It appears as though Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani has thrown his support behind the Ayatollah Khamenei/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad factions for now (I use that awkward language because it's no longer clear that Khamenei has full support at Qom). His statements have been translated in a lot of different ways, but the majority translation seems to indicate that Rafsanjani has decided that his interests (whatever they are) are better served by deferring to Khamenei. Whether that means he just defers to him "today" or "indefinitely" is unclear, but Rafsanjani has always been a bit of a fair-weather friend - a bit of a follower rather than a leader.
Follow under the flip for more tentative analysis (or potentially nonsense, depending on how things turn out this week). Also, if there are any people educated in Persian or Arabic, please accept my apologies if my analysis mixes Arabic and Persian terms, as I often don't know with certainty what language a term originates from. My goal is to be as informative as I can to as many people as possible, and I'm absolutely open to corrections if I'm misusing any language (including the English language!).
Rafsanjani's statement, in part:
The incidents were the results of complicated plots by obscure sources with the aim of creating separation and differences between the people and the system. And with the aim of making the people distrust the Islamic system.
The presently unanswerable question: Was his statement equally impenetrable in Persian, or is it an awkward translation? The above statement is the clearest translation I've seen yet (and the clearest sentence from that translation), and it appears to support, at least on the surface, Khamanei's assertion that "The evil British with their demonic Queen Takhisis are trying to destroy Iranian society!" (With all apologies to Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman). The rest of his statement was more obscure than the above quote, so most Western media and bloggers are focusing on that to show that Rafsanjani has decided to support Khamenei for now.
There's about 30 living marja right now, or Grand Ayatollahs, most of them in Iran at Qom, a substantial minority in Iraq at Najaf, and a handful in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it's notable the number of Iranian marja who have come out against Khamenei - who a lot of religious scholars believe isn't really a marja - that he was wrongfully elevated to the position from Hojatoleslam in order to succeed Khomeini, not unlike taking a Bishop and making him the Pope because you you didn't trust any of the Archbishops or Cardinals. If you ask me, the Archbishops and Cardinals (the marja and ayatollahs) are likely to harbor resentment.
So the question that I think people should be focusing on this week - has Iran abandoned velayat-e faqih - the belief that Islamic scholars should lead the State - and if so, does that mean Khamenei's power base will shrink? From where I sit, Khamenei has scrapped velayat-e faqih and turned Iran into a garden-variety totalitarian state. Even dictatorships need constituents to stay alive, and if the ulama, the learned Islamic clerics, think that the Islamic Republic is no longer Islamic nor a Republic, will they retreat into insular study like they did in Iraq under Hussein? If so, it'll take one of the legs out from under Khamenei's chair, and 3-legged chairs aren't very stable.
It's interesting the Khamenei sent Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami (not to be confused with former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, one of the "good guys") to give the sermon at Jumu'ah in Tehran on Friday, rather than going himself, as most people had expected. Khatami's speech was fire and brimstone that Fred Phelps could be proud of, basically saying that the opposition leaders and protestors were the "enemies of God" and should be dealt with accordingly, which is to say, should be executed. Frankly, it made Khamanei's speech on the prior Friday look downright cuddly, which was probably the point. But was the second point to show that Khamenei hasn't entirely lost the support of the religious establishment at Qom? That's the question of the week.
Secondary question - is Grand Ayatollah (Marja) Sistani, native of Iran and most prominent Marja in Iraq, going to throw his support behind anyone, and if so, would that have any effect? Sistani is respected by everyone in the room - the US likes him for helping to bring Moqtada al-Sadr under control, the Iraqis like him for his work to gather Shi'a support for Iraqi civil society, the Iranians like him as a native son... is he going to get involved or stay out of it? He tried damned hard to stay out of Iraqi politics until it became clear that the clerics at Najaf were needed to restrain the violence. I suspect that he's going to be rather scarce over the next month, or use the US withdraw from Iraqi cities to say, basically, "We have big enough problems in Iraq, I'm not going to talk about Iran today," but if he inserts his own thoughts into this, what effect will that have? I get asked this a lot, and I just don't think Sistani would see any upside to getting involved in this.
On another note - before the election Mousavi was able to get a permit to lead a ceremony marking the assassination of some of the Revolutionary leaders, held at the Ghoba Mosque in Tehran - he masterfully turned it into an opposition rally, which reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi spoke at in person and Mousavi spoke to by cell phone and loudspeaker. Predictably, the Basij and Pasdaran broke it up with violence, but it goes to show that, despite the fact that Mousavi's movement and actions appear to be sharply curtailed, he hasn't given up. The street protests will probably not continue in the fashion that they did after the election (doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results...), but plainly, people have not given up yet.
I will conclude by saying that Western media has basically been run out of Tehran on a rail, and reliable information is VERY difficult to come by. I believe the above to be based on accurate reporting, but any or all of it could be in error. As I've observed before, Iran's draconian limitations on journalists seem to waive the government's right right to the benefit of the doubt.