| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Captain Compassion" |
| Date: |
19 Jan 2007 09:42:12 PM |
| Object: |
IRAN'S BLAME BATTLE |
IRAN'S BLAME BATTLE
FEUD OVER FAILING ECONOMY Rafsanjani:
January 19, 2007
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01192007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/irans_blame_battle_opedcolumnists_amir_taheri.htm?page=0
AS tension builds up between Iran and the international community, a
potentially more significant conflict is taking shape within the
ruling establishment in Tehran.
The conflict is centered on what looks like a looming economic crisis.
Inflation has risen to 17 percent, its highest rate since the 1970s. A
cascade of business closures has pushed unemployment, already high
even by Third World standards, to its highest level in three decades.
The value of the national currency (the rial) has dropped against
regional and global currencies, and is still on the slide. By official
estimates, including some offered by Islamic Chief Justice Ayatollah
Shahroudi, capital flight has turned into a flood.
In Iran, as in most other Third World economies, the absence of modern
investment opportunities gives real estate a leading role in
attracting savings at all levels. As soon as an Iranian has some extra
income, he tries to buy a piece of land or an apartment. As a result,
real estate has been a key measure of Iran's economic performance.
And by that measure, the economy is heading for meltdown. The money
that would have been invested in real estate inside Iran now goes to
Dubai and Turkey and, recently, Iraq.
SOME within the Khomeinist establishment blame the crisis on President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies. They claim that Ahmadinejad's
deliberate provocation of the West has fomented an atmosphere of
conflict and uncertainty that frightens investors. Many in Iran's
business community are convinced that the dispute over Tehran's
alleged nuclear ambitions will intensify, perphaps to full-scale war.
Ahmadinejad's opponents also blame his populist economic policies. The
president has been touring the country, distributing vast sums of oil
money locally - heedless of the fact that, in the absence of
productive investment opportunities, the cash fuels inflation. He has
also ordered a gradual termination of government subsidies on mass
consumer goods - notably gasoline (of which Iran imports 40 percent of
its needs) and domestic gas.
The measures have triggered a backlash among the poor, the
constituency that the Khomeinists have always tried to court. Popular
discontent is expressed in industrial strikes, anti-regime
demonstrations and public criticism of the system even at mosque
gatherings.
"Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei has started dropping hints that he is not
happy with Ahmadinejad's performance, implicitly blaming the president
for the economic meltdown.
Dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad was partly reflected in the recent
local government elections and elections for the Assembly of Experts,
where candidates closely identified with the president did poorly.
Overall, however, the radical factions of the Khomeinist movement (of
which Ahmadinejad is a product) did very well. In the local elections,
the radicals ended up with 83 percent of the votes; they also did well
in the Assembly of Experts' voting.
In other words, although Ahmadinejad's personal brand of radicalism
suffered a setback, the Khomeinist movement as a whole remains in
radical mode.
ON economic policy, the movement has always been divided between two
schools.
One school is called sazendegi or "constructionist." Its theorists
claim that the Khomeinist system can't survive in an atmosphere of
tension with the outside world and must find ways of attracting
partners while neutralizing its enemies.
Taking Communist China as a model, the constructionists argue that the
outside world, especially Western powers, don't care about any
political system's domestic aspects as long as it poses no threat to
them and offers them business opportunities. Like China's regime,
which has managed to survive and prosper, the Khomeinist system must
find a place in global trade, thus giving the major powers a stake in
its survival.
A powerful class of business-mullahs has always advocated the Chinese
model. They put their ideas to the test in the early 1990s under
President Hashemi Rafsanjani, himself the richest man in Iran. Having
ended the war with Iraq, Rafsanjani opened Iran's markets, and
presided over a mini-boom that some still remember as the "golden age"
of the Islamic Republic.
Opposing the Chinese model from the start were those who won the
sobriquet of "The North Koreans of Islam." Their chief theorist was
the late Muhammad-Ali Raja'i who briefly served as president in 1981
before he was assassinated.
Rajai's catchword was khod-kafa'i or "self-sufficiency." A genuine
Islamic society, he argued, will be impossible while the country is
exposed to global commerce dominated by "infidel" powers. With the
slogan: "Iranian! Buy Iranian!" he argued that the people of Iran must
start with the assumption that they need nothing. Once that "zero
base" was established, they should then decide what are the goods and
services they can't do without in the context of an Islamic society
based on frugality, mutual help and a minimization of needs.
According to Raja'i, the goods and services produced by "infidel"
powers, designed to meet the desires of their own populations, don't
always meet the requirements of Islamic life.
Ahmadinejad has always cast himself as an heir to Raja'i. In public,
he is often greeted with this chant: "Allah's Praise to Muhammad! The
friend of Raja'i is welcome!"
And, as governor of Ardabil (northwest of Tehran), Ahmadinejad
reorganized the province's economy to reduce trade in foreign-made
goods while encouraging local handicrafts and small businesses.
Later, on becoming Tehran mayor, he removed the giant billboards
showing David Beckham advertising sunglasses and George Clooney
selling coffee from the streets of the capital. (He replaced them with
pictures of suicide-bomb "martyrs.")
Living in a nondescript three-bedroom house in a poor neighborhood in
Tehran and driving a battered Iranian-made car, Ahmadinejad has used
qana'at (frugality) and twazu'e (modesty) as key concepts in his
doctrine of "self-sufficiency."
He claims that China has forfeited its "revolutionary purity," while
North Korea has not. He believes that businessman-mullahs like
Rafsanjani want to lead the Khomeinist revolution into a Faustian
bargain with the "infidel," led by the American "Great Satan," in the
name of economic prosperity.
FOR the first time since the early 1980s, the North Korean model is
clashing with the Chinese one within Iran's ruling establishment. The
outcome could shape the Islamic Republic's policies for years to come.
Some even think that the duel could decide whether the Islamic
Republic survives into its fourth decade.
--
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
"There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to
whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is
impossible." -- Jack Vance
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
.
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| User: "Neolibertarian" |
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| Title: Re: IRAN'S BLAME BATTLE |
20 Jan 2007 10:25:47 AM |
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In article <mf33r2d63csg7uorb74bv62n00acctgog2@4ax.com>,
Captain Compassion <daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net> wrote:
Ahmadinejad's opponents also blame his populist economic policies. The
president has been touring the country, distributing vast sums of oil
money locally - heedless of the fact that, in the absence of
productive investment opportunities, the cash fuels inflation. He has
also ordered a gradual termination of government subsidies on mass
consumer goods - notably gasoline (of which Iran imports 40 percent of
its needs) and domestic gas.
Always, this was the plan.
It would do us all well to remember that a wild animal is always most
dangerous when he's cornered.
--
NeoLibertarian
"Nobody inherits their civilisation.
You always inherit the /ruins/ of your civilisation.
Beginning with yourself."
--Dennis M. Hammes
.
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