by Mehmet Rami
American and Israeli flags will be burned galore, chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” will fill the sky. Quds Day, as is the case with so much of the Islamic Republics’ politics, will be a display of a stillborn humanitarianism, a modus operandi where legitimate injustices and pains within the global systemare expressed only after they are embroidered with a hateful, racist rhetoric. QudsDay is thus deplorable, it will make neocons across the world laugh under their breaths, and it will give Netanyahu enough speaking points for weeks—and rightly so.
None of this, of course, is terribly surprising for anyone with some knowledge of the way the Islamic Republic is run. Iran’s Rahbar(For “Supreme Leader”, whichever ambitious translator’s rendering of a word meaning “guide, leader” it is, makes a cleric-politician sound like a Power Rangers villain) Ali Khameneiis known to be fond of “Death to…” chants interrupting his speeches, and is all too happy to make a statement to the same effectevery once in a while. He claimed that Israel “will not see next 25 years” last September, and leaders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the closest allies of Khamenei and his fellow hardliner clerics, echoed the promise earlier this week as a sorts of Quds Day present.
Obviously, the only party here who “will not see next 25 years” is Khamenei himself, who is getting on at 76. And while the Western world itself will be much more interested in seeing the burning of flags and the hurling of insults by an irreconcilable enemy, things much subtler and more consequential have been happening in the world of Iranian politics this spring.
The best publicized of these events were the two elections for Iran’s parliament (more accurately its “Islamic Consultative Assembly”) and the Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing and supervising the Supreme Leader. Both elections have resulted in the ascendancy of numerous moderate candidates, despite the fact that almost half the candidates, most of them reformists or moderates, were disqualified by the Guardian Council appointed (directly or indirectly) by Khamenei—-in fact, so many moderates and conservatives were disqualified that the pro-Rouhani “List of Hope” had to include a number of conservative candidates.
Western media outlets were quick to report the election results as a victory for Rouhani, understandably as the pro-Rouhani list managed to push a number of prominent conservatives, some of them opponents of the President’s nuclear deal with Western powers, out of the parliament. But under the Iranian political system, conservatives as they lost their majority were replaced not only by Rouhani’s moderate or reformist allies. A large number of independents -whose allegiances are often unclear until the parliament actually convenes, and after then change on an issue-to-issue basis- were also elected, and remain the effective kingmakers in parliament. The actual complexity of the situation was made a lot more clear when hard-liners in both the parliament and the Assembly of Experts successfully rallied enough support to defeat reformist candidates in elections for both parliament speaker and chair of the Assembly of Experts.
However confusing these developments may sound, they are indicators of a dynamic landscape where, despite the countless prevalent anti-democratic features of the system, democratic and legitimate tools of coalition building and political struggle are also prominently utilized. It should be remembered also that neither the parliament nor the Assembly of Experts are the most important centers of power in Iran—Khamenei can overrule the former and is, of course, not actually “supervised” by the latter.At the end of the day, these elections may be the most important as indicators that Rouhani, along with figures like former presidents Akbar HashemiRafsanjani and Mohammad Khatemi who have endorsed the pro-Rouhani lists, continues to retain his popular support.
And this makes other news from Iran in the months before Quds Day both more understandable and more interesting. An unusually large number of recent incidents saw President Rouhani and Ayatollah Khamenei at clear, if subtly expressed, disagreement. Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes that this is, perhaps, because Rouhanihas “become more determined and firmer … he talks about issues that he refused to address in the past” as Iranian daily Aftab-a Yazd argued; but also because Khamenei “has become more persistent in expressing his views” according to the former Iranian MP Ahmad Salamatian. The points on which Rouhani and Khamenei have differed range from February’s candidate disqualifications to the importance of learning English in school, from the limits of morality policing in Tehran to the future of the country’s nuclear deal. A pro-Rouhani newspaper was shut down just last week, while Rouhani himself has recently pressed a court caseagainst a leading conservative daily critical of his administration. Khamenei complained of slow economoic recovery (true, and a big problem for moderates as the implementation of the nuclear deal has become much bumpier than expected) while Rouhani boasted that his country has seen its lowest inflation levels in the past 25 years (also true). The fact that Khamenei has been picking these fights is not unique in and of itself–he has, in efforts to consolidate power and steer the political agenda, also derailed Rafsanjani, Khatemi, and even Rouhani’s conservative precedent Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Nevertheless, coming right after a strong reaffirmation of popular support in Rouhani’s moderate policies and a popular rejection of hard-liner factions, it marks the beginning of a new phase in Iran’s politics.
After all, Rouhani himself stands for reelection in less than a year. Rumours that he would be disqualified from doing so by the Guardian Councilhave already risen and were immediately denied; but Rouhani was recently compelled to stress in a press conference that there was no rift between Khamenei and the Presidency. Rumours that Ahmedinejad is also considering a run are still alive; but considering the economic trainwreck Ahmedinejad dropped in his successor’s hands in 2013, he is the least of Rouhani’s worries. With unresolved social issues, slow economic recovery due to structural problems as well as ongoing hesitations of international investors regarding Iran, and constant threats by Khamenei to “set fire” to the nuclear deal that is the president’s signature achievement, Rouhani and his moderate and reformist allies will have to work hard in the next year at retaining popular support, solidifying their own coalition, and not provoking or creating justification for a full-on assault by Khamenei and his hardliners.
Perhaps even some of the Quds Day pomp was a display of the divergences amongst Iran’s leaders that this spring has underlined. Where Khamenei and his military allies continued with the usual violent rhetoric surrounding the event, Rouhani simply called for “more unity” amongst Muslims, titling the day a “call by Imam Khomeini”, not mentioning his successor Khamenei and keeping his criticism of Israel and Zionism within politically understandable –if harsh– territory.
That is not to say that his message will ultimately win, or even that it was the one more widely heard. Khamenei and his allies continue to hold most critical positions of power in the Iranian government; and the power networks they have forged have proven airtight so far. Only time and the skill with which more moderate politicians walk the tightrope that is Iranian politics –and of course, the Iranian people– will tell what political paradigm will emerge. But in the meanwhile, as this spring’s elections and disagreements show, we should know better than to listen to those would cast Iran as a monolithic “Axis-of-Evil” entity.
We’d be much better served to remember that Khamenei’s words, while the most powerful, are not the only ones spoken in the country—much better served if we try and look behind the burning flags.