An Iranian "Third Way"?

Millions of Iranians are out at the polls today, selecting a new parliament. It'll take awhile before the results are in and trends can be conclusively discerned. But I think it's likely that the outcome will somehow lead to a Third Way in Iranian politics.

The last decade has been dominated by nasty battles between Iran's populist reformist movement and entrenched hard-line forces at the core of the Iranian regime. Neither of these sides has been able to achieve very much, and Iranians are getting fed up with both of them.

President Mohammed Khatami's election in 1997 ushered the reformist movement into power. But his eight years in office left the reformist camp deeply disillusioned, partly because hard-liners successfully blocked most of Khatami's initiatives, and because reformists themselves became upset that Khatami and his allies didn't fight harder for their principles. Khatami's answer to that was that the hard-liners were too powerful and dangerous, and that pushing any harder risked plunging the country into a civil war of sorts.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in 2005 was a turning of the tide in favor of Iranian hard-liners, ideologues who advocate a militant, nationalist foreign policy and intervention by the state in economic decisions to benefit the poor, religious classes of Iranian society--i.e., the bedrock of the regime's support. Ahmadinejad's policies haven't worked very well, either. His militant foreign policy has dangerously isolated Iran from the West, bringing economic sanctions and choking off badly needed foreign investment and partnership. His egalitarian domestic policies have driven up unemployment as well as inflation.

A serious problem with this political stalemate is that it is turning off Iranian citizens. Hard-liners don't have vast popular support in Iran. Reformists have huge potential support, especially among the young. Yet, as long as hard-line bodies rig the elections by keeping reformist candidates off the ballot, this support stays at home on election day. Over time, that apathy will become the biggest threat to the future of the Islamic regime.

Iran's traditional conservatives therefore may be the biggest winners in today's election. They are certain to win a substantial number of seats in the new parliament, and could therefore become the most important opposition to Ahmadinejad's policies. If they succeed, one of their own may then emerge as an effective challenger to Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections.

That scenario could see an important turnaround in Iran's foreign policy, at a time when a new American president is getting settled in at the White House. Iran's traditional conservatives are pragmatic rather than strictly ideological in their outlook. Make no mistake: they are strong believers in the Islamic system, and they don't have much time for the democratic transformation of Iran that many reformists seek. But they seek a strong, vibrant Iran that is a leader in the world, and believe that one way to achieve that is through international cooperation and pragmatic policies. They would be more flexible about accommodating international concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions, and more amenable to addressing U.S. strategic interests.

The next leader of Iran--perhaps Ali Larijani or Hassan Rowhani, both of whom are former nuclear negotiators, or Tehran Mayor Mohammed Qalibaf-- may well be somebody who the next President of the U.S. "could do business with," to borrow Thatcher's '80s phrase about Gorbachev. That could be one of the eventual results of today's election. That's all very hypothetical, of course, but worth keeping an eye on.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo