When Hashemi Rafsanjani criticised the election’s outcome at Friday prayers two weeks ago, he showed the increasing isolation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – and also that of the Supreme Guardian, Ayatollah Khamenei. Observers in some western media are indicating they see the Revolutionary Guards coming out on top, as this blog has suggested for some months past. But it ain’t over till it’s over.
The focus of the squabble is now focused around Ahmadinejad’s cabinet. Some members are reportedly resigning, first vice-president Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie was ordered out by the Supreme Leader (over Ahmadinejad’s objections), and legislators in the Majlis are calling for the President to give them an accounting of his mismanagement. These legislators are mostly conservatives; Reformists, it has to be noted, are essentially sidelined in the actual power struggle, regardless of how much popular support they might retain.
Little of this fits popular notions of Iran in the west, but Iran never fit any of our categories to begin with. Seeing this situation as democracy versus theocracy is like seeing last year’s U.S. presidential contest as being based solely on racial issues. Yes, Obama’s skin colour was a factor, but his squaring off against John McCain was obviously about so much more than his parentage.
All the necessary factors are in place in Iran for an actual coup, as opposed to the business-as-normal finagling of the final election tallies that was wrongly portrayed here as a de facto coup. It wasn’t one, because the Reform faction in Iran is not organised enough to run the country, and the arrest of so many of its prime advocates has weakened its ability to be effective at the same time that anger in the urban populace continues to mount. A coup, therefore, was unnecessary.
The best we can say for popular sentiment is that it’s a factor in the total picture, but not the determining one. The nation’s leadership can ignore the people indefinitely, even if the apparatus of repression is severely over-burdened right now. But it cannot ignore its own strongest backers, the Principalists (conservatives), because they just might support the Revolutionary Guard putting tanks in the streets as a short-term emergency measure, or some similar excuse. At that point the Supreme Leader would become a virtual prisoner, his every pronouncement vetted and censored, and the Majlis would be similarly captive.
Will it be that simple? This is Iran, so maybe yes and maybe no. Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani still commands considerable prestige and influence, as, even more so, does former President Rafsanjani. These are two highly capable men used to operating in the cutthroat ambiguities of Tehran politics, and they don’t make rash alliances. But they do make careful alliances, and no doubt they are exploring what those might have to be with the Guard’s commanders.
As a random choice for rising through any change in government, I’ve been watching Abdol-Ali Najafi, a 48-year-old IRGC Brigadier General who heads the Guard’s secret units. I doubt he would emerge as a prominently visible face in any new government configuration, but he is an up-and-coming figure. He is used to running covert activities in Iraq and other black ops, as well as having responsibility for Ansar-ol-Mahdi, the group charged with guarding the Supreme Leader. Translation: he has the passwords, and can get in any time through the back door.
He reports to Mohammed Ali Jafari, the Guards’ current commander, who is doubtless also waiting expectantly for his moment. Qassem Soleimani, who heads the special Quds (that is, Jerusalem) Force, has diplomatic skills and has negotiated deals in Iraq, so he also bears watching. The Guards, be it noted, also have their own air force and naval units, as well as control over a significant segment of the nation’s economy.
Such an outcome is not what so many people hoped for six weeks ago as the election campaign was peaking. And, I suggest, a takeover by the Guards cannot be a final outcome. If they take over the country and unleash even more repression (a necessary step to prevent more civil disturbances) they are also likely to provoke, finally, a serious, armed opposition movement. A fringe group with a militant history such as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which has been designated a terrorist group then un-designated again, might find itself rising to prominence once more as a focus of discontent.
But if I was asked to put down money on any of this, I wouldn’t. This is Iran, and it never ceases to surprise itself, let alone the rest of us. And that's the only honest conclusion to make right now.