Iran - Is an elite "compromise" (or counter-coup) in the works?

The unfolding political crisis in Iran has many layers and dimensions, some more readily visible than others. The most conspicuous and inspiring part of this drama has been the confrontation between the popular movement led, or rather represented, by the reluctant semi-revolutionary Mir Hossein Moussavi and the escalating repression unleashed by the hard-liners. That's going on in plain view, relatively speaking.

But the crisis also involves complicated struggles between different factions and power centers within the political elite (discussed, for example, here & here & here), not least the long-term conflict between Khamenei and Rafsanjani. As the Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour recently put it:

At a political level what’s taking place now, among many other things [!], is the 20-year rivalry between Khamenei and Rafsanjani coming to a head [....] It’s an Iranian version of the Corleones and the Tattaglias; there are no good guys and bad guys [in that particular fight--JW], only bad and worse.

Those dynamics have been more opaque, but a lot of analysts and observers believe that they may ultimately be most decisive in shaping the immediate outcomes. Everyone assumes that there is frantic maneuvering going on behind the scenes, and rumors are rife.

=> A number of factions within the elite, including elements of the higher clergy, are more or less hostile to the Khamenei/Republican Guard/Ahmadinejad axis and feel threatened by its increasing grip on power, which the election coup was intended to consolidate. Some of the most dramatic rumors, or informed speculations, suggest that Rafsanjani may be able to "assemble a religious and political coalition to topple the supreme leader and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." On Thursday a piece in the Nation by an Iranian journalist writing under the pseudonym Babak Sarfaraz reiterated this scenario:

Khamenei’s anguished sermon on June 19 was not provoked simply by the popular uprising in the streets. According to a well-placed source in the holy city of Qom, Rafsanjani is working furiously behind the scenes to call for an emergency meeting of the Khobregan, or Assembly of Experts — the elite all-cleric body that can unseat the Supreme Leader or dilute his prerogatives. [....] Rafsanjani’s purported plan is to replace Khamenei’s one-person dictatorship with a Leadership Council composed of three or more high-ranking clerics; this formula was proposed and then abandoned in 1989 by several prominent clerics. [....]

=> Another variant of this rumor suggests that behind the scenes a "compromise" solution is in the works that would allow a run-off election between Ahmadinejad and Moussavi. Here's one version from the Iranian-American writer and academic Reza Aslan in the Daily Beast:

Reliable sources in Iran are suggesting that a possible compromise to put an end to the violent uprising that has rocked Iran for the past two weeks may be in the works. I have previously reported that the second most powerful man in Iran, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the Assembly of Experts (the body with the power to choose and dismiss the Supreme Leader) is in the city of Qom—the country’s religious center—trying to rally enough votes from his fellow Assembly members to remove the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from power. News out of Iran suggests that he may be succeeding. At the very least, it seems he may have gained enough support from the clerical establishment to force a compromise from Khamenei, one that would entail a run-off election between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main reformist rival Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Reports of the possible compromise, though unconfirmed, are coming from multiple sources. [....]

This would be a remarkable denouement, since it would not really be a "compromise" so much as an acceptance of the central demand of the Moussavi camp. After everything that Supreme Leader Khamenei, in particular, has said and done so far, I imagine he would see this as a devastating blow to his credibility (even if Ahmadinejad and the forces he represents manage to win or steal a hypothetical second-round vote).

Partly for those reasons, I confess that I am very skeptical about this scenario. But I wouldn't mind being proved wrong, since if something like this did happen, it would represent a significant defeat for the hard-line Khamenei/Republican Guard/Ahmadinejad bloc. They would have managed to provoke an effective coalition against them by the other major elite factions--backed up by the pressure of the popular movement out in the streets and, no doubt, a desire by sectors of the elite to avoid the political risks of very large-scale bloodshed. And, under the circumstances, the results could help move Iran in the direction of a more open and democratic society.

Thus, I hope this scenario is less implausible than it looks to me right now. It would have to be rammed down the throat of the hard-liners, and they do happen to control the most armed force, but they might be hesitant to attempt a crudely overt military coup against the institutions of the Islamic Republic if the rest of the elite were united against them. When people are really backed into a corner politically, they sometimes wind up doing a lot of things they don't really want to do.

=> Mehdi Noorbaksh, another Iranian-American academic with extensive contacts in Iran, assembled a range of recent developments and other possible clues into an analysis arguing that a behind-the-scenes elite "compromise" along these lines might be in the cards. He's given me permission to post it (below).

Noorbaksh is careful to indicate that this prognosis is speculative. But a lot of things going on in Iran are sufficiently fluid and murky that I suppose it can't be ruled out. So Noorbaksh's analysis is worth considering. And if something like this actually happens, you read it here first. (Unless, of course, you already got this rumor from another source.)

Watching and waiting,
Jeff Weintraub

-----------------------------------
June 25, 2009]

There is a possibility, and I am saying a possibility, for a compromise on the election result among the involved parties in Iran in the next couple of days. I received a call from Iran late last night indicating that there is a possibility for a runoff between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad. There are a few points that we should consider in this context.

1. The Guardian Council all but acknowledged election irregularities a few days ago and indicated that it involved 3 million votes. This body did not restrict these irregularities to a few thousand or even a hundred thousand votes, but millions. That was a face saving gesture to open the door for a possible future compromise in the event of mounting pressure. There are other irregularities having the same nature. Many districts, up to 170, show voter turnout of 95% to 140% of the eligible voters.

2. Ali Larijani, the head of the Iranian parliament, is trying to convince the leadership on the side of the supreme leader to give national TV time to Mousavi to talk to the Iranian people. In his TV talk a couple of days ago, Larijani was critical of the Iranian national TV for not allowing Mousavi to use that medium of communication to talk to the Iranian people. He also announced that a few members of the Guardian Council were biased toward one candidate, namely Ahmadinejad, in the election.

3. There is report that Rafsanjani has succeeded to get the signatures and support of many of the high clerics in Qom denouncing the election. If they openly denounce the election that could be a colossal blow to the supreme leader, and the much diminished legitimacy of the institution of Velayat-e Faqih and his authority.

4. The Guardian Councils’ investigation of the vote fraud has been extended, possibly to gain more time in negotiating a solution to the conflict.

5. There are reports that divisions within the Revolutionary Guard are beginning to surface. There is speculation that one of the commanders, Afzali, has either resigned or been abdicated from his post.

6. Rallies are expanding in many other cities of Iran, and street demonstrations have not been diminished in Tabriz, Isfahan, Kermanshah and other cities. Although the size of the demonstrations is smaller, they are more violent and forceful.

7. The killings of demonstrators will definitely result in more defiance and bolder actions of the protesters and gain more legitimacy for the green movement and its leadership. More killings will definitely delegitimize further the supreme leader’s authority. Imposing a government, after mass killings, on the Iranian people is a much more difficult task.

Mehdi Noorbaksh
Associate Professor of International Affairs
Harrisburg University of Science and Technology

John Simpson - "Secret voices of the new Iran" (BBC)

That title, I might note, has several layers of meaning.

John Simpson, World Affairs Editor of the BBC, left Iran on Sunday. A very interesting piece by Simpson, blending analysis, reflection, and historical background with striking anecdotes, appeared today. Some selections:

For reasons best not explained, I've come to know a former member of the Revolutionary Guards really well.

He's done some pretty dreadful things in his life, from attacking women in the streets for not wearing the full Islamic gear to fighting alongside Islamic revolutionaries in countries abroad.

And yet now, in the tumult that has gripped Iran since its elections last week, he's had a change of heart.

He's become a backer of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate who alleges fraud in the elections. He's saved up the money to send his son to a private school abroad, and he loathes President Ahmadinejad.

He's not the only one.

I had to leave Iran last Sunday, when the authorities refused to renew my visa. But before I left, another former senior Revolutionary Guard came to our hotel to see us.

"Remember me," he pleaded. "Remember that I helped the BBC."

I realised that even a person so intimately linked to the Islamic Revolution thinks that something will soon change in Iran. [....]

It illustrates the split that goes all the way through Iranian society. [....]

The 11 extraordinary days I spent there was my 20th visit in 30 years. I've been reviewing the material we recorded, taking a second look at what was really going on.

I think that these last weeks may turn out to be as momentous as the Islamic Revolution I witnessed there 30 years ago. [....]

But in some ways Simpson's piece has its own split personality. Despite the massive popular upheaval shaking Iran today, Simpson nevertheless thinks that what is central to the crisis is the culmination of a decades-long personal and factional power struggle at the heart of the regime:

It's as if the fabric of the Islamic Revolution itself has been torn; so much so that individual government ministers, civil servants, Republican Guards, senior military men, and all sorts of others, have taken sides, reflecting a power struggle at the very top. [....]

On one side is Ayatollah Khameinei, the arch conservative who keeps the Islamic revolution together. On the other, a cynical figure who has made a pile of money since the revolution: former President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani. [....]

But while the idealistic young people rally behind the slogan: "Death to the Dictator," I am not fully convinced that a Rafsanjani Iran necessarily offers the more open form of government they are risking their lives for.

Both sides in this struggle are strong believers in the Islamic Republic.

It may change, but it isn't finished. And the great mass of people who've taken part in the demonstrations could find themselves just looking on from the outside, as they did before.

Could be. Read the whole thing.

--Jeff Weintraub

Who has the oil?

And who uses it? (Via Andrew Sullivan)

Click on the map to expand. --Jeff Weintraub

Rami Khouri - "The Arabs Watch Iran with Forlorn Envy" (Beirut Daily Star)

The Palestinian-Jordanian-American journalist Rami Khouri, who at different times has been Editor-in-Chief of the Beirut Daily Star and the Jordan Times (among other things), is always worth reading (or almost always), whether or not one fully agrees with him.

In the piece below he offers some thoughtful, acute, and illuminating reflections on the political drama unfolding in Iran and the deeply ambivalent reactions to this spectacle in the Arab world. I have some thoughts about this piece myself, but for the moment I will just pass it on. Some highlights:

------------------------------
I started writing this column Sunday in Amman, Jordan, and finished writing it Tuesday in Beirut, Lebanon [....] Jordan and Lebanon contain extremes visible in the Arab world, including pro-American and pro-Iranian sentiments, Islamists, monarchists, and an assortment of tribal, Arab nationalist, state-centered and democratic values.

All of them, without exception, are reacting to events in Iran with fascination, confusion, and concern, reflecting self-inflicted political incoherence and mediocrity that are hallmarks of the modern Arab world. Broadly speaking, the Arab world has maneuvered itself into a lose-lose situation with regard to developments in Iran, despite the different views expressed toward the Islamic Republic.

The uncomfortable common denominator is that for both the people and the ruling power elites of the Arab world, whatever happens in Iran will largely be perceived negatively by a majority in the Middle East. This is a sad commentary on the condition of Arab political culture, which remains autocratic and rigid at the top, and passive and frustrated at the grassroots. [....]

Arab regimes and leaders have worked themselves into a lose-lose situation whereby they would be unhappy if the Iranian regime stayed in power and unhappy if it were removed through popular challenge. The same awkwardness defines the perspectives of Arab citizens. [....]

At the same time, ordinary Arabs would feel jealous were the demonstrators in Iran able to topple their regime for the second time in 30 years; this would highlight the chronic passivity and powerlessness of Arab citizens who must suffer permanent subjugation in their own long-running autocratic systems without being able to do anything about it. Whether Iranian street demonstrations challenged the shah or the Islamists who toppled him, Arabs watch all this on television with a forlorn envy.
------------------------------

=> And for anyone who might be interested, here is a collection of pieces commissioned by the New York Times: "The Arab World Reacts (or Doesn't)"

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Daily Star (Beirut, Lebanon)
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Arabs watch Iran with forlorn envy
By Rami G. Khouri

I started writing this column Sunday in Amman, Jordan, and finished writing it Tuesday in Beirut, Lebanon - a short journey that captured how the dynamic events in Iran are playing out in very different ways in a largely passive and vulnerable Arab world. Jordan and Lebanon contain extremes visible in the Arab world, including pro-American and pro-Iranian sentiments, Islamists, monarchists, and an assortment of tribal, Arab nationalist, state-centered and democratic values.

All of them, without exception, are reacting to events in Iran with fascination, confusion, and concern, reflecting self-inflicted political incoherence and mediocrity that are hallmarks of the modern Arab world. Broadly speaking, the Arab world has maneuvered itself into a lose-lose situation with regard to developments in Iran, despite the different views expressed toward the Islamic Republic.

The uncomfortable common denominator is that for both the people and the ruling power elites of the Arab world, whatever happens in Iran will largely be perceived negatively by a majority in the Middle East. This is a sad commentary on the condition of Arab political culture, which remains autocratic and rigid at the top, and passive and frustrated at the grassroots.

Most Arab regimes do not like Iran, they even fear it, because of its capacity to inspire revolutionary Islamism or at least mildly insurrectionary movements within their countries. A few Arab leaders even speak of Iran's predatory or hegemonic ambitions in the Gulf, Lebanon, Iraq and other lands. Only isolated pockets of power in the Arab world like or support the Iranian regime, including Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and some other Islamist or nationalist forces. Yet even the few isolated exceptions, like Hamas and Hizbullah, that have effectively carved out small domains of their own sovereignty are in an uncomfortable zone regarding events in Iran.

Arab public opinion, for its part, views Iran with much more nuance. Many Arabs cheered the Iranian Revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi 30 years ago, and continue to enjoy Iran's defiance of the US, Israel, UN sanctions and conservative Arab leaderships. Others in the Arab world see Iran's Islamic Revolution as a nasty export commodity that has only spelled trouble for Arab societies. Places like Lebanon and Palestine, especially, are offered the unattractive option of perpetual warfare with Israel, which entails the regular destruction of swaths of their society.

The irony today is that the Iranian regime and its policies are viewed very differently throughout the Arab world; but removing or reconfiguring the Islamic regime through street demonstrations or even through democratic elections seems problematic for virtually everyone in Arab society.

You would think that Arab governments would be pleased to see Iran's regime toppled, or tempered by its own people. Yet, if such change were to occur through street demonstrations choreographed via a web of digital communications, whispered messages, and rooftop religious chants in the middle of the night, autocratic Arab leaders would cringe - because they would sense in this their own vulnerability to similar mass political challenges. The fact is lost on no one that the Iranian regime has effectively withstood American, Israeli, European, and UN pressures, threats and sanctions for years, but found itself much more vulnerable to the spontaneous rebellion of many of its own citizens who felt degraded by the falsification of election results by the government.

(An intriguing side note: Events inside Iran picked up steam at the same time as the Iranian presidential elections coincided with the Obama administration's change of policy, as Washington backed off the threats and aggressiveness of the Bush years, and offered to engage with Iran on the basis of mutual respect. Would a more detached US policy toward Arab autocrats similarly open space for Arab domestic effervescence and indigenous calls for more liberal, honest politics?)

Arab regimes and leaders have worked themselves into a lose-lose situation whereby they would be unhappy if the Iranian regime stayed in power and unhappy if it were removed through popular challenge. The same awkwardness defines the perspectives of Arab citizens. Most Arabs do not want to live in an Iranian-style political system that blends theocracy with autocracy; but many were pleased to see the pro-American shah overthrown by Koran-carrying demonstrators. They would also be unhappy to see the Iranian regime overthrown because they enjoy its defiance of the US, Israel and the UN in particular, along with its development of a nuclear capability.

At the same time, ordinary Arabs would feel jealous were the demonstrators in Iran able to topple their regime for the second time in 30 years; this would highlight the chronic passivity and powerlessness of Arab citizens who must suffer permanent subjugation in their own long-running autocratic systems without being able to do anything about it. Whether Iranian street demonstrations challenged the shah or the Islamists who toppled him, Arabs watch all this on television with a forlorn envy.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice-weekly by The Daily Star.

Bloody confrontation in Baharestan Square

Following up a previous post ... it appears that there was indeed a large-scale blow-up today in Baharestan Square in Tehran, by the Parliament building. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post report, which conveys a sense of what the street confrontations in the capital look like since Saturday, when the regime began to ratchet up the level of violent force used against demonstrators:

Iran's supreme leader told a group of lawmakers Wednesday that "neither the system nor the people will submit to bullying" over the results of the disputed presidential election, and riot police backed by militiamen later forcibly broke up a demonstration at the parliament building in support of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. [....]

Security forces -- including regular police from all over Tehran, helmeted riot police officers and members of a force known as "Robocops" for their full body armor and special equipment -- converged on Baharestan Square to prevent a demonstration from taking shape. They were supported by members of the pro-government Basij militia and plainclothes agents who infiltrated the protesters, witnesses said.

"Robocops" riding motorcycles fired large handguns into the air as they charged up and down Republic Street and other nearby avenues, one witness said. A helicopter circled overhead. Some of the police carried paintball guns, which have been used in recent demonstrations to mark protesters for arrest. [....]

In one confrontation between protesters and Basij members, a middle-aged woman wearing a light-blue headscarf and a black coat angrily refused orders to leave. "I'm going to stay here and see how many people you kill today," she told the Basij. A plainclothes agent emerged from the crowd, swore at the woman and took out a pair of handcuffs to arrest her. Other people tried to stop the agent, but Basij members rushed them and beat them with clubs, the witness said. [....]

Bystanders and protesters alike were caught up in the violence.

At a corner of Republic Street, a main center for printing shops, a young engaged couple fled into an alley to escape a charge by club-wielding security forces. "Why are they attacking me?" the woman cried. "I only came here to print my wedding cards!"

The situation appeared to grow more violent as dusk fell, witnesses said.

In Twitter feeds, people who said they witnessed the crackdown described protesters with broken limbs and cracked heads, saying there was "blood everywhere" from the beatings. One said many people had been arrested. Another said people were being beaten "like animals." [....]

Andrew Sullivan highlighted this bit:

In an unusual exchange, he said, a child walked up to a regular police colonel and, gesturing toward truckloads of riot police, asked him, "Who are those guys?" The colonel replied with apparent disdain, "They're cows."

Meanwhile:

Hundreds of Iranians have been arrested since the elections. A senior official of Iran's judiciary, which is controlled by the ruling Shiite Muslim clerics, said a special court would try detained protesters, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. The government has vowed to make an example of detained "rioters."

"Those arrested in recent events will be dealt with in a way that will teach them a lesson," the official, Ibrahim Raisi, was quoted as saying. "The rioters should be dealt with in an exemplary way, and the judiciary will do that." Raisi did not elaborate.

--Jeff Weintraub

Engagement With a Post-Crackdown Iran? (Matthew Yglesias)

In terms of the foreign-policy picture (which I have largely, and deliberately, left alone), what's likely to happen after the dust settles?

My guess is that what Matt Yglesias says here is probably right--especially in his second-to-last paragraph, which cuts through a lot of distractions and zeroes in on the most crucial factors. Possibilities for diplomatic re-"engagement" between the US and Iran will depend not only on what the US government does or is willing to do, but also on who is running Iran after this crisis and what they want to do. In that respect, a realistic (as distinct from "realist") prognosis suggests that the prospects are not very encouraging.

Of course, right now all that remains speculative to some degree.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Matthew Yglesias
Jun 23rd, 2009 at 9:56 am

With the possibility of brutal suppression of the current round of protests very real, the question naturally arises as to what such a turn of events would mean for Barack Obama’s proposed policy of engagement with Iran. Robert Farley comments:

If the regime survives, it will be because of the loyalty and brutality of its security forces. With that brutality on display on US televisions (if only rarely) it will be much more difficult for Obama to build any domestic support for talks. Moreover, it’s not clear that he should; knowing that the Iranian regime was repressive before these latest incidents, and acknowledging that many US allies in the region don’t even bother with the fiction of elections doesn’t change the fact that it’s an ugly bit of business. I’d rather, other things being equal, not have my President engage with Iran while the current group of thugs is in power. Finally, I do think that the repression has opened greater opportunity for what might be termed a non-interventionist coercive strategy; this is to say that more and tougher sanctions against the regime are on the table now than was the case two weeks ago.

I would add to that the observation that a regime win would simply make me much less confident that engagement will work. The hope behind an engagement strategy was that the Supreme Leader might be inclined to side with the more pragmatic actors inside the system—guys like former president Rafsanjani and former prime minister Mousavi. With those people, and most of the Iranian elites of their ilk, now in open opposition to the regime, any crackdown would almost by definition entail the sidelining of the people who might be interested in a deal. Iran would essentially be in the hands of the most hardline figures, people who just don’t seem interested in improving relations with other countries.

Under the circumstances, the whole subject of American engagement may well wind up being moot.

Iran - Protests continue, repression escalates

Iran's political crisis continues, but the visible part of it seems to be be somewhat reduced in size and intensity for a few days. Not really a lull, but probably a pause in the storm ... while the opposition figures out what to do next and frantic maneuvers within and between different elite factions go on behind the scenes. Reuters:

TEHRAN (Reuters) – A security crackdown appears to have quelled street rallies against Iran's disputed poll, but the leadership faced a new challenge on Wednesday from calls by reformist clerics for national mourning for dead protesters. [....]

At least 10 protesters were killed in the worst violence on Saturday, and about seven more early last week. Many of the deaths have been filmed by fellow demonstrators, posted on the Internet and viewed by thousands around the world.

U.S. President Barack Obama toughened his stance on Tuesday and said he was "appalled and outraged" by Iran's crackdown.

Iran has accused the protesters of being backed by the West, the United States and Britain in particular, and have paraded arrested young demonstrators on state television confessing to being incited by foreign news broadcasts. [....]

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a dissident but yet one of the most senior clerics in Iran, called for three days of national mourning from Wednesday for those killed. [....]

Montazeri was once named successor to Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini, but fell out with the founder of the Islamic Republic shortly before his death in 1989. Montazeri has been under house arrest in the holy city of Qom for around a decade.

Reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi who came third in the election also signaled opposition would continue, calling on Iranians to hold ceremonies on Thursday to mourn the dead. [....]

By comparison with last week's massive demonstrations, street protests do seem to be happening on a smaller scale. But they're continuing, and there are various reports of policy and basijis beating up crowds and even firing on them.

=> One of these attacks on demonstrators seems to have occurred in and around Baharestan Square, near the Parliament building. Here is a phone interview televised by CNN:



And here is a partial transcript (via Andrew Sullivan:

"I was going towards Baharestan with my friend. This was everyone, not just supporters of one candidate or another. All of my friends, they were going to Baharestan to express our opposition to these killings and demanding freedom. The black-clad police stopped everyone. They emptied the buses that were taking people there and let the private cars go on. We went on until Ferdowsi then all of a sudden some 500 people with clubs came out of [undecipherable] mosque and they started beating everyone. They tried to beat everyone on [undecipherable] bridge and throwing them off of the bridge. And everyone also on the sidewalks. They beat a woman so savagely that she was drenched in blood and her husband, he fainted. They were beating people like hell. It was a massacre. They were trying to beat people so they would die. they were cursing and saying very bad words to everyone. This was exactly a massacre... I don't know how to describe it."

Nico Pitney reports:

Another Iranian who has been reliable in the past posts on Facebook, "In Baharestan we saw militia with axe choping ppl like meat - blood everywhere - like butcher . . . Fighting in Vanak Sq, Tajrish sq, Azadi Sq - now . ."

=> The Guardian's report today was headlined "Iran protesters in 'bloody clashes' with riot police". Some highlights

Bloody clashes broke out in Tehran today as Iran's supreme leader said he would not yield to pressure over the disputed election.

The renewed confrontation took place in Baharestan Square, near parliament, where hundreds of protestors faced off against several thousand riot police and other security personnel.

Witnesses likened the scene to a ­war zone, with helicopters hovering overhead, many arrests and police beating demonstrators. [....] With the independent media banned from covering street protests, the reports could not be verified. [....]

The latest confrontations came as the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose authority has been challenged by massive grassroots protests, said on state television: "I had insisted and will insist on implementing the law on the election issue. Neither the establishment nor the nation will yield to pressure at any cost."

But the opposition was just as unyielding. One of the defeated presidential candidates, Mehdi Karroubi, stepped up his challenge to the regime, describing the government as illegitimate. Rejecting the outcome of the 12 June vote, the reformist cleric and most liberal of the presidential candidates said on his website: "I do not accept the result and therefore consider as illegitimate the new government. Because of the irregularities, the vote should be annulled."

In another act of blatant defiance, the wife of defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi called on the authorities to immediately release Iranians who had been detained.

In remarks posted on her husband's website, Zahra Rahnavard said: "I regret the arrest of many politicians and people and want their immediate release. It is my duty to continue legal protests to preserve Iranian rights." [....]

Meanwhile according to Agence France-Presse:

The authorities have also intensified a crackdown on opposition leader and defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, with the arrest of staff at his newspaper and vitriolic attacks from the hardline press. [....]

Mousavi, who was premier in the post-revolution era, has urged supporters to keep demonstrating but to use "self-restraint" to avoid further bloodshed while another defeated candidate Mehdi Karroubi called for a mourning ceremony on Thursday for slain protesters.

Police have arrested 25 journalists and other staff at Mousavi's Kalemeh Sabz (Green Word) newspaper -- which was shut down about 10 days ago -- one of its editors said. [....]

As far as I can tell, Moussavi's own whereabouts are uncertain. On Saturday, according to several reports, Moussavi called for a general strike if he was arrested and declared to his supporters,“I am ready for martyrdom.”

I expect the next phase of the storm to break out soon, but we'll have to wait and see what happens next.

--Jeff Weintraub

Neda - A demonstrator's death puts a face on the Iranian protest movement

I have been waiting to say anything about this now-famous video until the facts became clearer. It has gone around the world has been widely discussed, so many of you have probably seen it already. If not, let me say that it's very powerful. It has provided one of the most iconic images to come out of the ongoing political upheaval in Iran.

It turns out that the young woman whose death is shown in this video was the 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan. Under the circumstances, the facts about this incident are still not entirely crystal-clear. But the basic outlines of what is known are conveyed in the LA Times article by Borzou Daragahi below.

Neda and three others, including her music teacher Hamid Panahi, were on their way to one of the demonstrations in Tehran on Saturday. (Panahi may be the man in the blue-and-white striped shirt in the video. Another man in the video, apparently, was a doctor named Arash Hejazi who tried to help save Neda in her last moments. Hejazi has fled to Britain--where he gave this interview.) Their car got stuck in traffic near the edge of the crowd, and when they got out to look, Neda Agha-Soltan was killed by a single shot through the chest.

Who shot her? Her fiance Caspian Makian told the BBC Persian Service:

Eyewitnesses and video footage of the shooting clearly show that probably Basij paramilitaries in civilian clothing deliberately targeted her. Eyewitnesses said they clearly targeted her and she was shot in the chest.

That's certainly plausible, though so far I don't know whether there's conclusive proof. At all events, this claim appears to be widely believed in Iran, and not only by supporters of the opposition.

According to the Guardian:

The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of Neda Agha Soltan out of their Tehran home after shocking images of her death were circulated around the world. [....] The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said. [....]

The government is also accusing protesters of killing Soltan, describing her as a martyr of the Basij militia. Javan, a pro-government newspaper, has gone so far as to blame the recently expelled BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, of hiring "thugs" to shoot her so he could make a documentary film.

Soltan was shot dead on Saturday evening near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators, turning her into a symbol of the Iranian protest movement. Barack Obama spoke of the "searing image" of Soltan's dying moments at his press conference yesterday

=> A few thoughts:

First, this event underlines the extent to which, in political conflicts as in many other areas of life, images are often more powerful than arguments. It's also true that for many people watching the death of one concrete person has a much bigger impact than reading about the deaths of thousands or hundreds of thousands. In an era when TV and now the internet can spread videos quickly around the world, the images that they capture are especially potent.

(One lesson that repressive and murderous regimes have learned is that it's very important to keep journalists away, and especially TV crews. In Iran this strategy has been undermined by the fact that so many people can take pictures with their cameras and cell-phones and then disseminate them via the internet.)

Second, Neda's family and friends have all indicated that she was not a political activist, and in fact it sounds as though she wasn't a very politically engaged person. Nor, according to what they say, was she necessarily a supporter of Moussavi's candidacy. What moved her to go join the protests was her sense of outrage at the fraudulent election results. "She couldn't stand the injustice of it all," according to Panahi. "All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted."

To put it more precisely, what outraged her was that she believed the official election results were fraudulent. But that underlines the key point. We can all argue about whether or not the election was stolen--it certainly looks that way, but of course there's no hard proof yet. However, it's clear that millions of Iranians, including people who were not politically mobilized before June 12, agree with Grand Ayatollah Montazeri that the official voting figures announced by the government were "results that no one in their right mind can believe." Even the Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, who supported Ahmadinejad and who claims that he really did win the election, conceded on Iranian TV that "a majority of people are of the opinion that the actual election results are different than what was officially announced.” That's a crucial social fact about Iran today.

--Jeff Weintraub

==============================
Los Angeles Times
June 23, 2009
Family, friends mourn 'Neda,' Iranian woman who died on video
By Borzou Daragahi

Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, 'was a beam of light' and not an activist, friends say. The video footage of her bleeding on the street has turned her into an international symbol of the protest movement.

Reporting from Tehran — The first word came from abroad. An aunt in the United States called her Saturday in a panic. "Don't go out into the streets, Golshad," she told her. "They're killing people."

The relative proceeded to describe a video, airing on exile television channels that are jammed in Iran, in which a young woman is shown bleeding to death as her companion calls out, "Neda! Neda!"

A dark foreboding swept over Golshad, who asked that her real name not be published. She began calling the cellphone and home numbers of her friend Neda Agha-Soltan -- who had gone to the chaotic demonstration with a group of friends -- but Neda didn't answer.

At midnight, as the city continued to smolder, Golshad drove to the Agha-Soltan residence in the Tehran Pars section in the eastern part of the capital.

As she heard the cries and wails and praising of God reverberating from the house, she crumpled, knowing that her worst fears were true.

"Neda! Neda!" the 25-year-old cried out. "What will I do?"

Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, was shot dead Saturday evening near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators who allege rampant vote fraud in the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The jittery cellphone footage of her bleeding on the street has turned "Neda" into an international symbol of the protest movement that erupted after the June 12 balloting. Images of her final moments have spread virally on social networks, been beamed across the world on cable and held aloft on placards on the streets of Tehran.

'A beam of light'

To those who knew and loved Agha-Soltan, she was far more than an icon. She was a daughter, sister and friend, a music and travel lover, a beautiful young woman in the prime of her life.

"She was a person full of joy," said her music teacher and close friend Hamid Panahi, who was among the mourners at her family home Sunday, awaiting word about her burial. "She was a beam of light. I'm so sorry. I was so hopeful for this woman."

Security forces urged her friends and family not to hold memorial services for her at a mosque and asked them not to speak publicly about her, associates of the family said. Authorities even asked the family to take down the black mourning banners in front of their house, aware of the potent symbol she had become.

But some insisted on speaking out anyway, hoping to make sure the world would not forget her.

Neda Agha-Soltan was born in Tehran, they said, to a father who worked for the government and a homemaker mother.

They were a family of modest means, part of the country's emerging middle class who built their lives in rapidly developing neighborhoods on the eastern and western outskirts of the city.

Like many in her neighborhood, Agha-Soltan was loyal to the country's Islamic roots and traditional values, friends say, but also curious about the outside world, which was easily accessed through satellite TV, the Internet and occasional trips abroad.

The second of three children, she studied Islamic philosophy at a branch of Tehran's Azad University until deciding to pursue a career in tourism. She took private classes to become a tour guide, including Turkish-language courses, friends said, hoping to someday lead groups of Iranians on trips abroad.

Travel was her passion, and with her friends she saved up enough money for package tours to Dubai, Turkey and Thailand. Two months ago, on a trip to Turkey, she relaxed along the beaches of Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast.

She also loved music, especially Persian pop, and was taking piano lessons, according to Panahi and other friends. She was also an accomplished singer, they said.

But she was never an activist, they added, and she began attending the mass protests only because she was outraged by the election results.

'Neda, don't go'

Her parents and others told her it would be dangerous to go to Saturday's march, said Golshad.

On Friday, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had warned in his weekly sermon that demonstrators would be responsible for any violence that broke out. Even Golshad stayed away. At 3:30 p.m., the two friends spoke.

"I told her, 'Neda, don't go,' " she recalled, heaving with sobs.

But Agha-Soltan was as stubborn as she was honest, Golshad said.

"She said, 'Don't worry. It's just one bullet and its over.' "

Her friends say she, Panahi and two others were stuck in traffic on Karegar Street, east of Tehran's Azadi (Freedom) Square, on their way to the demonstration sometime after 6:30 p.m.

After they stepped out of the car to get some fresh air and crane their necks over the jumble of cars, Panahi heard a crack from the distance. In the blink of an eye, he realized Agha-Soltan had collapsed to the ground.

"We were stuck in traffic and we got out and stood to watch, and without her throwing a rock or anything they shot her," he said. "It was just one bullet."

Blood poured from the right side of her chest and began bubbling out of her mouth and nose as her lungs filled up.

"I'm burning, I'm burning!" Panahi recalled her saying, her final words.

Those nearby gathered around. A doctor tried to help, Panahi said, telling him to put his palm over the wound and apply pressure. A driver coming from the other direction urged the crowd to put her into his car.

A frantic search for a hospital followed. They took a wrong turn down a dead end and switched her limp body to another car.

Along the way, protesters and others screamed at drivers to clear a path in the snarled traffic.

The medical staff of Shariati Hospital made a heroic effort to rush her into surgery, but it was too late. She was dead by the time she arrived at the emergency room, Panahi said.

"This is a crime that's not in support of the government," he said. "This is a crime against humanity."

Iranian authorities have strenuously denied that police were using lethal force to quell the protest.

During tours of the riot scene before, during and after the worst of the melee, there were no signs of security officials using guns.

Investigation begun

The prosecutor general's office has launched an investigation into the killing of "several people" Saturday and arrested one "armed terrorist," the website of Iran's Press TV said. At least 13 people were killed in Saturday's rioting.

"Policemen are not authorized to use weapons against people," said Tehran Police Chief Azizollah Rajabzadeh, according to Press TV. "They are trained to only use anti-riot tools to keep the people out of harm's way."

The government has suggested that loyalists to the exiled, outlawed opposition group Mujahedin Khalq may bear responsibility for the killings.

But family members and friends suspect that zealous pro-government paramilitaries, the Basiji or Ansar-e Hezbollah, might have been responsible.

Panahi said witnesses at the scene said the shooter was not a police officer but among a group of plainclothes security officials or militiamen lurking in the area.

On Sunday at the Agha-Soltan residence, friends and relatives came in droves, weeping and bent over, clutching one another.

A steady murmur of sobs and wails emanated from the apartment.

Mascara stained the cheeks of the women, some in sweeping black chadors and others in shapely designer mini-coats and sunglasses.

The men's eyes looked sore and bloodshot. Two helped a distraught young man walk along the hallway, one of Agha-Soltan's two brothers, someone said.

"She died full of love," Golshad said.

The relatives and friends piled into minivans for the hourlong trek to Tehran's Behesht Zahra cemetery, where she was buried. Her loved ones were outraged by the authorities' order not to eulogize her, to loudly sing her praises and mourn her loss. But they were too afraid and distraught to speak out, except for Panahi, who said he had nothing more to lose.

"They know me," he said. "They know where I am. They can come and get me whenever they want. My time has gone. We have to think about the young people."

Neda, he said, was smart and loving. She had a mischievous streak, gently teasing her friends and causing them to laugh. She was passionate about life and meant no one any harm.

In the election unrest, friends found in her an unexpected daring, a willingness to take risks for her beliefs.

"She couldn't stand the injustice of it all," Panahi said. "All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted.

"For pursuing her goals, she didn't use rocks or clubs," he said. "She wanted to show with her presence that 'I'm here. I also voted. And my vote wasn't counted.' It was a very peaceful act of protest, without any violence."

As to the person or persons responsible for her death, they will not be forgiven, he said.

"When they kill an innocent child, this is not justice. This is not religion. In no way is this acceptable," he said. "And I'm certain that the one who shot her will not get a pass from God."

daragahi@latimes.com

Actually, the protests in Iran are all a CIA plot

Via Nico Pitney's Huffington Post blog on Monday, here is a cover story in Iran's most important hard-line newspaper, Keyhan:



I don't know Farsi, but apparently the banner headline reads: "$400 Million CIA Budget For Creating Riots After The Election".

As everyone knows, back in 1953 there really was a CIA-organized plot that toppled an Iranian regime--the notorious overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and his government, which was replaced by the autocratic rule of the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (who was overthrown a quarter-century later in the 1979 revolution). That traumatic event is burned into Iran's collective memory, so it's not surprising that the Iranian regime and its supporters would try to invoke its echo in order to smear the opposition.

This time around, the notion that the CIA (in cahoots with the BBC?) could have masterminded the political struggle now going on in Iran, including the nation-wide upheaval that has brought millions of people into the streets, is fanciful.

According to Nico Pitney, several readers have e-mailed to say that the Keyhan article is based in part on "a piece by Paul Craig Roberts, likely this one," in the reliably anti-American-dictatorship-friendly nutcase-left newsletter CounterPunch. (To be fair, I should add that some sane, decent, and intellectually serious people also publish stuff occasionally in CounterPunch, though I'm not sure why.) So anyone who wants to read an English-language version of this conspiracy theory can find it here.

=> For the word from the horse's mouth, which vividly conveys the paranoid vision that guides the Iranian regime and its supporters, I recommend watching an Iranian government TV broadcast from 2008 that explains How the Iranian Intelligence Ministry sees the world.

(As Daniel Finkelstein, the Comment Editor of the London Times, remarked at the time: "This TV broadcast from the Iranian Intelligence Ministry is simultaneously absolutely hilarious and blood-chilling." Hard to disagree.)

--Jeff Weintraub

Iran - Surprise announcement from the Guardian Council

This just in:

On Press TV, the English-language state television satellite broadcaster, Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, declared: “If a major breach occurs in an election, the Guardian Council may annul the votes that come out of a particular affected ballot box, polling station, district, or city.”

“Fortunately, in the recent presidential election we found no witness of major fraud or breach in the election,” he said.

“Therefore, there is no possibility of an annulment taking place.” He was speaking late on Monday in Tehran and his remarks were posted early Tuesday, Tehran time.

Well, we were all on tenterhooks.

More seriously ... this is further confirmation that the government has totally rejected the key demand of the opposition--which is not surprising.

--Jeff Weintraub

Further confirmation that the Iranian election results look phony (from Chatham House)

The more closely the official results of Iran's presidential election are considered, the less believable they look. (For some examples, see here & here.)

The credibility of those results now been further undermined by a study issued jointly by Chatham House, the prominent British think tank, and the University of St. Andrews: "Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election". (A compact summary by two of the authors is here.)

Based on a detailed province-by-province analysis of the voting statistics from Iran's Interior Ministry for both the 2005 and 2009 presidential elections, the authors conclude that there are a lot of reasons to regard the 2009 figures with, let us say, great skepticism. Here are some of those reasons (for the rest, see the full study):

------------------------------
· In two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of more than 100% was recorded.

· If Ahmadinejad's victory was primarily caused by the increase in voter turn-out [JW: i.e., if a previously silent hard-line majority suddenly turned out to vote, which is an implausible idea on the face of it], one would expect the data to show that the provinces where there was the greatest 'swing' in support to Ahmadinejad would also be the provinces with the greatest increase in voter turnout. That is not the case.

· In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.

· In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends.
------------------------------

Juan Cole comments:

Note that many reformists did not vote in 2005, because they had become discouraged by the way the hard liners had blocked all their programs. Some 10.5 million persons who did not vote in 2005 did vote in 2009. It is highly unlikely that most of these non-voters in 2005 were conservatives who now came out for Ahmadinejad in 2009. But to do as well as the regime claimed, Ahmadinejad would have needed to attract substantial numbers of these voters to himself. [....]

As I had noted earlier, the official results ask us to believe that rural ethnic minorities (some of them Sunni!) who had long voted reformist or for candidates of their ethnicity or region, had switched over to Ahmadinejad. We have to believe that Mehdi Karroubi's support fell from over 6 million to 330,000 over all, and that he, an ethnic Lur, was defeated in Luristan by a hard line Persian Shiite. Or that Ahmadinejad went from having 22,000 votes in largely Sunni Kurdistan to about half a million! What, is there a new organization, "Naqshbandi Sunni Sufis for Hard Line Shiism?" It never made any sense. People who said it did make sense did not know what a Naqshbandi is. (Quick, ask them before they can look it up at wikipedia). [....]

When people, including myself, said that rural people liked Ahmadinejad, we meant Shiites living in Persian-speaking villages on the Iranian plateau, in fair proximity to cities such as Isfahan, Tehran and Shiraz. We weren't talking about Turkmen or Kurds (both Sunnis), or about Lurs (everyone suspected Karroubi would get that vote). I suspect that some of those to whom we referred as rural are being categorized as living in 'small towns' by the Chatham House authors. But field workers even in the Shiite, Persian-speaking villages point out that they often encounter anti-Ahmadinejad sentiments there, as well.

But that is neither here nor there. The numbers do not add up. You can't have more voters than there are people. You can't have a complete liberal and pragmatic-conservative swing behind hard liners who make their lives miserable.

The election was stolen. It is there in black and white. Those of us who know Iran, could see it plain as the nose on our faces, even if we could not quantify our reasons as elegantly as Chatham House.

--Jeff Weintraub

Update: The Guardian Council "announced on Monday that the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters there by [a total of] three million." No doubt there's some perfectly comprehensible explanation for this discrepancy, but to a suspicious mind it looks a little fishy. And three million questionable votes out of about 40 million reported overall might ordinarily seem like a significant amount. But fortunately the powers-that-be had taken the precaution of awarding Ahmadinejad a lead of about 11 millions votes, so a mere three million would not be enough to change the outcome.

“I don’t think they actually counted the votes, though that’s hard to prove,” said Ali Ansari, a professor at the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and one of the authors of a study of the election results issued by Chatham House, a London-based research group.

Why bother?

Update #2: For more on this announcement and its implications, and on the statistical implausibilities of the official vote totals more generally, see this piece by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, who is an acknowledged expert at crunching election statistics: "Worst. Damage Control. Ever."

This leaves only two possibilities: that there was widespread ballot-stuffing or that the results in some or all areas don't reflect any physical count of the ballots but were fabricated whole hog on a spreadsheet.

The Two Irans (Robert Worth)

A good piece by Robert Worth in today's New York Times "Week in Review".

Although it seems clear that the presidential election was stolen--or, at the very least, that the official election results wildly inflated the number of votes for Ahmadinejad--it is important to remember that Ahmadinejad and the forces he represents also enjoy real popular support. Worth concludes:

Both sides now view themselves as the true Iranian majority. It is not yet clear how any future vote count might persuade either side otherwise.

I recommend reading the whole article. Some highlights are below.

--Jeff Weintraub

-----------------------------------
Ascertaining what the true Iran is has never been harder. What is clear, though, is that the electoral dispute has exposed a deep rift in Iranian society, one that cannot be measured or healed by vote counts. On each side, faith merges with perception, making the partisans believe with fierce certainty that they represent the country’s true majority.

The difference is sometimes caricatured as one between a Westernized urban elite and the pious lower classes. In fact, it is not that simple, even if there is little doubt about who all those fashionable Tehrani women in jeans and loose head scarves voted for. A vast opposition rally on Monday — in which more than a million people are believed to have taken part — was also full of people who looked more like Ahmadinejad supporters: women in traditional Islamic garb, and working-class men.

In essence, the core of the struggle is between two competing views of what this country’s Islamic revolution sought to achieve.

“One side wants a gradual evolution of democratic institutions and a more democratic reading of Islamic institutions,” said Kavous Seyed-Emami, a political science professor at Imam Sadeq University in Tehran. “The other side is for a populist and more or less authoritarian reading of Islam.”

Over the past week, those differences have often been boiled down to slogans. “Death to the dictator!” chanted supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi, the lead opposition candidate. “Death to those who oppose the rule of the clerics!” was the refrain on the other side. [....]

In part, the split revolves around opposed understandings of Iran’s political evolution since the 1979 revolution. For the opposition, a defining moment came in 1997, when the reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami won the presidency in a landslide. Many in the opposition see that as a natural growth from the incendiary radicalism that founded the Islamic Republic to a more mature and democratic style of governance. Mr. Khatami’s broad victory margin — which was repeated in 2001 — still feeds their sense that they are the country’s true majority.

On the other side, many people see the same years as a gradual falling away from the zeal of the republic’s early years. Even those who admire Mr. Khatami often complain about corruption among leading officials, especially former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

For them, Mr. Ahmadinejad was the first president who seemed to understand Iran’s poor and working class, and who seemed capable of fulfilling the revolution’s promises of economic and social justice. They also respond to his aggressive nationalist rhetoric, which is rooted in a longstanding fear that Iran has been bullied, politically and culturally, by the West. By contrast, many younger and more cosmopolitan Iranians would like firmer connections to the outside world.

The past few weeks have helped widen the gulf. After years in which they felt downcast and helpless, opposition partisans saw the sudden birth of a popular movement in support of Mr. Moussavi that exceeded their hopes. Rallies began drawing tens of thousands of cheering people. The streets of Tehran and other major cities began exploding after dark with carnivalesque street celebrations, in which young people danced and dressed in the signature bright-green color of the Moussavi campaign. Word of the events spread by Facebook, which — like other new Internet technologies — proved a challenge for the authorities to control. Women became a driving force, emboldened by Mr. Moussavi’s ground-breaking decision to campaign alongside his wife, the distinguished political scientist Zahra Rahnavard.

As the rallies gathered force in Tehran and elsewhere, a conviction began to ripen: the country belonged, once again, to the partisans of democratic reform. Large numbers of Iranians who had voted for Mr. Khatami, and who — frustrated by his failure to put his ideas into practice — had sat out the vote in 2005, said they would return to the polls. The result seemed inevitable. A number of polls by opposition researchers suggested that Mr. Moussavi would not only survive to the second round; he would win in the first, by a decisive margin. [....]

But on the other side, there was no lack of confidence. Many Iranians said they thought Mr. Ahmadinejad had won the nationally televised debates, despite the criticism he received for his aggressive style. He had spent much of the previous four years traveling around Iran, visiting big cities and small towns in a way that no previous president had done. [....]

A few days before the election, Hossein Shariatmadari, the general director of the hard-line government newspaper Kayhan and a close confidant of Iran’s supreme leader, offered his own serenely confident prediction. Mr. Ahmadinejad would win easily.

“President Ahmadinejad is well-embraced by all the people,” said Mr. Shariatmadari, a courtly man who has links to the intelligence services and is widely feared in Iran. “He has special characteristics that people want in an ideal president.”

In retrospect, many Iranians now read such predictions as a wink from the clerical elite. They did not just want Mr. Ahmadinejad to win, it is said. They wanted him to win big, so as to persuade the reformers that they were a minority, and to erase the stain of Mr. Khatami’s reformist landslides.

Instead, the election and the dispute that followed had an entirely different and unexpected result: Both sides now view themselves as the true Iranian majority. It is not yet clear how any future vote count might persuade either side otherwise.

The end of the Iranian model? (Gershon Shafir)

Whatever the short-term outcome of Iran's current political crisis turns out to be, the effects of this popular upheaval and its suppression will almost certainly include a severe blow to the (already much eroded) legitimacy of the theocratic-authoritarian regime. And it's likely that this effect will not be confined to Iran itself.

Khomeini's 1979 revolution inspired and electrified a wide range of people throughout the Middle East and other parts of the Islamic world (and alarmed or terrified a number of others). The ongoing events in Iran, by contrast, should help to undermine the remaining appeal of the whole Iranian model launched by Khomeini. That could be enough, by itself, to give these events a world-historical importance.

(Perhaps the popular uprising going on in Iran today might even help to establish a new Iranian model--that of a democratic intifada? Well, we shouldn't let optimism carry us away ...)

My friend Gershon Shafir reflects on the wider ideological impact of the current political upheaval in Iran.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Informed Comment - Global Affairs
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The Failure of the Iranian Model
By Gershon Shafir

Twelve years ago, with the election of Khatami as President of Iran, it became obvious that in large cross sections of Iranian society the revolutionary zeal had petered out. The clergy was determined to keep the revolution that brought it to power alive and prevent its moderation and for that aim went to great length to limit free elections and democracy. With Ahmedinejad’s first (and only) election there was an attempt to revive its zeal internally and, as is customary with revolutions, project it outwards by linking it with local grievances, in this case, in Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The rigging of the elections and the violent clampdown on peaceful protestors that began today, demonstrates that the uneasy combination of an Islamic state and democracy has failed. By choosing revolution [JW: i.e., the continuation of an allegedly "revolutionary" regime] over the remaining vestiges of democracy, the clergy ensured that Iran will no longer serve as a model of mass supported Islamic Revolution. While internally the revolution has been saved, its foreign influence is likely to vane. Nor, as we learned, is it possible to make a peaceful transition from an Islamic to a democratic state, as happened in the aftermath of communism. Instead, Iran is coming to resemble the authoritarian regimes of the region.

Rafsanjani's daughter arrested in Iran

A further sign of splits within the elite. This one looks like a big deal.

I have seen reports about this in several places, but here's how the Times of India put it:

TEHRAN: The daughter of Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and four relatives were arrested over their involvement in protests against alleged election fraud in Iran, the Fars news agency reported on Sunday.

Faezeh Hashemi, a renowned women's rights activist, former parliament deputy and head of women sports in Iran, has in the recent years emerged, like her father, as one of the main opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad had before the June 12 election accused Rafsanjani and his children of corruption.

Fars said that Faezeh, her daughter and three other relatives were arrested during Saturday's demonstrations for 'agitating' the protestors.

("Renowned women's rights activist"? That seems a little overdone. At all events, it's worth noting that Rafsanjani and his family are not universally beloved in Iran. Rafsanjani is the epitome of the clerico-kleptocratic 'establishment' wing of the ruling elite, and Ahmadinejad's charges of corruption gave high-level expression to beliefs that are widely shared.)

Juan Cole remarks:

The regime has arrested Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, daughter of the former president, who spoke at a pro-Mousavi rally, along with 4 other members of that family. This step is typical of an old Iranian ruling technique, of keeping provincial tribal chieftains in check by keeping some of their children hostage at the royal court. It is widely suspected that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a multi-billionaire who is well connected politically, is funding and aiding the reform movement's protests.

--Jeff Weintraub

Update: Apparently, they have now been released. Maybe this was just a warning shot?

Iran - Can the armed forces be counted on to repress the people? Probably. (Laura Secor)

Students of revolutions, rebellions, revolts, and insurrections know that the moment when urban protests and street fighting turn into a revolution is often the moment when the armed forces--or a sizable portion of them--refuse to fire on the people. If that doesn't happen, and the regime is willing to make full use of the instruments of coercion at its disposal, then even the most large-scale unrest can usually be crushed.

That moment of truth is probably approaching in Iran. So far, in the face of massive, largely peaceful, marches and demonstrations, the regime has held back from a full-scale brutal crackdown on the opposition. That may strike some readers as an odd thing to say, given the deaths, beatings, arrests, and other forms of repression that have been going on for a week now, and that escalated sharply this weekend. As Laura Secor reported on Saturday:

The footage from Tehran today looks like urban warfare. Gone are the massive crowds. Instead we see bands of civilians under attack from bands of thugs, gunshots, flames, thin crowds chased through side streets. If the authorities succeed in keeping demonstrators dispersed and on the run, they could swiftly seize the upper hand. The Web site Tehran Bureau is reporting forty dead and more than two hundred wounded. The victims are seeking aid in foreign embassies rather than hospitals, according to Twitter reports from Tehran.

But if Iran's rulers had abandoned all restraint they could be killing people by the thousands, not dozens or hundreds. Some of the more cool-headed people within the regime's decision-making circles no doubt realize that even though they could probably crush all opposition effectively, unrestricted use of deadly force could lead to a large-scale bloodbath--which would shatter what remains of the regime's legitimacy. But the odds are that sometime fairly soon, unless the mobilization of popular protest simply runs out of steam--which is unlikely--they will decide that using the iron fist is preferable to backing down or losing control of the situation.

When that moment arrives, is there any possibility that significant portions of the regime's coercive apparatus might be unwilling to do the job? From what I know, and in the opinion of many people with a lot more expertise about Iran than I have, that seems unlikely. Even if some elements in the police or in the rank-and-file of the Republican Guard might waver, which is already just a hypothetical possibility, the storm-troopers of the paramilitary Basij militia should be completely reliable.

Still, one never knows for sure until the test comes. Looking ahead to that moment, Laura Secor considers the possibilities (see below). She is not optimistic. Iran in 2009 is not like east/central Europe in 1989 or Milosevic's Serbia in 2000.

The Islamic Republic [....] was born in a people’s revolution and built on faith in a religion that is deeply held by most Iranians. The state’s ideology is not the hollow construct of political elites, as communism was by the time it collapsed in much of Eastern Europe. Rather, Iranian Islamism was forged over decades, in long struggle with the despotic regime of Mohammad Reza Shah, and from the potent raw materials of Iranian nationalism and Islam. Although the country’s constituency for democracy is vast and growing, the regime has a constituency, too, and it is passionately loyal and heavily armed.

Then again, one can't be entirely certain in advance.

I think there is still a battle being waged for the hearts and minds of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij. [....]

The purpose of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij is the defense of the Islamic Revolution and the Supreme Leader. Rarely have the true believers in the militias been forced to consider the possibility that these two functions might come into conflict. Such a moment may have arrived. It is one thing to unleash brutal force on crowds that insult the Leader or Islam. That was how the members of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij could defend their assault on demonstrators at Tehran University in 1999. But now, in the name of Ahmadinejad’s controversial presidency, they are being asked to violently disperse fellow Iranians who are chanting religious slogans, carrying Korans, and calling for the lawful counting of their votes. Whether or not the rumors of splits at the top of the Revolutionary Guards’ hierarchy are true, the rank and file is not necessarily monolithic. [....]

If the opposition does indeed hope to appeal to the common humanity of its attackers, however, today’s events have not been particularly encouraging. Reports on Andrew Sullivan’s indispensable blog show unremitting violence, and a turn toward more frankly oppositional slogans on the part of the demonstrators.

As always, her analysis is worth reading in full.

Hoping for the best (but not optimistic),
Jeff Weintraub
=========================
New Yorker "News Desk" (On-Line)
Saturday, June 20, 2009
LAURA SECOR: FIGHTING OVER THE REVOLUTION

The footage from Tehran today looks like urban warfare. Gone are the massive crowds. Instead we see bands of civilians under attack from bands of thugs, gunshots, flames, thin crowds chased through side streets. If the authorities succeed in keeping demonstrators dispersed and on the run, they could swiftly seize the upper hand. The Web site Tehran Bureau is reporting forty dead and more than two hundred wounded. The victims are seeking aid in foreign embassies rather than hospitals, according to Twitter reports from Tehran.

Interestingly, the regime has disseminated reports of a bomb blast at the shrine to Khomeini on the outskirts of Tehran. Many observers and analysts suspect the bomb was planted or invented by the government, in an effort to tar the demonstrators as counter-revolutionaries. The protesters have done everything possible to complicate such stereotypes. There are reports that those demonstrators who came out today planned, via the Internet, to bring Korans onto the streets, and to sit and read from them when attacked by militiamen. Such tactics are in keeping with these demonstrators’ use of slogans and imagery taken from religion and from the Islamic Revolution of 1979—shouting “Allahu Akbar” from the rooftops, organizing demonstrations as public memorials for the dead, refusing (for the most part, at least until today) to attack Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei by name or to call for an end to theocratic rule. In effect, they are saying, We are not against the revolution or against the Islamic Republic. We are its defenders from desecration. Having the former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi for a leader helps in this regard, because of his close historic association with the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Nonetheless, the protesters’ posture has not been particularly effective with Khamenei, who yesterday threatened them and their leaders with bloodshed and mayhem. So who, exactly, are the demonstrators trying to convince? And who are the authorities trying to persuade with these reports of the shrine bombing?

I think there is still a battle being waged for the hearts and minds of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij. Successful nonviolent movements in other countries have depended on the cooptation of the rank and file in the armed forces; one remembers the moving scenes of Serbian riot police embracing demonstrators. Of course, the Serbian opposition spent months working up to that. In the summer of 2000, when Slobodan Milosevic’s government issued a statement to the army saying that the student activists were terrorists, an activist told me that he and his friends retaliated by sending care packages to soldiers in the hope that “in the key moment when he orders them to shoot on us, they won’t listen.” The success of Serbia’s democratic movement was not only that it deposed a rancid dictator but that it united, at least momentarily, a divided and scarred society.

Iran is not Serbia. The hostility between the people and the revolutionary shock troops is far older and deeper than anything that took root during Milosevic’s relatively brief tenure. By 2000, Milosevic’s fiefdom was rotten to the core; it survived on corruption, the fear of exposure on the part of many criminals and war profiteers, and hostility toward the world. The Islamic Republic, by contrast, was born in a people’s revolution and built on faith in a religion that is deeply held by most Iranians. The state’s ideology is not the hollow construct of political elites, as communism was by the time it collapsed in much of Eastern Europe. Rather, Iranian Islamism was forged over decades, in long struggle with the despotic regime of Mohammad Reza Shah, and from the potent raw materials of Iranian nationalism and Islam. Although the country’s constituency for democracy is vast and growing, the regime has a constituency, too, and it is passionately loyal and heavily armed.

The purpose of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij is the defense of the Islamic Revolution and the Supreme Leader. Rarely have the true believers in the militias been forced to consider the possibility that these two functions might come into conflict. Such a moment may have arrived. It is one thing to unleash brutal force on crowds that insult the Leader or Islam. That was how the members of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij could defend their assault on demonstrators at Tehran University in 1999. But now, in the name of Ahmadinejad’s controversial presidency, they are being asked to violently disperse fellow Iranians who are chanting religious slogans, carrying Korans, and calling for the lawful counting of their votes. Whether or not the rumors of splits at the top of the Revolutionary Guards’ hierarchy are true, the rank and file is not necessarily monolithic.

I am reminded of a conversation I had in December 2006 with a twenty-one-year-old Basiji named Mohammad Mahdi Kafshi-Ershad. He joined the Basij in high school, at the urging of his religious parents. Although he was a devout believer, he did not consider himself political. He said, “Among the Basijis, some are political and others just want to keep the government and country based on the religious fundamentals. If the government is one hundred per cent religious, there is no danger to belief. But today we have a mixture of politics and religion together. To its own benefit the government has mixed those things.” Some clerics, he told me with disgust, had become very rich and powerful, and they lived in lavish homes in North Tehran. The martyred Imam Ali would not approve of such lifestyles. As for voting, he was not himself inclined. “What if I vote for Ahmadinejad, and Ahmadinejad made a mistake?” he said. “It could be a sin. I don’t want to be a partner in a sin.” I wonder if there are other young men like Kafshi-Ershad, and how willing they will be to play partner to a political power grab by inflicting physical pain on protesters reading from the Koran.

If the opposition does indeed hope to appeal to the common humanity of its attackers, however, today’s events have not been particularly encouraging. Reports on Andrew Sullivan’s indispensable blog show unremitting violence, and a turn toward more frankly oppositional slogans on the part of the demonstrators.

Moussavi turns revolutionary (Gary Sick)

Ever since the French revolution, it has been repeatedly observed that revolutions make revolutionaries as much as the other way around. Perhaps this has been happening to Mir Hossein Moussavi?

(Of course, what we have been seeing in Iran has so far involved only the first stages of a proto-revolutionary situation. It is not yet a full-fledged revolution, and will probably not become one. But then Moussavi is only part of the way to becoming a reluctant revolutionary.)

In two previous posts (here & here) I discussed an important statement issued by Moussavi on Saturday, described in at least one on-line source as "Moussavi's Statement #5 to the Iranian People".

(The first reports I had seen described it as Moussavi's speech to the rally he addressed on Saturday, so that's how I described it myself; but that may have been inaccurate, since I have now seen different accounts of his speech. On the other hand, maybe this statement was both a speech--or part of a speech--and a written formal document? Either way ...)

Here is another take on Moussavi's statement by Gary Sick. He sees it as marking an important milestone in the process whereby the pressure of events and the experience of leading a mobilized popular movement have pushed Moussavi, almost despite himself, into an increasingly direct and even revolutionary challenge to the basic structure of Iran's theocratic-authoritarian regime:

It is apparent from this statement that Mousavi's movement—and Mousavi himself—has evolved enormously in the past week. The candidate started as a mild-mannered reformer. After the searing events of the past several days, he has dared to preach a counter sermon to Khameni's lecture on Islamic government. Although he never mentions the leader by name, there is no overlooking the direct contradiction of his arguments. This open opposition to the leader by a political figure is unprecedented.

Mousavi has in fact issued a manifesto for a new vision of the Islamic republic. The repression and disdain of the government has brought the opposition to a place they probably never dreamed of going. And no one knows where any of the parties are likely to go next.

But for outside observers, it is like standing on the edge of a glacier and feeling the ice begin to crack under your feet.

Read the rest below.

--Jeff Weintraub
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Daily Beast
June 21, 2009
Mousavi's New Revolutionary Manifesto
By Gary Sick

Today, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the presidential candidate who has come to represent the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people, issued a formal statement.

Although he denounces the "lies and fraud" of the leadership, particularly in the recent election, he views the fraudulent election as only as the symptom of something far more serious. He describes a revolution gone wrong, a revolution that was originally based on attention to the voice of the people but has resulted in "forcing an unwanted government on the nation."

This moment is "a turning point," he says, and he defines the movement that is forming around him as having a "historical mission" to accomplish nothing less than "renewing the life of the nation" according to its own ideals.

He acknowledges, interestingly, that his own voice at the beginning was less “eloquent” than he would have wished and that the people were ahead of him in turning the movement green. But now he accepts the "burden of duty put on our shoulders by the destiny of generations and ages."

He denounces both extremes of the political spectrum: on one hand those who believe that "Islamic government is the same as Tyranny of the Rightful;" and on the other, those who "consider religion and Islam to be blockers for realization of republicanism," i.e. those who believe that democracy is incompatible with Islam.

Mousavi says his call for annulment of the election and a revote, supervised by an impartial national body, "is a given right." The objective is nothing less than "to achieve a new type of political life in the country."

That is truly a revolutionary statement. He says he will stand by the side of all those seeking "new solutions" in a nonviolent way. He accepts the principles and the institutions of the Islamic republic, including the Revolutionary Guard and the basij, but denounces "deviations and deceptions." He demands reform "that returns us to the pure principles of the Islamic Revolution."

He calls for freedom of expression in all its forms, and says that if the government permits people to express their views freely, "there won't be a need for the presence of military and regulatory forces in the streets."

It is apparent from this statement that Mousavi's movement—and Mousavi himself—has evolved enormously in the past week. The candidate started as a mild-mannered reformer. After the searing events of the past several days, he has dared to preach a counter sermon to Khameni's lecture on Islamic government. Although he never mentions the leader by name, there is no overlooking the direct contradiction of his arguments. This open opposition to the leader by a political figure is unprecedented.

Mousavi has in fact issued a manifesto for a new vision of the Islamic republic. The repression and disdain of the government has brought the opposition to a place they probably never dreamed of going. And no one knows where any of the parties are likely to go next.

But for outside observers, it is like standing on the edge of a glacier and feeling the ice begin to crack under your feet.

Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and is the author of two books on U.S.-Iranian relations. Mr. Sick has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, where he is senior research scholar, adjunct professor of international affairs and former director of the Middle East Institute (2000-2003).

The week that shook Iran - A brief overview (AP)

It's already hard to keep track of the kaleidoscopic rush of events since the Iran's presidential election on June 12. For handy reference and preliminary stock-taking ... here's a nice day-by-day summing-up of the first week of Iran's political upheaval from the Associated Press.

Stay tuned for next week ...

--Jeff Weintraub

==============================
Associated Press
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Gunfire, euphoria: week that shook Iran

A protest song from decades ago rings out from the green-clad crowds supporting Mir Hossein Mousavi. Motorcycles weave through Tehran with backers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad waving Iranian flags. Protesters run wildly from the sound of gunshots.

The epic events in Iran have brought countless images to the world — many of them iconic scenes that will become part of history; others are the small but powerful vignettes that will be tucked away as personal narratives.

The AP gives a street-level view of a week that shook Iran.

Friday, June 12

Election Day and the excitement in Tehran is palpable. Never mind the broiling heat. Never mind the long lines. Bearded men, women in headscarves — no one seems to complain. Families bring their children to the polling stations in a carnival atmosphere. Their enthusiasm is striking. People seem genuinely eager to cast their ballots and make their voices heard. After all, this is what Iranians fought for in the 1979 revolution that toppled the shah and installed the Islamic republic — even though 60 percent of the population is too young to remember the struggle. As the day fades, however, signs of conflict loom. Soon after the polls close, Mousavi declares he has won. The government news agency then proclaims President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner. Young Ahmadinejad supporters cruise through the streets on motorbikes, waving Iranian flags and shouting "Mousavi is dead." Battle lines are drawn.

Saturday, June 13

Yesterday's euphoria is gone. The day begins with an ominous calm. Mobile phones and the Internet — the opposition's main organizing tools — no longer function. At Mousavi's headquarters, volunteers are in shock. They tell journalists that government militiamen attacked their office overnight and fired tear gas on Vali Asr Street. Angry Mousavi supporters, some wearing makeshift green masks, set fire to mounds of tires and torch a bus. Riot police in body armor swarm Tehran's wide, leafy streets, blocking traffic and beating protesters — men and women — with rubber truncheons. News photographers cruise the streets in cars, snapping images from open windows before speeding away to elude the police. Still, life goes on, with shoppers wandering through stores in one block while protesters battle police in another. The whole city smells of burning tires.

Sunday, June 14

The fissures in Iranian society are laid bare. A confident Ahmadinejad appears before the media, comparing the protesters to soccer hooligans. A few minutes walk away, young men are setting fire to piles of tires to block the police. It's a tactic used a generation ago in the uprising against the shah. But not every Iranian supports the opposition. In Vali Asr Square, thousands cheer Ahmadinejad. A woman weeps with emotion when the president appears. As night falls, some neighborhoods are alight with bonfires or trash cans set ablaze. From the roofs, residents hurl stones at the police or chant "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great," the battle cry of the 1979 revolution. Sidewalks in front of bank offices are littered with broken glass. Ringtones of mobile phones echo through the streets as Iranians call their friends to trade information. Gunfire crackled through streets of a few neighborhoods — probably police or militiamen firing in the air to disperse crowds. At one hotel, a middle-aged desk clerk complains that the Iranian people have been wronged. Opposition is clearly spreading beyond the young, Westernized class in trendy north Tehran.

Monday, June 15

Mousavi calls his followers to a mass rally at Revolution Square. But will they come? Protests so far have been small. The risk of arrest or a beating is great. By mid-afternoon, tens of thousands of people march to the square, chanting "death to dictatorship" and "where's my vote?" It's people power — Iranian style. Journalists mingle freely among the crowd, protected from the police by the sheer numbers. Government militiamen and riot police relax nearby. Neither the government nor the organizers want violence. Protest leaders urge the crowd to march silently and flash the "V for victory" sign. For the most part, the crowd complies. A protester points to two large men among the crowd. "Take their picture," he urges a photographer. "They are the ones beating people." Sounds of pre-revolutionary protest songs unheard in public for decades waft through the square. When Mousavi's convoy appears, the crowd swarms around it, chanting his name. All sorts of people are there — grandmothers, government workers, clerics, women in black chador robes, taxi drivers, hip young adults. Suddenly, shots ring out. People begin to run wildly. State media reports seven people were killed. One of the victims — a middle-aged man in khaki trousers and a white shirt — is carried through the crowd with a gaping head wound.

Tuesday, June 16

The Culture Ministry telephones international news organizations and bans them from reporting from the streets. Foreign journalists are told their visas will not be renewed and they must leave the country. Nevertheless, thousands of Mousavi supporters pour into the streets. Iranians turn to social-networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to send reports and post shaky images from mobile phones on the Internet. Callers tell news agencies that the crowd along Vali Asr avenue stretches for a mile. Mousavi urges supporters on his Web site not to resort to violence and calls for another mass rally Wednesday. Ahmadinejad attends a regional summit in Russia, seeking to portray confidence.

Wednesday, June 17

With foreign television crews shut down, Iranians post amateur video on the Internet showing thousands marching along an overpass in Tehran in support of Mousavi. Marchers flash the victory sign or carry placards. In a show of solidarity with Mousavi, several Iranian soccer players wear green tape on their wrists — the color of the opposition — during a World Cup qualifying match in South Korea that was televised in Iran. Nighttime cries of "Allahu akbar" ring out even louder than before.

Thursday, June 18

Mousavi calls his followers back to the streets to protest the election and mourn those killed in clashes. Many protesters wear black — the color of mourning — with green headbands and scarves. The protest is largely silent. A few men recognized as members of the secret police mingle in the crowd, watching but not interfering. One person in the crowd is overheard telling the plainclothes police that the protests won't last and opponents will grow tired of marches. Mobile phone service goes down again in the capital.

Friday, June 19

One week after the voting, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warns the opposition to end street protests and declares that the results of the disputed balloting will surely stand. Nightfall brings cries of "Death to the dictator!" and "Allahu akbar." But the stern warning pushes the opposition movement into a pivotal moment: either back down or risk a crushing response from police and the security forces. Mousavi and his allies take stock and plan a strategy that will have enormous implications for Iran and the world.

Associated Press journalists and other witnesses in Tehran contributed to this report.

Why the regime constructed by Khomeini has already suffered "a fatal wound" (Blake Hounshell & Fareed Zakaria)

In my comments about Moussavi's statement on Saturday, I noted that he presents himself and the movement he leads as affirming, reforming, and revitalizing the Islamic Republic established by Khomeini, not challenging the basic structure and principles of the regime. That position is no doubt politically necessary, but it may well also express Moussavi's sincere understanding of his agenda.

It's important to add, however, that the actual historic significance of this political upheaval in Iran will not necessarily accord with Moussavi's own intentions. The dynamics of this confrontation have increasingly polarized and deepened the conflict, as often happens in moments of mass political mobilization and state repression. In effect, the movement for which Moussavi is now the representative has partly evolved, partly been forced, into an increasingly direct challenge to the basic framework of the Khomeinist theocratic-authoritarian regime. And to some extent, despite Moussavi's explicit proclamations of loyalty to that regime, he has willy-nilly had to follow the same road.

Rather than elaborate further, let me just quote two effective formulations of this basic point.

Blake Hounshell (Foreign Policy):

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As for Mir Hossain Mousavi, the unlikely leader of this uprising, he has reportedly declared his readiness to become a martyr and sent a letter to the Guardian Council demanding a new election. In it, he sounds reluctant to admit that he's past the point of achieving redress through the system. All he seeks, he says, is the restoration of the Islamic Republic -- not its destruction. That makes sense for political reasons, since he needs as broad a coalition as possible and can't afford to alienate potential conservative supporters. He's still hoping to attract the support of the clergy, who could lend his movement enormous weight.

But the clear implication of Mousavi's actions is that he no longer sees the supreme leader as the legitimate, unquestioned ruler of Iran. I'm sure an increasing number of Iranians feel the same way, even if the regime ultimately beats them into submission as we watch helplessly, glued to our monitors. And that will spell the end of the Islamic Republic in the long run.
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It's important to underline the fact that we're almost talking about the long run here. In the short run, if the Khamenei/Republican Guard/Ahmadinejad bloc successfully crushes the opposition and consolidates its power--which, alas, seems more probable than not--the result might actually be a harder, more radicalized, and more intransigent regime. But that will come at the cost of shattering what remains of the regime's legitimacy and, it seems safe to predict, undermining its long-term viability.

And here is Fareed Zakaria (in a CNN interview):

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CNN: As you've seen the situation in Iran develop over the last week, what are your thoughts?

Fareed Zakaria: One of the first things that strikes me is we are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy.

CNN: Do you mean you think the regime will fall?

Zakaria: No, I don't mean the Iranian regime will fall soon. It may -- I certainly hope it will -- but repressive regimes can stick around for a long time. I mean that this is the end of the ideology that lay at the basis of the Iranian regime.

The regime's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, laid out his special interpretation of political Islam in a series of lectures in 1970. In this interpretation of Shia Islam, Islamic jurists had divinely ordained powers to rule as guardians of the society, supreme arbiters not only on matters of morality but politics as well. When Khomeini established the Islamic Republic of Iran, this idea was at its heart. Last week, that ideology suffered a fatal wound. [....]

When the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "divine assessment," he was indicating it was divinely sanctioned. But no one bought it. He was forced to accept the need for an inquiry into the election. The Guardian Council, Iran's supreme constitutional body, met with the candidates and promised to investigate and perhaps recount some votes. Khamenei has subsequently hardened his position but that is now irrelevant. Something very important has been laid bare in Iran today --- legitimacy does not flow from divine authority but from popular support. [....]
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That sounds basically right. Whatever happens now, my guess is that Iran is already a different country from what it was a week ago.

--Jeff Weintraub

Khatami asks for a commission to investigate the election

As President of Iran from 1997-2005, Mohammed Khatami presided over an experiment in reform-within-the-system that generated considerable hope and excitement but was effectively blocked, increasingly undermined, and eventually crushed and reversed by the hard-liners. (For some discussion of the Khatami experiment and its failure, see here & here & here.) Khatami remains one of the major figures in the broad coalition opposing the Khamenei/Republican Guard/Ahmadinejad bloc.

So it may be significant that today Khatami issued a public statement calling for an impartial commission to investigate last week's presidential election. Andrew Sullivan just posted a translation

His statement is out today. For more on Khatami, see here. A reader translated it:

This looks to me like an attempt to find some grounds for a possible compromise. That would make sense, since Khatami's inclination toward compromise has always been a characteristic feature of his political style (for good and for ill). It may also be a signal that at least some tendencies within the opposition camp are searching for ways to avoid a bloody showdown with the government. In that respect, one intriguing line from Moussavi's speech on Saturday may (or may not) be relevant:

I continue to strongly believe that the request for annulling the vote and repeating the election is a definite right that has to be considered by impartial and nationally trusted delegation. [emphasis added]

My guess is that the possibilities for any genuine compromise--as opposed to capitulation by one side or another--are not there. So in the end Khatami's statement may not be very significant after all. On the other hand, I suppose it's possible that it's a sign of intra-elite negotiations and maneuvering behind the scenes. For the moment we can only speculate.

At all events, Khatami is a sufficiently important figure that this gambit deserves attention. And the strongly pro-democratic thrust of Khatami's statement is also worth noting. The three opening paragraphs, for example, are admirably firm, straightforward, and substantively cogent. At moments they approach eloquence (even in this apparently hasty translation).

--Jeff Weintraub

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In the name of god, [etc.?]

Public participation and engagement is a great accomplishment of the Islamic Revolution that should be admired and promoted. This glorious participation of people of all ages and walks of life sends the clear message that the people are the true owners of the country and the revolution. This message should be observed today as well; the silent protest and civil behavior of people in the demonstrations show the public's maturity and alertness, but is also a reminder of the undeniable fact that people have clear and constitutional right which every regime and government is obligated to observe.

The provocative and insulting portrayal of our people who have been acting independently, and accusing their healthy civil protest to be an act of foreign influence is an example of the wrong policies that further distance people from our government.

Elections were held in Iran and a massive number of our great people do not believe the results that were announced and are protesting them. Public trust has been damaged and closing the door to civil protests means opening a dangerous path and god knows where that will lead.

People's rights must be respected.

Insecurity and tension must be avoided and reactions such as violence and military confrontation which can bear great expense and detriment for the regime and the people must be kept at bay. We should all take action towards reparation of public trust as it is the principle foundation of our country and government.

Violence and harassment, the like of which we unfortunately witnessed on Saturday, along with the arrest of men and women and our great cultural and political minds from the earliest hours of the announcement of election results and banning peaceful and dignified gathering of people that serves to demonstrate their civility, only adds to the problems.

Opportunities are quickly lost and give their place to threats, while I believe that there is still an exit from this situation and no need to create an atmosphere of security and military rule.

Referring the issue to sources or officials who should be protecting people's rights and executing a free and healthy election and monitoring it, but are themselves the target of criticism and protest, is not the solution.

In resolving this problem why not look to the approach and methods of our dear Imam [Khomeini] who was faced with similar situations and should be held as an example for us.

Appointing a fair, competent and brave commission that is critically trusted by the protesting public and accepting the fair verdict of this commission is a path out of this stage and a positive step in the strengthening of the Islamic Republic and reparation of public trust. It would also show critical and crucial decision-making in favor of the people and in line with the principles of the revolution in a sensitive time.

The quick release of those who have been detained and arrested, which has caused grave concern for their families and much of the public, along with opening the lines of information and communication, all of which have unfortunately been shut down, can help calm down the atmosphere.

On the other hand, we should all respect civil criticism and protest (that is void of riots and violence), as it is an obvious right of the people.

The primary objective should be to denounce violence and to replace the current environment of animosity, spite and accusations in favor of a new atmosphere based on truth and honesty with kindness, friendship and cooperation.

It is then that no matter what the price, the Islamic Republic and all its values will be safe and immune.

The public is present and still waiting, this presence should be respected.

[Arabic verse of prayer in closing]

Seyyed Mohammad Khatami
June 21, 2009

Moussavi's speech to the Saturday demonstration: No retreat

Below is an English translation of a speech (or part of a speech?) delivered by Moussavi to one of the rallies that the opposition managed to hold in Iran on Saturday, despite the government's efforts to break them up. (The transcript is also available here in both English and Farsi.)

(Update: Although the first reports I saw described this as a speech, it is described elsewhere as a formal written statement. Both may be true.)

I think it merits attention on several levels.

=> In immediate practical terms, the bottom line is that Moussavi refused to capitulate to Khamenei's ultimatum that the opposition should accept Ahmadinejad's re-election, shut down its demonstrations, and go home. Moussavi's response was firm and uncompromising.

As a companion who has seen the beauties of your green wave, I will never allow any one’s life endangered because of my actions. At the same time, I remain undeterred on my demand for annulling the election and demanding people’s rights. [....]

Be sure that I will always stand with you. [....].By trust in God, and hope for the future, and leaning on the strength of social movements, claim your rights in the frameworks of the existing constitution, based on principle of non-violence.

=> But Moussavi used most of the speech to reflect on the meaning and purpose of his candidacy, and of the larger movement at whose head he has, perhaps unexpectedly, found himself.

I had come to say that people wish honesty and integrity from their servants, and that many of our perils have arisen from lies. I had come to say that poverty and backwardness, corruption and injustice were not our destiny. I had come to re-invite to the Islamic revolution, as it had to be, and Islamic republic as it has to be. In this invitation, I was not charismatic [articulate], but the core message of revolution was so appealing that it surpassed my articulation and excited the young generation who had not seen those days to recreate scenes which we had not seen since the days of revolution[1979] and the sacred defense. The people’s movement chose green as its symbol. I confess that in this, I followed them.

The heart of Moussavi's message here is to present himself and his followers, not the ruling authorities, as the real guardians of the Islamic Republic and its guiding principles. His discussion blends Islamic and democratic themes, and I suppose that's not surprising.

What is more striking is that Moussavi aggressively portrays himself and his movement as the true disciples of the Ayatollah Khomeini (!), and as the ones committed to preserving and defending the true principles of the 1979 revolution. (To recall a slogan from that era, Moussavi presents himself as still "following the Imam's line". No second thoughts or regrets there.)

This is intriguing. Moussavi's decision to wrap his movement in the mantle of Khomeini is interesting in itself. But it also raises some deeper and more difficult questions. To what extent does Moussavi really believe this claim? Or, to put it in a way that is probably more appropriate, what does he mean by it, and how does he understand its implications? To what extent is his invocation of Khomeini a matter of tactical strategy, and to what extent (and in what ways) is it sincere and heartfelt? Those last two possibilities aren't mutually exclusive, of course.

Those aren't rhetorical questions. I don't know the answers, and recent analyses of Moussavi and his candidacy that I've seen (including this one) don't provide solid or unambiguous answers either.

(Political symbolism is complicated. We should remember that for much of the 20th century many people genuinely committed to democracy could nevertheless invoke an idealized image of Lenin with admiration. And since Khomeini is so central to the foundational myths of the Islamic Republic, it makes sense that people hoping to work for reform, rather than revolution, might be inclined to reinterpret and appropriate Khomeini as a symbolic figure rather than break with him. But I should add that on the basis of my own knowledge about Moussavi--which is quite thin--I have no reason to suspect that he doesn't sincerely believe what he's saying here. How he believes it is more obscure.)

During the campaign, Moussavi made it clear that he favors a number of policies that Khomeini would not have approved, to put it mildly. And it's also clear that many of the people who voted for Moussavi actually want to break with the system that Khomeini created. But for other portions of the anti-Ahmadinejad coalition that's undoubtedly not so clear--which is one more indication of the complexity and heterogeneity of the constituency (and now the popular movement) for which Moussavi has become, almost by default, the representative.

The meaning and import of what Moussavi has to say in this speech, both for him and for his audience, remain far from clear (at least to me). So these questions are worth pondering further. In the meantime, you can read the speech itself (below).

--Jeff Weintraub

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Enduring America
Video and Transcript: The Moment of Truth? Mousavi’s Speech at Saturday’s Protests">Video and Transcript: The Moment of Truth? Mousavi’s Speech at Saturday’s Protests
June 20, 2009
Posted by: Scott Lucas

This video was posted late Saturday afternoon. Supporters are claiming it is footage of Presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi appearing and addressing a large rally on Jeyhoon Street in Tehran today. Mousavi’s speech, which has appeared on numerous sites, has now been translated into English and is reproduced below the video. Taken together, these are evidence of a significant act of defiance, not only of the Iranian Government but of the Supreme Leader:



MOUSAVI: In the name of God, the kind and the merciful

Indeed god demands you to safe keep what people entrust in you, and to rule them with justice. [this a verse of Koran]

Respectable and intelligent people of Iran, These nights and days, a pivotal moment in our history is taking place. People ask each other: “what should we do?, which way should we go?”. It is my duty to share with you what I believe, and to learn from you, may we never forget our historical task and not give up on the duty we are given by the destiny of times and generations.

30 years ago, in this country a revolution became victorious in the name of Islam, a revolution for freedom, a revolution for reviving the dignity of men, a revolution for truth and justice. In those times, especially when our enlightened Imam [Khomeini] was alive, large amount of lives and matters were invested to legitimize this foundation and many valuable achievements were attained. An unprecedented enlightenment captured our society, and our people reached a new life where they endured the hardest of hardships with a sweet taste. What this people gained was dignity and freedom and a gift of the life of the pure ones [i.e. 12 Imams of Shiites]. I am certain that those who have seen those days will not be satisfied with anything less. Had we as a people lost certain talents that we were unable to experience that early spirituality? I had come to say that that was not the case. It is not late yet, we are not far from that enlightened space yet.

I had come to show that it was possible to live spiritually while living in a modern world. I had come to repeat Imam’s warnings about fundamentalism. I had come to say that evading the law leads to dictatorship; and to remind that paying attention to people’s dignity does not diminish the foundations of the regime, but strengthens it.

I had come to say that people wish honesty and integrity from their servants, and that many of our perils have arisen from lies. I had come to say that poverty and backwardness, corruption and injustice were not our destiny. I had come to re-invite to the Islamic revolution, as it had to be, and Islamic republic as it has to be. In this invitation, I was not charismatic [articulate], but the core message of revolution was so appealing that it surpassed my articulation and excited the young generation who had not seen those days to recreate scenes which we had not seen since the days of revolution[1979] and the sacred defense. The people’s movement chose green as its symbol. I confess that in this, I followed them.

And a generation that was accused of being removed from religion, has now reached “God is Great”, “Victory’s of God and victory’s near”, “Ya hossein” in their chants to prove that when this tree fruits, they all resemble. No one taught them these slogans, they reached them by the teachings of instinct.

How unfair are those whose petty advantages make them call this a “velvet revolution” staged by foreigners! [refering to state TV and Khameneni, perhaps!] But as you know, all of us were faced with deception and cheatings when we claimed to revitalize our nation and realize dreams that root in the hearts of young and old. And that which we had predicted will stem from evading law [dictatorship], realized soon in the worst manifestation.

The large voter turnout in recent election was the result of hard work to create hope and confidence in people, to create a deserving response to those whose broad dissatisfaction with the existing management crisis could have targeted the foundations of the regime. If this good will and trust of the poeple is not addressed via protecting their votes, or if they cannot react in a civil manner to claim their rights, the responsibility of the dangerous routs ahead will be on the shoulders of those who do not tolerate civil protests. If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven.

This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism. Imam’s fantastic art was to neutralize these dichotomies. I had come to focus on Imam’s approach to neutralize the burgeoning magic of these. Now, by confirming the results of election, by limiting the extent of investigation in a manner that the outcome will not be changed, even though in more than 170 branches the number of cast votes was more than 100% of eligible voters of the riding, the heads of the state have accepted the responsibility of what has happened during the election.

In these conditions, we are asked to follow our complaints via the Guardian council, while this council has proven its bias, not only before and during, but also after the election. The first principle of judgment is to be impartial. I, continue to strongly believe that the request for annulling the vote and repeating the election is a definite right that has to be considered by impartial and nationally trusted delegation. Not to dismiss the results of this investigation a priori, or to prevent people from demonstration by threatening them to bloodshed. Nor to unleash the Intelligence ministry’s plain clothes forces on people’s lives to disperse crowds by intimidation and inflammation, instead of responding to people’s legitimate questions, and then blaming the bloodshed on others.

As I am looking at the scene, I see it set for advancing a new political agenda that spreads beyond the objective of installing an unwanted government. As a companion who has seen the beauties of your green wave, I will never allow any one’s life endangered because of my actions. At the same time, I remain undeterred on my demand for annulling the election and demanding people’s rights. Despite my limited abilities, I believe that your motivation and creativity can pursue your legitimate demands in new civil manners.

Be sure that I will always stand with you. What this brother of yours recommends, especially to the dear youth, in terms of finding new solutions is to not allow liars and cheater steal your flag of defense of Islamic state, and foreigners rip the treasures of the Islamic republic which are your inheritance of the blood of your decent fathers. By trust in God, and hope for the future, and leaning on the strength of social movements, claim your rights in the frameworks of the existing constitution, based on principle of non-violence.

In this, we are not confronting the Basij. Basiji is our brother. In this we are not confronting the revolutionary guard. The guard is the keeper of our revolution. We are not confronting the army, the army is the keeper of our borders. These organs are the keepers of our independence, freedom and our Islamic republic. We are confronting deception and lies, we want to reform them, a reform by return to the pure principles of revolution.

We advise the authorities, to calm down the streets. Based on article 27 of the constitution, not only provide space for peaceful protest, but also encourage such gatherings. The state TV should stop badmouthing and taking sides. Before voices turn into shouting, let them be heard in reasonable debates. Let the press criticize, and write the news as they happen. In one word, create a free space for people to express their agreements and disagreements. Let those who want, say “takbeer” and don’t consider it opposition. It is clear that in this case, there won’t be a need for security forces on the streets, and we won’t have to face pictures and hear news that break the heart of anyone who loves the country and the revolution.

Your brother and companion Mir Hossein Mousavi

Thursday - Iran on the brink (Economist)

Max Rodenbeck of the Economist, who left Tehran on Thursday after spending a week there, wrote a first-rate overview of Iran's political crisis that takes it right up to the eve of the Great Crackdown we are now witnessing.

Developments in Iran move fast these days, so this is already not quite up-to-the-minute. But I recommend it to anyone who wants get a coherent overall picture of the situation heading into this weekend; Rodenbeck pulls together the jumble of events over the past week as well as some of the background to the election itself. This may strike some people as a little long to read on-line, but it's worth it. The coming days will test the analysis it offers.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
The Economist
June 18, 2009 | TEHRAN
Iran's election:
Demanding to be counted
[Max Rodenbeck]

An apparently rigged election is shaking the fragile pillars on which the Iranian republic rests

Iranians voted in record numbers on June 12th. Analysts had predicted a close race; hope of change was in the air. So for many, the official result—with a claimed margin of 63% for the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—was a preposterous sham. At first, youths took to the streets in Tehran and elsewhere, lighting fires and smashing shop windows. When these were beaten back, opposition grew. Braving an official ban and rumours of police gunfire, well over a million Iranians took to the streets of Tehran on June 15th, dwarfing a televised victory rally staged the day before by Mr Ahmadinejad. A fractured, demoralised opposition suddenly appeared united, empowered and focused on Mir Hosein Mousavi, the soft-spoken former prime minister who, by the official count, had polled only 13m votes to Mr Ahmadinejad’s 24m. Their protests have continued ever since.

In the three decades since the Islamic Republic was founded, Iran has not been rocked like this. Tehran is engulfed in huge marches every day. Women in chadors, bus conductors, shopkeepers and even turbanned clerics have joined the joyous show of people power. Nationwide strikes are planned.

But the government has struck back. Its men have beaten up protesters and fired on the crowd. Reformers, intellectuals, civil leaders and human-rights activists have been arrested or have gone missing, not only in Tehran but also in Tabriz, in the north-west, and across the country. Since the Ministry of Guidance has expelled foreign journalists, the course of the repression will be hard to follow. And the outcome of this clash is impossible to predict.

The unrest is not, or not yet, about the basic underpinnings of the system created by Iran’s 1979 revolution. Protesters have deliberately dressed modestly, enlisting religious symbolism to appeal to the notions of injustice and redemption that lie at the heart of Shia Islam. It is about feelings, shared on both sides of the divide, that the Islamic Republic has gone astray. The split reflects not only a polarised electorate, but also a deep and growing schism within the ruling establishment.

Iran’s unique system rests uncomfortably on two pillars, one democratic, the other theocratic. The elected parliament and presidency have plenty of power over state spending and investment, but little over national security, including Iran’s controversial nuclear programme. This falls under the aegis of the theocratic branch, embodied by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mr Khamenei serves not only as a moral authority but also as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and controls a range of powerful bodies intended to enforce the “Islamic” nature of the system, including courts, state broadcasting and the Guardian Council, an appointed committee charged, among other things, with vetting candidates and monitoring elections.

Today’s upheaval undermines both these pillars at once. Most Iranians believe electoral fraud has occurred on a massive scale. The implications are far-reaching. Extracting the state from the cloud of suspicion that has fallen over it will be tricky. A clampdown by the army and police, with Mr Ahmadinejad brazening out his critics, would wreck the Islamic Republic’s democratic pretensions for good. But this turmoil has not just undermined Iranian democracy; it has also damaged the prestige of the supreme leader.

Most of Iran’s fast-expanding but hard-pressed urban middle class dislike Mr Ahmadinejad. They suspect that his re-election was intended to stamp legitimacy on the grip of hardliners who consider the “Islamic” bit of the revolution more essential than its “republican” part. Among his opponents are pious conservatives, including some prominent senior clerics, as well as liberals who would, if given a real choice, probably opt for a secular state. But even in south Tehran, a working-class area assumed to be for Mr Ahmadinejad, pro-Mousavi voters thronged the streets: a middle-aged woman in tears lest the election was stolen, and a young man who used the only English word at his command to explain his choice: “Freedom”.

Their leaders are figures who, like Mr Mousavi, gained prominence in the early years of the revolution, but have learned pragmatism since. Many are linked to the reformist movement that briefly thrived during the presidency, from 1997 to 2005, of Muhammad Khatami, a smiling cleric whose enormous popularity failed to make headway against entrenched and occasionally vicious conservative opposition. Several of those arrested this week were Mr Khatami’s close advisers.

Men like these see Mr Ahmadinejad’s administration as dangerously incompetent in its domestic policy and recklessly confrontational in foreign affairs. Most ominous to some have been his purges not just of reformists, but also of the wider revolution-era nomenklatura from ministries, local government and universities in favour of people seen as narrow-minded, bullying provincials. This, together with the parcelling-out of rich government contracts to ideological allies such as the Revolutionary Guard, has raised fears that the state is drifting towards a Venezuelan model of demagogic cronyism.

What conservatives dread

The president’s supporters also suspect a coup, but one along the lines of eastern Europe’s colour revolutions. The danger, as they see it, is that Iran’s pure Islamic identity will be diluted by a wave of Western materialism, encouraged by a corrupt elite whose revolutionary ardour has faded. Supporters of Mr Ahmadinejad’s millenarian populism include commanders of the Revolutionary Guard and its larger volunteer auxiliary, the baseej, as well as allies the president has packed into the regular army, police and intelligence services. They are backed by extreme conservatives among the Shia clergy, some of whom say a pious elect, not the people, should rule. Other support comes from the (shrinking) peasantry, pensioners, war veterans and others who have benefited from the spendthrift but scattershot generosity of Mr Ahmadinejad’s government.

Getty Images

Scornful Ahmadinejad

The supreme leader, too, who should theoretically remain above the political fray, has frequently signalled tacit support for Mr Ahmadinejad. This means that he cannot easily dissociate himself, as he has in the past, from whatever electoral malpractice there may have been. Not only did he hastily bless the election result, pre-empting its validation by the Guardian Council as the rules require. He also, before the election, described the kind of candidate voters should choose in terms that made it clear he was referring to the president. Moreover, one of Mr Khamenei’s sons is believed to have not only quietly sponsored the president’s rise from provincial obscurity, but also orchestrated his two presidential campaigns.

The first of these, in 2005, also produced credible charges of fraud, albeit on a smaller scale. Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist cleric who ran in the recent election, was narrowly beaten to second place in a first round of voting because of a suspiciously heavy tilt to Mr Ahmadinejad in outlying provinces. This propelled Mr Ahmadinejad, then a political novice, into a surprise second-round triumph against Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president. Mr Karroubi’s protests at the time were quashed by the supreme leader.

This new result looks even more suspect. Before the vote, the president’s rivals had voiced worries about possible fraud. A news report claimed that whistleblowers inside the Ministry of Interior, which organises vote-counting, had warned that it planned to tamper with the outcome. Mr Rafsanjani, still a power-broker as head of two bodies that are meant to adjudicate between branches of government, took the unusual step of firing off a long, heated public letter to Mr Khamenei, declaring that unless the supreme leader acted to ensure a fair vote, trouble would ensue.

Conservatives at the heart of Iran’s “deep state”—that coterie of officials and clerics who are assumed really to be running things—were known to have been disturbed by the sudden snowballing of support for Mr Mousavi. He had at first been seen as a conveniently weak replacement for Mr Khatami, who withdrew from the race in his favour. Particularly upsetting to them was the disregard for public decorum displayed by the young women (“whores of the West” in one baseej newspaper) who joined Mr Mousavi’s rallies. The rigged count itself appeared to many to be a direct response to these fears.

Early on Mr Mousavi, who, supporters say, was tipped off by allies within the Ministry of Interior, proclaimed himself the likely winner. But soon afterwards rolling official results, announced with unusual speed, showed him far behind with only a third of the vote. Suspicions rose further as observers were barred from some counting centres, and the campaign headquarters of Mr Ahmadinejad’s opponents found its telephone lines cut, along with the nationwide text-messaging services they had intended to use to keep an independent tally of the vote. Any remaining doubts vanished on June 14th, as police sealed the headquarters of Messrs Karroubi and Mousavi, placed them under house arrest and detained dozens of their most prominent supporters.

Mr Ahmadinejad certainly has millions of enthusiasts, particularly in areas beyond the scrutiny of Tehran’s chattering classes. Yet the official result still seemed incredible. Mr Karroubi, for instance, had won more than 5m votes in 2005, but now trailed in last place with a mere 330,000 out of the 39m cast, fewer than the number of spoiled or blank ballots. All three challengers were shown to have lost even in their own home regions, despite strong local loyalties and the expectation of state largesse from having sons in high places.

What could explain such an apparently blatant attempt to rig an election that, even had Mr Mousavi won, would have represented little threat to either the republic or its supreme leader? The most likely theory is of a plan gone awry. Given the line-up of institutions either controlled by Mr Khamenei or systematically packed with Mr Ahmadinejad’s supporters, and given that no incumbent president in Iran has yet lost to a challenger, it may have seemed safe to bet on the president’s victory. This would have brought the added satisfaction to many dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, possibly including Mr Khamenei, of weakening the position of Mr Rafsanjani, who has mounted a rearguard struggle to contain the president’s influence.

Reuters

Cautious Khamenei

Just to make sure, strong potential challengers, such as Mr Khatami and the popular, conservative mayor of Tehran, Muhammad Qalibaf, were “persuaded” by the supreme leader not to run. Compared with the ebullient, politically canny Mr Ahmadinejad, the three remaining challengers appeared drab and uninspiring. Mr Ahmadinejad felt so confident that he agreed to an unprecedented series of televised debates. His superior political skills gave him the advantage on screen, but his scorn for his rivals helped stir up a surge of sympathy for Mr Mousavi, dispelling the political apathy that normally pervades Iran’s middle class.

Conservatives suddenly found themselves facing a torrent of youthful activists, their passion for change magnified by the spontaneous but effective use of simple symbols and modern communications. Stunned by this turn of events, Iran’s deep state appears to have opted for a last-minute, and therefore clumsy, attempt to alter the outcome in the president’s favour.

Democracy in the balance

What will happen now? None of the possible outcomes looks good. Mr Mousavi, who, along with Mr Karroubi, has shown unexpected steel in the face of pressure, insists that the only solution is to cancel the election results altogether. “Otherwise,” he says, “nothing will remain of people’s trust in the government and ruling system.” Yet, in deference to the Supreme Leader, the three disappointed challengers have also gone through the motions of a formal protest to the Guardian Council.

This 12-man body, chaired by an ultra-conservative who personally endorsed Mr Ahmadinejad, officially has ten days to investigate the charges pressed by Messrs Mousavi and Karroubi. Faced with the pressure of street protests, it has already, grudgingly, agreed to at least a partial recount of votes. Mr Khamenei has sought to bolster his position by issuing his own call for an inquiry. Yet many reformists fear that the intention is to play for time while passions burn out, and then declare some slight irregularities that do not affect the outcome. As a result, they appear grimly determined to carry on the protests.

Reuters

Waiting for change

The more immediate concern is that Mr Ahmadinejad may impose a form of martial law. There are already ominous signs of such a move, as arrests of prominent reformists widen, censorship and controls on communication tighten, and feared vigilantes of the baseej lash out with impunity. Given the machinery of oppression at his disposal, Mr Ahmadinejad could probably maintain power by force, though no one can say for sure where the army stands. But force would devastate the image of a state that he exalts as the pinnacle of good governance. Moreover, Mr Ahmadinejad would need the support of the far more cautious, consensus-seeking supreme leader, and this is far from assured.

Mr Khamenei faces a deep quandary. A resolution to the crisis that fails to assuage the huge and growing mass of Mr Mousavi’s supporters would do permanent damage to his regime’s democratic pillar. Few Iranians would ever again deign to volunteer for the empty pageantry of voting. Yet giving in completely to their demands would expose his own weakness and fallibility. Underlying all this is the bitter irony that in its paranoia to avoid a “velvet revolution”, Iran’s deep state has itself engineered precisely the conditions that might make such a revolution happen.

Obama to Iran: "The whole world is watching"

My feelings about how the Obama administration has responded so far to the political upheaval in Iran are complex--though, on balance, mostly positive. I don't want to try to spell out my thoughts on the matter right now, so for the moment let me just say that my sentiments are largely in accord with those of George Packer and Karim Sadjapour. More on this subject another time ...

In the meantime, the latest statement issued by the Obama administration conveys an important message to both the Iranian regime and the Iranian people.

--Jeff Weintraub

------------------------------
The White House
June 20, 2009
Statement from the President on Iran

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

"Where Is This Place That We Are Only Screaming To the World With Our Silence?" (Greg Djerejian)

Even so-called foreign-policy "realists" are sometimes startled and moved by actual realities. Here is a fine and eloquent outburst from Greg Djerejian (at Belgravia Dispatch. The heading of his post quotes a line spoken by an Iranian woman narrating a video clip from Iran.

------------------------------
June 20, 2009
WHERE IS THIS PLACE THAT WE ARE ONLY SCREAMING TO THE WORLD WITH OUR SILENCE?

This place is Iran, a country on the cusp of possibly an even larger-scale violent crackdown than as of this hour (writing Saturday mid-afternoon, New York time), another revolution, or some alternative denouement unknown to us at this hour. With the howling cries of ‘Allah-o-akbar’ in the background, in a YouTubed video reportedly made Friday evening in Iran (via The Lede) the subject line above is spoken by what sounds like a young female narrator (at the 1:35 mark). A hauntingly beautiful and arresting line--one which she breaks into tears uttering—seems to distill much of the spirit of the ‘silent’ protests of the Moussavi movement.



How can we not fail to be moved by her achingly sincere yearnings? How can our conscience not demand something be done? After all, aren’t these ardent cries of help aimed squarely at us here, meaning leading players in the international community? And then now this Saturday we are seeing the first flare-ups of more wide-spread and protracted anti-demonstrator crackdowns. Via Andrew, another heart-wrenching YouTube (if in far more direct, brutish vein) here:



Of course we are deeply repulsed and outraged at this senseless and cruel violence. [....] Make no mistake, if a Tiananmen style crackdown ensues, we must condemn it, and loudly. We must reappraise the timing and manner of going forward negotiations. Iran policy will need to be re-calibrated on multiple fronts. And I will be even less hopeful for any going forward diplomatic successes, with an increasingly sclerotic, repressive, insecure regime hanging on now well beyond its time. But we should not be, in a fit of ennobled but deeply misguided passion, engaging in actions like having President Obama directly contact Moussavi, or delivering a taped message to the Iranian people, and so on. For these actions will be turned on the backs of the people like the young woman massacred in cold blood today, and in short order. [....]
------------------------------

I will skip the rest, since it is not so much about Iran as about the ideological dogfights going on here in the US, in the punditocracy and the blogosphere, about how the US government and the rest of us should respond to that ongoing political drama in Iran. Those debates have generated some light, but more heat than light--that is, they have been excessively pervaded (in my view) by inter-sectarian point-scoring, score-settling, predictable sloganeering, ideological posturing, and reciprocal accusations of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty. (Yes, some of those accusations have been justified, to some degree, on all sides.) So I have mostly tried to avoid all that, and to focus on serious and potentially illuminating analyses of what is going on in Iran.

With all respect to Greg Djerejian, I think (fairly or unfairly) that some of those critical remarks apply to at least some aspects of the non-quoted portion of his post (including the rather tiresome ritual "neocon"-bashing which is becoming too much of a reflex in some quarters). But not to all of them ... so anyone who is interested in considering the rest of his discussion can pursue it here.

--Jeff Weintraub

Iran - What's at stake after Khamenei's Friday ultimatum? (Karim Sadjapour)

On Thursday the prominent Iran analyst Karim Sadjapour looked ahead to the next step in "the momentous internal Iranian drama that's unfolding". Below is an update from Friday, June 19 (via Blake Hounshell's blog at Foreign Policy). Here's the heart of the matter:

The weight of the world now rests on the shoulders of Mir Hossein Mousavi. I expect that Khamenei's people have privately sent signals to him that they're ready for a bloodbath, they're prepared to use overwhelming force to crush this, and is he willing to lead the people in the streets to slaughter?

Mousavi is not Khomeini, and Khamenei is not the Shah. Meaning, Khomeini would not hesitate to lead his followers to "martyrdom", and the Shah did not have the stomach for mass bloodshed. This time the religious zealots are the ones holding power.

The anger and the rage and sense of injustice people feel will not subside anytime soon, but if Mousavi concedes defeat he will demoralize millions of people. At the moment the demonstrations really have no other leadership. It's become a symbiotic relationship, Mousavi feeds off people's support, and the popular support allows Mousavi the political capital to remain defiant. So Mousavi truly has some agonizing decisions to make. [....]

Whatever happens, and I know I shouldn't be saying this as an analyst, but my eyes well when I think of the tremendous bravery and fortitude of the Iranian people. They deserve a much better regime than the one they have.

The rest is below. --Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Foreign Policy
Iran analyst: Is Mousavi willing to risk "slaughter" in the streets?

Carnegie Endowment Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour sends along an update to his Q&A with CFR:

Q. In light of Khamenei's firm speech Friday indicating he was not going to support a new election, what do you think will happen? Do you think the opposition will have to retreat?

First, it was expected that Khamenei's first response would be very firm, that's his modus operandi as a despot: Never compromise in the face of pressure, it only projects weakness and invites more pressure.

Khamenei is [a] shrewder politician than Ahmadinjedad. Whereas Ahmadinejad has a penchant for alienating even hardliners, Khamenei reached out and for now seemingly co-opted some of those that seemed to be previously be sitting on the fence, namely Speaker of the [P]arliament Ali Larijani and Mohsen Rezai, both of whom are tremendous opportunists.

The weight of the world now rests on the shoulders of Mir Hossein Mousavi. I expect that Khamenei's people have privately sent signals to him that they're ready for a bloodbath, they're prepared to use overwhelming force to crush this, and is he willing to lead the people in the streets to slaughter?

Mousavi is not Khomeini, and Khamenei is not the Shah. Meaning, Khomeini would not hesitate to lead his followers to "martyrdom", and the Shah did not have the stomach for mass bloodshed. This time the religious zealots are the ones holding power.

The anger and the rage and sense of injustice people feel will not subside anytime soon, but if Mousavi concedes defeat he will demoralize millions of people. At the moment the demonstrations really have no other leadership. It's become a symbiotic relationship, Mousavi feeds off people's support, and the popular support allows Mousavi the political capital to remain defiant. So Mousavi truly has some agonizing decisions to make.

Rafsanjani's role also remains critical. Can he co-opt disaffected revolutionary elites to undermine Khamenei? As Khamenei said, they've known each other for 52 years, when they were young apostles of Ayatollah Khomeini. I expect that Khamenei's people have told Rafsanjani that if he continues to agitate against Khamenei behind the scenes, he and his family will be either imprisoned or killed, and that the people of Iran are unlikely to weep for the corrupt Rafsanjani family.

Whatever happens, and I know I shouldn't be saying this as an analyst, but my eyes well when I think of the tremendous bravery and fortitude of the Iranian people. They deserve a much better regime than the one they have.

How they're doing it

The Tienanmen moment? Yes and no. Yes, it looks as though the Iranian regime decided that the moment has come to crush the protests by force. But in 1989 the Chinese regime seems to have wanted a concentrated, visible bloodbath in Tienanmen Square itself (to send a clear message). In this crackdown, the Iranian regime seems to be trying to avoid that.

According to a CNN report:

Uniformed and plainclothes police were deployed around Revolution Square, the site of a major planned demonstration, and traffic was being turned away on a major thoroughfare leading to the square, a witness said.

The forces confronted demonstrators who tried to avoid the thoroughfare and take side streets toward the square. Clashes erupted as forces used clubs to beat back protesters.

Periodically, groups of armed police would fire rifles into the air to disperse protesters along the side streets near Revolution Square.

Cell phone service was brought down after 5:30 p.m. in the area, witnesses said. [....]

Similar actions are being reported from other cities across Iran.

=> An e-mail message from my friend David Nickerson (quoted with his permission) gets to the heart of the matter:

After a week of bungling the protests and miscalculating, the Iranian regime writes a handbook on how to brutally repress a mass movement without iconic images. Simply don't let large crowds ever gather. Block off the streets and keep people compartmentalized in small neighborhoods.

[JW: Also, of course, they've cleared out foreign journalists.]

I realize that this is hardly new (I recall that UC campuses built in the 60s purposefully lacked large quads to prevent places for protests), but it is disappointing after a week of enormous crowds.

The bombing of the shrine was also a nice touch.

My heart goes out to the Iranians.

And he adds in a follow-up:

The scenario was entirely predictable, but that doesn't make it any less devastating. The past few days have been genuinely inspiring. Today is depressing reality

This may or may not be the end of it, though. We'll see.

--Jeff Weintraub

The crackdown begins in Iran?

If you turn up the sound, you can hear the sounds of shooting (and/or tear gas grenades) in the background. The following come from the Guardian's "Iran protests" blog:

-------------------------------------------
Police have clashed with protesters in Iran as the opposition movement continue its street protests against re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in defiance of threats from the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. [....]

9.55am:
"Protest leaders and responsible for bloodshed," the Khamenei's official English-language website ominously declares. [....]

11.10am:
Basij militia have been seen in large numbers in Tehran carrying clubs and rifles, according to witnesses cited by AFP (via France24).

11.30am:
Iran's deputy national police commander said that police will arrest all those who attend today's protest, according to al-Jazeera.

An update from a Twitter user in Tehran says the streets are full of riot police in Ebghelab square. [....]

1pm:
An unconfirmed tweet from a usually reliable source says Mousavi is walking from his Ettelaat office to the ministry of interior and that 10,000 people are with him.

Photos, claimed to be taken today, show several rows of riot police.

The BBC says its witness have seen hundreds of riot police in Enghelab Square.

Al-Jazeera also reports a heavy police presence, but points out that it is difficult to verify because phones are jammed. [....]

1.10pm:
The BBC's Jon Leyne, in Tehran, admitted on the World Service that he cannot tell if the rally is actually happening, because of the restrictions on reporting. The Guardian's reporters in Iran are in no position to comment either

1.25pm:
The entrance to Tehran's Revolution Square, is blocked by fire engines, according to AP. It also reports that riot police have surrounded Tehran University.

Several unconfirmed tweets claim that protesters have clashed with the police. Some claim the police have used batons. [....]

2.20pm:
There are heavy clashes on Azadi Street, and chants of death to Khamenei, according to this regularly updated live blog from Iran. It also reports intense clashes on Enghelab Square. It's impossible to verify this at the moment.

2.15pm:
Witnesses: police using tear gas, water cannons to disperse thousands of protesters in Tehran, says a flash on AP. [....]

2.25pm:
One person has been killed in an explosion near the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in Tehran, according to the Fars News Agency.

Two people were injured, Reuters quotes it saying. State TV has the same report, according to AP. [....]

2.35pm:
More on that explosion at the shrine: "A suicide bomber was killed at the northern wing of Imam Khomeini's shrine. Two people were injured," Fars news agency said, according to Reuters.

Khamenei talked about the threat of terrorism in his speech yesterday.

"Street demonstrations are a target for terrorist plots. Who would be responsible if something happened?" he said.

2.30pm:
Protesters are being shot at in Azadi Street, according to an unconfirmed report from Saeed Valadbaygi.

3.30pm:
An eyewitness in Enghelab square reports around 20,000 riot police, made up of Basiji militiamen and soldiers, and armed with rifles, tear gas and water cannons.

The eyewitness saw dozens of people beaten by riot police in an attempt to frighten them into evacuating the square, with one young man being beaten to the ground by four policemen. [....]

The eyewitness reports riot police attacking people on passing motorbikes and, on occasion, innocent passersby who have no way of escaping the heavy police presence. Nonetheless, there are thousands of Mousavi supporters, marching peacefully near the square, where they have been subjected to these brutal reprisals from the police.

Across Tehran, there is widespread fear and panic, with many desperate to know what is going on in Enghelab square, but unable to find out due to reporting restrictions. Now the question seems to be: what will Mousavi do next? [....]
-------------------------------------------

Moussavi seems to be out of sight, so it's possible he has been arrested. I expect that bits and pieces of news will keep dribbling out, but the expulsion or restriction of foreign journalists will make it hard to put together a comprehensive picture of what's going on. --Jeff Weintraub

Moussavi - Accidental leader, accidental democrat? (NYTimes)

Mir Hossein Moussavi is in various respects an unlikely leader of a popular movement that has come into head-on collision with Iranian regime. He is a long-time political insider, Prime Minister during the Iran-Iraq War and the large-scale political terror of the 1980s, who was always committed to Khomeini and to the theocratic regime Khomeini established. He still declares himself to be committed to the "principles" of the 1979 revolution.

So is he a hard-liner turned reformist? A leader swept up by a movement that took him farther than he ever intended to go? Or someone who is still less of a democratic reformer than many of his followers would like to believe? Perhaps even a bit of all three?

I don't pretend to know the answer. Moussavi certainly has a hard-line past (which may even have made him a more credible candidate), but people do sometimes change. Two weeks ago--that seems like a long time ago--I noticed the following exchange in a New York Times report on the presidential campaign:

“Five thousand innocent people were executed when you were in the government in the 1980s,” one woman told Muhammad Atrianfar a journalist who worked for Mr. Moussavi when he was prime minister in that period. “Why?”

Mr. Atrianfar seemed surprised by the question.

“My friends, at the beginning of the Islamic revolution we were all like Ahmadinejad, but we changed our path and our way,” he said, earning a round of applause from the audience.

Could be.

A lot depends on Moussavi right now. Here is a useful profile of him--the man and the phenomenon--from Wednesday's New York Times.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
New York Times
Tuesday, June 17, 2009
An Insider Turned Agitator Is the Face of Iran’s Opposition
By Robert F. Worth

TEHRAN — His followers have begun calling him “the Gandhi of Iran.” His image is carried aloft in the vast opposition demonstrations that have shaken Iran in recent days, his name chanted in rhyming verses that invoke Islam’s most sacred martyrs.

Mir Hussein Moussavi has become the public face of the movement, the man the protesters consider the true winner of the disputed presidential election.

But he is in some ways an accidental leader, a moderate figure anointed at the last minute to represent a popular upwelling against the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is far from being a liberal in the Western sense, and it is not yet clear how far he will be willing to go in defending the broad democratic hopes he has come to embody.

Mr. Moussavi, 67, is an insider who has moved toward opposition, and his motives for doing so remain murky. He was close to the founder of Iran’s Islamic Revolution but is at odds with the current supreme leader. Some prominent figures have rallied to his cause, including a former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. So it is not clear how much this battle reflects a popular resistance to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hard-line policies, and how much is about a struggle for power.

Mr. Moussavi and his wife, who played a prominent role in his campaign, have been under enormous pressure to accept the election results, said a close relative who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The relative did not specify what kind of pressure.

“They are both being very courageous and are expecting the pressure to increase,” said the relative. “Mr. Moussavi says he has taken a path that has no return and he is ready to make sacrifices.”

Mr. Moussavi began his political career as a hard-liner and a favorite of the revolution’s architect, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Although he has long had an adversarial relationship with Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his insider status makes him loath to mount a real challenge to the core institutions of the Islamic republic. He was an early supporter of Iran’s nuclear program, and as prime minister in the 1980s he approved Iran’s purchase of centrifuges on the nuclear black market, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Yet like many founding figures of the revolution, he has come to believe that the incendiary radicalism of the revolution’s early days must be tempered in an era of peace and state-building, those who know him say. Some have seen a symbolic meaning in his decision to make Monday’s vast demonstration in Tehran a march from Enghelab (revolution) Square to Azadi (freedom) Square.

“He is a hybrid child of the revolution,” said Shahram Kholdi, a lecturer at the University of Manchester who has written about Mr. Moussavi’s political evolution. “He is committed to Islamic principles but has liberal aspirations.”

In recent days, Mr. Moussavi has been pushed inexorably toward a confrontation that carries terrible risks for both sides. If the authorities use force on a major scale to quell the protests, it could crush the movement. It could also generate martyrs and deeper public anger, swelling the demonstrations into a broader threat to the system Mr. Moussavi hopes to preserve.

The steadiness he has shown since the election results were announced Saturday has helped solidify his role as a leader and has heartened his followers.

“The demands of the people are the most important goal of the Islamic republic,” Mr. Moussavi said as the polls closed on Friday night, in what was widely seen as a shot across the bow of Iran’s clerical leadership, and a warning that he would take his case public in the event of voter fraud.

Mr. Moussavi is in some ways an unlikely figurehead. Calm and deliberate, he has a soporific speaking manner, and even his most ardent defenders grant that he has little charisma. He was out of public life for two decades, a soft-spoken architect who loves to watch movies at home and was overshadowed for years by his distinguished wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a professor and artist.

Yet many also describe him as a resolute figure whose hard experience as Iran’s prime minister during the 1980s taught him not to fear risky decisions.

“He was an artist, a university professor with no experience, but he managed under harsh conditions to run a country of 35 million people through trial and error,” said Muhammad Atrianfar, who served as deputy interior minister under Mr. Moussavi, and later became a journalist. “The biggest result for him was the self-confidence he gained from that.”

As prime minister, he often clashed with Ayatollah Khamenei, who was president at the time. The fights were mostly over economic issues; Mr. Moussavi favored greater state control over the wartime economy, and Ayatollah Khamenei argued for less regulation. The president was more moderate on some issues, and unlike Mr. Moussavi, sometimes drew rebukes from Ayatollah Khomeini, then the supreme leader. In that sense they have switched positions, but the animus between them remains.

After stepping down in 1989, Mr. Moussavi kept a hand in politics, serving on Iran’s Expediency Council. But most of his time was devoted to architecture and painting. His chief influences include the Italian architect Renzo Piano, said a close relative.

“He takes some elements of modern Japanese architecture, and American postmodern, and then puts them in the context of Iranian architecture,” the relative said.

Although he is deeply religious, Mr. Moussavi (the name is also often rendered in English as Mir Hossein Mousavi) appears to hold relatively liberal social views. His wife is a well-known professor of political science who has campaigned alongside him, often giving speeches and news conferences independently. When they were younger, he was sometimes introduced as “the husband of Zahra Rahnavard.” His wife promised that if he was elected, he would advance women’s rights and appoint “at least two or three women” to the cabinet.

His oldest daughter is a nuclear physicist. The youngest prefers not to wear the Islamic chador, and her parents do not mind, the relative said. “There has never been any compulsion in the family,” the relative added.

In recent years, Mr. Moussavi was deeply dismayed by the excesses of the morality police and by the government’s decisions to shut down newspapers, his relative said.

He decided to run for president earlier this year to save Iran from what he said were Mr. Ahmadinejad’s “destructive” policies. But it was not until a few weeks ago that a popular movement began to build behind him. As the campaign drew to a close, Mr. Moussavi began answering the president’s rhetorical broadsides with some strong language of his own.

“When the president lies, nobody confronts him,” Mr. Moussavi said during his final debate appearance. “I’m a revolutionary and I’m speaking out against the situation he has created. He has filled the country with lies and hypocrisy. I’m not frightened to speak out. Remember that.”

For a long time, he was compared unfavorably to Mohammad Khatami, the charismatic reformist cleric who was president from 1997 to 2005. But many now say that during the recent protests, Mr. Moussavi held firm against the government in ways Mr. Khatami never would have.

“He’s not as open-minded as Khatami,” said Nasser Hadian, a political analyst. “But he’s more of a man of action.”

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting.

Heading for a "Tienanmen moment" in Iran?

In eastern Europe, 1989 was an annus mirabilis that saw the sudden collapse of the whole Soviet-dominated Communist order imposed after World War II, accompanied by transitions to democracy (fairly successfully in most cases) in the former Soviet-bloc countries. Two years later the Soviet Union itself came to an end.

In China, 1989 meant something different. There, as swelling movement of protest and discontent marked by the expression of democratic aspirations was crushed, brutally and effectively, by the Communist regime. The central image of that crackdown was the slaughter in Tienanmen Square in Beijing, though both the unrest and its suppression took place in a number of other cities, too.

Is Iran headed for some version of Tienanmen? I hope not, but I have to confess that at the moment this look like the most probable short-term outcome. In fact, this historical analogy came to my mind as soon as the massive popular protests against the stolen election began to gather momentum. Barring a complete capitulation by Moussavi and the rest of the opposition leadership, which seems unlikely, these demonstrations are going to continue. And Supreme Leader Khamenei's Friday speech, which ruled out any compromise with the opposition, made it clear that continuing popular protests would be met by force. The Khamenei/Republican Guard/Ahmadinejad bloc that carried out the election coup will crush popular protests rather than giving way to them, and there's no reason to doubt that the regime has enough reliable armed men to do the job. (With luck, it won't turn into a large-scale bloodbath.)

Again, I hope that this prognosis is too pessimistic. But the government and the opposition do appear to be moving toward a final confrontation, and we ought to prepare ourselves for that possibility. The dynamics of this process were laid out in a New York Times report as early as Tuesday, June 16, and the analysis seems even more on-target now. Some highlights:

------------------------------
In an iconic photograph of antigovernment demonstrations in Iran, a student with flowing black hair and a headband held aloft the bloody T-shirt of a wounded protester. After his face appeared on the cover of The Economist magazine in July 1999, Ahmad Batebi paid dearly for it, enduring nearly a decade of imprisonment and torture before fleeing into exile.



On Tuesday, as he watched the swelling antigovernment protests in Iran from suburban Virginia, Mr. Batebi described a sense of dread mixing with happiness. “Every society has to make their own version of freedom and democracy, and that is what the Iranian people are doing right now,” he said through a translator. “But I know that people are being beaten, some are going to jail and some will be killed.”

The Iranian government tolerated student-led uprisings in 1999 and 2003 for only a few days before unleashing fearsome crackdowns, sending Basij vigilantes onto campuses, where they flung a few students from the windows; bloodied as many heads as they could with bricks, chains or truncheons; and jailed scores.

Similar intimidation tactics have been on display over the past few days with little result, as Iranian state news reports of seven people killed in various cities did not deter another major antigovernment rally on Tuesday. This time, analysts say, the government will have trouble bringing about a swift, sharp end to the demonstrations over the contested presidential election results in the same way it had shut down previous eruptions.

First, there is the sheer size of these demonstrations, with protests that are not limited to students, but cut across generations and economic classes. Second, there is a more pronounced, if still nebulous, leadership centered around the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who has adopted an openly hard-edged attitude toward the government. Third, the current crisis was inspired by common anger over a national election, not the more narrow issues students took to heart.

The question mark remains how long Iran’s rulers will tolerate the demonstrations, and indeed how long the protesters will stay in the streets until what many analysts expect will be a “Tiananmen moment.” They fear a replay of the Chinese government’s rolling out tanks to ruthlessly crush pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 — China’s economic growth and centralized control being something of a model for the mullahs.

“This is an order of magnitude different from those earlier demonstrations,” said Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan, who has been tracking the upheaval on his Informed Comment blog. “In the earlier student demonstrations, people were saying that the hard-liners were doing things that were wrong. What these demonstrators are saying is that the regime has become so corrupt and so dictatorial that it has become rotten to the core.”

In the earlier protests, the middle class extended something like drive-by support, honking their horns or flashing their high-beam headlights as they drove past the chanting students. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spoke like a rueful patriarch, saying he regretted the few student deaths and that people who criticized him should not be chastised. After the initial spasms of violence the president at the time, Mohammad Khatami, fearing wider bloodshed, declined to call his followers out in support. [....]

“Moussavi was around in some tough times, he has not shown any signs of being intimidated by all this,” said Gary Sick, a senior scholar at Columbia University who runs the Persian Gulf research and information Web site called Gulf 2000. Just how far Mr. Moussavi takes the mantle of leadership is another unanswered question — the demonstrations will have to continue for the demands for change to yield results, he said.

Finally, there has been a critical shift in alliances. In the earlier uprisings, it was basically the reformists calling for change, opposed by both the religious hard-liners and the more pragmatic conservatives. This time, the pragmatists and the reformists have joined forces against the hard-liners, analysts said.

With that, the route to any workable compromise over demands by demonstrators for a new election is difficult to envision, analysts said. One reason Mr. Moussavi and other leaders have labored to keep the chants focused on the election result is to avoid giving the government the excuse to open fire because the demonstrators want to topple the system.

“I expect the situation to polarize further, and given the character of this regime, I think it is a matter of time before they roll in the tanks,” said Professor Cole.
------------------------------

That sounds right to me. Opposition rallies were suspended on Friday (at least, in Tehran). They resume on Saturday. The first signs of what's coming up may be conveyed by the size of Saturday's rallies and the government's response to them.

Hoping for the best,
Jeff Weintraub

Khamenei's ultimatum

[Click HERE for a Channel 4 video report]

In his first public statement since last Friday's presidential election, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered an address to the nation in the form of a Friday sermon. His message was bluntly intransigent and openly threatening. Some highlights from the Guardian's report:

-------------------------
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a stern warning to opponents today to stay off the streets and denied claims that last week's elections had been rigged.

In an uncompromising address at Friday prayers, Khamenei claimed that the high turnout at the elections showed how much the Iranian people supported the regime, and blamed western powers for interfering in Iranian politics, singling out the UK as the "most treacherous".

In a thinly veiled warning to the reformist presidential challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Khamenei said opposition leaders would be held responsible if they did not call for an end to the protests that have rocked Iran since last Friday's disputed election. [....]

"Arm wrestling in the street must stop," Khamenei said. "I want everyone to put an end to this. If they don't stop this … they will be held accountable for all of this."

The ayatollah insisted that it was "natural" for people to support different candidates but that the foreign media was responsible for portraying supporters of Mousavi as opposed to the Islamic revolution.

"Enemies try through various media, and some of these media belong to the Zionists … they try to make believe that there is a fight between supporters of the opposition and the Islamic establishment," said Khamenei. "They have no right to say that, that is not true." [....]

Ahmadinejad and his cabinet ministers attended the prayers, as did the parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, the mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and senior military officers from the revolutionary guards. Many of those in the audience appeared to be government employees or members of the president's militia. [....]

Mousavi was conspicuous by his absence from Friday prayers at Tehran University, where Khamenei was making his first public appearance since controversially endorsing Ahmadinejad's election as president. [....]

Defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, who like Mousavi has dismissed the official election result, also stayed away from the university today.
-------------------------

If there was any possibility that the crisis might be resolved by a deal between different elite factions, Khamenei's speech seems to have ruled it out quite definitively. It already looked clear that the government and the opposition were headed toward a showdown, and this speech will probably accelerate that outcome.

What Moussavi, Karroubi, and the rest of the opposition are demanding is the cancellation of last Friday's election be and a re-run. (For a compact explanation of why anything short of that would be pointless, see this piece by the Iranian human-rights activist and Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.) Khamenei, for his part, has ruled out any significant questioning of the official results at all.

I could be wrong, but my impression is that both the government and the opposition are boxed into position where it's hard for either to retreat or compromise without risking total defeat. If Moussavi calls off further demonstrations, he will not only be capitulating, but will also demoralize and probably enrage millions of his followers (who may ignore him anyway). On the other hand, unless the demonstrations start to peter out fairly soon--which looks very unlikely--the hard-liners will probably move to end the crisis by crushing the opposition, and I see little reason to doubt that their armed forces will prove reliable for that purpose. Depending on how that's done, it might or might not be a very bloody affair.

Watching and waiting,
Jeff Weintraub

P.S. For some further analysis of Khamenei's address, see Gary Sick's impressions here and the piece below.

=========================
The Guardian (London)
Friday 19 June 2009
What Iran's supreme leader Khamenei said - and what he meant

The address lasted more than an hour and was split into two sections. The first was principally a theological ­monologue. The second dealt largely with the turmoil gripping the country. Here are the key phrases, and what they mean.

"The competitions have ended. All those who have voted for these ­candidates will, God willing, receive their due reward. They all belong to the revolutionary front … Not just the 24 million votes that have been cast for the chosen president. Forty million voted for the revolution."

Implicit is a declaration that, ­notwithstanding offers to recount votes, last week's result will stand. Despite urging the complainants to go through "legal channels", Khamenei is in effect forestalling the outcome of such moves by presenting the 24 million votes credited to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ("the chosen president") as an uncontested fact.

"The legal mechanism for elections would not allow any cheating. Those involved in the election process know this, especially when there are 11 million [Ahmadinejad's claimed victory margin] votes between two people. Sometimes the difference is 100,000, so at the time there might be some doubts. But how can 11 million votes be replaced or changed?"

Khamenei is dismissing out of hand the fraud accusations that triggered the street demonstrations of recent days.

"You should remember the last will and testament of the late imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] – the law determines what should be done. Why are elections held? So that any differences would be settled at the ballot box … not at the street level.

By invoking Khomeini's famous words ("the nation's vote is the final word"), he seems to be implying that Mousavi and Karroubi and their followers are straying outside the limits enshrined by the Islamic revolution, and questioning their legitimacy.

"Street challenges are not acceptable after the election. I want everybody on all sides to put an end to this method. If they don't, the consequences and the riots should be shouldered by those who don't put an end to it … If there are any consequences, it will directly affect the leaders behind the scenes."

These are ominous remarks which appear to warn of a looming crackdown. The "leaders behind the scenes" may refer to the two defeated reformist candidates and – even more significantly – Rafsanjani, who is universally accepted as Mousavi's most important backer.

Ahmadinejad and the Basij (Jon Lee Anderson)

As Jon Lee Anderson points out, "the bearded plainclothes militiamen [who] have been attacking and harassing the demonstrators in Tehran this past week" are members of the Basij paramilitary corps.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who I wrote about for The New Yorker in April, is a Basiji, and the organization has always been an important part of his power base.

What all this means is usefully explained below.

(Anderson doesn't put it this way, but if one wanted to draw a very rough analogy--with appropriate complications and qualifications--one might say that the Basij are to the Iranian regime what the SA, or Storm Troopers, were to the Nazi movement. One major difference is that Hitler suppressed the SA after coming to power, whereas the Basij remain institutionalized as one of the pillars of the Iranian regime. As Anderson suggests, many of them now think of themselves as a combination of SA, Boy Scouts, and watchdogs of public morality. Not all of them are necessarily zealots, though. From what I have read over the years, I gather that some of them just ordinary rent-a-thugs for whom it's simply a job.)

=> Today's New York Times also carries a piece on the Basij.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
New Yorker "News Desk" (On-Line)
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
JON LEE ANDERSON: UNDERSTANDING THE BASIJ

Thirty years ago, during the demonstrations that led to the Shah’s downfall, one of the dominant images was scenes of uniformed soldiers firing live ammunition at protesters. This week, Iran’s clerics seem determined, at least, not to repeat that historic mistake. They remember that the daily news coverage of the Shah’s soldiers shooting and killing unarmed protesters precipitated the collapse of the regime.

Instead, bearded plainclothes militiamen have been attacking and harassing the demonstrators in Tehran this past week. These are Basijis, members of a civilian paramilitary organization founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. It was conceived of as a civilian auxiliary force subordinate to the Revolutionary Guards, and so it has functioned over the past three decades. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, fervent Basijis volunteered to serve on the front lines. For a time, very young Basijis were encouraged to offer themselves for martyrdom by clearing minefields with their bodies in what became known as “human waves”—literally walking to their deaths en masse so that more experienced soldiers could advance against the enemy. An Iranian friend of mine who is a war veteran described the the Basiji boy martyrs as having played a tragic but significant role in the war, by providing Iran with a “flesh wall” against Saddam Hussein’s vastly superior Western-supplied military technology.

In peacetime, the corps lets the Islamic regime employ violence as a form of social control while retaining some plausible deniability; scruffy bearded men in civilian clothes are not, after all, uniformed soldiers. The Basij is now said to have some 400,000 active members nationwide, with perhaps a million more reservists; in some ways, their relationship to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is also their commander in chief, recalls the one between Nicolae Ceausescu and the loyalist miners trucked in from the Romanian countryside to strong-arm pro-democracy protestors. From 1997 to 2005, during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, the Basij showed its usefulness again, by attacking students at demonstrations. Some students were killed. The protests died out.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who I wrote about for The New Yorker in April, is a Basiji, and the organization has always been an important part of his power base. During the past four years, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president and the reform movement dormant, the Basij has not been needed as shock troops. Instead they have made their presence felt by periodically throwing up traffic barricades on the streets of Tehran and stopping cars to smell the breath of drivers for evidence of illegal alcohol consumption, or to question couples about their marital status. These Basijis are usually scruffy working-class men, and thus bring an element of notional “class struggle” to the otherwise pragmatically lived lives of the citizens of the Islamic republic. Not surprisingly, among more educated and affluent Iranians, they are almost unanimously despised.

In the mass demonstrations that have taken place this week, the modus operandi of the Basijis has been brutal and predatory. They have used the same tactics as packs of African wild dogs worrying a herd of wildebeest. They choose their targets at the edges of the crowds, going for the vulnerable and unwary stragglers, and moving in as a group to reduce them with violence. Last Monday, the men who fired guns at demonstrators from the rooftops of buildings were almost certainly Basijis. They killed seven demonstrators at their leisure, and it also seems likely that they hoped this display of lethal intent would so intimidate the protesters that they would give up and go home. Clearly, that did not work, and it is probable that they were ordered to tone down such public displays of violence, at least for the time being. But they have continued to attack surreptitiously and in terrifying ways, jumping demonstrators as they return home on darkened streets at night. On Wednesday, there were reports that men who appeared to be Basijis had come onto theTehran University campus and had stabbed students with knives.

On a trip I made to Iran in 2006, a year after Ahmadinejad assumed the presidency, I met a Basij official, Dr. Mahdi Araby, who worked at the Tehran City Hall. In the late nineteen-nineties, Araby had been one of Ahmadinejad’s engineering students at the Iran University of Science and Technology, where Ahmadinejad was studying for his Ph.D. in traffic management. In 2003, after Ahmadinejad’s appointment as mayor of Tehran, he had asked Araby to come and work with him. Araby described Mayor Ahmadinejad as a man of pure heart and missionary zeal. “His original aim was not political,” explained Araby. “He just wanted to serve people.”

Araby pointed to a beige windbreaker that was hanging on a hook on the closed door of the room. I remarked that it appeared to be exactly like the jacket the president usually wore. He smiled proudly and said it was his. “It is the jacket of the Basij.” he said.

He then told me the following story. One night during Ahmadinejad’s time as mayor, Araby had been driving home when he saw an elderly couple standing by the side of the road and looking as though they were in distress. They were holding up a jerrican to show that they had run out of gas, but no one had stopped to assist them. Araby did. He instructed the old man how to siphon some petrol from his car, but the man had explained that he was asthmatic, so Araby did it himself. The old woman had wanted to pay him, but he had refused, telling them, “I am a Basiji. It is our duty to help.” Araby accidentally swallowed some of the petrol and had begun spitting up blood, so he ended up in hospital for three weeks. He explained that he had a lung problem from a chemical-weapon attack during the Iran-Iraq war. He smiled; his wounds, like his Basij jacket, were a badge of honor.

Next, Araby told me a story he had heard about Ahmadinejad while he was mayor. The story was that Ahmadinejad had been dressing up as a streetsweeper at night and going out with a work crew for an entire month, to understand what their life was like and decide how to pay them a fair wage. Araby had confronted Ahmadinejad about the story and asked if it was true. “He asked where I had heard it from, and he smiled,” said Araby. To him, Ahmadinejad’s reaction was a confirmation of the rumor. “Ahmadinejad is a true Basiji,” he said approvingly.

It was that same spirit that propelled Ahmadinejad into the presidential race, Araby believed. “I can tell you that, up to two months before the presidential election in 2005, he was undecided about running. But our people were fed up with the promises being made during the presidential campaign, and we realized that the middle-class people, and the people at the lower rungs of society, were not satisfied either.” Araby said, “He hadn’t planned to become president. We pushed him to do it.”

The Basij also connects Ahmadinejad to his spiritual mentor, Ayatollah Mesbah-e-Yazdi, a conservative hard-liner who is extremely hostile to the West and has frequently called for a stricter interpretation of Iran’s Islamic revolution, which he believes has strayed from the path set out for it by the late Imam Khomeini. Yazdi has frequently endorsed the use of violence against critics of the regime. In 2005, he openly and controversially encouraged his followers to vote for Ahmadinejad. Yazdi does not like Western journalists, but one of his aide’s, Hojestaleslam Gharavian, spoke to me on his behalf. We met in an office on a nondescript residential backstreet of southern Qom.

Gharavian, a teacher of Islamic studies, wore black and white robes and a black turban. He explained that it was he who had first brought Ahmadinejad to Yazdi’s attention, and that it had come about by a quirk of destiny. The ayatollah had been in the habit of speaking to the university professors’ Basij organization once a week, but once, when he was unable to attend, and Gharavian had stood in for him. He had met and been impressed by Ahmadinejad, who was a prominent member of the group. Afterward, he told Ayatollah Yazdi about him, and introduced them. “What was it that impressed you?” I asked Gharavian. “I saw that he had a true Basij culture,” he said approvingly. “And that, like Imam Khomeini, he was especially resistant to foreign cultural influences.”

Khamenei vs. Rafsanjani ... and why that conflict might matter to us (Gareth Smyth)

Another thought-provoking analysis by Gareth Smyth, former Iran correspondent for the Financial Times. Developing further his exploration of the power struggles within Iran's political elite and their implications (posted here on Wednesday), Smyth argues that intra-elite "differences over foreign policy are central to the crisis in Tehran" ... and that therefore the defeat of Rafsani and his allies would be geopolitical bad news.

Washington has long understood that to talk with Iran, it must deal with Ayatollah Khamenei. But while Ayatollah Khamenei is pre-eminent in the leadership group, the events of the last week do not suggest he is about to curb the growing influence of Mr Ahmadinejad.

Mr Rafsanjani has prided himself on his realism since he emerged in the revolutionary movement against the Shah. He played a key role in talks with the US leading to the release of western hostages in Lebanon two decades ago, and he portrayed himself in his unsuccessful presidential bid in 2005 as the person best placed to deliver an agreement with Washington.

For Mr Ahmadinejad, in contrast, principles are preferable to compromise. One of his early acts in office was a cull of ambassadors and officials linked to Mr Rafsanjani, especially those who conducted the 2003-5 talks with the European Union over the nuclear program. Hossein Musavian, the former negotiator with the EU, even faced spying charges.

During the recent election, Mr Ahmadinejad explicitly criticized the talks with the EU, despite the fact they were endorsed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. Are talks with the US so different?

Is it overstating matters to suggest that these foreign-policy differences are so dramatically sharp, let alone that they are "central" to the current political crisis? I'm not sure. But if Smyth's interpretation is correct, the implications are very important. And at all events, most of Smyth's analysis of the Khamenei/Rafsanjani power struggle in this piece is definitely on-target and illuminating.

=> Let's be clear: Rafsanjani is no good guy, nor has he ever been a "moderate" or "reformist" except in some very relative sense. Instead, he is one of the central figures--perhaps the iconic figure--of the clerico-kleptocratic 'establishment' faction of Iran's authoritarian elite. It was also Rafsanjani, not Ahmadinejad, who once mused publicly that a nuclear war with Israel would be OK, because it would merely harm the Islamic world but would destroy Israel.

If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.

Rafsanjani can be called "moderate," I suppose, in the sense that his commitment to the authoritarian regime has always been tempered by greed, cynicism, and the deal-making "pragmatism" of a classic Chicago-style political boss. By contrast, Ahmadinejad and the forces he represents, centered the Republican Guard (IRGC) and promoted by Khamenei, are ideological zealots committed to the revitalization and re-radicalization of the revolutionary regime. (They have also developed their own extensive economic interests, to be sure, though by all accounts Ahmadinejad himself is a genuinely ascetic and idealistic ideologue.)

During the reformist experiment of 1997-2005, when Khatami was President, Rafsanjani epitomized what the reformers saw themselves as fighting against. In recent years, however, Khatami and Rafsanjani have made common cause, and in this election Rafsanjani threw his support behind Moussavi's anti-Ahmadinejad candidacy. What happened?

The big change is that since 2005 a whole range of factions within the political elite have become increasingly alarmed at the threat of a total take-over by the Khamenei/IRGC/Ahmadinejad bloc--alarmed enough that they have not only come together in a stop-Ahmadinejad coalition but have also been willing to reach out to reformist constituencies. (For some details, see my previous posts here & here & here.) So what is going on now represents, among other things, a very high-stakes struggle over the future nature and direction of the Iranian regime itself.

=> For self-styled foreign-policy "realists," such questions about the shape of Iranian society & politics matter less than questions about how Iranian political developments might affect Iran's relations with other countries. With respect to such issues as Iran's nuclear program, the extensive role of the IRGC and the intelligence services in international terrorism, or the Iranian regime's support for groups like Lebanese Hizbullah and Hamas, would it make a significant difference whether the Khamenei/IRGC/Ahmadinejad axis or the Rafsanjani/Moussavi/Khatami axis emerges triumphant from the present crisis?

There are a range of possible answers to this question, and I'm not sure which is closest to being correct. There have been plausible arguments that the basic answer is no. That is, with respect to those issues--the kinds of nuclear and foreign-policy issues that most concern the US government and other foreign governments--an Iranian government without Ahmadinejad would continue to pursue essentially the same policies as before. They would simply pursue them in a less noisy and confrontational way, which might even prove more effective in deflecting international pressure.

Smyth, however, suggests that the basic answer is yes (even if we leave aside the political implications of this week's popular upheaval in Iran). That is, there is a genuine split within the elite on foreign-policy issues, and an Iranian government dominated by the Rafsanjani/Moussavi tendency would be more open to negotiating a constructive compromise on the nuclear program and other such issues. If so, then a victory by the Khamenei/IRGC/Ahmadinejad axis would make a desirable negotiated solution less achievable. Unlike Rafsanjani & Co., who might be willing to make a genuine deal, they're not really interested.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the most likely short-term outcome of the present crisis will leave the Khamenei/IRGC/Ahmadinejad axis in control of Iran. (I would be happy to be proved wrong, but I'm not optimistic.) If Smyth is right, that means bad news not only for Iranians--we knew that already--but also for everyone worried about the risks of nuclear proliferation (which I think should include all sane people).

So perhaps we should all be rooting for that old scoundrel Rafsanjani (even if it's hard to work up warm and affectionate feelings for him)? At the very least, Smyth's analysis is worth considering carefully.

Hoping for the best (but not optimistic),
Jeff Weintraub

=============================
Tehran Bureau
July 19, 2009
Rafsanjani’s next move
By GARETH SMYTH in Beirut


Differences over foreign policy are central to the crisis in Tehran

TEHRAN BUREAU | The clearest sign of the bitter division within Iran’s political class — at least before the post-election crackdown — was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s attack on Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani during a televised election debate.

Mr Rafsanjani was prompted to write a more-or-less open letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, after Mr Ahmadinejad accused him of corruption and called him the “puppet master” behind his main challenger, Mir-Hossein Musavi.

“If the system cannot or does not want to confront such ugly and sin-infected phenomena as insults, lies and false allegations,” wrote Mr Rafsanjani, “how can we consider ourselves followers of the sacred Islamic system?”

Mr Ahmadinejad’s criticism of Mr Rafsanjani go back to the start of his 2005 presidential campaign, when he was the mayor of Tehran and barely known across the country.

These attacks have centered not just on Mr Rafsanjani’s alleged opulence but on his foreign policy outlook, and this suggests that current events in Iran will affect the prospects for president Barack Obama’s policy of engagement.

Washington has long understood that to talk with Iran, it must deal with Ayatollah Khamenei. But while Ayatollah Khamenei is pre-eminent in the leadership group, the events of the last week do not suggest he is about to curb the growing influence of Mr Ahmadinejad.

Mr Rafsanjani has prided himself on his realism since he emerged in the revolutionary movement against the Shah. He played a key role in talks with the US leading to the release of western hostages in Lebanon two decades ago, and he portrayed himself in his unsuccessful presidential bid in 2005 as the person best placed to deliver an agreement with Washington.

For Mr Ahmadinejad, in contrast, principles are preferable to compromise. One of his early acts in office was a cull of ambassadors and officials linked to Mr Rafsanjani, especially those who conducted the 2003-5 talks with the European Union over the nuclear program. Hossein Musavian, the former negotiator with the EU, even faced spying charges.

During the recent election, Mr Ahmadinejad explicitly criticized the talks with the EU, despite the fact they were endorsed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. Are talks with the US so different?

Although Ayatollah Khamenei in March backed talking to Washington at least in principle, an influential group of fundamentalists — whose views are clearly expressed by Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of Kayhan — oppose any dalliance with the Great Satan.

This group is deeply concerned over US intervention in Iran, either through support for armed groups among ethnic minorities or attempts to foster a “velvet revolution” modeled on Ukraine.
Hence, while Iran’s political class shares a commitment to the country’s nuclear program and its “right” to be treated as an international power, there is clear evidence of differences over engagement with the US.

Officials from reformist and pragmatic conservative camps have for years floated a possible compromise on the nuclear program that would see Iran limit its activities and return to full UN inspection under the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.

The Iranian team during the 2003-5 negotiations with the EU believed a sustainable agreement was possible. I was told by an Iranian involved in the process that Hassan Rowhani, who led the Iranian side, in 2004 asked the leadership to back an agreement for capping uranium enrichment, a proposal he seems to have believed Europe would come to accept.

But most European diplomats at the time believed Mr Rowhani was merely playing the good cop when he warned them that failure to agree would lead to a shift to the right in Tehran. The rightward shift came with Ahmadinejad’s 2005 election win and is now accelerating.

The president is well aware that the coalition opposing him — including not just Mr Rafsanjani and Mr M0usavi, but former president Mohammed Khatami and former speaker Mehdi Karrubi — came together largely in fear that Mr Ahmadinejad was damaging Iran’s international position.

Both sides in the fractured political class understand their differences are intrinsically linked to foreign policy. Even if Mr Obama can find a clear route to Ayatollah Khamenei, he can hardly relish dealing with an Iranian leader facing an internal crisis and a possible power struggle.
Mr Rafsanjani, meanwhile, can be expected to resist both his own political demise and what he sees as the undermining of the Islamic system by Mr Ahmadinejad’s recklessness.

Unlike many of his reformist allies, Mr Rafsanjani holds two important state positions as the head of both the Expediency Council and the Experts Assembly, which has a constitutional responsibility to supervise the supreme leader.

Various reports and rumors are swirling that Mr Rafsanjani is in Qom trying to co-ordinate clerical opposition to Ahmadinejad, or even that he plans to call an extraordinary meeting of the Experts Assembly.

A reformist journalist once compared the relationship between Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr Rafsanjani to a married couple who quarreled but could not live apart.

I start to wonder if either party might now be thinking of divorce.

Copyright © 2009 Tehran Bureau

Moment of truth for Khamenei? ... continued (Aljazeera English)

Early today, anticipating Supreme Leader Khamenei's speech-in-the-guise-of-a-Friday-sermon, Aljazeera English aired this very nice compact analysis anticipating the event and putting it in context. One important piece in the Iranian political kaleidoscope is the long-term power struggle between Khamenei and his one-time backer, former President (and still major power broker) Hashemi Rafsanjani. This Aljazeera report focuses on that power struggle, but without reducing the whole story to it.

(I'd be curious to know whether there is an Arabic-language equivalent--and, if so, what it says.)

This video clip is included in the wrap-up by Juan Cole that I just posted. But for those of you who didn't make it through that whole collection of items, it provides a good background to Khamenei's Friday address ... on which more later.



--Jeff Weintraub

Thursday - Enormous mourning/protest rally in Tehran (Juan Cole)

Juan Cole's wrap-up of Thursday's events is so good that I will simply reproduce it (below).

Cole's point at the end of the first paragraph is perceptively phrased:

Mir-Hosain Mousavi, whom the crowd has adopted as their leader, addressed them briefly.

All this is only partly about Moussavi, or even about the stolen election. In part, Moussavi is the leader of a movement, but in part he has become the symbol and focus of something much bigger than himself and his candidacy--as Laura Secor explained eloquently on Wednesday:

Who knows what sort of president Mousavi would have been, or could yet be? He is an entirely different kind of animal from reformist politicians of the past; he is identified not with students and intellectuals but with the hardscrabble war years and the defense of the poor. [....] He was a favorite son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the nineteen-eighties. Many Khomeinists in the power structure respect and support him; within the Revolutionary Guards, as well as within the upper clergy, he has a constituency. Traditional, religious people are among his supporters, too. On the morning of June 12th, he may have been the uncharismatic compromise candidate for the anyone-but-Ahmadinejad crowd. But to other voters he was then, and he has increasingly become, something else: the vehicle both for the memory of the utopia that never came, and for the hopes of a younger generation that imagines he shares its vision of the future.

After Supreme Leader Khamenei's address on Friday, it seems increasingly likely that this movement and the Iranian regime are headed toward a decisive confrontation. More on that later.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Juan Cole (Informed Comment)
Friday, June 19, 2009
Mourning Rally Biggest Demonstration Since Monday in Tehran;
Khamenei to Address Nation

Thursday's march in Tehran was just enormous, several hundred thousand strong. AFP writes, "Many in the huge crowd walked silently and lit black candles as night fell. Others wore green wristbands or ribbons and carried flowers as they filed into Imam Khomeini Square, a large plaza in the heart of the capital named for the founder of the Islamic Revolution, witnesses said." The marchers wore black to show their mourning for the dozen reformers killed by security forces on Monday. Mir-Hosain Mousavi, whom the crowd has adopted as their leader, addressed them briefly.

BBC has video of the gargantuan "mourning day of protest".



See also the eyewitness account in the next posting.

AFP estimated the size of the demonstration as similar to the one on Monday. Some reporters thought a million people came out on Monday, though I prefer to be conservative on crowds, since it is easy to overestimate their size. Several hundred thousand, perhaps half a million, would be impressive enough. Such massive numbers of discontented urbanites tell you that change may well be in the air. The 2006 demonstration by an estimated 500,000 people in Los Angeles against immigration restrictions on Latinos (a la Tom Tancredo et al.) was in retrospect a harbinger of big trouble for the Republican Party in national US politics.

Back to Iran. AFP says, ' "The demonstrators marched silently until they reached the central square, where some chanted "Death to the dictator!" a witness said. Another said protesters also warned the government: "We will not get exhausted and we will come every day." '

The clerical hierarchy is itself increasingly split. It might have been expected that disgraced Grand Ayatollah Husayn Ali Montazeri, now under house arrest, would issue a letter in support of the protests. (Montazeri was once heir apparent to Imam Ruhollah Khomeini but his criticisms of regime practices and of clerical dictatorship led to his marginalization and ultimately arrest.) But former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is alleged to be trying to drum up support for Mousavi among senior clerics in the holy city of Qom. There are persistent rumors that reformist Ayatollah Yusuf Sani'i has given legal rulings that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not president of Iran.

The protesters hope that President Obama will maintain his relative silence on the movement, lest he unintentionally tar them with the brush of imperialist stooges.

The regime, surely fearing a popular revolution of the sort that toppled the shah in 1978-79, is using carrots and sticks to try to deal with an unpredictable situation. So far, however, both inducements and crackdowns have been a pittance. Several hundred protest leaders have been arrested, but when you've got hundreds of thousands out in the streets every day, a few hundred arrests don't mean much and clearly aren't intimidating anyone. In fact, they backfire by angering the protesters and ensuring they return the next day. The arrest of ailing former foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi at his hospital was particularly cruel. Some rumors have it that the regime was forced to release him back to the hospital, so poor is his health.

Babak Rahimi, in Tehran, sees the situation as being as unpredictable as that of fall 1978 when it was not apparent whether the shah would survive or the regime would fall.

The regime announced two new steps in response on Thursday. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will deliver the Friday Prayer Sermon later today, and is rumored to be planning to call for an end to protests and to threaten a harsh crackdown if he is not obeyed.

Aljazeera English has a good report today on the conflict between Khamenei and his former backer, Rafsanjani.



At the same time, all four presidential contenders have been invited to a meeting on Saturday with the Guardianship Council, which has been asked to reexamine ballot boxes for signs of fraud. The regime seems to think that the protests are occurring because the alleged losers are stirring them up. In fact, the crowds are way out ahead of the leaders. The things you hear about how Khamenei plans to deal with this crisis are so far not very promising. Ultimately, I think a compromise is being demanded of him, like a complete ballot recount or a new presidential election, that he cannot grant without so weakening his authority that he may lose it anyway. In such a game, he may think he has a better chance maintaining the regime by offering limited concessions coupled with a crack down on the stubborn. He may or may not be right about that.

Aljazeera English on Iran's citizen journalists.


A long, detailed, eyewitness account of the crisis from a perceptive reformist is here..

"Was There a Coup in Iran?" - Babak Rahimi

Following up Eric Hooglund's piece on "Iran's Rural Vote and Election Fraud" ...

... another scholar who has done research in rural Iran, Babak Rahimi of the University of California in San Diego, also questions the widespread assumption that rural Iranians monolithically support Ahmadinejad.

The official view, espoused by pro-government supporters, is that Ahmadinejad has been and continues to be popular in the rural and provincial regions of the country. He has many supporters primarily because of his welfare programs that target the urban poor and the rural population. [....]

But we simply do not have hard evidence that the rural regions gave overwhelming support to the current president. And my own fieldwork in the provinces of Bushehr, Khuzestan and Lurestan shows quite the opposite. For example, I have come across major tensions between provincial officials—especially the local Friday Imams—and Ahmadinejad administrative officials based in Tehran. The Friday Imam of the port-city of Asalooyeh, Bushehr, is a case in point. During the president's final visit to the port-city, the local Imam refused to meet the president, an act of defiance which was praised by many locals.

During my travels in the provinces, I also conducted informal interviews in the rural regions. The level of support for Ahmadinejad was considerably lower than I expected. In fact, I heard some of the most ferocious objections to the administration in the rural regions.

True, Ahmadinejad's populist policies has appealed to many in the working class, but there are also many who are highly frustrated with the regime. During a pro-Mousavi political rally a few days ago, I met and interviewed a number of men from these impoverished sections of southern Tehran, who described Mousavi as the man of the "Mostazafin" or the dispossessed. Clearly, the above observation is not a scientific survey and does not reflect the opinions of the entire country. But there is something here that could challenge the official view that class and provincial-rural voters played a central role in the elections. [....]

Rahimi is actually in Iran now, so writing this piece was not without possible risk.

As I write this, I am aware of the possibility of my own arrest. [....] These days, life in Iran is highly unpredictable.

One might say that ... and we should probably read this piece bearing that in mind. Regarding the question posed by his title, Rahimi's answer is a carefully formulated "maybe" (which, I would say, amounts to an implicit "probably").

Did Ahmadinejad really win this election? If not, was this a pre-planned coup as some are suggesting? Let me explore the possibilities, while keeping in mind that much that can be said about the election results is still open to speculation.

True. But since he took the trouble and risk of offering us these informed speculations, we might as well take the trouble to consider them.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
PBS.org Now
Week of June 19, 2009
Was There a Coup in Iran?
By Babak Rahimi

Babak Rahimi is an assistant professor of Iranian and Islamic Studies at the University of California. He has been in Iran since March to cover the elections.
Read his pre-election essay: Inside the Iranian Elections

"Ahmadinejad, Iran is not Chile!" is one among many anti-government slogans I have been hearing since Saturday, when the country saw an explosion of spontaneous demonstrations throughout its major cities after the announcement of the election results, seen by many as rigged and, hence, illegitimate. The above slogan captures one of the most significant claims made by the pro-Mousavi supporters, who are composed mostly of affluent northern-Tehrani youth. Their view is that the presidential election was nothing but an electoral coup that was pre-planned and methodically engineered by the security-military apparatus of the state, best represented by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Ahmadinejad was once a member.

"I cannot believe that they thought we will buy their lies. Did they think we will simply accept this election as legitimate and go home accepting the situation?" an older man explains while reading a pro-Mousavi newspaper at a busy park. An angry young woman from southern Tehran, where Ahmadinejad has allegedly received many votes, reacts to the results by saying, "This is not over at all; my vote was stolen! We will raise hell in this country!"

In another passionate remark, an ardent supporter of Mousavi says: "This is an electoral coup! How could we have failed to see this?" For the most part, a mixture of rage and disbelief underlines the emotions of many pro-Mousavi supporters, who earlier assumed their candidate would overwhelmingly win the elections. A level of unease prevails over the streets of Tehran, as many speculate over the actual results of the elections.

Did Ahmadinejad really win this election? If not, was this a pre-planned coup as some are suggesting? Let me explore the possibilities, while keeping in mind that much that can be said about the election results is still open to speculation.

The official view, espoused by pro-government supporters, is that Ahmadinejad has been and continues to be popular in the rural and provincial regions of the country. He has many supporters primarily because of his welfare programs that target the urban poor and the rural population. With the expansion of huge state subsidies and the distribution of state funds to various provinces, where he has regularly visited since 2005, the president has managed to muster enough support to legitimately claim victory. In many ways, the pro-Mousavi faction has simply misunderstood the force behind the populist campaign of the president that has largely evolved around anti-corruption and social justice.

But we simply do not have hard evidence that the rural regions gave overwhelming support to the current president. And my own fieldwork in the provinces of Bushehr, Khuzestan and Lurestan shows quite the opposite. For example, I have come across major tensions between provincial officials—especially the local Friday Imams—and Ahmadinejad administrative officials based in Tehran. The Friday Imam of the port-city of Asalooyeh, Bushehr, is a case in point. During the president's final visit to the port-city, the local Imam refused to meet the president, an act of defiance which was praised by many locals.

During my travels in the provinces, I also conducted informal interviews in the rural regions. The level of support for Ahmadinejad was considerably lower than I expected. In fact, I heard some of the most ferocious objections to the administration in the rural regions.

True, Ahmadinejad's populist policies has appealed to many in the working class, but there are also many who are highly frustrated with the regime. During a pro-Mousavi political rally a few days ago, I met and interviewed a number of men from these impoverished sections of southern Tehran, who described Mousavi as the man of the "Mostazafin" or the dispossessed. Clearly, the above observation is not a scientific survey and does not reflect the opinions of the entire country. But there is something here that could challenge the official view that class and provincial-rural voters played a central role in the elections.

"[The theory is] Ahmadinejad and some of his supporters ... have pre-planned a coup through the electoral process."
So was this a coup? This conspiratorial view has become increasingly popular among many pro-Mousavi supporters and some academics studying the elections in Iran. The theory goes something like this: With the support of the Iranian security-military complex, Ahmadinejad and some of his supporters, including hard-liner clerics, planned a coup through the electoral process. In this vision, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, continues to serve as a symbolic leader of the newly formed junta state, but true power remains in the hands of the Revolutionary Guard and the intelligence services. The result: a total military-political take over of the middle-aged revolutionary politicians, like the current president, and ultimately sidelining elder revolutionary iconic figures like Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohsen Rezai, Mehdi Karoubi and Mir-Hussain Mousavi.

What gives credibility to the above theory is the overwhelming evidence that the hard-liner Revolutionary Guard has increasingly become a major economic and military institution in the country since the early 2000s.This may suggest that we are witnessing the emergence of a new leadership in Iran, led mostly by non-clerical politicians with support from the military forces and the intelligence services.

Perhaps the tremendous sense of anxiety among many Iranians could also provide some clues as to the rise of such a new junta state. Fear of arrest by security agents, dressed up in plain clothes and intermingling with ordinary people, is now prevailing over the streets of Tehran and other major cities. Some of the followers of Mousavi I spoke with worry that they can be arrested at any given moment by the intelligence services, some of whom are pretending to be Mousavi supporters.

As I write this, I am aware of the possibility of my own arrest. Prior to the elections, a suspicious person inquired about my whereabouts from my wife. Luckily, I was away conducting my research. These days, life in Iran is highly unpredictable.

Updates from Iran - Updated

In a previous post, I mentioned several of the best English-language websites I know of with continually updated compilations of reports, analysis, videos, photos, Twitter tweets, and other on-line information & analysis from and about Iran.

Here is an updated list (slightly expanded, but definitely NOT complete):

Andrew Sullivan's "Daily Dish" blog
Nico Pitney at the Huffington post
Tehran Bureau
TPM Live Updates - Iran

--Jeff Weintraub

Vast silent marches in Tehran

We are witnessing in Iran one of those rare historic moments when a combination of splits within the elite, blunders by the ruling authorities, and an explosion of accumulated popular discontents suddenly shatters the taken-for-granted hegemony and solidity of a regime and allows "the people" to enter directly onto the historical stage.

This can be an awesome and inspiring spectacle--especially, to my taste, when those people are demonstrating in favor of democracy and against the power of the lie. And that's true even for those of us who recognize (a) that in such moments of revolt the politically mobilized "people" are never actually identical to the whole population or the expression of a unanimous popular will, and (b) that all too often these upheavals end in blood, tears, and disillusionment. It's still profoundly awe-inspiring.

How things will turn out in this case remains to be seen. Meanwhile, it's clear that the explosion of protest in Iran provoked (but by no means entirely caused) by the stolen presidential election is not dying down. For the moment, at least, it still looks like a swelling movement of People Power.

Every day this week there have been massive demonstrations and marches, some involving hundreds of thousands of people, in the streets of Tehran--and in many other Iranian cities as well, though information from outside Tehran is more spotty and incomplete. This succession of daily marches (now accompanied by expressions of mourning for the for "martyrs" killed in previous marches) is a pattern reminiscent of the Iranian revolution in 1979. (In fact, some observers have found these parallels eerily evocative.)

This time around, one new and interesting feature is that many of these marches have been deliberately quiet, even silent--no shouting or loud chanting--to avoid giving the police and the paramilitary Basijis an excuse for violence. Reports from many eye-witness observers tell us that the disciplined solemnity of these silent marches makes a powerful impression.

Here are a few striking images from Wednesday, this one via Andrew Sullivan ...



... and this one, via Nico Pitney's constantly-updated "Iran Election" blog at the Huffington Post. "Half way through, paramilitaries approach, and the crowd sits down, seemingly a non-violent act of resistance."



--Jeff Weintraub

"A Heaving Volcano" in Iran (Michael Totten last Friday)

Another item on Iran from Michael Totten. The most interesting thing about this piece is that it was posted on Friday, June 12--that is, before the fraudulent election "results" were announced and Iran erupted in massive political protests. That seems a long time ago now, but in some ways it makes reading this piece, with its prophetic title, even more intriguing and illuminating to read in retrospect.

At one point Totten quotes from a London Times article by Martin Fletcher which includes this passage:

Only one thing is certain. Iran will never be quite the same again. “We are in a new phase in this country and civilisation,” Saeed Laylaz, a respected political consultant, said as his compatriots prepared to vote.

Well, that's even more true now.

As they say, read the whole thing ...

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Michael Totten
June 12, 2009
A Heaving Volcano*

Iran’s presidential election isn’t real. The four candidates were hand-picked by the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei. It’s turning into something more than he bargained for, though, even if his regime is rigging the outcome for Mahmoud Admadinejad.

Take a look at Martin Fletcher’s piece in the Times of London.

Whatever the reason, Mr Mousavi's campaign took off. The youth of Tehran and other cities took to the streets in huge numbers. They flocked to Mousavi rallies in their tens of thousands. They turned the capital into a seething sea of green with their ribbons, headscarves, balloons and bandanas. They festooned the city with posters and banners. Until the small hours of each morning they packed squares, blocked junctions and careered around town in cars with horns blaring and pop music blasting.

The Islamic republic has never seen such sights before. It was almost open rebellion, an explosion of pent-up anger after four years in which the fundamentalist President and his morality police cracked down on dissent, human rights groups, and any dress or behaviour deemed unIslamic. “Death to the dictator,” young men and women roared at Mousavi rallies. “Death to the Government.

[…]

Mr Mousavi is an unlikely champion for such people. He is no reformist. He promises some social and economic liberalisation, and to do away with the hated “morality police”, but he is not challenging the political system. At 68, and distinctly lacking charisma, he is more Bob Dole than Barack Obama. Mousavi-mania is less a reflection of his popularity than of the loathing most educated, urban Iranians feel for a messianic President who has curtailed freedom, embarrassed Iran internationally and squandered record oil revenues through reckless spending.

In 2005 many liberal Iranians refused to vote, partly because they did not want to legitimise a political system that they abhor, and partly because they were profoundly disillusioned at how the conservative establishment had thwarted the reform efforts of their previous champion, President Khatami. But they will turn out in huge numbers today because they cannot contemplate four more years of Mr Ahmadinejad. “Now you and I vote so he will be defeated,” was the text message sent to millions of mobile phones after campaigning ended yesterday.

[…]

It is possible that violence will erupt if Mr Ahmadinejad is declared the victor and Mr Mousavi's supporters cry foul. It is likely that Mr Mousavi will fail to meet his supporters' sky-high expectations, partly because the Supreme Leader remains the real power in the land and partly because he is, in truth, a flawed vehicle for their hopes and aspirations.

Only one thing is certain. Iran will never be quite the same again. “We are in a new phase in this country and civilisation,” Saeed Laylaz, a respected political consultant, said as his compatriots prepared to vote.

All this reminds of me a piece I published a few years ago in Reason magazine about exiled Iranian revolutionaries in Iraq called The Next Iranian Revolution. Here are some excerpts:

More encouraging than Komala’s moderation and political evolution is its plausible claim—backed up by most Iranian activists, expatriates, and dissidents—that Iranian society as a whole is far more sensible and mature than it was in 1979, at least at the level below the state, on the street. The aftermath of an Iranian revolution, Mohtadi said, will not resemble the postwar occupation of Iraq with its civil war, insurgency, kidnappings, and car bombs.

“We have an internal opposition,” he said. “We have an internal movement against the regime. Women were warned not to celebrate 8 March, Women’s Day. They did. There are demonstrations in Iran. There are movements in Iran. You have the intellectuals, the political activists, the human rights activists, then the Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, different nationalities. There is a movement in Iran, unlike in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, where you had Kurds and nobody else.” (Iraq’s Shia did rise up against Saddam in 1991, but they had been quiet since Baghdad’s brutal response to that insurrection.) “It’s not like that in Iran.”

[…]

“You can complain about the government,” Mohtadi said. “You can insult them. But America is a red line. Khomeini himself is a red line. The Israelis are a red line, absolutely.” Iranians can’t buck the party line on certain topics, but they are brave enough, or just barely free enough, to protest the government to its face. “When [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad spoke to students,” Mohtadi pointed out, “hundreds of students stood up and called him a fascist and burned his picture.”

[…]

Islamist law is so widely detested and flouted in Iran that it’s a wonder the regime even bothers to keep up the pretense. In June 2005 Christopher Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair that every person he visited there, with the exception of one single imam, offered him alcohol, which is banned.

Everyone I met at the Komala compound said the Iranian regime itself wallows deep in the post-ideological torpor that inevitably follows radical revolutions. Except for the most fanatic officials, the government cares only about money and power. “Followers of the regime are not ideological anymore,” Sanjari said. “They are bribed by the government. They will no longer support it in the case that it is overthrown. Even among the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guards, there are so many people dissatisfied with the policies of the regime. Fortunately there aren’t religious conflicts between Shias, Sunnis, and different nationalities.”

Mohtadi concurred. “The next revolution and government will be explicitly anti-religious,” he said.

The Iranian writer Reza Zarabi says the regime has all but destroyed religion itself. “The name Iran, which used to be equated with such things as luxury, fine wine, and the arts, has become synonymous with terrorism,” he wrote. “When the Islamic Republic government of Iran finally meets its demise, they will have many symbols and slogans as testaments of their rule, yet the most profound will be their genocide of Islam, the black stain that they have put on this faith for many generations to come.”

The regime is claiming Ahmadinejad won, and there are unconfirmed reports that Mousavi has been arrested.

Interesting times are ahead in Iran.

UPDATE: It turns out that Mousavi wasn't detained.

UPDATE: Haaretz is now reporting that he has in fact been arrested.

*I stole the title of this post from Amir Taheri’s new book The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

Posted by Michael J. Totten at June 12, 2009 9:47 PM

Partial "recount" underway in Iran (Michael Totten)

That's is a charade, of course. But that news peg is the background for a useful item by the independent journalist Michael Totten, "a reader-funded foreign correspondent and foreign policy analyst who has reported from the Middle East, the Balkans, and the Caucasus" since 2003--and who is always worth reading.

Here Totten fills in one more piece of the election picture, this one from Iranian Kurdistan.

=> See also Totten's excellent roundup from Sunday, Insurrection: Day 2. That was four days ago, and four days is a long time when this kind of politics is involved ... but it's still very much on-target.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Stealing the Election All Over Again
Michael J. Totten - 06.17.2009 - 5:30 PM

According to the New York Times, Fars News Agency reports a partial “recounting” of votes has begun in Iran. But they are not being counted. They were not even counted the first time. Fars says the “recount” in the Kurdish province of Kermanshah shows “no irregularity.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has almost no support among Kurds whatsoever. Claiming he “won” 70 percent in Kermanshah is as outlandish as Dick Cheney winning San Francisco and Berkeley in a landslide.

A few years ago I profiled Abdulla Mohtadi, the commander of a heavily armed Kurdish revolutionary army just on the Iraq side of the Iran-Iraq border near Kermanshah. He spent his young adulthood fighting the Shah’s regime in 1979 and was accordingly arrested and tortured by the SAVAK. Now he’s spending his middle age fighting the Khomeinists who liquidated his liberal and leftist comrades in the post-revolution struggle for power.

He sent me the following message by email:

What happened in Iran is in fact a coup d’etat, by the Pasdaran (the Revolutionary Guards) and the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khamenei) himself. We in Kurdistan did not participate in the elections, not because we did not want to participate in the political process for change, but exactly because we knew that it could only play in the hands of dictators in Tehran. We frequently emphasized that we deeply sympathized with the people who desperately wanted change and thought going to vote would bring about that change, but repeatedly warned that dictators would take it as their source of legitimacy while they would never allow any change in the government by whatever means and at whatever costs. Now this has come true.

UPDATE: The The British Ahwazi Friendship Society provides a detailed look at the politics of Kermanshah and other ethnic minority regions.

"Is this another Iranian revolution?" (Gary Sick)

Probably not--as Gary Sick explains in this excellent analysis of where things stand 5 days after the stolen election provoked a massive political crisis.

Iran is in upheaval, and there are some evocative analogies to 1979, but those analogies also have real limitations. Instead, it seems more likely that the dynamics of the situation are leading to a resolution analogous to the Tienanmen crackdown in 1989 (hopefully without a large-scale bloodbath).

But for now that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Sick does a fine job of capturing the main outlines and dynamics of the situation here (as far as they can be discerned by outsiders) in an acute and compact way. So read this before it's overtaken by events.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Gary Sick
June 17, 2009
Is this another Iranian revolution?

[The heading of Sick's post links to another report: Video of Iran Riots, Police Fire on Protesters]

To someone who has watched and studied the Iranian revolution of 1979 with fascination, developments in Iran today have an eerie reminiscence. Then there were massive protests that filled the streets, often marching in dignified but ominous silence; there was bloodshed as nervous security men with guns faced determined but unarmed crowds; there were sullen mourning parades; there were catchy chants and ritual calls of “Down with the shah!”; at night the rooftops rang with shouts of allahu akbar.

You need only change “shah” to “dictator,” and you have a description of what is happening in Iran today.

But there is one very big difference. Thirty years ago, Iran had a charismatic cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini who had a refined sense of strategy and a willingness to risk everything for the cause he represented. On the other side was Mohammed Reza Shah, who had been on the throne for some 37 years and who commanded one of the most powerful military and security regimes in the world. On the surface it appeared to be an uneven battle – guns against turbans – but the ruler with the guns wavered and the turbans grew in size and confidence until the old order collapsed.

Today the nominal leader of the opposition forces is a reformed radical, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who is notably lacking in personal charisma. On the other side is the constitutional Leader, Ayatollah Khamene`i, who is widely perceived as a cautious political animal with limited qualifications for his religious post and who compensates for his own lack of charisma by manipulation of the political system and the institutions most loyal to him – particularly the politically minded clergy and the powerful security forces, including the Revolutionary Guards.

Neither of these men seems to be fully in control of their own forces, let alone the situation. The fraudulent election defeat of Mousavi was a triggering event, but the energy behind these unprecedented demonstrations is due more to the sense of outrage and betrayal at the gross manipulation of numbers by the regime than it is about any undying devotion to Mousavi. Yesterday Mousavi ordered that people stay home in face of a conflicting pro-regime demonstration. They marched anyway (and the daughter of former president Rafsanjani joined them and urged them on). Mousavi then “ordered” everyone to march the following day (which they were probably going to do with or without his orders).

Khamene`i announced the “divine assessment” of the election outcome – even before it would probably have been physically possible to count the more than 40 million ballots. Then, in the face of mass protests, he ordered an investigation of the results by the Guardian Council– the same organization that was responsible for managing the election in the first place. No one believed him in either case, and no one expected anything of importance from the Guardian Council. Khamene`i has ordered peace and reconciliation. No one paid any attention.

I deliberately did not mention president-elect Ahmadinejad. After celebrating his “victory,” he went off to a largely symbolic meeting in Moscow. He seems to be out of the decision loop and more of a passive player than a major actor in these events.

So who is calling the shots? Mousavi seems to be running along after the crowd, not leading it. But that is probably all that is required to keep the protest in motion.

On the other side, the very little evidence we have suggests that the important decisions are being made by the ultra-conservative leadership of the Revolutionary Guards, whose political role has ballooned over the past decade, perhaps in cooperation with their extremist counterparts in the clergy. They are utterly ruthless and ideologically fueled.

New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff reminded us several days ago (see blog item on June 15 below) at the end of the day, as I saw at Tiananmen 20 years ago, when Might and Right do battle, it’s often prudent to bet on Might, at least in the short run.

The regime seems to have miscalculated badly. They seemed to believe that a sudden coup – the announcement of dramatic election results followed by a show of force – would intimidate and silence the opposition and consolidate their control. That is perhaps more understandable if the decisions were being made by military leaders who tend to see the battle in Manichaean terms, rather than politicians such as Khamene`i who are accustomed to seeing shades of gray. In any event, it backfired and they now have a much larger crisis on their hands than if they had simply arranged for Ahmadinejad to win by a slim margin (which was at least believable).

All parties are now in uncharted territory. A significant portion of the Iranian population seems to have concluded that their social contract with the rulers – accepting Islamic rule in return for a respectful regard for the opinion of the governed, an Islamic Republic – is no longer valid. They do not trust their rulers.

The rulers, whose support has been declining for years in the face of their own inept management of the country, are increasingly replacing popular support with repression. This election seems to have called that tactic into question. For the military, the obvious answer is more repression. So it would appear to be a moment to bet on Might.

But nobody is fully in command of events. Decisions taken in the next weeks will be fateful and could determine the future path of the Iranian revolution.

There is another lesson as Iran’s leaders contemplate a Tiananmen moment. When the Tiananmen crackdown occurred almost exactly ten years ago, one of the leaders of China at the time was Zhao Ziyang, General Secretary of the Communist Party. He was later fired and placed under house arrest. His smuggled memoirs have just appeared, revealing the depth of disagreements within the leadership about how to proceed.

Is it possible that ten years from now we will have a volume describing the intense debates that one can only presume are underway today in the highest councils of the Islamic Republic of Iran?

The stolen election and its aftermath - Report from an Iranian village (Eric Hooglund)

=> First of all, let me reiterate that for people who want to follow the unfolding political drama in Iran, three of the best running compilations of reports, videos, photos, Twitter tweets, and other on-line information from and about developments in Iran are being provided by:
Andrew Sullivan's "Daily Dish" blog,
Nico Pitney at the Huffington post, and
Tehran Bureau.

=> Below is a piece from the Tehran Bureau website by Eric Hooglund, a prominent Middle East scholar who has studied rural Iran for decades.

Everything I have read over the past several years by experts on and directly informed observers of Iran (I am neither) suggests that support for Ahmadinejad the forces he represents is stronger in the countryside than in the cities, and I have no reason to doubt that general pattern. But that doesn't necessarily mean that rural support for Ahmadinejad is monolithic or universal, and Hooglund protests against casual assumptions that it is.

I just heard a CNN reporter in Tehran say that Ahmadinejad’s support base was rural. Is it possible that rural Iran, where less than 35 percent of the country’s population lives, provided Ahmadinejad the 63 percent of the vote he claims to have won? That would contradict my own research in Iran’s villages over the past 30 years, including just recently. I do not carry out research in Iran’s cities, as do foreign reporters who otherwise live in the metropolises of Europe and North America, and so I wonder how they can make such bold assertions about the allegedly extensive rural support for Ahmadinejad.

Take Bagh-e Iman, for example. It is a village of 850 households in the Zagros Mountains near the southwestern Iranian city of Shiraz. According to longtime, close friends who live there, the village is seething with moral outrage because at least two-thirds of all people over 18 years of age believe that the recent presidential election was stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

When news spread on Saturday (June 13) morning that Ahmadinejad had won more than 60 percent of the vote cast the day before, the residents were in shock. The week before the vote had witnessed the most intense campaigning in the village’s history, and it became evident that support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s candidacy was overwhelming. Supporters of Ahmadinejad were even booed and mocked when they attempted rallies and had to endure scolding lectures from relatives at family gatherings. [....]

The president was very unpopular in Bagh-e Iman and in most of the other villages around Shiraz, primarily because of his failure to deliver on the reforms he promised in his successful 2005 presidential campaign. [....]

Of course, that's just one part of a big country. But Hooglund's account is enough to make it clear that we should be hesitant about swallowing easy and simplistic generalizations about monolithic rural support for Ahmadinejad and the hard-liners.

In this case, furthermore, the villagers believe they could actually see the fraud being carried out.

By Saturday evening, the shock and disbelief had given way to anger that slowly turned into palpable moral outrage over what came to be believed as the theft of their election. The proof was right in the village: “Interior Ministry officials came from Shiraz, sealed the ballot boxes, and took then away even before the end of voting at 9 pm,” said Jalal. In all previous elections, a committee comprised of representative from each political faction had counted and certified the results right in the village. The unexpected change in procedures caught village monitors off guard, as it did everywhere else in the country.

More generally, Hooglund usefully emphasizes that we have to be aware of the complexity of the issues at stake in this election, for both voters and political elites.

Although the crowds shouted slogans such as “Death to Dictatorship,” most protestors shouted “Allah-o-akbar,” the popular chant of the 1978-79 Revolution. Indeed, in Shiraz, thousands climbed unto the roofs of their homes Sunday to shout ‘Allah-o-akbar’ for several hours.

Most villagers are supporters of the Islamic Republic, but they are ready for the reforms that they say are essential so that their children will have a secure economic future. They saw hope in Mousavi’s promise to implement reforms, even though he is a part of the governing elite.

But that political elite is divided over how Iran should be governed: a transparent democracy where elected representatives enact laws to benefit the people or a ‘guided democracy’ in which a select few make all decisions because they do not trust the masses to make the right ones. This astute political insight is one that is prevalent in Iran but seems to have escaped the notice of the Western reporters who are trying to explain Iran’s political crisis with resort to simplistic stereotypes.

It's also true, of course, that political upheavals sometimes develop dynamics of their own that take them beyond the intentions of both elites and masses. In this case, that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, read the whole thing,

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Tehran Bureau
July 17, 2009
Iran’s Rural Vote and Election Fraud
By Eric Hooglund

Eric Hooglund is professor of politics at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, and editor of the scholarly journal Middle East Critique. He is an expert on Iran, and his most recent publication is “Thirty Years of Islamic Revolution in Rural Iran” in Middle East Report, no. 250, spring 2009.

I just heard a CNN reporter in Tehran say that Ahmadinejad’s support base was rural. Is it possible that rural Iran, where less than 35 percent of the country’s population lives, provided Ahmadinejad the 63 percent of the vote he claims to have won? That would contradict my own research in Iran’s villages over the past 30 years, including just recently. I do not carry out research in Iran’s cities, as do foreign reporters who otherwise live in the metropolises of Europe and North America, and so I wonder how they can make such bold assertions about the allegedly extensive rural support for Ahmadinejad.

Take Bagh-e Iman, for example. It is a village of 850 households in the Zagros Mountains near the southwestern Iranian city of Shiraz. According to longtime, close friends who live there, the village is seething with moral outrage because at least two-thirds of all people over 18 years of age believe that the recent presidential election was stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

When news spread on Saturday (June 13) morning that Ahmadinejad had won more than 60 percent of the vote cast the day before, the residents were in shock. The week before the vote had witnessed the most intense campaigning in the village’s history, and it became evident that support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s candidacy was overwhelming. Supporters of Ahmadinejad were even booed and mocked when they attempted rallies and had to endure scolding lectures from relatives at family gatherings. “No one would dare vote for that hypocrite,” insisted Mrs. Ehsani, an elected member of the village council.

The president was very unpopular in Bagh-e Iman and in most of the other villages around Shiraz, primarily because of his failure to deliver on the reforms he promised in his successful 2005 presidential campaign. He did have some supporters. Village elders confided, “10 to 15 percent of village men, mostly [those who were] Basijis [militia members] and those who worked for government organizations, along with their families.”

Carloads of villagers actually drove to Shiraz to participate in the massive pro-Mousavi rallies that were held on the three nights prior to the balloting. And election-day itself was like a party in Bagh-e Iman. Many people openly announced their intentions to vote for Mousavi as they cheerfully stood in line chatting with neighbors, and local election monitors estimated that at least 65 percent of them actually did so. “Although some probably really voted for [Ayatollah Mehdi] Karubi, who also is a man of the people,” said election monitor Jalal.

Of course, the Basijis with their mothers, wives and sisters did come out in force but were quiet, apparently timid about revealing their voting intentions “because they probably voted for Ahmadinejad,” continued Jalal. But he insisted that they did not count for more than 20 or 25 percent of the vote.

By Saturday evening, the shock and disbelief had given way to anger that slowly turned into palpable moral outrage over what came to be believed as the theft of their election. The proof was right in the village: “Interior Ministry officials came from Shiraz, sealed the ballot boxes, and took then away even before the end of voting at 9 pm,” said Jalal. In all previous elections, a committee comprised of representative from each political faction had counted and certified the results right in the village. The unexpected change in procedures caught village monitors off guard, as it did everywhere else in the country.

By Saturday evening, small groups of demonstrators were roaming the main commercial streets of Shiraz, a city of 1.5 million residents, and protesting the announced results as a fraud. People refused to believe that Ahmadinejad could have been re-elected. Larger demonstrations took place on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, beginning in the late afternoon and continuing long after the sun had set. These attracted carloads of supporters from Bagh-e Iman and other villages, including several that were 60 kilometers from Shiraz.

Although the crowds shouted slogans such as “Death to Dictatorship,” most protestors shouted “Allah-o-akbar,” the popular chant of the 1978-79 Revolution. Indeed, in Shiraz, thousands climbed unto the roofs of their homes Sunday to shout ‘Allah-o-akbar’ for several hours.

Most villagers are supporters of the Islamic Republic, but they are ready for the reforms that they say are essential so that their children will have a secure economic future. They saw hope in Mousavi’s promise to implement reforms, even though he is a part of the governing elite.

But that political elite is divided over how Iran should be governed: a transparent democracy where elected representatives enact laws to benefit the people or a ‘guided democracy’ in which a select few make all decisions because they do not trust the masses to make the right ones. This astute political insight is one that is prevalent in Iran but seems to have escaped the notice of the Western reporters who are trying to explain Iran’s political crisis with resort to simplistic stereotypes.

Copyright © 2009 Eric Hooglund – distributed by Agence Global

Moment of truth for Khamenei ... and for Iran? (Laura Secor)

Another must-read analysis by Laura Secor (with more depth and breadth than the useful, but partial and relatively uncritical, analysis by Gareth Smyth I just posted). Here are some highlights.

On Khamenei:

-------------------------
What are Khamenei’s options? With protesters yelling “Down with the dictator” in the streets of nearly every city in Iran, his position could not be more precarious. He has staked his very legitimacy, and perhaps that of the edifice he sits atop, on forcing Iranians to accept Ahmadinejad’s supposed landslide victory. He can continue to try to force that down their throats with a show of raw power, or he can bend, which would show the opposition that he and the system are not really so powerful after all, that they are vulnerable to pressure from below. If he takes the latter road, it would be a radical departure from his style of governance up until now. This is the regime that violently quelled protest movements in 1999 and in 2002, crushed the hopes of reformers under Mohammad Khatami from 1997 through 2005, and apparently could not tolerate even the possibility of a Mousavi Presidency. But if he chooses the path of violence, he will transform his country into a crude and seething autocracy.

This is uncharted territory for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Until now, the regime has survived through a combination of repression and flexibility. [....] So is there any way Khamenei can dial the situation back even to the unhappy modus vivendi of June 11th? [....]
-------------------------

On Moussavi:

-------------------------
There is good reason to think that Khamenei found the possibility of a Mousavi Presidency, backed by the sort of youth movement that became evident in the days just prior to the election, intolerable. [....] And if there could be any doubt that Mousavi would prove a stronger advocate than Khatami for the agenda of his constituency, his steadfast, courageous behavior in the last three days has put it to rest.

Who knows what sort of president Mousavi would have been, or could yet be? He is an entirely different kind of animal from reformist politicians of the past; he is identified not with students and intellectuals but with the hardscrabble war years and the defense of the poor. But as one analyst explained to me, the problem he faces is that he is perhaps the only person on the Iranian political scene whose public stature is equal to Khamenei’s. He was a favorite son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the nineteen-eighties. Many Khomeinists in the power structure respect and support him; within the Revolutionary Guards, as well as within the upper clergy, he has a constituency. Traditional, religious people are among his supporters, too. On the morning of June 12th, he may have been the uncharismatic compromise candidate for the anyone-but-Ahmadinejad crowd. But to other voters he was then, and he has increasingly become, something else: the vehicle both for the memory of the utopia that never came, and for the hopes of a younger generation that imagines he shares its vision of the future.
-------------------------

Read the whole thing.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
New Yorker "News Desk" (On-Line)
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
LAURA SECOR: THE SUPREME LEADER'S NEXT MOVE

Today begins with seemingly contradictory news from Iran: the Guardian Council, a body of clerics that holds more power than the President or the parliament, has agreed to recount some of the votes from Friday’s disputed election. At the same time, the regime has expelled some members of the foreign press, forbidden Iranian journalists from leaving their offices, and arrested major reformist figures, including the former Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the former member of parliament Behzad Nabavi, and the reformist political strategist Saeed Hajjarian. These are men with impeccable revolutionary credentials—Hajjarian and Nabavi were founders of the Islamic Republic’s intelligence apparatus—and unquestionable loyalty to the constitutional order. What is going on here?

The Guardian Council’s gambit, while not entirely without promise, should be viewed with some skepticism. First, the council is not recounting all the ballots, if they can be found; it is reviewing only disputed ballot boxes, whatever that means. Second, this is not a disinterested review of the election results; in Iranian politics, the Guardian Council is essentially the practical hand of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the organ by which he most directly intervenes in the affairs of state. Through it, he has veto power over all legislation and can disqualify candidates for public office at will. Its members are directly or indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader, and manifestly beholden to him. So this is not a neutral intervention; it is Khamenei’s next move.

That’s what makes it interesting and, for the moment, perplexing. What are Khamenei’s options? With protesters yelling “Down with the dictator” in the streets of nearly every city in Iran, his position could not be more precarious. He has staked his very legitimacy, and perhaps that of the edifice he sits atop, on forcing Iranians to accept Ahmadinejad’s supposed landslide victory. He can continue to try to force that down their throats with a show of raw power, or he can bend, which would show the opposition that he and the system are not really so powerful after all, that they are vulnerable to pressure from below. If he takes the latter road, it would be a radical departure from his style of governance up until now. This is the regime that violently quelled protest movements in 1999 and in 2002, crushed the hopes of reformers under Mohammad Khatami from 1997 through 2005, and apparently could not tolerate even the possibility of a Mousavi Presidency. But if he chooses the path of violence, he will transform his country into a crude and seething autocracy.

This is uncharted territory for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Until now, the regime has survived through a combination of repression and flexibility. The dispersal of power throughout a complex system, among rival political factions, and with the limited but active participation of the voting public, has allowed a basically unpopular regime to control a large population with only limited and targeted violence. There have always been loopholes and pressure points that allow the opposition and the regime to be dance partners, even if one or both of them is secretly brandishing a knife behind the other’s back. That has been less true under Ahmadinejad than in the past. But the culture of the organized opposition under the Islamic Republic has tended to remain cautious and moderate. Many of the protesters of recent days are not calling for an end to the Islamic Republic. They are calling for their votes to be counted. More nights like last night, however, when some seven protesters were allegedly shot, could swiftly change that.

So is there any way Khamenei can dial the situation back even to the unhappy modus vivendi of June 11th? He could have the Guardian Council concede that the official figures were wrong, and assert that the vote was close enough, after all, to send the election to a second round between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad. If this had been the initial announcement from the Interior Ministry on June 12th, it would have been entirely plausible. Ahmadinejad has a reliable base that could comprise as much as thirty per cent of the country, as well as all the advantages of incumbency, including access to state television; his conservative challenger, Mohsen Rezai, had amassed little momentum; and, at least until Mousavi’s late surge, there was a real contest between Mousavi and Karroubi for the hearts of the uncommitted. A split vote and a run-off would hardly have raised an eyebrow in the first instance. But to call one now, after having already endorsed a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad and called out riot police to enforce it, would be an admission that a brute power grab had been attempted and abandoned.

If Khamenei did allow a second round, the next question is whether he would be prepared to conduct it under some kind of monitoring that would be acceptable to both sides, and whether he would be prepared to accept the outcome, whatever it might be. There is good reason to think that Khamenei found the possibility of a Mousavi Presidency, backed by the sort of youth movement that became evident in the days just prior to the election, intolerable. Imagine him accepting a Mousavi Presidency backed by a revved-up, furious, volatile crowd—one that has just emerged victorious from street battles with the Supreme Leader’s own militias. And if there could be any doubt that Mousavi would prove a stronger advocate than Khatami for the agenda of his constituency, his steadfast, courageous behavior in the last three days has put it to rest.

Who knows what sort of president Mousavi would have been, or could yet be? He is an entirely different kind of animal from reformist politicians of the past; he is identified not with students and intellectuals but with the hardscrabble war years and the defense of the poor. But as one analyst explained to me, the problem he faces is that he is perhaps the only person on the Iranian political scene whose public stature is equal to Khamenei’s. He was a favorite son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the nineteen-eighties. Many Khomeinists in the power structure respect and support him; within the Revolutionary Guards, as well as within the upper clergy, he has a constituency. Traditional, religious people are among his supporters, too. On the morning of June 12th, he may have been the uncharismatic compromise candidate for the anyone-but-Ahmadinejad crowd. But to other voters he was then, and he has increasingly become, something else: the vehicle both for the memory of the utopia that never came, and for the hopes of a younger generation that imagines he shares its vision of the future.

Gareth Smyth on "Iran's Power Struggle"

An analysis worth reading by Gareth Smyth, a first-rate journalist who used to be the Tehran correspondent for the Financial Times. I confess that I generally find Smyth's writing on Iran a bit too sympathetic to the interests and attitudes of the Iranian regime (though it would also be quite unfair to describe him as a straightforward apologist for the regime). But if we take that into account, this piece strikes me as useful and acute. At the very least, it captures one important dimension of the current crisis.

Smyth focuses here on the power struggles within the Iranian political elite leading to the emergence of what he calls a "centrist" coalition opposing Ahmadinejad that eventually coalesced around the candidacy of Moussavi (who, we should never forget, is a political insider himself). But the Moussavi candidacy tapped into a wider and deeper reservoir of public discontent and reformist hopes than expected, leading in turn to a backlash by the religio-political fundamentalists--or, as they call themselves in Iran, "principlists."

At the moment, all the major elite factions are weighing their next moves in the context of political crisis and popular upheaval (which Smyth describes as "street rioting" and others might describe as "massive popular protests"). Smyth appears to believe that, in the final analysis, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will be the decisive arbiter, and that he can and should act to stabilize the situation. We'll see.

=> By the way, Smyth's piece appears in the independent on-line TehranBureau ... an excellent source of news and analysis that's worth following.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
TehranBureau
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Iran's Power Struggle
By Gareth Smyth in Beirut

















[JW: Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, & Rafsanjani]

[TEHRAN BUREAU] As he surveys the aftermath of the rioting in Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be assessing the crisis he faces. Referring the complaints from defeated presidential candidates for a ten-day enquiry — just 48 hours after detecting a divine hand in the result — may stymie protests and gain time.

But the deeper challenge facing Iran’s supreme leader is to assuage or break up a coalition against Mr Ahmadinejad that has taken shape since the first year of his presidency. The events of the past week have widened the division between the president and his opponents, making it harder for Ayatollah Khamenei to defuse the situation through finding common ground.

The anti-Ahmadinejad coalition began in 2006 as a group of reformists and pragmatic conservatives alarmed at the new president’s foreign policy pronouncements, which they felt imperiled Iran’s international position. The group was also concerned at the president’s reflationary economics — and the harm inflicted on businesses by tougher western sanctions they blamed in part on Mr Ahmadinejad’s bellicose approach.

The three co-ordinators of this group were Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the revolutionary veteran who holds important state positions, Mohammad Khatami, the former reformist president, and Mehdi Karrubi, the former parliamentary speaker.

But the “coalition of the concerned,” a term first used at the end of 2006, helped shape a wider political agenda. As June’s presidential election approached, many leading political figures, including Ali Larijani, the parliamentary speaker, and Mohsen Rezaei, former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, called for a government of national unity. Mr Rezaei even challenged Mr Ahmadinejad in the presidential election. As the election approached, Iran’s reformists displayed rare political acumen, agreeing to run Mir Hossein Mousavi rather than Mr Khatami, a move that made it far harder to Mr Ahmadinejad to exploit fears that the reformists masked radical, pro-western elements wanting to overthrow the Islamic system.

Harder, but not impossible.

Mr Musavi’s stress on “principles” during the recent election marked his centrist convergence. But his rallies, allied by the western media’s infatuation with Tehran and 20-year-old women with blonde highlights, began to resemble the radical student protests of the time of Khatami’s presidency. The so-called “green revolution” had all the connotations that fundamentalists abhorred.

Relishing the challenge, Mr Ahmadinejad met it head on.

Returning to the theme of his 2005 victory, he attacked Mr Mousavi as part of the clique of Mr Rafsanjani. As a humble man of the people, the sitting president would remain steadfast against those believed to have enriched themselves at the people’s expense: it was a message with resonance among parts of Iran ignored by the western media.

For Ayatollah Khamenei, events have emphasized just what a mixed blessing Ahmadinejad has been, and remains. On one hand, his victory in 2005 showed the egalitarian slogans of the 1979 revolution could still motivate the masses and rewrite an agenda dividing Iran between “reformists” and “conservatives.”

But this was far from all the Ahmadinejad story. The “popular president,” an outsider of humble background, has shown scant respect for Iran’s clerical and political establishment. His call for class struggle, albeit with an Islamic hue, attacks on an “oil mafia” and his posture as the international leader of have-nots against big powers, all carry the danger of instability and threaten vested interests developed since the 1979 revolution.

And his international stance — although popular with many ordinary folk throughout the Islamic world — has brought Iran growing western pressure. Tehran’s pragmatic conservatives and professional diplomats believe that cold decisions about compromise lie ahead and fear that Ahmadinejad generates far too much heat.

So where does it go from here?

The unifying factor among the “coalition of the concerned” has been a desire to see Ahmadinejad out of office, and that desire is now stronger than ever and likely to keep the coalition together at least for now.

Mr Mousavi has played a careful hand in supporting the protests in Tehran while condemning violence. He has demanded the recounting of the election, or perhaps a re-run. Mr Khatami has backed him.

The calculations facing Mr Rafsanjani are more complex. Unlike the reformists, he holds important state positions as head of the Expediency Council and the Experts Assembly. But it seems far too early for him to make a real move.

Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr Rafsanjani have worked together for nearly half a century, as revolutionaries, as leaders during the desperate war with Iraq, and as leaders of the Iranian state. But there is also rivalry between them, expressed in the belief in important places that Mr Rafsanjani, although five years the senior of the two, has not given up hope of exercising the powers of the supreme office.

Ayatollah Khamenei has always favoured a leadership style that keeps him, as far as possible, above factional politics. The coalition now facing him, including Mr Rafsanjani, is making it more and more difficult for him to do that.

A possible, and perhaps telling, move for Ayatollah Khamenei would be an attempt to woo Mr Rafsanjani and perhaps some moderate reformists away from the coalition opposing Mr Ahmadinejad.

But the election and the street rioting put Mr Ahmadinejad in a stronger position to deter any concessions, even ones designed to split his opponents. Meanwhile on the other side, the price Mr Rafsanjani and others might ask is surely rising by the day.

The situation is delicate. But of all the politicians weighing up their bottom line and their next move, Ayatollah Khamenei has the greatest onus to act — and to act decisively.

Copyright © 2009 Tehran Bureau