June 15, 2009
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Iranian Intrigue
By now, the fact that the Iranian elections were rigged is common knowledge. If you still aren't sure, we know for a lot of reasons, for example, the national media announced the results before the votes were even counted. The citizens of Iran for good reasons feel upset.
The intrigue goes deeper. Power in a country is never as simple as it seems, for example, in America, President Obama found that once he was president, Nancy Pelosi (the house majority leader) had a lot of power that he needed to deal with. Or John Spratt, the Chairman of the budget committee, has a lot of power over the money that gets spent. Usually a person in a position of power can only use that power if he/she can take it: if Pelosi manages to push Obama around, then the office of president will not help him much. Learning to use power is a skill that must be developed.
In Iran, there are apparently two power groups: the religious leaders and the military leaders. Ahmadinejad is with the military group. So what appears to be happening is that the military group is trying to seize control of the country. Ahmadinejad has threatened to take away all the assets from many of the mullahs and give them to the poor. Sounds nice, but it is really an attempt to take power away from the religious leaders.
Now, there is another power group in any society, and that is the general population. In issues that they care about, the general population wins most of the time. What remains to be seen is if Ahmadinejad can pacify the people and get them to tolerate him for another few years. He's had a lousy start. It will be important to see what happens going forward. He has a few things he can try, give the poor money (worked in Venezuela), scare the people with military threats from foreign countries (works in N Korea), or he can adapt his regime to give the people what they want.
The military threats to Iran, of course, are Israel and the US (maybe Europe). We can expect Ahmadinejad to say more outrageous things, to try to provoke the US to threaten them. Fortunately, we have in Obama the perfect president for dealing with those kinds of things. He is extremely non-threatening. He doesn't fall for the provocations. He has his own agenda, and he makes his point clearly: he wants peace and cooperation between all parties. He doesn't want fighting, because really, working together we can be better than we each are alone.
If Ahmadinejad can't convince the people to at least tolerate him, then his time in office will end soon, and the harder he tries to hold on, the harder he will fall.
Interesting article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124502114089613711.html
Comments (2)
Probably one of the better posts on the Iranian election I've read lately. The thing is, the Supreme Leader is really the guy who is running the show. That's why Iran still is not a true democracy. He has all the power and he, essentially, decided this election because he likes Ahmadinejad the best. I hope that Persians can finally have democracy...on their own terms.
@desertrose2890 -
Thanks.
While you are right, in dictatorships it is not always so cut and dried. In China, for example, it was Deng Xiaoping who was in control, even after he retired as president, because he had so many connections and people who were willing to follow him.
The article I linked to suggests that although Supreme Leader Khamenei is still technically at the head, others may be trying to push him around. I don't know if it is true, but the idea doesn't seem unreasonable to me. And it is worth paying attention to.