Iranian Revolution Video Game

The article on this involves the regime's censorship, but the video game 1979 Revolution: Black Friday sounds like it has potential as a teaching tool:

The game’s title comes from a massacre that took place in Tehran’s Jaleh Square (later renamed Martyrs’ Square) on Sept. 8, 1978. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s military fired on protesters for violating martial law, killing scores of people. This moment in Iranian history is seen as the point of no return for the shah. In "Black Friday," the protagonist is an aspiring photojournalist named Reza who has to make life-altering decisions to survive the streets as insurrection breaks out against the Iranian monarch. The game progresses in a choose-your-own-adventure style that allows players to navigate the 1979 Iranian revolution as it unfolds. Think "The Walking Dead" game series with a historical twist.

This documentary style — also known as verite — comes from Iranian-Canadian game developer Navid Khonsari of the New York-based iNK Stories. Khonsari is behind such blockbusters as the "Grand Theft Auto" and "Max Payne" series...

To develop the game's storyline, Khonsari conducted over 40 interviews with a variety of Iranians both inside and outside of Iran who experienced the revolution firsthand. Some interviewees went so far as to provide personal photos of the events in 1978 and 1979. “They remain anonymous because of the concerns they might have for their own safety and the safety of their families,” Khonsari explained.

The game's Iranian opponents are concerned by Western influence on its development and ways in which it diverges from regime-approved narratives of the revolution.

Iran's New Assembly of Experts

Among the best analyses of Iran's recent elections are those by Farideh Farhi and Shervin Malekzadeh.  The conduct of the elections themselves is as potentially significant as the results.  Both Farhi and Malekzadeh highlight the role of alliances and political pragmatism.  As Malekzadeh reports:

Everywhere I went in Tehran last week, I heard the same theme: moderation and standing firm before the forces of radicalism. My interlocutors expressed a sense of resignation if not outright cynicism toward the elections and what they might bring in terms of needed change to Iran. Participants in Iranian elections realize that this is not liberal democracy. At the same time, just as they had in 2013, many Iranians expressed to me their overwhelming conviction that voting was the only way forward if Iran wanted to avoid the fate of its neighbors in the region, above all that of Syria. Participating in a system, no matter how flawed, was better than having no system at all.

And as Farhi says:

More than anything else, the two recent elections suggested that the time is over when one side thought it could get rid of the other side for good or even temporarily through force or a highly manipulated electoral process. Not that some sort of force majeure was not tried. The Guardian Council, dominated by clerics who themselves were candidates, unabashedly disqualified most opponents who could have won through their name recognition.

But their opponents, instead of withdrawing or sulking, made the strategic decision to participate in an alliance that had proven successful in receiving 51 percent of the vote in the 2013 presidential election. And then they made the tactical decision to connect together, particularly in the city of Tehran, by repeatedly asking voters to support everyone on the so-called 30+16 lists (the first for the parliament and the second for the Assembly of Experts). This was tactically necessary because, in the case of RSG’s Tehran parliament list, only a few top names were known. The rest were unknown in terms of their names or points of view and had to be voted in blind based on who was on top of the list or who supported the list. The Assembly’s list also had unknown names, but problematically a few names were connected with dark parts of the Islamic Republic’s history (i.e. early post-revolutionary executions and the murder of intellectuals and dissidents). So voters had to be convinced that voting for the whole list, while unsavory, was worth the elimination of others deemed even nastier.

The defeat of hardliners for the Assembly of Experts was especially striking:

Rohani and centrist ex-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani easily won seats in the Assembly of Experts, the chamber of clerics that chooses and supervises Iran's most powerful official, the supreme leader. 

In all, reformist-backed candidates claimed 52 of the assembly's 88 seats, according to the Interior Ministry, including 15 of 16 races in Tehran. In doing so, they managed to unseat several prominent hard-liners, including the current chief of the assembly, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, and Ayatollah Taghi Mesbah Yazdi.

My sense is that over the past couple of decades, Iran's conservatives have been most reluctant to allow Reformists a shot at the Assembly of Experts and the Council of Guardians, the latter being the body which vets candidates and legislation.  Two points about this past election stand out, though.  One is that "reformist" has in some ways been defined sharply rightward since Khatami's presidency.  Hassan Rouhani may offer verbal support to parts of Khatami's cultural agenda, but he has never acted on it and his real roots are close to Supreme Leader Khamene'i.  The second is that Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi was a rival to Khamene'i.  It may be that Khamene'i has decided that a tactical Rouhani-style alliance with reformists is the best way to eliminate rivals to his right and maintain his allies in power.

Dating in Iran

The Economist reports:

At a loss to explain why most youngsters are delaying marriage or altogether shunning the idea of a happy union, Iran’s government is taking action. In Hamedan province, a senior ayatollah recently warned unmarried public workers to find a spouse within a year or risk losing their jobs. A gentler approach, announced in January, is the launch of a matchmaker website which, the government hopes, could lead to as many as 100,000 marriages...

In any case, under-30s, who make up 55% of Iran’s population of 77m, seem far more interested in brief flings than marriage. Hence some 300 “immoral” Western-style dating websites have sprung up of late. Unable to close them all down, the state’s moral guardians have decided to turn matchmaker instead...

Rather than let their parents or the government arrange their future, many adolescents find inventive ways of meeting. One of the most common is dor-dor (“turn, turn” in Farsi) where telephone numbers are exchanged out of the windows of cars in the street—about as public as flirting can get in Iran. Facebook, although blocked by government censors, is also popular among those who have the illegal software to get around internet controls. So too are house parties.

We should probably see this as Iran's moves to limit contraception and promote fertility treatments. Increasing women's education and economic autonomy leads to lower fertility rates, which sharply limits population growth and could lead to the population even shrinking unless made up for by immigration.

Iran Moves Against Contraception

Iran's parliament has voted in favor of a ban on vasectomies as part of a widespread curtailment of contraception in the country:

Iran's parliament has voted to ban permanent forms of contraception, the state news agency IRNA reported, endorsing the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's call for measures to increase the population...

The bill, approved by 143 out of 231 members present in parliament, according to IRNA, also bans the advertising of birth control in a country where condoms had been widely available and family planning considered entirely normal.

The law now goes to the Guardian Council - a panel of theologians and jurists appointed by the Supreme Leader who examine whether legislation complies with Islam...

Iran's birth rate stands at 1.6 children per woman, lawmaker Ali Motahari said, according to IRNA. At that rate, the population of more than 75 million would fall to 31 million by 2094, and 47 percent of Iranians would be above the age of 60, said Mohamad Saleh Jokar, another lawmaker.

Iran's population doubled during the 1980's, which led to fears of over-population and moves to limit population growth during the 1990's.  That 1.6 children per woman today is well below a replacement rate of just over 2 children per woman. This explains the government's recent moves to increase fertility, moves which have included making the country the region's main center for fertility treatments.

Pearling History of the Gulf

If I were to name the most important recent book on Gulf history, it would actually be Robert Carter's Sea of Pearls.  Carter is an archaeologist who is more than competent in history, and I have previously highlighted his work on Gulf Christianity in the early Islamic period.  His objective in the current book is to push pearling to the forefront of the history of the pre-oil Gulf, given "how fundamentally the pearling industry moulded the settlement patterns and economy of the region, and how utterly the societies of the Gulf depended on it."

The book is based on archaeological work, oral history, primary sources available in western European languages (including in translation), and the work of previous scholars on particular aspects of its subject.  It has a chapter on antiquity and another on what is conventionally called the Middle Ages, but becomes more detailed when sources become more abundant on the eve of the Portuguese arrival in the region.  One central them is that for much of history, the Gulf pearling industry was centralized in a very few sites under the domination of a particular state, such as the Sasanian Empire, the Qarmatian polity of the 10th century, and the Safavid Empire.  This changed during the 18th century, when Iran entered its long period of instability and a number of new Arab tribes arrived, creating a much more decentralized industry with numerous centers.  The pearling towns which were founded during this period continue into the modern period as cities and towns on the Arabian shore, from Ras al-Khaimah to Kuwait.

The book also dedicates several chapters to explaining industry practices during the 19th and early 20th centuries, many of which are clearly similar to those of earlier times.  As early as the 1300s, merchants supported the expeditions with loans designed to cover the costs of equipping the expedition and support for divers' families during the four month of the annual pearling season.  If the divers and captains could not repay these debts, they had to continue working for the merchant, which often involved more debt.  This debt chain is often described as a form of indentured servitude, but Carter situates it within a general pattern of patronage relationships throughout the region, with the wealthy often providing for the poor in exchange for forms of service and loyalty.  The descriptions of great hardship all come from the late days in which the industry was dying, and the loan system generally seems to have prevented destitution following bad years, served to spread risk and profit within the pearling community, and allowed for the easy integration of newcomers and expansion of the industry during boom times.

There is, simply put, a ton of information in this massive book, which goes right up to the present, noting aspects of the pearl/oil transition, including the rise of a more generalized jewellery business and the continuation of many economic relationships.  Another thing is that it deals with the entire Gulf littoral, as opposed to focusing just on the Arabian shore or an unwieldy unit of whole states bordering the Gulf.  Finally, although Carter reads neither Arabic nor Persian, there is a vast amount of well-presented terminology in this book which will be of use to those who do.  This book is pricey, but has a place in any academic library serving scholars of the Middle East.

Underrated Isfahan

CNN lists Isfahan in Iran as one of its 10 most underrated cities:

Isfahan is one of Iran's great treasures, breathtakingly elegant, located at the foot of the Zagros mountains.

Its star attraction is Imam Square.

It's one of the world's largest, dominated by the Imam Mosque complex, which twists toward Mecca, though it's the smaller Sheik Lotfollah mosque with its stunning dome that stuns visitors.

The covered bazaar, just off the square, is great for miniatures and decorative tiles and chaikhanas, or teahouses, offering fresh brews and flavored shisha pipes.

After dark belongs to the courtyard café and tearoom at the Abbasi, a five-star hotel and former caravanserai. It's a magnet for city's professionals, who are eager to practice their English on the all-too-rare tourists in their midst.

Final mention must go to the Zayandeh River and its exquisitely pretty, arched Khaju Bridge (pictured in gallery).

Isfahan has a rich history.  It was one of the palace cities in the Sasanian Empire, and important early center of Persian-Islamic culture, and then most evident today was developed as the imperial capital of the Safavids from the reign of Abbas the Great around 1600 until the end of the dynasty over a century later.

Iran's Military Economy

During the 1990's, Iran's military forces came to have important economic interests throughout the country, something which many thought was a crucial factor in Ahmadinejad's rise to power, and especially his disputed 2009 re-election. victory.  It sounds like their interest in profit-making is continuing under Rouhani:

The volleys between Rouhani’s administration and the influential Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) continue. Soon after the chairman of the joint command of Iran’s armed forces publicly censured the state-run media for the Guards’ undermining of the administration, the government spokesman responded by announcing that it would welcome the Guards’ activities in economic projects.

The public relations office of the IRGC announded that Mohammad Bagher Nowbakht, the executive and planning deputy of president Rouhani participated in the IRGC’s 20th cross-country seminar of the Guards’ political messengers and in his speech said, “The Guards have provided many services in the last 35 years to the country and people, particularly during the holy defense (the 8-year war between Iran and Iraq) and the reconstruction period (following the war) when this was very prominent.” He continued, “Today, the Guards posses a lot of potential to construct and develop the country...”

Just a month earlier, IRGC’s top commander had complained about the government’s cooperation with the Guards in the economic sphere. “Unfortunately, the government has not welcomed the recommendations and actions of the Basij for resistance economy. We hope the government will utilize the successful capabilities of the Basij (ideological militia), the Guards and the public,” he had said.

Two weeks prior to that the political deputy of the Guards also spoke of the determination of the force to remain active in economic activities and reminded Rouhani’s government that the force had to be active in this sphere as a way of helping the “regime and the government.” 

As I read the article as a whole, Rouhani's government had been holding back some economic opportunities from the military because of criticism of him, a stand-off which he seems to have won, at least temporarily.

Hormuz Causeway Plans

Oman has come to play a crucial role as diplomatic mediator between Iran and the rest of the world, as it has had a strongly pro-Western orientation since Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970 and yet maintains close economic ties to Iran.  These ties have strengthened dramatically lately, as symbolized by plans for a motor causeway across the Strait of Hormuz connecting the two countries:

Oman and Iran are planning to build a causeway linking the two countries over the strait of Hormuz, the Iranian ambassador in Muscat was cited by local media as saying...

Sibeveih said that the project would be a bridge of “peace and friendship between Iran and Oman, other GCC countries and Yemen,” according to Al Watan daily newspaper. He said that the bridge would further help in strengthening relations between Iran and Oman.

He pointed out that the project would connect Iran economically with the GCC countries and Yemen, through Oman...

This development comes shortly after the agreement between the two countries to increase the number of flights between the two countries from 14 to 30 per week.

The two countries also agreed to open the air for cargo flights to further cement economic cooperation. They also agreed to strengthen cooperation in the field of training of personnel, and mutual support in international forums for the benefit of the two countries.

We'll see if this actually gets built.  The King Fahd Causeway connecting Bahrain and Saudi Arabia was almost two decades in the making, while the proposed Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Bridge can't get past the planning stages, and is perennially delayed by conflict.  This Hormuz bridge would be about the same length as the latter (and longer than the former), and have to allow for all the oil tankers passing through those waters.    For the foreseeable future, expect this to be a rhetorical symbol of friendship rather than a physical one.

Resource on Qajar Iran

It is behind a paywall, but the November 2013 Perspectives, a publication of the American Historical Association, profiled the on-line archive Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran.  Here is a description:

Unlike most digitized archives, Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran (WWQI) did not begin with a discrete collection, or even collections. Instead, the writings, photographs, and other primary source materials that WWQI is digitizing are dispersed across myriad locations and among numerous different owners. It is extremely unlikely that these materials would or could ever be released to research institutions en masse, in part because of their dispersed ownership, but also because of the personal value that many of these items hold for their present owners. Captured in digital form, they have become an archive-­albeit one for which a unified physical counterpart in the traditional form of accession numbers and boxes would never exist.

Initially imagined as a modest project-­we had anticipated generating some 3,000 images over the first two years-­WWQI has grown beyond our wildest dreams thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response of families and institutions in Iran and elsewhere. As of April 2013, we have over 33,000 images recorded from 43 private family collections and 10 institutional collections. We are currently processing collections from 18 additional families and two additional institutions.

Selection of collections depended on availability and on the collaboration of families each of our team members happened to know. Once the project took shape and became known, we had the opportunity to discuss in our periodic workshops how we could more proactively overcome emerging limitations of social, geographical, and cultural diversity of the archive. For instance, we have addressed the issue of how not to be limited to the urban elite by reaching out to families with a line of local religious leadership, and digitizing the voluminous books of neighborhood registries they hold. We have recently been able to access a rich collection of documents from early 20th-­century Kurdistan, and we have begun to work with Zoroastrian families to address the absence of that community's records in the archive...

The archive includes poetry; essays and treatises; travelogues; letters; marriage contracts and other legal documents; photographs; works of art; images of everyday objects; and a small collection of oral histories. The website is fully bilingual (Persian and English), and its search function includes filters for major categories like genre, collection, people, subject, place and period, allowing users to drill down into the archive and narrow their search results. Digitized images provide detailed views of each object with additional descriptive content.

I've actually used this in my History of the Modern Middle East class, where I get students without the right language skills to do a small primary source project by having them work on historical photographs.  The Gertrude Bell Archive and Baghdad Museum Project are also good photo sources.

Peace over the Hormuz Islands?

Abu Musa and Great and Lesser Tunb islands are occupied by Iran but claimed by the United Arab Emirates in a dispute which goes back at least to the formation of the latter country in 1971.  Today, however, comes a report a diplomatic breakthrough might be near:

Sources close to the negotiations have stated that a deal for the return of the strategic islands to the UAE was laid out during the recent visit of UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan to Tehran, and a response was presented during last week’s return visit by his Iranian counterpart, Mohammed Javad Zarif...

Last year, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC) inaugurated a naval base on Abu Musa. Karasik said the naval base housed hundreds of short-range missiles “for Tehran’s security purposes over the Strait of Hormuz.”

Last week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani extended an invitation to Khalifa and Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid to visit Iran.

“The situation is a win-win because the Islamic Republic wants to put aside this contentious issue while the UAE can claim its historical rights to the islands,” Karasik said.

In addition to the strategic benefits, a deal could mean large economic benefits for both countries, he added, “given Dubai’s economic linkages with Iran, and the fact that they both stand to benefit from the lifting of the sanctions.”

My understanding is that, within the United Arab Emirates, the islands had also been disputed between the emirates of Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, and that the former had collaborated a bit with the Iranian occupation in 1971.  I'm not sure if that is still an active issue.

Qaboos's Role on Iran

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Sultan Qaboos of Oman played a key role in the months of secret negotiations leading up to the Geneva agreement:

As early as 2009, according to Wikileaks, the sultanate offered to arrange talks between the US and Iran – which hadn’t had diplomatic relations for 30 years – on condition that they were kept quiet to avoid “heated atmospherics.” But it was reportedly the hostage crisis of three American “hikers” that brought him into a mediating role between the two sides and helped win the release of Sarah Shroud, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal, who were arrested  and accused of spying while hiking along the Iran-Iraq border.

With that success in his pocket, he offered to facilitate a US-Iran rapprochement, the AP reports. In March, US and Iranian officials met in Oman, Secretary of State John Kerry followed up in May, and the talks took on a momentum of their own after Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran’s June elections.

Iran's Water Issues

Iran's long term security is threatened by environmental degradation, especially dwindling water resources:

Iran’s fresh water supplies are now under unsustainable strains. Ninety percent of the country—which is slightly smaller than Alaska—is arid or semi-arid, and an estimated two-thirds of its rainfall evaporates before it can replenish rivers. As a result, Iran provides more than half of its water needs by drawing from underground aquifers, but public usage is rapidly draining the subterranean reservoirs. At current rates of overuse, twelve of Iran’s thirty-one provinces will exhaust their groundwater reserves within the next 50 years.

Iran’s economic policies have exacerbated the problem. Groundwater is free to well owners and, due to government subsidies, users pay a fraction of the actual energy costs for pumping water to the surface.  Iran annually pumps 4 billion cubic meters of groundwater that nature does not replenish...

In the northwest, Iran’s dams (such as the Karun-3, left), irrigation systems, and drought have so diminished the 13 rivers feeding into Lake Urmia that the Middle East’s largest lake has shrunk more than 60 percent since 1995. In the southwest, Lake Bakhtegan, once Iran’s second largest lake, has dried up completely under the combined impacts of prolonged drought and damming on the Kor River.

The article notes that there has already been low-level conflict over water in the country, including sabotage of a diversion pump by local farmers near Yazd and exchange of fire with Afghan forces over diversion of water into an irrigation canal.  The best solution for Iran is probably to give up the goal of becoming self-sufficient in food and move toward a sustainable level of agriculture with proceeds from the energy sector being used to acquire food from abroad.

Rouhani's Normalcy

Around a dozen political prisoners have been released in Iran:

The release resonates particularly strongly inside Iran, where it appeared to mark a first clear act of dismantling what analysts have called the “securitization” of the country: a process that gave increasing power to internal security forces, beginning with the 2005 election of arch-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and deepening appreciably after his fraud-tainted 2009 reelection and its violent aftermath.

Mr. Rouhani has called his shocking mid-June victory over a slate of conservative candidates the “beginning of a new chapter,” with expectations that the “era of sorrow is coming to an end.” Thousands of Iranians thronged streets across the country to celebrate Rouhani’s win.

My take on this is that Rouhani is trying to take Iran past the conflict and crisis that surrounded the 2009 presidential election, and promote an Iranian version of normalcy in which the reformists are brought in from the cold under the banner of the Islamic republic, perhaps quietly finding ways to put the suppression of the Green Movement into a black box called the "Ahmadinejad years" and act as if it had nothing to do with the system in power.

Rohani's Oil Policy

Iranian President Hassan Rohani has appointed as oil minister Bijan Zanganeh, who had the post during the Khatami administration from 1997 until 2005.  Here are his plans:

Back then, Mr Zanganeh signed deals with many foreign oil majors, bringing billions of petrodollars to Iran. He decentralised the powerful National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and filled his ministry with technocrats. Some of these were blemished with financial scandal. On taking office, Mr Rohani’s populist predecessor in the presidency, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denounced them as the “oil mafia” and chucked them out. Now Mr Zanganeh has hired some of them back.

The minister is aiming to raise Iran’s crude-oil production to its 2005 level of around 4.2m barrels a day, a 60% boost on current output. He is promising to speed up work on the country’s South Pars offshore gas development, which has suffered big technical and financial problems as sanctions have scared away foreign investors. But his proposal to foster a competitive private sector to help develop Iran’s many stalled energy projects will pit him against the powerful Revolutionary Guard. This militia, answerable only to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, owns various engineering firms that have become involved in oil projects...

In recent years the government has typically offered “buy-back” agreements, in which the oil company gets a small, fixed return on successful projects, rather than “production-sharing” deals, in which the contractor gets a share of the output and thus stands to gain much greater rewards. A Tehran-based oil analyst says the NIOC is likely to offer production-sharing deals on some of the riskier projects on Iran’s border with Iraq. However, it will face objections from the many parliamentarians who believe that such contracts are unconstitutional, because they give foreigners a share of Iran’s natural resources.

Iran Reining in Hamas?

Since Hamas has refused to support Bashar al-Assad in Syria's civil war, the group has had a strained relationship with its long-time backer Iran.  Today the New York Times reports that Iran is offering a boost to Hamas's even more radical rival Islamic Jihad:

The food boxes bore the logo of Islamic Jihad and the Iranian flag alongside the Palestinian one. Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed extremist militant group, often challenges the larger Hamas.

Organizers at the packaging center said that the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, a Beirut-based Iranian charity, was financing the $2 million food aid project. Islamic Jihad has been granted the honors of distributing the 40,000 parcels, giving it a boost at a delicate time when Hamas is struggling to cope with a shifting regional landscape...

There are signs that Hamas is now trying to mend its relations with Iran. This week Hamas joined other groups at a meeting in an Islamic Jihad office in Gaza to help plan activities for International Quds Day, a day of solidarity with Jerusalem that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini instituted when he came to power in Iran in 1979 and which falls on the last Friday of Ramadan. In recent years only Islamic Jihad observed the event, with small demonstrations in Gaza.

In what was perhaps a gesture meant to lower tensions further, an Islamic Jihad official said that the group had allocated 3,000 Iranian-financed food packages to Hamas for distribution to needy families on its lists. 

Iran's real aim here could be to simply rein in Hamas, which still makes a much better Palestinian ally than the smaller Islamic Jihad and which stands in need of support from somewhere given the fall of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

Iran in Yemen

According to Pomegranate, Iran really is intervening in Yemen:

Iran’s interest in Yemen is comparatively recent. But Western diplomats who used to cast doubt on the claims of Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, that Iran backed the Houthis, a rebel group in the country’s far north, are no longer so sceptical. Iran, they now generally reckon, backs not only the Houthis in the north but also secessionists in the south.

The details, to do with a series of alleged intercepted Iranian arms shipments to Yemen, remain murky. But it is clear that Iran is providing media and financial support to some Yemeni factions. Politicians and activists alike admit that they have been solicited by Iranian representatives with offers of cash and free trips. Both the Houthis and the more hardline southern rebels run television stations in the south of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, where Hizbullah, an Iran-backed party-cum-militia, holds sway.

The headline for the article is "The Spreading Sectarian Rift," but that seems misleading, almost as if it were decided on before the situation were understood.  If it were just Iranian support for the Houthis, who are Shi'ites of the Zaydi subsect, maybe, but if Iran is almost support the entirely Shi'ite southern  secessionists, they are just trying to win influence for themselves at the expense of the Arab Gulf states.

Rise of the Diplomat Shaykh

As I write, Hasan Rowhani has a commanding lead in Iran's presidential vote-counting, and the only question is whether he will win outright or go to a second round, probably against Tehran Mayor Muhammad Baqir Qalibaf.  Press coverage highlights the role of the reformist green movement in providing the energy for this victory, as he became the consensus reformist standard-bearer a few days ago with the withdrawal of Muhammad Reza Aref and the endorsement of reformist former president Muhammad Khatami.

Rowhani's political orientation is not primarily in the reformist camp, however, and before we call it a defeat for Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i, we should note that the Council of Guardians, the clerical vetting body, was not afraid to disqualify candidates whom they perceived as a threat to the system.  Rowhani has actually been close to pragmatist former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and is known primarily for his technocratic approach to foreign policy and security issues.  As Iran's chief nuclear negotiator in 2003, he was seen more as Khamene'i's agent than Khatami's.  As far as I can tell, he has advocated reformist domestic policies for only a few weeks.

The policies of Mahmood Ahmadinejad have been cast as a rejection of both Rafsanjani and Khatami, his two immediate predecessors, for the past eight years have substituted populism and and ideological hard line for pragmatism and business-friendly technocratic economic management, as well as obviously gone against Khatami's openness on social policy.  In 2009, we saw unity between the Rafsanjani and Khatami political tendencies, and this has clearly continued to the present.

If he does become president, and despite his lead here there is no guarantee he would win a second round if there is one, Rowhani would probably move to keep his highest-profile promise of freeing political prisoners, and Khamene'i would probably acquiesce in the freeing of most if not all.  I expect, however, that Rowhani's energies would be primarily dedicated to foreign policy and economic management rather than social and constitutional reform.  So again, while there is a moral victory in all those reformists who have refused to accept repression and voted while daring the regime to ignore their votes, an actual Rowhani presidency might not significantly advance their objectives even independent of the vetoes of policies by more conservative organs of government which we saw under Khatami.

Qalibaf's Support

Meir Javedanfar highlights reasons to watch the presidential campaign of Tehran mayor Muhammad Qalibaf (Ghalibaf):

According to Ayatollah Yahya Jaafari, the supreme leader’s representative to the city of Kerman, (IRGC Quds force) General Soleimani’s vote will go to Tehran Mayor Mohamed Ghalibaf in the upcoming Iranian presidential elections. Jaafari’s source is General Soleimani himself, who he says told him personally about his choice in the elections.

The Tehran mayor’s election campaign received another public endorsement when 120 members of Iran’s parliament signed a declaration of support for Ghalibaf on May 28. The move indicates that Ghalibaf has the support of more than 40% of Iran’s parliament. Given Iran’s fragmented politics, especially among conservatives, such consensus is an achievement that cannot be overlooked. This along with other sources of support are increasingly making Ghalibaf a serious contender.

One source is the Tehran municipality. Comparatively speaking, Ghalibaf is one of the most popular mayors Tehran has had in the last decade. His success means that in city council elections, candidates supporting him could do well. This could also translate into more genuine votes for Ghalibaf in Tehran in particular.

There is also Ghalibaf's former position within the IRGC, where he was the commander of its air force for three years, starting in 1997. Ghalibaf recently admitted that he took part in the suppression of student demonstrations in 1999. In 2000, he was appointed chief of the national police force.

Qalibaf was also a strong contender in the 2005 election that led to Ahmadinejad's first term.  I forget what happened to his campaign; all I remember is something about him trying to peddle a line of cologne while running.  One reason why there has been so much focus on Jalili this time around is that Jalili is seen as the favored candidate of Supreme Leader Khamene'i.  Qalibaf might be ideologically acceptable, but would have more of an independent power base.  However, neither the internal councils of Iran's highest leadership nor the manner in which their preferences might manifest themselves are transparent enough to say much with confidence about what June will bring.

Saeed Jalili

For about a year now I've wondered if Saeed Jalili might be the strongest contender for president within the realities of Iran's political system.  Here is a profile of him by Laura Rozen:

Jalili, 47, a trusted Khamenei aide who has served since 2007 as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) — the Iranian equivalent of National Security Advisor–has managed to largely bypass the bitter feuds that have polarized Iran’s ruling factions, analysts and associates observe. As a candidate who may be able to unite key conservative factions, a Jalili presidency potentially offers the prospect of a more consolidated Iranian leadership, which might be able to muster internal Iranian consensus if the Leader decides to make a deal, some analysts suggest.

Born in 1965 in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad, where Supreme Leader Khamenei is also from, Jalili is an Iran-Iraq war vet who joined Iran’s foreign ministry around 1990. (Earning his PhD from Iran’s Imam Sadeqh University, Jalili wrote his doctoral dissertation on the prophet Mohammad’s diplomacy.) He worked in the 1990s as an official in Iran’s foreign ministry, and then in 2001 joined the Supreme Leader’s office. In 2005, he became an advisor to new Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since 2007 he has served as the Iranian equivalent of National Security Advisor and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator.

With no real economics or management experience and a modest, mild mannered persona, Jalili may have a hard time winning popular support–even with the quiet backing of Khamenei and the machinery of Iran’s “deep state” security establishment (the Sepah, Revolutionary Guard, etc.), the Iranian analyst assessed.

The part about popular support does matter, however, since one thing the regime wants is the legitimacy of high voter turnouts and displays of public enthusiasm.

Iran's Registered Candidates

Yesterday was the deadline for candidates to register for next month's presidential elections in Iran, and Farideh Farhi has a good analysis of the field.  One candidate, a power center unto himself, as former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the pragmatist technocrat who served from 1989 until 1997 and has been a major player and fixer in Iranian politics since the 1980's.  His backing for the reformist Mir Hussain Mousavi in 2009 was significant to the Green Wave and subsequent protests, though Rafsanjani's instincts for political self-preservation have since led him to distance himself from the reformist camp and on occasion kowtow to Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i.  Still, Rafsanjani does not like Iran's direction over the past eight years, and is worrisome enough to Khamene'i that his family has been harassed, presumably to keep him in line.  Still, this time around and with the backing for reformist former president Muhammad Khatami, he looks to be the reformist standardbearer, as bizarre as that might seem given his place within the system.

Mahmood Ahmadinejad himself is clearly backing his current chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, whom he may hope to use the same way Vladimir Putin used Dmitri Medvedev in Russia, as a closely allied seatwarmer to get around term limits.  Mashaie is probably the top-line candidate least likely to actually be permitted to stand, since Khamene'i and his allies on the Council of Guardians have been intent on limiting Ahmadinejad's power since shortly after the last elections, and have targeted Mashaie in the past as an unacceptable officeholder.

Ahmadinejad himself is usually called a "principlist," which is a translation back into English of a Farsi term used for American "neoconservatives," but that faction now exists independently of him and is likely to coalesce around current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.  Like Ahmadinejad, Jalili is an Iran-Iraq War veteran, and probably has ties to the military-economic establishment that promoted Ahmadinejad to power in 2005.  I'm not clear what sort of networks might be supporting Jalili and Mashaie respectively if the latter is approved as a candidate.

Farhi also notes the "traditional conservatives" in the mold of Khamene'i himself:

The most important conservative alliance – involving former foreign minister Velayati, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and former Parliament speaker Gholamreza Haddad Adel – has also not been able to decide which one of them should run. All three have now registered, and there is a real possibility that both Qalibaf and Velayati will run. Finally, there are the old-style traditional conservatives. Deputy speaker of the Parliament Mohammad Hassan Abutorabifard has registered on their behalf but so has former foreign minister Manuchehr Mottaki who chose to ignore the choice of traditional conservatives and enter the race himself.

Rafsanjani’s entry into the fray with solid support from Khatami and his followers will force the conservatives not only to scramble for a consensus candidate, but also search for one who is relatively popular or at least better known. The opinion polls reportedly suggest that the most popular conservative candidate is Qalibaf because of his widely hailed management of the city of Tehran. He also has quite a following in his home province of Khorasan Razavi and where he won in the first round of the 2005 presidential election (Khorasan Razavi is one of the most important provinces in electoral calculations given its population of over 5.6 million, second only to Tehran as the country’s most populous province).

This is a ridiculous number of candidates, and even as we wait for the Council of Guardians to approve a final candidate list over the next ten days, it sounds like the story to watch will be which conservatives drop out.  There are also two reformist candidates, Muhammad-Reza Aref and Hassan Rowhani, who might eventually drop out in favor of Rafsanjani, though I suspect they will wait to make sure he is not rejected by the Guardians.