If the upcoming parliamentary elections in Iran were open and democratic, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ruling mullahs would have a lot to worry about. How would you like your allies to face an electorate when, in one of the coldest winters in recent memory, the government has left thousands of people for days or even weeks with no natural gas for heat? When even those in Tehran have suffered rolling blackouts every night for a month, robbing people of electricity and heat for hours at a time? And all this while the country’s major export — oil — is at nearly $100 a barrel?
That kind of breathtaking economic blundering usually costs politicians their jobs. But probably not in Iran. Not in a place where the mullahs can easily toss most reform-minded candidates off the ballot, as they have again this year.
If anything, the state is tightening its grip. One sign: In the midst of an icy winter, women reportedly have been arrested for straying from the edicts of the Islamic fashion police — wearing hats over head scarves, for example, or boots over pants.
Whatever the vote this spring, it is clear that Iran’s economy is faltering. It is failing despite billions upon billions in oil revenues. It is floundering because of a sclerotic, command-and-control system. It is failing, thanks to a hard nudge from two rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and an array of U.S.-led economic measures that have dried up foreign investment and shooed away international banks. A third round of sanctions is in the works and could be passed soon. And after that, we hope, a fourth and a fifth, if the Iranians continue to refuse to suspend their nuclear-enrichment program.
The economic pressure won’t likely stop Tehran’s drive to enrich uranium, a path to building nuclear weapons. The Iranians have come too far and they’re close. They’ve staked their national honor on enriching uranium. They’ve already got 3,000 centrifuges spinning. They’re making progress in mastering the process, even as they cloud the view of international inspectors. This week came disturbing news that Iran has begun to deploy an advanced type of centrifuge that could accelerate its ability to produce nuclear fuel — or fissile material for a bomb.
The startling conclusion of a recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate — that Iran halted its weapons program in 2003 — drained the steam from any international support for a military confrontation with Tehran. Ironically, however, that could backfire on Tehran: If Iranians no longer feel the need to rally around their leaders under the threat of an imminent confrontation with the West, might they now start to look harder at their shambles of an economy, unemployment and inflation in double digits, gasoline rationed, and start to demand more? Might they ask the obvious question: Is the drive to enrich uranium worth it?
There are signs that Ahmadinejad is on increasingly shaky ground, with voters and with the ruling mullahs. He’s been openly criticized in the parliament. Some of his allies have turned against him. In recent weeks, the speakers of the Iranian parliament disclosed that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rebuked Ahmadinejad for opposing parliament-mandated spending on natural gas for remote villagers.
Ahmadinejad was elected on promises to help Iran’s poor, to boost prosperity in the country. He now leads a government that would rather watch its people freeze than give up its nuclear ambitions.
