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Divisions Sharpen as Iran Girds for Renewed Protests

Omid Memarian

BERKELEY, California, Jun 7 2010 (IPS) - A week before the first anniversary of Iran’s contested presidential elections, the disruption of a speech by the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini during a memorial service for the founder of the Islamic Republic on Jun. 4 has once more publicly exposed the rift within the top level of Iran’s leadership.

According to the government, two million Basij militia members and supporters from all over the country were mobilised to come to Tehran to participate in last week’s ceremonies marking the 21st anniversary of Khomeini’s death.

However, many believe the rallies were in fact intended to intimidate the opposition protesters expected to take to the streets on Jun. 12, a year after the polls in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner and the government waged a bloody crackdown in which hundreds were arrested and jailed.

Though the militia’s presence must have been organised and approved beforehand, the unprecedented heckling of a well- known public figure seems to indicate that the divisions among various factions of the Islamic Republic’s rulers is intensifying.

According to the schedule, the Friday Prayers event was to feature three prominent speakers – President Ahmadinejad, followed by Hassan Khomeini, the Ayatollah’s grandson, followed by current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But Ahmadinejad took too long to finish his speech, and at the end he announced the next speaker to be the Supreme Leader, “omitting” Hassan Khomeini from the speakers list.

When Hassan Khomeini took the podium anyway, a group of radical pro-government men began to loudly heckle him, reportedly shouting “Death to Mousavi” – a reference to a leader of the so-called Green opposition movement and a candidate in the 2009 elections – forcing Khomeini to cut his speech short.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei then implicitly attacked Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi – the other major opposition candidate – at one point comparing the men, who publicly support the late Imam Khomeini, to two followers of the Prophet Mohammad who ended up opposing him during the rule of Imam Ali.

Mousavi quickly issued a statement explicitly criticising the Supreme Leader’s comments, and charging that the whole incident was orchestrated to purge Hassan Khomeini from Iran’s political scene.

“This behaviour demonstrates that radicals continue to have the last word inside the Iranian regime,” Alireza Eshraghi, editor of the Iran programme at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, told IPS.

“Ayatollah Khamenei is sure about his control over the situation and… and he is unwilling to compromise even with the moderates, a reason why his approach is that ‘you are either with me or not’,” he said.

Three prominent and high-ranking clerical leaders, Ayatollah Sanei, Ayatollah Mousavi Ardabili, and Ayatollah Bayat Zanjani, all of whom have positions close to those of the reformists, also condemned the disruption and accused the government of being behind the incident.

Ayatollah Sanei said that authorities, particularly the president, have become “incapable of solving the country’s social, economic, political, and international problems, so they do these actions as a way to divert public attention.”

Ali Motahari, a conservative Member of Parliament, wrote in a piece published on the conservative website Bazab that Ahmadinejad had a pivotal role in what took place on Jun. 4. He also said that if Iran’s judiciary had charged and tried the “2009 sedition elements”, which according to him are Mousavi, Karroubi, and Ahmadinejad himself, the events of last Friday could have been avoided.

“Ahmadinejad is like a spoiled child who is rewarded for his constant abuse of others,” he said.

Motahari’s remarks drew an immediate backlash from conservatives in Parliament.

“Considering Ali Motahari’s positions, so far 50 MPs have asked in a letter to the Arbitration Council of the Fundamentalist Faction to expel him from the Faction,” said Mahmoud Ahmadi Bighash, a conservative MP, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency, IRNA.

On Sunday, Ali Larijani, speaker of the Iranian Parliament, threatened to report violations of the legislated budget by Ahmadinejad’s cabinet to the public and to other Parliamentary members.

A feud has been brewing between Larijani and Ahmadinejad since the president claimed that the Parliament had passed bills in violation of the country’s Sharia laws a few weeks ago.

“So far, the Parliament has passed more than 130 laws which are against the Sharia and against the Constitution,” Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with the Article 90 Commission of the Iranian Parliament.

Alireza Haghighi, a political analyst in Toronto, told IPS that over the past three decades, the Iranian government has cracked down with increasing severity against its opponents, with the result that it is now upsetting the Islamic Republic’s establishment.

“Ali Larijani’s critics represent the established clergy against Ahmadinejad and the pressure will increase this year,” he said.

Reports out of Tehran indicate that a heavy police presence is tangible in the city on the threshold of the election anniversary. Many young people have been questioned and even arrested for what police call “poor hijab”, the modest dress code mandated under Iranian law.

Several students also told IPS that over the past few days, access to Google and Gmail has been frequently blocked at their universities, and that internet speeds are severely reduced at certain times of day.

“The Iranian ruling authorities may be able to control the street protests through guns, but the rifts among the different sections of power structure have turned so severe, they will not be able to hide it anymore,” a Tehran University professor told IPS on the condition of anonymity.

“Ahmadinejad not only faces the widespread opposition of the elite academic class and the civil society, he is facing the ever-increasing opposition of the conservatives,” he said. “The combination of the two will either lead to a weakening of his power or a serious crackdown on the opposition, even the moderate conservatives – both options will bear a heavy cost for the stabilisation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”