Iranian Presidential Candidates Preaching Change, Too
Judging by the platforms of the three candidates presently approved to challenge Ahmadinejad in the June 12 presidential elections, they all wish to improve Iran’s relations with the West.
Why? Three reasons demonstrate their motivations.
First is Barack Obama. His Nowruz (Iranian new year) message to the people of Iran and his popularity in the international arena has impacted domestic Iranian politics, without Obama making an overt statement such as a candidate endorsement. The majority of candidates see this as an opportunity, including Mohsen Rezai.
The former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), Rezai is currently sought by INTERPOL for his involvement in the 1994 AMIA bombing in Argentina. Despite his murky past, Rezai — who sees himself as a pragmatic — is standing for election. In a recent interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau, Rezai stated that “current changes in American foreign policy must be taken seriously.” The change he sees includes “America’s lack of interest to send its armies around the world.”
In other words, unlike Bush, Obama is not interested in the invasion of other countries — including Iran. Rezai is interested in cooperating with the U.S. on issues such as illicit drugs, peace and stability in the Near and Middle East, and the global economic crisis.
When it comes to Israel, Rezai — who referred to Imad Mughniya, the assassinated head of Hezbollah’s armed forces, as his friend — believes that the best way to prevent an Israeli attack is to build an international nuclear fuel consortium on Iranian soil. Such a group would include the U.S. itself, as well as Russia and the E.U. He believes that with such countries as stakeholders, Israel would be unlikely to attack.
Rezai also states that “the people of Palestine should determine their own destiny.”
Domestic politics also fuel the drive for improved relations with the West, according to reformists Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. These politicians have witnessed how U.S. relations and Holocaust issues have been hijacked by Ahmadinejad and his supporters. What worries them is that he has been using such issues to his advantage by isolating Iran. They know that Ahmadinejad and his radical partners thrive in isolation, using it to stifle domestic opposition. Isolation and confrontation with the international community also give Ahmadinejad an opportunity to implement policy with little concern for other voices. Over the last four years, the opposition has suffered under isolation and now wishes to put an end to it. They want to reclaim their stature within Iranian politics, and bringing Iran out of isolation is a means towards that end.
Wait a second let me check my spelling. Did I not spell pajamasmedia.com? It looks like I spelled dailykos.com. Meir begins to make sense only at the last paragraph where he states Khamenei controls foreign policy (and domestic policy too). All else is hope and change rhetoric. As long as Khamenei is puppetmaster all will dance to his tune. We have seen time and time again reformists are still Mullahcrats. Maybe Meir is in holy rapture beguiled by Obama’s sweet talk and he’s projecting his ecstasy onto these Iranian candidates. Wake up Meir it’s all a dream. No matter which candidate wins Iran won’t suddenly be pro West. They’ll continue with their nuclear ambitions and their Middle East hegemonic plans.
So, let me get this straight, instead of the real deal, you’re hoping for change to “Ahmadinejad-lite”?
You and Obama are Pathetic.
Voting in Iran is presently a waste of time. The mullahs run the show regardless of who wins. These reactionary males intensely hate the West and are likely willing to commit suicide to honor Allah. They would have little hesitation to destroy Israel and other Western countries—even if it results in the very destruction of Iran. The pro-American Iranians are essentially powerless. We should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities as soon as possible.
Sometimes I think we are not given the full story about Iran through the media. Bombing the facilities will surely make those “pro-american” Iranians flock even more to our side.
pure shea butter
Old Islamic fascist — meet the new Islamic fascists… But you’d barely notice reading Javedenfar’s apologetics. He even tries to infuse the murdering former head of the IRGC with “hope and change” plausibility. It’s all designed to convince clueless Westerners that Islamic Iran can be pursuaded away from her Islamic (Nazi) trajectory if we’d only vow to stop threatening them and make friends with the “reformers”.
Javedanfar’s “analysis” is obviously faulty, yet his brand of diversionary bunkum has served fascist Iran well in the last three decades. We’ve been betrayed, sold down the river– for such agents don’t offer us valuable insight. They serve mainly work to deflect, disinform, confuse, obfuscate, and most important, forestall effective responses by the West against the sewer of Islamic Iran until it’s too late. The best efforts of this legion of horrible Iranian “analysts” in academia, in the media, and worst of all, in the State Department have now ushered in the nuclear epoch of Islamic terror. We will soon rue the day we ever listened to such duplicitous snakes.
@ woyska PVO
Mr. Javedanfar was writing in 2006 “Barring his outbursts denying the extent of the Holocaust and threatening Israel with annihilation, Mr. Ahmadinejad is saying and doing what a majority of Iranians want to hear. The key to his success is that he has learned who the average Iranian is and what he or she wants. The West has not.”
It seems that he did not learn.
Now Mr. Javedanfar is trying to convince everybody that Rezae would be someone similar to Putin, Mousavi is similar to Sarkozy and Ahmadinejad in reality is an Iranian Bush. He is also implicitly saying that apart from Ahmadinejad none of the candidates will be helping Hezbullah and Hamas with money and munition, none of them will push for more work on nuclear weapons and definitely none of them will send weapons to Taliban in exchange for heroin heading for Europe. Woysko, he is Iranian, he is doing his propaganda bit so you are wrong – he is not pathetic. The pathetic one is the guy presently in the White House and the ones who think so-called “reformists” are reformists in the western style. But then they thought that Hezbullah is really like a western political party, PRC is now in fact a capitalist country and Putin is a great guy.
FT reports that Khameni came out in support of Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy. See, http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/90919.html