The election of Ahmadinejad

The election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of Iran in June 2005 was greeted with dismay by leftists and liberals alike. But his election came as no surprise to us nor is it as significant as most observers are making out. As we wrote in Revolutionary Perspectives 32 (p15):

As the effectiveness of religion as a tool for fooling and controlling the working class is gradually weakening, nationalism is appealing more and more to reformists, conservatives and, of course, all of the opposition, Capitalist ideology moves from one reactionary idea to the next.

After eight years in which "the reforming Presidency of Khatami" has little to show for its rule, it is not surprising that the Iranian theocratic ruling class needed to find a new promise to beguile the masses. They found it in the out and out populist nationalism of the former Mayor of Tehran. Ahmadinejad is the first President since 1980 who is not a cleric, but he is even more committed to the rule of Islam in Iranian social life. He is a murderous thug who, as one of the earliest members of the Pasdaran ("Revolutionary" Guards), was responsible for the most brutal tortures and murders in the first days of the February Revolution of 1979. With unemployment stubbornly rising (it is 11% according to the Economics ministry, 16% according to the Bank of Iran and 30% according to those who know how Iranian official statistics are notoriously manipulated), he represents another attempt by the Islamic Regime to present a new option to the long-suffering Iranian masses. Just as Khatami was elected in1997 when the price of oil was so low that the Iranian economy was in deep crisis, Ahmadinejad was s/elected to pretend that the Islamic republic had something new once again to offer. His propaganda presents him as ostentatiously spartan in his everyday life. This contrasts sharply with the corrupt mullahs, amply represented by his final election opponent, Rafsanjani, who have run Iran for over a quarter of a century. These mullahs have all preached the virtues of an egalitarian Islamic community and then managed to build themselves large houses in North Tehran with money that seems to magically available to them. Many voted for Ahmadinejad because he was not associated with any of these characters and the urban unemployed have been told he will bring them jobs.

The nature of Ahmadinejad's election victory has sparked much gnashing and wailing amongst the Iranian Left. They have complained of the corrupt nature of the election, of the guided choice so that in the end the only candidates they could choose from were both conservative figures representing the regime. Some have patriotically but stupidly declared that the Ahmadinejad victory is an embarrassment for all Iranians. Others have shrewdly pointed out that this is about the same choice as we get in the West. The difference is that in the heartlands of Western democracy it is the amount of money which limits who will be and won't be a candidate. In the Western capitalist version of democracy those with money are freer than those without. In the Iranian version, it is the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council who decide, and they make no bones about excluding anyone they regard as a dangerous reformist ("indifferent to Islam" is the formula used to bar them from standing). Plutocracy, or theocracy, neither are truly representative but in both systems the ruling class gets what it wants. The difference between electing a government and controlling the state is much more disguised in the West, where the Prime Minister of the day appears to be running the country. In Iran there can be no mistake after eight years of failed reformism about who runs the state. Indeed the BBC recently produced a neat little table (see below) which fully illustrates the difference between government and state. In Iran, all the real places of power in the state are unelected and the elected democratic fig leafs are just the governmental shop front for the obscene business which goes on behind the scenes.

Not that the fig leaf is unimportant to the idea that the propertied classes nominally rule by consent. Ahmadinejad's election is based on two populist promises. The first is offering jobs for the unemployed. The second strand to Ahmadinejad's populism is an apparently more aggressive nationalism on the international stage. His victory is thus also a product of the current imperialist confrontation between the US and Iran. In this sense Ahmadinejad's election represents the response of the Iranian ruling class to the breakdown of all attempts to try to re-establish diplomatic relations with Washington.

Déjà vu - the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction

Ahmadinejad has made this abundantly clear in the last few weeks. On October 26th he made a speech to 3000 student supporters of the regime once again calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. His actual words were translated as Israel should be "wiped off the map" (Glasgow Herald, 27th October 2005). This is only a re-iteration of Iran's official position of the last 25 years but the sight of the students shouting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" may have stirred a few memories in the White House of the days when its diplomatic representatives were held hostage in Tehran. Ahmadinejad has also sacked all the diplomatic representatives of Iran in Paris, London and Berlin (the so-called EU-3 countries) who tried to negotiate a compromise on Iran's nuclear energy programme with these Western governments. This is part of a power struggle with the followers of Rafsanjani in the main organs of the state but it is also evidence that a strident reassertion of Iranian sovereignty and national pride will be the leitmotif of Iran's foreign policy from now on.

This response should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the war of words that has been going on for years over Iran's nuclear programme. The trajectory of the discussions and the pressures bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the path that led to the invasion of Iraq.

Firstly, we should not forget that Iran was supplied its nuclear know-how by the USA from as early as 1957. For the next two decades, the US provided Iran with its first experimental nuclear reactor and enriched uranium and plutonium, the very evidence which the US uses to condemn Iran as aiming to build a bomb. Under the Ford Administration (of which Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney were members), the US agreed to supply eight nuclear reactors and lasers capable of enriching uranium. But all that was when Reza Shah, restored in 1953 thanks to a CIA-led coup, was in charge, and he was a friend of Israel. The Shah also refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), whilst the Islamic Republic has. Signing the NPT means that the Islamic Republic voluntarily submitted itself to international inspections. It even voluntarily closed down is Isfahan facility pending the outcome of negotiations with the EU-3. Contrast this with Israel, Pakistan and India. All three have refused to sign the NPT and over the last decade all are known to have secretly developed nuclear capabilities, even if the Israel Government still pretends it hasn't (despite the scientist Mordechai Vanunu's imprisonment for revealing this secret). Israel is now believed to have 200 nuclear warheads and threatens frequently to bomb Iran's nuclear research programme but no one seems to think that this is threatening behaviour.

The rule of one law for America's friends and another for its enemies carries over into the inspection regime. Remember weapons inspections in Iraq? It's a similar story with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headed by Mohammed el-Baradei. The IAEA repeatedly declared that it could find no evidence of a programme to build nuclear weapons. After 9/11, the war on terror was declared and Iran was identified alongside Iraq and North Korea as part of "an axis of evil". Some "axis", when they had virtually no diplomatic contacts, but then coherence has never intruded into US imperial ambitions. With the relatively swift victory of the US and its allies in Iraq there was even a brief period of pressure from Cheney and others in the Bush Administration to carry out the invasion of Iran. It was at this time that El-Baradei made his first visit to Tehran. Despite much opposition inside ruling circles, the Khatami Government took the decision to sign the NPT at the end of 2003. The more nationalist factions pointed out that, with Israel only 600 miles away supplied with US F-15 aircraft able to drop nuclear bombs as well as nuclear submarines and missiles, the Iranians should at least keep the option of developing their own bomb. Khatami's answer was to try to persuade the UN Security Council that the de-nuclearisation of all of Western Asia (i.e. Israel) would be the best step. Iran was supported by Egypt, Syria and Jordan but the proposal was eventually withdrawn because the US threatened to use its veto in the Security Council. This sparked further opposition in Iran, but Khatami stated that as Iran had no actual nuclear weapons, it was a good diplomatic move to allow the inspectors in, as this would demonstrate that Iran only had a peaceful programme.

El-Baradei duly arrived and his inspections team fanned out across the country. When he then asked for increased powers to inspect beyond the terms of the NPT the Iranians again reluctantly agreed to an Additional Protocol as a temporary measure to demonstrate good faith. By October 3rd, 2004, El-Baradei was reporting that:

Iran has no nuclear weapons programme...So far I see nothing that could be called an imminent danger. I have seen no nuclear weapons programme in Iran. What I have seen is that Iran is trying to gain access to nuclear enrichment technology, and so far there is no danger in Iran.

He later told Al Jazeera TV:

Our findings in Iraq proved that the agency was right because we didn't find anything which indicated the presence of nuclear weapons in Iraq... If we want to take a lesson from Iraq, we should not rush before all the realities are clarified, and this is what we want to do about Iran.

This was too much for the US which publicly opposed the reappointment of El-Baradei. He then obligingly changed his tune. He began to say that there had not been enough transparency in Iran. Iran was now told to give access to its "military-owned workshops", key personnel and all its research locations. In other words, it was to open up all its defences for international inspection. El-Baradei was then re-appointed as Head of the IAEA with US support. At the same time US "drones" (unmanned aircraft) have been testing out Iran's air defences and photographing suspected nuclear sites since April 2004. All this was just the kind of manoeuvre that preceded the US attack on Iraq.

Petrodollars and the euro

Even more significant is the fact that Iran is also following Iraq in shifting its oil price sales to euros rather than dollars. But, whereas Saddam's shift was a unilateral event, the Iranians pose a bigger potential threat to the US. In June 2004 (right in the middle of the dispute over nuclear weapons), the Iranians announced that they were planning (in 2005-6) to set up a new Iranian oil "Bourse". Iran has already switched to euros for receipt of oil payments from the EU and Asia. This has not undermined the continuing use of dollars for fixing the global price. However, the Iranians have already announced that they intend their Bourse to become a rival to the two dominant exchanges in the world oil market, the IPE, the International Petroleum Exchange (London) and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). Both IPE and NYMEX are US-owned and the prices for the three current oil standards (Norway Brent crude, West Texas Intermediate Crude and UAE Dubai crude) are all fixed in dollars. If the planned Bourse is set up, Saudi Arabia has already expressed an interest in investing in it which would mean that potentially the world's two greatest oil producers could challenge the dominance of the dollar-based exchanges.

It will not be easy for the Iranian scheme to succeed, given that most oil is traded by states lined up with the US, but this is the very thing the US cannot allow to happen. The real reason for its use of force in the Middle East is not the "war on terror", not "regime change to bring democracy" nor is it even simply to control oil supplies. It is to maintain the dollar as the unit of currency of international exchange so that the rest of the world will pay for America's economic weakness. Oil is, of course, the most important and most strategic commodity on the world market so that is why it is the focus of US attention. But the real issue is to get the rest of the world to continue funding the US trade deficits.

The post-war boom came to an end in the early 1970's when profit rates had diminished so greatly that only a massive devaluation of capital could have started a new cycle of accumulation. Although the US tooled up for a global war (which would have devalued the means of production), it never came as the USSR imploded rather than trying to fight a war it could not win. The first sign that this crisis of accumulation was taking place was that the dollar was first devalued (1971) and then allowed to float freely (1973). It was thus no longer the standard measure of exchange which held the world trading system together. The floating dollar has allowed the US to pass the bulk of its crisis on to the rest of the world.

How does it do this? Since 1976, the value of US imports has exceeded exports in every single year. In 2004, this culminated in a new record trade deficit of $617 billions. The US can only get away with this if the dollars it issues to finance this trade gap are bought by other states (in various financial forms) and thus do not enter into circulation in the USA to cause massive inflation there. By 2005, the rest of the world was absorbing and holding these dollars to the colossal sum of more than $50 billion a month. And, of course those states (like Japan and other Asian economies) with massive dollar holdings are also locked into supporting the USA's economy as getting rid of their dollars would lead to an enormous crisis in their major market.

The feebleness of the EU

The US ruling class can let the dollar rise or fall without worry so long as there is no competitor currency to take over as the world's main medium of exchange. Until recently, the euro was not really likely to compete but with its appreciation (and its greater stability) against the dollar it is becoming increasingly attractive as a medium of exchange to countries which sell primary commodities, such as the oil producers. You would have thought that the countries of the European Union would have been all out to exploit this situation in order to defend their own direct interests. And the EU has significant interests in Iran. Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Elf, and ENI are all European oil companies which have invested significantly in Iran. This in itself is source of great irritation in Washington, where a bill is being prepared to take sanctions against these companies for profiting by trading with a country on which the US has imposed sanctions for over two decades. The fact that that Iran is a large potential market, and now has the third highest reserves of oil on the planet, means that the US have wilfully cut themselves off from this trade. Although the US Congress is likely to pass a law penalising foreign companies operating in Iran, it may be unnecessary. Leaving aside the fact that the EU is actually very divided (especially as the British bourgeoisie act like a Trojan Horse for the US and see their interests as linked to the dollar since it does not even use the euro), the Europeans' independent policy towards Iran has virtually collapsed.

The policy of the Khatami and Rafsanjani factions was to court the EU as a counterweight to the US. They argued that the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) would act independently of the US and help to negotiate a position which would be acceptable both within Iran and internationally. But their hopes evaporated when it became clear that they got the same response to every proposal: "the US would not agree". The EU was prepared to offer Iran economic inducements to accept the abandonment of its nuclear development but this was too little to be of any interest. This was underlined by the continuing survival of North Korea which had shown that open defiance of the USA need not have disastrous consequences (but then North Korea is neither economically nor strategically significant to the US!). When the EU - 3 would not even listen to Iran's proposal to accept Western corporate investment (and therefore close supervision) in the uranium enrichment programme, it was clear that the policy of the Khatami and Rafsanjani factions of trying to arrive at some accord with the West was in total ruins.

Since the invasion of Iraq, the EU (in particular Blair and Chirac) has had no independent policy vis-à-vis the Iranian situation. Whilst the invasion of Iraq has been a global disaster, by increasing terrorism, it has had the benefit for the US of making the West all sing from the same hymn sheet (at least in the Middle East). Its allies now see opposing the US's main policy as futile. With the election of Ahmadinejad, it is clear that the Veleyat Faqih (Supreme Leader) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has taken back the control of foreign policy (which he is officially charged with conducting under the constitution). Ahmadinejad is thus, as we argued above, only the mouthpiece of the regime's new defiant line towards the West. At the same time, the Iranian ruling class are not counting on friendly relations, and very important trade links, with Russia or China to help them. The Iranians could try to get them to use their veto in the UN Security Council to prevent the impending sanctions being imposed by the US. But there is already recognition in Tehran that the UN Security Council will be by-passed anyway by the US. As in the past, they will use another body, like NATO, to start a sanctions campaign and then put economic and military pressure on more and more individual states to make them join it.

War in sight?

Given the economic failings of the Islamic Republic over the last quarter of a century, this threat of more sanctions and a clear plan for war (as Seymour Hersh revealed last January in the New York Times), is not entirely unwelcome. The regime's failings have always been blamed on some scapegoat from the outside world. First it was American imperialism, then the decade long war with Iraq, finally it was falling oil prices. Forced in 1997 to bring in Khatami to offer the promise (but no more) of real change, the regime are now turning to rampant nationalism both for external and internal consumption. The "new conservatives", as Ahmadinejad and his friends are called, are thus pitted against their "neo-con" counterparts in the USA. As Iran represents the last real bulwark against US-Israeli domination of the Middle East, as Iran has now replaced Iraq as the second biggest oil supplier in OPEC and as its known reserves are increasing with the discovery of new oilfields, Iran, with its threat to undermine the dominance of the dollar, is a tempting target for the USA.

The only thing that may stay the USA's hand will be the logistical problem of attacking such a huge country when the USA is itself still mired in the quagmire of Iraq. Iran has sophisticated anti-ship missiles on the island of Abu Musa (which controls the Straits of Hormuz or the entrance to the Gulf). However, in the current situation, the US ruling class see these challenges as historical threats to US hegemony. There is a perception, especially in the "neo-con" circles that influence the White House, that only a decaying power will be soft on its rivals and that the one thing the USA still has is overwhelming military power. US academic and political circles have often discussed books on the rise and fall of empires (usually written by British academics like Paul Kennedy or Niall Ferguson) but they don't really seem to learn much from them. In fact the US is caught on the horns of a dilemma. It cannot allow any currency to replace the dollar as the main world currency (without, at least, then facing an unprecedented economic and social crisis at home). However, paying for further military adventures will only exacerbate economic problems. This is already visible in the fact that the budget deficit (which vanished in 2000-1) has returned with a vengeance. In 2004, it reached a record $665.9 billions or 6% of GDP. Some of it has to do with incidental costs, but the bulk is from increased spending on the military since 9/11. The military budget has been increased to $400 billions and, by the end of the decade, it is planned to rise to $500 billion. US troops are now stationed in over half the member states of the United Nations.

In fact, comparisons of the USA with the decline of the Roman Empire are not entirely idle. By the First Century A.D., the Roman Army totally dominated Roman Society and the Empire. It demanded ever greater resources to defend that Empire and, to do so, had to invade new territories to gain more land on which to grow food (since the slave-based mode of production could not be made substantially more productive) to support an Army of 35 legions. But invading new territories meant that they needed to increase the Army which then meant they had to get more land... and so on. In short, the cure was a bad as the disease. It is something similar for the USA now. In contrast to Rome, the US operates within a dramatically more dynamic mode of production which is capable of parasitically appropriating the wealth of the planet through the sophisticated skulduggery of high finance. However, it has arrived at a point in which the contradictions in the world economy and the challenges to its own hegemony are so acute that permanent, unresolved war seems to be the settled policy of the state. Anything that gives the US an excuse to occupy any area is deemed significant. Despite the talk of all kinds of reformers, there is no possibility of peace under these capitalist conditions. In the US there is no other policy option but the military one. Indeed, one of the consequences of the "war on terror" is that the Defense Department headed by Donald Rumsfeld has largely taken over the role of the State Department. The US has no real diplomacy in the old sense. Its official announced policy is "the pre-emptive strike". It is small wonder that Colin Powell resigned as he had been reduced to a cipher, and Condoleeza Rice (who is already a cipher) has taken over.

This week (November 8th 2005), the Iranians once again asked the EU-3 to resume negotiations on the nuclear issue, only to be immediately rejected. We should not forget that Saddam Hussein's regime kept stating that they could show no more weapons of mass destruction because there were none to show. History proved them right. But what does that matter? Iraq resumed selling oil in dollars within a few days of the US-led invasion. Iran plans to start its euro-based Petroleum Bourse in "early 2006" and the US plan of attack is already prepared...

The stakes are so high and the military lobby so powerful in the current USA ruling class that another catastrophe is possible unless the workers in the advanced capitalist countries can paralyse and strangle the monster of imperialism before it can strike again...

Previous Bureau texts on Iran

• Internationalist Communist 19: "The Working Class and the Iranian Elections";
• Revolutionary Perspectives 13: "Iran: Twenty Years since the Fall of the Shah";
• Revolutionary Perspectives 32: "The Hopelessness of Reform and the Capitalist Nature of the Islamic Republic";
• Revolutionary Perspectives 35: "Will the US Attack Iran? Two Faces of Capitalist Barbarism".

Previous Bureau texts on the US and its aims

• Internationalist Communist 22: "Permanent War is American Capitalism's Response to the Crisis";
• Revolutionary Perspectives 27-30 and 32-34: various articles on the war in Iraq.