TO EXPORT, OR NOT TO EXPORT?
Since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the idea of "exporting the revolution" – spreading Iran's aggressive brand of Shi'a political Islam beyond the country's borders – has been a cardinal tenet of Iranian government, upheld by successive rulers and lionized by Iran's clerical elite. But now, one of the Iranian regime's own appears to have called the nature of that principle into question. “What did Imam Khomeini mean by exporting the revolution?” former president Mohammad Khatami asked publicly of his supporters during a sermon in early May. “Did he mean that we take up arms, that we blow up places in other nations and we create groups to carry out sabotage in other countries?”
Khatami's words have touched off a political firestorm. The conservative Kayhan newspaper has accused him of tarnishing the "shining reputation of the Islamic Republic" and providing the West with fodder for their "baseless accusations" against Iran. A number of Iranian politicians, meanwhile, are said to be planning to lodge a formal protest against Khatami with Iran's feared intelligence ministry.
Iran’s current president, meanwhile, appears to have very different ideas from his predecessor. “We need to rebuild Iran as soon as possible. There is little time,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an audience of clerics in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad in early May. “We need to take care of Iran as soon as possible and start taking the global responsibility of the [Islamic] Revolution.” “We must remember that our main duty and the main objective to be realized as a result of all these efforts is inviting humanity towards the path of the righteous Imam,” Ahmadinejad told the assembled religious leaders. “We have no other mission than this.” (London Financial Times, May 8, 2008; Tehran Channel One, May 8, 2008)
NOT SO QUIET ON THE ECONOMIC FRONT
For months, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's economic policies have been the source of deepening domestic friction. Numerous public intellectuals in Iran have spoken out against Ahmadinejad's management of the national economy, holding him for Iran's recent fiscal decline. Even the president's own Economy and Finance Minister, Davoud Danesh Jaafari, termed the Iranian government's economic policies to be "unscientific" – a comment for which he was summarily sacked back in April.
All this criticism has not caused the Iranian president to have a change of heart, however. To the contrary, Ahmadinejad appears to have decided that – if anything – his stewardship has not been progressive enough. On May 13th, his government announced an arbitrary change in the national banking rate to between 10 and 12 percent, well below the country's current level of inflation. The move earned Ahmadinejad the ire of Tahmasb Mazaheri, the head of Iran's central bank, who has publicly declared that a 10 percent interest rate "cannot be imposed." (Agence France Presse, May 15, 2008)
[Editor's Note: If enacted, the proposed rate cut would be the second of its kind during Ahmadinejad’s tenure. Last spring, the Iranian president cut bank interest rates from between 14 and 17 percent to 12 percent, spurring a major outcry among economists and financial analysts. The move is all the more controversial because, even as the Iranian government continues to slash rates, domestic inflation continues to creep steadily upward – resulting in what many analysts predict will be ever greater economic instability.]
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