MENA Blog Roundup (12/20/2006)
The bloggers at Foreign Policy’s passport highlight a different take on the recent elections in Iran.
Friday’s elections for Iran’s local councils and Assembly of Experts were widely reported as a “setback” for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And they were. But a more appropriate way to view them, says blogger Jonathan Edelstein, is as a crisis averted for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
As Edelstein, a lawyer in New York with a knack for analyzing Middle East politics, explains, Ahmadinejad’s faction was hoping to take control of the Assembly in order to install Ayatollah Mohammed Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi as the new Supreme Leader. With Yazdi in charge, Ahmadinejad would be free from the shackles Khamenei has placed on him in the realm of foreign policy.
The passport also points out this (via Bloomberg)
In the Tehran municipal election the president’s sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad, who is running on a list titled “the Pleasant Scent of Service,” ranks 11th from 15th candidates, state television said. She could fail to win a seat.
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Marc Lynch of Abu Aardvark looks at a new, post Baker-Hamilton study released by the International Crisis Group entitled “After Baker-Hamilton: What to do in Iraq“.
After the disappointing showing of the Iraq Study Group, the ICG makes for bracing reading – and offers a much more serious attempt to find some kind of solution. It eviscerates Washington fantasies in ways far deeper than Baker-Hamilton’s simple admission that things aren’t going well, by going straight to the heart of the political structures which have emerged from the American occupation.
Iranian Election Results
Note: These reports are based on partial results
The elections in Iran have been judged by some Western observers as a blow to the hard line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Conservative opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took an early lead in Iran’s local elections, according to partial results announced by the Interior Ministry on Monday.
The trend appears to be an embarrassment for Ahmadinejad whose anti-Israeli rhetoric and unyielding position on Iran’s nuclear program have provoked condemnation in the West and moves toward sanctions at the U.N. Security Council.
Partial results of Friday’s polls provided by the Interior Ministry suggested that Ahmadinejad’s allies had largely failed to win control of local councils. Instead, candidates supporting Tehran Mayor Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, a moderate conservative opposed to the president, have taken the lead.
The partial results also indicated that reformers were making a comeback, after having been suppressed in the parliamentary elections of 2004 when many of their best candidates were barred from running. [link]
The results will not affect foreign policy but may have a moderating effect on the Assembly of Experts; the body that elects the Supreme Leader. Don’t take my word on this but I believe that a change in the top of the Iranian government is imminent…
A Palestinian Civil War?
The Passport points out that things continue to simmer between the two top factions in the Palestinian territories. An Israeli intel report indicates that Iran may be training Hamas fighters.
Israeli military officials said Monday that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Hamas militants recently left the Gaza Strip to receive advanced military training in Iran.
The training is similar to that received by thousands of Hezbollah guerrillas from Lebanon over the past few years, and Israel fears it will greatly improve Hamas’ military capability in any future battle with Israel Defense Forces troops in Gaza, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
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The mass training of Hamas fighters in Iran is a new development reflecting the growing alliance between Shiite Iran and the Sunni Hamas movement, Israel warned.
This development comes as the Palestinian president has called for new elections; a move Hamas has rejected. This, in addition to other events, brings the territories closer to a civil war (if one isn’t already happening).
[2006-12-18 2:42 PM] From The Guardian (h/t John Robb) in an article entitled ‘This looks like civil war’ – Palestinians battle on the streets:
Mr Haniyeh’s trip abroad, during which he secured promises of around $350m in funding from Iran, Qatar and Sudan, was seen by many Palestinians as an endorsement of his rule. “That was a message for people here that he received legitimacy in the Arab world,” said Mr Khatib.
Despite the donations, Hamas remains far short of the approximately $600m Israel has kept from the Palestinian Authority in tax revenues. But the economic crisis does not seem to have dampened Hamas’s support. Mr Khatib said his polling research suggested Hamas would keep its majority if elections were called now.
That is, if they participate…
[2006-12-18 3:04 PM] Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan calls the call for new elections “…a ‘very negative’ move so soon after the last Palestinian elections.”
[2006-12-19 2:15 PM] Mark I Levenstein provides deeper analysis of the existing poll data between the two factions; Hamas and Fatah. Along with a brief look at the constitutionality of this possible move by Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah
Bahrainian Election Backlash
The Shi’a majority of Bahrain has been ruled by a Sunni minority. In the wake of recent elections in the island kingdom, in which the Shiite made “stunning gains” and laid claim to 17 of 40 seats in Parliament, the INAA has called foul at the controversial appointment of Sheikh Ahmad bin Atiyatullah al-Khalifa as minister for Cabinet affairs; among other things. In response, the INAA has claimed “royal interference in the distribution of posts within the Parliament.” An INAA statement stated that
…Sheikh Ahmad was the “principal accused in the Bandar report scandal.” That was an allusion to claims by an alleged British spy that he headed a “secret organization” within the government aiming to maintain Sunni domination of the Shiite-majority Gulf kingdom.
Sheikh Ahmad’s appointment is “considered by the majority of the Bahraini people – Shiites and Sunnis – as a message of provocation,” the statement said.
As to alleged royal interference in filling key posts within Parliament, the statement claimed this reflected a “policy of exclusion and marginalization” and said the INAA should not attend a meeting on assigning the posts.
It added that the group would refuse to accept any leadership positions in the Parliament, where “our presence will be purely symbolic.”
Iranian Elections
Today Iranians went to the polls to vote on local councils and more importantly the Assembly of Experts. The Assembly of Experts is the body that selects and provides oversight of the Supreme Leader; the most powerful political position in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This election is being framed in the press as “the first electoral test for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies.”
Results will be provided ASAP as an update or another post…
[2006-12-15 1:20 PM] Poll’s have been kept open for at least another hour.
[2006-12-15 3:35 PM] After a 3 hour extension due to high turnout, the Iranian poll have closed. Results are said to be released on Sunday.
Election Reform in the United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates holds its first ever elections starting Saturday, with an indirect vote for half the members of an advisory council, a small step in a tightly-controlled reform process. The figures sum up the modest nature of the exercise in the federation of seven emirates, the last of the conservative Gulf Arab monarchies to hold polls. [link]
By American standards (18 years old to vote), only 2% of the population is allowed to vote. That is bad. But of the 6,689 permitted by the government to vote, 1,189 of those votes will be placed by women. That’s a little better. Still far from democracy like we in the States experience.
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