Now that Iran is making it to the front pages in dramatic fashion again, I feel compelled to review a bit of history and discuss the current context of the recent violence. Here are the main characters I'm going to highlight here: Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ali Khamenei, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Hossein Ali Montazeri.
The Iranian Revolution contained a ferocity and a level of violence directly proportional to the oppression of the Shah's regime. As a historical figure the Shah compares well to Louis XVI or Czar Nicholas, and the Iranian Revolution also compares well to the French and Russian Revolutions. In this context, the violence and turmoil of 1979-1980 was expected. Saddam Hussein exacerbated the violence and Revolutionary fervor by attacking Iran in September of 1980. Saddam had Western and even Soviet backing, and the UN did nothing about his naked aggression--this is why a generation of Revolutionary Guards tend to have some of the worldviews they do (Ahmadinejad included).
During the Iran/Iraq war, Mir Hossein Mousavi was Prime Minister, Ali Khamenei was President, and Hashemi Rafsanjani was Speaker of the Majlis (Iran's Parliament). Hossein Ali Montazeri was the right hand of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, and regarded as his successor throughout the 1980s. The Iran/Iraq war raged for eight years, and a settlement was reluctantly reached in August of 1988. This war cost Iran in the neighborhood of 500,000 lives and it made the nation seriously indebted to the Army and the Revolutionary Guards.
In 1989, Hossein Ali Montazeri had a serious falling out with Khomeini over mass executions of MEK prisoners and the Salman Rushdie fatwa and subsequently lost his position. Mir Hossein Mousavi retired from politics and the position of Prime Minister was eliminated. It was no secret that Khamenei and Mousavi did not care for each other. Hashemi Rafsanjani, ever the political wheeler dealer, sought to place Khamenei in as Khomenei's successor. Khamenei became an Ayatollah mysteriously quickly (a position equivalent to an Islamic Phd, and many argue he never qualified). When Khomenei died in June, Khamenei was elevated to Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts shortly thereafter.
1989 was a turning point in the history of the Islamic Republic. They could have taken a very different direction then, but the elevation of Khamenei was to prove a very conservative force and over his career he has sided with hard-line Ayatollah Yazdi and similar thinkers along with a series of Revolutionary Guard careerists, of which Ahmadinejad is the latest. To their credit, this conservative ruling clique has played the lower classes and the devout against the middle of Iranian society. This is really what has kept them in power. Here are some examples: Literacy rate in 1979: 47%, Now: nearly 90%. University students in Iran in 1979: >200,000, Now: over 1,500,000. In addition, a great number of highway, electricity, and water projects have reached remote areas in ways that the Shah and his corrupt cronies never dreamed of delivering. A great summary of this can be found here: Evand Abrahamian CUNY.
Returning to Hossein Ali Montazeri. After his fall, he became a consistent critic of the government. Tirelessly he pointed out their abuses of power and their failure to live up to the ideals of the Revolution. Over the course of the 1990s the shadowy forces of the conservative ruling clique learned to hide and sometimes not hide their hand of oppression. Critics were silenced through "heart attacks" or sometimes they were assassinated by "religious fanatics" and left with their tongues cut out. To see a chronicle of such actions and more, read Shirin Ebadi's Iran Awakening. Although not directly connected, the spirit of Montazeri reached mainstream Iranian politics with the surprise and landslide election of the smiling mullah Mohammed Khatami in 1997 as President. The Reform Movement began in earnest, but Khatami was thwarted on just about every move he made. The only changes that occurred in the 1997-2005 period were some relaxation of dress codes and other trivial things. Naked oppression did recede too however. (It should be noted that here in the US Khatami's election was greeted with close to nothing, and when W became President, he put Khatami's Iran in the Axis of Evil after they substantially helped with information and logistics in Afghanistan.)
In 2005, Khatami could not run again. Rafsanjani tried, but was defeated by surprise newcomer, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It should be noted that one of the biggest reasons for Ahmadienjad's win in 2005 was apathy. Many Iranians were bitterly disappointed with the level of change under Khatami, so they concluded that it did not matter who was President. (Boy, were they wrong, sound familiar?) Voter turnout was very low in the initial election of 2005 and the runoff a week later.
In 2009, there was more than one important election. In March, the leadership position of the Assembly of Experts was due for a vote. The Assembly of Experts appoints the Supreme Leader, and has general oversight power. They are supposed to meet twice yearly. Hashemi Rafsanjani has lead this body for the better part of two decades. The Ahmadinejad/Khamenei coalition made a serious effort to put their man Ayatollah Yazdi aka "The Crocodile" at the top of this body. They failed. Rafsanjani prevailed by over 2 to 1 in the voting, and he will lead this body until 2014. It is likely that the Assembly of Experts has many Montazeri sympathizers and other serious clerics who doubt the validity of the Revolutionary Guard-Khamenei/Ahmadinejad government. Regarding the other important election of 2009--I do not think I have to summarize what happened, but I do wish to point out one thing. Many Iranians believe that Khamenei tipped his hand and revealed his bias toward the RGs and Ahmadinejad and has exposed his illegitimacy. This, however, does not necessarily mean that the Islamic Republic is illegitimate--it means that Khamenei is a usurper. The situation can be corrected within the construct of the existing constitution.
The Assembly of Experts is one reason why the current crisis could easily result in change that maintains the Islamic Republic. Many comments in recent diaries equate the current government with clerics, however this is not accurate. There is no way to know for certain, but I would posit that a majority of clerics in Iran no longer side with the Ahmadinejad/Khamenei coalition, and the Assembly of Experts March election is the most concrete evidence of this possibility. It is 100% accurate to note, however, that some of the most virulent and effective criticism of the government has come from clerics. Beginning with Grand Ayatollah Motazeri--the man whose death has sparked these recent outbursts and continuing with Grand Ayatollah Saanei (he has a website translated in English: See Here), Ayatollah Taheri, and quite possibly a majority of the Assembly of Experts. In addition, yesterday's protests seem to have the participation of devout followers. See Here: December 27th. A coalition which couples the followers of the various Reform Ayatollahs with the overwhelming youth of the Green Movement will present the most serious problem for the ruling elite, while at the same time does not mean "secular" government or the imminent fall of the Islamic Republic.
To paraphrase a recent NYT Roger Cohen piece: Anyone who says they know what will happen in Iran is lying. I do not have a crystal ball, but I do think that predictions of the fall of the Islamic Republic of Iran are premature. To lay my cards completely on the table, I do not think it is preferable either. Iran, if you take out the Internet connected, is still a traditional and developing nation. A majority of its' people are still devout Shi'a and they would be, with or without, government sanction. As a nation, they have a great deal of resources, human and otherwise, but they need to develop on their own course. That course may not include what we in the West typically understand as "secular democracy" but that does not mean that progress is not being made. It is up to the people of Iran, Green Movement, Reform, religious, old, middle-aged and young to chart their own course and live with each other as they choose. We intervened once before, and we all remember how that turned out.