Newsletter No. 1383
News-Analysis
June 18, 2009

 

TOKYO MUM ON IRANIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

I’ve been waiting several days now to hear the Aso administration’s response to the presidential election controversy in Iran. Well, I’m still waiting. MOFA has so far posted nothing at all on their English website. On the Japanese website there is the transcript of a press conference in which one reporter directly asked Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone his reaction to protests in Tehran by those dissatisfied with the officially-announced results of the presidential election. Nakasone basically said nothing: He is “extremely concerned” about the situation and the Japanese government will watch developments closely.

This is the typical behavior of the current Japanese government: They talk a good game about democracy and international contributions when it is easy to do so, but when crunch time comes they fall silent along the sidelines.

Did Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the conservative establishment steal the election? That point is unclear; Ahmadinejad may well have prevailed in fairly-conducted poll. He does have a real constituency of grassroots supporters, particularly in the rural areas. On the other hand, almost nobody believes the results as declared (suspiciously quickly) by the government authorities. The most interesting comment in this regard came from opposition Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who declared on his website, “No one in their right mind can believe [the official results]… A government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy. I ask the police and army [personnel] not to ‘sell their religion,’ and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before God.”

The political struggle in Iran is ultimately something that Iranians themselves must work out. Nevertheless, I don’t see why MOFA couldn’t be loudly announcing that Tokyo stands in support of democracy and that the Iranian government has a responsibility to demonstrate to the world that the presidential election process is not a sham. Tokyo needs to start speaking up when it matters; not just when convenient.

As for myself, unless the regime deals honestly with the doubts about this election’s integrity, then I will be forced to begin describing this government as just another West Asian dictatorship rather than as a “semi-democracy,” as I have described it in the past.

The Asahi View

The only substantial Japanese statement that has so far appeared is an editorial in the Asahi Shinbun. I agree with what the Asahi says about the election, but there is one point near the end that I sharply disagree with. The terms of the NPT are clear: If a nation does not pursue nuclear weapons programs, then it has an “inalienable right” to develop nuclear energy programs. This bargain is the fundamental basis of the NPT.

The notion that Iran (or any other nation) must “win the understanding of the world” in order to pursue a peaceful nuclear energy program is stipulated nowhere in the NPT. This argument is a fiction dredged up by the Bush administration to put extralegal pressure on its enemies. I’m disappointed that the Asahi, one of the more enlightened newspapers in Japan, should succumb to and further promote this specious argument.

Iran's Presidential Poll
Asahi Shinbun
June 17, 2009

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected to a second term in the June 12 presidential election. There were four candidates, but the contest was essentially a duel between the incumbent, a conservative hard-liner on uranium enrichment and other foreign policy issues, and former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, a reformist endorsed by former President Mohammad Khatami. Pre-election polls pointed to the likelihood of a runoff between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, with the latter picking up considerable support mainly from urban voters and young people. The high voter turnout of 85 percent indicated the intensity of public interest in this election.

This is all the more reason why Ahmadinejad's landslide victory in the first round of balloting has raised questions and evoked outrage at home as well as abroad. The Mousavi camp has lodged an official appeal to invalidate the election, claiming it was rigged. With Mousavi supporters escalating their protests and clashing with security forces, the nation has fallen into a state of unrest.

In the 1997 presidential election, reformist Khatami defeated his conservative rivals, earning Iran the image of one of a handful of Middle East nations where democratic elections are held. But after Ahmadinejad assumed the presidency in 2005, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, from which the president himself came, began to exert greater influence over society, with former senior officials being appointed to key government posts such as the chief of police and interior minister. There probably is a connection between this and the public's anger over the election results.

Ahmadinejad is known for his vehement anti-Israel and anti-American comments. On the nation's nuclear program, he invited United Nations sanctions in 2006 and caused his country to become isolated from the international community. But he is also committed to fighting poverty at home and has won implicit support from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader -- two factors that obviously contributed to his election victory. On the other hand, urban voters were bitterly opposed to Ahmadinejad's dictatorial rule, which suppresses free speech and enforces a stringent Islamic dress code.

Naturally, the United States and European nations were disappointed with the election outcome. But it was well worth noting how Iran's pro-reform voters committed themselves enthusiastically to the Mousavi campaign in hopes of stemming the conservative tide.

We believe these people were galvanized into action by U.S. President Barack Obama's message calling for dialogue with Iran to restore relations severed by the Iranian Revolution. The international community, including the United States, must support this burgeoning public opinion in Iran and keep urging it to change its policy. As for Ahmadinejad, our strong hope is that he would shed his narrow anti-American nationalism and awaken to his responsibility as the leader of a major nation in the region.

With a population exceeding 70 million, Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil producer, and its levels of education, culture and technology are among the highest in the Middle East.

If Iran is to insist on its right to peaceful use of nuclear power, then it must follow due process to win the understanding of the world, not pursue its nuclear program in a secretive manner and invite suspicions that it is trying to build nuclear weapons.

Iran's neighbors to the east, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are politically unstable. To the west is Iraq. Iran has a major role to play in stabilizing the region.