UPDATE (1:31 p.m.): Rafsanjani: shark or kingmaker?, posted yesterday (h/t TLede). Also see my UPDATE (12:34 p.m.) below. Maybe both, after all, politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t, to use an American saying, bean bag.
The super-rich Rafsanjani, his family, and his supporters in the reformist Kargozaran party make no bones about helping finance and direct Mir Hossein Mousavi’s campaign to topple Ahmadinejad, whom they despise. But with Mousavi ostensibly beaten, the developing post-election struggle now pits Rafsanjani against Khamenei rather than the president – who is widely seen as a mouthpiece for the hardline fundamentalism typified by the Supreme Leader. Although he is supposed to stay above the fray, Khamenei endorsed Ahmadinejad this time, just as in the second round of the 2005 election.
Rafsanjani has made no secret of his belief that foreign and economic policies pursued during the past four years under Khamenei’s guidance have seriously damaged the Islamic Republic….
UPDATE (1:00 p.m.): Quote of the day, so far:
We don’t have Mousavi supporters, it’s now all of Iran… – via anonymous academic, from Juan Cole
UPDATE (12:57): Targeting students, the pictures.
UPDATE (12:34 p.m.): Via twitpic… and a little context. This is a reigniting of the battle between Khamenei and Rafsanjani, with Ahmadinejad and Mousavi the proxies. It goes back years, with the corrupt Rafsanjani pitting himself against the religious Khamenei, who is seen by experts as Bob Baer and others to be a fraud. If Rafsanjani muscles the Assembly of Experts to vote against Khamenei, he will finally have wrestled his enemy to the ground, something that has been a very long battle for Rafsanjani, who likely feels his credentials far exceed SLK.
UPDATE: (11:30 a.m.): Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, yesterday the SCO, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional grouping led by Russia and China, to quote CS Monitor, gave Ahmadinejad a platform. Where his global patrons were only too happy to let him parade his recent “win” as they mocked the importance of free elections, to no one’s surprise.
UPDATE (11:17 a.m.): From ABC’s Robert Fisk in Iran:
It was interesting that the special forces – who normally take the side of Ahmadinejad’s Basij militia – were there with clubs and sticks in their camouflage trousers and their purity white shirts and on this occasion the Iranian military kept them away from Mousavi’s men and women.
In fact at one point, Mousavi’s supporters were shouting ‘thank you, thank you’ to the soldiers.
One woman went up to the special forces men, who normally are very brutal with Mr Mousavi’s supporters, and said ‘can you protect us from the Basij?’ He said ‘with God’s help’.
UPDATE (11:01 a.m.): Joe Cirincione weighs in…
If Ahmadinejad is forced out, prospects also improve. Some analysts have somewhat mechanically assumed that because Mir Hossein Mousavi was involved in the revival of the Shah’s nuclear weapons program by the Islamic Republic in the 1980′s, he would champion the uranium enrichment program now. If he had barely won election, and while the issue remained a nationalist touchstone spanning political camps, there was some truth to this prediction.
But that was before the Uprising. Nationalism now has new, more powerful and more meaningful expressions. Mousavi was always more open to dialogue with the West. As president, his discourse could now include the nuclear program with much less fear of attack.
UPDATE (10:40 a.m.): Bill Keller from Iran.
__________Original post below__________
Ayatollah Montazeri’s letter is stunning. It reveals a serious crack in the religious hierarchy in Iran. Nothing is more significant or could weigh more on what happens going forward.
Bob Baer was on “Hardball” yesterday, filling in the rest of the picture, with more here. Baer also described Iran in a way that most people don’t understand.
In Iran nothing is ever as it seems, including presidential elections. It’s arguable that Friday’s election had less to do with a vote for or against Ahmadinejad than it did with a vote for or against Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. And if the elections were stolen, it was likely in an effort to maintain Khamenei’s hold on power rather than Ahmadinejad’s.
Iran is not a theocracy. It is a military dictatorship headed by Khamenei and advised by a coterie of generals from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Army, as well as hard-liners in the secret police. Ahmadinejad is little more than the spokesman for this group.
No one in their right mind can believe” the official results from Friday’s contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad. Montazeri accused the regime of handling Mousavi’s charges of fraud and the massive protests of his backers “in the worst way possible.”“A government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy,” he declared in comments on his official Web site. “I ask the police and army personals (personnel) not to ‘sell their religion,’ and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before God.”
As Steve Clemons said late last night, this election is over. The sticky part of it is how things move forward. Photoshopping Ahmadinejad’s crowds , as they did with that missile launch (h/t sullivan), is not going to be the answer.
As for John McCain, evidently “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” is still running through his brain. The Republicans seem caught as flatfooted by the happenings in Iran and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his contingent.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is rumored through a Twitter feed to have commanded a meeting to unseat Khamenei. Shorter: the corrupt Rafsanjani has done his own meddling and may be at the heart of it all.
Still, if the protests and demonstrations in Tehran cannot be controlled, we should seriously start to wonder about Khamenei’s future. Rafsanjani is rumored to be in the holy city of Qum plotting against Khamenei, seeing if he has enough votes in the 86-member Assembly of Experts to remove Khamenei. A vote recount is unlikely to change the results of the election, but it could lead to more demonstrations, which backed by Rafsanjani and the other mullahs, might just end Khamenei’s 20 year run. – Bob Baer
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