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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Focus Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Iran looks outwards
By Azadeh Moaveni
Iran's jubilant reform camp -- preening after its electoral victory and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's embarrassingly weak showing -- has long commanded more political support than might be anticipated for its contentious objectives; its ever-greater following includes opportunists as well as the sincere. A closer peek at the unlikely bedfellows in the reform movement shows just how appealing the political current is, and reformists must hope this trend continues as they try to realise the most controversial aims of their platform.
Foreign policy may not be the first battle, but it is likely to be the most divisive. Final results of the election have shown reformist victories for 170 of the parliament's 290 seats, with conservative candidates securing 45, independents 10, and another 65 to be determined in an April run-off. The reformist coalition discussed foreign policy openly during the campaign, with Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi publicly expressing hope that the elections would allow for a major change in foreign policy. One of the first public exchanges between President Muhammad Khatami and Rafsanjani has centered around the issue. How the foreign policy debate evolves will signal whether the sixth parliament can make any real headway with the ideological quandaries that to many Iranians seem irreconcilable within the establishment.
In his first post-election Friday sermon on 25 February, Rafsanjani dutifully expounded the familiar shibboleths against the US, insisting that the reformists' win signalled no change in Iran's foreign policy. The next day Khatami obliquely responded that to have enemies was no great accomplishment -- the challenge is to create a new relationship where animosity once prevailed.
But Rafsanjani's warning is less an early signal of his own intent -- or his own pragmatic politics, for that matter -- than it is a reminder of the US's special place in the Iranian collective imagination. Since its inception, the Islamic Republic has defined itself against an ideological American 'other,' and no one would be more shaken by closer ties with the West than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is believed to decide with whom and how Iran will deal. Although the reformists may manage to wring concessions out of fickle independents, this will be of little use without any means to pressure the man who really pulls the strings. That Rafsanjani is Khamenei's only hope of influencing the parliament is in itself significant -- the presence of an ardent pragmatist at the head of the right's parliamentary delegation shows that the embattled reformists have become something more like the political mainstream.
Reformers will concentrate their efforts on domestic matters, but their constituency will keep a close eye on their foreign policy progress. The oft referenced but little understood youthful segment of the Iranian electorate is keenly interested in the country's place in the world, and their support for more expansive relations cuts across lines assumed to divide this group. What the liberal kids in affluent northern Tehran want is obvious -- lots of cultural freedom, discos, and the lifestyle they see on satellite television and live while on vacation. They vote for the reformists, reserve only venom for the mullahs, and are waiting impatiently for everyone to get on with the important stuff -- namely, the normalising of their leisure time. Exactly how Iran's working-class and more religious youth feel about foreign policy is less predictable, though, because their views on this matter are largely divorced from their social and cultural values.
Among religious young people who voted for the most prominent right-wing party, the Association of Militant Clerics -- whose social conservatism might be expected to extend to their government's relations with the world -- there exists a marked preference for engagement. "We want progress, and progress requires outside relations," said Hamideh Ghazi, a 22-year-old accounting student who cast her ballot for the conservatives on election day. "It's that simple."
Modernisation, without Western cultural baggage, is what many of the approximately 30 per cent of conservative-leaning youth are after (the reform coalition estimates it enjoys 70 per cent popular approval from within each class). "We don't want to be part of the Third World, and we see how Khatami's relations with Europe have enhanced Iran's reputation in the world," said 19-year-old Zeinab Kangarloo, who also voted for the conservative faction but does not support Rafsanjani. Kangarloo's politics are counter-intuitive -- she supports Khamenei unquestioningly, the president warmly, and the rambunctious left wing of the reformists little. Because she wants a modern country, and because she sees the president working together with Khamenei, she supports them both -- but Rafsanjani, she says, is mainly concerned with augmenting his personal wealth and the reformists are too radical in too many ways.
Fatemeh Gahranchi, a 43-year old housewife, says her generation has more at stake here. "We sacrificed too much in the name of religion during the war [with Iraq] to suddenly have it not matter anymore," she insists. "If our 'enemy' [the West] can so quickly become a friend again, that means all our young people died for nothing." And this, for poorer Iranians, whose sons were sent to the front lines in far greater numbers, would be unbearable. While the war with Iraq is little more than a distant memory for those who could afford to buy their sons' exemptions from military duty, those who could not still live with the memory of lost sons and brothers. For this older generation, the death of their young people and the disenfranchisement of those who survived are inexorably wrapped up with the ideological duty of "defeating the enemy".
Young conservatives will not be hard to bring around to the reformists' side in the foreign policy battle, but older ones will be more difficult to convince. What is clear is that divisions along ideological lines are less sure than they may seem, and that especially in terms of foreign policy, young, religious and conservative Iranians want a modern state in the community of nations as much as their less pious peers -- the underlying values and reasons vary, but the intention is very much the same.
