Iran's New President Elect

[In Search of True Thinkers]

Today in Iran the Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won in the presidential election run-off. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is said to be a religous fundementalist however I think that given the choice of canidates that were contesting for office he was the best one available to fight western imperialism. I also question just how much of a "religous fundementalist" he really is as I suspect that this was something that may have been overblown by Western media. For example take his stance on the internet:

Is it a concern? "No ... we cannot shut the doors to the country."

"My own phone bill is so high because my children use the Internet so much."

Also see some of his other quotes to see where he lies on keys issues that are affecting Iran.

ON RELATIONS WITH THE U.S.

"Relations with the United States are not a cure for our ills."

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has no fear about restoring ties but ... how to carry it out must be studied so that the independence, pride and self-esteem of the Iranian nation will not be harmed."

ON IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM

"Acquiring peaceful nuclear technology is the demand of the whole Iranian nation, and the rulers as representatives of the people must put all their efforts into realising this demand."

"Those who are in negotiations are frightened and do not know the people ... A popular and fundamentalist government will quickly change the country's stance in favour of the nation."

ON SOCIAL/POLITICAL FREEDOMS

"We did not have a revolution in order to have a democracy."

"People think a return to revolutionary values is only a matter of wearing the headscarf."

"The country's true problem is employment and housing, not what to wear."

ON THE ECONOMY

"Currently, the private banks have no positive or constructive role in the economy, rather a destructive one."

"I will cut the hands off the mafias of powers and factions who have a grasp on our oil, I stake my life on this ... People must see their share of oil money in their daily lives."

"The increase in petrol prices has led to an increase in all other prices. The solution is to use public transport."

[Colombia]

He seems to be the most likely to want to ease tensions between the Muslim word and that of the West. Although his views may seem a bit liberal in Iran, they are considered radically conservative here in the West.

Hope tensions will drop now.

[American_Trotskyist]

Why is the sham ‘presidential election’ in Iran becoming so bitter? (http://www.kargar.org/english/2005_election.htm)

He is just annother Religious lunitic. This is by the Iranian Revolutionary Socialists’ League

[RedAnarchist]

The runner-up in the election is complaining about the result, but he wont appeal.

[Anarcho-Communist]

Unemployment of Iran

Official statistics say unemployment is about 16 percent, but some analysts place the true figure above 30 percent. Some reports also say up to 40 percent of Iranians live under the poverty line - the point where income cannot keep pace with basic needs.

The 49-year-old Ahmadinejad was unnoticed before the first round of voting June 17. Few gave him a chance at challenging Rafsanjani, a self-proclaimed moderate who served as president from 1989-97. But Ahmadinejad stunned them all, finishing No. 2 behind a shaken Rafsanjani.

Widespread allegations said the Revolutionary Guards and other hard-line factions intimidated voters and manipulated the vote to nudge Ahmadinejad into second place, but the ruling clerics who backed him confirmed the result.

Dismayed pro-reform groups flooded behind Rafsanjani. But Ahmadinejad deftly avoided salvos with liberals, who fear he could push Iran back toward the rigid codes after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He offered only a terse and vague: “I am against extremism.”

He counterattacked by portraying the wealthy Rafsanjani as aloof and pampered. Then he rolled out proposals to redistribute government largesse to the provinces and urban poor, boost health and insurance benefits, offer zero-interest agriculture loans and raise minimum pay scales.

It’s unclear how much will become reality, but theocracy can open any door if willing.

Business leaders reacted with alarm. To them, Ahmadinejad is an Islamic socialist who will eventually clamp down on private enterprise and the Teheran Stock Exchange.

Still, he didn’t fight back directly. He said only Iran was drifting from the values of the revolution - which sounds scary to Western-oriented Iranians, but appeals strongly to those who feel modernizing Iran has left them in the dust.

In a final TV campaign pitch Wednesday, he described the Iranian everyman: making the equivalent of about US$150 a month and crushed by bills and inflation hovering around 15 percent.

“How can such a person have dignity in front of his children and wife?” he said. “How can a family respect him if he cannot even take care of them?”

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 02:28 AM
The runner-up in the election is complaining about the result, but he wont appeal.
Appeal to who...the mullahs who backed Ahmadinejad.

And this is Rafsanjani, a conservative figure himself, making these accusations of fraud. Not just the opponents of mullah rule. By monopolizing power through this sham election, the mullahs have isolated themselves and decreased the stability of their regime.

One of the more interesting Ahmadinejad quotes was left out - there is already an amazing amount of freedom, something like that. In other words, too much. While most of Iran's population seems to want more, that's why they voted for Khatami, but he was unable to keep his promises.

The one interesting thing about Ahmadinejad was his populist campaign promises - economic measures that would benefit working people, including a higher mimum wage. To some degree his election reflects not just voter intimidation - though that was certainly present - but is also a symptom of workers' and peasants' discontent.....the liberals like Khatami tend to be for "freer markets" and Rafsanjani is one of Iran's richest men.

It's highly doubtful that Ahmadinejad will carry out those promises, of course. It's just a symptom.

[Purple]

if some of you didnt know but he was an executioner when he was in some authority practicing job(don't quite remember), he is also a very influential promotor of decapitating thieves' hands..

my girlfriend is from Iran, only lived three years in Norway, and she did not have much faith that anything would change with him in power. He is actually a bit more conservative than the last president, but the ones that makes all the big decisions in the country is the people above the president, who is the ultra-muslim "Guardian Counsil".

The vote was probably rigged as Ahmadinejad pretty much came out of nowhere, and suddenly(and suprisingly) won the entire thing with 65%(I think it was).

...and the chances for Ahmadinejad to open any relations abroad(which is something Iran needs to lighten the ultra-religious regime) has become even slimmer as he has stated many times that it is no priority at all.

[Man o' the Century]

Iran, what a sad joke.

[Guerrilla22]

A hard line fundamentalist, wonderful. This a direct result of Bush's hard ass stance on Iran.

[Severian]

This week in the Militant (http://www.themilitant.com/2005/6926/692603.html)
Which has more contacts inside Iran than most left papers.

Populist demagogue beats ‘reformer’ in Iran’s election
U.S. gov’t response muted
(News Analysis)

BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
In a landslide victory June 24 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in a run-off election against former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Ahmadinejad, the mayor of Tehran since 2003, is not a “conservative” or an Islamic “hard-line fundamentalist” as the bourgeois media have largely labeled him. He is capitalist politician who demagogically presents himself as a strong leader who stands above classes and can deal with the “corrupt elite”—that is, a Bonapartist figure.

In his election campaign Ahmadinejad used the populist rhetoric of the 1979 plebeian revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed regime of the shah. He appealed to the outrage of the toiling masses over rampant bourgeois corruption, the less and less hidden privileges of the bourgeoisie and middle-class layers, and the growing class differentiations in income, wealth, and health.

The only forces surprised by Ahmadinejad’s victory were the middle-class reformers who live in a different reality than the workers, farmers, and other exploited producers of Iran. They blamed the “unwashed masses” for choosing “reaction.” Capitalist politicians in imperialist countries that have courted the “reformers” in Iran were taken aback too. Middle-class liberals and their radical fellow travelers in the United States and other imperialist countries were stunned, reacting as if Iran’s version of a “Bush agenda” had won over there too.

The Tehran Times said the president-elect was not “affiliated to any well-known political party and was even expected to withdraw before the first round of the election.”

The People’s Weekly World, which reflects the views of the Communist Party USA, ran an article by a correspondent from Iran’s Tudeh (Communist) Party calling the first round of the vote a “rigged election [that] blocks Iran’s path to reform.” It said Ahmadinejad is allied with “fascistic forces.”

The response of Washington and its allies, however, has been muted. While public attacks by Bush administration officials on Iran’s election as illegitimate were very much in the news prior to the run-off vote, they have since been toned down. The imperialist governments see that the newly elected populist demagogue may have an easier time making a deal on the nuclear question, and on cutting aid to pro-Tehran armed groups abroad, than his opponents within the Iranian bourgeoisie who have lost whatever popular support they may have once had.

There are no differences between the Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani camps, or outgoing “reformist” president Mohammad Khatami, over nuclear power and weapons. All three support the ongoing negotiations over this issue with officials from the imperialist governments of Germany, France, and Britain, who in collaboration with Washington seek to block Tehran’s ability to develop and use nuclear power. This take place as the right to acquire nuclear energy is becoming generalized into a national aspiration in Iran, similar to the sentiment to nationalize the oil industry in the 1950s.

Ahmadinejad will be the first noncleric president of Iran in 24 years. He won 17.2 million votes to 10 million for Rafsanjani. Iranian state television reported a 60 percent turnout of eligible voters.

Like his predecessors, Ahmadinejad made it clear he is committed to advancing the bourgeois development of the country—including privatization of industry and greater foreign investment. He pitched his campaign, however, on populist promises. He won support for his presidential bid by vowing to raise wages, lower prices, and wipe out corruption. He said he would provide pensions, health insurance, and unemployment benefits to women, and zero-interest loans to farmers.

Pitching himself as an “Islamic Robin Hood,” he told reporters that he was Iran’s “little servant and street sweeper.” All this played into the growing dissatisfaction of working people, who currently face 15 percent inflation and an official unemployment rate of 12 percent. An Associated Press dispatch said that actual joblessness exceeds 30 percent. With some 40 percent of Iranians living under the government’s official poverty line, the differentiation between the living standard and job conditions of working people, on one hand, and middle-class professionals and the bourgeoisie, on the other, is growing.

Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric harked back to popular aspirations coming out of the 1979 revolution. Back then he participated in the student-led movement that seized the U.S. embassy, exposing it as a spy den for the CIA. In the absence of revolutionary working-class leadership, many of the gains the toiling masses made through that popular revolt were eroded and reversed to a large degree by the bourgeois leadership that took the helm since 1979.

Rafsanjani campaigned on his record as president between 1989 and 1997. He oriented his campaign more toward affluent layers, describing himself as one of the original “reformers.” At a June 21 rally at Tehran University, he told some 4,000 students, “I believe that I was the prime mover in establishing reforms, and Khatami’s government took further steps. Definitely it should go on.” With an eye toward making clear his willingness to mend relations with imperialist powers, he organized young supporters to distribute campaign stickers written in English, not Farsi.

“Some reports have explained Ahmadinejad’s victory as a populist backlash against Mr. Rafsanjani’s corrupt clericalism,” noted an editorial in the June 28 Wall Street Journal. While corruption is endemic to all capitalist regimes, railing against the sleaze of “reformers” and other capitalist politicians dressed in (increasingly elegant) clerical garb helped boost Ahmadinejad’s vote total, especially in contrast to Rafsanjani, a representative of the status quo in the eyes of many.

In the absence of a working-class alternative in Iran, the toilers’ desire for social justice and leveling of income distribution gets derailed by bourgeois demagogues into voting for a Bonapartist figure.

Background: a 2000 report from Tehran on the election of Khatami to the president (http://www.themilitant.com/2000/6410/641073.html)

[Oldergod]

hes a pawn..leave him

[Xiao Banfa]

Ahmadinejad is concerned sincerly with the welfare of the Iranian people.
He is more likely to aid the development of nuclear weapons. Iran needs nuclear weapons. Iran needs nuclear weapons. Look next fucking door!
We, as anti Imperialists should nitpick about whether a regime is "too Islamic"
like precious white bourgeois who are oh so genteel and read the fucking guardian.
Once the world is no longer unipolar then talk to me about this shit.
As Churchill said when forming an alliance with Stalin against the greater fascist enemy "we would welcomed the devil". At least Iran's not the devil.

[Xiao Banfa]

Compañero


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Ahmadinejad is concerned sincerely with the welfare of the Iranian people.
He is more likely to aid the development of nuclear weapons. Iran needs nuclear weapons. Iran needs nuclear weapons. Look next fucking door!
We, as anti Imperialists shouldn't nitpick about whether a regime is "too Islamic"
like precious white bourgeois who are oh so genteel and read the fucking guardian.
Once the world is no longer unipolar then talk to me about this shit.
As Churchill said when forming an alliance with Stalin against the greater fascist enemy "we would have welcomed the devil". At least Iran's not the devil.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Tino [email protected] 4 2005, 01:25 AM

We, as anti Imperialists should nitpick about whether a regime is "too Islamic"
like precious white bourgeois who are oh so genteel and read the fucking guardian.
Which, of course, ignores the interests and desires of working people in Iraq.

[AnarchoCommunist]

There was no real choice in these sham 'elections' in Iran, just like every capitalist country that holds 'elections'.

However I cannot see any opposition to the Islamist regime in Iran that is of an anti capitalist outlook and therefore worthy of our solidarity and support.

The National Resistance Council of Iran is nothing but an array of pro-Shah/Emperor exiles and pro-US Iranian neo-consevatives, with many deep links to the CIA, Pentagon and other imperialist agencies in the American Empire.

The NRCI is the group that had provided the Americans with photo's and satellite imagery of Iran's alleged weapon plants. Besides the obvious lack of principle this group shows by helping the Americans in building a case to kill 100,000s of Iranians and invade their country, just so they can get into a few positions of power; Is it not a bit obvious that if a small exile group lacking any popular support in Iran could get such detailed photo's from within the Iran and satellite pictures as well, seems like they are nothing but a American imperialist front group.

The other opposition groups are nothing but liberals and reformists who want Iran to become some sort of capitalist democratic secular state.

The choice for the working class in Iran is clear, none of these groups can deliver what they want or provide any real or effective oppostion to the Islamo-fascist regime in Tehran.

[Xiao Banfa]

read my revised post, comrades. I'm sorry for the concentartion mistakes.
PFLP!!!!

[Xiao Banfa]

There exists a dichotomy which determines our successes or failures agains imperialist unipolarity.

[pastradamus]

He was always gonna win it anyway. He's one of those leaders with a tough upper lip & the people wanted that.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2005, 06:25 AM
The National Resistance Council of Iran is nothing but an array of pro-Shah/Emperor exiles and pro-US Iranian neo-consevatives, with many deep links to the CIA, Pentagon and other imperialist agencies in the American Empire.
Eh...no. The NCRI is a front group for the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK or MKO, the O for Organization.)

The MEK are an formerly far-left group - probably still leftist in word - which turned against the Iranian revolution and became a tool of the Iraqi regime. Now seeking to become a tool of U.S. imperialism. The only question is whether Washington's buying.

But not pro-shah AFAIK or "neoconservative"...that's really a right-wing conspiracy theorist or paleoconservative catchword there, with anti-Jewish and other reactionary implications.


The choice for the working class in Iran is clear, none of these groups can deliver what they want or provide any real or effective oppostion to the Islamo-fascist regime in Tehran.

Well, yeah. (Though the regime is far from fascist, workers' economic organizations exist, there's a certain space for discussion including publishing a lot of stuff, etc.)

But despite the lack of leadership and organization, the working class is still the "effective opposition", people fight back as the opportunity arises and it's out of mass struggles that new revolutionary leadership emerges.

Tino wrote: "Once the world is no longer unipolar then talk to me about this shit."

In other words, never.

No rising imperialist power has any chance of dethroning or even challenging the U.S. So the world will remain "unipolar" until we deal with "this shit", that is building a worldwide working-class revolutionary movement to bring down history's final empire.

Which is a good thing, that we only have to bring downl with one unstable, overextended empire, to end imperialist world domination. And hopefully have some time to do it before WWIII among imperialist powers becomes likely.

[bolshevik butcher]

Would it have made a hge difference who got elected? I mean i read that in iran this supreme leader guy can actualy over rule parliment.

[Severian]

Yes, that's true. But it makes some difference. The presidency has some limited power, and it also has a symbolic importance.

[Led Zeppelin]

Severian, what do you think of the Fedaian (Minority)?