Iran under Spell

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Iran’s fascinating internal power struggle

TORONTO STAR - June 8, 2011

For decades Iran’s complex internal struggles have been a subject for scholarly specialists. But the recent string of charges against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his inner circle rival those of America’s most colourful conspiracy theorists.

Blasphemy, sorcery even perversion have been raised in the rhetorical battle between the abrasive, let-it-all-hang-out Ahmadinejad and the grey, uncharismatic spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his supporters.

Detested by Iran’s Green protest movement, Ahmadinejad is now equally reviled by the conservative cadre of clerics — who once backed him and helped him to win a second term.

“Ahmadinejad’s political life is over,” says Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “He’s tried to challenge the Supreme Leader’s authority but will end up marginalized.”

The struggle between Ahmadinejad’s iconoclasts and the powerful Khamenei-led clerics has burst from behind closed doors at an awkward time. Iran needs solidarity to achieve the new role it seeks in a Middle East that has been shaken by the cracking of old regimes.

Although the conflict hinges on power, it also takes in a broad sweep of political, economic, ideological and religious issues that divide the two conservative factions, with Ahmadinejad and his powerful chief of staff promoting a religious cult that believes in the second coming of Shiism’s “hidden imam,” who is meant to create peace from chaos upon his return, more or less the equivalent of Christianity’s apocalyptic fundamentalist sects.

By creating a new interpretation of religion in Iran, and claiming to be in touch with the hidden imam he and his supporters tried to fight free of the ruling clerical order.

“Ahmadinejad’s version is that the clerics are mere coupon-clippers,” says Anoush Ehteshami, a professor of international relations at Durham University. “If you’re expecting the 12th imam to return, why do you need representatives here on earth? It’s a profound fight for the direction of the Islamic state.”

And Ahmadinejad’s hinting that the clerical regime was obsolete was an unofficial declaration of war.

“The clerics have read Ahmadinejad the riot act,” says Mehrzad Boroujerdi, director of Middle East Studies at Syracuse University. “But he still craves his 15 minutes of fame. He won’t go quietly.”

In 2009, Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of a disputed election that sent hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets and saw the birth of Iran’s Green Movement. Khamenei risked his own reputation to support him.

But signs of struggle surfaced swiftly.

Most recently, Khamenei allegedly ordered — or condoned — spying on Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff by the intelligence service. The president retaliated by firing the head of the service.

Khamenei overruled the move, and Ahmadinejad boycotted cabinet meetings in defiance. The ante was upped when Khamenei asked one of his supporters to create a “caretaker cabinet” that could take over if the president were ousted.

Ahmadinejad got the point, and returned to business as usual. But he struck back with a bid to take over the plum oil and gas ministry, and led a shakeup of the government that included the merger of eight ministries and the firing of three ministers without parliament’s consent. The backlash was threat of impeachment.

Ahmadinejad is aware that his time to reshape Iran could be short — the next parliamentary election is 2012, and his second term ends in 2013.

Iran’s presidents are barred from running for more than two consecutive terms. But Ahmadinejad’s ambitions appear to go farther.

“He’s made the same mistake that others made before him,” says Khalaji. “They thought they could use clerics as instruments for their own agenda. Ahmadinejad thought when he was famous, rich and popular enough he wouldn’t need them.”

But his ambitions have so far misfired. A dozen supporters have been arrested, and there have been public death threats against his chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who is blamed for leading a “pervert culture” of religious rebellion. Meanwhile the president, uneasily, hangs on.

“Getting rid of Ahmadinejad would be embarrassing to Khamenei, because he has spent a lot of political capital supporting him,” says Boroujerdi.

“But in this system the Supreme Leader has the heaviest cannons to roll out. God is on the side of the biggest battalions.”

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