Bani-Sadr pays the price
Roger Cooper
The most surprising aspect of Abolhasan Bani-Sadr's political demise is not that the Majlis has declared him 'politically incompetent' and that Ayatollah Khomeini has formally dismissed him from the presidency, but rather that he survived as long as he did. A year ago, only five months after he had obtained 76 per cent of the vote in Iran's first presidential election, he had clearly failed as a politician. But for the outbreak of war with Iraq last autumn he would probably have gone sooner.
Whatever one's attitude to the course of Iran's revolution and Bani-Sadr's ideology the Majlis declaration is undeniably true: Bani-Sadr was politically incompetent. There is no universal truth that a president or a king should be a competent politician, and the reverse is often the case, even in such developed democracies as Switzerland and the United States, but an Iranian president must be a consummate politician or else a figurehead. Bani-Sadr was neither the former nor prepared to be the latter. He was something quite different, an intellectual, the product of a professional religious family — his father was a provincial ayatollah — and the Western educational system, in his case Teheran University and the Sorbonne. His anti-Shah credentials were impeccable, and his pre-revolutionary links with Khomeini made him an ideal candidate for the presidency. As an economic theoretician he was thought qualified to restructure the shattered economy, another asset in a country where material considerations are as important as formal religion. Despite these advantages his landslide election was not a true personal triumph. He won because Khomeini wanted him to win, and in almost so many words said so in public, much as he gave the green light to the Islamic Republican Party's victory in the parliamentary elections that followed. At the eleventh hour the IRP presidential candidate was disqualified on the ground that his father was an Afghan. The disqualification was unjust and was clearly aimed at smoothing the path for Khomeini's proteg6. If Bani-Sadr had been even a mediocre politician he might have built himself a party, either before or after his election. All he did was to make long and boring speeches in a whining nasal voice and write a sour-grapes newspaper column in which he chronicled his own powerlessness, thus further eroding his personal prestige and that of the presidency.
The final stitch in his shroud — Muslims do not use coffins — came when he appealed to his supporters to rise against the tyranny of the regime, a virtual head-on challenge to Khomeini himself. His courage and idealism may be admired, but this was an act of supreme political folly. Even with his strong links with the armed forces he could not realistically have hoped for a coup, having himself presided last summer over the purging of just those elements in the military who might have staged one. Now his whereabouts are unknown, a warrant has been issued for his arrest and he is reported as having fled to Egypt. Although President Sadat would welcome him — and almost any opponent of Khomeini — with great warmth, it is unlikely that he would choose Cairo as a haven. There the Shah died and is buried and there it was that the Shah's eldest son proclaimed himself Reza Shah IT last year. However much Bani-Sadr may have fallen out with the present leaders of Iran it is unthinkable that he would ally himself with the remnants of the Pahlavis, and this is how his going to Cairo would be interpreted by ordinary Iranian's.
His main problem, though, is probably how to get out of Iran as soon as possible. Only two months ago he could count on the Ayatollah's support, despite his deteriorating position. Today he would be justifiably afraid that if he did give himself up his opponents might try him — or just execute him — for treason. And even if his life were spared, what outlets would there be for him as a 'thinker and writer', the role Khomeini has proposed for him?
The men who now wield formal power in Iran, at least until a new president is elected, which the constitution says must happen within 50 days, have been exercising it in practice for almost a year. They are Mohammad Ali Rajai, the former maths teacher who became prime minister against Bani-Sadr's wishes, the Majlis speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Mohammad Beheshti, head of the supreme court and leader of the IRP. Rajai, whose only political experience before coming premier was as minister of education, when he supervised the sexual segregation of schools and the Islamicisation of text-books, was described by Bani-Sadr, justifiably one would think, as unqualified. He appears to be a yes-man for Beheshti, who is more powerful in day-to-day matters even than Khomeini. Both Rafsanjani and Beheshti are senior clerics, and the latter is an ayatollah.
Opponents of the regime, even those who were sympathetic to Bani-Sadr as 'the best of a bad lot', now claim to be pleased with his dismissal. They argue that the constant bickering between the liberals and the fundamentalist Islamic Republicans was preventing a show-down between 'the people' and 'the regime'. Now, they say, the decks are cleared and the real struggle can begin. This is wishful thinking. True, the fundamentalists can no longer directly blame Bani-Sadr's camp for failures — economic or military — though 'plotters' and 'counterrevolutionaries' can always be found as scapegoats. But there is no certainty that a direct confrontation will now result.
Predicting the future in Iran is never easy, but it seems likely that the presidential triumvirate will now purge all organisations — ministries, the armed forces, the banks — where pro-Bani-Sadr elements exist. They have already started this process by executing 23 people within days of the street fighting called for by the president's men. These were mainly sentenced under that useful charge so popular with Judge Khalkhali. ('Corruption on earth and waging war on Allah. Guilty. Take him away. Next one please.') This reign of revolutionary terror could sustain the IRP in power for many months. Without a leader even as weak a one as Bani-Sadr, there is no chance for the liberal opposition in the foreseeable future.
Not all the opposition is liberal, of course. The two main groups that seem set on a collision course with the regime are the Mojahedin-e Khalq and the Fedayin -e Khalq, both well armed and disciplined. The Fedayin, openly Marxist, and the Mojahedin , who try to marry Marxist ideas with Islam, have suffered repeated maulings from the IRP's heavies, the so-called Hezbollahis ('members of the party of God'). These street thugs can be relied on to deal with any liberals, women's rightists or other counter-revolutionaries who dare to protest in public, and are the lineal descendants of the men used by the CIA to topple Mossadeq and by the Shah to deal with student demonstrations. Both these extreme-left guerrilla groups, now underground but only just below the surface, have a strong following among urban youth, and in Iran more than half the population is under 20.
It is odd how quickly we became used to thinking of Bani-Sadr as a liberal or moderate. As minister of economy he nationalised the banks and insurance companies without compensation, his record on human rights was questionable, and his political beliefs were scarcely pro-Western. But his open opposition to the hostagetaking made him look civilised, realistic and someone we could identify with. This is more than can be said of his successors, though even they may in time look like men of reason if Iran continues on its present course. After the Islamic Republicans, after Khomeini, who knows what is next in store for Iran?
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