Mottaki: Iran's Tariq Aziz - The Norm With All Authoritarian Regimes That Search For Legitimacy
18 December 2010By Tariq Alhomayed
Around two years ago recently ousted Iranian Foreign
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Lebanese Prime
Minister Saad Hariri that "we have repeatedly invited
you to visit Tehran and you have yet to visit, however
let me tell you that it takes between five and thirty
years to manufacture a Persian carpet…so we are
patient." At the time, Hariri smiled and said "true,
but it only takes you five minutes to sell the
carpet!" It seems that Mottaki has today understood
this golden concept after he was sacked by Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whilst on an official
visit to Senegal.
Iran today is not a center of strength so much as it
is a center for great internal conflict, and this
internal conflict is beginning to be transported
outwards as is the norm with all authoritarian regimes
that search for legitimacy. However does Ahmadinejad's
removal of Mottaki as Iran's foreign minister come as
a surprise?
Of course not, and we must not rule out Ahmadinejad
himself being removed at any time, for it is clear
that the power struggle within Iran is still ongoing.
It is true that some believe that Ahmadinejad's
position has been strengthened with the removal of
Mottaki, however some victories turn into defeats, and
the removal of prominent government figures could
strengthen the anti-Ahmadinejad front in Tehran,
especially as the economic sector there is suffering
and the religious figures behind Ahmadinejad do not
have a strong or united position. This is not to
mention the division in the Iranian street on
Ahmadinejad's presidency, and the recent criticism
that he has received from some figures within the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
When we say that Mottaki being fired is not
surprising, there is a simple reason for this, which
is that the former Iranian Foreign Minister was
supposed to improve the image of a regime that does
not emerge from a political crisis without embroiling
itself in a worse one. From the nuclear negotiations
file to the crisis with its Arab Gulf neighbors – the
extent and intensity of this crisis was revealed in
the leaked US diplomatic cables – to other crises, the
least of which is what happened with regards the
smuggled weapons in Nigeria.
Mottaki's role was to achieve the impossible, just
like the role of Tariq Aziz during the Saddam Hussein
era. It was up to Mottaki to free his country from
political crises and improve its reputation, whilst at
the same time Ahmadinejad did not miss an opportunity
to provoke a crisis; saying that Iran wanted to wipe
Israel off the map, or taking every possible
opportunity to talk about attacking the US, or
rejecting the issuance of any peaceful statement with
regards to the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.
Anybody who looks at the period in which Mottaki was
Iran's foreign minister will understand this
completely, for example there was the incident when
Ahmadinejad said that the elimination of the USA and
England from the FIFA World Cup was a punishment for
their government's imposing of economic sanctions upon
Tehran. These are not the words of a seasoned
politician, but rather a statement that you might
expect to hear whilst sitting in a coffee-shop.
Whilst it is true that Mottaki never smoked a cigar in
front of the cameras in the same manner that Tariq
Aziz did, he may want to try this today. As for us,
our role is to monitor what is being said from inside
Iran, for it seems that these days are full of
surprises, and nobody can know what is going to happen
there and whether this change will be positive or
negative.
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EsinIslam.Com
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