Not quite a surprise

The presidential election in Iran is over, and yet, not over. To the utter dismay and disappointment of western governments, the western media, and his political adversaries in Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, 62, has been re-elected.

He got 62.6 per cent and his nearest rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, 68, got 33.8 per cent, as per official announcement by the ministry of the interior. Mousavi has not yet accepted defeat and sent the customary congratulations to Ahmedinejad.

Instead, he requested the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini to cancel the election and have a re-poll. The Ayatollah has rejected the idea of a re-poll and advised Mousavi and his agitating supporters to put an end to their “provocative behaviour”. The protests might continue for some more time, but there is no reason as of now to expect a re-poll.

There have been allegations of rigging. In fact, Persian language media outside Iran has carried two days after the election the text of a letter from Mousavi to the supreme leader, written the day before the election, urging strong action to prevent rigging by the supporters of Ahmedinejad.

It would appear that if Mousavi had won, the letter might not have been publicised, assuming it ever was written. It is possible that there was rigging, but it is doubtful whether rigging alone can account for the 10 million difference in votes between the winning and the losing candidate. At the last election in 2004 too the Western media had predicted the victory of Rasfanjani who lost out to Ahmedinejad.

The BBC has suggested that the ongoing protest is directed not only against Ahmedinejad, but also the entire establishment presided over by the supreme leader. The protest shows the anger and frustration of the youth, especially the 8 million under-30s born after the 1979 revolution. Perhaps such an assessment is rather far-fetched and misses out the point that a good many of the protesters are from the rich northern part of the capital.

The portrayal of Mousavi as a “reformer” in the western media is to be taken with a pinch of salt. As prime minister (1980-1988) Mousavi did not show much zeal for reforms. He carried out a secret order from Khomeini, the supreme leader, and thousands, ranging between 30,000 and 80,000 were executed in the summer of 1988.

The victims were members of Peoples’ Mujahedin of Iran and of the Tudeh Party of Iran (Communists). It is rather ironic to see Mousavi projected as a champion of women’s rights when earlier he apparently went along with the authorities’ persecution of leftist women on whom they applied to start praying according to the tenets of Islam.

There are accounts of the time which talk about how women were considered not “responsible for their actions” and hence should be punished less severely than men but punished nonetheless. There were also allegations that several leftist women were punished drastically — lashes, if they did not pray and some, who were on hunger strikes in protest, even died as a result.

Now that he has been re-elected, one might expect Ahmedinejad to reform himself, to put it mildly. There is no need to deny that the Holocaust occurred. In any case, it is utterly indefensible to do that.

As regards the nuclear question, while Iran has the right to enrich uranium to the industrial grade, and Ahmedinejad is right in asserting that right, a less confrontational style vis-a-vis the West is advisable in Iran’s own interest.

Washington has reacted in ambivalent manner. Vice-president Joe Biden has an “awful lot of doubt” about the way the election was conducted. But, so far there is no clear indication of any plan to reject the result.

President Obama knows or should know that without Iran’s support or benevolent neutrality his plans for withdrawal of troops from Iraq and stabilisation in Afghanistan will not work out. He should also know that the best way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear-weapon capability is to concede to Iran’s legitimate right to enrich uranium to the industrial grade and to flood Iran with safeguards inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The CIA had concluded in 2007 that Iran had stopped pursuing any bomb-making project. If Obama wants reconciliation with Iran he has to reject Israel’s advice and make some practical gestures by lifting the embargo on export of civilian aircraft parts to Iran, or, better still, defreeze Iran’s money in US banks.

For India, it is a good time to review its policy towards Iran. The vote against Iran at the IAEA was unnecessary and an abstention, if suitably explained, might have taken care of US sensibilities. There is no good reason for not to go ahead with the much delayed Iran-Pakistan-India Gas pipe line.

Those who argue against it based on political instability in Pakistan are rather confused. Mani Shankar Aiyer as oil minister had devised the wise formula that India pays only for the delivered gas.

The writer is a former Indian diplomat