The “Velvet Revolution” of Iranian Puritan Hardliners

Abstract

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2005 victory in Iran's presidential elections baffled foreign political circles in the same way that the rise to power of President Khatami-who preceded him-befuddled western diplomats and analysts.1 During the campaign, opinion polls indicated that Ahmadinejad had very little chance to emerge triumphant in the elections. Political analysts, consequently, paid little or no attention to him. After the election, however, many concluded that Ahmadinejad's victory proved how little the west knew about Iranian politics.Immediately after his election, Ahmadinejad's sensational and controversial stances towards Israel and the US alarmed the international community and marred the former Khatami's government's efforts at confidence building with the west.All the while, erroneous, sensational, and often misleading information presented on Ahmadinejad-mostly for publicity purposes-depict a simple picture of him, and complicate the international community's interactions with the new government.This article attempts to offer an in-depth understanding of the new government's policies by examining Ahmadinejad's personality, the powers that support him, and the conditions conducive to the rise to power of a puritan, hardline non-clergy candidate who took the reins of power from a reformist cleric.AHMADINEJAD'S CHILDHOODAhmadinejad was born in 1956 in the village of Aradan in the city of Garmsar into a poor, religious family. His father, whom he adored, exposed him to early religious education and regularly took him to the mosque. To find employment, his family moved to Tehran with one-year-old Mahmoud and his three siblings. He completed his primary and high school education in Tehran. In 1975, during Mohammad Reza Shah's regime, he passed the extremely difficult university entrance exam with high marks, and began graduate work at the Science and Technology University (Elm & Sanat, or S&T), one of the country's best universities.AHMADINEJAD'S UNIVERSITY PERIODHe swiftly got involved in university party politics, but his pre-revolution activism was not of such great magnitude as to place him in jail. At that time, the S&T University's Islamic Association was actually more politically and religiously conservative than those of many other contemporary universities in Tehran. Even after the revolution, religious radicalism was not the predominant force in the association, as it was at other universities in the capital.During the revolution, revolutionary organizations such as the Mujahideen Khalq and Chereekhaye Fadaee Khalq found success in recruiting young students by appealing to their anti-imperialist and justice-seeking collective impulses. Meanwhile, the liberal cabinet of Mehdi Bazargan-Iran's first post-revolution prime minister-was unable to meet the radical demands of the younger generation, leaving them prey to leftist propaganda. Thus the Islamic Association of Universities decided to take matters in its own hands, and strove to wipe out their rivals. The US embassy takeover was meant to serve as one such step against both the liberal government and the political left.Representatives from the Islamic associations of various Tehran universities met secretly to discuss the idea put forward by Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, Mohsen Mirdamadi, Bitaraf, and Reza Seifullahi. They decided to stage a demonstration in Algiers to object to Mehdi Bazargarfs meeting with US National security Advisor Zbigniew Brezhenski, and a sit-in strike in the US embassy courtyard in Tehran to protest the Shah's presence in the US. The sit-in strike ultimately turned into the US embassy takeover. In these secret meetings, representatives of the S&T University, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had opposed the measure on the grounds that other big powers might retaliate against Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ahmadinejad further argued that if the US embassy was to be occupied, the Soviet embassy should be occupied too. …