Gaming the System in Tehran

Presidents Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Even dictators, especially dictators,  need to remain popular (that is, they need a constituency). President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to have added his iffy performance in the last election, plus (+) the many protests since then, plus (+) street protests across the nearby Arab world (especially Syria?), plus (+) stalled economy, to equal (=) a need to change the system. This might not buy him new support (although Pres. Ahmadinejad is not an unintelligent political operative), but it certainly will bring him into conflict with the inheritors/watchdogs of the 1979 Revolution.

• Ahmadinejad also confronted the conservative majority in parliament by rejecting its demand for a new committee to oversee the parliamentary elections due this winter...
• This escalating confrontation between the president and the leader on the one hand, and the president and the parliament on the other is causing new cracks at the leadership level, effectively creating a three-tier system....
• The controversial Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who is Ahmadinejad's chief of staff, his main adviser and confidant, leads the president's team. They are the most rightwing conservatives; yet, because they are nonclerical and younger looking they seem bold in challenging the clergy. Mashaei is demanding an "Iranian republic" rather than an "Islamic Republic" – apparently in an effort to attract the young who protested after the presidential elections of 2009. ("Ahmadinejad has fuelled Iran's power struggle," by Massoumeh Torfeh, guardian.co.uk, Saturday 21 May 2011)

Taking on both the leader and Parliament might be a bridge too far. Ali Larijani, who was just reelected as Speaker of the Majles (Parliament) for another year, appears to have had coups in mind when he commented on Iranian history a half-century back:

• In a speech he delivered at a conference on the history of the Majles, Larijani said that the parliament is not supposed to be controlled by the executive branch. Referring to the late Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, Larijani said, "Mosaddegh's strategic mistake was that he dissolved the Majles. That laid the foundation for the [CIA-sponsored] coup [of 1953], and concentrated the power in the executive branch, which led to the Majles becoming powerless. Any country that commits such an error will either have a revolution or a coup. If the countries of the region had powerful legislative branches, they would not have experienced popular revolutions. Moreover, if the legal framework [to express] the popular demand is respected, there would never be a dictatorship. It is not an honor for the executive branch to declare that to develop the country it must control the Majles; this is the foundation for a dictatorship. But it is an honor when the legislative branch controls the executive branch."("Is Mashaei Next?," Frontline Press Roundup, May 26, 20110)

It Is Official (at least according to President Ahmadinejad): The Cape Verde Islands Are British!

The President's speech at Hamedan (where he may or may not have been attacked) included the following bit of historical geography news:

• Look at this country of England — a small island west of Africa. These people made weapons and ships; they attacked people; they subjugated India, whose area is 10 times the size of England, whose populations is tens of times larger! (August 4, 2010, "The Iranian President’s Geography Lesson," by Robert Mackey, The Lede)

(It would make for longer days in Winter in Lincolnshire.)

Movement within the Regime?

• A leading conservative rival to Ahmadinejad, lawmaker Ali Mottahari, warned that Iran was not yet out of the clear.
• "We cannot claim the crisis is totally over until both sides make up for their mistakes," he said in an interview with Khabaronline (in Persian), the news website affiliated with parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani. "The differences of opinion between the government and [the opposition] might have been eased to some extent, but they still exist. Our statesmen should not imagine that people's massive presence in the Thursday rally reflects the approval of their performance...."
• Mottahari recently called on opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi to stop calling for protests for a bit and let government insiders like him take care of Ahmadinejad and his ilk.
• In the interview he seemed to be auditioning to replace them, echoing their calls to restore civil liberties. "The government should respect social freedoms and stop its press bans," he said. "The government should also take action to secure the release of political prisoners and create a climate of friendship and affection."(LA Times. Babylon & Beyond, "IRAN: A day after 22 Bahman rally, a conservative Ahmadinejad rival opens fire," February 12, 2010)

(Note: Babylon & Beyond has a full post-mortem of the Iranian government's actions and those of the Green movement on 22 Bahman here.)