The surprise victory of Hassan Rouhani in Iran’s Jun. 14 election has provoked a range of reactions here, ranging from cautious optimism about possible détente between Tehran and Washington to outright rejection of the notion that his presidency will produce any substantive change in policy, foreign or domestic.

While most Iran specialists fall into the former category, neo-conservatives and other pro-Israel forces insist that even if the president-elect wanted to be more forthcoming on western demands to curb Tehran’s nuclear programme and other concerns, he would still be overruled by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and other powerful hard-line interests.

Echoing concerns voiced by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the latter also expressed worry that Rouhani’s more “moderate” image – especially in contrast to the belligerence of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – may lull western governments into making undesirable concessions.

“The search for a ‘moderate’ Iranian leader has beguiled every American president since the revolution of 1979,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s neo-conservative editorial board. “But the hunt for the unicorn seems destined to begin again with the breathless reporting that Iranians have elected 64-year-old cleric Hassan Rohani as their next president.”

President Barack Obama himself no doubt added to those concerns Monday when, after a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-8 Summit in Northern Ireland, he told reporters that the two leaders “expressed cautious optimism that with a new election [in Iran], we may be able to move forward on a dialogue that allows us to resolve the problems with Iran’s nuclear program”.

Rouhani’s first-round victory, with just under 51 percent of the vote in a field of six candidates, came as a surprise to all but a few analysts here. Most expected a candidate, notably Tehran’s current nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, with the hard-line views that are believed to reflect those of Khamenei, to triumph whether by the actual vote tally or by the kind of ballot rigging that many believe occurred in the contested 2009 election.

While Rouhani, who has several degrees including a doctorate from Caledonian University in Glasgow, has held senior foreign-policy positions in the regime – among them, the nuclear file under reformist President Mohammad Khatami – he was openly critical of Tehran’s recent diplomacy, particularly over its nuclear programme, during the election campaign.

“We have to calculate our national interests,” he said shortly before the election. “It’s nice for the centrifuges to run, but people’s livelihoods have to also run, our factories have to also run,” a reference to the impact of U.S. and western sanctions aimed at “crippling” Iran’s economy.

Rouhani, who will assume the presidency in August, gained the strong backing of both Khatami and former President Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, a centrist whose own candidacy had been disqualified by the Guardian Council. Both leaders had also called for major changes in Iran’s foreign policy, including the regime’s handling of negotiations with the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany) over the nuclear programme.

Most Iran experts believe Rouhani’s victory offers a major opportunity for progress in those negotiations. They note that he persuaded Khamenei to go along with a voluntary suspension of Iran’s enrichment-related and reprocessing activities while trying to negotiate an accord with the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany).

In 2006, in his capacity as Khamenei’s representative on the regime’s Supreme National Security Council, he published a detailed offer in TIME magazine that included accepting strict limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment and enhanced International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) oversight of Iran’s nuclear-related facilities – only to be rejected by the administration of former President George W. Bush.

A key Rouhani subordinate when he headed the nuclear file, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, has worked continuously on the terms of a nuclear accord ever since he was accused of treason by the Ahmadinejad government and fled the country to accept a post at Princeton University. Most recently, he has emphasised that Iran must accept “the maximum level of transparency in cooperation with the IAEA” – a theme that Rouhani also stressed during a press conference in Tehran Monday.

“It’s not too outrageous to suspect that Mousavian will return to Iran,” according to Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University, who described Rouhani’s tone and style as the “anti-Ahmadinejad”. “There’s a continuity that is very real. Mousavian has argued there’s a deal to be made; it just takes some goodwill on both sides.”

Other Iran experts agree that Rouhani’s election makes a deal substantially more possible than it would have been had Jalili, whose platform stressed “resistance” to western demands, been elected.

But they argue that Washington must also be prepared to make concessions in order to persuade Khamenei to go along, especially in light of the fact that the United States has previously rejected Rouhani’s overtures.

“Rouhani’s election presents the United States and its partners with a test – of our intensions and seriousness about reaching an agreement,” wrote Paul Pillar, a CIA veteran who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East from 2000 to 2005, the period of Rouhani’s greatest influence over Iran’s nuclear policy.

“Failure of the test will confirm suspicions in Tehran that we do not want a deal and instead are stringing along negotiations while waiting for the sanctions to wreak more damage,” he wrote on his nationalinterest.org blog.

“Passage of the test will require placing on the table a proposal that, in return for the desired restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities, incorporates significant relief from economic sanctions and at least tacit acceptance of a continued peaceful Iranian nuclear program, to include low-level enrichment of uranium,” according to Pillar.

Describing Rouhani’s victory as a “game-changer”, Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, argued that Washington must be willing to offer substantial sanctions relief in order to strike a deal.

“For the past eight years, U.S. policy has relied on pressure – threats of war and international economic sanctions – rather than incentives to change Iran’s calculus. Continuing with that approach will be counterproductive. It will not provide Rowhani with the cover for a fresh approach to nuclear talks,” he wrote on foreignpolicy.com.

But such thinking is precisely what worries neo-conservatives and leaders of the Israel lobby.

The White House “no doubt will ramp up its beseeching diplomacy to strike a nuclear deal with the Rohani government”, the Journal’s editorial writers warned Monday. “President Obama is desperate to find some agreement to avoid having to launch a military strike. Expect Mr. Rohani to go along for the talks, but mainly to ease Western sanctions and buy more nuclear time.”

The same forces are similarly worried about the replacement of Ahmadinejad by a less bombastic and far more sophisticated Iranian president.

In a blog entitled “Rooting for Jalili”, Daniel Pipes, the president of the Middle East Forum, wrote that the same logic that led him to support Ahmadinejad’s re-election four years ago applied to this election.

It “is better to have a bellicose, apocalyptic, in-your-face Ahamdinejad who scares the world than a sweet-talking (the 2009 moderate candidate Mir-Hossein) Mousavi who again lulls it to sleep, even as thousands of centrifuges whir away”, he concluded.

The decision by the reformist candidate Mohammadreza Aref to withdraw his candidacy – and in effect open the path for the centrist Hassan Rowhani to become the unified candidate of both the centrists and reformists – is an important development in Iranian politics.

Its impact will reach beyond this election.

This isn’t only because the centrist and reformist forces, currently led by former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, respectively, have done what the conservative forces failed to do.

After all, the conservatives – or the array of forces known as the “Principlists” in Iran, also began with the idea of coalition-building in mind.

The trio – former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, Tehran mayor Mohmmad Baqer Qalibaf, and former Parliament Speaker Gholamreza Haddad Adel – had agreed that only one of them would stand on Election Day.

Today, however, only Haddad Adel has dropped out without specifying his preferred candidate.

Beyond Velayati and Qalibaf, other principlist candidates, including nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaie, remain in the race.

So now a splintered principlist field faces a candidate that has the backing of significant political and social forces; a candidate who may, just may, become president if the Iranian electorate decides to vote in larger than expected numbers and, of course, there is no ballot box-tampering.

Just this thought, for me, represents an amazing turn of events in Iran’s ongoing election saga.

But even if this form of strategising does not yield success for whatever reason, the process that led to this alliance is an important one, one that may have a lasting impact on Iranian politics.

Why? Well, first and foremost, it was a process that was initially pushed by the rank-and-file and then deliberated upon by a committee of Khatami advisors at the top.

In an interview with Mehr News, Ahmad Masjed Jamei, Khatami’s minister of culture and Islamic guidance, explained that after Hashemi Rafsanjani’s disqualification most committee members were thinking they would not participate in the election in an organised fashion.

Their views, however, changed because “news from the provinces” suggested that people “expected” the reformists to participate and choose one candidate to support in order to increase his chance of winning.

So by creating subcommittees, with identified membership, they began working on different tasks.

One subcommittee began talking to candidates as well as well prominent centrists such Hashemi Rafsanjani and former presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri.

Another developed an independent mechanism for polling to see which candidate is doing better as he presents himself to the public through state-controlled media as well as campaign rallies.

This resulted in the reformist decision to support a candidate who is not explicitly running as a reformist because of his better chances.

It took a day or so to convince Aref but once Khatami publicly stepped in and asked him to step aside, Aref did as he had said he would if the reformist leader made the request. Aref is now being declared a man of honor and his word.

And yesterday, both Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani came out in strong support of Rowhani.

Khatami released a video in which he asked people to vote, to create a wave.

He said not voting is of no use, even in a very flawed electoral system.

He shunned idealism and explained why the choice was “rationally” made in the face of the Guardian Council’s disqualification of Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Khatami is usually framed as a timid leader who has a hard time leading.

This time around, though, the reluctant leader was moved to action with pressure from below and coordination and advice by a group of aides, all in a rather public and transparent way.

There was no guarantee that it would work. In fact, many assumed that it would not. But it was tried and led to results.

The message is clear: there is a good sector of the Iranian society that wants the reformists to stay in politics, not by only lamenting what is being done to them, but by actively strategising to counter the array of tactics and maneuvers that are marshaled to prevent their rightful claim to political power.

This alliance – win or lose – is a declaration that the centrists and reformists are here to stay and cannot be purged.

The traditional approach to rejection – which essentially involved going to one’s corner and merely lamenting the unfairness of the electoral process – was not practised this time, in Masjed Jamei’s words, because of pressure from below, which demanded participation in the competition for power.

In both Aref and Rowhani’s rallies, the call for unity was loudly demanded, as was the call for Khatami to lead and help bring about the alliance.

Well, Khatami did it, using a rather deliberate and transparent process that took time and made many rank-and-file reformists nervous.

But he, and the process he relied upon, came through with a big bang, allowing him to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Hashemi Rafsanjani who also said yesterday that even Nateq Nouri, who was the so-called system’s candidate in 1997 and lost to Khatami, will support Rowhani.

Meanwhile, the Guardian Council’s spokesperson, Abbasali Kadkhodai, had a meeting with representatives of the 6 remaining candidates, assuring them that “every vote will be read”.

We will have to wait and see.

But even if every vote is read, Rowhani’s success is not guaranteed if reformist and centrist voters – the most disaffected voters after what happened in the 2009 election – do not come out and vote.

In any case, an example of what successful politics on the part of those seeking change in Iran can look like was just put on display for future reference.

For Washington, obsessed with matters Iranian, it may be hard to accept a simple fact: Iran’s Jun. 14 presidential election is an Iranian event. If we attempt to make it about us, we will find ourselves on the same road that has previously led to multiple failures: Iran-contra; “goodwill begets goodwill”; and a non-existent two-track policy.  

In other words, we will continue the futility of the last three decades when we thought we could pick winners and losers in Iran’s elections or become involved in the country’s internal politics. If we do the same now, we will again get tied up in knots of our own bad assump­tions and uninformed decisions."In Washington, officials dismissed anything - reasonable or not - with Ahmadinejad’s fingerprints on it." – John Limbert

So what, if anything, should the United States do and say about Iran’s election?

First, we should shut up about everything but the basics and stick to the universal principles of good government.

We should not help the Islamic Republic make the election about us.

The ideologues in Tehran would love to paint a vote for this or that candidate as a slap in the face to “world arrogance” (the U.S.), or to portray a candidate who advocates rationality as an U.S. agent.

Second, if we must say something about the election, we should say as little as possible and choose our words cautiously.

To begin with the obvious, the election will give Washington an opportunity simply because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will no longer be in office.

As long as he was, his outrageous statements on the Holocaust, Israel and other mat­ters made him too toxic for U.S. officials to deal with on any issue and at any level. In Washington, officials dismissed anything – reasonable or not – with Ahmadinejad’s fingerprints on it.

Of course late-night comics and those who would turn the Islamic Republic into a superhuman threat to civilisation will miss him.

His love of the absurd and his divisiveness made him a liability even for his own countrymen, who criticised him for talking without thinking and for his needless provocative rhetoric that could drag Iran to destruction.

The reality is that the Iranian president has almost always been a minor figure in Iranian politics. True power lies elsewhere, and the sooner the president accepted his unimpor­tance, the smoother his tenure would be.

Even Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, reportedly complained about his powerlessness when he was Iran’s president from 1981 to 1989.

Real change will come not when one Iranian figurehead replaces another. It will likely come with the end of Iran’s senior clerical elite and the network of financial, judicial and security institutions it controls.

It’s worth noting that the group of about 25 oligarchs who have held the key positions in the Islamic Republic since 1979 is now much smaller, and that one of its key figures – former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani – has taken the unlikely role of outsider.

But those members of the men’s club who do remain – including figures such as Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, Mohammad Yazdi, Ahmad Jannati, and Ali Khamenei himself – continue to wield consi­derable power.

Thus far they have shown little inclination to change either the foreign or domestic policies that have kept them in their palaces for the past 34 years.

The U.S. would certainly like to see free and fair elections in Iran. But until that blessed day arrives, we will have to deal with a less ideal world.

If the Jun. 14 Iranian election is ultimately “good enough” (that is, if it is better than Iran’s 2009 election and no worse than the 2000 U.S. presidential election), President Obama should send a note of congratulation to the winner.

In that note he should chose his platitudes carefully and avoid gratuitous insults like “odious regime”, “change your behaviour” or “stop support for terrorists”.

Judicious language about “mutual respect” and “mutual interest”, which the president used in the first years of his administration, puts the ideologues of the Islamic Republic in a most uncom­fortable place.

Although they know well (with more than 30 years of practice) how to respond to American insults, thoughtful U.S. language discredits their rhetoric and neutralises their anti-U.S. slogans.

After all, how can the Islamic Republic make a believable enemy of someone who seeks discussions based on “mutual respect”, something the Iranians have always said they want as a condition of engagement?

I am always optimistic that the U.S, and Iran can somehow end their unique 34-year estrange­ment – an estrangement that has done no one any good and threatens to descend into an armed conflict that neither side says it wants.

A recent “Iran Project” study, endorsed by three dozen former U.S. officials and scholars, says of the U.S.-Iran relation­ship: “The [American] goal would be to build a practical relationship that could over time help the United States achieve its principal objectives without resort to force.”

Such a relationship would be a major break with the past three decades of hostility and ex­changes of empty slogans, threats, insults and occasionally worse.

That break, however, is unlikely to happen as a result of this June’s Iranian presiden­tial election.

There was no break in the U.S.-Iran estrangement even after Mohammad Khatami’s election in 1997, although both sides lowered the volume of their rhetoric for a time and spoke about “dialogues” and “roadmaps”.

At that time the two countries began exchanging artists, scientists, and sports teams, but somehow those worthy programmes did not result in any change at the political level. Wrestlers and filmmakers came and went, but the silent treatment and hostility remained among officials.

So what should the U.S. do or say about the Iranian election?

Keep focused on our own goal, which, as the above-noted study says, is to achieve principal American objectives without resorting to the use of force.

Doing so requires saying as little as possible and ensuring that official statements emphasise the principle that Iranians, like the rest of us, deserve a govern­ment that does not steal elections and allows its citizens to express themselves without fear of the club and the goon squad. Everyone will get the point.

*John Limbert is Class of 1955 Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy. During a 34-year diplomatic career, he served in Tehran (where he was a hostage at the U.S. Embassy in 1979-81) and, in 2009-2010, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern (Iranian) Affairs.

With the disqualification of former president and current chair of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by a vetting body, the Guardian Council, Iran’s presidential campaign is opening with many in the country in a state of shock.

Although the eight qualified candidates offer somewhat of a choice given their different approaches to the economy and foreign policy, the disqualification of Rafsanjani has once again raised the spectre that the conservative establishment intends to manipulate the electoral process in such a way that only a conservative candidate will win when voters cast their ballots Jun. 14.

Rafsanjan’s candidacy, which received solid support from former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, had created hope among a section of the Iranian population — unhappy with the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — that a real contest over the direction of the country was possible.

In his first statement after declaring his candidacy, Rafsanjani had made clear that returning the country towards “moderation” and away from the “extremism” that had taken hold in both domestic and foreign policy was his objective.

His stature and name recognition had immediately catapulted him as the most formidable candidate against the conservative establishment.

The possibility that the Guardian Council would disqualify a man who is the appointed chair of the Expediency Council and an elected member of the Clerical Council of Experts was deemed unfathomable to many.

In the words of conservative MP Ali Mottahari, who had pleaded with Rafsanjani to register as a candidate, “if Hashemi is disqualified, the foundations of the revolution and the whole system of the Islamic Republic will be questioned.”

Rafsanjani’s unexpected disqualification poses a challenge for his supporters, who include centrists, reformists and even some middle-of-the-road conservatives such as Mottahari: who, if anyone, will they now support in the election?

The slate of approved candidates includes two individuals — former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani and former first vice president Mohammadreza Aref — who hold mostly similar views to Rafsanjani.

In fact, both had said that they would withdraw if Rafsanjani’s candidacy was approved. But neither is as well known as the former president and they will now have to compete against each other in attracting likeminded voters.

Rowhani has chosen to run as an independent, while Aref is running as a reformist. While Rafsanjani’s candidacy had energised and unified the reformists and centrists, the campaign of these two lesser known candidates may be cause for disunity and/or voter apathy.

A third candidate, Mohammad Gharazi — who may also have centrist tendencies — is even less known throughout the country.

He served first as the minister of petroleum and then post, telegraph, and telephone in the cabinet of then-prime minister Mir Hossein Mussavi — now under house arrest after his 2009 presidential bid — and then in Rafsanjani’s cabinet when he served as president.

But since 1997, Ghazari has not held public office. Furthermore, no one really knows his views or why he was qualified when several other ministers with more recent experience were not.

Reformist supporters, already distraught over the previous contested election and continued incarceration of candidates they voted for in 2009, may see Rafsanjani’s disqualification as yet another sign that their vote will not count.

Apathy or abstention in protest among supporters is now a real issue for the centrists and reformists. This challenge may — and only may — be overcome if one of the candidates agrees to withdraw in favour of the other and the popular former reformist president Khatami throws his support behind the unified candidate in the same way he did with the candidacy of Rafsanjani.

But even this may not be enough. The reality is that the low name recognition of both candidates limits the impact of such political manoeuvring and coalition-building by the reformists, especially if the conservative-controlled security establishment makes campaigning and the spread of information difficult. Already Aftab News, a website affiliated with Rowhani, has been blocked.

This leaves the competition among the other five candidates who come from the conservative bloc. One, former presidential candidate, Mohsen Rezaee, is also running as an independent and is both the most likely to last until Election Day and the least likely to garner many votes.

It is the competition among the other four conservative candidates — Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, former Parliamentary Speaker Gholamali Haddad Adel, and current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili — that will in all likelihood determine the fate of the election.

If Rafsanjani had been qualified, there would have been an urge for unity among these candidates since, without such unity, the former president could have received the 50 percent plus one necessary to win in the first round.

Now, however, the same forces that had prevented the conservative candidates from rallying behind one candidate remain in play.

Polls published by various Iranian news agencies, although not very reliable, uniformly suggest that Qalibaf is the most popular conservative candidate because of his management of the Tehran megapolis and the vast improvement in the delivery of services he has overseen there.

But Qalibaf’s relative popularity has not yet been sufficient to convince other candidates to unite behind him. This may eventually happen after televised presidential debates if he does well in them and if Velayati and Haddad Adel drop out in his favour since, from the beginning, the three of them had agreed that eventually the most popular should stand on Election Day.

But there is no guarantee that this will happen. Velayati in particular has ambitions of his own and has implied that Leader Ali Khameni’s preference should be given at least as much weight as polls, giving rise to speculation that he is the Leader’s preferred candidate despite clear signs that he has not been able to create much excitement even among conservative voters.

Convincing the hard-line candidate Jalili to drop out in favour of Qalibaf will be even harder.

In fact, from now until Election Day there will probably be as much pressure on Qalibaf to drop out in favour of Jalili as the other way around in the hope that a unified conservative candidate can win in the first round, avoiding the risk of either Rowhani or Aref making it to the second round where the top two candidates will have to compete on Jun. 21.

Jalili is the least experienced — and well known — of all the conservative candidates and, in a campaign in which economy is the number one issue by far, there are real concerns regarding whether he is experienced enough to manage Iran’s deep economic problems.

But his late entry in the presidential race, minutes after Rafsanjani entered it, has also given rise to speculation that he, instead of Velayati, may be the Leader’s preferred choice.

What is not a subject of speculation is the fact that Jalili takes the hardest line of all the candidates.

His campaign slogan of “hope, justice, and resistance” suggests that he is the most likely to continue current policies, although perhaps with less bombast and populist flair than the current president.

As such, Jalili stands apart from the other seven candidates who will campaign on the need for both change and competent leadership.

Jalili jumped into the race at the last minute as a hard-line counter to Rafsanjani’s call for moderation. Ironically, with the latter’s disqualification, he now stands alone as the candidate whom others will try to mobilise voters against.

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.

More than seven weeks after the secretive arrest of prominent Iranian diplomat Bagher Asadi, an Iranian official confirmed his detention Thursday, although he declined to provide further details.

Courtesy of Bagher Asadi/Facebook

“So far as I know, this individual (in custody) is an experienced foreign ministry diplomat and his latest assignment has been deputy for the D8 group secretary-general,” former foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA). “But I am not informed about the details of the situation.”

The D8, of which Asadi was director of the secretariat, is a group of developing nations with large Muslim populations that have formed an economic development alliance. It includes Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.

A source close to the family told IPS that since his arrest, Asadi’s family has been under pressure from security forces not to discuss the matter publicly.

“They are worried that talking to the media will not help his situation in detention,” the source said on the condition of anonymity.

Another source close to the family told IPS, “We are in shock how the Iranian authorities can arrest somebody without even announcing it when he was at home.”

The source said that during the arrest, which occurred on Mar. 12, Asadi’s house was searched and his laptop and other personal items were confiscated.

“The authorities promised the family to release him after a few days, but he is still in prison. A few days after the arrest, Bagher called home and said he is okay. But since then there has been no news about his condition and the reason behind the arrest.

“We are concerned that he is under pressure and they want to break him,” the source added.

There appears to be official confusion as to Asadi’s status. Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Commission, told Bahar newspaper Thursday, “Ordinarily, the arrest of a diplomat is a result of a violation he may have committed in the country in which he is stationed, or it could be political, for example about the subject of reformists.”

Speculating about the case, which he claimed no personal knowledge of, Bakhshayesh added, “I think this news must be wrong, and Reuters did wrong in publishing such news.”

This last was a reference to a Reuters article published Tuesday which first broke the news that Asadi had been arrested, although the reporter was unable to independently confirm the claim by anonymous sources.

Mohammad Reza Heydari, a former Iranian diplomat who joined the opposition following the violent post-election crackdown on street protesters in 2009 by the Iranian police and intelligence, told IPS that sources inside the foreign ministry told him that Asadi has criticised President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies in private meetings, and he may have been arrested after news of these talks were reported and leaked.

“Considering his way of thinking and his criticism, I believe they are building a case against him. Fabricating cases against individuals is a common practice of the Islamic Republic regime,” said Heydari.

“The Iranian regime has taken the Iranian people as hostages these days. He talked about the people’s rights and current affairs, and this was reported to Tehran by people he was socialising with, and this led to his passport confiscation and detention upon return to Tehran,” he said.

Among his foreign ministry colleagues, Asadi is known as one of the most professional Iranian diplomats. In a prescient January 2004 op-ed published by the New York Times, Asadi warned against the conservative group that could follow President Mohammad Khatami’s reformist cabinet.

“The conservatives’ blatant disdain for human rights and republican aspects of governance, among other things, would inevitably invite outside censure and further complicate an already tenuous relationship,” he wrote.

The Iranian mission at the U.N. did not return repeated calls by IPS for verification of the news or additional details about the arrest.

Although there has been speculation that the arrest is connected to upcoming national elections in June, Heydari believes it’s simply business as usual.

“This arrest is a part of the treatment the Islamic Republic gives its diplomats who speak their minds in the countries where they are stationed, aiming to give a lesson to the diplomats that if they express any opinions other than the ruling system’s, they will be severely dealt with,” he said.

Asadi’s arrest took place amidst other political arrests of reformists or critical activists over the past few weeks, as the Jun. 14 elections approach.

High-ranking officials have warned against the candidacies of former Iranian presidents Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, accusing them of involvement in the 2009 post-election events.

According to Heydari, the Foreign Ministry Inspection Office routinely tells Iranian diplomats prior to dispatching them on their missions that they must refrain from expressing opinions in the presence of individuals who could be potential state enemies, as those expressed opinions could be used against the state later.

“There should be freedom for people to talk. After all, in different meetings, people express their opinions. Monitoring the individuals everywhere and questioning them later are not sustainable methods,” he said.

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.

Iran’s president has accused the brother of the speaker of parliament of corruption, increasing tensions between two of the country’s most powerful political figures in the run-up to presidential elections in the country.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cabinet were in parliament on Sunday for the impeachment hearing of Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, the labour minister, when he levelled the accusations against Fazel Larijani, the speaker’s brother.

He played an inaudible audio recording in which Fazel allegedly says he used his family’s status for economic gains, but both brothers dismissed the allegations made by Ahmadinejad.

“Our problem is that our president does not observe the basics of proper behaviour,” Ali Larjani, the speaker, said, retorting to the president’s comments, adding that it had nothing to do with Sheikholeslami’s impeachment process.

“Actually it’s a good thing that you played this tape today, so that the people better understand your character.”

Al Jazeera’s Soraya Lennie, reporting from Tehran, said: “Most of (the reactions) have been quite negative and critical of the president . One parliamentarian said ‘the president is not acting in the manner befitting his post’.”

Request denied

During Sunday’s impeachment hearing, Ali Larijani told Ahmadinejad that parliament was not the proper place for the corruption discussion and that he should take it any accusation to the relevant authorities.

He also denied a request by Ahmadinejad to speak again.

Ahmadinejad claims that the audio recording of a conversation between Saeed Mortazavi, an associate of Ahmadinejad, and Fazel Larijani was proof of Fazel implying that he could use his brothers’ influence to remove obstacles in return for involvement in business endeavours.

The Larijani family is one of the country’s most influential poltical families. Sadeq Larjani, Iran’s judiciary chief, is a brother of Fazel and Ali.

Fazel told Iran’s Fars news agency that he would file a legal complaint against Ahmadinejad and Mortazavi for “spreading lies and disturbing public opinion”.

“This was a conspiratorial step and hypocritical action taken so that Mortazavi could use it as leverage,” he said. “I’m not the first person to be attacked by these Mafia-like individuals.”

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, reviews his findings at a meeting of the General Assembly’s Third Committee on the promotion and protection of human rights. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Omid Memarian
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 25 2012 (IPS)

More than a year into his mandate, Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, told the Third Committee of the U.N. General Assembly this week that the rights situation in Iran remains critical, especially as it pertains to human rights defenders, journalists, and religious and ethnic minorities.

According to Shaheed, more than 40 Iranian journalists are in prison, along with human rights defenders like Abdolfattah Soltani, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, and Mohammad Seifzadeh. These individuals, along with prominent activist Narges Mohammadi, were members of a human rights organisation under the direction of Nobel Peace Laureate and attorney Shirin Ebadi.

Due to government harassment, Ebadi is now forced to live outside Iran to continue her human rights advocacy.

Altogether, Shaheed’s report estimates that some 32 lawyers have been prosecuted since 2009, and that at least nine defence attorneys are currently imprisoned.

Since his appointment in June 2011, the Iranian government has refused to respond to Shaheed’s multiple requests to travel to Iran and visit prisons there, although he conducted nearly 100 interviews with sources both within and outside the country to prepare his reports.

He told IPS on Tuesday that the Iranian government’s response to his mandate and his reports has been “evolving”, even though Tehran has repeatedly denied him a visa to visit the country.

“Their initial response was that they would not deal with me at all,” Shaheed told IPS. “Now you see that they have actually responded to reports that are out there. In fact, I have written about 20 different communications to the Iranian authorities and I have received some responses to these inquiries, so they haven’t entirely ignored me.”

Shaheed is not the only official barred from visiting Iranian prisons. Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was denied a request by the judiciary to allow him to visit Evin Prison, where most political detainees are held.

Though Shaheed’s and Ahmadinejad’s reasons for visiting Evin Prison may be quite different, the Iranian security apparatus’ lack of transparency and lawlessness appear to have closed the doors of the notorious prison even to high-ranking Iranian officials.

Last week, Shaheed’s report was distributed among U.N. diplomats. Immediately after its release, the head of Iran’s judiciary denounced the report as “baseless”.

“The U.N. Special Rapporteur’s third report, like his previous reports, is full of baseless and untrue statements,” Sadegh Larijani said on Iran’s state television. “Most of what they say takes issue with a fundamental discussion which pertains to all Islamic countries, and it is one which objects to Islamic laws, and unfortunately, Islamic countries are asleep, because presently we are the target of such talk.

“Nonetheless, all of this is an attack on them. Most of the issues are objections to Islamic laws. They object to our Islamic values,” Larijani told reporters.

Shaheed denies the accusations. “We can discuss the Sharia law itself and also the case of Iran’s commitments to international law,” he told IPS. “But that dialogue must happen, and my point to Iran is: observe your own laws, they are written by the people of Iran, some of them recently, and they will improve a vast majority of issues that are there. I think international alertness about what is happening in the country will help address issues of concern.”

One of the major issues raised by Third Committee members as well as Shaheed’s report was the glaring increase in the number of executions in Iran.

In June 2012, two men were sentenced to death for consuming alcohol for the third time, the report states. “At least 141 officially-announced executions are known to have been carried out between January and early June 2012. Several sources have reported that another 82 secret executions would have been carried out during the same time period, and that there were 53 executions across the country during one week in May 2012; 43, the majority of executions were reportedly related to drug offences.”

Larijani says that the death penalty is implemented in the interest of public safety. “The executions are mostly carried out for drug traffickers and sex offenders. How can we sell out the country’s peace to your rhetoric?” he said.

In response to a question by IPS regarding how his reports might impact rights victims’ lives inside Iran, Shaheed said, “If you are a victim of rights violations, documenting your case helps you. Being the voice of the voiceless is an important role that the mandate holder can play. Of course I was very disappointed when this past Monday, 13 people were executed. But as more people talk about Iran, I think we will begin to make a difference.

“I’m not the only one talking about Iran,” Shaheed emphasised. “The Human Rights Committee this past year raised some very serious concerns about Iran, and Iran is again up for review in Geneva next year. I am sure there are issues of concern, and I think all this focus on violations and the prescription of what should be done and the desire on the part of other people to engage with Iran to define ways to address these issues is important.”

The United States, Britain, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Brazil welcomed Shaheed’s report and asked Iran to cooperate with his mandate.

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?”