Wall Street Journal: After suffering three decades of international isolation and unremitting Islamic revolution, millions of pro-democracy voters in Iran were supposed to have the opportunity in this Friday's presidential election to express their disenchantment with religious dictatorship. It is not to be. The guardians of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolution will remain deeply entrenched.
The Wall Street Journal
Only candidates vetted by the ruling clerics have been allowed to stand.
OPINION
By CON COUGHLIN
After suffering three decades of international isolation and unremitting Islamic revolution, millions of pro-democracy voters in Iran were supposed to have the opportunity in this Friday's presidential election to express their disenchantment with religious dictatorship. It is not to be. The guardians of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolution will remain deeply entrenched.
The leading candidate is the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was a founding member of the Revolutionary Guards and got to know Khomeini during the American embassy siege (he was not directly involved in the hostage-taking itself). Meanwhile, the country's all-powerful supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was installed directly at the behest of Khomeini to be his successor shortly before the latter's death in June 1989.
Khomeini's heirs have maintained their iron grip of power, which has enabled them to uphold his guiding principles as well as export the Iranian revolution to places such as Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq. They are also pressing ahead with the development of a controversial nuclear program.
To be sure, decades of incessant revolutionary activity has taken its toll on the Iranian people, the vast majority of whom were born after 1979. Apart from having to live under a regime where political opposition is brutally oppressed, adulterers are regularly stoned to death, and the limbs of petty criminals amputated in public, the vast majority of ordinary Iranians do not desire to live in a country that is regarded as an international pariah and is constantly subjected to the privations of economic sanctions.
It was for this reason that expectations for the presidential election were running high both inside Iran and throughout the wider world. Many hoped it would be a watershed moment when Iran's people could force a dramatic change of direction in the way the country is governed. Trying to encourage the moderates to gain the upper hand in Tehran has, after all, been the holy grail of Western policy makers for decades.
The administration of George W. Bush had hopes of helping Iran's Internet generation (Iran is one of the world's leading blogging nations) to have its voice heard above the regime's repressive strictures, a policy that's continuing under President Barack Obama. It hasn't worked.
Some 475 candidates put their names forward to become the country's seventh post-revolutionary president. They included Mohammed Khatami, the moderate politician who served for two terms as Iran's president from 1997.
However, it was Mr. Khatami's surprise victory then that prompted the hard-liners around Supreme Leader Khamenei to implement measures that would prevent moderates from gaining power again. Thus, for the past two elections to the Majlis (the Iranian parliament) the Revolutionary Guards — who are controlled directly by Mr. Khamanei — have carefully vetted all the candidates to ensure only those with the right revolutionary credentials are allowed to stand.
Now the regime, in the form of the Guardian Council, which is charged with upholding the tenets of Khomeini's revolution, has employed the same tactic ahead of the presidential election: Of the original 475 applicants only four candidates have survived the cull. All of them have revolutionary credentials beyond reproach.
There is of course the 52-year-old Mr. Ahmadinejad. He is widely expected to win re-election.
Mohsen Rezaie, 55, is a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards. He is subject to an international arrest warrant issued by the Argentine goverment in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires which killed 85 people and injured 151.
Mir Hossein Musavi, 67, is a conservative hard-liner who served as Iran's prime minister under the Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s and frequently clashed with Khamenei, then the president of Iran, over various issues including improved relations with the U.S.
Finally there is Mahdi Kharroubi, 72, a former speaker of parliament. He enjoys the distinction of having been a close confidant of both Khomeini and Mr. Khamenei.
As a result of the Guardian Council's intervention, Iran's voters are left with a Potemkin election in which the survival of the guardians of Khomeini's Islamic revolution is guaranteed. And just in case there was any possibility that the Internet generation might be tempted to mobilize disenchanted voters, the authorities have taken the precaution of closing the Facebook Web site for the duration of the campaign.
All of this makes for an unpleasant situation in the White House, which is still clinging to the hope that it can establish a constructive dialogue with Tehran. Since coming to office, Mr. Obama has gone out of his way to extend the hand of friendship to Iran, pledging that he is prepared to open direct negotiations with Iran if Tehran would be prepared, as he said in his inaugural speech, to "unclench its fist."
But to date Mr Obama has received precious little in return from Iran for this extravagant gesture. When not celebrating the launch of ballistic missiles capable of hitting Israel, Mr. Ahmadinejad has remained defiant about Iran's right to develop its illicit nuclear program, repeatedly rejecting proposals to freeze its activities in return for an easing of economic sanctions.
No matter who wins this "election," Mr. Obama should expect more of the same.
Mr. Coughlin is the executive foreign editor of the Daily Telegraph in London and the author of "Khomeini's Ghost: The Iranian Revolution and the Rise of Militant Islam" (Ecco, 2009).
