By Soheil Asefi
An Iranian
economic delegation, headed by Economic Affairs and Finance Minister Ali
Tayyebnia, held intensive talks with their counterparts from other
countries on the sidelines of the joint annual meeting of the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on October 11-13. The talks
followed the little noticed meeting between Iran's new president Hassan
Rouhani and IMF chief Christine Lagarde.
The privatization trend in the Islamic
Republic of Iran is entering a new phase, which is an important story.
Unfortunately, it has been drowned out by a heated "debate of the month"
in the mainstream Persian media within Iran (from pro-Rouhani,
neoliberal, religious reformist dailies to the "Army of the Guardians of
the Islamic Revolution" papers, which mainstream Western media used to
call "hardliner") and in the Iranian diaspora (Persian satellite
television channels such as BBC Persian, VOA, etc.). This debate is all
about the Rouhani-Obama story, plotted around the new round of nuclear
negotiations between Iran and the "international community." But what
about the Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines, and Agriculture
(ICCIMA)? It is in this organization and in these sectors that what
really matters to workers has been happening.
Significantly, former head of the Chamber
of Commerce Mohammad Nahavandian, a U.S.-educated neoliberal economist
and politician, has been appointed chief of staff to Iran's "moderate"
new president. Nahavandian, who is also former head of Iran's World
Trade Organization commission, is one of former president Hashemi
Rafsanjani's pawns populating the Rouhani cabinet. Along with other
adept diplomats of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he is
expected to be a prime mover pushing Iran further into the
aforementioned new phase of neoliberalism.
The Rouhani administration, the eleventh
Iranian government tasked to "solve" the crisis of capital and social
exclusion, is focusing mainly on international politics as well as the
domestic economy. With respect to international politics, it is indeed
interesting to watch Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now
pathetically being upstaged by the banality of pro-Obama U.S. think
tanks, their Persian pundit factotums, and assorted Islamic Republic
"experts" on the air, who now have a friendly minister of foreign
affairs in the Rouhani administration, a man named Zariz, whose name
means "intelligent and graceful" in Persian and Arabic and perfectly
matches his diplomatic persona.
In any event, Rouhani's (and, it is
appropriate to say, the capitalist system's) global neoliberal economic
outlook in itself may remove many barriers in Iran-U.S. relations and
reduce the dispute between the two countries to their divergent
political visions for the region.To read more...
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