The struggle in Iran is about much more than an election

Emile Hokayem, Political Editor

• Last Updated: June 17. 2009 2:14AM UAE / June 16. 2009 10:14PM GMT

The ongoing protests in the streets and outcry from the rooftops of Iran may not amount to much in the short-term, but regardless of what happens in coming days, these events will have a lasting impact on the country and its politics.

By picking an unnecessary fight with his people, forging the outcome of a presidential election that mobilised 42 million Iranians and then sending his goons to break up peaceful rallies, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has dropped any pretence of cultivating popular legitimacy. The Islamic Republic’s ideals and institutions have been sacrificed in favour of absolute power.

Apologists for the hardliners in Tehran are busy trying to validate the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s overwhelming win. But there is enough inconsistency in voting patterns, substantiation to claims of fraud by state intervention prior to and during the electoral process, and evidence of media and internet manipulation and censorship to cast very serious doubt about the outcome of the elections.

Why Mr Khamenei has decided that Iran’s tightly-controlled participatory process posed an unacceptable risk to his authority and the survival of the Republic is still uncertain. He may have feared that the convergence of a reformist wave and the much-anticipated US overture would pose an existential challenge to his regime and shake its revolutionary foundations. But if he expected the ever vibrant Iranian people to quietly accept his diktat, he showed poor judgment and a blatant lack of awareness and respect for their aspirations.

Indeed, defying predictions that he would cave in to Mr Khamenei’s injunctions and accept the manufactured victory of Mr Ahmadinejad, the centrist contender Mir Hossein Mousavi, a man under intense popular pressure, joined the illegal but massive demonstration in downtown Tehran on Monday to make demands of his own.

As a result, unrest in Iran may escalate in the next few days, although the collapse of the regime remains very improbable at this point. But this much is certain: unless the powerful figures opposed to Mr Ahmadinejad coalesce to persuade his patron and the country’s top authority, Mr Khamenei, to agree to a genuine recount or a rerun, popular momentum is likely to deflate, returning Iranians to the apathy that was prevalent before the election. But in the long run, the damage done to the remaining levers of legitimacy and influence of the Republic may well eclipse the injustices done to Mr Mousavi and his supporters.

Iran’s political system has always confounded outsiders. Its many centres of power compete intensely and publicly but are kept in balance by the overriding power of the Supreme Leader, who once preferred consensual rather than authoritarian rule. But ever since the system was shaken by the rise of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and the strong demand for reform that ensued, a neoconservative backlash has emerged, best embodied by the populist firebrand, Mr Ahmadinejad.

Indeed, the struggle in Tehran is much bigger than Mr Mousavi’s fate. In the past four years, Mr Ahmadinejad has emerged as an instrument for the consolidation of power for Mr Khamenei and his neoconservative clique known as the Principlist movement. This process has alienated key regime figures, from the powerful former president, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, to the reformists who gathered around the soft-spoken former president Mohammad Khatami to senior clerics like Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei. Mr Khamenei now relies on a narrower, praetorian-like power base, heavily dominated by past and present members of the Revolutionary Guards who have shown their obedience.

This arm-wrestling between the elders of the Islamic Revolution, ironically getting more pragmatic by the day and now allying themselves with the reformist movement, and the second generation of unbending revolutionaries, battle-hardened during the Iran-Iraq war, is now being played out in the streets as well as in the corridors of power.

This is why a real revolution remains unlikely. If dissent has spread within the political establishment, Mr Khamenei still controls the security apparatus. The opposition is keenly aware of that balance of power. The leaders of the opposition are themselves products of the Republic and are unwilling to completely do away with it. Some protesters are calling for the dismissal of Mr Khamenei and Mr Ahmadinejad, but “Marg bar dictator” (Death to the dictator) will hardly become Mr Mousavi’s rallying cry.

If the recount by the Council of Guardians agreed to by Mr Khamenei yesterday turns out to be more than a delaying tactic to deflate the popular uprising, then a possible resolution of the crisis would have two components. The first would be the possible demise of Mr Ahmadinejad and his replacement by Mr Mousavi. The second would be less public and more subtle: a reaffirmation by the new president of his commitment to Islamist ideals in exchange for an informal re-calibration of Mr Khamenei’s powers. Indeed, that may be the most profound consequence of the erosion of Mr Khamenei’s standing: the gradual reconsideration of the system of the welayet-e-faqih that is central to the Republic’s functioning.

If Mr Khamenei decides to hold firm, he and Mr Ahmadinejad may retake control of the streets tomorrow, but at a significant cost in blood. And their regime will be more insecure and distrusted than ever.

This election will also profoundly shape Iran’s relations with the world. It was said that it mattered little who held Iran’s presidency since real power resided with Mr Khamenei, especially on security and foreign policy issues. The announced US overture to Iran was not premised on the personality of the president, even if there was a preference in Western capitals for a less radioactive replacement. The world now realises not only that the person matters – why else would the regime put up such a fight to impose its candidate – but how that person came to be president counts as much. Any concession made to an embattled figure like Mr Ahmadinejad will echo as a betrayal of the peaceful uprisings. Mr Khamenei and Mr Ahmadinejad may even deduce from this crisis that they need to be even more confrontational.

Iran always was a mysterious place. The mystery has only grown with this new phase in its tumultuous history.

ehokayem@thenational.ae