IRAN: THE GLOVES COME OFF IN AHMADINEJAD-MOUSAVI DEBATE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 RPO DUBAI 000233

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 6/4/2019
TAGS: PREL PGOV IR
SUBJECT: IRAN: THE GLOVES COME OFF IN AHMADINEJAD-MOUSAVI DEBATE

CLASSIFIED BY: Ramin Asgard, Director, Iran Regional Presence
Office, DOS.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)



1. (C) Summary: The much-anticipated live debate between
President Ahmadinejad and his chief rival, former Prime Minister
Mir Hossein Mousavi, was a watershed event in which Ahmadinejad
broke long-standing taboos by leveling allegations of corruption
at senior regime officials and attacking the academic
credentials of Mousavi's wife. Ahmadinejad's attempt to portray
himself as a victim beset by an alliance of powerful
establishment figures was met with derision by his opponent, who
portrayed the incumbent as a radical who has endangered Iran
through his delusional foreign policy and erratic management of
the economy. The unusually adversarial nature of the exchange
will likely further polarize the June 12 election, which
Ahmadinejad already characterized as "three against one." The
series of televised debates continues this evening as Mousavi
faces Mohsen Rezai, a co-founder of the Revolutionary Guards and
a long-time Ahmadinejad critic.


2. (C) Mousavi and Ahmadinejad squared off last night on prime
time television in the second live debate of the campaign
season. The confrontational nature and directness of the
candidates' criticism of each other was unprecedented in
contemporary Iranian political discourse. Ahmadinejad went on
the attack immediately, attempting to link his rival to Ali
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - a towering figure in Iran since the
Revolution who is widely considered to have used his many
positions of power over the years to amass vast wealth and
influence for himself and his family. (Note: Ahmadinejad
defeated Rafsanjani in the second round of the 2005 presidential
election and the little-known Ahmadinejad is widely thought to
have benefited from a significant anti-Rafsanjani vote.)
Throughout the 90-minute debate, Ahmadinejad sought to portray
the campaigns of his three rivals as an elaborate plot devised
by Rafsanjani and other establishment figures to get rid of him
to regain their monopoly of Iran's power and resources. He also
tried to pre-empt criticism of the economy - long considered his
biggest vulnerability in this race and the object of relentless
criticism from his opponents - by blaming earlier governments
for Iran's economic woes.


3. (C) In response, Mousavi disparaged virtually every aspect of
Ahmadinejad's conduct in office, from his provocative foreign
policy to his erratic economic policy decisions, and accused him
of leading Iran into "dictatorship." He strongly insinuated
that Ahmadinejad suffers from delusions, deriding the
President's allegations of kidnapping plots against him during
foreign travel. "Should we," Mousavi asked rhetorically, "let
our imaginations grow so much that they turn into our foreign
policy? " He also mocked the President for threatening to
execute the British sailors detained in 2007 then dressing them
up in suits and giving them a send-off worthy of visiting
dignitaries, and decried Ahmadinejad's four unanswered letters
to Presidents Bush and Obama as an insult to Iran's dignity.
Mousavi characterized the President's frequent invocation of the
Holocaust as folly that undermined the country's standing.


4. (C) These attacks gave Ahmadinejad the opening to trumpet his
version of Iran's foreign policy accomplishments during the
tenure of his presidency. He countered that releasing the
Britons had been a "beautiful act" on behalf of Iran and only
followed a written apology from Prime Minister Blair, as well as
pledges from the U.K. to change its behavior toward Iran.
Ahmadinejad triumphantly noted that after 27 years of trying to
bring about regime change in Iran, only after he took over the
presidency did the U.S. Government change its policy and want to
sit down at a table with Tehran.


5. (C) Throughout the debate, Ahmadinejad made good on his
public threat last week to "expose" his opponents' and their
associates by accusing Rafsanjani and his son of stealing oil
money, and former Majles Speaker Nateq-Nuri and his son of
living off of bribery. He also attacked the campaign manager of
another candidate for corruption during his tenure as mayor of
Tehran in the 1990s. Ahmadinejad capped off his naming and
shaming by brandishing a photograph of Mousavi's wife, an
important political figure in her own right, and accusing her of
having circumvented correct university entrance procedures.


Iranians React


6. (C) Iranians watching the live debate with IRPO officer
gasped audibly at several points during the heated exchange.
Our contacts explained that the initial pointed criticism by
each candidate of the other was itself a sharp break from the
tradition of indirect criticism in political discourse in Iran.
Most shocking, however, were Ahmadinejad's allegations of
corruption against several pillars of the Islamic Republic. The
charges are widely known among Iranians, but had not been
previously been leveled in a public forum by a leading
government figure.


7. (C) Most Iranian media outlets are closed today for the
national observance of the twentieth anniversary of Ayatollah
Khomeini's death; however bloggers lit up the internet after the
debate and scores of videos of post-debate revelry and street
confrontations have already been posted on Youtube and
elsewhere. In them, raucous crowds are shown pouring into the
streets of major urban centers following the debates, with
reports of crowds of Ahmadinejad supporters facing off with
Mousavi followers. Though no consensus winner has emerged from
the debate, Iranians seem largely in awe of the unprecedented
poltical spectacle. In particular, the corruption allegations
are the subject of much online chatter. As one Iranian from
Isfahan observed on Facebook, "I can't believe what I saw
tonight. I hate Ahmadinejad, but he is the only one crazy
enough to say all those ugly truths."


8. (C) At Imam Khomeini's mausoleum this morning, in an address
to mark his death, Supreme Leader Khamenei touched on the
upcoming election. Though he did not specifically reference the
debate, he said that it is wrong to say that Iran has been
humiliated on the world stage, a clear signal to Ahmadinejad's
rivals to tone down this line of attack. He also warned
candidates' to treat each other with courtesy, and ensure that
their disagreements do not spill over into the street. He also
reiterated the line from his March 21 Mashhad speech in which he
reminded Iranians that he only has one vote and that his vote
will remain secret.


Comment


9. (C) In this debate, Ahmadinejad made clear that he is trying
to run as the anti-establishment candidate, a difficult maneuver
for any incumbent to pull off gracefully. Yet among the rural
and urban poor who constitute Ahmadinejad's electoral base, the
sentiment that the elite have benefited at the expense of
average Iranian is powerful and pervasive. The President's
argument hinges on his ability to convince voters that he is the
true political heir of the Islamic Revolution, and that the
presidents who preceded him - Rafsanjani and Khatami - were
aberrations from the original revolutionary goals. Similarly,
Ahmadinejad is forcefully ascribing criticism of Iran's economic
performance under his watch to the same political actors who are
trying to unseat him now, arguing that the problems cited by his
critics, namely high inflation and unemployment, have always
existed. On the other hand, Mousavi is seeking to portray
Ahmadinejad as an unstable, radicalized, destructive deviation
from Iran's proper revolutionary course. In many ways, the June
12 election will be a vote on whose version of history wins.
There can be little doubt however, that this debate has further
polarized voters as the election seems to increasingly be a
referendum on Ahmadinejad himself.


ASGARD