Ahmadinejad's Mission: Creating a role model of a modern, advanced, powerful and Islamic society
MonsieurStat
Colin Freeman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Tehran -- With his cheap suits, 18-hour workdays and ever-ready quotes from
the Quran, he is the very model of Islamic piety. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the
ultra hard-liner who swept to power as Iran's new president Friday, is
modest about everything in life -- except, perhaps, his own modesty.
Even as he cast his ballot in the poll that propelled him to victory, the
former mayor of Tehran could not resist yet another chance to portray
himself as just a humble municipal worker. "I take pride in being the
Iranian nation's little servant and street-sweeper," he declared, a
reference to the time he briefly swapped his mayor's desk for a stint in the
city trash brigade.
Yet for his reform-minded detractors, the worry now is that he will sweep
away much more than just litter. They fear that Ahmadinejad -- whom they dub
"Iran's Taliban" -- will cancel the few social freedoms they have won in the
last decade, bringing back a religious orthodoxy not seen since the early
days of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
In a brief radio address Saturday, the president-elect declared, "My mission
is creating a role model of a modern, advanced, powerful and Islamic
society." He made no mention of his views on individual freedoms, allowing
reform advocates to fear the worst.
Outside Iran, the concern is that Ahmadinejad's hard-line Islamism will
extend well beyond puritanism. Widely considered as the mouthpiece of the
country's all-powerful clerics, he threatens to usher in a new era of
confrontational relations with the West that could have far-reaching
consequences for the region.
"We continue to stand with those who call for greater freedoms for the
Iranian people," White House spokeswoman Maria Tamburri said Saturday.
Unlike most of his reformist presidential rivals, who promised rapprochement
with the West, he has made no secret of his desire to continue with Iran's
controversial nuclear program -- and of his disdain for U.S. overtures to
rebuild links.
"The U.S. administration cut off ties unilaterally to lay waste to the
Islamic republic," he has argued. "They want to restore them today for the
same reason."
Future talks on Iran's nuclear program, which the Bush administration
suspects is for military rather than civilian use, are now expected to be
put into the hands of avowed anti-Western clerics.
During eight years in office, reform-minded President Mohammad Khatami
tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to loosen the grip of the all-powerful
mullahs. On Friday, a convincing number of Iranians voted to wind the
political clock back toward its revolutionary heyday.
Originally written off as a rank outsider because of his stance at the more
extreme end of Iran's religious right, Ahmadinejad ended up with 62.2
percent of the vote in Friday's runoff, nearly twice the 35.3 percent tally
of his rival, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Turnout Friday was more
than 59 percent, down from first-round turnout on June 17 of almost 63
percent.
Despite the allegations from Rafsanjani and other defeated reformists that
the military, the militias and the clergy had worked unfairly to pump up
Ahmadinejad's vote, sometimes resorting to intimidation, it seemed difficult
to argue that the mayor had not struck a populist chord with millions of
voters.
The explanation for his runaway success appears to be a growing
disillusionment among many poorer Iranians with reforms introduced by his
predecessor. While Khatami pried the country open to foreign trade and
Western- style innovations such as the Internet and satellite TV, such
changes have been seen as benefiting mostly the well-to-do.
In the affluent suburbs of liberal northern Tehran, where Internet cafes and
fast-food outlets abound, gloomy tales are already being swapped about his
conservative vision for the future. Fashionably dressed young women
contemplate their varnished nails wistfully, debating whether they will be
forced to wear gloves, and courting couples ponder how much longer they will
be allowed to stroll together in public.
"This may as well be the end," moaned Ali Reza Yazdgerd, 20. "We will have
to cut out hair, parties, skiing, coffee shops. Everything that we enjoy is
going to be suppressed."
But in the vast, Soviet-style public housing blocks of southern Tehran and
across dirt-poor rural provinces, the reformists' talk of greater political
freedom had little resonance. Ahmadinejad's urge for a return to the values
of the Islamic revolution -- fondly, if selectively, remembered as a time of
self-sacrifice and community spirit -- struck an immediate chord.
Nowhere is that truer than in the modest farming hamlet of Aradan, 60 miles
southeast of Tehran, where the country's new leader, one of seven children
of a blacksmith, was born in 1956. The mud-brick house of his youth is now a
litter-strewn hovel, but fellow neighbors expect great things of the
village's most famous son.
"This country has great wealth, but it lies in the hands of a few. Only
Ahmadinejad can disperse it," said his cousin Muhammad Reza Mohseni, a
philosophy teacher.
"We are looking to him to bring justice, save the poor and cut off thieves'
hands," added Massoumeh Sabbaghian, another cousin.
Ahmadinejad has dismissed claims that he will be illiberal, saying that
predictions that he will require all women to wear the all-encompassing
chador -- many younger women now wear a loose coat called a manteau and a
colorful scarf -- or banning the Internet are simply "rumors."
In conservative cities such as Qom, a center of Shiite orthodoxy, the
enthusiasm for his hard-line rhetoric illustrates the yawning social gulf
that modernization has thrown up.
Taghi Davoud Abadi decked out his cafe with Ahmadinejad posters. "We have
lost half of the values of the Islamic revolution," he said. "We must not
accept a Western cultural invasion."
Despite being a relative youngster -- 49 -- by Iranian political standards,
and the first non-cleric to reach the country's highest elected office,
Ahmadinejad has impeccable credentials as a veteran of the 1979 Islamic
revolution that toppled Iran's pro-Western monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza
Pahlavi.
He was among the students who helped plan the taking of hostages at the U.
S. Embassy that year, and then served as a special-forces soldier during the
Iran-Iraq war. He was an instructor in the basij, the thuggish clerical
militia that enforces religious observance.
After that he moved into politics, first as the appointed governor of
Ardabil, a backwater province in the northwest. The country's ruling
ayatollahs appointed him mayor of Tehran, at the front of a wave of hard-
liners who swept into city government in 2003.
His stints as a can-do technocrat have impressed voters most. His campaign
video played up his image as an honest servant of the people, working from 6
a.m. to midnight, fighting Iran's corrupt bureaucracy to get roads paved and
houses built, and relaxing in his modest home by reading the Quran.
In many ways, it carries more than a passing reminder of his revolutionary
mentor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who in Iran, at least, is remembered as
an austere, egalitarian cleric. Ahmadinejad's manifesto also pledged social
justice: higher wages for Iran's underclass, more development funds, and an
enhanced share of the country's vast oil wealth, which many feel has been
siphoned off to benefit Tehran's urban elite.
"People think a return to revolutionary values is only a matter of wearing
the head scarf," he said during the campaign. "The country's true problem is
employment and housing, not what to wear."
What remains to be seen is whether his policies will match his rhetoric.
Elected Iranian politicians still have relatively little power compared to
the Guardian Council and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who
managed to water down or squelch altogether most of Khatami's more ambitious
reforms.
Iran's business community is also hostile to his talk of harnessing its
wealth for the national good. Populist pledges to rein in Iran's oil
"mafias" and private banks could spark a capital flight that might undermine
his plans to slash Iran's 30 percent unemployment.
For opponents of the regime, the main ray of hope is that his presidency
precipitates a crisis that finally will give Iran's long-fractured reform
movement the unity to end the theocracy's stranglehold.
"Ahmadinejad is a shortcut for the opposition and a move toward the
revolution," said Roozbeh Farhanipour, a Southern California-based
opposition activist. "I hope that this is the last president of the Islamic
Republic."
But his supporters are hopeful that prosperous times are just ahead. "God
willing, things will be better with Ahmadinejad," said Tala Shabani, who
works at a welfare organization in Tehran. "I'm the only one earning for my
family. Ahmadinejad is a humble man. Let's see what he can do."
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Orthodox landslide
In Iran: Religious moderates feel Ahmadinejad's hard-line orthodoxy may
result in rolling back the nation's recent social freedoms.
Outside Iran: Ahmadinejad is seen as a mouthpiece for powerful, anti-
Western clerics. Concern grows over confrontation with the West,
continuation of nuclear program.
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Key issues for new president
Nuclear talks: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Iran's nuclear negotiators of
giving way to European pressure over U.S.-led suspicions that Iran's nuclear
energy program is a cover for atomic weapons development. He fully supports
Iran's nuclear program and is expected to bring in a new team for the talks.
Economy: In his campaign, he promised to tackle high unemployment and
redirect funds to improve the lives of millions of poor Iranians. He has not
given clear details on prospects for foreign investment and other
free-market issues such as privatization and the Tehran Stock Exchange. Some
critics believe he will attempt to increase government controls on commerce.
U.S. relations: Ahmadinejad has said he seeks ties with all nations except
those that "seek animosity" against Iran -- a clear reference to the United
States. His closest advisers include some of Iran's most anti-American
clerics.
RBRK
backward, anti-Iranian terrorist Islamic arab society. But he and his
followers along with said ali geda will take that wish to their graves
very soon if they attempt anything arab. They already got the message.
kir sagam to holghoom naney har chi tokhm tazieh goosaaleh
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Enzo
Luzer!