A Lesson in Grey from Tehran

A popular slogan in Iran over the years has been "Marg bar Amrika!" or "Death to America". Lee Hamilton, who now serves on the US Homeland Security Advisory Council, said recently that he did not know of any other country that had caused the US as much heartburn as Iran over the past few decades. It started when Islamist students captured the US embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. They were released on January 20, 1980, just minutes after new president Ronald Reagan was sworn in.

The relationship between the two countries is far too complex to be put under a simple label. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Iran collaborated with United States' attempt to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Prussian politician Otto von Bismarck once said that politics was the art of the possible, though some say it makes for strange bedfellows. Still, this collaboration took the validity of these two statements to a new height.

As complex as the Iran-US relations is the political picture of Iran itself after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 when large crowds of protestors took to the streets of Tehran and other major cities against what they called the Shah's despotic rule. The uprising brought in Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran's Supreme Leader who launched his Islamic revolution that some say has transformed the dynamics of the modern Middle East politics since.

In order to understand the lessons to be learned from the latest Iranian unrest, one may want to look at the leading and supporting actors as well as props and will only find the intellectually fascinating shades of grey when it comes to politics in Iran, or anywhere, every where, for that matter.

First, take Iran's Supreme Leader—Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He is the successor of The Ayatollah-the pinnacle cleric and spiritual leader of Iran after the decades of moral decadence and political oppression during Shah Palavi's regime. Before being elevated to the position of Supreme Leader, Khamenei was known as an open-minded mullah, not exactly liberal, but not as rigid as his predecessor. He once attracted the ire of the Ayatollah by publicly questioning some aspects of having the supreme leader system itself. Khamenei's most vulnerable point has been his relative lack of religious credentials. He was promoted from the middle clerical rank to ayatollah overnight in what was essentially a political rather than a religious decision. Many keepers of the Shiite tradition scorn him. In fact, it is this aspect of Khamenei's vulnerability that presidential candidate Moussavi has used to challenge his authority.

Another lead actor is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has proved to be an enigmatic man who may have been in over his head since he took over from Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2005.

As president, Ahmadinejad sent antique carpets in the presidential palace to a carpet museum, refused VIP seating on the presidential plane and continued to live in his home (located in the poorest zone of Tehran) until his security advisers forced him to move to a safer, quieter area.

Ahmadinejad, whose bank balance is zero, refused to draw his presidential salary, opting instead for a lecturer's low monthly wage of US$250 (Bt8,550), arguing that all the wealth belongs to the nation and that his job is to safeguard it. He even brings his own breakfast and lunch to office.

Every time he appoints a new minister, he gets them to sign a document declaring that they shall remain poor, that their and their relatives' bank accounts will be monitored, that they won't take advantage of the office and will leave the ministry with dignity. Yet it is this very same egalitarian Ahmadinejad who cracks down on academic freedom, earning him the status of "dictator". He started rationing petrol, much to the discontent of his people. He only travelled outside of Iran once before becoming the president and that was to Iraq but saw himself playing a role of diplomat provocateur. He recently made outrageous statements like the Holocaust was only a myth.

Dowdy in appearance, he is communications savvy and has hired a very able "art adviser" to handle his public relations. In a poll by an outside independent organisation three weeks before the election, Ahmadinejad led Mousavi by a 2-to-1 margin. So, he would have robbed himself of legitimate elections if he "fixed" things, and if the poll was correct, he didn't need to rig it anyway.

The other lead actor is the leader of the "Green Revolution" Mousavi, who is a political veteran serving as the last prime minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989 before the post was eliminated.

He was in charge of a regime that executed dissidents, took US hostages, issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie and guided the country through the war with Iraq. During the latest campaign, he won the hearts of many by saying that Iran was in danger with Ahmadinejad's adventurism, instability, grandstanding, superficiality, disregard for the law and a penchant for dictatorship.

During the first and only presidential debate in Iran's history on June 3, Ahmadinejad verbally attacked Mousavi's wife as well as the two popular previous presidents - Rafsanjani and Khatami. Such rants might explain the surge of Mousavi's popularity in the last two weeks leading up to the election, though interestingly enough, he didn't do too well in his own hometown of Tabliz.

Then there are the props - each man's supporters - who in the Western press are categorised as being part of a "class war" in Iran. A closer look shows that there is no real class demarcation between the two groups, but they both want to see a more democratic Iran, even if it is under Ahmadinejad.

The Supreme Leader is at a paradoxical crossroads. If he lets the demonstration get out of hand, it could bring about the sea change in the regime of clerical rule. If he uses the violence to quell the voices of protesters, it will damage the myth of a popular mandate for the Islamic revolution. He has practically three options left if the partial recount fails to pacify the protestors, namely either to order a total recount, or to agree to a Ahmandinejad-Mussavi power sharing, or to order a new election. But in any case there is no denying that the failing of the present regime lies in the lack of good governance, check and balance mechanisms, accountability, fairness (as oppose to cronyism) and nepotism, and economic opportunity.

On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama possibly made the most sensible assessment of the latest Tehran entanglement. He said there was not much difference between the policies of Ahmadinejad and reformist presidential candidate Mousavi, whose supporters are leading nationwide protests against Friday's election results.

"It's important to understand that though there is amazing foment taking place in Iran, the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised," Obama said.

"Either way we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighbourhood and has been pursuing nuclear weapons."

In other words, the lesson here is, that apart from all the irony, contradiction and "colours" in politics, reality will perhaps always be different shades of grey.