Questions For Ali Ansari: Iran On The Brink

As Iran stumbles toward its next election, with its economy in freefall and in confrontation with the world, we turn to Ali Ansari, an influential Iranian historian, to discuss where things are headed. Ansari heads the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and is one of Europe's foremost experts on Iran. He appears frequently on television, has addressed Britain's parliament, and is a fellow of the policy institute Chatham House. His new book, The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran, explores the relationship between history and myth (ostureh) in the evolution of Iranian nationalism, and the revival of the notion of Iranshahr in popular and political consciousness. We talked to him about the upcoming presidential election, Ayatollah Khamanei's famous nuclear fatwa, and why Britain understands Iran better than America.  

If Saeed Jalili, as opposed to a candidate like Hassan Rowhani, were to win the election, it  might mean very different things for Iran's relationship with the West. Does Jalili's record as the nuclear negotiator tell us anything about his standing or tendencies toward the West?

Jalili is the one who would stick most firmly and unimaginatively to the Leader's line. As far as I can tell he has not been a good negotiator. He is very austere and quite convinced of his own views which are very close to those of the leader, but by all accounts he has lacked both imagination and authority in being able to take the negotiations forward. At times it would appear that he has completely missed the point of the negotiation digressing onto broader issues of world government which have tended to leave his interlocutors lost as to the purpose of the meetings they have attended with him.

We hear much talk in Iran these days about revealed secrets and corruption, and have had this Godfather-esque face off between the Larijanis and Ahmadinejad. How much of the factional rivalries that we're seeing are about ideological differences as opposed to competing political-economic interests?

Part of this is that the Green movement has been subsumed by the course of history, right now people are really just debating the difference between conservatives in Iran. Now we have someone like Rowhani being presented as a reformist politician, which is dubious. The main ideological differences do still exist, in many ways the Rafsanjani and Khatami wing do acknowledge mistakes of past and those distinctions are very real. Rowhani in that way is an protege of Rafsanjani, and they'll find it difficult to stop him from running, but I don't think they'll let him win, he's a problematic figure. They're talking a little about making peace with America, but this is to keep people happy and occupied, its the scraps off the table, and keeps people like you and me interested.

This time it will take a whole different scale of change to make me think anything is going to happen, and that partly reflects mood on Iranian street as well. Who do you have, really? Even Qalibaf recently said something incredibly stupid, that it was the reformists who sent in the paramilitaries and niroo entezami to the dormitory on 18 of Tir. Basically most these candidates who stand any chance need to show their obsequiousness to the supreme leader.

Where it's interesting is whether Ahmadinejad delivers on all of his threats. I think the reformists are sitting back and wanting to see this situation play out. If Ahmadinejad releases that tape, which shows that there was fraud in 2009, it will be hilarious. But the tape, whether it exists, is something they've very sensitive about; and the numbers that he cites do actually concur with comments made by Zakani and others in December 2009 about the level of votes that were added. That figure of eight million is not pulled out of thin air.

Aren't the implications for him equally damaging?

I'm not sure that Ahmadinejad has thought through the consequences of what he's doing. He's obviously trying to re-invent himself as a man of the people, a champion of the constitution, and again they work on the premise that the only certainty is Khamenei, the fact that people will vote for whoever stands up against him. So I think tactically they're being quite clever. But I agree with you, the consequences would be a disaster.

Either going to go like 2012 parliamentary elections, which no one can remember or what the result was. But they will want to keep tight control. [Trying to balance that with high turnout,] this is their problem, and I don't know how they're going to do it. They'll just fake it. They faked it last time.

Both Ahmadinejad and Mashai seem to deeply worry the political establishment, their mix of populism with Iranian nationalism seems to produce a lot of anxiety. Do you the think the political establishment overrates their cunning and reach?

I think they're overrating them. Look at that recent rally in Azadi Stadium, it was half empty. Mashai is an interesting character, but my read of it is that they're not leading anything, they're just following society. And there is a trendy in society of nationalism, quite rampant nationalism, and Mashai is trying to tap into that and control it. If you want to look at it in a more cynical way, they're trying to manipulate this nationalist constituency. Let's take one example: Mashai said last year that he wanted to hold the Norouz festival at Persepolis. Now that's fairly bold, but the interesting this is that it's not his idea. Iranians have been doing this for some time now. If you go on YouTube and see the last Norouz celebrated at Pasargad, and the tomb of Cyrus the Great, there are vast crowds in the thousands. This is a long way to go, it's four hours from Shiraz in the baking heat.

So what are Mashai and Ahmadinejad trying to tap into? Into a concept of a pre-Islamic Iranianess, and they're trying to wed it with Islamicness. This idea that Ahmadinejad gets the Cyrus Cylinder back, he dresses up as Cyrus, and puts a keffiyeh around him, so basically what he's trying to say about Cyrus is that he's a really great Muslim. He's trying to hijack this sentiment to his own benefit.

Do you see sanctions against Iran as being effective, if the stated goal has been to force Iran to compromise on its nuclear program?

You have to look at context of how we got here. The imposition of sanctions was the tool of last resort, particularly for the Europeans. Throughout the 1990s and better part of last decade, the Europeans were inclined to follow a policy of critical engagement or dialogue. I think what changed was basically the administration in Iran: Ahmadinejad's approach was much more confrontational, no lip service was paid even to the norms of diplomacy. This this pushed the Europeans in the direction of the Americans, rather than the other way around. Undoubtedly 2009 was also a watershed, it altered the world view on Iran, and that was when the notion of dialogue went completely off radar.

The other thing to bear in mind is the language the Iranian regime was using, the Ahmadinejad administration provoked these sanctions, they actually wanted it in a way. The wanted to call the [international community's] bluff, and got caught out. There's a context there that needs to be firmly in place. So no one really wanted to be here, but faced with the prospect of a very confrontational, antagonistic, Iranian government and the threats coming from the Israelis about the possibility of an air strike, this was seen in many ways as the least worst option. If you look at the way we got here, the Iranians themselves hold quite a lot of responsibility for what has happened.

How can we measure if they are working?

The fact is there are  cases where sanctions have worked. There are people who will say that sanctions are a back-breaking policy, and I think sanctions as an excuse for policy are a mistake. But selective, targeted sanctions that affect key areas in tandem with a broader strategic perspective can be effective, and we've seen it for instance in South Africa. Now South Africa is the great bug bear for a lot of those who don't agree with sanctions [against Iran], because the minute you say to them, 'so would you have opposed sanctions on South Africa?' they say 'no, because the blacks in South Africa wanted sanctions.' Well there are also suggestions that there are some opposition groups in Iran who also argue that there needs to be more pressure of various sorts, economic and on human rights, in order to make regime understand cost of what it's doing.

The short answer is it's too early to say whether sanctions been effective or not. The sanctions on the oil industry, the quite tough ones, [have only been in place since last July], and you can't say they haven't had any impact, they've had a terrible impact on the economy. They may not have had the direct impact of affecting key decision makers for the time being, but its undoubtedly having a detrimental effect on the overall economy.

One thing that frightens me is that if you're saying sanctions definitely won't work, what you're saying is we have only two options: one, lift it all, and go back to normalized relations, and I think that's going to be extremely difficult under current circumstances; second, you have what the hard-line Israelis are arguing, that you'd better go in and bomb them, because they won't pay attention to anything else. One thing we do know is that sadly takes time. No one is saying this good, no in their right would say it's good that there are medical supply shortages, but you have to see how we got here.

There are a number of countries with nuclear weapons, say Pakistan and North Korea, that are seen as problematic by the West. But the world deals with them under the principle of deterrence, that they won't nuke anyone because they'd assure their own destruction. Why is deterrence not considered seriously as a way of dealing with Iran?

Honestly I think it is. There is a way of dealing with and containing Iran, and in some ways it's the least worst solution. But my private reason against Iran having nuclear weapons is that it's a complete and utter waste of money. There is this notion that Iranians have of strength through nuclear weapons, that somehow Iran becomes strong and secure if it has a nuclear weapon, and also technologically advanced; but this technology is 60 years old, it's not advanced or cutting edge.

This mad rush of technological bravado is actually detrimental to Iran's economic interests. Real strength comes through building sound government and economic institutions, and they've simply failed do this. [Rushing to develop nuclear weapons] might actually undermine you and weaken you, as it did with the Soviet Union. But they want to show themselves and their own people, we are scientifically very advanced and clever, especially so to have done this on the back of Western opposition, therefore we're bloody brilliant.

I had a wonderful conversation once with an Iranian diplomat, and I was teasing him a bit, I told him, 'You know these Americans and British are very clever; basically, they keep saying no and you say yes, and in the end they are going to bankrupt you.' For a moment, I remember looking at his face, it was as though the penny had dropped. There is no strategy behind this, it's just the because Americans say no, we say yes.

Much is made of Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons, and often times it's invoked by supporters as evidence of Iran's peaceful intentions. Does this fatwa hold up, when Iran makes its case to the world?

There is no fatwa. Technically a fatwa should be written down. Now I've had this discussion with senior clerics. There's no example where on a matter of national security of such importance, that Ayatollah Khamenei doesn't think it's worthwhile to write it down. This just doesn't make sense to me. When they had the protest against the tobacco boycott in 1891, they wrote it down. In this case, Khamenei himself has never called it a fatwa. If you go look on n his own website, it's not listed under fatwas. There are speeches and pronouncements, but that's different.

My point is simply this: it is not got enough, on a matter of national security, in which war and peace, life and death, are at stake, that you should be able to say that the supreme leader has spoken and therefore it is the law. And the reason why I challenge that, is that if you accept that, then you have to accept that the Islamic Republic of Iran is dead. Because actually government in Iran is government by verbal decree. And this is absurd, kiss goodbye to the majles, to institutions; all Khamenei has to do is wake up one day and [say something.]

The second point is the Rushdie fatwa. If fatwas are irrevocable and sacrosanct, then why is it that the Rushdie fatwa could be ignored if it was politically expedient to do so? The fact is, Iranian diplomats spent the better part of a decade, from 1989-1998 basically that fatwas were religious and did not need to be adhered to by a government. Well, I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways. If you want it to be a fatwa, legitimate, write it down, have a judicial review, write down a judgement, give their reasons, according to this and that, ideally then supported by a number of senior clerics who reinforce it. That's the way it works. Otherwise, this is disingenuous, that's why I will continue to say that there is no fatwa.

Do you think Western media coverage of the nuclear issue acknowledges Iran's reasons for pursuing a nuclear program?

I think coverage of the nuclear issue is largely dominated by the soap box, and that's a pity. Coverage from either side, both the left and the right, has been soap box comments. For me, the main problem with the nuclear issue is 2006, when Ahmadinejasd made the fateful blunder of letting it go to the UN Security Council, because once it went there it became a whole different animal. I think there are too many people here who are willing to see the injustice of Iran's position without looking at the historical context of what's gone on. Of course it's not fair, but nothing is fair. What do they want, who expects international relations to be fair? You use the hand you have to maximise your advantage and minimise your disadvantages. Ahmadinejad has maximised his disadvantages, and minimised his advantages.

Did you see the film Argo, what did you think?

I thought the first introduction was pretty banal, and obviously the last 20 minutes was totally made up. But the rest was okay, I thought it was well done, Ben Affleck did a good job on it. I didn't think it was worthy of best film [at the Oscars]. The first bit was very unfair to Farah, it wasn't necessary to say she bathed in milk. What was the point of that?

Do you think British diplomats understand Iran differently or better than American officials?

I think there's a degree of nuance in British thinking which is quite historically grained, that the Americans, on the whole, because of their political and institutional systems, tend not to have. I don't want to exaggerate that, but there's an element where politics is far too involved on foreign policy making on Iran; you look to State Department officials, and they find it extremely difficult to operate in that sense. But even if you go back to the 1970s and compare the British and American assessments of Iran, the American assessments sometimes come across as extremely superficial. There are exceptions to every rule, but there are cases even today where I think the Americans have a tendency to move from one extreme to the other. Basically, the British have a longer resource base if they want it, they don't always read it, a longer reach and historical look, whereas the Americans are much more geared to their election cycle.