Iranian Ironies

In parallel to Iran’s negotiation with the international community over the nuclear issue, and proposals to enrich uranium in Russia and re-transport it to reactors in Iran, a new type of internal movement is taking place in Tehran. It comes after the domestic protests against the make-up of the regime and its acts, under the cover of wilayat al-faqih, and the government that was formed after presidential elections in June.

It is no coincidence that Iran’s pursuit of negotiations on its nuclear program in Geneva, at the beginning of the month, and then in Vienna the other day, is coinciding with the complicated and painful transition that the Iranian domestic situation is experiencing. One of the most prominent aspects here is that moderate conservatives from the ruling conservative ruling wing have submitted the so-called “national reconciliation project” to the Supreme Guide of the Revolution, Sayyed Ali Khamenei, in order to recover a minimum of domestic accord with the reformist current, in light of the multiple battles that Tehran is waging, externally and internally, and the dangers, of various degrees of importance, that result regarding its regional role.

Perhaps the two developments’ coinciding is an irony that requires a profound review of Iranian policies that have governed Tehran’s behavior over the last two decades. There is a big difference between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rushing to inviting America and the international community to agree with him about “managing the world,” on the one hand, and Tehran’s readiness to accept the international community’s supervision, and with it America’s, of the production of enriched uranium, and the west’s control over how it is transferred to Iran, on the other.

In this case, “the world” is taking part in managing a sovereign Iranian issue whose completion has been linked to the so-called Iranians’ rejection of harm to their national feeling with regard to the west’s refusal to let them have nuclear technology.

Tehran has been successful in waging “proxy wars” with the west, in surrounding countries or elsewhere, farther away, and this has given it the ability to intervene in many regional power sharing formulas, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, by way of the Gulf countries and Yemen, not to speak about its breakthroughs in Syria and Egypt. It has generated a feeling in Iran that it can share the running of the world with the big countries. The other irony lies in Iran’s exercising its influence in the region took place under a call for “national reconciliation” and supporting “national consensus.” Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and then Yemen, have been the arenas in which these Iranian calls have appeared most prominently.

This irony poses a question about whether Iran has also fallen victim to the game that it has played against other countries, where it has exercised its influence. After all, there is a need for “national reconciliation” in Iran and invitations to groups within the country’s political society to join it, due to the months-long political division, which has begun to take a dangerous turn with the rise of terrorist extremism, and sectarian violence, as we saw from the recent explosion in Sistan-Baluchistan. This took place after it made light of the comments by various parties in the Lebanese crisis to Iran’s leaders, in answer to protecting its back by supporting certain sides against others, through calling for national reconciliation and consensus: why don’t you seek national consensus in your country, for the sects and those who have been deprived of their rights and various political forces – why don’t you give them the freedom of movement that we have here? Persian traits of cunning might be behind the Iranian pragmatism in negotiating with the west, and in the appearance of forces from the regime calling for national reconciliation. However, it is also true that there are new regional and international political realities that have prompted Iran’s leaders to think about employing some modesty. In recent years, rivalries have accompanied Iranian security and military policies with countries both near and far, and with important Islamic countries and western states, and these have become part of the domestic disputes, since reformers have called for reviewing these policies. These developments have forced Tehran to gather itself, after a period of expanding into other countries and provoking considerable hostility. Tehran has accused Washington of pursuing Sunni-Shiite tension in the region as part of its policy of constructive chaos; these accusations have been made by groups that along with Iran, accuse the US of carrying out such plans, but have begun to consider Iranian policy a partner of the US in this plan. Some of the modesty that many await from Iran has been required by Hizbullah in Lebanon, and this is another story.