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Iran shows tensions between ultras, reformers
 [Beirut Daily Star: Region] The political unrest in Iran over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election marks a key point in the ideological struggle between ultra-conservatives and reformers, according to analysts. Thirty years after the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the two factions are finding co-habitation increasingly difficult and the show of force in the wake of the disputed elections has unleashed a chain reaction.The final effect on the nature and orientation of the regime in Iran remains unpredictable with some influential figures yet to take sides. One key element is that the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who "has always tried to play an arbitration role in order to maintain the illusion of being an honest broker came out so quickly in support of Ahmadinejad," said Rouzbeh Parsi, Iran researcher at the Paris-based Institute of Security Studies. While there are plenty of indications that the opposition supporters who have taken to the streets to cry foul over the election results have a valid grievance, in a place like Iran proof is hard to come by, analysts say. "Nobody was allowed to follow the ballot boxes, that is why the opposition does not accept the partial recount," said Parsi. "A lot of things make it [the result] impossible even if we don't have proof," argues Shahram Chubin of the Carnegie Institute. Thierry Coville, of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris, has no doubt that massive electoral fraud has been committed. "There's been an electoral hold-up," he said."They massively rigged it so you have two thirds, one third in order to eliminate the reformists," he added, speaking of a "coup d'etat in disguise." According to the official results, Ahmadinejad won by a thumping majority of 63 percent against just 34 percent for opposition runner-up Mir Hossein Mousavi, a gap of 11 million votes. But if the electorate is being cheated then the goal for the "extremist right wing circles" around Ahmadinejad "is to see an Islamic state established once and for all," said Parsi. "They do not trust the people," he stressed. Chubin sees the emergence of "two very different assumptions of what Iran should be." On the one hand there are those who want to see "political accountability and institutions that work properly" while the other faction "emphasises the religious legitimacy, lives on crises, on confronting the world". The hardliners stole the election not just because the reformers were a threat to their candidate, the incumbent president, at the June 12 election but because they were openly challenging the regime's view of what Iran should be, he argued. What is clear at the moment is that Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, a reformist Iranian leader and also a candidate in the presidential election, are getting worsted because the ultra-conservatives have "the means of repression," he added. Nevertheless "the regime has been weakened" and its ultimate victory remains uncertain in the medium to long term due to the fissures in their own ranks, he opined. "The row is not limited to the students and the middle-class. It is very diversified geographically and socially," due to the modernisation of Iranian society over the past 30 years, according to Coville. The "conservative traditionalists" like parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani and Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Khamenei "will have to take sides if the confrontation persists," he added. According to Tehran press last week, Larijani and over 100 MPs refused to attend a victory party hosted by President Ahmadinejad. The "conservative modernists" grouped around former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will similarly have to choose sides. Rafsanjani, head of state from 1988-1997, remains an influential figure and is chairman of the Assembly of Experts, the only body which can elect, monitor or even dismiss the supreme leader of Iran. Posted by: Fred 2009-07-04 |
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