It was one of the largest and longest conventional interstate wars since the Korean War ended in 1953. A half million lives were lost, and perhaps another million were injured. The economic cost of the war exceeded one trillion dollars.1 Yet, the battle lines at the end of the war were almost exactly where they had been at the beginning of hostilities. It was also the only war in modern times in which chemical weapons were used on a massive scale.

Although the war ended in 1988, it led to numerous aftershocks that rippled throughout the region including the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the liberation of Kuwait a year later, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The bloody U.S. war that President Obama recently ended in Iraq was the finale in this march of folly. The seeds of multigenerational tragedy were planted in the Iran-Iraq War. The world will live with its consequences for decades, if not longer.

There were no “good guys” in the Iran-Iraq War, only two brutal dictatorships. Saddam Hussein was a megalomaniac who built enormous, ugly monuments to his ambitions and dreamed of becoming the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, controlling the world’s oil supplies, and destroying Israel. At the end of the first Gulf War in 1988, Hussein waged genocide against his own Kurdish population. Ayatollah Khomeini created a theocracy in Iran which imprisoned and executed thousands of its own citizens, forced tens of thousands into exile, and even took American diplomats hostage.

U.S. Policy During the War

America had no natural partners in the Iran-Iraq War, but its interests dictated that the United States allow neither Saddam nor Khomeini to dominate the region and the world’s energy supply. For most of the war, it was Iran that appeared on the verge of victory, so Washington had little choice but to support Iraq.

For those who aspire to a national security policy built on the principles of the United Nations Charter or a moral high ground, Iran-Iraq was an immoral swamp. For American policymakers in the 1980s, there was a simple difference. When the war began, Iran held dozens of American diplomats hostage and even tortured some. Only after 444 days in captivity did Iran let the American hostages go. In contrast to Khomeini, many Americans hoped that the Iraqi leader was somehow redeemable and could be worked with as a difficult but manageable partner. We realize now that this was a mirage, but in the 1980s it was still a hope. Thus, America tilted toward Iraq, hoping it would hold back the “medieval fanatics” to the east from gaining control of the world’s oil reserves.

But “our side” kept breaking the rules. First, Iraq was the aggressor in September 1980. Certainly Iraq had been provoked by Iranian actions along the border, but the main act of aggression was carried out by the Iraqi army in the form of a massive attack. As long as Iraq held Iranian territory, Washington did not call for the restoration of the status quo ante as would be the norm for most international conflicts; only when the tables turned did the United States call for respect for the international border. Then Iraq began using chemical weapons—first, in a piecemeal and largely ineffectual fashion, but by the war’s end, on an industrial scale and with decisive effect. The threat of Iraqi chemical warheads on long range missiles cleared Tehran of many of its inhabitants in 1988, and Saddam began using chemical warheads to systematically kill his own people. Rather than fall silent, the guns of war merely changed theaters with the 1988 cease-fire, as the Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds began, an act of pure genocide by the government that the United States had supported during the war.

The conflict was not President Ronald Reagan’s finest hour. At first he tilted toward Iraq, sending the CIA to Baghdad with critical intelligence in 1982 to thwart Iran’s war plans. It worked. Then Reagan tilted toward Iran, sending sophisticated arms to Tehran in an effort to get American hostages in Lebanon freed. It didn’t work. A few hostages were released but more hostages were taken. Then Reagan tilted back toward Iraq and Washington’s undeclared war followed in 1987 and 1988. The principal architect of the policy was Reagan’s Director of Central Intelligence, Bill Casey, who died before the Iran scandal forced his resignation and possible indictment.

Lessons for Today

So what are the lessons of this war for America today? The first lesson is that we should expect to be blamed for all that goes wrong. Both Iraqis and Iranians came to believe the United States was manipulating each of them during the war. Ironically, and perhaps naively, the United States tried to reach out to both belligerents through the course of the war— in great secrecy both times—to try to build a strategic partnership. The disastrous arms-for-hostages policy, which came to be known as the Iran- Contra affair, convinced Iraqis rightly that the United States was trying to play both sides of the conflict. The result was that when the war ended, the Iraqi regime and most Iraqis regarded the United States as a threat, despite Washington’s support during the war. That support had taken the form of critical intelligence assistance to Baghdad, considerable diplomatic cover, and largesse from our Arab allies who loaned tens of billions of dollars to Baghdad to sustain Iraq’s war effort.

Iranians call the war the “Imposed War” because they believe the United States subjected them to the conflict and orchestrated the global “tilt” toward Iraq. They note that the United Nations did not condemn Iraq for starting the war. In fact, the UN did not even discuss the war for weeks after it started, and it ultimately considered Iraq to be the aggressor only years later, as part of a deal orchestrated by President George H.W. Bush to free the remaining U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon.

Although the war had tragic consequences for Iran, by portraying the conflict as a “David and Goliath” struggle imposed by the United States and its allies, Iranian leaders managed to consolidate the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Revolution was fairly short in duration and its cost was miniscule in comparison to the Iran-Iraq War. For the generation of Iranians who are now leading their country, including men like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the war was the defining event of their lives and a major force in shaping their worldview. Their anti-Americanism and deep suspicion of the West can be traced directly to their understanding of the Iran-Iraq War. We should thus expect the next war to make Iran more extreme and more determined to get the bomb.

Another lesson of the first war is that Iran will not be easily intimidated by the United States. By 1987, Iran was devastated by the war, many of its cities had been destroyed, its oil exports were minimal. and its economy was shattered. But it did not hesitate to fight the U.S. Navy in the Gulf and to use asymmetric means to retaliate in Lebanon and elsewhere. Even with most of its navy sunk by U.S. Naval forces, Iran kept fighting and the Iranian people continued rallying behind Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iran fought a smart war, avoiding too rapid and too dangerous an escalation. As General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has noted, Iranian behavior is rational, not suicidal.2 Iran will not take steps that endanger the revolution’s survival; the country will look to exploit America’s vulnerabilities in Afghanistan and Bahrain, as well as Israel’s in Lebanon and the Saudis’ in Yemen. In the 1980s, Iran created Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack American, French, and Israeli targets as punishment for American support of Iraq. Hezbollah then tried to assassinate the emir of Kuwait to punish that country for being Iraq’s outlet to the Persian Gulf. In essence, Iran expanded the battlefield of the Iran-Iraq War to other countries where it could exploit security vulnerabilities. We should expect the same in a future war, one for which Iran and Hezbollah have had decades to prepare. Indeed, Iran and Hezbollah are already waging a low intensity terror campaign against Israel from Bulgaria to India, and they have reportedly used cyber warfare against Saudi and Qatari oil companies.3

Another lesson is that ending a future war will be a challenge. In 1988, Iran sued for a cease-fire only after suffering catastrophic defeat on the ground against Iraqi forces and after Saddam Hussein threatened to fire Scud missiles armed with chemical warheads into Iranian cities.4 Iranians feared they would face a second “Hiroshima” if they did not accept a truce; indeed many evacuated Tehran in fear of an Iraqi chemical attack. For Khomeini, accepting the truce was like “drinking poison.”5 No two wars are identical, but history suggests that Iran will not back down easily.

The final lesson is to always scrutinize the advice of allies. Ironically, in the 1980s the closest U.S. partner in the region, Israel, pressed Washington hard and repeatedly to essentially switch sides and offer assistance to Iran. Israeli leaders, generals, and spies were obsessed by the Iraqi threat in the 1980s just as they are preoccupied by the Iranian threat today, and they longed to restore the cozy relationship they had with the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s. Through the Iraq-Iran War, Israel was the only consistent source of spare parts for the Iranian air force’s U.S.-made jets.6 Israeli leaders, notably Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, brought considerable pressure to bear on Washington for an American engagement with Tehran, and Iran-Contra was in many ways their idea. American diplomats and spies deployed abroad were told to turn a blind eye to Israeli arms deals with Tehran, even when it was official U.S. policy (in the Washington euphemism of the day) to “staunch” all avenues by which the Iranians might obtain weapons or other material needed for their war effort.7

America’s Arab allies provided equally bad advice. Egypt’s President Mubarak, Jordan’s King Hussein, and Saudi King Fahd all urged support for Saddam and Iraq, while turning a blind eye to Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against his own people. Egypt sent arms, Jordan sent volunteers, and the Saudis bankrolled Saddam’s war, while telling America that he was a born-again moderate who could be worked with and trusted. It was not to be.

Looking back a quarter century after the war in 1988 is revealing and sobering. America accomplished its immediate goals in the first war: it halted Iran’s advance into Iraq, defended the tankers in the Gulf, and contained the war from spreading into the Arabian Peninsula. Khomeini did not conquer Basra and Baghdad and march on Jerusalem as he dreamed he would. But today, Iran is the dominant foreign power in Baghdad, thanks in large part to another war America fought in the Gulf. President George W. Bush toppled Saddam and ended his brutal dictatorship, but in doing so, Bush opened the door to a Shia majority government which is much friendlier to Tehran than to Riyadh or Amman, or Washington. These are sobering reminders of the unintended consequences of wars.

The first American war with Iran helped make Iran a more radical and extreme country. A second war may well do the same. Thus another war with Iran to stop its nuclear program may ultimately prove to be the catalyst that pushes Iran to acquire a dangerous nuclear weapons arsenal. Rather than stopping proliferation, it could incite it further.

History of course does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Lessons of old wars should be carefully considered before entering new ones. Many Americans have forgotten the lessons of our undeclared war in the 1980s. We have fought so many other wars since: in Iraq (twice), in Afghanistan, and in Libya. While it may be easy for Washington to forget, no Iranian has.

This article was originally published by The Fletcher Forum.

Endnotes
1 Janet Lang et al, Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988 (Plymouth, Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), ix.
2 Fareed Zakaria, “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a ‘rational actor,’” CNN Pressroom, February 21, 2012.
3 Nicole Perlroth, “In Cyberattack on Saudi firm, U.S. sees Iran firing back,” New York Times, October 23, 2012.
4 Lang, 169.
5 Lang, 196.
6 Lang, 89.
7 Lang, 90.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Fletcher Forum

Image Source: © Morteza Nikoubazl / Reuters

"Khomeini Would Have Been Disqualified": Hashemi Rafsanjani's Supporters React to His Rejection

Mehrun Etebari — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:44:00 -0400

The move by the Guardian Council, announced yesterday, to deem former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani unqualified to run in the upcoming presidential election was accepted by some elements of Iranian political society – particularly among the more conservative elements of the Principlist camp – but came as a shock to many of his supporters, who tend to lie in the reformist and centrist segments of the Iranian political spectrum. Below are four translated excerpts of reactions from notable Rafsanjani supporters in Iran.

Tehran MP Ali Motahari, a frequent conservative critic of Ahmadinejad and a leading Principlist supporter of Rafsanjani’s candidacy, in an open letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appealing Rafsanjani’s disqualification:

“This disqualification, with was made based on the two unjustified reasons of physical incapacity and playing a role in the sedition of 1388 (2009), will inflict serious damage on the upcoming election, and will not contribute to correctly building the political epic you are seeking. I strongly believe that, if Imam Khomeini himself had, under a different name, participated in this election, even he would have been disqualified, for even he faced some criticism at times. Be informed that, with the entrance of Mr. Hashemi into the election, such enthusiasm erupted among the people and such hope entered their hearts for a reform of problems and for expedited progress of the nation, and that with his disqualification, naturally this enthusiasm and hope has disappeared.”

(For further coverage of this letter in English, visit Al Monitor.)

Elsewhere, Motahari mocked what he saw as the arbitrary nature of the “physical capacity” justification for Rafsanjani’s disqualification, telling Mehr News, “I propose that, to assess the physical capacity of Mr. Hashemi, there be a 200 meter race between him and Mr. Jalili [who reportedly lost part of a leg in the Iran-Iraq War] and a wrestling match between him and Mr. Haddad-Adel.”

Reformist political analyst and professor Sadegh Zibakalam, writing on his Facebook page:

“The atmosphere that took hold in our society after the registration of Mr. Hashemi was reminiscent of that of the 2^nd of Khordad, 1376 [the date on which Mohammad Khatami won a sweeping victory in the 1997 presidential election]. I was personally surprised by the extent of the celebrations and the wave of happiness and jubilation that erupted. In the week that followed, I saw many people, including academics, bazaaris, and others, who would say that they had planned not to vote but were doubting that decision with the arrival of Hashemi. I believe that Mr. Hashemi’s age is just an excuse and the true reason [for his disqualification] is the wave that occurred in society and caused deep worry to the Principlists. I believe that…we were heading for another 2^nd of Khordad. How did they wish to stop this wave? The wave was either leading to a 2^nd of Khordad of 1376 or to a 22^nd of Khordad of 1388 [the date of the disputed re-election of Ahmadinejad in 2009].”

Zahra Mostafavi, politician and daughter of Khomeini, in open letter of appeal to Khamenei:

“The very day that I heard the Imam [Khomeini] express his approval of yourself to be the leader – and I have always defended and expressed that view myself when necessary – I also learned of the approval of Mr. Hashemi’s qualification, for the Imam mentioned his name too, just after yours. Fortunately, and as you deserved, you were elected by the Assembly of Experts, and I did not see the need to bring up his comments on this matter. But unfortunately, today I see that the Guardian Council has taken it upon itself to disqualify [Hashemi] from the presidency. As a sister, I tell you that this action has no purpose but to insert distance in between two companions of the Imam and to neglect the delight and happiness the people on the street had found for the system.”

(For further coverage of her remarks in English, visit Al Monitor.)

Naimeh Eshraghi, Granddaughter of Khomeini and reformist activist, as quoted in remarks to the Tasnim news site

“Advanced age is not something for the Guardian Council to assess, as the law allows for people of that age to become candidates for the presidency. If the Guardian Council disqualified Hashemi, it should have a convincing reason to do this…and Mr. Hashemi will certainly react via legal means, although I do not believe that he will show objection in this matter. The solution to Mr. Hashemi’s disqualification by the Guardian Council is not to crowd the streets in protests and creating disturbances.”

Authors

Mehrun Etebari

What is Iran's Nuclear Red Line?

Steven Pifer — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:05:00 -0400

Tehran’s denials and protestations to the contrary, its nuclear ambitions clearly go beyond peaceful, civilian purposes. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is soon expected to issue a report stating that Iran has increased its capacity to enrich uranium but is limiting the most worrisome activity. This raises the question of how far Iran wishes to proceed down the nuclear path. The answer is important, as there is an important distinction between an Iran that has assembled (and perhaps tested) a nuclear weapon, and an Iran that has a latent nuclear capability but does not take the final step of pulling the pieces together to have a nuclear weapon.

The short answer to the question now is that we do not know. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Iran wishes to have a nuclear weapons option but has not yet decided whether to build a bomb.

Concern about Iran’s nuclear intentions has grown as it has enriched uranium at facilities at Natanz and Fordow, facilities about which Tehran did not inform the IAEA until others revealed them. The Iranians conduct uranium enrichment operations to 3.5 percent, which they say they need for fuel rods for nuclear power reactors, despite the fact that Russia has contracted to sell Iran the fuel rods that it needs for its sole power reactor at Bushehr. More troublesome, Iran also enriches to 20 percent. The Iranian government claims that it needs 20 percent enriched uranium for fuel for the Tehran research reactor, though it is not clear that Iran has the technical capability to produce fuel rods for that reactor.

Although 20 percent qualifies as “highly-enriched uranium,” weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90 percent or greater. Once uranium has been enriched to 20 percent, it is much of the way to 90 percent. Interestingly, while enriching to 20 percent, Iran has taken some of the resulting uranium gas (referred to as uranium hexafluoride) and converted it to uranium oxide, a solid powder. Iran thus has kept its stock of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 20 percent below the amount that, if enriched to 90 percent, would suffice for a nuclear bomb. Some see that as a signal that Tehran is sensitive to Western concerns. While the process of converting uranium hexafluoride to uranium oxide can be reversed, it takes time.

Of course, Iran must do more than have fissile material. Can it construct a deliverable nuclear weapon? Building a “gun-type” bomb is relatively simple (to the extent that the physics of nuclear weapons can be called simple). U.S. scientists in 1945 were so confident of the design for the bomb used on Hiroshima that they did not bother to test it. But a gun-type weapon would be large and bulky, probably weighing on the order of five tons.

Building a sophisticated weapon that could fit in a ballistic missile warhead—the delivery means of choice—poses a more demanding technical task. The weapon needs to be small and durable enough to withstand the dynamic and thermal stresses of ballistic flight. While the IAEA has questions about past Iranian weaponization activities, the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran in 2003 halted its nuclear weapons program (PDF), which it defined as weaponization work as well as enrichment.

As for the delivery system, Iran has an inventory of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The Sajjil-2, currently under development, has an estimated range of 2200 kilometers. That puts the Gulf states, Israel and southeastern Europe in range, but Iran still has a long way to go before it could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.

So Iran has made varying degrees of progress down the tracks—enrichment, weaponization and delivery system—needed to have a viable nuclear weapon. How far will it proceed?

One option is to build a bomb and, to show the world its nuclear prowess, conduct a test. But that option poses real risks for the Iranian government. It would make Iran even more of a nuclear pariah and increase its international isolation. It would provoke huge concern in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, perhaps leading the Saudis—and others such as Egypt and Turkey—to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs. And it would indisputably cross the red lines that Jerusalem and Washington have drawn.

The second option is that Iran develops its enrichment, weaponization and missile technologies so that it has a latent nuclear weapons capability but stops short of putting the pieces together. In this option, Tehran might continue to limit its stock of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 20 percent by converting some to uranium oxide. Assuming that Iran does not have a covert enrichment facility (something Western intelligence services undoubtedly spend considerable time and effort looking for), we would know of an Iranian decision to enrich its uranium to weapons-grade, as the IAEA monitors its facilities at Natanz and Fordow. While experts differ regarding how much alert time the world would have, there would be tactical warning—currently measured in months—of a decision by Tehran to produce weapons-grade uranium.

The distinction between these two options is important. While no one, particularly Israel, would be comfortable with a latent Iranian nuclear capability, that is vastly preferable to an Iran with even a small stockpile of nuclear weapons. It would pose less of a threat to the nuclear non-proliferation regime. It would leave time for international sanctions to intensify their impact on the Iranian economy and perhaps affect the calculations in Tehran. And it would give the UN Security Council Permanent Five plus Germany time to explore whether the Iranian government is prepared to consider a negotiated settlement that satisfies international concerns.

Authors

Steven Pifer

Iran's Guardians Versus The 'Grey Eminence'

Suzanne Maloney — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:06:00 -0400

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has found his field of dreams, with Tuesday's announcement of the list of eight candidates who secured approval to run in Iran’s upcoming presidential election. The most remarkable aspect about the list was the two names that were missing: those of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a two-term former president and one of the founders of the revolutionary state, and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, whose infamy within Iran almost eclipses that of his primary patron, current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The decision probably paves the way for an anodyne campaign that displays— with one key exception— mindless deference to the ideological strictures of Khamenei’s rule.

The announcement came near nightfall in Tehran, where rainy weather as well as the preemptive deployment of riot police and an internet slowdown helped ensure that the news was digested quietly. While it is improbable that the candidate list itself could spark street riots, today’s Islamic Republic takes no chances. The security measures reflected the overabundance of caution that has characterized Iran’s political environment since the post-election unrest of 2009, when an unexpectedly exuberant reaction to a regime stalwart persuaded the Supreme Leader to effectively dispense with the pretense of a credible vote-count and declare victory for his then-favored son, Ahmadinejad.

Ever the pragmatist, Rafsanjani navigated that crisis warily, and only ever advocated a truce with the opposition Green Movement that emerged briefly in its wake. Still, the prospective candidacy of a politician whom a dissident once dubbed the 'Grey Eminence' for his Machiavellian tendencies buoyed the hopes of the vestiges of the Green Movement and of the reformists who had preceded them. That development surely helped seal his fate for this ballot. Rafsanjani’s rejection provoked some surprise and plenty of cynicism, as the figment of the regime’s adherence to procedural correctness was abandoned for a wholesale embrace of the primacy of absolute obedience.

However absurd the Islamic Republic’s vetting process has been in the past – and more than two dozen elections over the course of 34 years have provided plenty of fodder – the suggestion that a man who has been at the apex of power in the Islamic Republic since its inception no longer meets its constitutional standards for the presidency carries the farce to a new level. Rafsanjani sits on the Assembly of Experts, which appoints Iran’s supreme leader, and leads its Expediency Council, which adjudicates challenges to proposed legislation. The determination that he is unfit for the presidency inevitably calls into question the credibility of these other institutions. The other rationale on offer— the aspersions on Rafsanjani’s advanced age (78) that were invoked by a number of conservative power brokers— is similarly insupportable. The Islamic Republic is, after all, a clerical gerontocracy. Rafsanjani may be closing in on 80, but he cuts a relatively spry figure among the Iranian political establishment, including by comparison with its late founder who seized power as a septuagenarian.

Rafsanjani's rejection suggests that the Supreme Leader— along with his key constituencies in the traditional clergy and the Revolutionary Guard— saw Rafsanjani’s electoral exclusion as a lesser threat than his inclusion. Apparently they calculated that his prospects for animate a challenge to the system as a candidate outweighed the possibility that his rejection would alienate the establishment or provoke popular unrest. For a regime that is increasingly incapable of tolerating mass political engagement, it was probably a judicious call.

Iranians are watching Rafsanjani’s next step closely. The Iranian press and social media are abuzz with reports: one of his sons asserts that he would not challenge disqualification, while his daughter notes that he rejected pressure to withdraw his candidacy quietly. The former president has apparently retreated to Qom, a move that may invoke powerful symbolism from Iranian history, when protestors against an unjust monarch took sanctuary in Qom. However, it remains unclear whether Rafsanjani’s retreat is intended to bolster his case with support from the country’s powerful seminaries, or intended to lick his wounds and spare his dignity.

The Rafsanjani saga is spellbinding, but it is possible to make too much of his rejection. Over the past 10 days, I’ve been somewhat skeptical of the emerging Rafsanjani-as-Iranian-savior meme for a couple of reasons. First, it’s simply impossible to know what if any popular mandate Rafsanjani could command. After all, his last successful bid for elective office took place 20 years ago, a time that it is at most a hazy memory for the majority of Iran’s disproportionately young population. Since that time, he lost two subsequent attempts at the ballot box, a 2000 parliamentary campaign and the 2005 run against Ahmadinejad for the presidency.

His losses reflected his profoundly mixed reputation among ordinary Iranians, if my own anecdotal experience is any guide. The image of the former president as an infallible architect of economic reform is in fact greatly exaggerated. He did spearhead the post-war reconstruction program against considerable domestic opposition, but his policies also instigated a destabilizing debt crisis and spiraling inflation. Rafsanjani’s reputation for personal enrichment, the ascendance of his sons and daughters and nephew, and the culture of crony capitalism that emerged during his tenure left deep resentments among ordinary Iranians whose share of the post-war spoils typically did not expand.

And for all the outrage over his exclusion, it’s worth recalling that Rafsanjani knows a thing or two about rigging elections. In his first election to the presidency in 1989, he ran virtually uncontested; the Council of Guardians rejected all but one of the other 80 prospective candidates who applied. His opponent, a former agriculture minister and parliamentarian, was perceived at the time as merely “a name to fill out the ballot sheet,” who chivalrously articulated no opposing views in helping Rafsanjani cruise to a margin of 94 percent of the vote. His 1993 reelection was only mildly more competitive with three rivals approved out of 128 aspirants. In the interim, Rafsanjani helped engineer the culling of leftist candidates from the 1992 parliamentary elections on the grounds that they opposed his economic reforms.

In Iran, what goes around tends to come around, and the curtains probably closed on Rafsanjani’s opportunity to lead the Islamic Republic out of its ideological wilderness years or even decades ago. He will remain a force to be reckoned with in the arena, most notably through his longstanding ally Hassan Rouhani, whose bid to run managed to pass the Guardians’ Council scrutiny. Rouhani has nowhere near the name recognition of Rafsanjani, but he is a political figure of some stature and reputed intellect, who was one of the earliest and most vocal establishment critics of Ahmadinejad. He negotiated Iran’s short-lived suspension of uranium enrichment with the Europeans in 2004, and even in his incipient presidential campaign he has had the audacity to highlight the plight of Iran's political prisoners. A Rouhani win seems beyond improbable at this stage, but his approval offers a silver lining for Iran’s dispirited reformists mourning the loss of Hashemi Rafsanjani.

While the Rafsanjani furor is likely to deflate over the course of the campaign, the rejection of Ahmadinejad’s protégé, Mashaei, may well escalate before it is over. The news of Mashaei’s rejection seemed entirely foreordained; no one other than President Ahmadinejad himself anticipated that the Guardians' Council would allow the man dubbed the leader of a 'deviant current,' intent on subverting the revolutionary system and prone to blasphemy, to run for the country's second highest office. Ahmadinejad’s other allies had already withdrawn from the campaign, ostensibly to augment Mashaei’s chances, and now the mercurial president has literally no horse in the race and arguably no stake in keeping faith with the political establishment intent on eliminating him.

The president and his protégé are not without recourse; they have a claim on some residual popular base and a burgeoning political machinery. And most importantly, Ahmadinejad has already proven he is unencumbered by a sense of fidelity to the established rules of the Islamic Republic; among his other leverage, he has already threatened to reveal damaging information about the scope of his contested victory in 2009 in order to undermine the system. As a result, the most compelling dimension of Iran’s 2013 presidential elections may not be which candidate wins the office, but rather how the incumbent leaves the office.

Over the course of upcoming days, check back with Iran @ Saban for more on Mashaei, Rafsanjani and the ongoing fallout from the latest news. We’ll weigh in on the candidates who were approved, most notably nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili who has emerged as the analytical community’s pick for early front-runner. And we want to encourage you to join the conversation; email your thoughts on the candidate list and all the other Iran news of the day to IranAtSaban@brookings.edu, and we’ll post comments, questions and comebacks as they trickle in.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

How Arab Public Opinion Is Reshaping the Middle East

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 21, 2013
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

The Arab awakening that began in 2011 is transforming the Middle East in ways that continue to surprise seasoned observers. As new political leaders and movements struggle for power and work to shape the region’s future, one thing is clear: public opinion is more consequential now than it has arguably ever been. How Arabs view themselves and the world around them will have enormous consequences for the region and the larger international community in the years ahead. How are changes in Arab public opinion shaping the changes occurring across the region? Have the U.S. and its allies done enough to understand and support the voices of Arabs seeking greater representation and opportunity?

On May 21, the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, as part of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, hosted the launch of The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2013), the latest book by Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami. Kim Ghattas, BBC’s State Department correspondent, engaged Dr. Telhami in a discussion of the book and the issues it raises. Martin Indyk, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, provided introductory remarks.

Audio

How Arab Public Opinion Is Reshaping the Middle East

Welcome to Iran @ Saban

Suzanne Maloney — Mon, 20 May 2013 08:30:00 -0400

Welcome and khosh amadid!

Welcome to Iran @ Saban, a new blog featuring commentary and analysis on the array of issues related to Iran by scholars at the Brookings Institution. It takes only a quick scan of the headlines each day to appreciate the significance of Iran to American national interests and international security, and the variety and complexity of the issues and actors at stake. Through an intense focus on all things Iran, we hope to advance a better understanding of the internal dynamics of the Islamic Republic and promote effective international strategies for dealing with the challenges its policies pose.

We’ve timed our kick-off to coincide with the upcoming Iranian presidential election, in hopes of enriching the discussion that has already emerged around the ballot. As current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepares to leave office, Iran's internal power struggles will enter a new phase. From now through the vote on June 14^th and presumably well beyond, we’ll closely follow the twists and turns of Iran’s frequently unexpected electoral dynamics and consider what the future may bring for Iran. This discussion will delve into the major issues confronting Tehran today, especially the economic crisis and the impact of sanctions.

Although the electoral interplay will consume a great deal of attention in the next few weeks, the focus of the blog will extend well beyond the events of the election and Iran's domestic dramas. We will be tackling Iran’s approach to the region and the world, its relationship with established and emerging powers, and the strategies and tactics of various players, including the United States, toward Tehran. Inevitably, we’ll spend a lot of time examining the nuclear issue, starting with the prospects for revitalizing the stalled negotiations between Tehran and the international community and discussions around alternative approaches if dialogue fails to produce a diplomatic resolution of Iran's nuclear ambitions. However, the sense of urgency surrounding the nuclear issue has narrowed the American debate on Iran in recent years, problematically in my opinion. For that reason, watch the space for a robust discussion of the range of issues and threats related to Iran, including terrorism, human rights, the peace process and the Syrian civil war, the rise of new regional and global powers, and the impact of technology and changes in energy markets on Iranian politics and the policy options of the international community.

Let me also say a few words about what this blog won’t be: this won’t be a vehicle for lobbying for or against any particular point of view. This blog will be infused with opinions – various and variegated – but in keeping with the Brookings’ mission, our discussions here on the blog will remain grounded in the ideals of intellectual objectivity, rigorous policy-relevant analysis, and civil debate. In that respect, we hope to integrate some of our longer form scholarship into the blog, by featuring previews of forthcoming publications related to Iran and initating conversations surrounding our ongoing research projects.

I also want to underscore that this will not be a solo venture. At the outset, my name may recur disproportionately, as the person charged with wrangling the blog’s content and as one of the few scholars who has the luxury of obsessing almost exclusively about Iran. However, Iran invokes a diverse and thorny set of foreign policy issues and concerns, and many of my Brookings scholars are at the forefront of research and writing on areas relevant to the Iranian challenge. We’ll try to draw in experts on a range of different regions, including China, Europe, and India as well as the scholars in our Doha office, and functional areas of expertise, such as energy, intelligence, and nonproliferation, and the site will feature the work of a fantastic team of Brookings staff providing with research and media support. As visitors to this site will soon appreciate, the whole of Brookings' work on Iran is much greater than the sum of its parts.

I want to close this opening with an overture: we want to extend the debate on Iran beyond the walls of Brookings, and we encourage you to join the conversation via email to IranAtSaban@brookings.edu We’ll also be on Twitter (via, among others, @maloneysuzanne) and engaging through a variety of other media.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Why Iran's Presidential Election Matters

Suzanne Maloney — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:26:00 -0400

In conversations with policymakers, journalists and analysts about the upcoming Iranian presidential elections, one question looms: does it even matter? Iran is, after all, an Islamic theocracy, a state in which the supreme leader is the ultimate decision-maker and elections are heavily stage-managed from start to finish. The president’s powers are explicitly limited, and whatever sense of electoral unpredictability that may have characterized Iran in the past— for example, in 1997, when a reformist cleric upset the heavily-favored front-runner— appeared to have ended with the contested 2009 reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Millions of Iranians outraged by the unusual speed and dubious margin of Ahmadinejad’s ostensible victory took to the streets chanting “where is my vote?” This violence that greeted this appeal, and the show trials and other Stalinist tactics that followed in its wake, seemed to suggest that Iran's quirky system had devolved to a more banal authoritarianism, where polls serve as mere pageants and institutions are unabashedly manipulated.

It would be tempting, then, to dismiss the election scheduled for June 14 as mere window-dressing or to disregard the brewing antagonisms within Iran’s political establishment as irrelevant. This would be a mistake, however, and yet another misreading of Iran’s complicated domestic dynamics. Don’t get me wrong— I don’t mean to suggest that the election will bear any resemblance to a truly democratic enterprise; even in the best of times, the Islamic Republic fell far short of meeting international standards for free and fair elections. However, while the outcome will be engineered, the element of improvisation is real, and the outcome of this latest twist in the thirty-four year power struggle within Iran will have significant implications for the future of the country and its role in the world.

If the past eight years of Ahmadinejad’s antics have taught us nothing else, they have demonstrated over and over again that Iran’s presidency matters. Despite its electoral illegitimacy, its institutional constraints, and the assiduous efforts of a system built around a divine mandate, the office of the presidency has emerged as one with real power to shape the context for domestic and foreign policy. The post exerts considerable authority over the Iranian budget, the framework for internal political activities, the social and cultural atmosphere, and even the most sensitive aspects of Iran’s security policies. Whoever assumes the office in August of this year will find himself near the apex of power, at a time of unprecedented external pressure and at the cusp of generational change within the Iranian regime. For this reason, the election and its outcome will have enormous sway over the future course of the Islamic Republic.

To appreciate the significance of the much-maligned Iranian presidency, simply consider the track records of its most recent occupants. During his two terms in office (1997-2005), reformist president Mohammad Khatami managed to curb some of the worst abuses of Iran’s own citizens and establish new avenues for political participation and speech. His tenure attracted foreign investment to Iran, unified its exchange rate, and established an oil stabilization fund to promote responsible economic stewardship. He repaired Iran’s relationships with much of the world, and even helped push through a multi-year suspension of the most worrisome aspects of its nuclear program.

It was not an unadulterated success by any stretch of the imagination; Khatami’s ambitions for change were inherently limited by his steadfast loyalty to the theocratic system and many of its most problematic policies, and even his mild reforms were thwarted at every turn by hardliners’ opposition. Still, compare those years to the two terms of his successor, who oversaw a crackdown against technocrats and the media, squandered an epic boom in oil revenues, and indulged in hate speech that helped alienate the world and isolate his country. It’s clear that Iranians as well as the international community were better served by Khatami’s halting moderation than by Ahmadinejad’s impetuous antagonisms.

It’s almost certain that the June election won’t produce a shocking upset or a reformist victory, and that whoever manages to secure the presidency this time around will offer continuity on the issues that matter most to Washington, particularly the nuclear issue. However, elections— even ones that are heavily rigged— represent critical junctures in the lifecycle of political systems, and in Iran they have repeatedly sent the revolutionary system careening in new directions. At times, these changes in course were deliberate, as in 1989 when Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ran virtually unopposed in order to spearhead the country’s post-war reconstruction. At other times, the shifts have been wholly unanticipated, such as the advent of the reform movement or even Ahmadinejad himself, whose mid-term transformation from the Supreme Leader’s acolyte to his whipping boy has given the Iranian political establishment whiplash.

Iran’s revolution was the product of a deeply divided coalition that agreed on little beyond their opposition to the Shah, and throughout its history, the Islamic Republic has experienced a intense, evolving competition for influence. That contest remains as dynamic as ever, and the election will offer an opportunity for external observers to gauge the state of play. For those within the system, the campaign provides endless openings for ambitious contenders and rival factions to position themselves for future influence and reframe Iran’s political climate, just as Khatami and Ahmadinejad did. The election will help determine what becomes of a regime stalwart, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; the future prospects of the quixotic and enterpreneurial Ahmadinejad; and the rise or fall of a curious array of aspiring Iranian leaders.

And because the legacy of the revolution and Iran’s century-old struggle for representative rule has made popular participation incumbent even upon its theocracy, the election will mobilize millions of Iranians in ways that often prove difficult to control, even with a well-orchestrated repression. Over the course of the forthcoming weeks, we’ll be watching all these factors closely and seeking to interpret what the campaign and its outcome mean for Iran’s domestic evolution and its ongoing conflicts with the international community.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

America and Iran: Wrestling with Ghosts

Suzanne Maloney — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:56:00 -0400

One of the very few feel-good stories in the recent history of U.S.-Iranian relations came to an unexpectedly abrupt end last week, when Iranian authorities cut short a series of wrestling exhibition matches in the United States. The first round, held in New York last Wednesday, drew large, boisterous crowds and buoyant media coverage, helping to animate a three-nation campaign (with Russia) to sustain wrestling as an Olympic sport and raise funds for youth wrestling programs. No sooner had the applause in New York died down, however, than Tehran opted to ditch a planned Los Angeles stop on the tour, and the Iranian wrestlers quickly returned to Tehran on Saturday.

So far, the rationale for the decision seems vague, and there are discrepancies between the statement of the exhibition’s American sponsor, USA Wrestling, and the official Iranian press agency's rendition. News reports referenced Iranian concerns about security provisions, and rumors circulated of anticipated protests by members of the large Iranian diaspora living in Southern California. Whatever the explanation, the hasty truncation of the American-Iranian wrestling tour is unfortunate but not entirely unexpected. For all sunny sentiments associated with cultural diplomacy, managing the political and logistical complexities of people-to-people exchanges between such longstanding adversaries can be fraught with potential minefields.

I should know; as a graduate student in the late 1990s, I participated in several of the first academic exchange programs between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. And I experienced first-hand the excitement as well as the issues that go along with such efforts. Thanks to funding from both governments and the coordination and contacts of the American Institute for Iranian Studies, I was able to study Persian at the Dehkhoda Institute in Tehran, travel widely throughout the country, and conduct research for my doctoral dissertation on Iran's Foundation for the Oppressed and other parastatal organizations. Fumbling my way around a country that I had studied extensively but never visited was an amazing experience. Iranians treated me and my fellow American interlopers with the hospitality for which the country rightly used to be legendary and the curiosity that inevitably accompanies three decades of official estrangement.

However, I also came to appreciate how precarious these enterprises can be. The problem with people-to-people diplomacy is, well, the people. Amateur ambassadors can be mighty difficult to manage, particularly with the limited oversight of what are ultimately low-priority programs. Inserting a gaggle of grad students, or wrestlers or any of the other professional groups that have sought to overcome official estrangement through bilateral exchanges, creates endless opportunities for normal human interactions to explode into diplomatic incidents. I'll never forget the combination of exhaustion and anxiety on the face of the one of the many Iranian handlers when a few Americans unexpectedly found ourselves in the midst of a gun battle between police and drug runners in the southeastern city of Kerman. We had arrived in Iran just as the regime unleashed its repression of the July 1999 student protests, and now this real-time brush with the country's low-intensity drug war was just the kind of mess that could cost our minder his job and his future. "I am having a nervous breakdown," he confessed as he alternated between tea and chain smoking.

I suspect that there are a number of program officers within the State Department who can sympathize. During the Bush Administration's second term, then-Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns spurred a good-faith effort to expand educational and cultural exchanges with Iran. Artists, doctors, athletes and scientists from Iran crisscrossed America, sharing expertise and experience in subjects as diverse as earthquake science and engineering and AIDS treatment and education. Publicly, the programs often appeared to be blazingly successful in their stated goal of enhancing mutual understanding between Americans and Iranians. Behind the scenes, however, the story was often more complicated, thanks to Tehran’s paranoid conviction that these innocuous opportunities were the leading edge of a Washington-sponsored ‘soft revolution.’ A number of Iranians who participated in these exchanges found their passports seized or their professional advancement threatened; some feared returning home, and several were ultimately imprisoned after permitting their stories to be featured prominently in a major American newspaper.

I believe deeply in the mission and purpose of people-to-people exchanges. What little I understand about contemporary Iranian politics is grounded in the months I spent there over the course of 1998 and 1999, as well as the skills, contacts, and subsequent opportunities to visit Iran that I acquired as a direct result of that early immersion. Surely, the benefits for my fellow American participants— as well as the hundreds of Iranians who have been able to interact with their professional counterparts in the United States— have been at least as meaningful.

Still, people-to-people diplomacy is no substitute for official diplomacy, and it frequently offers as much complication as illumination. Back in 1999, my fretful Iranian minder won an early reprieve when our exchange program was unexpectedly curtailed upon the order of the State Department. A call from the Swiss ambassador, whose embassy serves as the protecting power of Americans in the absence of official relations, initiated a flurry of bureaucratic maneuvers to hasten our departure, and a few days later we were gone. I subsequently heard a range of rumors explaining the episode, including one focused around the efforts of the Clinton administration to establish back-channel cooperation with then-President Mohammad Khatami on counterterrorism efforts. Whatever the truth, nothing ever came of that initiative, and fourteen years later, the wrestlers' unfortunately early exit underscores the steep obstacles that remain in bridging the American-Iranian divide.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Who Are Iran's Voters?

Djavad Salehi-Isfahani — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:10:00 -0400

The list of candidates registered for the Iranian presidential election in June — at least until they are trimmed by the Guardian Council — offers Iranian voters a reasonable variety of philosophies from which to choose.

As usual, there is a mix of social and economic issues on voters’ minds, but differences between candidates in their approaches to solving Iran’s mounting economic problems matter most. Populists, led by president Ahmadinejad’s close associate Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, promise more redistribution. Pragmatists and reformers, led by former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, argue for the revival of economic growth. Finally, an assortment of conservatives, led by politicians close to the Supreme Leader, such as former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, will take a middle course promising both growth and redistribution.

But who are the voters to whom these philosophies would appeal?

Since the last election in 2009, the voting-age population (18 years and older) has grown from 47 million to 55 million. (Age structure and employment data are calculations from the 2% sample of the 2011 census provided by the Statistical Center of Iran and are adjusted to reflect the 2013 age structure.) It has also aged slightly: The median voter is now 38 years old, three years older than in 2009. Voters under 30 (henceforth young voters), account for one-third of all voters, down from 37% in 2009. So, young voters are not as numerous as they were in 2009 when, in the aftermath of the highly contested vote that returned Ahmadinejad to office for a second term, they poured into the streets and created the Islamic Republic’s first serious political crisis. But, compared with 19% in the US, Iran's young voters are still quite a force to be reckoned with.

The shift to adult voters (aged 30-64), who comprise 57% of all voters, compared to 54% in 2009, though small, points to the direction in which Iranian politics may be moving in the future: away from social issues that concern youth and in the direction of economic issues that matter to older voters. In 2009, younger voters were energized by Mir Hossein Mousavi’s statement during a television debate that, if elected, he would stop the public chastity police. They seemed less concerned that his economic plan was much less specific about how he was going to help them find jobs.

Youth suffer from very high rates of joblessness, but their pain is often shifted to their parents. An astonishing 65% of young voters live with their parents, and are thus partly shielded from the harshest aspects of Iran’s failing economy.

Older voters are more concerned with economic issues because they work and are breadwinners for their families. Youth suffer from very high rates of joblessness, but their pain is often shifted to their parents. An astonishing 65% of young voters live with their parents, and are thus partly shielded from the harshest aspects of Iran’s failing economy. About 77% of adult males work, compared to 40% for young voters (11% of adult women work compared to only 6% of young women).

Social class will play a larger role in this election than any in the past, thanks in part to the populist policies of the Ahmadinejad administration. In 2011, the median voter lived in a family with about $11 per day of expenditures per person, which by common international standards classifies him or her as middle class. (Conversions to US dollars use a factor of 6,500 rials in 2011, which is higher than the World Bank estimate of 5,854 rials per USD; income and expenditure data use the Expenditure and Income Surveys of 2009 and 2011 collected by the Statistical Center of Iran.)

Poor voters (defined as living in families with less than $3 per day) accounted for only 2.1% of the voting age population. But rising inequality, especially at the very top, has created a much wider base of disgruntled voters who would like to see the government engage in more redistribution, not less, despite the fact that many in Iran now believe that Ahmadinejad-style redistribution has caused inflation and not improved their lot.

Since January 2011, President Ahmadinejad’s main populist program — cash instead of energy subsidies — has been depositing cash in individual bank accounts of nearly every Iranian every month. Survey evidence suggests that for people below the median income, trading cheap fuel for cash has been a net gain. The monthly payment amounted to $360 (in international dollars) for a family of four in 2011, which was about 50% of the monthly expenditures of people in the poorest 10% (now about half as much), 17% for those in the middle of the distribution, but only 5% for the richest decile. As a result of these and other transfers, the Gini index of income distribution fell by nearly 5 percentage points to 0.36 (my calculations from surveys of incomes and expenditures), its lowest level in the post-revolution period.

Improving the distribution of incomes is not the same thing as raising them. In the last two years, Iran’s economy has performed very badly, in part because of international sanctions, but also in large part because crude redistributive policies, such as unconditional cash transfers, are rarely good for economic growth.

Even if Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the candidate most closely associated with Ahmadinejad, is allowed to run, it is uncertain whether or not he will be able to rally the beneficiaries of the populist policies followed in the last eight years to make a good showing at the polls. Uncertain, too, is how long his reformist and conservative opponents can afford to ignore popular demands for redistribution or be able to undo the redistributive policies of the current administration if they win the election.

Authors

Djavad Salehi-Isfahani

Publication: Al Monitor

Image Source: © Morteza Nikoubazl / Reuters

Iran Press Report: What to Make of the Glut of Presidential Candidates?

Mehrun Etebari — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:30:00 -0400

This week in the Iranian media, we witnessed reactions to the surprising number of recognized candidates who registered – many on the final day – to run in June 14^th presidential election. Some commentators on both the left and right wings of the Iranian press spectrum suggested that the number of candidates who registered on the conservative Principlist side poses a serious risk to that front’s chances. Even with the potential for a whittling of the Principlist slate via the ongoing vetting of the Guardian Council, which is due to finish on May 21, the disorganized approach from Principlist groups who had planned to coordinate and enter a small number of unity candidates is disturbing, said Mohammad Eskandari in the hardline daily Javan, particularly with the surprising late entrance of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani buoying the reformists’ presidential hopes. He wrote that he could envision different Principlist coalitions like the 2+1 Coalition, the Coalition of Five, and the Resistance Front putting individual ambitions aside and deciding on a unified approach. “However,” he continued, “the second possible path, which is for the unification process among the Principlists to remain fruitless, could translate to a major defeat for the Principlists, and thus allow the reformists to take the presidency.”

Understandably, this has led to some glee from commentators with reformist sympathies, as Rafsanjani remains far and away the most viable candidate in the reformist camp, leaving them no such indecision. Referring first to the 2+1 group of former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, former Majlis speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, and Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Javad Qorbani in Mardom-Salari marveled at how among this coalition set up to choose a single candidate most likely to win the election, all three registered because, as he sees it, “Each of the three candidates thinks himself to be the best.” He pointed to similar disunity in the Coalition of Five members Mohammad Hassan Aboutourabi-Fard and Manouchehr Mottaki both running. He concluded, “These disagreements show not only the Principlists’ lack of a plan and contradict their claim of unity, but they also indicate that those who claim to be Principlists are actually solitary individuals who have found the way up the ladder of power by sticking with the Principlist movement.” Other reformists suggested the entry of Rafsanjani was a “shock” that would force the Principlists into discipline out of necessity. Hassan Rasuli in Bahar argued that the conservative establishment would have to find a strategic choice who could appeal to a wide base, and guessed as to who that would be: “Among all the registered candidates, Mr. Jalili – who has good relations with the younger, newer wing of the Principlists and on a related note serves with Mr. Ahmadinejad on the Supreme National Security Council – has a higher chance than others to take the central place in the elections as a rival for Mr. Hashemi.” (This idea of Jalili as the obvious choice is far from unanimous in the Iranian media, with one Principlist MP telling Tehran-e Emrooz, “Qalibaf’s experience in various management areas as well has his performance in all executive duties have shown that he has the qualifications to become the focus of the Principlists’ unity.”)

The media has also been rife with reactions to the registration of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the controversial Ahmadinejad advisor and central figure in what critics call the “Deviant Current” that surrounds the president. The president has been criticized for his “illegal” act in accompanying his protégé to the registration, with Ali Rezaei writing in Javan that the president’s legal justification for his actions are ludicrous: “Another justification that the president and his entourage used is that the president had taken the day off on that day and he was using his personal identity, not his legal identity! Even if this justification is made in a kindergarten, the children will laugh at it since any illiterate knows someone serving as president cannot separate his personal identity from his legal identity under any circumstance.” In the same paper, pointing to arguments from the president’s entourage aimed at preventing the Guardian Council from disqualifying Mashaei, Yadollah Javani argued that the legal duty of the council must be performed without interference, and ignorance of the Council’s role and independence is tantamount to lawbreaking and reminiscent of the defiance that marked the 2009 election protests. Connecting complaints against the Guardian Council to the “sedition” of that year, he wrote, “According to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, the roots of the events of 1388 were a disregard for the law.”

APPENDIX: Translated Summaries of Selected Opinion Pieces (Newest to Oldest)

“The Principlists, Unity, and Passing this Historic Turning Point.” Mohammad Eskandari, Javan, 24 Ordibehesht 1392 / 14 May 2013.

In the hardline Javan, Eskandari expresses worry that the conservatives of the Principlist movement, who should be poised to easily win the presidency, are putting that goal in serious jeopardy through their own disorganization and lack of consensus on a candidate. He writes that these elections are at such a crucial time that the importance of getting them right is magnified, saying, “Iran, the region, and the world are poised at a historical turning point where any move on this chessboard has the potential to be crucial and fateful,” particularly due to Iran’s current role as the “standard-bearer of independent nations.” He argues that while a Principlist victory would have immensely positive ramifications, “a victory by the reformists, and particularly by Hashemi, would have to be considered a backward step.” However, he says, given the current state of affairs in the Principlist camp, Rafsanjani’s “arrival at the 90^th minute” and his ability to generate momentum has meant the prospect of Principlist defeat is a real one if the conservatives remain complacent. “Unfortunately, the state of the Principlists’ election planning is chaotic and there is no think tank to lead and organize the number of candidates. A high number of people in the Principlist movement have made themselves presidential candidates and each is based in a different branch of the movement.” He criticizes the inability of Principlist subgroups that should have been far more organized among themselves, such as the Resistance Front (which includes candidates Jalili and Lankerani) and the 2+1 coalition (made up of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Ali Akbar Velayati, and Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel) to register only one candidate each. He writes that the number of Principlist candidates will come down with the Guardian Council’s vetting, but that groups like the abovementioned alliances and the “Coalition of Five” will ideally get the number of their candidates down to two at most, which would at least be likely to guarantee that the election goes to a second round. But he remains worried: “However, the second possible path, which is for the unification process among the Principlists to remain fruitless, could translate to a major defeat for the Principlists, and thus allow the reformists to take the presidency.”

“Ahmadinejad is Opening Up a Confrontational Phase.” Hassan Rasuli, Bahar, 24 Ordibehesht 1392 / 14 May 2013.

In the reformist daily Bahar, Rasuli argues that Rafsanjani’s late entrance into the presidential election has shocked the reformists’ opponents both in the Ahmadinejad camp and the Principlist establishment. He writes that the Principlists in particular were given a sense of shock and factional uncertainty regarding their own strategy for the elections, as they had not been counting on a major reformist candidate such as Rafsanjani or former President Khatami to enter. He writes that looking at Principlist websites or looking at “newspapers such as Kayhan, the intellectual tribune of the movement” in advance of Rafsanjani’s entrance, it was clear that the conservatives had no expectation of a serious rival in the election. But now, the Principlists will be forced to sow unity among their varied ranks – or at least attempt do so. He suggests that one candidate above all would be ideal Principlist choice: “in the opinion of this author, amongst all the registered candidates, Mr. Jalili – who has good relations with the younger, newer wing of the Principlists and on a related note serves with Mr. Ahmadinejad on the Supreme National Security Council – has a higher chance than others to take the central place in the elections as a rival for Mr. Hashemi.” Meanwhile, he writes, Ahmadinejad’s camp, featuring Mashaei, appears to be seeking to sow controversy and chaos in the aftermath of Rafsanjani’s entry.

“Where Do Hashemi’s Doubts Come From?” Mohammad Imani, Kayhan, 24 Ordibehesht 1392 / 14 May 2013.

Following upon its articles last week insisting that Rafsanjani’s lack of a popular base and his near-certain failure in the election would keep him on the sidelines of the election, the Kayhan editorial by Imani argues that his entrance into the race does not change the fact that the ex-president has serious doubts about his ability to succeed in the race – and with good reason. Imani writes that the hesitation of the candidate comes from his own knowledge that his supposed supporters among the reformist front can’t be trusted to vote for him. He says that Hashemi remembers well how he gave support, via “secret” influence over his Kargozaran party, to Mohammad Khatami’s election effort in 1997, but that within 2 years, he received “payback” in the form of vilification from reformist activists.

“Words With the Flavor of Sedition.” Yadollah Javani, Javan, 23 Ordibehesht 1392 / 13 May 2013.

In the hardline Javan daily, Javani writes that there is a great threat from certain candidates – most notably Mashaei – of unconstitutional activities that seek to interfere with the legal process under which the Guardian Council is vetting candidates. He points to the way in which President Ahmadinejad accompanied his advisor on the occasion of his registration as evidence of the attempt to pressure the Guardian Council, which should be left to its independent duty. He also says that those who criticize the Council in advance, suggesting that its vetting is a hindrance of democracy on political grounds, are mistaken, because it is an important duty to “prevent improper individuals from becoming president.” He asks those candidates who accuse the Council of plotting to interfere, “Is it their view that all 686 registered candidates be allowed to run in the election?” He insists that all candidates remain silent and wait for the results of the vetting, because anything else is tantamount to ignorance and violation of the constitution. “According to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, the roots of the events of 1388 were a disregard for the law.”

“Two Coalitions, One Fate: The Principlists’ Un-principled Behavior.” Javad Qorbani, Mardom-Salari, 23 Ordibehesht 1392 / 13 May 2013.

In the moderate daily Mardom-Salari, Qorbani writes that the Principlists are in complete disarray, as can be seen from the chaotic nature of their candidate registration. Particularly, he points at the fact that two notable Principlist coalitions that were set up to choose a single candidate failed to limit their registrations to a single candidate, showing a lack of discipline and unity. Even though the 2+1 coalition was designed for only one candidate, deemed to be the most likely to win, to come forward as a candidate, as he puts it, “Each of the three candidates thinks himself to be the best.” He writes that words from Haddad-Adel indicating that all three candidates registered to ensure that at least one of them emerged from the vetting process smacks of insincerity and it laughable. “With the knowledge that we have of the Guardian Council, if the eligibility of these three candidates is not confirmed, whose eligibility will be?” He also points to the fact that the Coalition of Five supposedly announced that Aboutourabi-Fard was put forward as a candidate with the approval of the entire group – yet former foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki registered anyway, citing his greater popularity in polls. He argues, “These disagreements show not only the Principlists’ lack of a plan and contradict their claim of unity, but they also indicate that those who claim to be Principlists are actually solitary individuals who have found the way up the ladder of power by sticking with the Principlist movement.”

Authors

Mehrun Etebari

A Statesman’s Forum with H.E. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:30:00 -0400

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May 17, 2013
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

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On May 17, the Center on the U.S. and Europe at Brookings hosted a Stateman's Forum with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In his remarks, Mr. Erdoğan reflected on three terms of Justice and Development Party (AK Party) leadership during a period of rapid evolution for Turkey and its role in the world.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became Prime Minister of Turkey in March 2003, following the electoral success in 2002 of the AK Party. In the 2007and 2011 elections, the AK Party was returned to power with landslide victories in Turkey's parliamentary elections, making Mr. Erdoğan the longest-serving prime minister in Turkish history. Previously, Mr. Erdoğan served as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1997. He was educated at Marmara University.

Brookings President Strobe Talbott introduced Mr. Erdoğan. At the conclusion of the Prime Minister's remarks, Brookings TUSIAD Senior Fellow Kemal Kirişci moderated a discussion.

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Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan's U.S. Agenda

Kemal Kirişci — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:46:00 -0400

Editor's note: On May 17, 2013 Brookings hosted Prime Minister Erdogan for an event on U.S.-Turkish relations.

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is visiting Washington this week and will meet with President Obama today. This is his first visit to the United States since December 2009. But the world and the Middle East have changed dramatically since then. Thus, the agenda for Erdogan’s talks with Obama will be a very crowded one. Four topics in particular are likely to stand out.

1. The Situation in Syria

Erdogan arrives in Washington at a time when there is growing pressure on the Obama administration to change its course on Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry has already taken some steps to increase nonlethal support for the opposition in Syria while putting growing pressure on the moderate opposition to tighten their ranks and distance themselves from radical Islamist groups. These measures are unlikely to satisfy Erdogan. He has long been a vocal critic of the international community, the United Nations Security Council and the United States for idly “watching the tragedy” unfolding in Syria.

He is likely to remind Obama quite loudly that the butchery of civilians by the Assad regime has reached levels that makes it unethical not to respond to and that, as the car bombs that exploded in Turkish border town of Reyhanli last weekend demonstrate, Turkish national security is being directly affected. He will also offer facts and figures to show how the humanitarian situation is fast deteriorating and becoming untenable with an ever expanding flow of refugees and displaced people. He will not miss the opportunity to share with Obama the evidence collected from refugees arriving in Turkish hospitals that the Syrian regime is using chemical weapons. Erdogan may go as far as to push Obama to support the idea of creating a no-fly zone along the Turkish border.

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Authors

Kemal Kirişci

Publication: The National Interest

Iran’s Presidential Election Puts Populism to the Test

Djavad Salehi-Isfahani — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:25:00 -0400

Economic issues are paramount on the minds of Iranian voters as they ponder the long list of candidates registered for president: who among them is likely to survive the vetting by the Guardian Council, and, of those, who offers the best plan to get Iran’s economy out of the rut it has been in for the last several years?

Since the last election in 2009, the economy has stopped growing, more people are unemployed, prices have skyrocketed, and the currency has lost more than half of its value. Not all of these are the fault of outgoing President Ahmadinejad — sanctions have tightened considerably since he started his second term in 2009. But for the last several months the economic debate in Iran has been dominated by both his conservative and reformist critics who charge that his populist policies have brought economic ruin.

Three large programs define this populist legacy of redistribution. The first was a large $40 billion lending program for small enterprises, known as the “quick-returns projects”, which started in 2006 and was already widely considered a colossal failure before the 2009 election. The 2011 census revealed zero net jobs added to the economy since the program’s inception. Meanwhile, the public banks that were forced to lend to these projects have been left with huge unpaid loans. This large expansion of credit that failed to bring much additional output spurred the inflationary spiral that would later define the Ahmadinejad presidency.

The low-cost housing scheme, known as Maskan Mehr, also turned out to be highly inflationary because it relied on public lending to low-income people, forcing the banks to increase their borrowing from the Central Bank by about $40 billion and adding even more to liquidity.

The third, and most controversial, is the subsidy reform program, which redistributed some $70 billion worth of energy subsidies — most of which benefited people in middle- and upper-income groups — more equitably by replacing them with cash transfers. It also proved inflationary because the amount of cash distributed exceeded the cost of the energy subsidies that had been removed by an estimated $15 billion per year. The last two programs are still ongoing and have come under sharp attack, from both reformists and conservatives.

There seems to be a widespread perception among Iranian voters that Mr. Ahmadinejad has failed to deliver on his promise, first made in the 2005 elections, to “bring the oil money to the dinner table.” But this does not mean that the public is ready to give up on redistribution. If there is a program that promises them what they are looking for – redistribution without inflation – they will support it. But such a program is not currently to be found among the plans of any of the declared candidates.

Mr. Rafsanjani’s dramatic entrance into the election fray last Saturday is in part motivated by the hope that after eight years of redistributive policies, a majority of voters are now ready to view the type of pro-growth and pro-market policies that he spearheaded as president from 1989 to 1997 with more sympathy. He has certainly already won the support of the left-leaning reformers who, ironically, heavily criticized his structural-adjustment policies then.

Mr. Mashai’s equally dramatic registration on Saturday (with President Ahmadinejad at his side) is to convince voters that with more time populists will deliver on their promises. They should be assured of sizeable support from lower-income people, especially those who have benefited from his cash transfers.

The subsidy reform has been putting 450,000 rials per person per month in individual bank accounts since January 2011. While the value of this transfer has declined due to inflation – when it started it was worth about $45 but is now worth less than half as much — it amounted to about 50% of the per capita expenditures of the poorest 10% of the population in 2011. With unemployment at record levels, they would find themselves in extreme poverty if this transfer is substantially reduced or eliminated. As much as half of the country’s total population are net beneficiaries of the cash transfer program because the energy subsidies they replaced were highly regressive.

Mr. Rafsanjani’s put-down of cash transfers in 2008 as “fostering beggars” is unlikely to endear him to the poor and the jobless. Convincing them that they would do better with real economic growth makes economic sense but will be a hard sell politically to this group. He may not need them, however, because the middle- and upper-income classes for whom the cash transfer matters little — for the top decile, it makes up only 5% of their expenditures — account for some 40% of the electorate.

Candidates from conservative factions, known as “Principlists”, have so far gotten away with simply pointing out what they are against – inflation, unemployment, and bad implementation of good policies by the current administration. They have been careful to stress their commitment to continue the two remaining programs – subsidy reform and low-cost housing – but manage them better.

But the arrival of Mssrs. Rafsanjani and Mashai on the electoral scene will force them to define more precisely how they plan to bring about economic growth while continuing the most important policies of the Ahmadinejad administration. If the Guardian Council, which has the final say on who can run, allows this election to become a three-way race between populist, pro-growth, and Principlist philosophies, the conservative candidates will have to say more clearly what they are for, not just what they are against. Without it, they are likely to find themselves squeezed between the two better-defined alternatives.

Authors

Djavad Salehi-Isfahani

Publication: Lobe Log

American Foreign Policy in Retreat? A Discussion with Vali Nasr

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:30:00 -0400

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May 14, 2013
9:30 AM - 11:00 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

For the past decade, a debate has raged about the future of American power and foreign policy engagement. In his new book, The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (Knopf Doubleday Publishing, 2013), Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Vali Nasr questions America’s choice to lessen its foreign policy engagement around the world. Nasr argues that after taking office in 2009, the Obama administration let fears of terrorism and political backlash confine its policies to that of the previous administration, instead of seizing the opportunity to fundamentally reshape American foreign policy over the past four years. Meanwhile, China and Russia – rivals to American influence globally – were quietly expanding their influence in places where the U.S. has long held sway. Nasr argues that the Obama administration’s foreign policy decision making could have potentially dangerous outcomes, and, what’s more, sells short America’s power and role in the world.

On May 14, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted Vali Nasr for a discussion on the state of U.S. power globally and whether American foreign policy under the Obama administration is in retreat. Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Kagan joined the discussion, which was moderated by Vice President Martin Indyk, director of Foreign Policy.

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American Foreign Policy in Retreat? A Discussion with Vali Nasr

65 Years After 'Catastrophe,' Palestinians Have Little to Cheer About

Ibrahim Sharqieh — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

On May 15, the Palestinians will commemorate 65 years of their “Nakba” – “the Catastrophe.” This is how they describe 1948, which saw the destruction of Palestinian society, 750,000 Palestinians forced from their homes, and over 450 Palestinian towns wiped off the map. Today, there are over 5 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations’ UNRWA. But while 1948 was a terrible trauma for the collective Palestinian memory, the reality is that it was only the beginning of a long journey of displacement, dispossession, and exile. The real Nakba is ongoing, and the Palestinian people live it on a daily basis both inside and outside the Palestinian territories. As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry throws himself into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, we have to ask: Will his efforts bring this human tragedy a step closer to the end? Or only make it worse?

On a recent trip to Lebanon, I made sure to visit the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. While under control of the Israeli army that occupied Beirut in 1982, approximately 800 to 3,500 Palestinian refugees were massacred at the hands of Christian militias. In the camps today, the bitter reality of the Palestinian refugees’ life in exile is on full display: an enormous mass grave in the camps’ center holds the victims of 1982 massacre. It is a daily reminder to the refugees of their continuing human tragedy.

The Palestinians in Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp have hardly been spared the bitterness of displacement and dispossession. Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011, the estimated 150,000 Palestinian refugees in Yarmouk have reportedly been subjected to terror, horror, and murder of all kinds. Many have fled the camp to become “double refugees” in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan. Um Mazen, one of these twice-displaced told the Financial Times, “It’s the Nakba of Yarmouk.”

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, too, have their share of Nakba. An Israeli policy of collective punishment has left 1.7 million Palestinians trapped in a besieged Gaza, the world’s largest prison. In the West Bank, the modern-day Nakba can be seen in continued settler violence, settlement expansion, and a dividing wall that encroaches on Palestinian land and, in many cases, deprives people of their livelihoods. This is in addition, of course, to the many Palestinians of Jerusalem who lost the right to return home after living only a few years abroad.

Against this grim backdrop, Kerry has made a public commitment to bring peace to the region through his intensive personal diplomacy. But while it may be too early to pass judgment on his initiative, the traditional American approach to this conflict has been predictable – and unworkable. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for example, suggested ending the agony of Palestinians refugees’ exile by sending them to…Chile and Argentina.

As Edward Abington told me, Arafat urged President Bill Clinton to ask Benjamin Netanyahu to stop or at least delay the construction of the Har Homa colony – a colony that threatened the collapse of the entire peace process. Abington – former U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem and the key U.S. contact with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1996 – said that Arafat repeatedly entreated Clinton, but to no avail. Finally, Clinton is said to have passed the request on to newly appointed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She seemed to done nothing. It was then, Abington said, that Arafat knew he could not count on the Americans to make a real difference.

The Palestinian Nakba is one of the root causes of today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict; if Secretary Kerry is to succeed, he will need to address it. The economic package he plans to introduce would affect the Palestinians in the West Bank. But it would do nothing for the Yarmouk’s double refugees or Shatila – surrounded by death, past and present.

Kerry’s major step to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been the adjustment of the 11-year-old Arab Peace Plan to include mutual land swaps. The plan will now accommodate the illegal Israeli colonies in the West Bank – including Har Homa. It is absurd that Washington’s position has shifted from freezing settlement activities during the Obama administration’s first term to accommodating those settlements in the second term.

By pressuring the Arabs to accept land swaps even before negotiations begin, Kerry has set up his mediation efforts for failure. He has left no incentive for the Netanyahu government to negotiate; on the contrary, now that the Arabs have in principle accepted land swaps, Netanyahu will likely take advantage of this concession to further intensify settlement activities.

By presenting the land swap to Netanyahu without a firm commitment to stop settlement building, Kerry has sabotaged himself. As he will discover, Netanyahu’s right-wing government is only interested in exploiting every possible opportunity to sabotage peace efforts, building more colonies – and as a result, continuously exacerbating the crisis of America’s image and credibility in the Middle East. To be certain, Netanyahu government has just announced, in response to Kerry’s land swap, the building of 300 units at the heart of the West Bank’s city, Ramallah. This outcome has shown clearly there is nothing innovative about Kerry’s peace plan and that his efforts align perfectly with traditional Washington mediation efforts of appeasing Israeli governments, damaging American image and credibility in the region, and of course making the anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba more painful.

Authors

Ibrahim Sharqieh

Publication: CNN

Pragmatism May Drive Israeli-Turkish Ties

Kemal Kirişci — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Israeli-Turkish relations are likely to feature prominently during Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to Washington, DC. Turkish and Israeli officials are engaged in talks to work out Israeli compensation to the families killed and injured during the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla incident. These talks are part of a U.S.-brokered rapprochement between the two countries, which began with an official apology by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Erdoğan in late March for “any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury” aboard the Mavi Marmara. This hasn’t been an easy exercise; a major challenge for Turkey comes from finding a balance between the domestic debate over the lifting of the blockade of Gaza and Turkey’s own compensation issues for the Kurdish population on the one hand and Turkey’s pressing national security needs against the deteriorating situation in Syria on the other.

The families of the Mavi Marmara victims have repeatedly objected to compensation talks until the Gaza Strip blockade is lifted. The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (İHH), the Turkish NGO which organized the Mavi Marmara trip, and the hard-core Islamists who partly constitute the electoral basis of Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) also publicly support their position. Recently, they held a major public meeting promoting the idea of “first lifting the blockade” and took a critical view of Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç’s involvement in compensation talks with Israel. Interestingly, Erdoğan chose to remain silent on the issue and allow Arınç to face the criticism on his own. Arınç’s position and Erdoğan’s silence should be viewed in the context of Turkey’s own domestic compensation issues.

As much as the Turkish government in recent times has been trying to address the Kurdish problem and reach a political solution, the three decades’ old conflict between the Turkish Armed Forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has taken a heavy toll on civilians. It has led to the injury and death of many civilians, loss and destruction of property, and the internal displacement of over 1 million civilians. Long discussions related to compensation for these individuals finally culminated in the Turkish government’s passing of a compensation law in 2004. The law aimed to facilitate the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and compensate them for their losses. Yet, critics of the implementation of this law say it falls short of sufficiently compensating the economic losses and emotional pain IDPs have suffered. Furthermore, critics cite high rejection rates among those applying for compensation and a failure to formally recognize victims and acknowledge any wrongdoings toward the individuals as shortfalls of the compensation law.

A more recent example is the Uludere incident where 34 civilians of Kurdish ethnicity were mistaken for PKK terrorists and killed in an airstrike by the Turkish military in the southeastern corner of Turkey in December 2011. Although the Turkish government has offered close to $70,000 in compensation for each victim, families of the victims have refused to accept the offer until a full investigation takes place, those responsible for the attack are brought to justice, and an official apology is issued by the Turkish state. Such an apology has not so far been issued, prompting criticism in Turkish media outlets over the importance placed on an Israeli apology for the victims of the Mavi Marmara while the victims of Uludere wait for an apology and compensation from the Turkish government.

As compensation talks with Israel continue, the real challenge will lie in the Turkish government’s ability to soften the position of the İHH, hard-liners within AK Party and the victims’ families toward the Gaza blockade while keeping an eye on Turkey’s immediate geopolitical interests. Shifts in the balance of power in the region brought about by the Arab Awakening and most recently the Syrian crisis is pushing Turkey to re-evaluate its position toward Israel. Pragmatism on the part of Turkey and Israel in resolving their differences will be of greater benefit to addressing the growing security and humanitarian challenges resulting from the Syrian crisis as well as improving the welfare of the Palestinians in Gaza than if negotiations between the two countries failed. As Prime Minister Erdoğan prepares for his visit to Washington, DC, this week, the carnage provoked by two car bombs that exploded in the Turkish border town of Reyhanlı on Saturday will surely be a stark reminder of the need for this kind of pragmatism. U.S. President Barack Obama should seize the occasion of the visit to promote such pragmatism but also be willing to listen to Erdoğan’s deep-seated and genuine frustration with the situation in Syria. An empathetic ear on the part of Obama may go a long way in not only helping to improve Israeli-Turkish relations, a major U.S. objective, but also start cooperating in concrete terms to address an ever-expanding Syrian crisis.

Authors

Kemal Kirişci

Publication: Hurriyet Daily News

Explaining the Western Response to the Arab Spring

Daniel L. Byman — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Abstract:

This article examines the initial Western response to the Arab Spring. Traditional interests – oil, counterterrorism, containing Iran, and the security of Israel – offer only a limited explanation. Domestic politics and a humanitarian agenda explain some variation, but they too are insufficient. A number of leaders appeared to believe change would happen no matter what, so it was often better to embrace it than fight it. Others desired to showcase a new model, where the United States would not necessarily lead. Western powers also recognized the limits of their power and desired to maintain alliances with conservative countries like Saudi Arabia.

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Authors

Daniel L. Byman

Publication: The Journal of Strategic Studies

And They’re Off: The Campaign for a New Iranian President Has Begun

Suzanne Maloney — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:26:00 -0400

The race to replace Iran’s deeply polarizing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, officially opened last week with the registration of prospective candidates, and already the campaign promises an utterly fascinating ride through the unpredictable politics of the Islamic Republic. The shock and awe surrounding the last-minute decision by Iran’s iconic former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to throw his hat into yet another race has only been topped for drama by the latest antics of the current incumbent aimed apparently at elevating a controversial protégé to succeed him. At least at the outset, these sensational developments have overshadowed the emerging shape of the real race among an array of regime functionaries, most notably nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.

With 686 would-be candidates and an array of insidious regime mechanisms for influencing the outcome, it is literally impossible to predict today who the ultimate contenders will be, much less who will win the race. However, what is clear is that Iran’s presidential election represents the opening salvo in another historic turning point in the volatile evolution of the revolutionary theocracy.

The application period is a deliberately chaotic process, designed to justify the pretense behind the clerical vetting process and bolster the credibility of the nominees who are ultimately tapped by Iran’s Guardians’ Council, a 12-member unelected clerical oversight body. There is also a keen dimension of political theater, as the prospective candidates seek to gauge their relative prospects and the leadership endeavors to maintain an uneasy balance between galvanizing popular interest in the campaign and inciting the kind of electoral exuberance that has generated instability in the past. Over the course of the next 10 days, the field will be narrowed from several hundred to a mere handful who are assessed to meet the constitutional standards for the office.

This time around, the chaos has been intensified by the lingering memories of the upheaval that ensued in 2009, when an implausibly rapid vote-count and wide margin in favor of Ahmadinejad’s reelection instigated the largest and most sustained protests in Iran’s post-revolutionary history. The ensuing crackdown left Iran’s burgeoning reform movement estranged, imprisoned or scurrying into exile. Predictably, however, no sooner had the conservative wing of the Iranian political spectrum achieved uncontested dominance than deep fissures emerged within them. For the past two years, frictions among Iranian hard-liners have been directed, full bore, at Ahmadinejad himself, which greatly heightens the significance of the current contest to succeed him.

Cue Ahmadinejad’s first electoral adversary, Rafsanjani, whose entrance has sparked an intense debate about his motivations as well as about the competition to come. In a prospective field comprised mostly of second-tier Iranian political figures, mostly former ministers and parliamentarians, he is vastly better known and boasts a political machinery that spans factions and decades. For many within Iran’s dispirited reformist and opposition ranks, the former president offers their best hope of political redemption and national salvation, a hint of their own marginalization given their past differences with him. Rafsanjani’s reputation for pragmatism is well-earned; he was tasked by Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolution’s founder, with ending the futile war with Iraq and later endeavored against stiff opposition to rehabilitate the country and reform its economy. He has carefully navigated fidelity to the system while critiquing both Ahmadinejad and the 2009 election, and his return to the presidency would likely revive now-dormant diplomatic fantasies in Europe and perhaps even Washington.

However, the former president faces powerful impediments that had persuaded many observers that his recent hints about the race were just a tease. Mostly notable is his age – almost 79 – which raises questions of capacity but also may undermine his appeal in a country with a disproportionately young population. More problematic is the unfortunate reality that he appears to have a more effusive constituency in the Western media than in Iran. Among the Iranian establishment, Rafsanjani is widely perceived as wildly corrupt and ideologically untrustworthy, and the population at large rejected his bid for a parliamentary seat in 2000 and favored Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential run-off. Now his unexpected entrance has incited a firestorm among the most doctrinaire of the hardliners, who have accused him of conspiring to delegitimize the system by daring the clerical supervisors to reject his candidacy.

Whatever happens, though, the calculations of the politician nicknamed “The Shark” (a reference to his lack of facial hair as well as his wily political skills) have already upended a race expected to rely on a motley array of second-tier Iranian political figures. His close ally, former nuclear negotiator Hassan Ruhani, had previously pledged to quit if Rafsanjani ran; Ruhani is a sharp-elbowed politician who has been an early and consistent critic of Ahmadinejad’s nuclear diplomacy and economic policy. So far that withdrawal has not come, despite much Twitter speculation to the contrary, and other similar pacts among conservative contenders also appear to be fraying under the weight of a suddenly reconfigured competition.

The Rafsanjani wild card is only one novelty in a race replete with interest. The other aspirant whose registration on Saturday has electrified Iranian poll watchers is Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. Mashaei, a close advisor to Ahmadinejad, has long been the focus of fierce clerical ire as a result of his eclectic religious and political views. He was forced out of a vice presidential slot in 2009 and is routinely scorned as the mastermind of a ‘deviant current’ that has infiltrated the Islamic Republic in an effort to undermine it. Mashaei’s ambitions have been telegraphed over many months through increasingly unsubtle efforts of Ahmadinejad to stack the deck in his favor, culminating in the tandem appearance at Mashaei’s registration. That move prompted a legal complaint against the president – either a quaint nod at legalism in a patently manipulated electoral framework or the first step in a process of silencing the unpredictable Ahmadinejad via intimidation or imprisonment.

The calculations of Rafsanjani, Mashaei and Ahmadinejad are compelling in their own right, and they will no doubt influence Iran’s future. However, the drama associated with them has diverted attention from the likely electoral landscape, which features a less thrilling but still significant roster of contenders. For several months, some speculation has centered on former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, a pediatrician by original training whose entire 32-year political career is the product of patronage by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Others have long fixated on Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqr Qalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guards commander who has assiduously restyled himself as a moderate, modernist problem-solver. Another dark horse to watch closely Gholamali Haddad Adel, a parliamentary leader and literature professor whose daughter is married to Khamenei’s powerful son Mojtaba.

The real heavyweight in the pack, however, is Jalili, who was virtually unknown beyond a small circle of the Iranian leadership until his appointment as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council in 2009. In leading the contentious negotiations with the international community over Iran’s nuclear program, he has personified Iran’s quixotic mix of defiance with occasional bursts of pragmatism. One of his early forays in the high-stakes talks featured a discursive lecture on the Prophet Mohammad’s diplomacy, the subject of his doctoral dissertation. But Jalili was also responsible for signing onto a Western confidence-building step in 2009 that was quickly disavowed by Tehran. He survived the ensuing outcry among conservatives unscathed, a testament to his primary patron, Khamenei, whose office he directed for four years. Of all the would-be aspirants for the presidency in this round, Jalili appears to benefit from an air of ordination, and already talk has emerged among other conservatives of withdrawing in order to bolster his competitiveness.

Setting aside the personality politics, the most astonishing, and important, dimension of the campaign is simply that we care at all. Four years ago, many observers – including myself – argued the blatant orchestration of Ahmadinejad’s reelection had all but extinguished the relevance of the electoral dimension of Iran’s convoluted governing system. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and many academics forecast that Iran was descending into a military dictatorship. So many of these predictions now appear off the mark, as external analysts and politicians all too often find when interpreting Iran.

Let’s be clear – the 2013 ballot will be rigged to a greater or lesser extent depending on how the campaign evolves, and the winner will undoubtedly benefit from unabashed assistance from the institutions, including the Guard. However, as the initial maneuvers of the 2013 presidential race underscores, politics in Iran remain competitive, unpredictable, and captivating. So stay tuned, and watch this space. One week from today, Brookings will be launching Iran @ Saban, a new blog that will focus on political and economic developments within Iran as well as the threats posed by its current policies and the strategic responses of the international community. The blog will showcase the deep bench of Brookings scholarship on the Middle East and issues such as proliferation, terrorism and, of course, electoral politics and the future of Iran.

Authors

Suzanne Maloney

Brookings: Topics - Middle East and North Africa

Building New Democracies: Institutional Reform after the Arab Spring

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Obama’s National Security Speech and Pakistan

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Lessons from America’s First War with Iran

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"Khomeini Would Have Been Disqualified": Hashemi Rafsanjani's Supporters React to His Rejection

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What is Iran's Nuclear Red Line?

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Iran's Guardians Versus The 'Grey Eminence'

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How Arab Public Opinion Is Reshaping the Middle East

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Welcome to Iran @ Saban

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Why Iran's Presidential Election Matters

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America and Iran: Wrestling with Ghosts

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Who Are Iran's Voters?

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Iran Press Report: What to Make of the Glut of Presidential Candidates?

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A Statesman’s Forum with H.E. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey

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Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan's U.S. Agenda

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Iran’s Presidential Election Puts Populism to the Test

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American Foreign Policy in Retreat? A Discussion with Vali Nasr

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65 Years After 'Catastrophe,' Palestinians Have Little to Cheer About

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Pragmatism May Drive Israeli-Turkish Ties

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Explaining the Western Response to the Arab Spring

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And They’re Off: The Campaign for a New Iranian President Has Begun

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