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768En temps normal, c’est-à-dire en temps d’infrastructure crisique normalement active, nous aurions accordé toute notre attention à l’installation dans ses nouvelles fonctions du président iranien Rouhani. Mais ces temps sont aussi ceux de la “crise diluvienne” et ils imposent des sujets d’observation et de méditation d’une heure à l’autre. Les circonstances ont donc fait que l’inauguration de Rouhani est passée un peu inaperçue par rapport à l’importance de l’événement, dans le brouhaha des autres crises en cours.
D’autre part, il paraît bien que les espoirs vaguement avancés (voir le 31 juillet 2013) pour une amélioration des relations entre le bloc BAO et l’Iran aient reçu un brutal coup d’arrêt, avant même qu’on puisse espérer qu’ils se concrétisent, par un vote de la Chambre des Représentants US durcissant les sanctions contre l’Iran, par 400 voix contre 20. Sur le fond, d’ailleurs, les conditions ont-elles vraiment changé, du côté du bloc BAO, c’est-à-dire des exigences de l’ordre du fondamental impliquant une intrusion dans la souveraineté iranienne et une mise en cause de la légitimité du pouvoir, pour obtenir une décision également fondamentale pour l’Iran et, au-delà, un changement de régime ? Il semble que le bloc BAO, les USA en premier, ne voient dans l’arrivée de Rouhani qu’un événement tactique, leur donnant éventuellement l’espoir d’obtenir gain de cause sans envisager le pire comme on le fait régulièrement depuis huit ans (une intervention armée). C’est-à-dire que le bloc BAO continuerait à chercher, non pas un arrangement équitable permettant d’établir des relations équilibrées, mais bien une victoire dans des négociations, – c’est-à-dire une issue substituant un déséquilibre à un autre déséquilibre. Les chances de parvenir à leurs fins du bloc BAO et des USA sont, dans ces conditions, extrêmement minces sinon nulles, d’autant que la situation générale au Moyen-Orient n’a cessé d’évoluer à l’avantage de l’Iran durant ces trois dernières années, – paradoxe du “printemps arabe” dont les experts washingtoniens espéraient qu’il emporterait le régime iranien.
Nous pensons que ce texte que nous empruntons à Flynt Leverett et de Hillary Mann Leverett, auxquels nous faisons régulièrement appel pour leurs commentaires sur l’Iran, éclaire remarquablement cette situation à l’heure de l’arrivée au pouvoir de Rouhani. Les deux experts estiment que l'élection de Rouhani et la transition jusqu'à sa prise de fonction (samedi) ont confirmé décisivement la complète légitimité du régime iranien et réduit à néant les espoirs de regime change des pays du bloc BAO. Du coup, la stratégie suivie par ces pays équivaut effectivement à un suicide stratégique. Ce texte, qui a été publié par Aljazeera, figure sur le site des deux experts (GoingToTeheran.com), à la date du 2 août 2013.
dedefensa.org
As Hassan Rouhani approaches his inauguration this weekend, there is self-referential optimism in Western policy circles about what his accession might portend. A substantial quorum in these circles sees Rouhani as perhaps someone with whom the West—to recall Margaret Thatcher’s 1984 assessment of rising Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev—“can do business.”
The traits these observers cite to justify their optimism—Rouhani’s deep knowledge of the nuclear file, his history of seeking creative diplomatic solutions, an easier rhetorical style for Westerners than outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fluency in English—are real.
But the focus on them suggests that Western elites still look for Tehran to accommodate the West’s nuclear demands—above all, by compromising Iran’s right, as a sovereign state and signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enrich uranium indigenously under safeguards. This motivates them to interpret Rouhani’s election as evidence of Iranians’ growing weariness with sanctions and, by extension, with their government’s policies that prompt escalating international pressure on Iran’s economy.
If this assessment shapes Western policy toward Tehran after Rouhani’s inauguration, America and its European partners will not only squander yet another chance to realign relations with Iran. They will also ensure further and far more precipitous erosion of their standing and influence in the Middle East.
Such an interpretation, first of all, misreads who Rouhani is and what he represents. Rouhani is not an “ultra-Green” radical, out to deconstruct the Islamic Republic into some secularized alternative; properly speaking, he is not even a reformist. He is a conservative cleric, from what Iranians call the “modern right,” launched in the 1980s by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Rouhani’s mentor and patron.
Far from being an antagonist to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Rouhani enjoys Khamenei’s confidence. In 2005, after newly-installed President Ahmadinejad replaced Rouhani as the Supreme National Security Council’s secretary-general, Khamenei kept Rouhani on the Council as his personal representative.
From a Western perspective, Rouhani’s diplomatic record might seem relatively accommodating; when he was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003-2005, Tehran suspended enrichment for nearly two years. Rouhani’s approach has been criticized in Iran, for Western powers offered nothing significant in return for suspension.
In his presidential campaign, though, Rouhani strongly defended his record, arguing that, far from betraying Iran’s nuclear rights, his approach let it avoid sanctions while laying the foundation for subsequent development of its enrichment infrastructure. In his first post-election press conference, he made clear that the days when Iran might consider suspension “are over.”
Beyond misreading Rouhani, reigning Western narratives prevent Western powers from accepting and dealing with the Islamic Republic as a system. Alongside other indicators, Rouhani’s election should tell Westerners this system is more resilient than they recognize.
Unlike the Shah’s Iran, Mubarak’s Egypt, or Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, the Islamic Republic doesn’t operate in service of the United States or any other foreign power. It has endured decades of U.S.-instigated military, clandestine, and economic pressure, yet still produced better results at alleviating poverty, boosting health and education outcomes, and improving the social status of women than either the Shah’s regime or any of its neighbors, including American allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
More fundamentally, the Islamic Republic’s core project of integrating Islamic governance with participatory politics continues to command the support of most Iranians living in their country. The election Rouhani won showed that the nezam (system) works as designed, letting candidates who accept its constitutional framework to compete vigorously by advocating divergent approaches to domestic and international issues.
Iranian voters—more than 70 percent of whom took part—acted like they believed they had meaningful choices and that their votes mattered. High-quality polls and the election results show that Rouhani (the only clerical candidate) won for good reason: he ran an effective campaign, did well in three televised (and widely watched) debates, and broadened his base through adroit politicking.
Rouhani’s inauguration might also remind Westerners of something they should already know: Iranian presidents are neither all-powerful nor powerless. The presidency is an important power center in a system that balances multiple power centers—e.g., the Supreme Leader as well as parliament and the judiciary—against one another. America and its partners should stop trying to play Iran’s public against its government, or one power center against others, and instead engage the Islamic Republic as a system.
This is especially important on nuclear matters—for, in Tehran, terms for an acceptable nuclear deal are set by consensus among the Leader, the president, and other power centers. After Rouhani becomes president, that consensus will continue to rule out surrendering Iran’s right to safeguarded enrichment; Western powers will still need to accept this right as the basis for an agreement.
Just as unwillingness to deal with the Islamic Republic as a system warps Western diplomacy with Iran, it also undermines the Western position in the Middle East more broadly. For this system’s animating idea—integrating Islamist governance and participatory politics—appeals not just in Iran, but to Muslim societies across the region. Iran is the only place where this idea has had sustained, concrete expression, but it is what Middle Eastern Muslims choose every time they are allowed to vote on their political future.
America and its European partners disdain coming to terms with this reality, in Iran and elsewhere. Disingenuous rhetoric notwithstanding, Washington still prefers secular authoritarianism—as in its support for the Egyptian coup, a naked effort to restore Mubarakism without Mubarak. Alternatively, the United States works with Saudi Arabia to promote anti-Iranian—and, in the end, anti-American) takfeeri militants, as in Libya and Syria, witlessly disregarding the inevitably negative consequences for its own security. Either way, American policy systematically undermines prospects for moderate and popularly legitimated political Islamism to emerge in Sunni-majority Arab states.
Today, with Middle Eastern publics increasingly mobilized and their opinions mattering more than ever, this amounts to strategic suicide for America and its allies. To begin recovering its regional position, Washington must come to terms with the aspirations of Middle Eastern Muslims for participatory Islamist governance. And that can only start by accepting the uniquely Islamist and fiercely independent system bequeathed by Iran’s 1979 revolution—the legitimacy of which is powerfully affirmed by Rouhani’s accession.
Flynt Leverett et Hillary Mann Leverett
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