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Irans Powerless President

By Aaron Sarver

On May 31, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said negotiations with Iran could take place if Iran suspends its atomic research activities; direct negotiations between the two countries haven’t occurred in 27 years. The relationship between the two countries has been particularly tense since the 2002 State of the Union address, when President Bush named Iran part of an “axis… return to article

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    The perception was that the country’s economy is really monopolized by the political class, with tremendous corruption at the top, and nothing is trickling down toward ordinary people.

    Well, yes and no.  The “political class” is the Mullahs.  Iran is a theocracy.  Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is an ayatollah, a religious leader. Rafsanjani’s past offices include speaker of parliament and president of Iran from 1989 to 1997, and he is now chairman of the powerful Expediency Council.  He is also believed to be the richest person in Iran, and members of his family control great chunks of the Irani economy.  But most of the Iranian economy is controlled by religious foundations, that is, some Mullah exercises economic power, often in the multi-billion dollar range, in his own behalf.  Little gets to the people, and the economy has been going downhill for lo, these many years, in spite of the oil wealth.

    Graft and corruption are endemic in Iran.  The Bam earthquake on December 26, 2003, killed at least 30,000 people.  But the earthquake, at 6.5 on the Richter Scale, was not all that strong.  And Iran has building codes to assure that buildings are earthquake resistant, but these codes can be ignored if the proper people are paid.  Residents of Bam were furious with the Mullahs after the ‘quake, because the Mullahs were on the take while building codes were violated, and the Council of Guardians was assuring that Bam would be rebuilt, but everybody knew they were lying. 

    The Mullahs desperately need legitimacy, and they have a two-prong plan to achieve that legitimacy, without having to bother with satisfying the democratic aspirations of the people of Iran.  Number one is nuclear weapons, giving them dominance of the Arabian Gulf (Persian Gulf if you are on the east side) with a majority of the world’s oil supply, and a dominant position in the ongoing Sunni-Shia religious feuds.  That would be a big step up, as the Shia are only about 20% of all Muslims, and the majority Sunnis now control the Holy cities of Mecca and Medina. 

    The second part of the Mullahs’ plan is to gain recognition from the USA, thereby cementing their primacy in the religious, economic (oil), and geographic spheres within the Middle East.  The mullahs want the USA to grant them legitimacy, much as Nixon granted legitimacy to China, resulting in stability and growth for China, and an increasingly free economy and a measure of personal freedom for the Chinese people, which was Nixon’s real objective.  But Nixon was betting on the come in China, trusting that improved trade and contacts would lead to personal freedom for the Chinese people, an objective that the totalitarian Chinese leadership does not accept, but there is progress, regardless. 

    Iran is not China.  China had nuclear weapons, and had bought into the MAD scenario, when Nixon went to China.  Iran does not have nukes, and regularly threatens Israel, Europe, and the USA against the time they do achieve nuclear weapons.  Which is another way of saying that China was sane, and Iran is insane, as evidenced by their distortion of facts (on terrorism, or Israel, for examples) and their religious fanaticism (this guy lives in a well for the last 1400 years, and he is coming out in the near future to establish the Kingdom of Allah, during a big war - so, how to start a big war?  Nuclear weapons ought to do it.).

    So, granting legitimacy to the Mullahs is more likely to hurt the Irani people than to help them.  And it does nothing to stabilize the world economy, the geopolitical situation, the oil markets, and the worldwide shipping lanes that the USA has protected and maintained almost single-handedly for the last sixty years. 

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    United States Posted by scorp on Jun 7, 2006 at 12:13 PM

    Talking to Iran at this point is a mistake, in that the Mullahs continue to make progress toward their nuclear goals (and therefore think they are winning) as long as they can keep the USA otherwise engaged.  But the Mullahs are ignoring two salient points.  Israel and George Bush both have said that the Iranian bomb will never be.  George Bush is not inclined to lose his nerve, much less Israel, so the Iranis and the USA are engaged in a little bit of theater, with almost no prospect that the Mullahs will concede.  But other forces are at work.  The Iranian people hate the Mullahs with a passion, and there are daily riots throughout Iran that you do not read about in leftist newspapers.  And Iranian stooges (Hezbollah, Mookie) are vulnerable if we need to turn up the screws on the road to Iranian non-proliferation.

    United States Posted by scorp on Jun 7, 2006 at 12:14 PM
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