Mideast Youth » Azadi

Iranian Scholar on The Fate of the “Policy of Ambiguation”

Azadi — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:44:03 +0000

Mehdi Khalaji, a visiting scholar at the Washington Institution for Near East Policy, believes that Iran’s Supreme Leader’s policy of not taking clear stances in terms of foreign policy and refusing to give practical responses to Western countries is West’s most critical obstacle in solving Iran’s problems. Though, he believes that this policy is soon about to face its fate due to world’s changing “regional and global equations.”
In his recent article “Islamic Republic: Diplomatic Obstruction” on Dutch-based Radio Zameneh, Khalaji points out that the goal of this policy is to buy time while not taking any fatal decisions. “Ayatollah Khamanei, who is the strongest person in Iran’s political structure, has not been taking any fatal decisions, at least in terms of foreign policy, in the last two years.” says Khalaji, “more than that, he has tried to use a policy of ambiguity and agitation to buy more time in order to fulfill his goals.”
Khalaji then points out that there are clear signs that Ayatollah Khamenei has no plan of either going to war with or normalizing Iran’s relations with the U.S. “For example, his top foreign policy consultant, Ali Akbar Velaiati, in an article published on many European journals highlights the role of Supreme Leader and images Ahmadinezhad as the less important figure,” he points out, “on the other hand, in a speech immediately after that, he introduces Mahmood Ahmadinezhad as the key player.”
This so-called “policy of ambiguation,” Khalaji believes, is a critical problem for Western powers in their behavior towards Iran because they like to negotiate with someone who makes the decisions. But as Khalaji points out, “in Iran, those who have the power do not make decisions and those who can make decisions do not have the power.”
As far the Iran-US relations is concerned, Khalaji believes that Ayatollah Khamanei considers a peace with U.S as a “to-be-or-not-to-be” matter regarding the ideals of Islamic Revolution. Therefore, “he views the continuation of his current policies while not getting in to any kind of conflict with U.S or Israel as his main challenge,” Khalaji points out “and this is the exact policy that leads westerns to a condition of intoleration, desperation, and moving towards harder measures.”
Khalaji believes that the new regional and global equations is the main obstacle facing Iran’s ambition of continuation of “policy of ambiguation.” “The rising nuclear crisis, insecurity in Iraq and problems in Lebanon and Occupied parts of Palestine has made it harder and harder for Israel, U.S, and other Western countries to accept the continuation of these policies,” he adds “Ayatollah Khamenei considers the pre-9/11 policies still practical, but the regional and global equations have changed since then.”
“ It seems unlikely for the U.S general policies towards Iran to change, either with Bush administration or his replacement.” Khalaji concludes, “ Ayatollah Khamenei is the only one who holds the key to either get in to a war or peacefully solve the nuclear crisis. If Iran’s Leader changes his mind and does not rely on the practicality of hard power more than it is practical, Iran can reenter the Global Community while having good relations with the West and U.S and playing a significant role in the region, which is what Iranian people, culture, and geographical location deserves.”

Two main obstacles of democracy in Middle East

Azadi — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:05:24 +0000

To be honest, I do not feel good about what’s happening in Pakistan. In other words, I feel sorry about that. In one of my posts in Irano-American, my former blog, I called the story of Pakistan the sad story of democracy in Middle East. To be honest, it seems so hard for the intellectuals of Islamic countries to make their leaders accept the democratic concepts. Lots of economic and social elements contribute to this miserable fact. Economically, the Middle Eastern countries are highly dependent on their resources specially oil. So the government is barely dependent on the Bourgeoisie class, which sociologically is the most influent social force in creating democracy by obliging the totalitarian governments to accept the democratic values. The other reason is the Islamic religion and its high potential to be used as a dictatorial element. Islamic fundamentalism, beyond any doubt, has been one of the major obstacles in front of the process of transition to democracy in this very important part of the world.

God bless the democracy in Iran

Azadi — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 03:40:01 +0000

The results of the Competence Review, a procedure later added to the constitution based on which special governmental organizations specially the Guardian Council can review the competence of the election candidates and prevent the nominators decided ”incompetent” from being elected by the people, shows a breakdown for Iranian intellectual movement. This anti-democratic step took by the conservative front of the government will most probably cause a political deadlock for the Iranian democratic movement.

This situation is very similar to what happened after the election of Mahmood Ahmadinezhad, current president of Iran, when the intellectuals could basically do nothing to approach their goals for a democratic government. At that time, the intellectual movement split between two parts: reformists and the supporters of the downfall of the Islamic Republic government. Although these two groups never merged in spite of some efforts to reach the goal of a united intellectual movement, during the Reform Era, an era during which democrat reformists took charge of Iranian government and parliament, they sometimes fought for the same goals, and this decreased the size of the gap among them. After the reformists lost the Presidential election of 2006, supporters of downfall, also known as revolutionists, started to emphasize on the impossibility of reforming Islamic Republic government.

A group of reformists at that point remained on their former beliefs, and the other group started to split the reformist front little by little. In spite of all the problems reformists faced at the time, unsuccessful polices of the conservative president of Iran, Mahmood Ahmadinezhad, and the idea of retrying the passed way without the former mistakes made them try for the coming parliamentary elections of 2008. The saddening news of the massive rejection of their competence places the democratic movement of Iran again in a situation of political deadlock and incapability to take effective positions.

I, like a lot of other people, have no idea what is going to happen. I hope the situation will stay the same and won’t get worse because I know it is almost impossible to reach betterment in Iran at least in near future. I bet, hope is a better verb to describe what I intend to say, time will solve the problem we are facing right now.