Fighting among themselves

Oct 13th 2005 TEHRAN

From The Economist print edition

Adversarial abroad, Iran's new president is being buffeted at home

“A KNIFE without a blade” is how Mehdi Bazargan, who headed Iran's first revolutionary government, described himself in 1979, and his words may strike a disagreeable chord with the new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since he took office in August, parliament, influential unelected bodies and even members of his own cabinet have set out to blunt his egalitarian instincts and revolutionary zeal. At least Bazargan, a liberal, had the comfort of knowing that he was hemmed in by ideological opponents; when Mr Ahmadinejad speaks of “people who put spokes in the wheels”, he is referring to his friends.

Though they are, in the main, animated by the same conservative ideals as the president, many members of parliament backed rival candidates in the presidential election in June; they have been brazenly obstructive ever since. They started by withholding votes of confidence from four cabinet nominees whom they knew to be close to Mr Ahmadinejad. They decry his “security-based” approach to home affairs. And, on October 4th, they slowed the passage of two bills the government wanted to rush through parliament; one of them, which aims to dole out public-sector profits to struggling young couples, is the mainstay of the president's social policy.

Perhaps most ominous of all is the helping hand that Iran's “supreme leader”, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is widely believed to have endorsed Mr Ahmadinejad's elevation, seems to be lending his tormentors. Last month, Mr Khamenei arranged for Muhammad Baqer Ghalibaf, a fellow conservative whom Mr Ahmadinejad defeated to become president, to become mayor of Tehran, the capital. (Defying convention, the president has not invited Mr Ghalibaf to cabinet meetings.) Then, earlier this month, Mr Khamenei gave the Expediency Council, an appointed body headed by a second defeated presidential candidate, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, “supervisory” powers over all branches of government. One council member pointedly observed that “everyone is obliged to abide by [the council's] conclusions.”

No one is sure how often the Expediency Council will intervene in everyday politics or what the constitutional implications will be. What is clear is that, in many conservatives' eyes, the president is too inexperienced and too exuberantly ideological to be trusted with all the powers that are theoretically his. Some have also been particularly unnerved by his attempts to crack down on corrupt officials. For his part, Mr Khamenei may be transferring power and influence, often from elected institutions, to bodies he appoints. The result may be confusion, but of a stable kind.

For stability is needed after the shock of last month's meeting of the governing board at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear guardian, which was dominated by discussion of Iran's contentious nuclear programme. Board members confounded Iranian expectations by declaring Iran to be non-compliant with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and by raising the likelihood of referral to the UN Security Council. In Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad was blamed for alienating supporters on the board with a tough speech that he had delivered before the UN's General Assembly. In Mr Rafsanjani's caustic words, the need is for “diplomacy, not slogans”.

Step forward Mr Rafsanjani. As a former president who favours negotiations over confrontation, he seems the ideal man to lower tensions and prepare Iranians for the concessions that may be necessary if UN referral is to be avoided. While Mr Ahmadinejad was hectoring in New York, Mr Rafsanjani was quietly assuaging fears in Saudi Arabia that Iran is trying to turn Iraq into an aggressively Shia state. His trip was apparently successful—and the Saudis obligingly snubbed Mr Ahmadinejad's foreign minister by suddenly postponing the visit that he had been scheduled to make.

In the run-up to the next IAEA board meeting, in November, Mr Rafsanjani will urge Mr Khamenei to rein in his hardline nuclear negotiator and to resume stalled negotiations with Iran's European interlocutors, who insist that Iran must re-suspend its nuclear work at Isfahan before the talks can start again.

At the same time, the Iranians are serving notice of the chaos that they can sow, should they choose, in Iraq. Britain detects Iranian expertise in armour-piercing explosives that have cost, so far, eight British lives, and suspects Iran of training militants that are now active there.