DATE=01/13/2001

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-00917

TITLE=ON THE LINE: IRAN'S UNCERTAIN FUTURE

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0037

CONTENT=

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Anncr:On the Line a discussion of United States policy and contemporary issues. This week, "Iran's Uncertain Future." Here is your host, Robert Reilly.

Host:Hello and welcome to On the Line. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami is expected to run for another term in the restricted elections scheduled for June 8th. Mr. Khatami was elected in 1997 on a promise of moderating Iran's rigid authoritarian political and social structures. But he has had limited success, despite the victory a year ago of reformists in Iran's parliamentary elections. Hard-line Muslim clerics opposed to change remain in control of the judiciary, military, and most of the media.

Joining me today to discuss Iran's uncertain future are two experts. Roscoe Suddarth is the president of the Middle East Institute and a former U-S ambassador to Jordan. And Suzanne Maloney is a research associate at the Brookings Institution. Welcome to the program.

Roscoe Suddarth, how do you appraise the current situation in Iran with this discouraging news as against any promising signs from, for instance, the trial, which is going on now, of eighteen alleged murderers who killed the dissidents back in 1998?

Suddarth: Well, Suzanne is the great expert, but I would say, it's pretty discouraging. It seems to me that, even though this trial is going on, most of the momentum is in the direction of the conservatives, who have been able to close down a lot of the press. And even Khatami himself has admitted that he was unable to carry out his constitutional responsibilities. Nor do I see the people ready to go to the streets. So I think we're in for a prolonged period of status quo stasis. I hope I'm wrong but we could be seeing a generational change as being the next signal event. It's the most discouraging period since Khatami took over.

Host: Do you agree with that, Suzanne Maloney?

Maloney: I think there are a lot of negative signs in this trial. It encompasses some of the really sensitive issues and the biggest problems that Iran is facing right now. It involves the murder of four prominent political dissidents and writers almost two years ago. And the fact that it's being held in a closed setting, rather than in a public setting, is an issue of a great deal of frustration for a lot of Iranians.

Host: It's a military court also, isn't it?

Maloney: It is a military court, so none of the details of the chain of command and, really, how the murders of these dissidents, and allegedly, potentially up to eighty or a hundred other dissidents in the past eight to ten years, might have actually been carried out and decided upon by the power structure. But I think the trial itself is indicative that there is change on the ground in Iran and that the change has meaning. The fact that representatives of the ministry of information were actually apprehended and prosecuted, even if it didn't go up to the ultimate commanders of those decisions, is a very encouraging sign. And so I think that we have to be satisfied, at least for the moment, with the idea that we're making some progress on a very limited basis, and that, in fact, the Iranian people are demanding more themselves.

Host: On the other hand, it has to be discouraging that two of the journalists who were very involved in exposing the intelligence service involvement in the murders were put in prison.

Maloney: Right [Akbar] Ganji and [Emadeddin] Baghi, two of the more prominent journalists. And really they are political activists more than they would be considered reporters by a kind of Western standard. They're enterprising individuals with a lot of access at the highest levels, and they were imprisoned in the summer and the fall along with a number of other prominent political activists, journalists, and lawyers, people who brought cases like this one of the serial killings to the attention of the Iranian people. And their voices have been, largely, silenced. On the other hand, a number of these individuals have been using their trials, much as the former Minister of Interior, Abdollah Nuri did a year and a half ago to begin to question the system in a very public and critical way.

Host: President Khatami, as long ago as last summer, said he was going to run for another term and then he withdrew that statement. Now people say, because of the re-shuffling in the president's cabinet, that there's a sign that he will indeed go ahead and run. On the other hand, I want to actually read, Roscoe Suddarth, the statement you alluded to because it doesn't sound like a campaign speech. And that is when President Khatami made the statement toward the end of last year: "after three and a-half years as president, I don't have sufficient powers to implement the constitution, which is my biggest responsibility. In practice, the president is unable to stop the trend of violations or force implementation of the constitution." Is that a campaign speech? What is that?

Suddarth: There are big questions about whether Khatami is a politician or a philosopher. And I don't believe that he is a plant by the conservatives to try to draw away the counter-revolutionary fervor. I think he's a sincere person, but that he hasn't had that moment of truth where he looks himself in the mirror and says: "how do I want to be remembered in history, as a patsy for the conservatives who lacks the courage of my convictions or as someone..?"

Host: Is that how you see him now?

Suddarth: That's the way I see him, yes, not quite a patsy but someone who is unwilling to pull out all of the plugs and call for his supporters to go to the streets.

Host: Should he do that, Suzanne Maloney, get his supporters in the streets? What would be the results?

Maloney: No, the result of that would be sustained unrest, which would be neither to the interest of the reformers because they would find themselves facing the military apparatus which is controlled by the conservatives. Nor do I think it would be in the interest of the conservatives themselves because I think they can see, both from Iranian history and from the events in Palestine and Israel today, that a cycle of violence, once created, becomes very difficult to stop. But the statement that you alluded to can be interpreted in different ways. And the way that it was perceived in Iran was largely as a hopeful sign because it was the first statement of Khatami really acknowledging what the limitations are of his abilities. And so, there was a lot of excitement about this statement, the recognition that Khatami is willing to come out and state quite straightforwardly that, in fact, he can't accomplish the program for which he was elected. And it also refocused attention, not on the individuals in question, but on the system itself, but on the constitution and on the powers of the presidency, which is a very interesting debate.

Host: The way I would parse this sentence is that he is making a rather bold statement that Iran is an extra-legal regime.

Maloney: He's suggesting that the supremacy of the supreme leader and the ability of the supreme leader to overrule all of the popular will is not something that he agrees with and is something that ought not to be sustained.

Suddarth: And that's something, by the way that Qom, the religious center, seems to be saying. Our journal is publishing a major piece by [Ayatollah] Montazeri which, in effect, questions the powers of the authority of the supreme leader. There's a great school of conservative theology in Qom, which says that the supreme leader has gone way beyond any kind of Islamic interpretation of the constitution.

Maloney: I think it is very exciting because what you have in Iran, and what you have really had over the past twenty years, is this debate about the nature of popular sovereignty and whether or not a government of the people should be by the people as well. And who chooses and who makes the decisions - that's a very important debate. I don't think we see it going on in a lot of our other allies in the region.

Host: But isn't that perhaps because this is really a theological debate and we're simply seeing the political manifestations of it?

Maloney: It's both theological debate and a political debate. You can have it on either plane, but it has a very direct political impact.

Host: Theologically or poltically?

Maloney: I think to the extent that it has moved from the seminaries, where there are always some questions about what the precedents for this idea of "velayet-e-faqih", the "guardianship of the jurists," which was the office really conceptualized by Ayatollah Khomeini and also his at one time named heir apparent, Ayatollah Montezeri, who is now under house arrest. But this whole institution itself has been quite controversial from the start. It has no precedents in Islamic history or outside of the Shia world. But the idea that you are now seeing this debate, which has always existed, moving in much more dramatic fashion within Qom, within the seminaries themselves, but also onto the pages of the reformist newspapers, such as they exist today.

Host: And how do they exist today?

Maloney: More than thirty newspapers have been closed since April of last year in the aftermath of the profound victory of the reformists in the parliamentary elections, and yet we've seen the very modest rebound of reformist press. Obviously, the red lines are much more narrowly drawn. And I suspect that these newspapers are not being nearly as adventurous in what they're willing to publish. But there are three or four newspapers that are published on a daily basis that are sounding the reformist themes. There are a couple of weeklies that have emerged that have come onto the national scene from some of the provincial areas. You are seeing a political debate that exists in Iran on a public basis.

Host: I just want to take a moment to remind our audience that this On the Line and this week we're discussing the uncertain future of Iran with Roscoe Suddarth from the Middle East Institute and Suzanne Maloney from the Brookings Institution. Roscoe Suddarth, you mentioned something about a generational change that may affect the future of Iran. Isn't that change already there? Half the people in Iran are under twenty years old. They have no memory of the Shah. They have no memory of the Iranian revolution. And aren't they the force that's bubbling up behind this in terms of the students?

Suddarth: Yes, exactly. I was merely talking about the leadership. And Khamenei looks like a pretty frail fellow. He was a compromise candidate anyway. It could well be that when he passes on that the office could pass on as well. I mean, that's the key. Khatami has pointed out that we have a funny system. We believe in popular sovereignty for the presidency but we also believe in this other concept where God has somehow given the divine guidance to the supreme leader. And it's obvious that it's very difficult for the two to coexist.

Host: It would be somewhat unlikely, would it not, Suzanne Maloney, to see the institutions that control Iran society - from the secret police, the military, the judiciary and the controlled press - to turn to someone who is more liberal, or less authoritarian, than Ayatollah Khamenei.

Maloney: It isn't even necessarily about the ideology of the individual who controls them, but how and under what circumstances they are controlled. At the moment, they report only to the supreme leader. And he is, of course, accountable to no one other than God, ostensibly.

Suddarth: And don't forget, Bob, that the Shah's so-called impregnable polity crumbled within a year. And Iran is now capable of mass political mobilization. And we're beginning to see that in the younger generation and the fact that they are yearning for more contact with the outside world, a more secular lifestyle. So we're seeing tectonic plates being moved. But with the supreme leader and a few of the conservatives who have vast, vast vested interests, I mean, they control most of the economy and hence most of the money in the country. In effect you have a clerical class that has enriched itself and enraged itself. Talk to any taxi driver and they'll curse them in Tehran. So, we're building up to, I won't say, a pre- revolutionary situation, but to insistent change. How that's going to happen, I don't know.

Host: Sounds like a recipe for an explosion, Suzanne Maloney?

Maloney: Where Iran is concerned you have to predict the unpredictable. There's certainly the possibility of some sort of dramatic event, of an explosion of some sort on a popular level, because there is frustration over the level of unemployment, the declining per capita income, all of these sorts of economic problems that fall on the shoulders of the ordinary person. And there is some frustration at the top, or among the elite levels, about the political and social restrictions that exist. My sense is that most Iranians would be very satisfied with a situation in which they feel some hope is possible for their economic futures and have some freedom to walk around the streets without fear of being harassed by a self-appointed religious police. So I think there's always that strong possibility of some unforeseen incident occurring and I think that all of the powers that be, both reformist and conservative, have a great deal vested in precluding any sort of dramatic explosion. We are seeing the students' unions and some of the more liberal organizations trying to quash any instability among their supporters.

Host: But does that translate, Roscoe Suddarth, into support for President Khatami for a second term? He got seventy percent of the vote in 1997. Is he both sides' candidate, in a way?

Suddarth: No, I think he will definitely be supported. There is no candidate more liberal than he is.

Host: Some talk about his brother or the culture minister who just resigned.

Suddarth: Well, perhaps its too early to see that. There is definite disappointment in Khatami and even on the economic side, he hasn't decided whether he wants to be a statist or to be a reformer. So he's got radical and conservative economic people in his own cabinet that he hasn't been able to reconcile. I don't see, at this point, any challenger to him. The main question is whether he wants to do it himself.

Host: And what if he doesn't, who could step in and how could they step in? There are restrictions as to who can run.

Maloney: There are religious bodies that, essentially, vet the candidates for presidency. So in the past, where hundreds of individuals have applied to run, they have allowed somewhere around three to four to run, four in the previous election. And I wouldn't expect that the prerequisites for being a candidate would become any easier this time around. I think Khatami has no choice other than to run. And the question is: what can he extract from the conservatives in the process of declaring his candidacy as concessions, because they need him, perhaps, more than the liberals do, more than the reformists do, because there are certainly other reformist politicians, very charismatic, very popular, some of whom are in jail at the moment, but who could certainly attract a very large standing at the polls. There are some conservative politicians who have amazing political abilities and a potential to transform themselves into popular politicians but, to date, the basis for their power has not been real popular support. So I don't really see them attracting a large following in the polls and I don't see them risking their own political futures in contesting this election. So I think Khatami is the candidate. Khatami is the winner. The question is the size of his mandate and what he is able to extract in terms of institutional power in the process.

Host: And what does this mean for the future relations between Iran and the United States?

Suddarth: Well I'd say that they are pretty low priorities for both. The Iranians have the conservatives that are really very much against the U.S. relationship, even though most of the young people would love things to open up. It's too early to speculate. I would suspect that the Bush administration will be more interested in, number one, they've got an urgent problem on their hands in Israel and Palestine. What they really want to do something about is Iraq. And I think that Iran would be way down the list. And even though you can argue that, yes, there is Texas oil and that would argue for U-S oil companies being able to go back, I think there is also a strong military element, particularly with Colin Powell and others in the administration, that we have to get beyond Khobar towers. And if Iran continues to make these inflammatory statements about attacking Israel if Israel attacks Syria and so forth, then that makes it politically impossible for them to do anything.

Host: What did you make of that? During the height of the tension between Israel and the Palestinians, Iran makes the statement that, if Israel attacks Lebanon or Syria, they will militarily come to their assistance.

Maloney: There was some attempt to disavow that statement, after the fact, within Iran, at least. I didn't find the statement surprising and I think that it reflects a larger concern that we all must have that, if there were to be any formal hostilities to break out between Israel and its neighbors, certainly that would involve the states of the region to some extent or another. And Iran would be a player. It already is a player in its support for Hezbollah. And I think, as Ambassador Suddarth said, as long as we have this crisis in Israel and Palestine, we are unlikely to see any dramatic change in the U-S-Iranian relationship, if only because the rhetoric is so hot.

Host: But what about the point that Roscoe Suddarth made when saying that a higher priority for the United States is Iraq? Certainly that's a priority for Iran too. In fact, some commentators say they're returning to Russia now for modernized tanks and on-the-ground kind of military equipment because they are worried about Saddam Hussein's build-up.

Maloney: Iran has been courting both Russia and China, I think, as an attempt to sort of triangulate and avoid the necessity of having any sort of a relationship with the United States. But in the end, I don't think there's a lot of disagreement within the conservatives and the reformers, as well as within people here in Washington, that at some stage we're going to have to find a way to sit down at a table and talk to one another. We've enough common interests and common threats.

Host: How worried is Iran about Iraq?

Maloney: I think Iraq is a perennial problem and a perennial threat for Iran. You only need to talk to young Iranians who remember rushing into bomb shelters during the war of the cities period of the war. Iranians on an individual level continue to feel the scars of the war. It affected every family a half million casualties in Iran.

Suddarth: Excuse me, that can be a bit exaggerated. My sense is that the Iranians are pretty happy with the situation the way it is now. The United States expended vast amounts of resources to contain Iraq. The last thing they want is what the U-S Congress wants, which is a democratic, Pro-Western government in Baghdad. So, I think they are quite happy and would be really quite worried were we to start a destabilization campaign that could end up in an even more hostile situation.

Host: And what do they need a Shahab-three missile for that takes them quite far out of the Middle Eastern area in terms of their reach with weapons of mass destruction?

Suddarth: By their lights, they look at the Israelis that have a missile that is quite capable - and they have nuclear weapons - of reaching Tehran. By the Iranian logic, why shouldn't we have something like that ourselves?

Host:I'm afraid that's all the time we have this week. I would like to thank our guests - Roscoe Suddarth from the Middle East Institute and Suzanne Maloney from the Brookings Institution - for joining me to discuss Iran's uncertain future. This is Robert Reilly for On the Line.