Eye of the storm: An election without democracy in Iran
By AMIR TAHERI
Jerusalem Post
We may have to wait another week before the authorities in Teheran announce the full results of the February 20 general election.
But don't hold your breath. The results have been known for weeks.
The list of candidates established by the Council of the Guardians of the Revolution on February 7 was designed to ensure the control of the future Islamic Majlis (parliament) by the more hard-line factions within the Khomeinist regime.
Even a month ago, few would have predicted such an easy victory for the faction of which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the figurehead. The rival faction, whose standard-bearer is President Muhammad Khatami, was expected to put up a real fight.
It did not because, lacking a base of popular support, it did not have the stomach for a real fight.
The Iranian election experience puts an end to several illusions.
The first of these is that the mere holding of elections is a sign of democratization. Now, however, we know that although there can be no democracy without elections, it is possible to have elections without democracy.
The second illusion that has died in Iran today is that the present regime can be reformed from within.
The third illusion is the belief that we now have a united domestic opposition force with a coherent analysis of the nation's situation and a clear vision of its future.
Now, however, we know that the so-called reformist camp did not exist except in the imagination of some Western commentators.
This election has broken that camp into no fewer than 18 different mini-groups, some of which have boycotted the elections while others, although denied the right to field candidates of their own, have opposed the boycott in the name of revolutionary solidarity.
The "reformist" camp which, in fact, presented absolutely no major reform program in any field, consisted of a crowd as random as that of a group of people waiting for a bus who have nothing in common except a desire to get on the next bus.
A credible opposition cannot be made of occasional student riots, farcical sit-ins in the parliament, speeches about Schopenhauer and Hegel, and Colgate smiles of the kind President Khatami excels in. Before anything else, it needs to show why the present system is bad, and how and with what it should be replaced.
In the past decade or so, Iranian opposition has generated much heat but little light. It has shown a great deal of passion but little thought. Romantic preoccupation with vague generalities has been its wont, while the Khomeinist establishment has focused on the concrete issues of power and its implementation.
There can be no democratization without an opposition capable of offering clear alternatives to a government's analyses and policies.
With the death of these illusions, Iranians and others interested in Iran must review some of their recent assumptions.
The key lesson to Iranians is that the alternative to this regime cannot emerge from within it.
It is possible, and to some extent even happening now, that large segments of the establishment drift away from it. But unless they are absorbed into an opposition, they will amount to nothing but the flotsam and jetsam of a turbulent political life.
Today's election shows once again that the present regime's legitimacy does not come from the ballot box but from its ability to impose its will by force if necessary. It obliges Iran's neighbors, and the major powers interested in the region, to abandon their illusions and to either accept the present regime on its own terms or designate it as a foe that must ultimately be brought down.
The death of illusions in Iran also means the death of the European policy of constructive dialogue first proposed by the Germans in the 1980s and now most actively pursued by the British. That policy was based on the assumption that the regime could reform itself, peacefully and speedily.
It is now clear that it cannot.
Thus the Europeans face a stark choice. They can decide to - holding their noses - continue dealing with the Iranian regime because they need its cooperation on a number of issues, notably nuclear non-proliferation, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Or they can orchestrate a set of new diplomatic, economic, and even military pressures on the regime as a means of encouraging the emergence of a genuinely democratic internal opposition.
The Bush administration, for its part, needs to develop a coherent analysis of the Iranian situation. It must decide whether or not Iran is, in the words of the State Department's number-two, Richard Armitage, a "sort of democracy" or a despotic regime using religion and violence to remain in power.
Short-term realpolitik may counsel an accommodation with the present regime in Teheran, much as it has determined Washington's China policy. But that kind of realpolitik would mean the premature death of President George W. Bush's ambitious plan for a new Middle East. It would also give the Islamic Republic time to assemble an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction, which the Teheran leadership regards as its best insurance policy.
The writer, an Iranian author and journalist, is editor of the Paris-based Politique Internationale.
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