The victory of Hassan Rouhani in Iran’s Jun. 14 election marked a significant shift in Iranian politics, occasioned by the forceful return of the two most important political factions of the Islamic Republic – traditional conservatives and reformists.

Hassan Rouhani. Credit: Mojtaba Salimi/cc by 3.0

These two factions had been sidelined in the past decade. In fact, many had assumed that they had permanently lost their significance, giving way to either a more radical version of conservatism or the personal dictatorship of Leader Ali Khamenei.

But the alliance that was created in support of Rouhani’s candidacy by three key figures of the Islamic Republic – former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, as well as former speaker of the Parliament and presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri – set the stage for the return of both traditional conservatism and reformism to Iranian politics.

These two factions were effectively the founding pillars of the Islamic Republic. In the 1980s, they were identified as the right and left wings of the Islamic Republic because of their disagreements over the economic direction of the country.

But, by the late 1990s, they became known as the principlist and reformist wings due to their political differences over whether the republican or Islamic sides of the Islamic Republic should be given greater emphasis.

In the 1980s, prime minister Mir Hossein Mussavi, now under house arrest, was considered a leftist, focusing on economic justice and state control of the economy, while then-president Khamenei was deemed close to the Islamic Republic’s right wing which defended the importance of private property and the private sector.

Even the membership of the Guardian Council – which, along with the vetting of candidates for the executive and legislative branches, is tasked with assessing legislation for their constitutionality, as well as their Islamic content – included individuals from both factions.

Control of Iran’s Parliament shifted from one faction to another and from one election to another over the years. President Rafsanjani (1989-97), who has long tried to straddle both wings as a self-identified centrist and moderate, had to deal with both leftist- and rightist-controlled parliaments. Similarly, reformist President Khatami (1997-2005) had to negotiate with both reformist and principlist-controlled parliaments.

But this political arrangement began to fall apart with the 2004 parliamentary election and then the 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. He came to power with Principlist support and immediately began the process of purging the leftist/ reformist wing of the Islamic Republic.

Initially, the purge created a temporary alliance between Ahmadinejad and traditional conservatives who were happy to see their ideological opponents pushed out of the political process.

But positioning himself as a younger-generation populist, Ahmadinejad soon began to turn against the other political pillar of the Islamic Republic: traditional conservatism. While traditional conservatives maintained their presence in the judiciary and the parliament, Khamenei’s support permitted Ahmadinejad to effectively prevent any kind of legal challenge to his imperial governing style in the executive branch.

After the 2009 contested election in which Ahmadinejad was re-elected, it was Khamenei’s continued backing that led to parliament’s approval of his cabinet ministers, the prevention of various efforts to impeach him, and halting the many judicial cases against Ahmadinejad’s illegal conduct, including his repeated refusal to implement legislation passed by the Parliament.

It was within this context that Iran’s traditional conservatives began to realise that they could meet the same fate as the reformists if they did not step up and help revive some of the old political pillars of the Islamic Republic.

Instead of competing against their old their old nemeses, the reformists, they forged an alliance behind the candidacy of Rouhani, who, while belonging to the Islamic Republic’s right wing, successfully wooed the reformist vote through his criticism of the increasingly securitised political environment of Iran and the purge of key reformist politicians in the past decade.

To understand the extent of the change this alliance represented in Iran’s recent history, suffice to say that the two main candidates who ran against each other in 1997 – reformist Khatami and conservative Nateq Nouri – joined hands to rally their supporters behind Rouhani’s candidacy.

The intent of the alliance was to forestall the encroaching dictatorship of the office of the Leader and prevent the radicals with little respect for the electoral process from consolidating their control of that office.

In many ways, the formation of this alliance was an unprecedented act in the history of modern Iran and, according to many observers inside the country, reflective of the “maturity” of the political players.

In the words of reformist journalist Abbas Abdi, writing for Etemaad Daily, “This election was deeper than other elections in Iran in terms of its political meaning, and at this time we can be hopeful that it will be the beginning of a new trend in the Iranian society.”

A historian of contemporary Iran who did not want to be identified went further. He told IPS that in Iran’s recent history there were many moments when political players could have paved the way for further change and democratisation had they been able to co-operate with each other and form alliances. However, their inability to do so led to the eventual purge of all of them and the re-establishment of personal dictatorship.

The most noted example in recent memory was the collapse of the democratic coalition built by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq with the help of cleric Ayatollah Abolqassem Kashani in the early 1950s. Ultimately Mossadeq’s fall from power was assured through a CIA-sponsored military coup that brought the Shah back to power. But the coup was made easy because the coalition built by Mossadeq had by then fallen apart.

According to this historian, “the principlist-reformist alliance is such an important event that it can be said to have catapulted Iran into a new stage of its history.”

This historian also notes that at no time in Iran’s modern history has there been such “an urge in both society, as well as government circles for unity and cooperation, in the face of external threats,” including both the U.S.-led economic sanctions and threats of war by Israel and the United States.

The last-minute entry of former president and current chair of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani into the presidential polls set for Jun. 14 has inspired vastly different reactions in a conflicted Iran.

Chair of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Credit: Amir Farshad Ebrahimi/cc by 2.0

Those calling for change hail his candidacy as a hopeful sign. Deeming his entry a response to serious societal demands, even many reformists think that as a centrist, Rafsanjani is the best choice for changing the direction the country has taken under the eight-year presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Prior to his decision to enter the fray, representatives of many groups, including the business community and university students and professors, had met and appealed to Rafsanjani to run. Even many reformists and supporters of former president Mohammad Khatami thought that Rafsanjani would be a better candidate to challenge the conservatives’ hold over the country.

Ali, one of the protesters who took to the streets after the 2009 disputed election, considers Rafsanjani the best choice since “he is faithful to the foundations of the Islamic Republic and [the 1979] revolution and also has sufficient personal power to create not only a balance in the relations between the president and the Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei], but also return the country to a normal situation with the collaboration of the latter.”

Likewise, many in the business community see Rafsanjani as the right person to rectify what they consider to be the “economic mess” Ahmadinejad’s administration has created.

One source, who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity, said, “Hashemi [Rafsanjani] has the experience of reconstruction after the [Iran-Iraq] War, and the current destruction is nothing less and perhaps even more than the destruction during the war, and there is a need for someone who can take charge of the situation.”

In a statement issued Wednesday, former president Khatami also described the country’s situation as critical in the face of the lack of popular trust in the government and the external threats that confront it. He called on his supporters to “understand this historical moment… and stand on Mr. Hashemi’s side.”

But this is only one face of Iran. Rafsanjani’s entry has so disrupted the calculations of his opponents in the conservative camp that they spared no time in attacking him and his record in unprecedented terms.

If, in the 2005 and 2009 elections, it was only Ahmadinejad who spoke against Rafsanjani, now many potential conservative candidates are using anything they can get their hands on to attack him, even suggesting, in some cases, that they are doing so on Khamenei’s behalf or to protect the Leader against the threat posed by Rafsanjani’s candidacy.

One of those potential candidates, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, who used to be a member of the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), went so far as characterising Rafsanjani’s return as “militarism”. He did not explain what the phrase meant precisely, but described Rafsanjani’s conduct since the end of his presidency in 1997 as wholly negative.

“In the debates, Mr. Rafsanjani has to explain his conduct to the people for the past 16 years,” he asserted, apparently referring to the alleged challenges Rafsanjani has posed to Khamenei’s authority.

Gholamali Haddad Adel, another potential candidate who is deemed close to the Leader, implied in an interview with Fars News that Rafsanjani has been engaged in “sedition” and said that his supporters are the same ones who voted for opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mussavi in 2009 and then attempted to undermine the system by protesting against the results of the disputed election.

Even Ali Akbar Velayati, who served as Rafsanjani’s loyal foreign minister during his presidency, accused his former boss of not taking “the position he should have taken” in 2009 and “in those circumstances not remaining on the side of the Leader.”

Given the support and excitement Rafsanjani’s candidacy has generated among various groups, these reactions are hardly unexpected. No one doubts that his entry will impact the race in significant ways. Although public opinion polls taken inside Iran are not considered reliable due to the lack of transparency regarding their methodology, one conducted by Iran Student News Agency (ISNA) suggested that Rafsanjani had moved past Khatami and others in terms of popularity as a candidate by receiving the support of 30.5 percent of over 10,000 respondents.

But while criticism of Rafsanjani is considered fair game, the question of whether Ayatollah Khamenei actually approves of the extent to which conservative candidates are questioning Rafsanjani’s loyalty to the Islamic Republic is a source of great speculation. After all, as the Khamenei-appointed chair of the Expediency Council, Rafsanjani remains a high-ranking official. Accusing him of sedition in such a public manner is unusual even for the raucous politics of the Islamic Republic.

This is why some close observers of Iranian politics are not convinced that Khamenei has given the green light for such destructive criticism. At the same time, his silence has opened the path for everyone to attack.

According to a Tehran University political science professor who spoke to IPS on the condition of anonymity, Khamenei’s silence has allowed “those who want to climb the ladder of power to think that the easiest way to move up is to claim absolute obedience to the Leader and then use that as a prop to attack their political opponents, many of whom are long-standing and experienced officials of the Islamic Republic.”

Rafsanjani seems aware of this phenomenon and, in his first statement after registering his candidacy, lamented tactics that have forced “experienced managers of the Islamic Republic to sit at home.” In this statement he identified his campaign slogan as e’tedal Alavi (“moderation” with Alavi being a reference to the political conduct of the first Shi’ite Imam Ali) and thus affirmed his apparent intent to bring many of those managers and officials back into the government.

This call for moderation against the “extremism” that has taken hold of the country also appeals to a number of traditional conservatives with strong ties to the business and clerical communities. Many of them have also been pushed out of power during Ahmadinejad’s tenure.

Indeed, one conservative politician who did not want to be identified questioned the charges being made by his colleagues that are amplified in the media, insisting that Rafsanjani’s return does not pose a serious threat to Iran’s Leader.

“Despite the different views that Mr. Hashemi has, he will maintain respect for the position and standing of the Leader. But temperament-wise he is the only one able to bring back equilibrium to the power system of the Islamic Republic,” the politician said.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Credit: sajed.ir/GNU

By Yasaman Baji
TEHRAN, May 7 2013 (IPS)

As the five-day registration period for presidential candidates began here Tuesday, the question of whether Iran’s upcoming election will represent the will of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or the people of Iran is uppermost on many people’s minds, including those of the potential candidates.

In the crowded field of former and current officials who have declared their intent to run, many have already made a point of declaring their total allegiance to the Leader’s dictates. For instance, the repeat presidential candidate, conservative Mohsen Rezaee, promised on Apr. 1 that his administration will be “the most coordinated administration” with the Leader ever.

Even some reformists, who are known to be critics of the Leader, have called for the candidacy of someone who will not provoke Khamenei’s opposition or sensitivities.

Abbas Abdi, a reformist journalist, goes as far as identifying the candidacy of former president Mohammad Khatami as a mistake, saying “Khatami has not had a meeting with a leader for the past four years. How could his presidency be possible?”

But this is not a position taken by many other reformist individuals or groups. Since mid-March many individuals and groups, through public letters and meetings, have called upon Khatami to become a candidate. Their call is premised on Khatami’s popularity and the belief in the continued attractiveness of his ideas and conduct as president.

Similar calls have been made for former president and current chair of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to run. Neither of the past presidents has committed himself, and both have said that they will not run unless the leader agrees to their candidacy. Their argument has been that, without such a nod, the political environment will just become too contentious and tension-ridden.

In Rafsanjani’s words, “if Ayatollah Khamenei does not agree with my candidacy, the result will be counterproductive…If there’s a situation where there is a difference between me and the leadership of the state, all of us will suffer.”

In fact, mere talk of runs by Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani has led to overwrought accusations on the part of hardliners.

Hossein Shariatmadari, the intractable editor of the hardline Kayhan Daily, called Khatami “corrupt on earth” and a “supporter of sedition,” a reference to his backing of former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mussavi and Mehdi Karrubi who remain under house arrest due to the protests that followed the 2009 presidential election.

According to Shariatmadari, “supporters of sedition… will undoubtedly be disqualified.”

In turn, the hardline minister of intelligence, Heidar Moslehi, went after Rafsanjani, calling him “the source of sedition.” His language was so harsh that it elicited a response from several members of Parliament who scolded the minister for his overt political involvement and accusations against someone who continues to serve as the chair of the Leader’s own advisory council.

No one doubts that these attacks are intended to intimidate the two former presidents. Whether Khamenei himself is behind them is also a subject of much speculation. After all, Shariatmadari is appointed by Khamenei, while the minister of intelligence was protected from being fired by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad through Khamenei’s personal intervention.

Even more fundamental is the question of whether the upcoming election will once again turn into an arena of confrontation between the presumed desired candidate of the Leader and the one chosen by society, as many believe was the case in the 2009 election when Ahmadinejad was swiftly declared the winner.

While the protests have long since ended, many voters continue to believe that there was extensive fraud in 2009. Furthermore, given his ardent support for Ahmadinejad’s re-election, many hold Khamenei responsible for the downward economic spiral the country has faced and their own economic woes.

In the words of a 73-year-old taxi driver, “I used to believe in Khamenei, but when I saw that he wants everything for himself and is ready to take the country into ruin in order to insist that he made the right choice, I no longer support him. Every day I curse him for the sake of the youth in this country.”

Talk about potential runs by Khatami and Rafsanjani had created hope that Khamenei might have finally seen the mistake he made in 2009 and become willing to entertain honest competition among a whole slew of candidates representing the diverse sentiments of society.

But the harsh attacks by Shariatmadari and Moslehi have again created doubts about the potential for a fair election and Khamenei’s calculations.

According to a well-known novelist who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity, “Khameni wants us to back down and acknowledge his leadership as a principle of the constitution but when we back down, he wants more. When we say we accept the constitution, his supporters say it is not enough to accept his constitutional role; you have to completely give in to his leadership.

“When we say we will participate in the election, they say we must recant our actions in 2009. But he himself is not willing to take any responsibility or acknowledge mistakes for the mess Ahmadinejad has created in the country.”

Reformists are no longer the only critics. A prominent conservative who wished to remain anonymous told IPS that he considers Khamenei a failed leader who has tried to become like the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

This conservative politician believes that Khamenei has never understood the two main differences he has with Khomeini. “First of all Khomeini was a charismatic leader who had an organic relationship with the society while Khamenei has an organisational relationship,” he said.

“Secondly, Khomeini was clever enough to accommodate popular sentiment even if they were against his own wishes while Khamenei obstinately and vindictively stands against them.”

Many citizens who participated in the 2009 election and continue to think that their vote was “stolen” will not vote in the Jun. 14 election. But everyone will be watching to see whether Khamenei will again insist on having his wish become the choice of the country.

With just over two months before the Jun. 14 presidential election, Iranians remain unclear about which candidates will be approved by the Guardian Council to compete, let alone who has the best chance of winning.

Khatami’s candidacy increases the chance of disparate reformist factions coalescing behind one candidate. Credit: World Economic Forum/cc by 2.0

To date, nearly 20 former officials have either declared or expressed interest in running.

But talk of a possible run by former president Mohammad Khatami has sparked excitement and hope, at least among that part of the Iranian population that feels disenfranchised by the contested 2009 presidential election and the repression that followed.

At the same time, there has also been harsh criticism and angry reaction on the part of conservatives, as well as some reformists who see his potential candidacy as a betrayal of the two 2009 presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, who have spent most of the past four years under house arrest.

The campaign to recruit Khatami was confirmed in a public letter issued in mid-March and signed by 91 individuals, including a number of prominent reformists, calling on him to become a candidate. The following day, the Reformist Front’s Coordination Council, the most important collection of reformist parties and organisations, echoed the call.

These appeals are based on the belief that Khatami remains the most popular politician in Iran. His flaws, including his timidity in confronting unelected institutions and the state’s security apparatus during his tenure (1997-2005), are widely acknowledged.

But the hope is that a substantial part of the electorate will rally behind him given their fondness for his urbane and gracious demeanour and the possibility of returning the country to an environment which is more open politically and culturally less rigid — an environment where economic and foreign policy-making is less erratic and bombastic than under his successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Nonetheless, the call for Khatami’s candidacy has angered many radical reformers, particularly those now in exile who see him as an ineffective leader and his candidacy as detrimental to the larger necessity of fundamental change that they say the Islamic Republic requires.

But their call for an electoral boycott is not shared by most reformists inside the country. To them, the memory of Khatami’s presidency offers a sufficient alternative for participation in the electoral process.

According to a well-known novelist, speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity, “The civil, social, and cultural freedoms of the Khatami period are a nostalgic memory for all of us. He has left a defendable record of governing as an intellectual.”

In the words of another supporter who is also a renowned translator, “He makes us proud of our culture and civilisation.”

Similarly, many in the private sector remember his economic policies, despite weaknesses and setbacks, as having laid the basis of a sounder economic decision-making process.

“During the Khatami presidency,” a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Mines told IPS, “our path to trade with the world was opened, production and economic activities of the youth were given more attention, and most importantly the Oil Stabilisation Fund was established” to support the private sector during economic downturns.

But not all support for Khatami is based on nostalgia. There are also political and tactical considerations.

His candidacy increases the chance of disparate reformist factions coalescing behind one candidate. In addition, keeping him at the centre of attention maximises the impact of the support he may eventually give to another reformist candidate. This is what happened in 2009 when Khatami withdrew his candidacy and publicly supported Mussavi.

Khatami himself has remained non-committal. “You do not need to worry about my decision,” he told an audience of university students recently. “I am just one individual in the great reformist collective. I have my own opinion but in practice I also respect the collective decision.”

Khatami’s unwillingness to declare his plans is at least partly the result of uncertainty regarding the field in which he will potentially compete.

The current number of potential candidates could grow between now and the third week of May when the Guardian Council completes the vetting process and announces the names of those who are “qualified” by it to run.

In 2009, only four out 475 registrants – most of whom were not well-known enough to meet the constitutional requirement of being “among the religious and political elites” of the country – were approved by the Council, while in the open 2005 election eight out of more than 1,000 aspirants made the cut.

Khatami may be disqualified by the conservative Guardian Council for being too close to Mussavi and Karrubi and what the regime has identified as the “sedition current” in the country.

On Mar. 9, the hard-line Kayhan Daily, which is reportedly close to Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ran a harsh piece entitled “Who Said They Will Let You to Run?” The column cited Khatami’s “multiple crimes” during the “American-Israeli sedition” of the 2009 election, insisting that they disqualified him from “participation in the body-politic of the system” and called for his supporters to “forget about (his) candidacy for (the) presidency”.

The intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, went further and referred to Khatami as “shameless” and rebuked him for forgetting the harm he had done to country by questioning the results of the 2009 election and still wanting to run.

But the fact that Khatami may be disqualified has not deterred his supporters who believe that it is better to force the Guardian Council – and, ultimately, Khamenei himself who many believe would be the hidden hand behind Khatami’s disqualification – to bear the political costs of such a move.

Even if there is a threat of physical attack against Khatami, according to one political science professor, the former president should not seek Khamenei’s permission, or not enter the fray for fear of disqualification. Given the dire economic situation in the country and Iran’s difficult international predicament, “Khatami must feel a sense of duty and step forward,” he told IPS.

For such supporters the hope is that the country’s difficult predicament, as well as the former president’s continued popularity, will also influence Khamenei and ultimately persuade him to abandon any objection to Khatami’s candidacy.

Ironically, the desire for Khatami’s return, if it is indeed as widespread as his supporters believe, can also be seen as a reflection of the broader societal desire for cooperating with Khamenei to end the deepening economic and political crisis in the country.

In the words of one high-ranking state manager, who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity, “It is only with Khatami that the dangers associated with any shift of power in Iran be avoided. With anyone else, such a shift may be like an electricity blackout, resulting in event greater popular disenchantment. We hope Ayatollah Khamenei understands this and welcomes it.”

Last week’s dramatic and very public display of deep fissures among the leading politicians of Iran has left many here wondering if the conflict will escalate into an all-out war among various political factions in the run-up to the presidential election in June.

President Ahmadinejad (left) and Ayatollah Khamenei. Credit: Mehr News Agency

While everyone considers Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to be the only official powerful enough to prevent such infighting from getting out of hand, confidence that he will indeed do so has been shaken.

Politics in the Islamic Republic has always been raucous and full of surprises, but what happened last week was in many ways unprecedented.

The spark was the parliament’s decision to impeach the minister of cooperatives, labour, and social welfare, Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, for his failure to dismiss former judge and Tehran prosecutor-general Saeed Mortazavi from his post as the director of the Social Security Organisation (SSO), an agency under the ministry’s authority.

Lawmakers were concerned that, under Mortazavi’s leadership, the SSO, Iran’s largest pension fund and one of its largest economic organisations, has been selling off major public assets to individuals and companies close to the government.

The Court of Administrative Justice had ruled previously that Mortazavi should be removed both because he lacked the necessary qualifications for his post and because of his suspension as a judge as a result of a number of pending indictments against him.

The executive branch, however, frustrated the ruling – first, by changing the name of the SSO and then by transferring the new organisation from the ministry’s authority to that of the first vice president’s office. It also removed Mortazavi as director only to re-appoint him as its caretaker pending the appointment of a new one.

The parliament was aghast at this deliberate defiance, but, constitutionally unable to impeach the first vice president, it chose instead move against Sheikholeslami.

But the impeachment process, which was broadcast live on radio, took an extraordinary turn when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, purportedly appearing in defence of his minister, instead played a secretly taped conversation between Mortazavi and a younger brother of the powerful Speaker of the Parliament, Ali Larijani and Judiciary chief Sadeq Amoli Larijani.

The tape’s content suggested that Larijani’s brother, Fazel, was trying to tout his influence with his brothers in order to receive profitable contracts from Mortazavi.

After allowing the tape to be played, Speaker Larijani denounced the president for his conduct. Among other charges, Larijani claimed that he had been told before the session that if he did not stop the impeachment proceeding, the tape would be played.

He then detailed alleged legal violations by the executive branch, and recalling the words of Ahmadinejad’s own brother, suggested that some members of the president’s close circle may be in contact with opposition groups outside of Iran.

At the session’s end, the parliament, in what was widely seen as a de facto referendum on Ahmadinejad’s performance, voted to remove Sheikholeslami by the largest margin recorded against any cabinet official.

Initial amusement at the fireworks and folly of politicians, however, has now given way to genuine bewilderment as to where this open acrimony among powerful factions is leading.

Ahmadinejad’s penchant for using the threat of revelations regarding the corrupt conduct of various past or present officials has been on display since his 2009 presidential re-election, when he accused key figures of the Islamic Republic, including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former Parliament Speaker and presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, of extensive corruption.

But his attack on the Larijani family, which includes the heads of the judicial and legislative branches of government, was unprecedented in its use of a secretly taped conversation played before an official and very public forum.

Mortazavi’s immediate arrest by the judiciary on charges of taping a conversation without legal authorisation calmed some nerves and suggested that Ahmadinejad was finally being reined in. It also pleased much of the Iranian press, for which Mortazavi’s career when he was a judge is best remembered for his imprisonment of numerous journalists and banning of many reformist newspapers.

“On top of satisfying a sense of revenge many people had towards Mortazavi,” one political analyst told IPS, “this arrest also signaled to many people that Leader Khamenei was now serious in addressing the blatant legal abuses committed by Ahmadinejad and his cronies.”

But Mortazavi’s release from prison the next day created new uncertainty, renewing concern about Khamenei’s willingness or ability to put an end to the attacks by Ahmadinejad and his loyal supporters against other officials of the Islamic Republic.

This concern was confirmed when, on the anniversary of the revolution Sunday, Speaker Larijani’s speech was disrupted when objects were hurled at him in an event in the holy city of Qom which he represents in the Parliament.

The well-known cleric Mohammad Javad Hojjati Kermani expressed this concern last Thursday in the daily Ettela’at, whose chief editor is appointed by Khamenei.

Noting his own disagreements with the Leader, Kermani wrote that he prays for Khamenei’s wellbeing every day since “in case of his death I do not know what will happen to this country and the nation… and what these abusive and slandering, fiery (men) will do to the people.”

This concern is not without foundation. The day after Mortazavi’s release, the Iran Daily, which is run by Ahmadinejad supporters, described the revelations against the Larijani brothers as a “soft document”. According to a journalist who did not want to be identified, “the term soft document suggests that more concrete and important evidence of their corruption will be revealed if necessary.”

Most observers believe that the Leader does indeed have the power to put an end to Ahmadinejad’s aggressive behaviour and are befuddled why he does not use it.

One university professor believes that the Leader, whose strategy since mid-2011 – when attacks by the president against his former conservative allies broke into the open – he describes as intended to gradually and peacefully weaken Ahmadinejad’s influence while letting him serve out his term, has been genuinely “taken aback” by Ahmadinejad’s “sudden game”.

In this view, Khamenei has been “temporarily thrown off-balance and doesn’t know what to do”.

But another close observer of Iranian politics sees the issue as more than temporary. This political science professor thinks that the Leader and people surrounding him are undecided about what to do for two reasons.

“Fears that Ahmadinejad may reveal more about the corruption of high-ranking officials, including Khamenei’s own children, or even the details of electoral manipulations that may have occurred in the contested 2009 presidential election and fear of admitting that he (Khamenei) was wrong in his full-fledged support of Ahmadinejad after the 2009 election,” the professor says.

What lies behind the Leader’s inaction and passivity has become a puzzle. Perhaps this is why in his last speech, which mostly focused on Iran’s foreign relations, he promised to speak soon on last week’s stunning turn of events.

The country awaits his words and wonders whether he can prevent the heat generated last week from turning into a firestorm.

Presidential elections in Iran have historically been used by reformists to push for a more open political environment. Credit: Garry Knight/cc by 2.0

By Yasaman Baji
TEHRAN, Jan 30 2013 (IPS)

With the June 2013 presidential election drawing closer, Iran’s reformists are debating what they should do in the face of the severe restrictions to which their leaders and political parties have been subject since the popular protests that roiled the country after the last election four years ago.

While some reformists have insisted they will boycott the election, others are arguing that it could offer a new opportunity for political organising regardless of whether the Guardian Council, the body that vets potential candidates, will permit their well-known political leaders to run.

Still others say much depends on how the competition among their conservative rivals shakes out in the coming months. Since no conservative or hard-line candidate has yet stepped forward to announce his official candidacy, they argue it is too soon to decide what position to take and that the political environment could yet change in unexpected ways before the election.

Presidential elections in Iran have historically been used by reformists both to push for a more open political environment and to demonstrate their ability to mobilise popular support, particularly among the urban middle classes.

This year, however, reformists appear more ambivalent, especially given the continuing house arrests of their 2009 presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, and the imprisonment of other key reformist leaders, including former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajzadeh and the former chair of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Relations Committee, Mohsen Mirdamadi.

Their release – as well as those of other political prisoners – has been a top priority for many reformists, even as a condition for their participation in the June election.

But some reformist leaders disagree. Former interior minister Abdullah Nuri believes that addressing the deteriorating economic situation and the continuing external threat against Iran posed by the U.S.-led sanctions regime is more urgent than the release of their political comrades from detention.

In addition, Nuri worries that the insistence on the release of political prisoners before the reformists agree to participate in the election will force them to play a game under rules set by their foes. “We should take the first step and show our opponents that we are determined and serious,” Nuri told the monthly Aseman in October.

Former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, who supported Karrubi in the 2009 election, has taken a similar position.

Also writing in Aseman, he recently asked: “Is it logical to ask our rivals to fulfill our ultimate demands so that we can win the competition with them? If political prisoners were to be released (and)… economic, cultural, and political situation and domestic and foreign policy be improved (before the election), then why should the reformists win power?

“These are in effect the reformists’ future programmes, and they must make an effort to fulfill them when they reach power and not make them conditions for participation in elections.”

Such words, along with rumours regarding the possible candidacy of former first vice president Mohammadreza Aref and former minister of education Mohammad Ali Najafi, have given the impression that at least some reformists are seriously considering participating in the election.

Some reformist groups have even declared that former president Mohammad Khatami will be their candidate despite the latter’s declaration last summer that he will not run.

Even the mention of Khatami’s name as a possible candidate, however, has unsettled the hard-line establishment. Iranian state television has gone so far as showing Khatami – something it had not done for years – and calling him a “companion of sedition”. Sedition is a term routinely used to refer to the protests that followed the contested results of the 2009 presidential election.

“Companions of sedition” could participate in the election, the television programme said, only if they renounced or recanted their support of sedition.

In December, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, the body that determines who is eligible to run for office, appeared to echo that view, insisting that the disavowal of sedition will make it more likely that candidates will receive favourable consideration.

The call for renunciation by institutions close to the Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, however, was immediately rejected by key reformists. Cleric Mussavi Khoeiniha, the publisher of the now-banned daily Salaam, pointed out that the reformists had made former Prime Minister Mussavi their candidate in 2009.

“Now we should renounce our support in order to participate in the election so that they can repeat the same story? What kind of political logic would allow us to do this?” he asked, adding that that he is opposed to the view that reformists should participate in the election at any cost.

One well-known reformist who did not want to be identified told IPS that the Leader and his close advisors don’t believe the country is facing such a serious crisis that they need reformists’ participation in the election as a means to enhance the legitimacy of the regime and promote national unity in the face of external pressures.

“They only need the people we can bring to the polls and not us. Why should we then place our votes in their pockets?” he said.

Khatami himself has ignored demands on him to renounce his support for the 2009 protests and has instead, along with former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, called repeatedly for a free and fair election.

In doing so, he has chosen to ignore Leader Khamenei’s criticism of “those who keep saying” that elections must be free. “In which country elections are freer than Iran? Be careful your words do not discourage people from participating in elections,” Khameni has warned.

Khatami reacted to the Leader’s criticism by saying that a free election simply means an election which is not engineered in advance for the purpose of achieving specific results.

“They say we will not give permission; you should participate in the election but only the way we want you to,” Khatami scoffed in a recent meeting with a reformist party.

Still, Khatami has remained vocal and has used the pre-election political environment to repeatedly sound the message that the reformists have not gone away and remain an important voice for articulating unmet needs and demands for political and social reform in the country.

These demands for a more open political and cultural environment tells Abbas Abdi, a well-known reformist journalist, that reformists should do as they did in the 1997 presidential election when Khatami’s surprise victory shocked the conservative establishment.

“Our understanding should be that there is an election, and we should participate in it. In all likelihood, we will not receive a lot of votes but maybe we will,” Abdi stated in an interview with the daily Etemaad.

A university professor who asked not to be identified was even more sanguine. “Even if there is no hope in the benevolence of the Leader, there must be hope in his limitations,” he told IPS.

Pointing to Khamenei’s aversion to being seen as interfering in the political process, the professor believes that, “Between Khamenei’s pretense of impartiality and hidden interventions, a space is created for the activities of political groups, including the reformists.”

As of now, however, it is not clear whether the reformists believe such a space exists and, if it does, whether they will even be allowed to try to seize it.

This week’s arrests of more than a dozen of young journalists who mostly work for reformist dailies and weeklies may be an omen that the traditionally more open pre-election environment may not be repeated this time.

While the charges against these journalists have not yet been announced, indications are that their arrests are not for their writings and relate to their alleged illegal contacts with “anti-revolutionary” Persian-language media outside of Iran.

The move suggests that the current political establishment in Iran remains highly sensitive and continues to treat the reformists not as competitors with different domestic and foreign policy outlooks but as a security challenge to the survival of the Islamic regime.

Amid growing and increasingly harsh criticism of his handling of the economy, talk of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s removal has regained momentum in Iran in recent weeks.

President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei. Credit: Mehr News Agency

But, according to most observers, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is unlikely to back any move to shorten Ahmadinejad’s term, which runs out in mid-2013, for fear that impeaching him will only wreak greater havoc on a political environment that is already highly polarised and contentious.

Over 100 members of the parliament, or Majlis, have signed on to a demand that the president be summoned to answer questions about the recent drastic devaluation of the currency. Runaway inflation, combined with rising unemployment, has rattled many MPs concerned with the devaluation’s impact both on the price of key imports and the cost of operating factories and agricultural enterprises.

If the president either refuses to appear or fails to explain his policies to parliament’s satisfaction, the issue may eventually be referred to the judiciary, which, would, in turn, clear the way to his removal before the presidential election scheduled to take place next June.

But even the MPs who have called for Ahmadinejad to testify are not optimistic that such a scenario is realistic. “Neither MPs have hope that such questioning will lead anywhere, nor the representatives of the government are trying to stop the process,” according to Etemaad Daily.

Calls for Ahamdinejad’s removal are not new. In mid-summer there were reports that two former members of Ahmadinejad’s cabinet – former foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and former interior minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi – had written a letter to Khamenei calling for the president’s removal.

Khamenei, however, has proved reluctant to criticise the president or acknowledge the severe economic woes the country faces. In the two weeks of intense volatility in the currency market, he even denied during a provincial visit the existence of an economic crisis.

He acknowledged that problems such as unemployment and inflation exist “like everywhere else”, but insisted that these problems can be overcome. “Nothing exists that the nation and officials cannot solve,” he said.

Khamenei’s positive take on the state of the Iranian economy is received with quite a lot of scepticism among the population. Many people see Khamenei as oblivious to the crushing burden of economic difficulties that increasingly dominate conversations at dinner tables, in cafes, and in the street.

Khamenei’s continued support for Ahmadinejad is also much discussed. Some prominent politicians, such as Deputy Speaker Mohammadreza Bahaonar, have publicly said that the Leader wants the government to finish its legal terms. “The cost of removing the president is more than us doing nothing for another year,” he said recently.

This is not a view shared by Ahmad Tavakoli, another prominent MP from Tehran. “Ahmadinejad’s period is over, and the continuation of his presidency is not positive,” he said this week, suggesting that he disagrees with Khamenei’s decision to tolerate Ahmadinejad until the end of his term.

There are other theories why Khamenei will continue to support Ahmadinejad. According to Ali, a journalist who asked only that his first name be used, Khamenei cannot back down from the support because he is unable to explain the costs his support of Ahmadinejad in the disputed 2009 election have imposed on the people and the country. “Khamenei prefers the current situation to acknowledging that he made a mistake,” Ali insists.

Reza, a 58-year-old political activist, sees fear as the explanation for Khamenei’s support for Ahmadinejad. He believes that Ahmadineajd’s penchant for creating “corruption dossiers” on key political actors “will eventually be directed at Khamenei’s family whose financial record is not without blemish.”

According to Reza, if pushed, “Ahmadinejad will reveal the information he has and this scares the Ayatollah. Through his support Khamenei is in effect paying for Ahamdinejad’s silence.”

In reality, Khamenei faces a complex situation. On the one hand, he must deal with the more public and harsher criticism of Ahmadinejad’s economic policies, and, on the other, the potentially destabilising impact of the president’s removal.

So far, Khamenei’s approach in balancing these two concerns seeks a third path, which, according to one political commentator, is “to take effective control of executive affairs and transform Ahmadinejad into a show president whose time is spent traveling abroad.”

The result can be seen in Khamenei’s conduct in the past few years. Until recently, Khamenei was always considered to be a “sitting Leader” whose annual trips to a designated province or public appearances were mostly limited to official events, such as the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder.

Since the end of the post- 2009 election protests, however, Khamenei has taken many more short trips. Earlier this year, for example, he comforted the family of an assassinated nuclear scientist at their home. He also took a quick trip to East Azerbaijan after the August earthquake while the president was in Saudi Arabia.

More significantly, he has been meeting with economic actors and their representatives in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, eliciting their views and promising redress. One recently elected MP who did not want to be identified told IPS, “I send requests regarding my district’s needs directly to the Leader and not the president.”

A University of Tehran professor says that the roots of Khamenei’s increased activism can be found in Ahmadinejad’s extensive use of executive privilege and extra-legal powers to circumvent and marginalise other branches of the government, particularly the parliament.

According to the professor, however, Khamenei may also be engaged in unconstitutional conduct by interfering in the affairs of the executive branch. “Khamenei is as blameworthy as Ahmadinejad in weakening the rule of law and preventing other institutions from performing their supervisory task in relation to the executive branch,” he says.

Khamenei rejects these criticisms and said in April 2011, after he prevented Ahmadinejad from firing the intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, that “the office of the Leader has no intention of interfering in the decisions and activities of the government, unless it feels that an interest of the state has been ignored.”

These days, however, his words are received with scepticism. Maryam, a retired teacher, sees in Khamenei’s performance a desire to centralise power in his office. “He wants a weak president so that he can be in control and be in charge, and now he is in charge of everything. Why should he change the situation?”

Last week’s decision by the U.S. State Department to remove the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from its terrorism list has, as anticipated, led to charges by the Iranian government that the administration of President Barack Obama is hypocritical and using double standards.

While the U.S. government has deemed the MEK’s official disavowal of violence as sufficient for removal from its terrorist list, Tehran insists the MEK has never stopped its terrorist acts inside Iranian territory.

That view is very much echoed by the general public as well.

Although MEK was part of coalition that spearheaded the downfall of the monarchy in 1979, many people continue to blame the violence and radicalism of the early years of the revolution on MEK’s decision to engage in armed resistance against the revolutionary regime.

But for the Iranian public, the group’s unsavoury, if not sinister reputation was sealed with its cooperation with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88).

MEK leader Massoud Rajavi’s flight from Iran to Iraq and the organisation’s military operations against Iran in the latter part of the war have created deep antipathy among the Iranian population, leading even many of those who supported the organisation in the early days of the revolution to hide or deny their previous links.

Fifty-year old Azar, who spent four years in prison in the 1980s for her support of the MEK, says that even her family shunned her after her release from prison despite her efforts to completely disassociate herself from the group.

“I was not taken to family gatherings because another family member was killed in a Mojahedin attack, and even my parents were worried that I had not given up on my ideas,” she told IPS.

The distaste for the Mojahedin is reinforced today by the widespread belief, confirmed by reports in the Western press, that it has been an instrument of the Israeli government in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. In the view of Ali, who is a merchant, “they have sold themselves and are ready to even sell their mothers to gain power.”

Government-owned media contribute to this negative image by never mentioning the name of the organisation and simply identifying its membership as monafeqin, which means hypocrites. But even without government propaganda, the iconic photo of Rajavi shaking hands with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War is sufficiently effective in sustaining MEK’s highly negative image.

Given this negative image and lack of support inside Iran, MEK’s removal from the terrorist list has puzzled many Iranians. Reza, a leftist activist in the 1980s who enlisted in the ranks of the Green Movement after the contested 2009 presidential election, thinks that the move by the United Stated is intended to further pressure Iran but worries about the impact it will have on the opposition movement.

“The reason people protested against Ahmadinejad’s election was because they were worried about their country,” he told IPS. “But if protests pave the way for a more dangerous path for the country and society involving the Mojahedin, then we prefer the current conditions.”

In addition, questions are raised for some Iranians who have always seen the United States as a progressive and democratic country. The news that many U.S. politicians have become advocates of the organisation after receiving large sums of money from MEK has shocked them. This is particularly so since most Iranians are aware of the MEK’s cult-like and undemocratic internal organisation.

“When in the U.S. you can buy a senator with money,” Maryam said during a recent debate among university students here, “then the claimed support for democracy and freedom is as much of a lie as Ahmadinejad’s utterances, and can always be changed with money.”

To this, Alireza, an economics student, added wryly, “If money is the issue, then perhaps members of the U.S. Congress can publicly announce their price to us, and we Iranians are ready to collect money and give it to them so that they would lift the economic sanctions they have imposed on us.”

A university professor, however, took a more serious tone, suggesting MEK’s removal from the list has led many activists and intellectuals to wonder why the United States, a country which prides itself on its support for democracy and human rights, has taken a step that so clearly weakens the democratic movement in Iran. To him, the removal has given the Islamic Republic “a useful enemy”.

As a mutual threat, MEK’s removal, he said, “facilitates the bringing together of a society and government that have in recent years moved apart.”

This sentiment was expressed in a different way by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who in his press conference this week said that the MEK removal from the terrorist list “is a cause for our happiness”.

He said, “If we had to tell the world that the United States is the main supporter of terrorism and uses double standards in dealing with the issue, we would have to spend 500 million dollars – but now they have themselves done it for free.”

More than three years after the contested 2009 presidential election, many Iranians continue to mistrust their government. But rather than stand on the sidelines, they are still trying to better the conditions in the country.

With the end of street protests against the poll results, analysts have debated the impact of the breach of trust the election opened between the large number of urban middle-class people who voted for presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mussavi, who has been under house arrest along with his spouse for most of the last three years, and the regime.

But once the protests subsided, a sense of responsibility has become the guiding spirit for many despite the violence and repression that were used by the government to crush the opposition.

This sense of responsibility emanates from concern regarding the way the country has been run in the face of the concerted effort by the United States to isolate and threaten Iran and weaken its economy.

This concern was articulated even by the conservative presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei, who stated during the electoral campaign that “the country is standing at a precipice.”

Instead of withdrawing from the public sphere as many foreign observers had anticipated, the middle class has gradually become more active, trying to wield influence in areas not directly related to politics.

This active presence was first felt in the economic arena, where businesspeople have been at the forefront. Private entrepreneurs in the electricity and construction sectors are good examples. Despite the fact that the government has lagged badly in its payment for their services, they continue to look for solutions and work with a government many of them find distasteful. The government, in turn, has been less sensitive to the criticisms of the private sector and has elicited the suggestions of its members.

Implementation of subsidy reforms was one area of cooperation. One businessman says that eliminating subsidies has always been one of the key demands of the private sector, but the timing of its implementation in the midst of serious economic downturn was not deemed appropriate.

Nevertheless, the businessman said, “We cooperated because the government insisted.” Working groups in various ministries were created that brought together representatives from the government as well as various business sectors to assess various ways to implement the plan.

The Mahmoud Ahmadinejad administration eventually failed to implement the agreements that were reached, particularly in relation to providing direct financial support that was expected to be given to businesses so they could adjust to sudden price increases in energy costs for factories. But continued interaction with the government and public airing of serious problems eventually led to the parliament halting the second phase of the subsidy plan.

According to the businessman, “Waste of resources and mistakes cannot be ignored and we still need to utilise channels that are open to us such as the parliament or even parts of the government that show more understanding to influence and bring about change.”

Another businessman who also writes on economic issues for newspapers says, “Every time I write a column, I worry about being hauled in for questioning by the authorities.” But he continues to write because “We love our country and are concerned about the conditions of the country. This is why we must express our criticism and views. Perhaps someone will hear and give attention to a point of view that comes out of compassion and not enmity.”

Cooperation with the government has been more difficult for people who are active in the cultural and social arena. Nevertheless, the question of whether to do so has turned into a significant discussion. A political scientist states that an invitation extended to him by a government institution led to heated discussion among his academic friends. “But eventually we agreed that having an impact is better than sitting at home and sulking,” he said.

“Refusing to speak, rejection, and elimination,” the political scientist goes on to say, “are embodied in a discourse that has violence within it, and this is what we reject. In any case, we should not waste time. We cannot wait for an ideal time since such a time may never come. We should capitalise on every opportunity to participate and influence.”

But this high desire to participate and influence is tempered by a lack of trust in government, and, the government itself continues to be wary – even fearful – of popular participation in every aspect of the society.

This mutual distrust was clearly evident in the popular response to the earthquake that occurred in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province in August. While quite a lot of money and goods were gathered by people from other provinces, particularly Tehran, many volunteer activists proved reluctant to deliver them to the Red Crescent which was charged with leading the rescue and aid mission. They insisted on delivering the aid on their own.

The government, in turn, arrested about 20 volunteers. Although some of these volunteers were quickly released, their arrest suggests that the government remains highly insecure regarding any kind of co-operative work among the population.

A sociologist in Tehran sees the source of this insecurity in “fear of potential mobilisation and collaboration in any segment of the society.” In his view, the earthquake provided an opportunity for people of the capital city of Tehran to come to the aid of Azeri-speaking people of the East Azerbaijan province.

But “wherever participation leads to bonds among people, even if this participation helps the government in performing its duties, it is rejected by the government,” he said.

Government rejection, however, has not been able to crush this desire for participation by any means and in any place possible. A sociologist from Allameh Tabatabai University suggests that people have developed “creative” ways to contribute and identifies their behavior as “intrusive participation”.

For instance, in the case of the earthquake, the Iranian blogosphere was replete with complaints about the inadequate information given by the state-owned television, quickly forcing better coverage. In addition, several private construction companies joined forces with donors, while bypassing the government, to build houses for people in the earthquake-stricken areas.

According to the sociologist, “Any opportunity for participation, co-operative work among the population, and loud criticism is seized actively.” And it is precisely this active posture that unsettles the government.

“The government doesn’t know where this participation is going to come next and is always in a state of reaction,” says the sociologist for Allameh Tabatabai University.

After weeks of wrangling between the Iranian parliament and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the appointment of a highly controversial former judge to direct the country’s Social Security Organisation, the parliament has once again failed to impose its will on the president.

Today, the former judge, Saeed Mortazavi, who has been indicted for serious human rights abuses, including “complicity in murder”, remains at his post despite a promise to key members of Parliament that he would resign.

The latest turn of events has led to widespread speculation on the role that Mortazavi may be playing between Ahmadinejad and Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and has highlighted both the opacity and complexity of the regime.

The public display of discord went as far as a procedural call for the impeachment of Mortazavi’s boss, Minister of Labour and Welfare Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, who hinted that Mortazavi’s appointment had been imposed on him by the president.

The parliament cannot actually remove Mortazavi, as its impeachment privileges do not include sub-ministerial appointments. But MPs ultimately decided not to impeach the minister in late April, after former speaker of the parliament Gholamali Haddad Adel publicly stated that Mortazavi had taken an “oath of honour” to resign.

Although Mortazavi did not show up to work for a few days, this lasted only a short while. He told one journalist that MPs were lying about his resignation.

The series of events have badly embarrassed Haddad Adel, whose efforts to resolve the conflict were initially seen as an attempt to increase his chances of becoming speaker of the newly elected parliament.

The 45-year-old Mortazavi is a highly controversial figure in the Islamic Republic. He became a judge when he was just 20 years old, despite lacking legal training, and rapidly climbed the judicial ladder.

He ended up as the chief press judge during the reformist era (1997- 2005) and was responsible for the closure of many reformist papers and the arrest of journalists and bloggers. Repeated complaints about his extralegal activities, including those lodged by members of the reformist members of parliament, went nowhere.

In 2002, Mortazavi was chosen as Tehran’s chief prosecutor, and it was in this position that he was later accused of killing Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist. Evidence of physical abuse again led members of parliament to attempt Mortazavi’s removal, but to no avail.

At that time, the prominent reformist MP Mohsen Armin explicitly commented upon the possibility of support for Mortazavi from higher levels. “I know that Judge Mortazavi is not at the level to engage in such acts without support,” Armin said.

Conservatives too have been unhappy with Mortazavi, accusing him of ethical and financial misconduct. In 2008, when the illegal sale of questions for the competitive entrance examination to Iran’s largest private university, the Azad University, was being investigated, the hard-line MP Alireza Zakani accused Mortazavi of destroying the evidence of the crime and losing key files that eventually made the pursuit of the case impossible.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2009 election, Mortazavi was identified as being responsible for sending peaceful demonstrators to the overcrowded Kahrizak prison, where prisoners were severely mistreated, resulting in the deaths of five young men.

Even Khamenei, who many have identified as one of Mortazavi’s main supporters, acknowledged violations at that time, ordering the closure of Kahrizak and promising prosecutions. But Mortazavi was merely demoted from his position as prosecutor general and continued working as deputy prosecutor.

It was only in 2010, following a parliamentary commission’s probes of the Kahrizak affair, that Mortazavi was finally relieved of his post. Eventually he was indicted for “complicity in murder”, “violation of citizens’ rights”, and “dishonouring Iran’s security forces”.

Yet even as these charges awaited prosecution, Ahmadinejad appointed Mortazavi to head the Task Force on Drug Trafficking. In March 2012, Ahmadinejad further elevated Mortazavi to his most recent posting, as director of the Social Security Organisation, the government’s largest social welfare agency.

It was this move that created an uproar in the parliament, particularly since Mortazavi had no background in running such a large agency.

Yet with Mortazavi continuing in his position, many are increasingly coming to believe that his survival could not be possible without direct support from Ayatollah Khamenei. In this, observers point to Haddad Adel’s intervention to avert the ministerial impeachment, highlighting the fact that Hadded Adel’s daughter is married to Khamenei’s son.

According to the Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji, Mortazavi is one of many to have carried out Khamenei’s orders – and who is now being protected by the Leader.

Others argue that given the key posts that Mortazavi has held in the past, the government is now forced to deal with him leniently, lest he reveal regime secrets. The opposition website Jaras has even suggested that Mortazavi has left secretive material on a CD in the United States, to be released if necessary.

Some dismiss such conspiracies. A university professor, speaking anonymously, doubts that Khamenei’s direct orders were behind Kazemi’s murder, the Kahrizak crimes, or even Mortazavi’s appointment to the Social Security Organisation.

“To the same extent that Ayatollah Khamenei did not know about these crimes or appointments in advance, he is incapable of punishing individuals upon whom he relies for the repression of his opponents,” the professor says.

The issue is a “management problem”, he suggests, along with an over- reliance on repressive forces. “People like Ahmadinejad and Mortazavi have made it their business to create dossiers on others, including Khamenei himself,” the professor notes.

“Khamenei is forced to remain quiet on Mortazavi out of the fear of what he may reveal. Meanwhile, by hiring Mortazavi, Ahmadinejad essentially keeps under his wing a walking dossier against the Leader.”

By Yasaman Baji and - -
TEHRAN, Mar 19 2012 (IPS)

Last week’s unexpected reappointment of Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as the chair of Expediency Council has provoked considerable speculation here about Iran’s future political trajectory as it faces unprecedented economic pressure and military threats from Israel and the United States.

Rafsanjani's relationship with Khamenei and his inner circle has deteriorated steadily since the 2009 election. Credit: Mesgary/CC BY 2.0

The appointment ends months of speculation and expectations by the country’s hardliners regarding Rafsanjani’s forcible retirement from public life, although it remains unclear whether his re-appointment is anything more than symbolic given the conservative sweep in the Mar. 2 parliamentary election.

Many hardliners identify Rafsanjani as the behind-the-scenes figure challenging the results of the 2009 election, as well as Khamenei’s leadership. And his coy remark after voting in this year’s election that “if the same votes are cast as announced, we will have a good Parliament,” only added to the fury of his hard-line detractors who called for his removal.

Rafsanjani has chaired the Expediency Council since its inception, first as the president of the republic and then through successive five-year appointments since he left office in 1997. But his relationship with Khamenei and his inner circle has deteriorated steadily since the 2009 election.

For example, Rafsanjani’s website, which publicised his views and recollections of the Islamic Republic’s history, was recently shut down by judicial authorities.

Moreover, his children have come under tremendous pressure. His son Mohsen was forced to resign as the manger of Iran’s Metro system; his activist daughter Faezeh was handed a six-month prison sentence last month for speaking out against the system; and his youngest son Mehdi has been living in self-exile for over a year out of the fear that he will be arrested for his activities in the 2009 election.

Rtafsanjani’s persistent criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s performance, which in the past several years has led to the latter’s boycott – in defiance of the law – of Expediency Council meetings , has also alienated him from the president’s followers.

Earlier this year, one of Ahmadinejad’s close allies, Ali Akbar Javanfekr called for “a review of the composition of influential state bodies”, arguing that, “It is not right to expect the elected president to sit next to and speak with individuals who are confronting the regime and the supreme leader and who through their remarks and actions encourage the plots of the enemies of Islam, the country and the people.”

Until May 2011, Rafsanjani also served as chair of the Assembly of Experts, an elected body of 86 clerics charged, among other things, with electing and removing the Leader. But after much pressure, apparently including behind-the-scenes lobbying by Khamenei himself, he agreed not to seek re-election.

Rafsanjani’s re-appointment to head the Expediency Council is thus all the more remarkable, suggesting that he has maintained his standing within key constituencies of the Islamic Republic.

The Expediency Discernment Council of the System, as it is formally known, is an administrative assembly appointed by the Leader and was created in 1987 by the revolution’s leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to resolve differences on legislation between the Parliament and the Guardian Council.

A constitutional revision in 1989 gave it legal standing as an advisory body to which the Leader could refer significant issues for resolution.

In 2006, Khamenei further extended the Council’s powers by delegating to it some of his own supervisory authority over all branches of the government. Since then, however, Khamenei has consistently prevented it from fulfilling that role.

As Rafsanjani pointed out in a recent controversial interview with Etemaad Daily, Khamenei has done this by simply not responding to the operational guidelines submitted to him by the Council three years ago and by demanding that it not insert itself into controversies regarding alleged violations of the law by the Ahmadinejad administration.

The Islamic Republic’s Constitution gives the Guardian Council the right to veto laws passed by parliament that it deems either un- Islamic or unconstitutional. But if the parliament chooses to challenge a Guardian Council’s veto, it can refer the issue to the Expediency Council.

This council, whose membership includes, among others, the six clerical members of the Guardian Council, as well as the heads of all branches of the government, can, in turn, overrule the decision by the Guardian Council in “the interest of the system.”

In the past, the council has played a key role in overcoming the Guardian Council’s resistance on issues as varied as removing barriers to foreign investment and increasing the minimum marriage age for women.

The continued harassment of Rafsanjani’s family had convinced many observers that Khamenei would finally remove the former president from his last public position. But this did not happen.

It is hard to imagine the move to be “out of the longstanding friendship between the two men”, said a political activist named Alireza who noted that Khamenei did not hesitate to remove from the Council Rafsanjani’s brother, Mohammad Hashemi, and former petroleum minister, Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, who had played an active role in the presidential campaign of Mir Hossein Mussavi in 2009.

Khamenei was “probably unable to convince prominent clerics of the need for Rafsanjani’s complete purge,” he told IPS. “The move would have completely breached Khamenei’s relationship with these influential clerics.”

Another analyst points out that without Rafsanjani as chair, influential clerics such as Ayatollah Abbas Vaez Tabasi, who heads Iran’s richest religious foundation, Astan-e Qods-e Razavi, would probably boycott future meetings, “making even more public Khamenei’s effective loss of support among the higher ranks of the clerical community.”

The Mar. 2 parliamentary election may have also contributed to the decision. Although the Interior Ministry announced that 64 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, scepticism about the official figures is widespread.

“The fact that the Leader did not issue a written statement of appreciation for popular participation, as is usually his custom, reveals his unhappiness regarding the election,” a Tehran University political science professor told IPS. “And under these circumstances his hands were constrained in the push to eliminate important individuals such as Rafsanjani.”

Regardless of Khamenei’s true reasons, the message received by the public of Rafsanjani’s re-appointment, wrote Sadeq Zibakalam, another political science professor at the University of Tehran, in the reformist Shargh newspaper, was one of support for moderation against extremism.

“As much as his re-instatement (undoubtedly pleased) the moderates and those who have a concern for the system and the country’s future, it was far from pleasing to those currents and personalities who are neither concerned about the future of the system nor the country in 10, 20, or 30 years,” Zibakalam wrote in his column.

On the other hand, the re-appointment could prove merely cosmetic unless Khamenei relents and approves the powers the Council proposed in its guidelines three years ago.

“What is the use of spending hours and months of expert testimony and work …if the executive branch shelves (these plans) and there are no instruments for making sure that these plans are properly put into effect,” asked Zibakalam.

That will likely be the true test of whether Rafsanjani’s reappointment signals a return to moderation, balance, and even reconciliation after several years in which the regime has taken an increasingly hard-line stance.

Excerpt:

While the general public here is anxious about the increasingly harsh sanctions imposed by Western powers on Iran’s financial and oil sectors, the leaders of the Islamic Republic appear more consumed by the upcoming parliamentary elections to be held Mar. 2.

This is despite the fact that these elections will not, in all likelihood, lead to much change in the current make-up of the Parliament, which is dominated by right side of the political spectrum and solid supporters the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Various leaders of the Islamic Republic are nevertheless expressing seemingly contradictory worries about election results being challenged, as they were in the 2009 presidential elections, and low turnout.

The first expression of these concerns came from Khamenei himself in a speech in Kermanshah Province in October. In a clear reference to post-election protests in 2009, he identified two primary issues. The first, he said, is “people’s presence, which must be broad and extensive. The second issue is remaining loyal to laws and respect for the people’s vote. It should not be so that if elections turned out the way we want… we accept it; and if the outcome goes against our views, we undermine the law.”

Concerns about post-election protests have also been expressed by Iran’s military leaders. In early January, the commander of Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohammad-ali Jafari, said, “Enemies intend to revive the sedition current in the wake of the elections for the Ninth Parliament through mayhem and artificial resuscitation and they prepared some plans.” To neutralize these plans, Jafari called for “maximal participation” of the people in the election.

Even the former presidential candidate and IRGC commander, Mohsen Rezaie, said on Feb. 16 that high participation is important for Iran’s “security and prestige”. “Enemies are waiting to increase sanctions and put Iran under pressure in the event of low turnout,” he went on to say.

The emphasis on high participation is a reflection of the reliance on elections as a source of legitimacy for the Islamic Republic. In 1993, when President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was re-elected, the 51- percent turnout was deemed a reflection of political apathy and became a source of concern.

The rise of reformist parties in the 1990s resolved the participation issue, increasing the turnout by double digits. But it also led to the presence of reformist candidates in both parliamentary and presidential elections who were seen as not sufficiently committed to the ideals of the Islamic Republic.

The post-2009 expulsion of these candidates from the political process and their branding as “seditionists” has renewed concerns about next month’s turnout, particularly in large cities such as Tehran, which is home to some 15 percent of the country’s electorate.

According to Mohammad-reza Bahonar, the conservative deputy speaker of parliament, a recent poll suggests that in Tehran, a mere 18 percent of the electorate plans to vote. It is perhaps for this reason that the judiciary has identified any calls for election boycott as a crime that will be punished.

But many analysts in Iran believe it will be unnecessary for reformist or opposition leaders to call for a boycott. The electorate, particularly in large cities, seems genuinely weary of electoral politics. The banning of major reformist parties, such as the Islamic Iran’s Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mojaheddin, and the imprisonment of their leaders have contributed heavily to this mood.

According to one university professor, the widespread feeling is one of people no longer wanting to become an “epic making nation”, in the words of the official propaganda that followed the 2009 presidential election, since they still believe that in the epic they made “their vote was counted for someone they did not vote for”.

Such a mood may lead the authorities to exaggerate the actual turnout next month. Already some hard-line dailies such as Kayhan are predicting a 65 percent or more turnout throughout the country, which would be quite high by historical standards, comparable only to the 1996 and 2000 parliamentary elections in which there was a real sense of competition among a wider selection of candidates.

In the last two parliamentary elections, from which many reformist candidates were excluded, the participation rate throughout the country was 51 percent in 2004 and 57 percent in 2008.

But a low turnout is only one aspect of the official concern. The increasingly acrimonious competition among various groups on the right of the political spectrum, known as Principlists, has also created the potential for election results to be challenged by candidates unhappy with any irregularities in that may take place.

The election season did not start this way. With no significant competition from reformists, representatives of various Principlist organisations vowed to work together to form unified lists of candidates throughout the country, and particularly in Tehran, which, with 30 seats, constitutes the most important district in the country, by far.

But this effort, which was led by Principlist stalwart and chairman of Council of Experts Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, was unable to reach an agreement. The resulting splits have created two major groups: The United Principlist Front and the Steadfastness Front.

The former group is more of a coalition and includes candidates from both hard-line and more moderate and traditional wings of Principlism. It includes individuals who are close to Tehran’s mayor, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, as well as the current speaker, Ali Larijani, who is running as one the United Principlist Front’s candidates in the city of Qom.

The Steadfastness Front, on the other hand, consists mostly of hard- line followers of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, many of whom served in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s cabinet. In fact, many observers believe that the Steadfastness Front does not identify itself with Ahmadinejad directly only because of the president’s association with his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, who has become persona non grata among Principlists due to his unorthodox and “deviationist” views.

Meanwhile, suspicions abound that Mashaie himself is organising a large number of candidates, and supporting them financially behind the scenes. A large meeting of “President’s Young Advisors” was just held in Tehran involving several thousand participants. But Mashie supporters have yet to release the list of their candidates, leaving their opponents in the dark.

Sadeq Zibakalam, a professor at the University of Tehran, suggested in an interview with the Iran Labor News Agency (ILNA) that such ambiguity is deliberate. “In order to avoid disqualification by the Guardian Council, the (Ahmadienjad) government will not reveal its support of candidates until the last days of the campaign,” he said.

He further believes that the Front’s plans to concentrate their efforts on the last days of the campaign will be particularly effective in smaller cities and rural areas where, according to the latest census data, about 29 percent of Iran’s population resides.

Added to the fear that Ahmadinejad and Mashaei supporters will do well owing to their access to the government’s financial resources is the reality that elections in Iran are conducted by the Interior Ministry. The Guardian Council, in its supervisory capacity, will try to act as a check to this government-controlled ministry. But the intense intra-Principlist competition is keeping the electoral process acrimonious and its results potentially open to challenge.

In the words of Abbas Abdi, a prominent journalist, the naked struggle over the spoils of the state, a common characteristic of most state-controlled oil-based economies, has effectively led to “a rather quick transition to outright political hostility and ugliness among former allies”.

The news of Iran’s participation in an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington and subsequent harsh rhetoric by senior officials in both Washington and Riyadh have generated deep and complex nationalist feelings on the part of the public here.

For the first time since the disputed 2009 election, both supporters and opponents of the government are responding in similar fashion, voicing considerable scepticism about the charges and questioning U.S. intentions and objectives regarding Iran.

At the same time, this outpouring of nationalist feelings cannot be entirely comforting to Iranian officials as the public is demanding prudence from the regime in handling what it sees as an increasingly dangerous situation.

Reactions to the alleged plot by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to assassinate the Saudi ambassador were initially muted. The public display of outrage on the part of U.S. officials, including President Barack Obama himself, stirred fears of a possible military attack.

At the same time, the public anger generated by the contested June election against the IRGC and its role in suppressing the popular movement made many people hesitant to take the side of Iranian officials who, like Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Washington’s claims “nonsense”.

However, as the verbal attacks against Iran have intensified over the last two weeks, concern about increased sanctions, fear regarding the possibility of war, and even indifference have given way to a deep and complex sense of nationalism.

For many, the idea of the IRGC plotting to assassinate a Saudi ambassador in Washington is hard to believe.

According to Alireza, a 55-year old shop owner, “Saudi Arabia has done many nasty things against Iran, including the killing of Iranian pilgrims [in Mecca] in 1987 and support for Saddam Hussein during the war, but Iran has never retaliated.”

“Why should it give a pretext to the United States now?” said Alireza, who, like others interviewed for this story, asked that his full name not be used.

The possibility that the alleged plot might pave the way for sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has led to even harsher reactions.

Hussein, who has a degree in economics, insists that until now he never believed the narrative peddled by regime hardliners that the West wants to destroy Islamic Republic. But with the loud public pronouncement of Iran’s guilt “before a trial is held and solid proof is offered”, he says, he no longer has any doubts.

“There is really no difference between the sanctioning of the CBI and the humiliating oil-for-food programme that was implemented to weaken the nation of Iraq and pave the way for the military invasion of that country.”

That view was echoed by Cyrus, a master’s degree candidate in electronics at the University of Tehran and an active participant in the now-underground Green Movement. “The pride and power of every country is its people, and by sanctioning the Central Bank they want to humiliate and weaken the people (of Iran) and invade the country,” he told IPS.

A friend of Mohsen Rouholamini, who was killed by guards in Kahrizak prison after his arrest during the post-election protests, Cyrus stressed that the task of opposition in Iran has become much more difficult in Iran since it has to “fight for freedom and democracy inside the country and against foreign threats in the international arena”.

The fact that Saudi Arabia is accusing Iran along with the United States has provoked additional reactions on the public’s part. Most Iranians have never really forgiven Saudi Arabia for its financial support of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, although they appreciated the improved relations with Riyadh during the presidencies of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami.

But recent Wikileaks revelations that Saudi officials prodded the U.S. “to cut off the head of the snake”, in reference to Iran, have revived old suspicions.

Sadeq Kharrazi, former deputy foreign minister and ambassador to France during the Khatami government has gone as far to suggest that Iran has made a “strategic mistake” in its insistence on relations and conciliation with “some Arab countries in the region”.

The question that is being asked is what has caused Saudi Arabia to act so boldly against Iran’s interests in the international arena in recent months. For many critics, the answer lies in the rift between the government and people that occurred as a result of the June 2009 elections and the repression that ensued.

According to the 45-year old Azar, who has a graduate degree in management, Saudi Arabia could not have acted in this manner during Khatami’s presidency due to the popular support that he enjoyed.

At the same time, however, she strongly rejects the notion that the IRGC plotted the Saudi ambassador’s assassination, as charged by Washington and Riyadh.

“The Arabs and the West think that since we oppose the government, we would like to offer our country to foreigners. But these are two independent issues. We are against the government but we love our country.”

Azar believes that even if Mir Hossein Mussavi, the presidential candidate who has been under house arrest, were free, popular scepticism regarding the alleged plot would be the same.

The plot allegations on the part of highest-ranking U.S. officials have also led to a noticeable change in the way the United States is viewed here.

One political activist believes that, until very recently, many in the general public and even among political activists trusted the spoken words of the U.S. president and officials more than those uttered by Iranian officials.

But “the continuation of hostilities, sanctions, and in particular the recent allegations have changed people’s views, since they are beginning to feel that the long-term U.S. objective is the destruction of Iran.”

According to a recently dismissed university professor, an added twist is the way this negative view of U.S. intentions has become associated in a national consciousness with how dangerous President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies and bombastic rhetoric have been in making it easy for the United States to pursue its aggressive policies towards Iran.

“The first manifestation of this national consciousness can be traced in the massive number of people who chose to participate in the 2009 elections to prevent Ahmadinejad’s re-election because they thought his policies were dangerous,” the academic said. “They participated because they feared for their country.”

This fear and need for a more prudent foreign policy was openly expressed by former intelligence minister Ali Yunesi, who served during the Khatami administration, in an interview with Etemaad Daily.

Calling the plot allegations “chimerical”, he went on to emphasise the need for a “foreign policy that does not create the context for the acceptance of conspiracies by enemies”. Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy “is not assertive foreign policy; it is (a policy) of creating enemies,” Yunesi said.

In this sense, the government of Iran cannot feel assured that the solidarity and nationalist reaction caused by the assassination accusations will work to its benefit.

“This national consciousness is actually quite corrosive and dangerous for the government because it constantly insists on the pursuit of policies that have a positive impact and do not give the United States, Saudi Arabia, or other countries any pretext for harming the country,” the dismissed university professor told IPS.

Tehran’s relatively tranquil week ended with large protests commemorating the tenth anniversary of attacks on the dormitories of Tehran University in 1999, making Thursday yet another significant day in the short post-election history of protests since Jun. 12.

Protesters in Tehran on Jul. 9, known as 18 Tir. Credit: .faramarz/flickr/creative commons

Students have marked the occasion every year on the Iranian date 18 Tir since 1999, but this was the first time that the anniversary of the violent attack by plainclothes officers was turned into a general protest.

The protests clearly showed that Iran’s turmoil is not over and many are still serious about their objection to the authoritarian turn they think the country has taken since the disputed election.

Since the poll, Iranians have watched not only what some believe was a stolen election, but the subsequent crackdown on peaceful demonstrations, mass arrests of campaign and political staffs as well as ordinary protesters, and silencing of communications networks, including blocking newspapers sympathetic to the opposition and arresting journalists.

This year for 18 Tir, the protests were also a commemoration of a similar dormitory attack that occurred on the night of Jun. 14, 2009 leading to the reported deaths of seven students.

People knew in advance at what hour and where they should gather. This information was relayed via email to an extensive network with a clear map of various protest routes. Participants were expected to walk from various plazas in the capital towards Enqelab Square and the University of Tehran.

Tehran’s police chief Ahmadi Moghadam had explicitly warned that no permit was issued for the rally and protestors would be confronted.

Efforts were also made to prevent the gathering. There were rumours of Wednesday being made a holiday because of air pollution that had overtaken Tehran. The hope was to inspire people to take a vacation and leave town. It didn’t work and a large crowd showed up.

In Enqelab Square, there were only uniformed police at first. Later some members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) came and attempted to frighten people with the sound of revving motorcycles. They shouted and asked the crowd to leave. When they failed to disperse the group, which was chanting “death to the dictator” and “Allah-o Akbar”, they turned to tear gas.

But even tear gas did not work. Some protesters left, but others simply congregated again in another part of the square, chanting. Their persistence finally led the IRGC and police to attack the crowd with batons, indiscriminate of age or gender.

This was apparently the first time that the police force itself openly attacked demonstrators, a task that had previously been left to plainclothes officers and the Basij militia, the IRGC’s special riot control forces.

Along Krgar Street leading to Enqelab Square, people walked or rode in their cars, raising their hands in a victory sign and blowing car horns. “Death to the Dictator,” “You Are the Dirt,” and “You Are the Enemy” were among the most prevalent chants.

This situation continued for at least an hour until an attempt was again made to disperse people with tear gas. Even when the security forces entered the street, they did not know who to attack. People from all sides were blowing their horns and chanting. So the security forces began taking photographs as people tried to cover their faces.

The transformation of one of Tehran’s main streets into a garrison belied the statement of President Mahmoud Ahmadeinjad in his television appearance on Jul. 7 that he was opposed to the securitisation of the society and would put an end to it.

The protests were also again a direct challenge to the words and authority of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who in a recent speech accused the foreign media of identifying people as ‘rioters’.

Instead, he identified them as people saddened by the loss of their candidate. His tone was more conciliatory than his Jun. 19 Friday Prayer sermon – precisely at the time when opposition at the street level turned openly against him. It is not yet clear how Khamanei will react in the face of such sustained opposition.

Ahmad Khatami, one of Tehran’s four temporary Friday Prayer leaders, said on Wednesday that the rumour that the Council of Experts is thinking about making the leader’s position a multi-person council is false.

But this public denial is itself a testimonial to the fact that the recent protests have been directed against the leader and the widespread dissatisfaction about his office’s inability to be an umbrella under which all political sides can stand.

The dissatisfaction became clear with people’s presence everywhere – at multiple protests throughout Tehran, as well as, reportedly, in other cities.

Demonstrators burned garbage cans in order to counteract the tear gas, were beaten, and ran into homes that opened their doors to them. Some were also arrested. The license plates of some cars whose drivers were blowing horns were taken by the police and other cars had their windows smashed.

Still, most people are expressing their anger calmly. In the words of one protestor: “Our anger is natural and logical, but they are nervous because our coming together warms our hearts and makes us happy. When they see us they become nervous and humiliated.”

After the initial convulsive post-election protests, the city was essentially turned into a large prison. Although the deputy prosecutor general announced that 2,000 to 2,500 people arrested previously had been released and 100 others will be released in the next few days, more protestors were identified through pictures and were arrested.

In addition, the renowned human rights lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, and his colleagues were detained.

News that 20 people had been executed on drug trafficking charges also raised fears that they were in fact demonstrators. Perhaps the government was sending a message that a new more violent phase was beginning, people said.

But this fear has so far not led to inaction. The city has indeed turned into a large garrison. Mobiles and text messaging systems are still cut off. But the presence of people is felt more than ever.

Crowds, along with stones and gravel found on street pavements, have become the only means of resistance and confrontation. And people know it.

After several tumultuous days, the streets of Tehran are relatively quiet. But the density of police and basij presence has given the city an air of suffocation. It is hard to breathe.

Baharestan Sq, Teheran, Jun. 24, 2009. Credit: yish/flickr/creative commons

Tehran has the feel of martial law even if there has been no official announcement. But their presence with sticks and batons in front of everyone’s eyes is sufficient to make the Iranian capital feel like it is under occupation.

Gatherings of more than three people have been declared illegal; “do not stop, move” is a constant refrain. The text messaging system is still not working and the Internet is heavily filtered.

Security forces are a constant presence in medical centres – large and small – and at the coroner’s office, Behesht Zahra morgue, where they interrogate family members searching for the disappeared or lost ones. It is said that medical personnel have been asked to create files on the injured.

People are still insisting on their protest against the result of the election one way or another. In the protests that occurred Jun. 22 in Haft-e Tir square and then again in front of Iran’s Parliament, the basiji presence was overwhelming, outnumbering protestors.

After the many pictures and videos that showed the brutality of the security forces, a different tactic was used in Haft-e Tir. Instead of batons and bullets, the authorities decided to detain protestors and prevent any picture-taking. Mobile phones were confiscated.

On the south side of Haft-e Tir, a bus was parked that soon enough filled up with people who knew nothing of their destination. The presence of members of the Intelligence Ministry and plain-clothes officers engaged in spying and identifying people to be arrested was quite evident.

But in Haft-e Tir at least, despite heavy-handed repression, the security forces could not control the demonstrators. A spontaneous gathering of about 2,000 led to shouts of “Allah-o Akbar,” a chorus was that was temporarily dispersed with tear and pepper gas only to regroup again. People walked and walked, quietly watching.

People say even without demonstrations their presence in the streets is important. If that proves impossible, the nightly shouts of “Allah-o Akbars” must continue, they say.

In the midst of all this uncertainty, the make-up of basiji forces in the streets reveals an interesting aspect of the way the government is facing its opponents. There is no doubt that middle-aged plain-clothes men lead these forces.

But those who follow orders and are actually beating people are young. When this reporter asked a young Basiji how old he was, he raised his voice and warned that I should not ask him questions, or else.

It was not difficult to guess that he was only 16 or 17. Asked why he was hitting people, his retort was: “Because you are a monafeq; the Leader has said you are a monafeq.”

Monafeq, meaning hypocrite, is the common term to refer to the widely loathed Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) who fought with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.

The young man is not the only basiji brought to Tehran these days. An informal sampling of those who responded to questions found that they were mostly unemployed young men brought to Tehran from smaller cities with a promise of good pay.

Young protestors in the streets sarcastically say that this is indeed the government’s promised job creation plan. This joke has a sad reality hidden in it. The fact is that in a country like Iran where the government is the most significant promoter of infrastructural development as well as public education and employment, the job of attacking other citizens has become the most lucrative under the circumstances.

Meanwhile, the quiet streets of Tehran have become filled with rumours. Lack of newspapers in newsstands and pervasive distrust of official outlets, especially the national television, have made each individual citizen a carrier of rumours. Those rumours that are almost or not yet confirmed, everyone qualifies, but they are nonetheless weapons of the weak about those who people hope will bring about change and against those held responsible for the current situation.

The most widely heard rumours concern former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. It is said that Iran’s cleverest politician, who is also known as the country’s consummate behind-the-scenes politician, has already gathered 40 signatures from high-ranking clerics for the disqualification of the president.

There are also rumours about his long conversation with one of the most important sources of emulation, Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, who in recent weeks has not participated in Qom’s Friday Prayers and, in a statement published Friday, said, “efforts must definitely be made to ensure that no smoldering embers remain under the ashes, and to turn the unkindness and pessimism into goodwill, and the competition into friendship and cooperation between all groups…”

When calm returns, he said, there should be “ways to reach national reconciliation”.

In all likelihood the feverish rumours about Hashemi Rafsanjani’s behind-the-scenes activities are more than mere rumour since FarsNews, the organ of the Ahmadinejad government, has suddenly developed a keen interest in history, running statements made by Hashemi Rafsanjani uttered during the student demonstrations in 1999 during which he stressed the need to follow the dictates of Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

While Hashemi Rafsanjani himself remains eerily quiet, Farsnews, it seems, is hoping to fill a void. But no one is buying it. His silence, rightly or wrongly, has made people even more confident that he must be up to something that will soon reveal itself.

The second set of rumours belong to Khamenei’s second son, Mojtaba, a cleric who has also remained hidden from public view. Until recently, there was not much news about this mysterious cleric. Most people don’t even know what he looks like.

His name came up during the 2005 presidential election when then-presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, in a letter Ayatollah Khamenei, implied that his son had something to do with what many observers believed was an earlier fraud.

It is said that Mojtaba Khamenei hopes to replace his father one day and that it is he who has been propagating rumours about Hashemi Rafsanjani’s family’s wealth and corruption. Now, people are speculating that that Khamenei’s strong denunciation of the British government during the Friday Prayer sermon last week may have had something to with the freeze London placed on 1.6 billion dollars in Iranian bank accounts last week, some of which of may have been in Mojtaba’s name.

The children of Rafsanjani have long been subject of corruption-oriented rumours. That Khamenei’s children have suddenly become the focus of such undesirable speculation offers one indication of how radically times and attitudes have changed.

Then there are rumours about Mojtaba’s accomplices in the electoral coup. They include the head of the joint chiefs of staff, General Hassan Firuzabadi, who has held this position since 1989; Sadeq Mahsuli, the Interior Minister; Gholamali Haddad Adel, the former Speaker of the Parliament whose daughter is married to Mojtaba; Ruhollah Hosseinian, a cleric and Parliamentary deputy; Morteza Tamaddon, Tehran’s provincial governor and a close associate of Ahmadinejad’s; and Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Qods Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, among others.

The notion of secret negotiations to resolve the crisis is also widespread and supported by official news that a delegation from Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Relations Committee, headed by its chair Alaeddin Borujerdi, met separately with the three defeated presidential candidates, as well as Hashemi Rafsanjani on Jun. 24 and 25.

Very little has been revealed about the content of the meetings, but most believe it was no accident that the spokesperson for the Guardian Council soon afterward announced that a special committee of five “independent individuals,” including former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and former Parliament speaker Gholamali Haddad Adel, will also meet with representatives of the candidates to discuss their concerns. It is reported that Mohsen Rezaie and Karroubi have agreed to send their representatives.

The decision by Karroubi, if true, creates a dilemma for reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi who cannot be happy with the composition of the five-member special committee, all of whom have already lined up behind President Ahmadinejad.

He has to decide how to balance his efforts to sustain the mobilisation against the election in the streets, on the one hand, and to build opposition to Ahmadinejad within the Islamic Republic’s elite, on the other.

It will be a difficult balance to calibrate given people’s expectations. In his latest letter, he promised to remain steadfast in his quest for a just outcome. The quiet streets of Iran are watching.

Yasaman Baji is the pseudonym of a journalist writing from Tehran.

The political crisis that broke out over the Jun. 12 elections entered a new stage here Saturday afternoon as the government’s security forces moved aggressively – and sometimes with lethal force – against demonstrators throughout Iran’s capital city.

At least 13 protesters were reported killed Saturday. Credit: dwh90723/flickr/creative commons

Saturday’s clashes, which began in earnest in mid-afternoon as protestors tried to gather at what has become their central rallying point at Enqelab (Revolution) Square, came one day after Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced in no uncertain terms that he would not back down from his support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and will hold responsible the leaders of the Green Protest Movement – now the effective title of the demonstrations that have engulfed the country – for any violence that might ensue.

As thousands of people moved from all directions towards the Enqelab, they were met by uniformed Basij, Sepah (Revolutionary Guards), and special riot police forces at key intersections in a show of force that appeared designed more to frighten and intimidate the population than to secure the civil peace.

Around 4:00 p.m., the police closest to Enqelab told marchers that the square had been closed and that they should move toward Azadi (Freedom) Square. But as the crowds inched their way in that direction, they encountered fellow demonstrators coming from Azadi who told them that it, too, had been closed to demonstrators and that police had directed them to Enqelab.

The idea seemed to be to keep people dispersed and confused somewhere between the two squares, perhaps an apt, if ironic, metaphor for the itinerant state of the people of Iran in the past 30 years.

Still, people who were determined to reach Enqelab continued their path and were faced with the first attack by a relatively large number of Sepah Special Forces who launched tear gas canisters at the crowd, and began indiscriminately beating stragglers with batons, kicking men and women, and even throwing stones.

Similar attacks were also reported in metro stations and on the numerous pedestrian bridges that exist in the city of Tehran.

People were running into houses, seeking protection from homeowners who had opened their doors.

Protests continued at least until 9 p.m., with Iranian state television reporting a total of 13 deaths, while state radio said 19. There is no doubt that there are many more injured and arrested.

Without a functioning mobile and text messaging system, accurate information has become impossible to come by. Rumours are flying furiously.

One protestor, for example, swore that he had seen with her own eyes former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Moussavi, whose candidacy sparked the Green Protest Movement and who Saturday vowed to continue pursuing non-violent protest until the election results were annulled, wearing a shroud close to Enqelab Square.

In his statement, Moussavi explained that he had decided against meeting with the Guardian Council to press his claims of election fraud in light of Khamenei’s speech at Friday’s Prayers, which both accepted the official results of the election and acknowledged the possibility of only minimal electoral tinkering.

The other reformist candidate, former Parliamentary Speaker Mehdi Karrubi, also decided against meeting with the Council. Instead, Moussavi called for a full investigation by an independent body.

By 10 p.m. Saturday, shouts of Allah-o Akbar, like every other night for the past week, erupted from rooftops in every sector of the city. Not only did the shouts appear louder and more sustained Saturday night, however, the slogan “death to the dictator” was heard more prominently than before. In some streets, the shouts turned into “Death to Khamenei.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s television and radio stations are broadcasting news about nameless people arrested in the current turmoil.

The detainees, according to these reports, have confessed to being members of Mojaheddin-e Khalq, an Iraq-based dissident group that is widely unpopular due to its alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. The official media also claimed that many of those arrested had confessed to joining the demonstrations after being contacted by individuals in Britain who allegedly asked them to go into the streets and vandalise property and burn buses.

Britain has become a favoured scapegoat of the regime during the current crisis, no doubt because of its constant intervention in Iran’s internal affairs during the first half of the 20th century, culminating in the overthrow – with help from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – of former Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq and the restoration of Reza Shah Pahlaevi.

At this point, most people here appear stunned by the latest turn of events and are reacting to incidents and reports of incidents as they occur.

Many people here believe that the Green Movement, the likes of which has not been seen since the 1979 revolution, cannot be stopped. Others see a major and ominous difference between the current situation and the events of 30 years ago – that is, the strong will of the hard-liners who currently control the State’s security forces to use all means to suppress dissent. In their view, the Shah’s regime, despite its bad name, was less determined.

With Khamenei’s words Friday and Saturday’s popular reaction, the Green Movement appears to have entered a new phase in which its growing number of adherents see the highest authority in the land as the main obstacle in the historic struggle for the rule of law and a just order in Iran. They also see Khamenei himself as having chosen partisanship over guardianship of the constitutional order as his institutional position demands.

At this point the challenge that began with election results, even if it ends with a defeat, has shaken the foundation of the institution of vali-ye faqih or supreme jurisprudent. And a shaken foundation makes a downfall a not-too-distant possibility. If Khamenei does not soon realise how the popular tide has turned against him, he may yet go the way of the Shah.

*Yasaman Baji is the pseudonym of a journalist writing from Tehran.

With tens of thousands of police deployed Saturday to suppress the massive crowds that have been demanding new elections, it appears that the political crisis touched off by the disputed victory of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has entered a new phase.

Protesters engaged in running battles with riot police in the streets Saturday, Jun. 20. Credit: iranelection.posterous.com/creative commons

Police were quick to attack groups of protestors as they moved from various parts of Tehran to rally at Enqelab (Revolution) Square in the afternoon, apparently in hopes of dispersing demonstrators in advance and thus preempting the opposition protests that have filled the streets for much of the past week.

It now appears that the highly anticipated speech by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s at the Friday Prayer marked a major hardening of the regime’s attitude toward the protests.

Iranians of all walks were glued to their television sets, listening for hints about ways to calm the mayhem that has engulfed Iran since Election Day, particularly in large cities.

Some were disappointed but said they really did not expect more; others watched in disbelief the leader’s seeming inability to address the popular anger.

Although the speech did begin with a vow to soothe wounded feelings, it ended with defiance and a statement of readiness to sacrifice for the cause of revolution and Islam. The speech was widely perceived as an incitement, and was immediately greeted with piercing shouts by protesters of ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ (God is great) from rooftops across Tehran.

The incitement came in the form of unusual clarity in support of President Ahmadinejad as well as the more explicit issuing of a threat.

Ayatollah Khamenei described the difference of 11 million votes between Ahmadinejad and leading reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi as solid evidence that the election was not rigged, effectively closing the door to the possibility of the Guardian Council, the body that must certify the votes, finding its own way to redress the situation.

This was not the first time Khamenei had supported Ahmadinejad. But on previous occasions, his support was framed as a defence of a sitting president under heavy criticism and not necessarily support for his ideas and policies. This time the leader made his relationship to and support for Ahmadinejad clear.

He termed as baseless the opposition’s criticisms of Ahmadinejad and explicitly stated that his views own about social, economic and foreign policy were closer to Ahmadinejad than to those of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. This was the first time, as acknowledged by the leader himself, that he named specific political figures, and the leader, who is expected to stand above the factional fray, announced his partisanship.

Most importantly, he asked the two candidates contesting the election –Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi – to stop their “street muscle flexing” demonstrations or take responsibility for the violence that might ensue, possibly through a terrorist act.

The reference to a terrorist act was seen as particularly ominous.

There were reports Saturday morning of a bomb blast near the shrine of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Saturday morning.

According to the Constitution, the supreme leader is Iran’s highest authority, with far-reaching powers. He can certainly utilise those powers to intimidate opponents and incite his base to attack his opponents.

People in the streets are wondering aloud about whether Ayatollah Khamenei is aware of the depth of people’s anger and whether he is giving support to the president in spite of this awareness.

The protests that have so far taken shape are unprecedented in the history of the Islamic Republic in their seriousness and coordination in the pursuit of specific demands.

This appears to be a very different movement from the more limited student movement of the 1990s. It is an eclectic movement entailing people of all classes, educational levels, ages and gender.

Grandparents walk alongside their children and grandchildren. University professors, artists and intellectuals have joined. Even some members of the Iranian national soccer team wore the colour of protest – green – on their wrists while playing South Korea to a 1-1 draw earlier in the week.

It is perhaps the breadth of the opposition movement that has so far kept the demands of protestors limited and focused only on the voiding of the election. Astonishingly, this movement appears very similar in many ways that that which generated the 1979 Revolution both in terms of symbols and tactics.

The opposition, which owes its existence essentially to the activities of campaign workers in various cities, managed very quickly to rally behind of one candidate – Moussavi – and against another – Ahmadinejad. As one demonstrator said, “Those campaign nights and days caused us to meet each other and know that we have common demands.”

The congregation of crowd this time is also similar to 1979 in terms of the relative lack of sophisticated electronic media or cell phones to bring people together.

Although social networking cites like Twitter initially played a large role, the government’s efforts to block access to the internet and modern telecommunications systems have again forced people to rely on word of mouth, making “every individual a medium,” an expression often repeated in the streets.

Silent walks allow people to trade numbers, talk to each other, learn about each other’s lives, and plan for the next demonstration.

Every night people climb to the rooftops of their buildings at exactly 10 p.m. and shout, “Allah-o Akbar” across the city, a haunting echo of the Revolution.

Even gunshots piercing the night have not prevented voices expressed in unison. This popular movement has so far received the support of Ayatollahs Mussavi Ardebili, Sanei, Amjad, Bayat, Makarem Shirazi, and of course dissident Montazeri, who, according to unconfirmed reports, has once more been placed under house arrest

Iranian bloggers are asking people to send pictures and names of plain-clothes goons that are beating people in the streets and in student dormitories. So far, the pictures of seven people have been identified, including one who shot a young man from atop a station of the basij, a feared paramilitary group that often acts as the government’s “morality police”.

The incident led to the burning of the station and the hospitalisation for severe burns of the basiji gunman.

The intent is to expose the assailants to the larger society’s eyes and conscience and shame them into inaction.

Iran’s parliament, or Majles, has itself promised an investigation into an incident earlier this week when suspected basiji invaded dormitories at Tehran University and beat suspected student leaders. An appeal by the Majles deputy speaker to name the responsible individuals led to fisticuffs in the chamber.

But with his talk on Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei placed himself solidly on the side of the government’s hard-liners, closing the path of return that the opposition had sought in calling for the voiding of the election results.

The Guardian Council has invited all candidates to participate in a meeting with the council. Latest reports suggest that neither Moussavi nor Karrubi attended the meeting.

At the same time, the police have been deployed to prevent protestors from gathering at Enqelab (Revolution) Square to march towards Azadi (Freedom) Square, the highly symbolic route that has been adopted by the opposition for the past week.

How Moussavi and Karrubi, not to mention their hundreds of thousands of supporters here, or, for that matter, the powerful Hashemi Rafsanjani, will respond remains to be seen.

*Yasaman Baji is the pseudonym of a journalist writing from Tehran.