Financial Times Editorial Comment: Iranian clerics caught in a bind

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Iranian clerics caught in a bind
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: June 16 2009 20:14 | Last updated: June 16 2009 20:14
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2e3fdbf8-5a9c-11de-8c14-00144feabdc0.html


In the face of massive protests at the disputed result of the Iranian election, the theocrats who rule the country have been taken by surprise. Seldom have the divisions within their ranks seemed so apparent. They are seeking to suppress the demonstrations by clamping down on communications, banning independent media coverage and arresting leading reformers. Yet they also know that ruthless suppression, in the wake of rigged elections, would severely damage their legitimacy.

Tuesday’s decision by the Guardian Council to order a partial recount of the votes in the presidential election is a sop to the opposition and is unlikely to defuse the situation. According to the official result, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the populist incumbent, won a landslide victory against his more moderate challenger, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, and no selective recount is likely to reverse it.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader and the principal power in the land, has already endorsed the outcome, so his credibility is also on the line. Mr Moussavi is demanding that the election be annulled. That deadlock may be resolved only in the confrontation between protest and power on the streets. Both the clergy and security forces are known to be divided over the abrasive personality and erratic policies of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad. His economic policies, in particular, consisting largely of handouts to rural and urban poor to buy their votes, have resulted in rampant inflation and growing unemployment. He has alienated leading figures such as the former president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, who chairs the Assembly of Experts that elects the supreme leader. There has been an ominous silence from the powerful clerics of Qom in support of his re-election.

In such circumstances there is little the outside world can do, however. Outside “interference” would be used by Mr Ahmadi-Nejad to prove that his opponents are tools of “western imperialists”. Mr Moussavi, a former prime minister and long-time supporter of the Islamic revolution, is certainly not that. He would be just as tough a negotiator in defending Iran’s nuclear programme.

Strangely enough, the outside world needs a legitimate regime in Iran as much as the Iranian people. It will be much harder for Barack Obama, US president, to re-engage with a leader perceived to have returned to power through fraud and brute force. But that is a problem for another day.