THE UNITED STATES AND THE IRANIAN ELECTION

To whose voice is Kerry listening?

In a poorly chosen moment, standing next to the Israeli President in Tel Aviv, John Kerry criticized the Iranian presidential election as undemocratic and unfair. “I can't think of anybody in the world looking at Iran's election who wouldn't be amazed by a process by which an unelected guardian council which is unaccountable to the Iranian people has actually disqualified hundreds of candidates, potential candidates, according to very vague criteria which the Iranian people are not privileged to know or judge by,” he said. “The Council narrowed a list of almost seven hundred potential candidates down to...officials of their choice, based solely on who represents the regime’s interests,” Kerry said shortly before he left Israel.

Ayatollah Beheshti was one of the most influential postrevolutionary leaders. He was killed in a bomb blast at the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party in the summer of 1981. The blast killed more than 75 people including 15 members of the parliament. The Organization of Mojahedin Khalq claimed responsibility for the attack. The terrorist organization now represents the main hope for many American hawks to bring "democracy" to Iran!

In 1979, when the Constitutional Assembly was busy drafting a new constitution for the postrevolutionary Iran, the framers of the new constitution tried hard to define how the newly born Islamic republic is distinct from communist countries and liberal democracies. In a scathing rejection of liberal democratic regimes, the influential Vice Chair of the Assembly, Ayatollah Beheshti, called electoral politics in the United States a sham. “In reality,” he remarked in a Chomskyite fashion of Manufacturing Consent, “people think they are free, but they are ruled by the capitalist class which controls all the bureaucratic instruments of the state and all the mass media.  The ruling classes formally respect the electorate, but through the monopoly of mass media, they direct voting patterns of the public and shape public opinion.  They respect the public only so long as it does not contradict the basic interests of the ruling class.”

Both Kerry and Beheshti have a point. There is no doubt that corporations have hijacked the American electoral politics. It is true that there are no political or legal institutions that determine who can and who cannot run for the presidency in the United States (except in the cases of constitutional requirements). But it is an open secret that without the consent of major corporations no candidate will be considered to be viable in the two-party American political theater.  People in corporate high offices are a different kind of “unelected” officials who steer elections toward the interests of ruling classes. Although this has been a general characteristic of the capitalist state, in recent decades, with unregulated mergers of industrial, military, entertainment, and news media, the boundaries between the political elite and corporate executives have increasingly been muddied.

Who is being represented in a "representative government?"

There are two major problems with statements such as Kerry’s latest declaration about the lack of democracy in Iran.

1.              The US is unashamedly hypocritical in its policy of promotion of democracy and human rights. Just a cursory look at the US allies in the region, from the Saudi family to the autocratic Persian Gulf Sheikhdoms, shows that for the United States the real problem in Iran is not democracy but competing regional interests. In the last 60 years or so, the US has shown that it can easily live with and defend brutal dictatorships so long as they preserve and promote American interests. In other words, the United States lacks moral authority vis-à-vis Iran to play the role of its democracy guardian angel.

2.              Americans know all too well that behind whatever faction in Iran they throw their support, it will destroy them. When are we going to appreciate the fact that the American intervention in Iranian factional undermines the reformists and strengthens the hardliners.  These mistakes have been repeated so many times that some conspiracy theorists might conclude that the US intentionally wants to keep hardliners in power in Iran. You could never underestimate the benefits of sustaining a good, barbaric, and irrational enemy.

The Iranian experience has also been far from ideal.
On all the ballot boxes in Iran there is a reminder of Ayatollah Khomeini's declaration that:
"The final arbiter is the nation's ballot!"

مصطفی تاج‌زاده: ميزان رأی رهبر است

In a statement from his cell in Evin prison in Tehran, Mostafa Tajzadeh,
one of the most influential political strategists of the reformists,
lambasted the recent Guardian Council decisions. The title of his letter is:
"The final arbiter is the Supreme Leader's ballot!"
He has been a vocal critic of the Supreme Leader and
his unlimited authority over the nation's affairs.

The Guardian Council limits the scope and the possibilities of Iranian elections.

Wall Street and Corporate Executives limit the scope and the possibilities of American elections.

There are those in the US who intend to use any pretext for an all out war against Iran. A day before Kerry’s comment, the Senate passed Resolution 65, conveying the U.S. support for potential Israeli military strikes on Iran. I am not an alarmist. But one should take American interest in democracy in Iran with a grain of Persian Gulf salt.