Ekklesia, UK
June 25 2005

Iran’s new president a blow to US foreign policy -25/06/05

The landslide victory of the conservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, in Iran’s presidential poll has thwarted US hopes of a
satisfactory resolution to the nuclear standoff between the two
nations. It has also challenged the effectiveness of America’s
aggressive foreign policy stance in the region.

Western analysts were caught off guard by the scale of the defeat of
moderate ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose political
pragmatism and dialogue with progressive students over
democratisation held out hopes for further change in Iran.

Mr Ahmadinejad won the run-off in the two-stage election with 62 per
cent of the 22 million votes cast on a turnout of 47 per cent. The
average turnout in the two contests was 55 per cent. US commentators
immediately claimed that this `low poll’ questions the legitimacy of
the result, which was not one they expected or wanted.

But Tehran has hit back by pointing out that even the comparatively
high 2004 US federal turnout of 60 per cent was lower than Iran’s
first round figure of 62% – and that the 2000 American election was
`won’ by the presidential candidate with fewer votes amidst
widespread rigging allegations and a poll of just over 51 per cent.

Though US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has to some extent
mitigated her tough ideological image through straight talking
diplomacy, the overall image of the US – especially in the Muslim
world – has continued to plummet in recent months.

President Bush’s confrontational foreign policy based on military
intervention is widely seen as having backfired – with the insurgency
in Iraq claiming hundreds of lives each week, a recent CIA report
admitting the emergence of a new breed of mobile Islamic jihadists,
the Taleban reconfiguring in Afghanistan, and now a serious reversal
of the reform movement in Iran.

European nations, many of them sceptical or hostile towards the
US-led invasion of Iraq, have long been urging a more open and
pragmatic approach towards Iran on the part of the White House. But
they have mostly been ignored.

Regional commentators say that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory is due
to a number of factors – his appeal to poor voters and those opposing
corruption, his defiance of what is seen as US aggression, and his
positioning as an Iranian nationalist aligned to conservative Islamic
forces but not imprisoned by them.

The US State Department declared a few hours ago that the result was
`out of step with moves towards democracy in the region.’ They are
also pointing towards 300 complaints about voting irregularities
raised by Rafsanjani backers.

A spokesperson for the new Iranian president declared: `The US
position is unprincipled. To them a country is only democratic if it
elects people they agree with.’

Christians and other minority groups in Iran are wondering what the
future will hold for them under the new, hard-line presidency.

The majority of Iran’s 250,000 Christian population are members of
the Armenian Orthodox Church, with others belonging to Assyrian
Church of the East. There are also small numbers of Chaldean
Catholics, Anglicans and Protestants.

Persians, Parthians and Medes were among the first new Christian
converts at Pentecost. Since then there had been a continuous
minority Christian presence in Iran.

The Armenian Church has a recognised status, though its activities
are carefully controlled. Protestant Christianity is seen as
Western-aligned and treated accordingly.