The Ayatullah vs. The President

The invective and the encomiums from the white-bearded speaker echoed almost like ritual as thousands of Iranians gathered at Tehran University on Feb. 3 for a Friday prayer marking the 33rd anniversary of the country’s Islamic revolution. Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, who has presided over such ceremonies for 23 years, railed against threats from Israel and the U.S. and praised the country’s nuclear program, all to the thundering approval of the masses below his podium.

Then his speech took an unexpected turn toward the parliamentary elections coming up on March 2. “Officials shouldn’t be fooled by the conspiracies of the enemy,” Khamenei said ominously. “Those people who don’t receive votes should be careful that they don’t get duped like the candidates who didn’t receive votes in [the 2009 presidential elections]. All the candidates and their supporters are responsible for ensuring security when faced with enemy plots.” This wasn’t a threat directed at the opposition Green movement, which has been largely sidelined, with its leaders under house arrest and hundreds of supporters behind bars. By warning against a repeat of the protests that followed the 2009 vote, Khamenei was taking aim at his once favorite political son, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who betrayed no emotion as he sat with dignitaries in the front row of the crowd.

As the U.S. and its allies increase pressure on Iran to freeze its nuclear program, the upcoming elections in the Islamic Republic are revealing a domestic political struggle that may have an impact on the way Tehran goes about dealing with its foreign adversaries. On one side is Khamenei, who is ruthlessly consolidating power; on the other is Ahmadinejad, who after years of anti-Western militancy stands as an unlikely advocate of peaceful engagement with the U.S. The urgency over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions grew on Feb. 22 when inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency abruptly ended their tour of Iran after the government denied them access to a military site and refused to clarify the military dimensions of their nuclear program.

Few are betting on Ahmadinejad. Says Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “Iran has become a one-party system, the party of Khamenei, [and] the most important qualification for aspiring members of parliament in Iran is obsequiousness to the Supreme Leader.” But a critical sector of Tehran’s power structure is showing signs of restiveness: the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the dominant military force in the country, some 120,000 strong, which happens to oversee vast business interests. Though the corps is not monolithic, it has been supportive of Khamenei since he assumed the role of Supreme Leader in 1989. Now, however, some Guards commanders, faced with biting new international sanctions, are increasingly critical of Khamenei’s brinkmanship. If Ahmadinejad and his allies somehow win a majority in the 290-seat parliament, the beleaguered President could once again try to chip away at Khamenei’s authority, perhaps even advocating radical policy goals like dialogue with the U.S. or more-transparent nuclear negotiations.

It is not that Ahmadinejad loves Washington. He just happens to be betting that most Iranian voters want to see an improvement in ties. In 2002, the last time a poll was taken on the subject in Iran, 74% of respondents said they were in favor of normalizing relations. Since then, no one has tried to replicate the poll because the man responsible for conducting it was thrown into jail. Nevertheless, in a likely signal to an Iranian demographic keen on renewed ties, Ahmadinejad mentioned that Iran was ready for talks with the U.S. in nearly every interview he gave during his September road show through New York City for the U.N. General Assembly. Still, the canny politician gave no hint of compromise on Iran’s nuclear program–a sign that his warming toward the U.S. was targeted at a domestic audience that was also proud of the country’s atomic research.

Khamenei has long blocked any attempt by Ahmadinejad to reach out to the West because that breakthrough would give the President enormous political capital at home. If Khamenei’s loyalists come out on top in the vote, as most observers expect, they could move to impeach Ahmadinejad before his term is up next year. “Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are thirsty for each other’s blood,” says Mohsen Sazegara, a founding member of the Revolutionary Guards who now supports the Green opposition. “Khamenei’s inner circle is just waiting in the wings to attack Ahmadinejad. This is a very serious rivalry.”

How did it come to this? Even though Khamenei firmly supported Ahmadinejad in the aftermath of the controversial 2009 presidential vote that paralyzed the country with protests, the two men soon drifted apart. An emboldened Ahmadinejad attempted to find ways to shrink the power of the clergy–a move that was anathema to the Supreme Leader. The President began formulating his own economic and foreign policy and rebuffed Khamenei’s advice. It wasn’t long before he started purging Khamenei loyalists from his Cabinet. The feud spilled into the open last spring when Ahmadinejad tried to fire Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, a close Khamenei ally. Moslehi was reinstated at Khamenei’s behest, and Ahmadinejad showed his disapproval by staying away from Cabinet meetings for over a week.

Then things got bizarre: last spring, Khamenei loyalists accused several Ahmadinejad allies, including chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, of practicing witchcraft and summoning jinn, mystical creatures that exist in a parallel world. Many of this group of loyalists, who have been labeled the “deviant trend” by some hard-line newspapers, were arrested. And Mashaei faces possible jail time for alleged links to a $2.6 billion embezzlement scandal, the largest in Iranian history.

The pressure hasn’t stopped. In early February, the Majlis, or parliament, summoned Ahmadinejad to appear by mid-March for disobeying the Supreme Leader and for mismanaging the economy. It’s the first time a sitting President has been ordered to parliament for questioning. Impeachment hearings could start before the new parliament convenes this summer.

Ahmadinejad’s allies are still taking hits. Last month, the President’s top press adviser, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, was sentenced to one year in jail for insulting Khamenei in a Web posting. Javanfekr is appealing that sentence, but in mid-February he was sentenced to six months’ jail time for a separate article he wrote that criticized a law making head coverings for women mandatory. State censors also blocked access to a number of websites supporting Ahmadinejad, some of which openly ridiculed Khamenei.

This cutthroat environment hasn’t made it easy for Ahmadinejad loyalists to campaign for the parliamentary elections. In fact, the Guardian Council, the governmental body that vets candidates, has already disqualified a number of them. Many of the President’s supporters are now disguising their allegiances and running as independents. “The Intelligence Ministry and other security bodies are highly sensitive about the ‘deviant trend,’ ” says Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Ahmadinejad supporters can’t enter the elections openly. They have to enter in a covert way.”

His allies can be more open about their affiliation in the small towns and rural areas where the President’s just-folks charm has preserved a good measure of his popularity. But Ahmadinejad has also tried to buttress his support through a more time-tested political tactic: cash handouts. In December 2010, Ahmadinejad’s government began a broad program to slash subsidies for fuel, food and other basic goods. The government then circulated those savings as direct payments to ordinary Iranians, roughly $20 per person per month–not a huge sum for urbanites in Tehran but an amount that Iranians in impoverished rural areas were grateful for. “Some of the poorest sectors of Iranian society have become dependent on these subsidies, and they see themselves as being indebted to Ahmadinejad,” says Fereydoun Khavand, an Iran specialist who teaches economics at the Ren Descartes University in Paris. “This would probably lead them to vote for Ahmadinejad in the election.”

For his part, Khamenei can count on the loyalty of devout Iranians who regard him as the leader of the Islamic world. Among those diehard supporters are thousands of young men from the Basij, the paramilitary organization that acts as the Supreme Leader’s muscle. These Basij militiamen played a large role in the crackdown against the protesters of the Green movement in 2009 and would likely be called into the streets again if there is any unrest during the upcoming elections. Animosity toward the U.S. is a fundamental pillar of the Islamic revolution in the eyes of this hardcore group. Khamenei realizes that any rapprochement with Washington on his part would diminish their support for him.

Still, Iran is in the middle of a vicious economic crisis that neither Ahmadinejad nor Khamenei has been able to address. The value of the currency, the rial, has dropped by nearly half against the dollar in the past month, the price of meat has tripled to nearly $30 per kilo, and the price of tea has doubled. In recent weeks, Iranian companies have defaulted on payments for thousands of tons of rice and grain. The Iranian government, in desperation, is now proposing barter arrangements with some companies, particularly in India, where oil and gold would be traded for food products to bypass sanctions. Things will only get worse. The European Union’s embargo on Iranian oil is scheduled to begin in July. In a feeble attempt at tit for tat, Tehran declared that it would cease selling oil to Britain and France. Those two countries, however, buy only a minimal amount of Iranian oil.

The latest round of sanctions has not spared the Revolutionary Guards, which own businesses ranging from car manufacturing to electronics and zinc mines. In January, Hossein Alai, a senior former commander who headed the Guards navy, wrote an unprecedented article in the Etelaat newspaper that noted the similarities between Iran’s current situation and its state in the days before the fall of the Shah. The comparison to Khamenei was not lost on Iranians. “There is a faction within the Revolutionary Guards that is deeply upset about the economic sanctions,” says Sazegara, the former Guards commander. “Khamenei understands the danger. The knife has hit the bone this time, and it’s a real threat for the Islamic Republic.”

Through all the infighting, the regime has maintained a united front against the bellicose threats of Benjamin Netanyahu and the White House’s refrain of “all options are on the table.” Victory on March 2 will only deepen that resistance to external pressure, if not increase the decibels of Khamenei’s hard line. If it provokes an attack, the Supreme Leader may just find a way to profit as the country rallies around him in reflexive patriotism. Says Marwan Muasher, a former Foreign Minister of Jordan: “A strike would resurrect the regime from the dead.”