April 4, 2003, 8:30 a.m.
Mullahs Disagreeing
The internal debate about Iran�s future.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-taheri040403.asp
By Amir Taheri
The most dramatic way a mullah can show anger is by throwing his turban on
the floor. This is what Iran's President Muhammad Khatami, a junior mullah,
did the other day as he stormed out of a meeting of the Expediency Council,
the Islamic Republic's highest decision-making organ.
The council, headed by the wily former president Hashemi Rafsanjani,
continued the session, signaling the fact that Khatami may have become
irrelevant.
According to the official media, the cause of the turban-throwing
shenanigan was a decision by the Expediency Council to double the budget of
the Council of Guardians, a constitutional body through which hard-line
mullahs have vetoed Khatami's timid attempts at reform for the past five
years.
Our sources, however, insist that the turban-throwing scene was prompted by
a heated exchange between Khatami and Rafsajani with regard to Iran's
position toward a U.S.-led change of regime in Iraq. The two men had
clashed on the subject last month at a session of the High Council of
National Defense that failed to produce a common strategy.
Iran's decision-making elite, consisting of some 100 mullahs and their
non-clerical prot�g�s, is divided into two camps with regard to Iraq.
One camp, led by former prime minister Mir-Hussein Mussavi, with Khatami as
figurehead, could be labeled "accommodationist." Its main argument is that
Iran's best interest lies in a partnership with the United States in
toppling the Iraqi regime.
Saeed Hajjarian, Khatami's chief strategist, recently explained the
accommodationist position in a long article.
"Change in Iraq has become inevitable," he wrote. "And it is clear that we
can neither stop nor go against it. We must thus go along with it and seek
two things: a guarantee that the next regime in Baghdad will not be hostile
to Iran, and a guarantee that we are not [Washington's] next target."
Hajjarian asserts that the time to make a deal with the Americans is now
because Washington cannot be sure of how things will turn out in Iraq.
"Once the Americans have won the war and have their man ruling Baghdad,
they would have no need of anyone, least of all we in Iran," Hajjarian wrote.
The accommodationist analysis is shared by a majority of the members of the
Islamic Majlis, the pseudo-parliament whose members are elected by the
people from an official pre-selected list.
Facing the accommodationists is the faction one could call "the
confrontationists," led by Rafsanjani. The "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei,
who lashed out against the U.S. in an address to the Islamic Revolutionary
Guards on March 11, represents the public face of the faction.
Khamenei's chief foreign-policy adviser, former foreign minister Ali-Akbar
Velayati, recently spelled out the confrontationist position in a series of
speeches, interviews, and articles in Iran.
"The American Great Satan will never accept an Islamic system. It is coming
to Iraq to complete its encirclement of our Islamic Republic before it
moves against us. To help the Americans conquer Iraq easily would be
suicidal for our revolution."
Velayati claims that the U.S. has two aims in the Middle East: preventing
the destruction of the "Zionist entity" and control of Arab oil.
Unlike the accommodationists who foresee an easy American victory, the
confrontationists believe that U.S. involvement in Iraq could become "the
beginning of its end."
"Iraq is a swamp," Khamenei said in his address to the guards. "The Great
Satan will get caught in that swamp; and that will speed up its inevitable
collapse." In a recent article Velayati spelled out a strategy aimed at
"confronting the Great Satan in a number of fronts."
Iraq will be one front. Iran has concentrated the so-called Badr Brigade,
named after the Prophet Muhammad's first major military victory, along the
border with Iraq. The brigade is a 10,000-man force of Iraqi Shiite
guerrillas. On March 14 some of the men organized a highly publicized
parade inside Iraqi Kurdistan.
Iran also has a 6,000-man Kurdish force, known as the Hezbollah of
Kurdistan, and positioned astride the border close to Sardasht.
The accommodationist faction supports the so-called Supreme Assembly of the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) led by Ayatollah Muhammad-Baqer Hakim
Tabatabi, who lives in Teheran.
The confrontationists for their part have close ties with two other Shiite
groups: the Hizb al-Daawah ("Party of the Call") and the Islamic Labor
party, both of which have headquarters in Damascus.
Another front, according to Velayati, will be Afghanistan, where Iran has
forged close ties with Ismail Khan, the "emir" of Herat, and is arming the
Hazara Shiites in Bamiyan and Maydan-Shahr. Still another front could be
Azerbaijan, where Iran has won influence in the Talesh region on the
Caspian Sea.
Ironically, Iran's allies in Azerbaijan are Sunni Muslims opposed to the
Shiite majority whose leaders have opted for a pro-American foreign policy
complimented by close ties with Turkey. Iran also has considerable
influence in Armenia, where, in tandem with Russia, it helped Armenian
forces capture the Azerbaijani enclave of High Karabagh a decade ago.
Velayati insists that Iran should avoid direct confrontation with the U.S.
He recommends "the lighting of countless small fires here and there"
designed to stretch U.S. forces and, in time, persuade American public
opinion that Pax Americana in the Middle East is not worth the price.
The major front Velayati envisages will be opened against Israel. Iran is
speeding up military supplies to the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.
According to Teheran sources the Lebanese Hezbollah is already in
possession of over 10,000 rockets of various descriptions. These include
Fajr III and Fajr IV, upgrades of the Soviet-designed Katyusha, with
improved ranges of between 50 and 70 km. Although fairly unsophisticated
weapons � the rockets lack a proper guiding system � they could,
nevertheless, wreak havoc if used in large numbers in a compact and densely
populated area.
To prepare for the reactivation of the anti-Zionist front Teheran played
host last month to a large delegation of Palestinians from Hamas and
Islamic Jihad.
Rafsanjani told his guests of "new opportunities for the destruction of the
Zionist entity." He claimed that a combination of "massive and repeated
martyrdom operations" could create "a new situation" if combined with the
opening of a "second front" in Lebanon.
The accommodationists reject such strategies as dangerous. "The overthrow
of Saddam Hussein would be good news for everyone, the Iraqis, the Iranians
and the entire Muslim world," says Ali-Muhammad Abtahi, an assistant to
Khatami for parliamentary affairs.
"The end of Saddam must be the start of a period of peace and understanding
in the region, not of new adventures."
The fight between the accommodationists and the confrontationists has split
Shiite religious opinion with regard to Iraq.
Most senior Iraqi and Iranian ayatollahs have issued fatwas approving an
alliance with "the Americans infidel" to get rid of Saddam. These include
Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani (in Najaf, Iraq) and Grand Ayatollah
Sayyed Muhammad Shirazi (in Qom, Iran).
Mullahs linked with the confrontationist faction, however, have issued
fatwas urging alliance with "the infidel Saddam and his Baathists" against
the U.S. Among these mullahs are Muhammad-Hussein Fadhlallah, spiritual
leader of the Lebanese branch of the Hezbollah, and Taqi Muddaressi, a
Syrian-backed Iraqi mullah.
Hassan Rouhani, a junior mullah who is secretary general of the High
Council of National Defense, says that Iran should be prepared for
"preemptive action" to forestall U.S. attempts at using force against the
Islamic Republic.
"The Americans will not dare think of a full-scale military invasion of
Iran," he says. "But they will certainly use soft war and low intensity
tactics to topple our regime. We must, therefore, be ready to take
preemptive action. The most effective way is to open new political and
military fronts against Israel."
For the time being then, the confrontation camp seems to be in the
ascendant. It is not only gathering wood for the "many fires" envisaged by
Velayati, it is also speeding up Iran's nuclear program in the hope of
having an "effective deterrent" within two years, the period needed before
things become clear in Iraq.
� Amir Taheri, Iranian author and journalist, is based in Europe.
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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