Qalibaf on the Rise: Possible Future Presidential Rival to Ahmadi-Nejad Interviewed by Time

It is presently fashionable amongst commentators to place Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the current mayor of Tehran, as part of a 'moderate conservative' faction gathering momentum with support from the conservative establishment based in Qom and from individuals largely indifferent to the competing trends of reformism and populism, whom instead only desire their real disposable income to have greater spending power and inflationary pressures to be alleviated. His preference for economic liberalization and opposition to the populist economic policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, whose economic policies have been blamed for the precipitous increase in inflation, and whose incendiary rhetoric has been deemed partially responsible for the rapid deterioration of Iranian relations with the West, above all the EU-3, has transformed Qalibaf into a darling, along with Ali Larijani, of the conservative establishment.

Although for Iranian reformists this can hardly be called a heartening development, it seems that with the consolidation of the 'conservative pragmatists' the Islamic Republic is caught in a double-bind of sorts. On the one hand, with the deregulation of markets, the privatization of state-run industries, and the liberalization of Iran's economic relations with the region, China, Russia and the West, political and cultural hegemony ceases to reside with any one source. Such fiat has steadily been under subtle attack for some time and there is simply no way of reversing this dominant trend, no matter how much those on the right such as the Mesbah-Yazdi's of this world may continue to kick and scream.

The Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels famously said that 'I reach for my pistol whenever I hear the world 'culture''. It seems that the deflation of Qom's cultural hegemony (not that it ever possessed such an all-encompassing hegemony) in tandem with the ongoing process of economic liberalization will continue the gradual creep that is undermining the establishment's supremacy, even though the whole situation often seems extremely bleak and devoid of hope.

The other part of the double-bind is that if the Islamic Republic refuses to provide economic prosperity and a better standard of living for the Iranian people its fate is equally sealed. This is exactly why an American attack against Iran would be disastrous, because the erosion of the unquestioned power of the regime has been underway for some time and will continue unabated and in the same graduated fashion as long as Iran and its markets remain open and in a relation of reciprocity to the outside world.

A policy of containment built to ensure the preponderance of Iran's international isolation as a pariah state prevents any such prospect and in fact allows the reactionary elements within Iran to shore up power as they can foist blame for the economic downturn on Iran's enemies, stir up nationalist sentiment, and entrench a sense of victimhood and the 'us versus them' mentality, which demagogues, whether they be in Iran or the US know so ably how to exploit. The gross failure of American policy with respect to Cuba, North Korea and Iraq clarifies the the issue perfectly. The more regimes reckoned reprehensible have been shunted out and excluded from the international community, the more they have closed in on themselves and meandered away from the path of reform.

To read the interview click below:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1723250-2,00.html