Addressing the recent political row in Iran, Geneive Abdo suggests that Western observers should stick to the known knowns in the Islamic Republic:
Ahmadinejad and Mashaie, whom the president hopes will succeed him when his term expires in 2013, envision a future Iran devoid of Islamic orthodoxy. This attempt to take Iran in a new direction has prompted accusations from high-ranking clerics that Ahmadinejad and Mashaie are influenced by religious "deviants" who believe in supernatural powers and djinns, or spirits. In fact, in the past Mashaie has said he can interpret for himself the Islamic texts, such as the Quran, and does not need the clergy -- an enormous threat to the clerical establishment's claim to religious sanction for their hold on power. In response, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi told a group of IRGC officers and staff that, "In order to learn the religion, one must go to scholars of the religion and not to exorcists and monks. Which wise person would accept learning the faith from exorcists and monks instead of scholars of the faith?"Not only would Ahmadinejad and Mashaie's vision lead to the marginalization of Iran's clerics, but it would also make it far less likely that Iran could exert influence in Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon, Palestine and continue to call the shots in Iraq. Without the clerical establishment, Iran would have no religious or moral authority to interfere in these countries, where Iran seeks to extend its political influence in the name of Islam. This is definitely bad news for the United States and other Western governments, which worry that Iran will succeed in extending its influence in the Arab world, particularly after the Arab uprisings.
While this is a downside to Khamenei's triumph in the power struggle, his victory has preserved a system the West might not understand but one that so far remains somewhat predictable. Such is the state of affairs inside Iran's regime that Khamenei and the conservatives the United States once called "hard-liners" are now a safer bet than the wild card that is Ahmadinejad.
I'm on the fence about this, though I believe Abdo makes a compelling case. The only thing worse than doctrinal theocracy might be a kind of lay theocracy done on the fly - there's a predictable awfulness to the current Iranian regime that could potentially worsen were it subject to interpretive awfulness.
Mashaei, on the other hand, has made some relatively encouraging comments about Iran's domestic and international behavior, suggesting that a modern Iran and an Islamic Iran needn't be mutually exclusive.
This, in my mind, is less an ideological rift than a generational one. Iran is a highly dysfunctional and corrupt kleptocracy run, often at very high levels, by clerics with zero business running the day-to-day business of a country. Ahmadinejad has worked to replace these clerics with seemingly more qualified, technocrat-types - he is, keep in mind, an engineer by training - in keeping with what appears to be some kind of 'vision' for a more modern, nationalistic Iran governed by smart, patriotic and pious men with ties to the revolutionary guard (sound like anyone we know?).
Left out of this process, oddly enough, are those most qualified to actually weigh in on Iran's more modern, nationalistic future: the Green Movement. And rather than include the Greens in this national, uh, dialogue, the regime's warring conservatives instead saw past their differences long enough to target and imprison Iran's reformists, lest they get in the way of the important business of reforming Iran. (Welcome to the Byzantine world of Tehranology.)
It's a pity, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger, that both of these conservative factions cannot lose, but I believe that they will, in time - and hopefully at the hands of those whom they've left out of the present in-fight.
(AP photo)
