As everyone well oriented as to time and place anticipated, the Orator-in-Chief, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, will be performing his variety of guerrilla theater on the world's stage for another four years. Since this result was what the Grand Ayatollah, the Supreme Guardian of the Revolution, Ali Hoseyani Kahmenei, and his coterie of clerics, Revolutionary Guard officers and other Quran-thumping and bomb (soon to be of the nuclear sort) waving Iranian sachems wanted, it is what the Iranian people got.
Not that the outcome of the election really mattered as the Geek has noted in previous posts. The ultimate authority for foreign affairs, military policy, internal security, religious purity, and the economy rests with the Grand Ayatollah and the Council of Guardians. Grand Ayatollah Kahmenei has the final authority to interpret the will of Allah as it applies to all governmental actions.
As long as the theocracy, the mullahocracy, continues to exist without serious challenge, the outcome of elections has no significance. With one possible exception: If the Grand Ayatollah and his closest associates find it expedient, they can modify any or all governmental policies and actions to assure their continuation in power. It is a sort of "Allah helps those who help themselves" understanding of the relation between the will of the divinity and the realities of power maintenance.
Presumably the Grand Ayatollah and his circle will have to take some account of the dissent from the status quo represented by the final days of the campaign and the showing at the polls made by Moussavi. His supporters are not negligible either as to number or the places they hold in Iranian society and its economy. Thus the challenge to the status quo they represent must be addressed.
Undoubtedly, given the record of the mullahocracy to date, the first response will be repressive. The use of motorcycle mounted "robocops" to breakup incipient demonstrations at the Moussavi campaign headquarters as the election results were announced makes the reflex of repression quite evident. The repression bodes well to continue and increase given the questions of electoral fraud which have already emerged.
Ahmedinejad's reelection under clouded circumstances may present very real difficulties for the Obama administration's efforts to establish fruitful diplomatic exchanges with Iran as has been noted by Thomas Pickering. These difficulties will be compounded an order of magnitude or two should the mullahs lean on the repression button too hard or too long.
However, even that may not matter given the trajectories of the past thirty years of Iranian history. Throughout the period the mullahs have shown a dedication to intransigence, defiance, rejection and faith in (mainly but not exclusively) indirect application of force. The opposition to the US has been more rigorous, more consistent, more universal and longer lived than that presented by the Soviet Union during the full duration of the Cold War.
The Iranian record of uncompromising obstinacy, prevarication and hostility surpasses that of any government in modern history. That's right. Not even the Soviets, the Nazis, the Chinese Communists of Mao's salad days begins to equal the well-documented career of Iran following the Revolution of 1979.
No mere election result, no simple exercise in democracy, no whining of the vox populi should have, could have, been expected to alter that well-established a pattern. Other than the most marginal, most transient, most cosmetic of changes, nothing can or should have been anticipated from the Great Vote of 12 June 09.
The brutal fact remains that the mullahs of Iran are implacably opposed to the interests of the United States and other similarly minded countries. Another brutal fact holds hands with the first. The mullahocracy is hostile without limits to the United States as they are to Israel (and any other country inclined to ally itself with either of these two "main enemies.")
This unending opposition and limitless hostility is manifest in the record of the past thirty years. Iran has supported, no, fostered, terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. It has assisted, trained, supported and guided al-Qaeda. It is up to its collective turban on the side of the opposition in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iran has linked itself with anti-American governments and movements throughout Latin America. It has engaged in long-running massive and highly effective counterfeiting operations focusing on the American hundred dollar bill. Beyond that, Iran has consistently and effectively engaged in subversive activities from Europe to Southeast Asia. It has engaged in espionage with an intensity and persistence rivaling that of the old Soviet Union or contemporary China.
And, the mullahs have formed a de facto alliance with the other source of global bad news today: North Korea. There can be no doubt (nor dearth of information) in Washington concerning the tight affiliation between Tehran and Pyongyang on nuclear and related matters.
Which brings us to the second reason that today is not a good one for the wishful thinking among us. Again it is news without surprise.
North Korea has not rolled over in the face of the latest Security Council resolution and its so-called "sanctions that will bite." Quite the contrary. Pyongyang has rattled the saber again.
The leaders of the Hermit Kingdom of the North have promised a vague sort of military response to attempts at stopping and searching ships bearing cargo of North Korean origin. They have added the promise to continue the extraction of plutonium from the fuel rods currently in storage and, explicitly, the continued fabrication of this element into nuclear weapons.
And so the game continues. SecState Clinton reacted to the North Korean statement in the completely predictable and totally ineffective business-as-usual way. She termed the weaponization threat as "provocative" and "regrettable." As a matter of course the Secretary assured Pyongyang that this action would further "isolate" the North Korean Hermits from the "international community."
The Geek wagers you can hear the sound of knees knocking in Pyongyang right now. SecState Clinton's tough words coming right on top of the "biting" new sanctions must have the Dear Leader, his son and the rest of the Hermit Kingdom's cadre worried to all get out.
Considering that China is resolutely opposed to the use of force by the UN and presumably its member nations (including the US) in order to enforce the sanctions including the blockade of all weapons exports from North Korea, the new effort to "isolate" and "punish" the Bad Boys of Pyongyang will be every bit as (in)effective as their numerous predecessors.
As long as the spectre of refugees pouring across the Tumen and Yalu rivers keeps Beijing from fully cooperating in the implementation of sanctions and as long as Tehran sees Pyongyang as a useful cohort in their international schemes, North Korea will suffer no real pain. At least at the governmental and military levels. The Hermits will remain immune from pressure.
That's one more of those brutal facts which limits the scope and effectiveness of Obama administration diplomacy as it has the diplomacy of past administrations.
We had all best get a firm grip on these brutal truths--and one more. The last piece of brutal reality is simple. Iran will remain the worst of Global Bad Actors unless and until the US and its allies comply with Tehran's policy requirements. That is with the Grand Ayatollah's unique view of the world political order he wants to see come into existence.
As the perceptive ex-Communist foreign minister of France, Bernard Kouchner, said regarding Iran last year, "We must prepare for the worst. And the worst is war."
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