Rafsanjani Shows His Cards

It seemed that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was cutting bait. A member of the establishment, he was not willing to stick his neck out for the reformers, and seeing the crackdown in Iran, was content to work inside the system rather than openly commit to revolution. And then...

Reporting from Beirut -- A day after commanders of the Revolutionary Guard warned there was no middle ground in the dispute over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the political party of one of Iran's most powerful clerics Monday defiantly issued a statement dismissing the vote.

The statement by the Kargozaran Sazandegi, or Executives of Construction Party, all but cleared away weeks of ambiguity about the stance of the powerful cleric Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The cleric, who heads two government councils that oversee the supreme leader and mediate disputes between branches, openly backed Mir-Hossein Mousavi. But he has not spoken definitively about the election since the June 12 vote, which was validated after a partial recount by the powerful Guardian Council.

"We declare that the result is unacceptable due to the unhealthy voting process, massive electoral fraud and the siding of the majority of the Guardian Council with a specific candidate," said the statement issued by the party.

That's a major statement of support, unprecedented from Rafsanjani since the election. It shows that the reform movement will not go away and doesn't mind a bit of boldness.

Opposition leaders are seeking the release of all political prisoners. Ali Khamenei is retrenching and blaming outside enemies. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will head to television tonight with a national address. There are large demonstrations scheduled Thursday.

This isn't over.

In The Name Of Akbar Hashemi

I understand all the outpouring of support for Neda, killed on the streets of Tehran and captured on YouTube dying. She may become an important symbolic figure in the continued protest movement in Iran, and her martyrdom will form a cycle of protest and dissent. But Neda's memory will not win the battle against the ruling regime, at least not in the same way that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's insider dealing may.

Which brings me to the fight within. On Sunday, I saw Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of the establishment’s embittered éminence grise, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He told me his father, who despises President Mahmoud Adhmadinejad, is fighting a furious rearguard action to have the election annulled by the Guardian Council, the 12-member oversight body that will pronounce this week on the election’s legality.

The ruling had seemed a formality, given Khamenei’s summary dismissal of a recount and the loyalist composition of the body, but the Council is now talking about irregularities in 50 cities and discrepancies that could affect 3 million votes. Out of a total of 40 million votes, that’s a significant number.

There are rumblings from the influential parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, who is close to Khamenei but not Ahmadinejad. With Rafsanjani, Khatami and the defeated conservative former Revolutionary Guard leader, Mohsen Rezai, the dissenting front has breadth. Rezai, who officially won 680,000 votes, says more than 900,000 voters have written to him with their ID numbers saying they cast their ballot for him.

The people drove this uprising with bravery. But they need Rafsanjani on the inside to be successful. With all the layers of police state forces that can deploy to crush dissent, only a split on the inside will force the necessary changes. Hoping for anything different would be as silly as hoping that the neocon "clap louder!" approach could bear any fruit.

...this is not to say that Neda's story won't be an important part of the uprising, in a similar way that this literally insane story about the Basiji asking a dead bystander teen's family for a "bullet fee" for the ordnance they entered into his body. It's just that Rafsanjani's moves will actually have the most impact, though they will not play out on the streets.

...And the Guardian Council has stated that the vote count will stand, and what's a few million votes among friends, anyway?

Consent of the Governed

Iranian state-run media is trying to suggest that Mir Hossein Mousavi and his followers are criminals and terrorists. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's daughter and four other relatives have been arrested. Media, like the BBC's main correspondent, have been expelled. The crackdown has escalated, and yet the protests continue. And the arrest of the relatives of Rafsanjani shows the split among the clerisy. Even Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has asserted that a majority of the public questions the election results. And you're hearing open talk about an alternative leadership structure.

Fareed Zakaria makes an important point:

Fareed Zakaria: One of the first things that strikes me is we are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy.

CNN: Do you mean you think the regime will fall?

Zakaria: No, I don't mean the Iranian regime will fall soon. It may -- I certainly hope it will -- but repressive regimes can stick around for a long time. I mean that this is the end of the ideology that lay at the basis of the Iranian regime.

The regime's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, laid out his special interpretation of political Islam in a series of lectures in 1970. In this interpretation of Shia Islam, Islamic jurists had divinely ordained powers to rule as guardians of the society, supreme arbiters not only on matters of morality but politics as well. When Khomeini established the Islamic Republic of Iran, this idea was at its heart. Last week, that ideology suffered a fatal wound.

CNN: How so?

Zakaria: When the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "divine assessment," he was indicating it was divinely sanctioned. But no one bought it. He was forced to accept the need for an inquiry into the election. The Guardian Council, Iran's supreme constitutional body, met with the candidates and promised to investigate and perhaps recount some votes. Khamenei has subsequently hardened his position but that is now irrelevant. Something very important has been laid bare in Iran today --- legitimacy does not flow from divine authority but from popular support.

We weren't sure that the "consent of the governed" meant anything in an Islamic theocracy, but what we're seeing in the streets show that it in fact does.

Drumbeat Update

I suspected that Nicolas Sarkozy was out making a bunch of statements about Iran because what he was hearing from the President at their little set-to in Kennebunkport was turning him white. The Moonie Times confirms this:

After a brief interruption of his New Hampshire vacation to meet President Bush in the family compound at Kenebunkport, Maine, French President Nicolas Sarkozy came away convinced his U.S. counterpart is serious about bombing Iran's secret nuclear facilities. That's the reading as it filtered back to Europe's foreign ministries...

But meanwhile, it's interesting to see how this is playing out in Tehran, where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's chief rival was just given more power than him:

In a move considered to be a blow to the hardline politics of Iran's ruling party, the former president Hashemi Rafsanjani was today chosen to head the powerful clerical body that has responsibility over the country's supreme leader.

Mr Rafsanjani received 41 votes to lead the Assembly of Experts, the group of clerics that oversees, appoints and dismisses Iran's supreme leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei [...]

The former president is regarded as more moderate than the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose politics are at odds with Mr Rafsanjani's .

The two politicians went head to head in the 2005 elections, when Mr Ahmadinejad beat Mr Rafsanjani in the run-off to become president of the country.

"This is exactly what the hardliners don't want," said Dr Ali Ansari, an Iran-watcher at Chatham House and a professor of Iranian history at the University of St Andrews. "It's a body blow for Ahmadinejad."

Iran's governmental structure is byzantine. But suffice to say that the head of the committee that can fire the Supreme Leader has a lot more power than the President of the country. Inside Iran the Ahmadinejad Presidency has not been successful, particularly on the economic front that he has the most control over. And his statements on matters of foreign policy are seen inside the regime as unhelpful. Far from being a despot or a dictator, Ahmadinejad is an unpopular public servant. Just like George Bush.

This seems to be happening on Iran's terms and not in reaction to American threats. I think that we often make the mistake in America that the world revolves around us, a kind of American heliocentric theory. In fact there are internal machinations that we don't fully understand, and typically when we try to meddle in these affairs we make the problem worse.