The Iranian Labyrinth

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Journalist, historian, and Middle East expert Dilip Hiro is the author of 27 books, including the encyclopedic The Essential Middle East: A Comprehensive Guide (Carroll & Graf, 2003), Secrets and Lies: Operation 'Iraqi Freedom' and After (Nation Books 2004), and the recently published Iranian Labyrinth: Journeys Through Theocratic Iran and Its Furies (Nation Books 2005). Mr. Hiro spoke with Utne.com on Tuesday, Nov. 15.

An issue of class
Does the election in June of hard-line Islamic president Mahmud Ahmadinejad signal a shift in Iranian public sentiment away from moderation and international outreach? If that's the case, what is causing that shift?

It's not a question of hard line or soft line. Basically what happened with the final runoff election was there was a clear-cut competition between the very rich [Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani] and somebody who's quite an ordinary fellow, who is actually the son of a blacksmith, and got a PhD from Tehran University, and lived in South Tehran, which is a poor area. And so the election results of 5-to-3 -- Ahmadinejad got 63 percent and Rafsanjani got 37 percent -- that division shows that the working class and peasantry and the lower-middle class voted for Ahmadinejad. Whereas the middle class and the upper-middle class voted for Rafsanjani.

I think it's the first time, actually, that there has been quite simply a class division in Iran after the revolution. There was a clear-cut opposition taken by two-thirds of the people voting for somebody with whom they identify, and who is not a mullah. You see, the mullahs generally have a rather bad reputation because they are in power and power corrupts, so they tend to be corrupt. And Rafsanjani is the epitome of that political process. ...

We have to remember that Rafsanjani still has the same political position as before. He is the head of the Expediency Council, a very important body. Its function is to conciliate differences between president and parliament and the Guardian Council, which is important. ... Not only that, but something which very few people in America would have noticed: After the election the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei actually increased the power of the Expediency Council. His decree says that the Expediency Council has the right to oversee the military as well as the revolutionary guard and intelligence agency. So he increased the power of the body run by Rafsanjani, who got defeated.

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