Persia House Issue Analysis
October 26, 2010
Five months after the UN Security Council, United States, and European Union passed their latest round of sanctions against the Islamic Republic, Iran continues to escape complete economic isolation due to its ability to leverage economic relations with Asian energy firms, medium-sized European companies, and Turkish financial institutions. The extent to which economic hardship can influence Iranian officials’ foreign policy decision-making—the objective behind the sanctions—remains unclear. The West’s ability to compel the Islamic Republic to be more cooperative at the negotiating table depends largely on which sectors of the Iranian society feel the most economic pain, and the power those groups possess to effect the change that Western governments seek.
The US and EU have achieved mixed success in isolating Iran’s vital oil and gas sector. Although many large Western companies have pulled out of Iran, the sanctions have yet to prove as crippling as intended by their...
July 12, 2010
Power Dispute between President Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Conservatives Reflects Revolutionary Guards’ Aspirations for Absolute Power
In the past few weeks, Iranians have witnessed a series of controversies pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against powerful clerics, the majority of the Majlis, and the Judiciary branch. Various conservative factions are invigorating their responses to Ahmadinejad’s and his allies’ efforts to consolidate absolute power and turn the Islamic Republic into a military dictatorship. Ahmadinejad is alienating elements of even those hardline clerics who have so far supported him, further restricting his circle of support. The current struggle among those in power is neither between liberals and conservatives nor between pragmatic conservatives and hardliners: it is between the IRGC-backed allies of Ahmadinejad and the rest of the regime.
Iran is witnessing an unfolding, and increasingly desperate, political knife fight among the...
June 11, 2010
The Opposition Moves Away from its Strategy of Street Protests Amidst Regime Crackdown
One year after the disputed June 12, 2009 presidential election, public resentment over Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection remains widespread. The opposition Green Movement continues to mobilize national disenchantment with the regime. However, the government's continuing harsh crackdown that followed the election is forcing the opposition to channel its energy into civil actions in order to avoid violence. While the regime will likely succeed in preventing a repeat of last year’s large-scale protests and containing smaller ones that may occur on Saturday’s one-year election anniversary, the regime’s busing in of thousands of Basijis into Tehran indicates the continued threat it perceives from the Green Movement. At the same time, government infighting remains at high levels over...
April 22, 2010
The heated debate over Ahmadinejad’s plan to cut government subsidies once again highlighted the rift between the president’s hardline allies and the majority of conservatives who control the Majlis. Since 2008, Ahmadinejad had been pushing to pass a Subsidy Reform Bill, but Majlis members worried about the inflationary effect it would have (as prices of key goods are brought in line with market rates), and were skeptical over how the President would use the revenue accrued from the subsidy cuts. As a result, the Majlis repeatedly prevented the bill’s passage. In 2009, it delayed passing the bill once again by insisting that the subsidy plan be incorporated into the 2010-2011 Budget Bill—a maneuver meant to maintain parliamentary oversight over how the saved revenue would be spent. Lawmakers, including conservative representatives, worried that if the...
April 2, 2010
The Iranian regime remains very much focused on what it views as the single most significant threat to its long-term stability: the “Soft War.” Tehran claims that the United States and the West, in concert with various internal reformist elements, are orchestrating a cyber soft war against Iran. As such, Iranian authorities have been touting the need to counter the growing cyber threat since 2005, and claiming it as one of their highest priorities since January 2009. As a result, they appear to have fashioned a comprehensive approach to execute a counter-cyber program. This approach includes controlling both the means by which messages are transmitted among Iranians and the content of these messages through a combination of offensive and defensive strategies. Tehran has been planning and developing cyber strategies since at least 2005, including the following actions:
- 2005: The government claims...
March 6, 2010
In the run-up to Iraq’s parliamentary elections, the Islamic Republic’s media outlets provided limited coverage of an event that will have significant security and economic implications for Iran. Most of the coverage focused on denying Iran’s interference in Iraqi politics while deflecting attention to US and Saudi interference in Iraq's internal affairs. This focus likely was part of Tehran's calculated effort to prevent exacerbating an Iraqi nationalist backlash against candidates receiving Iranian support.
Iranian strategy to deflect and deny interference in Iraqi politics
The Iranian Government continued to deny reports that it was providing money and campaign assistance to its allies in Iraq, specifically $9 million per month to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and $8 million to supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr.
At the same time...
February 12, 2010
As the Islamic Republic’s crackdown on the Green Movement protestors continues to occupy center stage in both the domestic and international media, the regime is also quietly, yet swiftly, moving to lay the foundation for a totalitarian security state. The government is implementing an interlocking series of policies—encompassing the technological, legal, and social spheres—intended to tighten its control over key elements of the Iranian state.
Actions to control technology
In addition to broadening the role of internal security forces, and increasing the resources available to them, the government is accelerating efforts to filter online information coming from outside the country as well as to control access points used by Iranians to communicate with each other within the Islamic Republic.
The extent of the resources...
January 25, 2010
With the Guardian Council’s passage of President Ahmadinejad’s Economic Reform Plan on January 13, economic policies will, on balance, add to the undercurrent of frustration that fuels Iran’s worsening political crisis.
Structural Challenges
As discussed in our September 2009 article on Iran’s economic challenges, the country suffers from serious structural problems stemming largely from government mismanagement, inefficiency, and corruption.
Inflation continues to pose a serious economic and political challenge to the regime. Although the government claims that the inflation rate was reduced from around 30 percent in the fall of 2008 to 13.5 percent in winter 2009, the economic situation has not improved. Instead, the administration’s strategy of lowering inflation through reducing liquidity has...
December 29, 2009
The regime continues to juggle parallel threats in the form of ongoing street protests and widening rifts within the regime itself.
The opposition fights on
The street protests continue to grow, fed by a steady flow of religious anniversaries and events. Notwithstanding the obvious resilience and persistence of the protestors, however, it is still uncertain whether these protests will translate into the kind of mass following among the Iranian populace that will truly threaten the existence of the regime or whether, lacking a leader with a clear plan (with Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi largely cheering from the sidelines), the opposition will begin to split into disparate factions pursuing divergent goals. If, however, a larger cross-section of Iranian society were to unite in the face of increasing repression, which could result from the regime’s unprecedented decision to attack protesters during the holy Ashura processions—a time...
November 19, 2009
For decades Iran has relied on non-state proxies throughout the Middle East as a means of strengthening its regional role, and undermining the West’s efforts to contain the Islamic Republic. This has been a cause for growing alarm among other countries in the region, in particular Saudi Arabia. Now, amidst increasing international pressure over Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran’s asymmetric strategy is threatening to further its isolation, leaving it even more dependent on Russia’s goodwill, and vulnerable to Russian double-dealing.
Proxy War and Pariah State: Saudi Arabia Accuses Iran of Arming Yemeni Rebels
In recent years, Arab leaders have voiced increasing concern over what they see as a rising Iranian-backed “Shi’a crescent,” stretching from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon, and from the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia to the Horn of Africa. Yet while most Arab governments hold an unfavorable view of Iranian policies and politics in the Persian Gulf, Saudi...
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