Now there’s one I haven’t heard before ...
Western diplomats may not give Iran’s parliamentary election campaign high marks for democratic procedure but they acknowledge that the expected conservative sweep could make their jobs easier. Most embassies here say their task of negotiating with the Islamic republic on key areas of concern -- notably the nuclear and al-Qaeda issues -- will be simplified after conservatives cement control over all branches of the regime.
Diplomats interviewed here were critical of the move by the Islamic Republic’s conservative Guardians Council to blacklist most reformist candidates from running in Friday’s polls. "Let’s not make any pretences here: the elections do not meet our standards of democracy," a senior Tehran-based European diplomat told AFP. "But the reformists are not, and have never been, pulling the strings. Whenever we get to the brunt of an issue, the conservatives have the final say. The regime has been giving us a clear signal: we can shake hands with the president, but if we want to get down to the nitty-gritty and have a result at the end, then we deal with conservatives."
When foreign ministers from the European Union’s "big three" -- Britain, France and Germany -- sought to bring Iran into line with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demands for greater transparency over its suspect nuclear programme, it was a prominent conservative they dealt with. Reformist President Mohammad Karensky Khatami and his cabinet were largely excluded from the October 2003 negotiations in Tehran, which resulted in Iran signing up to tougher inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog. For Khatami, his role was reduced to giving a smile and a handshake before the cameras. Instead, Supreme National Security Council chief Hassan Rowhani -- a conservative close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- was charged with handling the issue. "Rowhani is being presented as the regime’s point-man when it comes to topics like the nuclear issue, relations with the United States, Iraq, al-Qaeda, the Middle East crisis and a whole host of other security issues," another Western diplomat said. "Khatami has become irrelevant, and the reformers in the parliament even more so."
But with reformists in the executive, diplomats have been spending many frustrating hours at the negotiating table with interlocutors who openly admit to wielding no real power. The talks that matter have been in private, with regime hardliners. After the polls, President Khatami and some of his cabinet colleagues could be the only reformers remaining in public office, unless they choose to resign or the new parliament promptly impeaches them. The mild-mannered cleric’s second and final term as president ends in mid-2005, and diplomats and analysts say they have already detected manoeuvres in the regime to see him replaced by Rowhani. "There will be no prizes for guessing who will win on Friday and who is being lined up to replace Khatami," joked another Western diplomat. "But I don’t think you’ll see many of us making a fuss and slamming the door."
"These are issues that we have to deal with security people on -- in other words the conservatives," noted a diplomat from a close European ally of the United States. "The reformists have never been in the loop on these kind of things. Having conservatives running everything may not be a reflection of the will of the Iranian public, but it will probably make our job -- as diplomats trying to deal with the people that matter -- much easier." |