No-chance challenger undercuts Ahmadinejad

Michael Theodoulou, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: May 06. 2009 11:00PM UAE / May 6. 2009 7:00PM GMT

He once told Israeli officials that Iran was not ready to recognise Israel but would avoid confronting it directly or through proxies.

Today Mohsen Rezai says if elected president he is willing to co-operate with Washington on regional security matters.

But the former head of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and conservative challenger to Iran’s hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has little chance of winning the June 12 elections. Opinion polls give the dour and uncharismatic Mr Rezai less than 10 per cent of the vote.

Even if successful, Mr Rezai would not get to meet the US president, Barack Obama. Since 2007, Mr Rezai has been one of five Iranian officials sought by Interpol for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Argentina that killed 85 people.

Iran has always denied any involvement and refused to surrender the suspects, dismissing allegations by Argentine prosecutors as political fabrications resulting from US and Israeli pressure.

Of Iran’s four main presidential contenders, Mr Rezai is perhaps the most enigmatic, embodying many of the contradictions in the Iranian system. Despite his electoral weakness, however, his candidacy is problematic for Mr Ahmadinejad.

Mr Rezai’s nettlesome challenge highlights splits within the conservative camp and he could siphon votes from Mr Ahmadinejad, weakening his defence against the two strong reformist challengers, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi.

Mr Rezai, 57, launched a ferocious attack on Mr Ahmadinejad at a press conference this week, accusing him of driving the Islamic Republic to the edge of a “precipice”. He lambasted the incumbent’s economic mismanagement, said his questioning of the Holocaust had “no benefit”, and scorned as “adventurous” Mr Ahmadinejad’s nuclear rhetoric.

Mr Rezai, a father of five, argues that his tenure as IRGC chief during the war with Iraq gives him the managerial experience needed to run the country. At 27, he became the IRGC’s leader in 1981, holding the post until 1997 when he joined Iran’s highest political arbitration mechanism, the Expediency Council, now serving as its secretary.

Yesterday, with an eye to wooing sceptical women voters, he appointed a granddaughter of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, father of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, as his women’s issues campaign adviser.

“I will appoint a woman as my foreign minister to challenge [US Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton,” Mr Rezai pledged plaintively this week.

Mr Rezai enjoys some support among war veterans and in his home region in the Khuzestan region in south-western Iran.

But the two reformist candidates are expected to fare far better in the area, which is impoverished despite its huge oil wealth. Nor can Mr Rezai expect significant support from the IRGC, where he is liked by just one faction.

As an IRGC commander committed to the preservation of the Islamic system, Mr Rezai was necessarily an ideologue.

But protecting the system required flexibility and Mr Rezai, regarded as a moderate conservative, has a proven pragmatic streak.

That was demonstrated in the spring of 2003 following the US’s swift overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Iran was encircled by hostile American troops and felt deeply vulnerable.

The jittery Iranian leadership hastily drafted an unprecedented offer of a “grand bargain” to Washington, addressing all key points of contention, including Iran’s nuclear programme.

Effectively, Iran also would accept a two-state solution for Israel and the occupied territories, and help stabilise Iraq.

Tehran in turn wanted an end to sanctions and guarantees the US would not attempt to overthrow or undermine the Islamic regime.

Weeks before delivering the offer, Tehran tried to ensure Israel would not scotch the plan by making similar proposals to the Jewish state.

Iran’s point-man for this delicate task was Mr Rezai, who as IRGC commander had given aid and advice to Hizbollah, which caused Israel much pain and humiliation in Lebanon.

At a meeting in Athens, Mr Rezai told Israeli officials that Iran would moderate its position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by adopting a “Malaysian” or “Pakistani” profile: Iran would not recognise Israel but neither would it challenge or confront it. Hizbollah, too, would be reined in.

One well-sourced account of the remarkable meeting is given by Trita Parsi in his 2007 book Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States. Israel in return would not oppose a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington and would recognise Iran’s role in the region.

A well-informed Iranian source said Mr Rezai also told the Israelis that the Jewish state was not “Iran’s biggest strategic threat – Pakistan is”.

The Israelis were intrigued, but the Iranian proposals, together with their US “grand bargain” offer, were promptly rejected by hardliners in Washington and Tel Aviv.

The insurgency in Iraq had yet to ignite and there was hubris in Washington.

Neo-conservatives in the Pentagon and the US vice-president saw the Iranian offer as a sign of weakness. Their response, according to Dr Parsi, was final: “We don’t talk to evil.”


mtheodoulou@thenational.ae