Iran raises the stakes - SIR 7 June 2007

The current campaign against suspected dissidents and dual nationals by the Iranian authorities has echoes of the purges and hostage-taking that followed in the wake of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In part, Tehran’s crackdown is a logical response to US calls for ‘regime change’, but recent events are raising fears that the Islamic Republic is about to launch a wide-ranging battle against reformers, human rights advocates, and even ordinary citizens who hold foreign passports or who have links with the West.

The latest developments should be seen in the context of the two imperatives driving Iranian foreign policy: Tehran’s ambitions to be the key regional power amid the continuing chaos in Iraq, and the insecurity of the ultra-hardliners grouped around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who fear – not without reason – that Washington is plotting to foment internal instability by using Iranian proxies funded through a murky network of international charities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In certain respects, there are noteworthy parallels to be drawn between the prevailing point of view in Tehran and in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.

There can be no doubt that the Ahmadinejad administration fears the rise of internal political dissent, although the moderate reformers who backed former president Mohammed Khatami pose little real challenge to the regime. Many of the reformers’ core supporters have become so disillusioned with the failure to achieve rapid, durable change that they have dropped out of politics altogether. Others have moved abroad convinced that reform is now impossible.

However, the real domestic challenge to Tehran is likely to come from the Islamic Republic’s ‘Achilles’ heel’ – the country’s substantial ethnic minority communities which together make up an estimated 40 percent of Iran’s 69 million population. These ethnic groups include Arabs and Kurds, as well as smaller numbers of Ahwazis and Baluchis. Ahmadinejad and his security chiefs are now certain that some armed separatist movements are being funded covertly by foreign donors, including the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), although Washington has always maintained that it does not support terrorist activity in Iran.

Amid the growing conviction among Iranian hardliners that the US and its allies, including Britain, are intent on destablising the Islamic Republic in pursuit of eventual ‘regime change’, the recent arrests of dual nationals should hardly come as a surprise. Since May, several high profile academics and journalists have been detained while visiting Iran, including Haleh Esfandiari, director of the US-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars’ Middle East programme, Parnaz Azima, a journalist with US-funded Radio Farda and social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh. All three hold dual US-Iranian citizenship, although Tehran does not recognise them as US nationals.

With a wider probe of other Iranians with foreign links or passports underway, further arrests and possible trials of detainees on charges which could include espionage or what Tehran is terming "anti-revolutionary activities" cannot be ruled out. To the outside world, the detention of internationally known dual-nationals appears akin to hostage taking. However, parallels are also being drawn to the arrest of five Iranian citizens – including senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials – by US forces in neighbouring Iraq in January.

As relations between the US and its allies on one side and Iran on the other continue to deteriorate over a range of issues – including Tehran’s nuclear programme and its alleged support for militant Shia groups in Iraq – stepping up internal pressure on the Iranian regime is increasingly high on Washington’s agenda. One school of thought among US policy makers is that the Bush administration should consider lifting the terrorist designation imposed on the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) organisation. This group, which is also known in English as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), is believed to have several thousand armed guerrillas based in Iraq and a long history dating back to the era of the late Shah of Iran.

One of the key problems with the MEK is that it enjoyed close relations with, and funding from, Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq until 2003. Although MEK guerrillas agreed a ceasefire with US forces after the invasion, the group remains listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) by the US State Department, as well as by the European Union (EU). Pressure to remove the MEK from this list has recently been stepped up, and a recent demonstration in London organised by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) – a political group of exiles opposed to the Islamic Republic – called on the British government to rethink its ban.

Whether such groups are capable of posing a serious threat to Ahmadinejad’s regime is doubtful. Support for the MEK in Iraq has been falling and although some sources close to the movement claim that it can call on a force up to 50,000 strong, recent intelligence estimates suggest that the guerrillas’ real strength is now less than 5,000, with some analysts suggesting that the group may actually be even smaller. However, the very existence of the MEK is useful to Tehran in that it provides a conveniently shadowy entity which can be blamed for internal incidents, as well as being easy to label as consisting of ‘traitors’ and the agents of foreign powers.

Other leading analysts are calling for a more fundamental assessment of US policy towards the Islamic Republic. For example, in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs, Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations suggested that the long-standing US policy of ‘containment’ has failed. Instead, Takeyh proposes an alternative strategy: "Acknowledging that Iran is a rising power, the United States should open talks with a view to creating a framework to regulate Iran’s influence, displaying a willingness to coexist with Iran while limiting its excesses. In other words, Washington should embrace a policy of détente."

According to Takeyh "despite his deep religious convictions, Ahmadinejad is not a messianist seeking to usher in a new world order; he is a canny manipulator trying to rouse public indignation in a chaotic neighbourhood". He also points out that "by offering the pragmatists in Tehran a chance to resume diplomatic and economic relations with the United States, it could help them sideline the radicals and tip Iran’s internal balance of power in their favour".

This point of view appears diametrically opposed to the current view in Washington which seems to favour using covert measures to undermine Ahmadinejad. However, given that there seems to be no realistic prospect of triggering a widespread anti-clerical uprising against the hardline leadership of the Islamic Republic, there are serious risks inherent in channelling – directly or via proxies – funds originating in the US to Iranian opposition groups, particularly those regarded by most of Washington’s own allies as terrorist organisations. An alternative model could be to encourage and widen existing divisions between the pragmatic conservatives grouped around former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the hardline Islamist radicals loyal to Ahmadinejad whose excesses are causing mounting concern among the country’s most senior leaders, including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Another major problem for Tehran is that the recent arrests of dual nationals risks fuelling the already serious ‘brain drain’ of talent from the country. This is not a new problem. Many wealthy or well educated Iranians fled Iran following the 1979 revolution and this trend has continued with one source estimating that as many as half of the Islamic Republic’s best young scientists leave the country, with around 75% of those who leave heading to the US. A report last year for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revealed that Iran had the highest rate of ‘brain drain’ of any of the 90 countries assessed during the study – a cost in terms of human capital that may be losing the Islamic Republic as much as $40 billion annually according to the Iranian government’s own estimates.

Moreover, some long-term émigrés have returned home for regular visits in recent years and there has also been an upsurge in Iranians participating in programmes run by international organisations. All this could now be in doubt owing to the current detentions in Tehran.

With the Iranian authorities seemingly set on launching a widespread purge of dual nationals – and potentially any Iranians with foreign contacts – the country may face an accelerating loss of intellectual capital. Inward investment, particularly by Iranians who are resident abroad, is also likely to decline as dual passport holders stay away for fear of being detained on suspicion of spying or treason. SIR.