American Footprints » Iranian politics

Rafsanjani Falling

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:05:44 +0000

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who served as Iran’s president from 1989-1997, lost to Ahmadinejad in 2005, and was a behind-the-scenes mover of Mir Hussein Musavi’s 2009 campaign that led to the Green Movement, has been taking major political hits for at least a year, possibly as payback for his 2009 actions. Tehran Bureau reports:

“Two websites connected to Ahmadinejad and the security forces claimed that when the current term of the chairmanship of the Expediency Discernment Council expires next month, Khamenei will not reappoint Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as its Chair. Bultan News, a website linked with the security forces, speculated that Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator during the Khatami administration, will be the new Chair of the Council. Rowhani is a member of the Council, as well as the head of its Center for Strategic Studies.

“Then Shabestan News Agency, run by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, analyzed the possibility that Rafsanjani might be assassinated, but dismissed the notion, pointing out that he is no longer an influential figure after losing the Chairmanship of the Assembly of Experts and control of Islamic Azad University. He also no longer serves as the Friday prayer Imam of Tehran. It then speculated that he will not be reappointed as the Chairman of the Council.

“Since the June 2009 presidential election, the hardliners’ pressure on Rafsanjani has increased tremendously. In addition to losing all his influential posts, the website that reflected his views has been blocked, his daughter Faezeh Hashemi has been sentenced to six months in jail, and his 16-year-old grandson is under investigation. The family of one his sons has also been barred from leaving Iran.

“As a result of a quasi-coup, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has finally succeeded in taking control of the Islamic Azad University, Iran’s largest university system, one of the largest of its kind in the world. It happened at the end of a meeting of the board of trustees of the university, which Rafsanjani leads. After the former president and his supporters left the meeting, the representatives of Ahmadinejad’s camp on the board announced that Farhad Daneshjoo, a brother of the Minister of Science, Research and Technology, which overseas the universities, has been elected by the board as the new president of the university, replacing Rafsanjani’s ally Dr. Abdollah Jasbi, who has led the university since its inception in 1982. Rafsanjani said that he will not sign the order for Daneshjoo’s appointment, but Daneshjoo has said that he will not back down because the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, an extra-constitutional body that control cultural affairs, has confirmed him as the new president of the university.”

Some of that is unconfirmed or still being battled over, but the trend is clear. Leadership of Islamic Azad University is a big deal financially as well as politically, as it has well over one million students. It has been the scene of political fighting at least since mid-2010.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Iran’s New Oil Minister

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:27:04 +0000

One trend of the past decade or so of Iranian history has been the growing involvement in the IRGC in Iran’s economy. Now, a prominent officer/businessman has become the country’s oil minister:

“Iran’s parliament has voted to approve Rostam Qasemi, a Revolutionary Guards commander, to head the country’s oil ministry.

“The country’s president had called on the Majlis to confirm Qasemi and end months of wrangling over control of oil and gas production in the world’s fifth biggest crude exporter…

“Qasemi heads a major engineering company – owned by the elite military body – and is under US and EU sanctions due to Western concerns Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons technology, a charge the Islamic republic has always denied…

“The newly appointed minister comes from Khatam al-Anbia, the Guards company initially set up to conduct vital infrastructure work during the eight-year war with Iraq which followed the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“It has since executed oil projects worth a total of $25bn, state-owned IRNA reported recently, quoting Ahmad Qalebani, managing director of the state National Iranian Oil Co.

“Qasemi’s position has drawn the attention of Western countries that believe the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliates are involved in Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons, a goal that Tehran denies.”

This affair, however, shows that in contrast to previous analysis, Ahmadinejad may not be part of a solid front with the military, as he tried to prevent Qasemi’s rise to that post.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Khamene’i and the IRGC

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:17:42 +0000

One ongoing question in Iranian politics is the relative power of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and the IRGC. In an interview with RFE-RL, Mahmud Tehrani, Khamene’i's nephew, supports the view that the Supreme Leader might not be so supreme:

“I think Khamenei — who is my uncle — is either a toy in the hands of Ahmadinejad, [Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi], and the Revolutionary Guard, or he shares their crimes.

“There is nothing he can do. If he backs off from his comments even one step, he will lose his leadership and the whole [conservative] camp will disintegrate.

“I don’t think Ali Khamenei has a lot of power, it’s likely that all of this is being run by the Revolutionary Guard, and Ali Khamenei is forced to deal with the [Revolutionary Guard] in order not to lose his role as the supreme leader. He can’t do anything and he won’t say anything [substantial]. Since June 14 we haven’t heard anything from Khamenei other than repeating Ahmadinejad’s comments.”

This isn’t entirely true, since there has been some tension between Khamene’i and Ahmadinejad, and Tehrani doesn’t say what his views are based on. Still, they’re plausible, and he appears to have some sort of family sources he’s in touch with.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Iran Protests Continue

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:59:22 +0000

Much of the coverage has shifted to trials of reformist leaders and Ahmadinejad’s government, but it’s worth remembering that protests are continuing in Iran:

“Opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi has called for continued protests over Iran’s disputed June election, two days after MPs backed most of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s new government ministers.

“Musavi, remaining defiant over a poll he says was rigged in favor of the hard-line president, urged his supporters to create a wide opposition network using meetings such as family and union gatherings, as well as sporting and cultural events.

“‘In order to achieve our cause, I do not recommend anything but the pursuit of the green path of hope which you have followed in the past few months…through small and large gatherings,’ he said in a statement on a reformist website.”

My best guess is that Mousavi wants to have his movement ready in the event of either a crisis they can mobilize more people around, or the next elections for some level of government.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Conflicting Religious Legitimacies

Brian Ulrich — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:08:27 +0000

After discussing the special relationship Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims with the Mahdi, the Hidden Imam who holds ultimate religious authority in Twelver Shi’ism,Mazyar Mokfi and Charles Recknagel raise an interesting point:

"All of this could be seen as religious and nonpolitical except for one thing: the Islamic republic already has a steward in the Mahdi’s absence. The steward is the supreme leader.

"That raises the possibility that Ahmadinejad’s symbolic sidestepping of the supreme leader today could end in the political sidestepping of the supreme leader tomorrow. And, as Ahmadinejad begins his second term in an unprecedented riff with Khamenei, the possibility only seems to grow more likely.

"Ahmadinejad himself has said he considers his goal to be handing over power to the ‘original leader’ of the country’s government. The allusion, again, is to the Mahdi’s imminent return, an event which would make the constitution and the office of supreme leader superfluous.

"But it is not just Ahmadinejad, whom reformists accuse of stealing the June election, who bears watching. Other powerful figures, too, are sidestepping Khamenei — suggesting broader forces than just Ahmadinejad are in play."

This is interesting in the context of speculation over whether Khamene’i was the prime mover in June’s electoral coup, or whether he might have been carried along by Ahmadinejad’s principlist faction, which is also influential in the IRGC and Basij militias. Another angle is that, if Khamene’i is seen as hoping to lay groundwork to be succeeded as Supreme Leader by his son Mojtaba, then other potential candidates, such as Ahmadinejad’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, have an interest in undermining him.

(Crossposted to my blog)

The Iranian Meaning of Hizbullah

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:32:53 +0000

Anyone interested in transnational Islamist political movements or the politics of the Gulf countries, especially the Arab ones, should read Laurence Louer’s Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf. I won’t be able to finish it right away as I return it to the library tomorrow in advance of moving, but it has lots of information on major Shi’ite political movements and how they manifest themselves within different national states.

This isn’t a major point within the book, but it may explain some of the references to Hizbullah in the current Iranian crisis:

"’Hezbollah’ is initially a Quranic term meaning the ‘party of God’. After the revolution, it became a recurring concept of Ruhollah Khomeini’s speeches to designate those truly committed to the defence of Islam and the Islamic revolution. The term was then appropriated by vigilante groups constituting a loose network of volunteers supported by some individual figures of the regime and claiming to act in order to safeguard the revolution against its enemies. While, in Iranian parlance, the word ‘Hezbollah’ designates the hardliners in general, it can also refer to structured pressure groups, often used by the regime to intimidate or even assassinate this or that recalcitrant person. While many self-describe as ‘Hezbollah’, many others often prefer to speak about them as partisans of the ‘Imam’s Line’, that is those who keep faithful to the heritage of so-called ‘Imam Khomeini’. This is the case, for example, of those who perpetrated the attack on the American embassy in Tehran in November 1979. Over the years, the label ‘Imam’s Line’ has been preferred by the vigilantes because ‘Hezbollah’ came to have a pejorative connotation in an Iranian society weary of revolutionary language and favourable to a more relaxed implementation of the Islamic ethic."

I don’t know if the term’s appropriation by vigilante groups refers specifically to the Ansar-i Hizbullah, or is a more general phenomenon.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Rafsanjani’s Sermon

Brian Ulrich — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:48:39 +0000

As Juan Cole explains, Rafsanjani’s Friday prayer sermon was a paean to popular sovereignty in the Islamic Republic, in which he noted that even the Supreme Leader is indirectly elected by the people. It places him squarely in the reformist camp in a way he simply wasn’t before, endorsing not only their candidate as an opponent of the principlists, but their core tenets, as well. Coming from a pillar of the establishment in such a high-profile setting, it also contributes to a weakening of the aura surrounding the office of the Supreme Leader, and sends a strong signal that the Green Wave is not over, even if it’s path to victory is not yet apparent.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Rafsanjani as Prayer Leader

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:25:35 +0000

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will lead Friday’s prayers in Tehran:

"The next flash point in the face-off is expected this Friday during prayers at Tehran University when Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential former president, will be leading them for the first time since the election a month ago.

"A strong supporter of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mr. Rafsanjani – a pillar of the regime for 30 years – has emerged since the contested June 12 election as one of the key figures in a power struggle with Iran’s supreme leader and his allies, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…

"Posters titled The Promised Day Has Arrived are already being circulated ahead of Friday prayers. They promise the presence of Mr. Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami, and urge reformists to flood the prayer hall.

"Friday prayers at Tehran University have traditionally been a political agenda setter for the Islamic Republic and conservative rallying point. The open-air hall rings weekly with condemnations of the enemies of the Islamic Republic and cries of ‘Death to America.’ A week into the postelection rioting, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, took the unusual step of personally addressing Friday prayers and delivered a speech condemning the rioters as the unwilling pawns of a British-fomented ‘Velvet Revolution.’"

This is yet another astute move by the opposition.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Supreme Leadership

Brian Ulrich — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:54:16 +0000

My trip back to the Midwest late last month broke my momentum in following Iran closely, and I’m only now starting to feel caught up enough so that my thoughts might be useful. Chief among those thoughts is the simple fact that the nature of the Supreme Leader’s office has changed, and perhaps with it, the range of potential futures for the Islamic Republic.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s concept of velayat-e faqih never had wide and deep theological support, but during the past 30 years, it has won acceptance, even if only passive, as a cornerstone of Iran’s political landscape. During the past month, however, that implicit authority has been weakened beyond repair. How many people, and I’m speaking specifically of Iranians, knew previously that the Assembly of Experts didn’t just elect the Supreme Leader, but also had the power to supervise and if necessary remove him? How many people, both within the government and outside it, have become his enemies now that he has openly become theirs?

The authority of his office weakened, Khamene’i now relies almost entirely on open displays of physical power, a development which grows out of the increasing Ahmadinejad-era militarization of Iranian politics that may have played a role in last month’s electoral coup to begin with. Two days ago, the Los Angeles Times‘s Borzou Daraghi reported this:

"The top leaders of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard publicly acknowledged they had taken over the nation’s security during the post-election unrest and warned late Sunday, in a threat against a reformist wave led by Mir-Hossein Mousavi, that there was no middle ground in the ongoing dispute over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the elite military branch, said the guard’s takeover of the nation’s security had led to ‘a revival of the revolution.’

"’These events put us in a new stage of the revolution and political struggles, and all of us must fully comprehend its dimensions,’ he said at a Sunday press conference, according to reports that surfaced today.

"’Because the Revolutionary Guard was assigned the task of controlling the situation, [it] took the initiative to quell a spiraling unrest. This event pushed us into a new phase of the revolution and political struggles and we have to understand all its dimensions.’"

Digest that statement, and you start to see the difference between the principlists’ "Islamic Government" and the "Islamic Republic" of traditional conservatives and most reformists.

What, then, of the popular revolution which has coalesced around Mousavi? If, over the course of several months, they succeed in forcing some sort of change the nature of which becomes more difficult to see as time passes, the Supreme Leadership is further weakened, having gone all in on suppressing it. If they fail, then the present regime continues, but it is difficult to see much future for the evolutionary potential many saw within the republican framework. It was always plausible for a successful reformist run to, in alliance with pragmatic conservatives, make the Supreme Leader a mostly ceremonial figure who gave sermons, talked about values, and presumably had a plush lifestyle if he wanted it, but interfered in government no more than Europe’s constitutional monarchs. The office has no future, however, as the dictator-for-life of a government maintained only by the military, especially if it eventually winds up in Mojtaba’s hands as a family fiefdom.