Yury TYSSOVSKY

Political analyst, journalist

On August 6, 2005 Iran got a new President. This is Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad, a man of rigorous conservative views.

As usual, the presidential elections were monitored by the Council of Guardians headed by Ayatollaah Ahmad Jannati, also a renown conservative. The Council includes six theologians appointed by Rahbar - the Supreme Leader and spiritual preceptor of the Islamic revolution Ayatollaah Mahmud Ali Hoseini Khamenei. Six other members of the Council are lawyers recommended by the head of the judicial authority, who is also appointed by Khamenei. They are approved by the Majlis (the Parliament). These twelve individuals check the correspondence of all the legislation adopted by the Parliament to the norms of the Muslim Law and also consider the candidates for the parliamentary and presidential elections.

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During the last eight years the struggle between the conservatives and the reformists in Iran has been the key issue of the country's domestic politics, but the Western hopes for the victory of the reformists never materialized. The reformism of the former President Mohammad Khatami met with a strong opposition of such influential authorities as the Council of Guardians, the armed forces command, and pasdarans from the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. Whereas the reformists were the majority in the 2000 Parliament, in 2004 the conservatives prevailed and elected Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, Khamenei's son-in-law as the Speaker. None the less, until the very day of the presidential elections the West laid bet on the followers of Khatami represented by Mostafa Moeen or, at least, on the 'moderate conservative' Ayatollaah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whereas the Tehran Mayor Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad was not considered a front-runner.

The 70-year old Hashemi Rafsanjani is a key figure in the domestic life of Iran. An associate of Imam Khomeini and Ali Khamenei, Hashemi Rafsanjani was President of Iran in 1989 - 1997. It was during his presidency that the West started to divide the Iranian politicians into "moderate liberals", including the country's leader and his followers, and the "fundamentalist radicals" represented by Rahbar and his circle of conservative Muslim theologians.

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a leader of an influential family clan, is currently the Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, which is a significant position in the Iranian authority hierarchy. He has extensive business interests in oil industry, air carriers, finance, car dealing, and pistachio export.

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In contrast, the 49-year-old Ahmadi-Nejad was the fourth child in a family of a blacksmith. He finished school with honors and got a degree in Civil Engineering from the Tehran University of Science and Technology. In 1979 Ahmadi-Nejad took part in the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran when 444 hostages were taken. In 1986 he became a pasdaran and served in the intelligence and security apparatus of this organization. Later he became the Governor of the province of Ardabil, and in April 2003 - the Mayor of Tehran. Conservative voters favored Ahmadi-Nejad's revolutionary past, his unquestionable loyalty to the existing political regime (with the Rahbar as the top authority), as well as his harsh statements concerning the US and Israel.

The reformist wave, which has been stirring unrest in Iran during the last eight years, caused a reaction in the previously passive strata of the society with their conservative way of life. Ahmadi-Nejad, supported by most of Imams of mosques, became a kind of a symbol of aggressive neoconservatism. The former Tehran Mayor is backed by such significant figures as Jannati and Khamenei's son Mojtaba, and also by the Council of Guardians and the Pasdaran leaders. Their support has played a crucial role.

It is fair to say that at the moment the course of the Islamic Republic of Iran under the new leader is a major issue for the whole world. As much as possible, the newly-elected President himself highlights the "moderate course" he intends to follow. Yes, prior to the elections Ahmadi-Nejad promised a "strong Islamic Iran", which "will be a model for the Moslem world". However, this will hardly result in a tightening of the public regime, at least for the reason that all the efforts will be committed to the task of restoring the understanding between

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the reformist and the conservative wings - since otherwise, as Khamenei says, "the bird can't fly".

The situation in international politics is more complicated. A third party was present invisibly at the electoral competition of the two major contenders - this was the US President George Bush. It is hard to say to what extent the harsh and often inadmissible statements of the White House contributed to the victory of the "foe of freedom", but they certainly did. The hostile attitude of the US leaders entailed an adequate response in Tehran. The new President of Iran defines his country's foreign politics priorities in an echelon manner. The top position is given to the immediate neighbors, the second - to the Islamic world, and finally, the next one - to the countries which "are not hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran".

Iran goes the way of progress relying on its own resources, says Ahmadi-Nejad, and there is no particular need on this way in the US, which cut off ties in order to harm the Iranian nation. Those who insist on restoring ties with the US have the same goal. On the whole, the Iranian society supports this political course, seeing a direct danger in the presence of the US troops on the Afghan and Iraqi territories, not to mention the fact that to some extent the US bases in the region are targeting Iran. Probably, these concerns are overstated: stuck in the sands of Iraq, the Pentagon has no manpower resources sufficient for yet another full-blown war. Rather, one might worry about the possibility of Israeli air strikes against Iran's atomic industry, but for this case Iran has mid-range missiles to retaliate with.

As for the Iranian politics concerning the Near and Middle East, supposedly, it will be pragmatic. After a Shi'a government,

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which is close in spirit to the Iranians, was formed in Baghdad, the Iranian authorities did everything possible to express a positive attitude to it. Considering the severe heritage of the Iran-Iraq relations of the Saddam times and the bloody eight-year-long war, this was not easy. And still, despite Washington's continuous charges against Tehran of interference in the neighbor's domestic affairs, including allegations of secretly delivering weapons and people to the Iraq resistance, without much noise the cabinet of Ibrahim al-Jaafari carried out the preparations for a reconciliation with Iran.

In July 2005 Tehran was officially visited by the Iraqi Defense Minister Saadun al-Duleimi. Observers called his negotiations with the Iranian Defense Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani a breakthrough in the bilateral relations. The Iraqi minister emphasized that Iraq will not allow to use its territory in an aggression against its neighbor. In his turn, Shamkhani demanded in a rather strong language from the Iraqi government to bring up the issue of the US troops withdrawal from Iraq. The result of the visit is a July 7, 2005 Memorandum on the cooperation of Iran and Iraq in the control of their common border, exchange of information on the minefields, and the return of the remnants of the war victims.

This was followed by a visit of Ibrahim al-Jaafari to Tehran. We consider Iraq a brother, said the Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Resa Aref at this meeting. The results of the talks appear impressive. Financial support in the amount of $1 billion was promised to Baghdad, and a project of a pipeline from Abadan to Basra was endorsed. A memorandum of understanding concerning the intensification of trade was adopted. Documents

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on the broadening of cooperation in railroad, marine, and automobile transportation were signed.

Experts believe that Washington's confrontational position to Tehran is a serious obstacle for further developments in the relations of these two countries. The Iran-Iraqi rapprochement was viewed by the US Administration with a thinly disguised disapproval.

A number of Western observers voiced a concern over the possible tightening of Tehran's position in the contacts with the EU on the Iranian nuclear dossier. These expectations came true, though this is not due to Ahmadi-Nejad personally. In Iran the foreign politics decisions are the product of joint activity of several branches of authority - the National Security Council, The Foreign Affairs Ministry, and the President's administration, and their decisions must be approved by Khamenei. Besides, it must be noted that Ahmadi-Nejad's statements on the majority of domestic and foreign politics issues are within the framework of what was said by the previous Iranian leaders. On top of that, in Iran the President is not the head of the country, but merely the head of the executive branch of the authority, whose decisions are approved or rejected by other institutions.

On August 14 Ahmadi-Nejad presented a list of the members of the new cabinet to the Majlis. This list comprises his associates, previously from the opposition to Khatami. These are the people who are able to defend Iran's interests in the discussions of its nuclear dossier. The position of the head of the High Council of National Security of Iran was given to a reputed hardliner Ali Larijani, a former Deputy Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps who, due to his status, will in fact be the chief negotiator with the West on the nuclear problem. From the very

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start he declared that Tehran will continue working on the full uranium cycle, though it will not quit dialogue with the three European nations.

In July and August the dialog between the three European nations (France, Great Britain, and Germany) and Tehran got substantially more complicated. The three nations offered Iran access to the global nuclear technology market, assistance in the development of civilian atomic programs, including the light water reactors, in exchange for refusing to build the Arak heavy water research reactor. Attention should be paid to Europe's recognition of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a perspective source of oil and gas for the "old continent" countries (however this recognition is not reflected in the final version of the official offer). At the same time the three nations, supported by the US, demanded that Iran give up working on the full cycle of uranium enrichment. Tehran rejected this demand absolutely as inconsistent with the inalienable rights of Iran. Furthermore, it was announced that the uranium conversion will be resumed at the Isfahan nuclear center, where operations were frozen for the time of the negotiations with the three. The danger of a referral of the issue for consideration at the UN Security Council, with the perspective of introducing punitive international sanctions against Iran, loomed ahead.

An extraordinary session of the International Atomic Energy Agency, held in Vienna on August 11, adopted a resolution proposed by the three European nations, which, however, did not involve the anticipated threats to Tehran. A referral of Iran's nuclear dossier to the Security Council did not make it to this resolution. From the legal point of view, Iran's position appears faultless. Iran is a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and all of the corresponding

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research in this country is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which provides for the right to perform uranium enrichment for civilian needs. Any allegations of Iran's intentions to develop nuclear weapons must be seriously substantiated. As for the traces of uranium in centrifuges, which were found earlier (the US kept referring to this fact as evidence of the military character of Iran's efforts), the International Atomic Energy Agency accepted their Iranian colleagues' explanation that these traces were there because the equipment bought in Pakistan was contaminated. However, Washington rejected the arguments of the International Atomic Energy Agency's nuclear scientists from five countries (Russia, USA, Great Britain, Japan, and France). The US Department of State declared that the doubts concerning the issue are still there.

The polemics between Iran and the West on the Iranian nuclear program still persists. Mohammad Saedi, deputy head of the Iranian delegation at the Viena talks, said that "Iran will not agree with the resolutions of the three European nations, since they are based on an outrageous violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty". Iran's specialists think that the long talks with the EU hinder the planned development of a network of atomic power plants and reject the offers to buy nuclear fuel abroad: it is much cheaper to manufacture it domestically. This position could lead the talks with the three nations to a deadlock, but there is still hope for a positive result.

The US position is contradictory. Earlier, for almost four years Washington had been claiming that Iran is about to develop an "Islamic" atomic bomb, but now the erroneous estimates are being revised. Still alleging that Iran intends to develop atomic weapons, the US Department of State and the CIA now conclude that if this is to happen, it will not be earlier that in 10 years from now. On August

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1, 2005 the Jerusalem Post cited a high-ranking Israeli military officer saying that under certain conditions Iran will be able to develop an atomic weapon by 2007, 2008, or 2012. Obviously, estimates vary a lot.

On August 12 George Bush said that the use of military force is the last means any President might use, but still added that the US had to resort to this very means in the recent past in order to provide for their security. This referred to Iraq. These words were said in an interview for Israeli journalists and were widely interpreted as the green light for preemptive strikes by the Israeli air force, which is already equipped with special bombs for underground targets. It is known that the US and Israel compiled a list of some 450 strategic installations in Iran, including the ones related to this country's nuclear program.

In his inauguration speech Ahmadi-Nejad emphasized that his country does not seek to have nuclear weapons. However, considering the complicated geopolitical situation of Iran, which is surrounded by the US bases and troops, Tehran does contemplate the fact that, from the standpoint of the country's international status, the nuclear weapon is an instrument to guarantee sovereignty and national security. The obvious examples are not only India, Pakistan, and Israel, already possessing nuclear weapons, but also North Korea, which also declared having nuclear weapons in February, 2005. Now Washington has to abandon the idea of threats against Pyongyang and is interested in a dialog with North Korea, demonstrating a constructive approach.

The US European allies' reaction to George Bush's statement on the possibility of using force against Iran was unfavorable. Gerhard SchrЦder criticized the US President and appealed to

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"the friends in Europe and the US" not to opt for confrontation. He said that we have seen that the military way leads nowhere.

As for Russia, in terms of Ahmadi-Nejad's scheme, our country is one of those that are not hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran. More than that, the bilateral relations between Russia and Iran are stable and warm. Perhaps the only contention is the work on uranium enrichment. In the basic aspects, Russia cautiously supports the Iranian position. Congratulating Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad on his being elected, V. Putin highlighted that Moscow is ready to cooperate with Iran in the nuclear area, stressing that obligations related to the prevention of spreading of the nuclear warfare must be observed. The Russian President mentioned the successful bilateral interactions in a number of areas, including the construction of an atomic power plant in Bushehr, which nears its completion. Deliveries of the Russian nuclear fuel for this plant are being prepared. Besides, Moscow and Tehran agreed that the spent nuclear fuel is to be returned to Russia, which, to some extent, alleviates the concerns about the "perilous" direction of the Iranian work on uranium enrichment. Rosatom director Aleksandr Rumyantsev said that Moscow intends to build six more atomic power plants in Iran. In August 2005 the representatives of Atomstroyexport told that the Bushehr construction employs 4000 Russian specialists and proceeds in the 24-hour regime. By the end of 2005 there will be some 5000 Russian specialists working at this site. And by the end of 2006 the electric power from Busher will go to Iran's national energy system. At the same time the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned against any attempts of using force to resolve the issues related to Iran's atomic project and said that such attempts would have severe consequences.

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