Iran
PoliticS AND RIGHTS

At the Heart of the
Revolt in Tehran
With hundreds of deaths, thousands of arrests, and journalists silenced, is the event burning in the Iranian capital a protest against vote falsification in the Presidential election, or something more? Be what it may, one thing is certain: the regime is no longer untouchable because, whatever the outcome of the revolution, a positive fact remains.

by Camille Eid

Though Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini succeeded after the 1979 Iranian revolution in placing the new Iranian regime under the dome of the “Supreme Guide” by investing this figure with absolute power, he was unable to protect that position from the risks of an imbalance between its religious and political functions. Thus, the opening question is the following: is the “green revolution” of Tehran a protest against vote falsification in the Presidential election or a revolt against the foundation of the Islamic Republic?
Khomeini articulated his thory about this foundation in his work, Velayat-e faquih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists).   He asserted that sovereignty belongs not to the people but to God; the people should not make laws, but rather simply obey those given by God in the sharia, or body of Islamic law. Since most people do not understand the sharia, the fuqaha, that is, the religious experts and scholars are responsible for choosing from among themselves the person most suitable for governing as the Supreme Guide. The Velayat-e faquih intended above all to compensate for the “occultation” (disappearance) of the Mahdi, the last of the twelve infallible imams, whose return has been awaited by Shiite faithful since the tenth century. The Supreme Guide thus would be the “delegate” of the Mahdi on earth and would have the task of hastening his return.
It must be noted that this theory never garnered unanimous agreement among Shiite dignitaries, and failure to acknowledge the Velayat-e faquih is not considered an abandonment of Shiitism at all, as, for example, would be the case for rejection of the infallibility of the imams. The elderly Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who has been under house arrest for years for criticizing the regime’s repression, is one such person. A few years ago, he said, “God, the one absolute Master, has given all believers a religious power, but that power is limited, not absolute.” This is an implicit criticism of the concentration of political and religious powers in the hands of the Supreme Guide. Actually, not even the Iranians were aware, 30 years ago, of the devastation that would be wrought by such a system. In the first referendum of March 30–31, 1979, to decide the form of the future government, 98.2% of Iranians gave their consent to the “Islamic Republic.”

The threat of the Guardians. The meaning of such a term was not entirely clear. Some had a maximalist vision that pushed for an Islamic government in the Khomenian sense. Others, with a minimalist vision, supported also by secularists and the left, intended a type of government in which the majority of the population was of the Islamic faith. Once the idea passed, the Khomenian front (the Islamic party and sympathizers of the Khatt-i Imam, the line of the imam) found an open road to incorporating the Velayat-e faqih into the Constitution.
 Returning to the initial question, are the recent events a protest against Iranian theocracy as a whole or a protest against the management of politics in the shadow of theocracy itself? To date, the two reform candidates, Mir Hossein Mussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, have avoided criticizing  Ayatollah Khamenei, current Supreme Guide who replaced Ayatollah Khomeni after the death of the latter in 1989. For that matter, their candidacy for President would not have been accepted if they had not formally affirmed their loyalty to the doctrine of the State. However, it cannot be excluded that this was merely a strategy for political survival to overcome the eligibility filters set by the Council of Guardians of the Constitution. This is the only way to understand the threat issued on the eve of elections by Yadollah Javani, head of the political office of the Revolutionary Guards, the pasdaran, when he warned that any attempt to provoke in Iran “a velvet revolution” like that of 1989 leading to the collapse of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia would be “nipped in the bud.” “There are indications,” said Javani, “that some extremist groups have planned a color revolution, using a specific color,” a clear allusion to the green color used by Mussavi to distinguish his electoral campaign. This is also the only way to explain why Khamenei sided so vehemently with Ahmadinejad before and after the elections, in an incorrect abandonment of his role as super partes arbiter. In May, he said, “Do not let those come into office with people’s votes who would want to surrender to our enemies and make the nation lose its dignity,” holding that it would be “a catastrophe” for Iran should a candidate be elected who “thinks about endearing himself to some Western power or an international arrogant.”
 These and other episodes herald a new phase in the history of the Iranian revolution, which can no longer be explained only in terms of internal struggle in the regime. Though commentators usually reduce this struggle to a contest between reformers and conservatives, in truth it presents many different facets. One of these entails the conflict between Ayatollah Khamenei and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, now Chairman of the regime’s Expediency Discernment Council. On the eve of the elections, Rafsanjani asked Khamenei to guarantee the “clean” conduct of the elections, making it understood that an Ahmadinejad victory on the first ballot would be perceived as a deception. Should many Iranians persist in rejecting Ahmadinejad’s second term, it is not unthinkable that the Council chaired by Rafsanjani might ask for Khamenei’s impeachment in favor of collegial direction, or at least a reduction in the vast prerogatives now granted to Khamenei.

Power struggle. The shadowy and intricate situation opens the country to various scenarios that U.S. analysts have already begun considering. One of these compares the Iranian protest to a kind of “Tienanmen” and envisages, as happened in China, the Iranian government’s gradual and pragmatic economic and social aperture to the West, subsequent to the political repression of the opposition. Another scenario excludes the possibility that conservative leaders could accept a reproduction of the Chinese script because they are convinced it would compromise their absolute authority and their dream of possessing nuclear technology. Paradoxically, numbering among the proponents of this hard line are Israeli analysts who had made no bones about their hope for Ahmadinejad’s reconfirmation, because a Mussavi victory would “confuse the fact that in Iran in any case the real person in command is Ali Khamenei,” while with Ahmadinejad “it’s easier to convince the world of the seriousness of the Iranian threat.” In any case, a positive fact remains. The Iranians who withdrew from politics for four years, disappointed and demoralized after the sad episode of Mohammad Khatami [President of Iran from 1997–2005, who advocated liberalization and freedom of expression], have now returned even more determined to propose their vision of an Iran open to civil liberties. Whatever the outcome of this current power struggle, it is evident that the regime can no longer conserve its aura of untouchability and that the Supreme Guide himself will cease to be considered a kind of turbaned shah. After all, even revolutions age.