Iranian public opinion and the nuclear stand-off

In an April 11 speech from the holy city of Mashhad, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that the Islamic Republic had "joined the club of nuclear countries", a declaration broadcast live on Iranian television, followed by footage of scientists dancing and waving test tubes marked with the chemical symbol for uranium.

While the technical achievement in question (enrichment of uranium to the 3.5 per cent level required to fuel nuclear reactors) was relatively modest, the bombastic pageantry was perfectly attuned to prevailing public opinion. As Western journalists in Tehran frequently point out, it is difficult to find ordinary Iranians who are displeased with their new president's nuclear brinkmanship.

This public consensus derives from several factors, not least of which is the regime's success in shaping media coverage of the issue. At the elite level, however, beneath a thin veneer of public unanimity, there is much debate about the wisdom of his tactics. The political implications of Ahmadinejad's mobilisation of the public are worrisome not only to reformist factions of the elite, but to conservatives with entrenched economic interests.

Iranian public opinion

While anecdotal evidence suggests that the vast majority of Iranians would like their country to be a nuclear power, what this means precisely, and at what expense they are willing to achieve it, are difficult to assess. Public discussion of whether Iran is or should be developing nuclear weapons is entirely absent from the media. Indeed, it's not entirely clear whether the Iranian public presumes that building nuclear weapons is, in fact, the intention of its government. Nonetheless, some generalisations can be made.

Iran's insecurity complex

Public support for nuclear weapons development is typically very high in countries that have been deeply traumatised by external aggression (Israel) or face powerful external threats (India, Pakistan). Iranians are predisposed on both accounts to view it favourably.

Iran was victimised by the bloodiest act of inter-state aggression since World War II. The eight-year war that followed Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion caused horrific levels of Iranian casualties, with conservative estimates putting the number of Iranian dead at around 300,000. To make matters worse, the outside world refused to sanction Iraq for the crime, even when the Iraqis made liberal use of chemical weapons, both against Iranian soldiers and civilians. The idea that Iran is on its own is deeply ingrained in the popular psyche, reinforced by the Persian-speaking majority's unique ethno-linguistic heritage and profound sense of cultural superiority over its immediate neighbours.

Iranians are painfully aware that their conventional military weakness, which invited Iraqi aggression, still endures. Iran's armed forces are plagued by a lack of access to Western technology, which puts them at a serious disadvantage vis-à-vis other major regional militaries, namely Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Iranian Government propaganda on advanced military research notwithstanding, the plain fact is that Iran's armed forces are in a terrible state of disrepair, with much of the equipment either obsolete or of little operational value against technologically advanced foes. The Iranian air force typifies this problem, with the bulk of its bombers and interceptors comprised of American F4D, F4E, RF-4E, F5E, F5F and F14 as supplied in the 1970s, a full generation behind the F15s, F16s and Tornadoes of neighbouring countries' air forces.

Indeed, this weakness was brought into sharp focus in September 1998 when the Taliban seized the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif and slew ten Iranian diplomats and a journalist. The Iranian military establishment was painfully made aware of its lack of "strategic" assets to deter even the weakest of the country's adversaries.

Moreover, Iran has powerful nuclear neighbours. To the east are India and Pakistan, which officially became nuclear powers in May 1998, while to the west is Israel, which has possessed a nuclear arsenal since the late 1960s. Iran's relations with Pakistan have been strained since the 1990s when Tehran and Islamabad supported diametrically opposed factions in Afghanistan. There is a clear sectarian dimension to this strategic rivalry. The Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus, as Iranians are well aware, is thoroughly penetrated by the same ultra-radical Sunni Islamist currents that are committing mass murders of Shiites in Iraq.

Furthermore, to the country's west lies Israel, with which the Islamic Republic has an acrimonious relationship. While most Iranians (save for Islamists) harbour little animosity towards Israel, Iranian support for Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and to a lesser extent Hamas, has generated intense Israeli animosity which make's the Jewish state's nuclear arsenal and conventional military capabilities very menacing.

Nationalism and technology

Of course the regime does not market its nuclear program as a solution to Iran's security needs. Publicly, Iranian officials maintain that the nuclear program is intended only for civilian energy use and they are adept at pitching this objective on its own merits. The Iranian public is very receptive to the idea of self-sufficiency, a perennial battle cry of the Iranian revolution reinforced by the privations of war and international isolation. Although the country has abundant oil reserves, Iranian leaders offer apocalyptic warnings about their eventual depletion. "Enemies of the nation are looking for a day when Iranian oil reserves will be depleted and the nation will stretch its hands to them for help," Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned in 2004.

Beyond the ruling elites, many Iranian analysts are convinced of the merits of nuclear energy as an adjunct (and eventual substitute) for oil and gas. The argument is that Iran should simply export its oil and gas and rely on nuclear power for energy, as an efficient way of maximising its foreign currency earnings. Moreover, it is argued that nuclear power is more environmentally friendly than oil and gas. Some polls suggest that over 80 per cent of the population supports developing civilian nuclear energy.

While the regime has skillfully manipulated the country's press to advance its position, the government (and especially the nuclear negotiating team) is often criticised by media straddling the reformist-conservative divide. Indeed the Tehran dailies often provide quality analysis, invariably scolding the government and the foreign policy establishment for making wrong moves in the intricate negotiations with the EU troika, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and now the United Nations.

Furthermore, the Iranian government has been very successful in presenting the country's nuclear program as the cornerstone of its efforts to modernise the country and narrow the sharp technological divide with the West, in part because scientific and intellectual achievement are highly valued in Iranian culture. Addressing the Assembly of Experts in early March, Khamenei warned that the US is trying to thwart Iran's nuclear program because it wants "to hinder the country's scientific and technological progress". This conflation of the nuclear program and general scientific advancement is ubiquitous in public discussions of the issue. Iranians feel humiliated that a country like Pakistan (widely viewed as culturally and intellectually inferior) is allowed by the international community to become a nuclear power, but the "sledgehammer" approach is employed against Iran.

Perceptions of the United States

This image of outsiders conspiring to bring Iran to its knees is central to the legitimising narrative of Iran's nuclear program. Popular perceptions of the United States, while positive in many respects, lend themselves very easily to this narrative. According to the regime, the US is not really concerned by the nuclear program - it is simply making accusations as a pretext to extend its hegemony over the region.

Since most Iranians believe the Bush administration did exactly the same thing in Iraq (where, in fact, there were no weapons of mass destruction), the conspiracy theory is a pretty easy sell. It is made easier by the fact that sensationalist Western claims of imminent Iranian nuclear weapons production (and reflexive Iranian denials) have been making headlines for over two decades. This tendency of Westerners to cry wolf on this issue has desensitised the Iranian public to today's accusations of nuclear weapons development.

This is not to say that Iranians believe the official claims of their government, but they question the motivation and accuracy of American accusations. Punitive measures by the West are therefore likely to rally support for the government and entrench the Islamic regime.

Moreover, Iranians frequently compare and contrast US policies towards Iraq and North Korea. The general perception is that the US invaded Iraq because it was weak, but sought a diplomatic solution to North Korea's blatant proliferation because Pyongyang stood its ground. This may be a simplistic argument, but it is treated as conventional wisdom in Iran. It is generally believed that nuclear weapons are the only real deterrent against an attack by the US.

Elite factions

While there is a broad consensus at the elite level that the country should be a nuclear power, there is great variation in how they perceive the strategic opportunity costs and domestic political implications of aggressively pursuing this goal.

The reformers, who lost their last major stake in the government with the departure of President Mohammed Khatami last year, are not necessarily less enamoured with the prospect of Iran being a nuclear power, but they do not see diplomatic isolation (and its domestic political implications) as an acceptable trade off. Khatami was arguably in favour of striking a deal with the EU troika in return for a wide range of commercial and economic concessions and security guarantees. Today, after months of relative silence, many have begun calling for a freeze on uranium enrichment to head off a crisis with the international community.

Ahmadinejad and his allies represent the second-generation of the Iranian revolution, having developed their political consciousness afterwards, in the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war rather than the turbulent streets of the Iranian revolution or the politicised seminaries of Qom (Ahmadinejad is the first non-clerical president in a quarter century). They are more nationalistic, more willing to combat social liberalisation if it compromises national unity and the long-term prospects of the Islamic Republic, and - most importantly - committed to a major redistribution of wealth. Moreover, Ahmadinajed's populist rhetoric appeals to wide swathes of Iranian society, particularly poor urban people.

This redistributive agenda sets him squarely apart from conservatives who have entrenched economic interests in Iran, most notably former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (who was defeated by Ahmadinejad in the second round of the 2005 election). While Rafsanjani and his clique publicly support the president's refusal to suspend Iran's enrichment program, they stand to lose economically if Ahmadinejad's tactics backfire and sanctions are imposed on Iran. They may be even more concerned about the implications of successful brinkmanship - victory in the nuclear standoff would enormously increase the president's influence within the Islamic Republic.

Ahmadinejad has only limited, if any, direct control over nuclear policy. Khamenei nominally has the final say, but the Islamic Republic has a complex national security decision-making establishment and decisions usually reflect prevailing consensus within it. Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and the secretary of the Expediency Council, probably outlined the mainstream view of the regime over the stand-off, rejecting concessions over the country's "peaceful" nuclear program, while warning against the kind of "adventurism" that would lead to heavy economic and security penalties.

Whatever their private misgivings about the strategic and political implications of the government's brinkmanship, all factions of the political elite recognise the depth of popular support for Iran's development of an advanced nuclear infrastructure (with full mastery over the fuel cycle), making it very difficult for them to openly support concessions to the West. Any major climb-down would be perceived by the public as a national humiliation. It is not clear what (if any) incentives the West can offer to change this fundamental dynamic. Even if an acceptable compromise can be found, it may prove short-lived as Iran can easily resume uranium enrichment at any time.