The Latter-Day Sultan
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/ 20081001essay87604/akbar-ganji/ the-latter-day-sultan.html
By Akbar Ganji
Reviewed by Michael Hornblow, associate editor

In the Washington Post, David Ignatius has been predicting that the United States will establish an Interests Section in Tehran after the election, and one does sense that something is happening behind the scenes, a diplomatic mating ritual, that may lead to increased dialogue and contacts. 

Iran of course has become a major foreign policy issue, one that is much discussed in the presidential campaign. When we discuss U.S.-Iranian relations the focus is usually on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a useful article in the current Foreign Affairs, Akbar Ganji, a leading journalist/dissident, reminds us that this focus is misplaced, as it exaggerates Ahmadinejad's importance.

Ganji stresses that formally or not Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is Iran's head of state, commander in chief, and top ideologue. Since 1989 the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government have all operated under his absolute sovereignty. He has a complete stranglehold on power in Iran, according to Ganji, and has the power to sack Ahmadinejad.

Ganji believes Iran today is not a totalitarian or fascist state but a neosultanate. Quoting Max Weber, Ganji suggests that Sultanism is both traditional and arbitrary and "expresses itself largely through recourse to military force and through an administrative system that is an extension of the ruler's household and court." According to Weber, "sultans promote or demote officials at will, they rob state bodies of their independence of action and infiltrate them with their proxies and they marshal state economic resources to fund an extensive apparatus of repression." Ganji states that this describes Khamenei.

Ganji notes that even if Ahmadinejad loses next year's presidential election, Iran's policies will not change. Yet Iran and the United States have tried occasionally to improve relations. At the 2001 session of the UN General Assembly, President Clinton reportedly waited outside a UN men's room to shake President Khatami's hand, but gave up when Khatami lingered inside. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Tehran cooperated with Washington and welcomed the fall of the Taliban government in Kabul. In the spring of 2003, with Khamenei's approval, the Iranians delivered an unsigned letter to the Swiss embassy in Tehran suggesting that the Iranian government would contemplate recognizing Israel, reining in the region's radical organizations, and proposing a security plan for the Persian Gulf. The Bush administration, according to Ganji, disregarded the offer, and the Iranian Government interpreted this brush-off to mean that after Iraq, it was Iran's turn to be invaded by the United States.

Ganji concludes that real change in Iran will come only when Iranians figure out how to move beyond the current sultanistic regime. Ganji believes the establishment of bilateral relations between the United States and Iran would serve both countries' national interests, but these efforts ought to be carried out so as not to undermine Iran's human rights and democracy advocates. Ganji points out that these advocates are strongly opposed to Washington's threats of a U.S. military strike and talk of regime change. Ganji believes such language and "more generally Iran policy under the Bush administration have only strengthened the hand of Sultan Khamenei and made Iran's transition to democracy much more difficult."