* Iran’s Dismal Elections
* India’s Strategic Role in the Indian Ocean
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Iran Elections & the Regime’s Defensive Posture
Voter turnout in elections in Iran hit what appears a historic low.
According to unofficial accounts, only about 40 % percent of the electorate cast a ballot last week Friday in separate votes for the country’s national parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the political body that will select the successor to Ayatollah AlI Khamenei, Iran’s 84-year-old supreme leader.
An opposition boycott and widespread disenchantment set the mood, even as the theocratic regime pushed its citizens pushed its citizens to come out to vote (WaPo/The Washington Post/Ishaan Tharoor, March 4).
“If the election is weak, everyone will be hurt,” Khamenei cajoled ahead of the vote last week.” I am not accusing anyone, but I remind everyone that we should look at the elections from the perspective of our national interests” (WaPo).
However, that message did not resonate at all, and even elicited something of a backlash.
The turnout numbers were probably the lowest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomenei and the Islamic regime into power.
The Interior Ministry said that 41 % percent of eligible voters nationwide had cast ballots and that blank ballots constituted only 8 % percent (NYT/Farnaz Fasshi, March 11).
In Tehran, the capital, as little as 25 % percent of the electorate may have voted, while other big cities reported around 30 % percent.
[ There is credible evidence that the government had manipulated the numbers to save face ].
Ordinary Iranians signaled their despair at a miserable economy. Their anger over the repression of landmark protests in 2022, and their cynicism about a regime that disqualified myriad candidates who were not in Khamenei’s hard-line camp from contesting seats.
“Voting has no value when we have no voice, it has no effect on our lives,” Massoud a 26-year-old university student told the Financial Times. “Voting will give sense of security to those who won’t even listen to us once the elections are over. By not voting, at least I can signal that I am not supporting them.”
Khamenei and his loyalists were deeply aware of this potential impact.
Some conservative lawmakers went to the extent of not only urging Iranians to vote, but also to bring 10 friends with them. To rouse up enthusiasm, certain public celebrations – including scenes on social media of supporters of local candidates dancing outside to loud music – were permitted in a country where such displays are otherwise restricted.
The Echo of the 2022 Protest Movement
None of that gave the mullahs in power much of a boost. Iran is still scarred by the fallout from the historic protest movement that followed the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old student, who was in the custody of the morality police for improperly wearing a hijab. News of her death triggered an astonishing social uprising, with women burning their headscarves on the street and many voicing calls not simply for reform of the regime, but for a wholesale overthrow of the ruling clerics.
The demonstrations were met with brutality, with hundreds killed by the security forces and thousands detained.
Numerous activists and civil society figures still languish behind bars. They include Shervin Hajipour, the Grammy award-winning Iranian musician whose song “Baraye” became the unofficial anthem of the protest movement. On the day of the elections, the regime sentenced him to three years in prison for “provoking people to riot to disturb national security.”
Repression – Left, Right & Centre
“Since the protest movement, government crackdowns on free speech and dissent have intensified. Rates of executions increased, conservative laws have been tightened and repressive tactics are on the rise, according to rights groups and activists,” explained WaPo.
“The country’s economy, meanwhile, continues to fail. Prices have soared as the value of the country’s currency has plummeted.”
Even Former Regime Officials Are Critical
Even once-prominent regime officials recognize the unconvincing nature of the elections.
Iran, said former president Mohammad Khatami, according to local media, is “far away from free, participatory and competitive elections.”
He added: “…the majority of Iranians are dissatisfied with the status quo and the present governance and this gives us little hope for the future” (NYT).
A more recent former president, Hassan Rouhani, was disqualified from running for the Assembly of Experts and said the regime’s habit of eliminating anyone outside its chosen candidates will “undermine the nation’s confidence in the system” (WaPo).
When Rouhani was president, he was seen as a potential successor to Khamenei a supposed ‘moderate’ who could more productively work with the West but was also part of the regime’s old guard.
His sidelining demonstrates the extent to which Khamenei and his clique have tightened their grip on the reins of power and further dispensed with the trappings of democracy for which the regime often congratulates itself.
“For years, the autocratic Islamic Republic could claim a small degree of legitimacy by pointing to the existence of a so-called ‘reformist faction’ within the regime,” noted Alex Vatanka, an Iran expert at the Middle East Institute think tank. But Khamenei, he argued, “no longer takes any chances.”
“He is focused on consolidating control in the hands of the very few hardline loyalists whom he wants in positions of power when he eventually dies,” Vatanka wrote. “The Iranian people can see through the mockery and refuse to play Khamenei’s cynical game.”
Weakened Iranian Society
Khamenei has adopted a defensive maneuver at a time when ordinary Iranians are suffering a grim economic toll.
The re-imposition of sanctions by the Trump administration – a move that smashed the nuclear deal brokered between Iran and world powers and has led to Iran once more resuscitating its uranium enrichment capacities – has unquestionably hurt Iranian society.
About 20% percent of the country’s middle class has slumped below the poverty line, while 80 % percent of Iranians rely on some form of government handout.
But the sanctions, argue the authors of a new book critical of the measures, have not put much of a dent in the regime’s control.
Members of the influential, hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have enriched themselves through the black market even as the country’s public-and-private sector companies struggle.
Economic deprivation also may have limited the scope of the uprising in 2022, with few calls for mass strikes at a time of insecurity and a weakened middle class.
“Iran is a great case study to actually look at [ sanctions ] this now-powerful and often used tool of American foreign policy, to examine, does it work and does it not work?” Vali Nasr, one of the book’s co-authors and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies stated to WaPo.
“And what we found is that it works in ways that we don’t want it to work. And it doesn’t work in the ways that we want it to work.”
India’s New Naval Base in the Indian Ocean – And Repercussions
India’s newly commissioned naval base in the Lakshadweep archipelago off the country’s south-west coast is expected to fortify its surveillance of the Indian Ocean and send a strategic message as China [ with the world’s largest navy ] seeks to expand its influence in the greater region (The Straits Times/Nirmala Ganapathy, March 9).
The Indian Navy on March 6 commissioned the base INS Jatayu on Minicoy Island, which is on the southernmost tip of the archipelago and lies near one of the busiest shipping routes from the Red Sea to East Asia. The island is about 400 km south-west of Kochi, in Kerala.
INS Jatayu is the second naval base in Lakshadweep after INS Dweeprakshak on Kavaratti Island.
Navy chief R. Hari Kumar said the new base would be India’s “eyes and ears” like INS Baaz, a military base on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the north-eastern Indian Ocean – with a commanding strategic location to the Strait of Malacca and further to the South China Sea, a bone of contention of China and the littoral states of Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Philipinnes.
Kumar added that it would increase the Indian Navy’s surveillance capacity after a recent surge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden.
It could also have an impact on the activities of the Houthis of Yemen.
On March 6, the Indian Navy rescued 21 crew members after a missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi militants hit a bulk carrier in the Gulf of Aden.
Admiral Kumar added: “The navy’s growing strength is not just to cater for these short-term, ongoing crises, but more importantly to ensure the future balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region.
Plans on Minicoy include an airstrip. The Indian Coast Guard said it is building a new air enclave, which includes a hangar, for its aircraft, to “enhance the reach of air-sea coordinated” operations.
The Maldives: Between the Dragon & the Elephant
The newly commissioned base is also close to the Maldives which has been drawing closer to China under its new President Mohamed Muizzu.
Like the other countries of South Asia, the Maldives is also faced with the basic dilemma of balancing its bilateral relations with the two Asian behemoths.
The Maldives and China on March 6 signed a military pact, under which Muizzu said his country would source “non-lethal” military equipment from China, which would also help train his country’s military.
Muizzu had come to power last September on the back of a campaign promise to remove Indian troops from the country, and had stoked fears that Indian influence had grown under the previous president Ibrahim Solih, who was seen to be friendly towards India.
To his accusations of India being a bully, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said “big bullies don’t provide US $ Dollar 4.5 billion (in aid) when their neighbours are in trouble”, or vaccines, or food.
Major General (Retd.) S.B. Asthana, a global strategic and defence analyst, said the new base would send a “strategic message” that India would continue to bolster its naval capabilities in the Indian Ocean amid the growing closeness between the Maldives and China.
However, “the Chinese will increase their influence in the Indian Ocean” to secure the sea lanes through which its oil supply from the Persian Gulf is transported, he said.
Two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments move through the Indian Ocean.
In the meantime, Sri Lanka has told India it would not allow any Chinese ‘research vessels’ to dock at its ports or go into its exclusive economic zone.
[ A maritime state’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is defined under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and extends up to 200 nautical miles (370 km) immediately offshore from a country’s land coast and in which the sovereign coastal state has exclusive rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources.
In the South China Sea, China disputes the EEZs of all the littoral states].
India’s Security Interests
“The development of these islands (Lakshadweep) and consequent bolstering of the security apparatus there serves India’s maritime interests in the south (of the Indian Ocean), given that the northernmost island of the Maldives is just another 80 km away. And more so, in light of the recent pushback efforts by the Maldives owing to Chinese influence on the current leadership in Male,” said retired vice-admiral Naval Command.
“India plans to bolster the security of its western and southern maritime areas by developing naval infrastructure in the Lakshadweep,” he added.
India has also sought to boost ties with other Indian Ocean island nations. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth on February 29 jointly inaugurated an airstrip and jetty India built on the remote island of Agalega in Mauritius.
“The western Indian Ocean region has acquired considerable strategic relevance over the past two decades for India – and the major powers,” noted C. Uday Bhaskar, director of New Delhi-based think tank Society for Policy Studies.
The importance of the Indian Ocean islands would only assume “greater importance for the operational potential they inherently possess due to their geography,” he said (The Straits Times, Singapore).
[ In comparison, China is reputed to have port facilities in Myanmar and a military base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa striding the Bab el Mandeb, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, where the U.S. also has a base! ].
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
Login to add a comment