Khomeini, Khamenei, Kathami, Montazeri, Rafsanjani, Mousavi, Ahmadinejad,.... mind boggling?
Not really. These are the names of some of the gentlemen, together with perhaps another handful....who are the key players over the past 30 years, who have lead or have strongly influenced the Iranian Revolution.
And if you follow their often combative relationships, you can see unfold a political soap opera spanning decades, with very simple and obvious plots and classic leadership characters on each side of the drama. There are those on the right and on those on the left. And they have been battling each other for the past quarter century....and now, today, they are facing one of the greatest challenges to their Revolution.
Starting from the 1979 Revolution.....and continuing thru epic power struggles, you have a growing divide between the conservatives...who are radical religious advocates mixed with militants, radical nationalists and religious purists..... and the liberals/reformers.....those who also backed and led the Revolution, but have a more progressive and less isolationist view of their country's future and want the Revolution to foster a modern, economically secure and internationally respected society in Iran. They want more rights for women, human rights to be honored and greater freedoms than the religiously conservatives accept.
I really don't think it is that different than the divides we have in America. We have conservatives in the US..... made up of the Christian religious right, plus militant hawks, and ultra-nationalists (American Exceptionalists). And then there are the liberals/progressivers in the US..... religiously and culturally tolerant, human rights advocates, and reform minded progressives.
But....back to Iran today..... the good guys (the reformers) were about to get a big win....after 4 years of "Bush-like" Ahmadinejad, they were about to get Mousavi...a reform leader with good diplomatic skills and a former respected President of the country. The reformers all thought Mousavi was at least going to win enough votes last week to require a run off with Ahmadinejad, if Mousavi did not win out right in the first ballot. But before the polling was even completed and before they went to sleep that evening on Friday last week...the tv was telling them that Ahmadinejad had won by a landslide....
..... and the masses of liberal, reform minded Iranians went ballistic, understandably.
Keep in mind that these two groups, right and left, have been clashing since 1979.
Ahmadinejad is conservative. But the President before him, Khatami, (think Clinton) was a reformer. And it was Khatami who arranged to have Montazeri released after 6 years of house arrest. And it is Montazeri who is today telling Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and telling the whole country, that the election is a sham.
Confused?
In really broad brush. while way over simplifying things...and skipping much...here's a little thread of history..... (If there are any blatant errors...please comment and accept my apologies in advance... I am a student of this information, not an authority.)
Start with Ayatollah Khomeini... the late Supreme Leader.... After the 1979 Revolution, a Supreme Leader was chosen. And it was Ayatollah Khomeini who got the big prize. He had been in exile in Iraq and Europe and made his big return as the Supreme Leader in 1979. While he always professed to care more about the faith of Islam than the "cost of melons" (read...not interested in materialistic things), he also came to support the more radical, religiously conservative, militant and nationalistic leaders within the Revolution. But his favorite student and the "fruit of his life" was Montazeri...and it was Ayatollah Montazeri who was designated to take over as the next Supreme Leader.
But A Montazeri was always reform minded. And much more concerned with human and civil rights, including women's rights. He never liked the hostage take over at the America Embassy, he wouldn't approve of the fatwah to kill the author of Santanic Verses, Salman Rushdie and A Montazeri was also a constant critic of the Revolution's leadership; for it's lack of tolerance, it's isolationism and it's poor human rights record. He also deplored the lost of life and property thru the 8 years of war with Iraq, and blamed the leadership for this enormous failure.
Soon before SLA Khomeini's death he decided to jettison A Montazeri as his heir apparent, and forced A Montazeri to resign from the appointment, by letter to the Assembly of Experts. Instead SLA Khomeini later designated SLA Khameini....the current Supreme Leader who is conservative.
It is this SLA Khamenei who is currently a supporter of Ahmadinejad..on Friday he announced that it was a miracle that Ahmadinejad had won and the probable cause of election irregularities. He is the Supreme Leader, but Iranian political power doesn't only reside in his office.
As mentioned, reformer A. Montazeri was bumped from becoming the Supreme leader a few years before SLA Khomeini died. And the Conservatives ended up getting conservative man, SLA Khameini, appointed. And when that happened, A Montazeri more or less called out SLA Khameini as being too inept and incapable of ruling as Supreme Leader. Pretty heavy stuff being thrown at the new Supreme Leader.
The would-be SLA Montazeri....reform minded....and the current SLA Khameini, both with huge followings...have had a relationship that has sizzled and crackled over the years. A Montazeri was too revered nationally, as a spiritual leader, too powerful, for the new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to take A Montazeri on.....for a while.
But let me digress back to why A Montazeri lost his appointment as the next Supreme Leader. It was in 1986...when Iran Contra happened. Yep...you guessed it....we "meddled" right into this mess back then and impacted Iran's future leadership too. The CiA had set up high level meetings with Rafsanjani (yes him. see his name at the top)... a strong parlimentary leader, former President and former right hand man of the SLA Khomeini, who was still in power.
Back in 1986 Rasanjani convinced SLA Khomeini to agree to a deal in which their evil enemy, the USA, would sell Iran weapons which would help them win the war with their even more evil enemy, Iraq, who was also backed and getting weapons from the USA. The Iranians would be able to get the same kind of weapons we were selling to Iraq and have a better chance to win. SLA Khomeini bought into this false morality. But.....A Montazeri did not.
And A Montazeri found out about this Iran Contra deal this thru his senior staffer, Mehdi Hashemi. Then, purportedly under Montazeri's orders, Hashemi leaked the info to the Lebanon news media, which leaked it to the rest of the world....the US was rocked with the Iran Contra scandal....all as a result of Hashemi, Montazeri's staff, revealing the "morally challenged" deal to the world.
That was all SLA Khomeini would take. Result: Hashemi was executed as a criminal of the state. Rafsanjani became the President of Iran. And A Montazeri lost his appointment as the next Supreme Leader. But A Montazeri's criticisms continued and became sharper and continued after SLA Khomeini died.
Many feel that it was his final undoing when he made a speech in which he strongly criticized the mistakes being made by the Revolution Leadership and said it made Iran look like it only cared about murdering its critics.... a veiled reference to Hashemi and other dissidents who were being routinely executed. Soon thereafter, in 1997, the new Supreme Leader Khamenei had A
A Montazeri put under house arrest. He remained under house arrest for 6 years.
In 2003 A Montazeri was released and has been a vocal critic of SLA Khamenei and a supporter of reforms, including women's rights, human and civil rights. He has a huge following...but he represents those who are out of power. The Reformers are out of power. The conservatives are in power. The conservatives hold the position of SL with conservative SLA Khamenei backing them. They have a conservative in President Ahmadinejad. And the have majority control of the Islamic Consultive Assembly, or the Parliament of Majlis. Out of 290 members, only 45 are in the Reform group. The Guardian Council which screens candidates and deals with elections (and election fraud), is controlled by SLA Khamenei.
But the Assembly of Experts is now chaired by A Rafsanjani, who is now considered "Reform friendly" And while the Assembly has a majority of conservatives, the Chairmanship position is important. This is the Assembly that chooses the Supreme Leader and can remove even, in theory, remove a Supreme Leader. And even thou Rafsanjani participated many years ago in the lurid Iran Contra affair..had the meetings with Robert McFarlane... he is now a supporter of reforms and a political enemy of Ahmadinejad. He is also now backing Mousavi and calling the elections a sham. He is a major force in Iran...having been so close to the first Supreme Leader before and after the Revolution and then also was elected to two terms as President of Iran and now culminating in his appointment as Chairman of the Assembly of Experts. (It was rumored over the weekend that he called a meeting of the Assembly and that this is why SLA Khamenei agreed to a partial recount of votes. )
And back again to the Present......
While the conservatives have been currently in power, the Reformers have recently been surging. There was a sense that power was shifting again....from Conservatives to Reformers. ("Obama Effect??")
Then the Big Cheat happened....with the apparently Fake Election results. And now the country of Iran is facing a crisis in leadership, power and direction.
While there is no definitive take on what really happened with the election ballots, I am, for now, convinced that SLA Khamenei realized that his man Ahmadinejad was going to lose and so authorized the electoral administration to announce immediately that Ahmadinejad had won, by using "made up" numbers. While this may seem like a huge political risk. The risk of having a reformer in again as President...must have been more repugnant to SLA Khamenei.
But...the Supreme Leader cannot just throw his power around. His power is reigned in somewhat by the Assembly of Experts...who in turn are a mix of reformers and conservatives. There are also many other, lesser known, political and religious leaders on both sides of the political divide in Iran. All of them have some influence. How they take sides will also determine the outcome.
It appears that there is enough check and balance, enough conflicting political interests, that, if SLA Khamenei and Ahmadinejad's people are actually caught, outright, cheating on the election....that the tables could turn dramatically. Which is why I think SLA Khamenei is trying to find a delicate balance....where it looks like he is being fair and neutral and uninvolved in a fraud.....by calling for partial recounts....but I suspect that his intended goal is to avoid any real investigation and to quell the unrest thru faux investigations and delays.
What we have a is real and ancient battle between conservatives and liberals....played out as a power struggle within the political leadership of Iran.... now a country at a cross roads.
Go Green!!