Politics and Governance

Election activities began in December as Iran's Election Commission announced that the Ministry of Interior established election headquarters in all 31 provinces. The key dates for the elections are:

• December 24, 2011: The candidate registration period began.
• December 30, 2011: The registration period ended.
• January 2012: The Guardian Council reviews the credentials of all candidates, a process that usually takes about a month.
• Late January or early February, 2012: The final list of eligible candidates—and disqualified candidates—should be released. In the past, the majority of candidates have been disqualified for failing to meet vague criteria.
• February 22, 2012: The official campaign period begins and lasts eight days.
• February 29, 2012: The official campaign ends.
• March 2, 2012: Election Day.

‘Sensitive’ elections

Iran is set for what its senior officials have described as "the most sensitive" elections in the history of the Islamic Republic, amid economic and political discontent at home and fears of a major confrontation with the ‘West’ over its nuclear program.

The authorities have publicly acknowledged the challenges they face. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned that the elections could pose a risk to the country's security, and he has appealed for national unity. “To some extent, elections have always been a challenging issue for our country,” he admitted. He asked people “to be careful that this challenge does not hurt the country's security.”

More than 5,000 candidates have put their names forward for parliamentary elections in March, the first national vote since the 2009 disputed presidential poll when popular uprisings known as the Green Movement challenged the results.

Managing the elections

Two bodies are charged with managing and administering election-related activities in Iran:

The Guardian Council has a broad supervisory role. It vets all candidates, monitors the voting process and certifies the election results.

The Ministry of Interior implements election operations under the council's authority. It is responsible for the conduct of elections, including establishing and operating polling stations, administering the vote and tabulating the results.

Iran's electoral infrastructure has technically not changed much since the 1979 revolution, but in practice the role of the Guardian Council has increasingly marginalized the Ministry of Interior. The 12-man council, composed of religious and legal experts, has emerged as the main arbiter of election outcomes in two ways:

First, the council has extended its powers to interpret the constitution to include supervising all stages of the elections, including the approval and rejection of candidates.

Second, the council has transformed its temporary supervisory offices staffed with volunteers into permanent offices in every county across the country. Today, Iran has more than 384 Guardian Council supervisory offices operating year-round with full-time staff members. Concurrently, the council has enjoyed an astronomical budget growth from $480,000 in 2000 to $25 million in 2011. The Guardian Council, dominated by conservatives, has thus morphed into the most powerful and far-reaching electoral management body in Iran.

Conservative infighting and competing factions

Over the past three decades, relations between the Guardian Council and the Ministry of Interior have fluctuated. Occasionally, the two bodies have had common interests, but at other times they have been controlled by competing factions. Since its inception, the council has been tied to conservative factions. The Interior Ministry, however, has changed hands as part of the executive branch of government.

During the 2004 Majles elections, the conservative-dominated Guardian Council and the reformist-controlled Ministry of Interior were at daggers drawn, however the 2008 Majles elections took place at a time that both institutions were under conservative control. The upcoming 2012 Majles elections are different: Although conservative factions control both the ministry and the council, their rivalries have turned the process into political fratricide.

Conservative factions with significant differences have generally melded into broad coalitions during electoral events to maximize their share of the votes. At the onset of the 2009 presidential election, competing conservative factions united against the reformists. But following the election, brewing tensions over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's long-term political agenda re-emerged. A public rift between Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinejad erupted in the spring of 2011 and deepened conflict among conservatives. The president's staunchest conservative supporters quickly turned into vocal critics. The president's associates were charged with corruption and embezzlement and publicly dubbed political “deviants.”

Revelations about Iran's largest incidents of bank embezzlement, scandals over corruption in the automotive industry, and the alleged plundering of social security pensions fueled the conservatives' war against Ahmadinejad. Members of parliament have repeatedly threatened to summon the president for questioning, and some have even proposed to impeach him.

In late 2011, Ahmadinejad, seeking to solidify his own political constituency, fought back by threatening opponents with revelations about their own misconduct, and so far, the Interior Ministry, headed by Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, a former Revolutionary Guard close to Ahmadinejad, has blocked at least 33 MPs from running in the elections, although many of them are currently serving in the parliament. Ali Motahari, a conservative MP whose father, Ayatollah Morteza Motahari, was among the key founders of the Islamic Republic, is among those on the blacklist. As an outspoken critic of the government's political and economic policies, Motahari was the driving force behind an impeachment motion against Ahmadinejad.

The role of reformists

As the election date approaches, the issue of participation is also gaining prominence. While in the past, calls to boycott elections were mainly led by the Iranian diaspora community, now, for the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, the leaders of the reformist groups, including former president Mohammad Khatami, 2009 presidential challengers Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, and Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, the secretary general of the reformist Association of Combatant Clerics, are emphasizing the ineffectiveness of participation in the polls.

The opposition Green Movement had announced earlier that it would only consider participating if its leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi were released from house arrest, but the authorities have remained reluctant to do so. The Fars News Agency, which is close to the Revolutionary Guard, announced that more than 1,200 reformists had put their names forward for the elections. Independent observers, however, questioned the claims, arguing that the regime has encouraged many of its own candidates to register as reformists in an attempt to undermine any boycott.

The issue of participation, along with the competition among disparate conservative factions is likely to make these elections more interesting or contentious than originally expected.

Raymond Karam is a program assistant for EWI's Regional Security Initiative.

On the Precedent for U.S. Defense Cuts:

Let’s think back and get some context. During the Kennedy administration, the percentage of the Department of Defense budget in U.S. GDP was between 10% and 15 %. After Saigon fell in April 1975, we went through a very interesting period of adjustments of defense budgets up through the Carter administration. During this period, the U.S. government was struggling with a containment policy of the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent China. Massive amounts of defense capabilities began to dwindle during the Carter administration. While I was at Holloman Air Force Base in the ‘70s, we would have an entire wing of airplanes but only one squadron—typically 12-24 aircraft—would have engines in them; that is a hollow force. During that period, the Army, Navy, and Marines rarely went out to practice.

The Reagan administration, recognizing the fact of a hollow military after Vietnam, initiated a defense build-up which led to the force structure in place during operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield. The George H.W. Bush administration maintained a similar defense budget, but then almost zero new aircraft were bought under the Clinton administration; this is all despite major campaigns (Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti, etc) while still sitting in Korea and Europe. From the beginning of the George W. Bush administration until 9/11, there was a serious discussion on transforming the Department of Defense to being smaller, lighter and more lethal, which was and still is a good discussion to have.

On U.S. Military Capabilities and Expenditures:

Since 1942, the stated mission of the U. S. military has been to be able to conduct full spectrum operations in multiple operations in multiple places simultaneously. The American leadership, since August 1945, has had a zero percent success rate in predicting where we’re going to go next. As a result, most U.S. national security players hold that we need to provide a capability-based assessment of what we might need, not a threat-based assessment; this gets to fighting multiple combat operations in multiple locations.

If I were still a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I would ask the president “what do you want us to do?” That is the grand strategy question. It is a laughable fallacy for people to criticize the fact that the next 12 militaries in line don’t spend as much as the United States. The next 12 militaries in line are not tasked by their leadership to maintain strategic order on a global scale. Number eight or nine does not have to maintain high-end technologies or maintain the ability for global reach or global power. Whether we want to or not, the United States is looked at as that global power. “Policeman” or “sheriff” is not the right metaphor. The world looks at the United States to be a keeper of order, to be able to deter, dissuade, or persuade—all activities that end up, hopefully, non-kinetic.

On the report’s conclusion that “U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations:” 

From 2001 to today we have spent a significant amount of money that has not been spent on our people, our infrastructure, our operation and maintenance accounts, or on our investment accounts for new equipment.

We can now say we are not looking to be able to conduct major combat operations in multiple locations, but we still want to be able to focus on counterinsurgency, on terrorism, etc and still have some measure of full spectrum capabilities. If you look at the amplitude of the demand on the military throughout recent history, I believe this question will play out interestingly from now through November 2012.

The reason the Army and the Marine Corps were grown to their current strengths was to support the “surge” policy and a larger footprint of the land component in Southwest Asia. With our forces coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, our priorities now are not necessarily large numbers of land forces.That’s especially true when each individual in the American military can cost, before training or equipment, upward to $250,000 per year to maintain. What we have seen is a realization that the Army and Marine Corps cannot be maintained at those levels.

On cyber conflicts:

There are four strategic commons on which all nations operate. International air space, outer space, international waters, and cyberspace are the strategic commons that all activities flow through; this means commercial, travel, banking, banking, etc. Land, being sovereign, does not count. The law of the sea has 300-400 years of precedence, the International Civil Aviation Organization started in the 1940s, and with the modalities of operating in space, there are templates and operating agreements in three of the four strategic commons. What you don’t have is something similar for cybersecurity. That is what EastWest Institute President John Edwin Mroz, I, and others have been banging the drums for: we need to formally address the notion of the rules for that common.

Activities within that cyber common move at the speed of light and are almost infinite in their applicability. Cyber is not a substitute or surrogate for other forms of warfare; it is rather a parallel activity that is interconnected and integrated. The issue is that when a nation is attacked by a non-nation state player within that domain you don’t have the same legalities as when country x and y attack each other on land and sea. There is a real global need for a body of work to get our arms around it.

On the role of nuclear disarmament in modern defense:

There is a desire to find the path to zero nuclear weapons. You won’t find too many senior military officers who would disagree with having a conversation about what it would look like if the major powers would give up nuclear weapons. Is it likely that others would give up existing or developing nuclear weapons? That’s a different question.

Budget realities confront the military with the choice of either spending money on new warheads, upgrading existing systems for warhead and launcher systems, or saving money by not doing any of that. The deficit and debt realities may offer an opportunity to begin those discussions in a more robust manner.

On military pensions:

There is an expectation with the military that if something happens to me the country will take care of my family. That’s a reasonable expectation because we don’t pay soldiers a lot of money. However, there is space to do some work. Most people retire from the military before they are 65. At 65, soldiers enter the funding line for veterans; prior to that they are in the Department of Defense funding line.

There is a window here to have a discussion on payments and benefits.  Is there an expectation that retirement benefits are absolutely free? Some think that, but I do not. Is there an expectation that you will be thrown out on the street when it comes to health care? I don’t believe that for a second, not with what we ask these people to do. I think what you’re seeing in the debate about the expensive military part of the budget is an attempt to see if there is a reasonable way to go forward without breaking the national budget. That’s a good conversation to have.

Photo: "Afghan women voice concerns to coalition" (CC BY 2.0) by DVIDSHUB

Two decades ago, Bill Clinton famously kept himself on message in his successful bid to unseat President George H.W. Bush by repeatedly invoking the phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.” It was Clinton’s ability to convince voters that he could do a better job than Bush in addressing their economic hopes and fears that propelled him to victory. With voters more nervous than ever about their economic future, you’d think the same mantra applies now. Not exactly, though. The phrase simply doesn’t pack the same punch that it did in 1992.

The reason: whether you’re talking about the United States or Europe, the economic crisis is only part of a much larger angst. What’s on people’s minds is leadership—or, more accurately, the lack of leadership. Current political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic inspire less and less confidence and respect just when they need more of both to confront the daunting economic challenges posed by sluggish growth,  ballooning public debt, the tottering euro and the breathtaking pace of technological changes that can be both exhilarating and frightening.

Barack Obama’s approval ratings continue to be stuck below 50 per cent, while the divided results in Iowa demonstrate that no Republican challenger has captured the imagination of voters, even if New Hampshire nearly anoints Mitt Romney as the party’s nominee. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come closest to seizing the mantle of leadership in Europe, warning in her New Year’s address that the continent was facing its “harshest test in decades.”  But she is the subject of dismissive comparisons to her towering predecessors like Helmut Kohl and Konrad Adenauer, with Europeans complaining that they have a historic crisis but no leaders of historic stature to meet it.

Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy—or, as some Europeans joke, “Merkozy”—are leading the effort to impose tough new EU budget discipline. This would apply not only to the most troubled economies like Greece, Spain and Italy but also to the other EU members, except for Britain which is increasingly going its own way. But while such steps are clearly merited, there’s a double danger: harsh austerity measures may not go far enough to get public debt under control, but may go too far in stifling growth. Already, there are predictions that Europe will be mired in another recession this year.

Some economists are concluding that the real culprit is the entire push for a common currency. “The euro should now be recognized as an experiment that failed,” Martin Feldstein, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan, writes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. While rejecting that verdict, even some of the staunchest advocates of European integration concede that failure is a possibility. Noting that China and the U.S. have a lock on the gold and silver medals when it comes to economic performance, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski warns the EU has to prove it still deserves the bronze. Without major internal reforms, he told Newsweek’s Polish edition, “we’ll fall off the podium.”

The crisis in the United States doesn’t look quite as dramatic, which is both good and bad news. The bad news is that, short of the feeling of impending doom, America’s politicians on both sides of the aisle look all too happy to consider 2012 to be a typical election year, where scoring points against each other trumps any impulse to come up with genuine solutions that require bipartisan cooperation.

Europeans traditionally admired the United States for its can-do spirit. Luigi Barzini, Italy’s elegant essayist, wrote in his 1983 book The Europeans that the continent’s inhabitants were always amazed by American attitudes. While Europeans expect to live with problems, he noted, Americans, by contrast, believe “that all problems not only must be solved, but also they can be solved, and that in fact the main purpose of man’s life is the solution of problems.”

Today Europeans bemoan the paralysis in Washington, wondering why that spirit has disappeared. They accurately point out that the U.S. faces many of the same challenges they do—and seems even less capable of deciding what to do about them. On a per capita basis, U.S. public debt ($33,555 in 2011) is higher than that of Germany ($27,750) and France ($33,083) and is only a bit below that of Italy ($37,313) and even Greece ($34,304).

Of course, debt—whether it’s per capita or as a percentage of GDP, where the U.S. still does better than most European countries—is only one measure of where things stand. And the Europeans are the first to admit that the U. S. still has the economic edge for all sorts of reasons—it’s more dynamic and entrepreneurial, less constrained by bureaucracy, and derives the benefits of continued demographic growth that stands in stark contrast to Europe’s unremitting demographic decline. But they have no confidence that they can look to the U.S. for genuine leadership by example when it comes to solving the big economic problems.

Still, there are grounds for guarded optimism. Because Europeans now recognize they are they are standing at the edge of a precipice, they may finally focus their energies on getting things right—finding a way to control runaway debt while promoting growth. Germany has done well within its borders on that score, but now needs to help others do so. Because Americans are more aware than ever that they now face many of the woes that they once ascribed only to Europe and other distant lands, they may demand more from their politicians in this election year—serious proposals about serious issues in a period when rapid technological changes are redefining everyone’s lives, livelihoods and capabilities. In a variety of new forums, like the Affordable World Security Conference that is scheduled for March in Washington, those discussions are already beginning.

As for the politicians, both the incumbents and those seeking to replace them, they’d do well to begin to engage in those discussions rather than merely scoring points against each other. And to take the lead in the search for new strategies and new solutions. Or, to put it bluntly, they should ponder a new mantra: “It’s leadership, stupid.”

Andrew Nagorski is vice president and director of public policy at the EastWest Institute. He is the author of the forthcoming book Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power.

EWI Senior Fellow Najam Abbas appeared on Al Jazeera English Dec. 11 to discuss the developing political situation following the recent Russian elections. Watch the video at Al Jazeera's website.

The lecture, held at EWI's New York Center and moderated by EWI's Andrew Nagorski, was named in honor of the distinguished British diplomat and counterterrorism consultant Ian Cuthbertson, who served in senior roles at both EWI and WPI.

The ongoing turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which many observers at least initially hailed as moves toward democratization, has raised many questions about the potential consequences for international security. Among these concerns is the effect it will have on counterterrorism operations throughout the region, especially in light of the pre-existing relationships between countries undergoing political upheavals and the Western governments most actively targeting terrorist operations. At a fundamental level, there is a sharp divide between many analysts on the question of the relationship between regime type and the prevalence and effectiveness of terrorism. Some argue that the institutions comprising a liberal democracy weaken the potential for terrorist activity and allow for more effective counterterrorism operations, while others maintain that autocratic regimes are more effective at thwarting and minimizing security threats.

Helfstein, who spoke first, is director of research for the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. An advisor to public and private sector organizations, Helfstein has extensively studied the effects of democratic and autocratic transitions from 1970 to 1990. Naureen Chowdhury Fink, who followed Helfstein, is a senior analyst at the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation. Having worked closely with the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) on developing their initiatives in South Asia, Fink offered her expertise on Bangladesh as a case study to understand the impact of regime type on counterterrorism.

The Arab Spring raises the question of whether the security relationships established between Western and MENA autocracies are more effective at combating terrorist activity than new democracies, liberal or not, which come with uncertainty. During the discussion, a consensus quickly arose that reality calls for far more nuance than a simple “yes” or “no” answer.

In the wake of the revolutions, functioning security networks have been thrown out the door and have yet to be replaced. Helfstein noted that the United States has “created a foreign policy in the past based on the notion that democracy actually hinders terrorism, but there are good reasons to question that assumption.” He went on to cite a quantitative analysis of the impact of regime type transitions on terrorism that at least partially discredits the notion that democracy inhibits terrorism.

Speaking about his research on regime transition from 1970–1990, Helfstein pointed out that regimes that transitioned from democracies to autocracies had substantially fewer terrorist acts in the two year period following the transition when compared to the two year period preceding the transition. And in fact, nations that became democracies in that period underwent just the opposite experience: a substantial increase in terrorist attacks in the following two years. Regardless of the optimism generated by images of democratic participation in formerly autocratic regimes, it is clear that the future holds serious challenges for these states.

Fink, a specialist in South Asia, offered her extensive experience as an analyst of counterterrorism in Bangladesh as a case study for the topic. “Democracy has created an inhospitable environment for militancy and terrorism in Bangladesh,” she noted, adding that the majority Muslim nation’s democratic institutions have acted as a “pressure valve” for managing discontent. Bengali democracy, which has been in place since 1972, serves to establish expectations of transparency and accountability from public officials who, should they fail to meet these expectations, can be replaced at the ballot box.

That said, Fink noted that the “violent political culture” found in Bangladesh has threatened the stability of fundamental democratic practices such as the peaceful transition of power, even among members of the same political party.  A major lesson for the Arab Spring is that the abuse of power within democratic institutions can allow alternate narratives of religious extremism and militancy to become more compelling to the populace.

In light of this discussion, the conventional wisdom holding democratic transition as an absolute good proves to be a questionable one. Helfstein said that transitions are usually “jarring events” that “not only impact the political institutions but they impact the social structure of society.” The societal shock produced by regime change can often lead to unpredictable consequences.

Both speakers emphasized the role of culture and social norms. The outcome of a democratic (or autocratic) transition is significantly linked with ingrained social mores that can prove highly resistant to the influence of imposed institutions. The coming months are sure to shed more light on how the current political transitions in the Arab world are influencing the prospects for effective counterterrorism.

Click here to listen to a podcast of the event.

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Many see reason to fret about the fate of Afghan women; there are widespread rumors that the Taliban may be among Bonn’s participants, and it is feared that their agenda will trump the interests of women at the conference. The significant representation of women in the official Afghan delegation to Bonn, however, sets Afghanistan apart as a more inclusive actor, especially when keeping in mind that of the 21 major peace processes from 1992 to 2005, only 2.4 percent of signatories were women.

This inclusiveness was not guaranteed. Rather, it was the result of persistent and persuasive lobbying by Afghan women themselves, including instrumental efforts by members of the EastWest Institute’s Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention.

While the Bonn conference is not a formal peace dialogue, it is foreseen that it will outline a vision for Afghanistan and could reinvigorate the reconciliation process. The 2001 Bonn Conference established a Ministry of Women’s Affairs in addition to the Afghan Human Rights Commission. Bonn 2011 represents a major opportunity to further enshrine gender equality and human rights in Afghanistan’s post-2014 order.

The Afghan Women’s Network hails the delegation as a “big victory for Afghan women.” But female presence at the conference, though an important step in the right direction, does not guarantee sufficient influence. Only the outcomes of the conference will reveal whether women are truly included in the discussion, or whether they are simply appearing for “women’s sake,” without real opportunities to participate. An enduring peace depends on female participation for several reasons.

First, conference conclusions must be deemed legitimate and have the necessary “buy-in” from and sense of ownership among the general populace if they are to contribute to security and prosperity. History has shown that it is not possible for the conditions of a sustainable peace to be determined by a select few. Excluding half of the population from the outset severely diminishes the prospects that future plans will result in broad-based, sustainable peace.

Second, if women lack an active voice, issues that disproportionately affect women and may be key to avoiding future conflict may escape notice. Over 45 conflict situations during the 20 years since the end of the Cold War, only 18 of 300 peace agreements have addressed sexual violence, according to the PeaceWomen Project.

Afghanistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. In a Thomson Reuters Foundation study, 90 percent of women polled feared the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014 would leave them in danger.

Just as the development community has recognized the centrality of women to a country’s economic growth, an inclusive approach to security acknowledges the engagement of women as a prerequisite for peace.

The participation of female delegates, however, is not sufficient to assure peace. Those who label women “natural” peacemakers merely reinforce gender stereotypes that women are innately more cooperative and passive than men—stereotypes blown away by female leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir.

The question of whether women are inherently agents of change is a moot point. The real question is why anyone would needlessly undermine an already fragile process by excluding half of the population.

The meaningful participation of women is one of many crucial requirements for a successful outcome from Bonn. The lack of progress made by traditional power holders in Afghanistan calls for a new approach, one that is inclusive, representative and legitimate. The stakes are too high to continue to expect radically better results in Afghanistan without any change of approach.

Jessica Zimerman is a Coordinator of the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention at the EastWest Institute.