Newsletter No. 1408
News-Analysis
July 11, 2009

 

THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE FOREIGN MINISTRY STATEMENT ON IRAN

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won his dubious re-election as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran on June 12th. Massive popular protests and heavy-handed government repression followed. In the end, it took the Japanese Foreign Ministry almost a month to make an official English-language statement on the situation. Here it is:

Statement by the Press Secretary on the Situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran Following the Presidential Election
July 6, 2009

Japan is concerned about the developments arose after the presidential election in the Islamic Republic of Iran, including extensive restrictions on the media and the arrest and prosecution of some embassy local staff.

The conflicting viewpoints following the presidential election are, basically, issues that should be addressed through the efforts of the Iranian Government and its citizens. However, in this process, Japan expects that the Iranian Government grants each opinion and view the appropriate amount of respect and pays due considerations to humanitarian aspects.

Japan also strongly hopes that Iran moves towards a more open and stable relationship with the international community.

I agree with the view that it is the Iranians themselves who must ultimately sort out this matter. Nevertheless, I also still believe that Tokyo ought to make it much clearer that they support the principles of democracy and call on the Iranian government—at a minimum—to follow its own laws and rules that have been established under the Islamic Republic. There is nothing “Islamic” about falsifying election results and unleashing massive state violence upon one’s own citizens. Tokyo needs to openly say something like this.

Japan’s Complimentary Position to the Ayatollah Khamenei

From what I have seen, some of the major media in Iran have backed the government line to the hilt. Indeed, a recent report from Press TV implies that Speaker of Japan’s House of Representatives Yohei Kono also backs Tehran’s position. They quote him as telling an Iranian delegation in Tokyo led by the head of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi: “We believe all countries have a unique culture and history, so they must be judged based on factual information.” I strongly suspect that Kono had much more to say than that, but Press TV wasn’t about to report that particular “factual information.”

Press TV concludes: “Tokyo has taken a neutral stance towards the recent post-election unrest in Iran, undermining the mainstream portrayal of the events in Tehran.”

Actually, Press TV’s analysis may not be entirely wrong when they see the Japanese government as having leaned in favor of the Iranian government’s position. When Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone called on June 22nd for “the government and people of Iran [to] exercise wisdom and cooperate to bring about a peaceful solution to the dispute” (without calling for justice or any democratic accounting), wasn’t his practical advice to the Iranian people to get off the streets and “peacefully” go back to their homes? In turn, wasn’t this pretty much what the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was also telling the people to do? Even the Asahi Shinbun, in the editorial presented in the appendix below, stated that they “pin our hopes on the possibility of a peaceful restoration of order within the Islamic system.”

A plausible argument could be made that the practical sum of Tokyo’s policy has been to back the Iranian government’s position that there is an overriding need for a “restoration of order.” The Japanese government officials and editorial-writers themselves may not perceive the degree to which they have, in fact, fallen into a line that compliments the position of the Ayatollah Khamenei.

NEZAMMAFI NOMINATED FOR AKUTAGAWA AWARD

On the positive news front, Iranian writer Shirin Nezammafi was among six nominees for the 141st Akutagawa Prize for new writers of serious fiction for her story “Shiroi Kami,” written in Japanese. She is only the third nominated writer who comes from a country that does not use Chinese characters. The Akutagawa Prize is considered Japan’s most prestigious literary prize for modern fiction.

Chinese novelist Yang Yi won the same prize last year as the first non-native Japanese speaker.

APPENDIX: NEWSPAPER EDITORIALS

Political Clash in Iran
Japan Times
June 25, 2009

The situation in Iran is tense as security forces have clashed with protesters over the June 12 election whose results — announced within two hours after the polls closed — gave incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the win over Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the moderate reform candidate.

Despite a pre-election prediction that it would be a neck-and-neck race, the announced results indicated a landslide victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad — about 63 percent of the vote from some 40 million people said to have cast paper ballots, to Mr. Mousavi's 34 percent. This has triggered mass protest demonstrations by supporters of Mr. Mousavi, who has called for a new election, claiming that the president stole the election. The demonstrations have resulted in some 500 arrests. More than 10 people are reported to have died with hundreds injured.

In light of the the Guardian Council's admission that the number of votes recorded in 50 cities amounted to 3 million more than the number of eligible voters, a new election should be the best way to dispel suspicions about the election results and calm the situation. But the council has turned down complaints that the election was invalid, saying that whatever irregularities existed were not serious enough to change the outcome of the election. This attitude will make it difficult to solve the current turmoil through legal procedures.

While Mr. Mousavi called for a continuation of nonviolent protests, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said no more protests over the election would be allowed. The Revolutionary Guards warned on their Web site that protesters will face "revolutionary confrontation."

More severe crackdowns, however, could generate even greater protests that could shake the present regime. Another scenario would be a break in the delicate balance between conservative and reform forces with the heavy-handed politics of hardline conservatives prevailing. While clerics have ultimate political power in Iran, democratic procedures have functioned comparatively better there than in other Islamic nations in the Middle East. This trait should not be weakened.

Growing Turmoil in Iran
Asahi Shinbun
June 24, 2009

Lives have been lost in escalating clashes between Iranian security forces and citizens challenging the outcome of Iran's June 12 presidential election.

Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-line conservative, swept the election with more than 60 percent of the votes. His reformist opponent, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, lodged an appeal, citing vote count fraud. Around the nation, Mousavi supporters took to the streets in protest.

In his speech last Friday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, denied the claims of election fraud and harshly warned protesters to stay off the streets. The next day, pro-reform citizens clashed with security forces in a renewed wave of violence. Khamenei's speech must have served as the cue for security forces to crack down on dissidents.

Tehran is currently under tight security, but we doubt this will help restore order to the nation. Mousavi is insisting that the election be declared invalid while former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate conservative, is also critical of the Ahmadinejad administration.

The fact that the administration is being propped up by the Basij volunteer militia, which is linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has drawn fire not only from reformists but even some conservatives as well. And now that Khamenei has shown his support for the administration, some street demonstrators have begun denouncing the supreme leader in public.

The situation is fluid, and we cannot but be deeply concerned about developments in the days ahead.

One worry is that Iran's dictatorial tendencies could become even more pronounced along with the administration's use of police and military forces to crack down on dissidents. And in order to tighten its reins at home, the administration may overplay foreign threats and let the Revolutionary Guards lead the nation down the path of militarism.

In that event, we cannot refute the possibility of Iran's uranium enrichment program, which has continued in defiance of the United Nations Security Council resolution, leading to nuclear armament.

Another worry is that Iran's Islamic system itself could collapse as a result of further escalation of popular protests against the current administration's hard-line policies. Some military and police officers do not approve of the ruthlessness of the Revolutionary Guards. Should they decide to side with dissidents, the nation could be thrown into the deepest chaos since the Iranian Revolution.

Such worries may be overblown. However, nobody anticipated the collapse of the pro-American regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi 30 years ago. The Iranian Revolution that brought the monarch down had begun with the administration's ruthless suppression of pro-democracy elements.

For the time being, we pin our hopes on the possibility of a peaceful restoration of order within the Islamic system. If the nation's reformists and moderate conservatives manage to regain their ground with the support of the public at large, they could become a force capable of holding Khamenei and the administration in check to some degree.

Transforming itself into an open and democratic Islamic system is the key to Iran's future stability. The administration must refrain from violent hard-line measures and guarantee freedom of the press.

A more dictatorial and unstable Iran will adversely affect the entire Middle East. Japan, the United States and nations of Europe, which are keeping their distance from the Ahmadinejad administration, must prevail on Russia, China and other pro-Ahmadinejad nations to work together to prevent Iran from going in any extreme direction.