After a first round of elections that saw the lowest turnout in the
history of the Islamic Republic, the presence in the runoff of areformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and long-time
legislator, brought a part of the moderate electorate back to the polls,
especially in the peripheral areas of the country and this was enough to
win over two ultra-conservative, divided and quarrelsome candidates.
Approximately 30,530,157 (49.8%) of the 61,452,321 eligible voters
participated in the presidential runoff. The final result will have been
influenced by the fact that the new President has an Azeri father and a
Kurdish mother, as well as by his commitment to getting closer to the
West and to softening the application of the law on compulsory veiling,
after years of sanctions and protests that have divided the country and
caused inflation to rise to 33%.
That said, the elected official was selected on the basis of the strict
rules of the Islamic Republic and will therefore respect the indications
of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and of an establishment
largely dominated by extremists, engaged in supporting the war between
Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The promises of openings to the
West, to ease the weight of the sanctions, find a limit in Western fears
that Tehran is enriching uranium for the production of nuclear weapons,
and will have to deal, like everything else, with the results of the
next American elections. It is quite clear that Trump's election would
in any case entail a closure towards the country, whoever he led. In the
meantime, the new leader has addressed the country asking not to be left
alone, aware that the institutions enjoy low consensus and that
everything must be done to regain popularity. The uncertainty about what
will happen in the United States makes it difficult to continue the
indirect talks with President Biden's administration on the possibility
of limiting Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of
sanctions.
Prisoner of the velayat-efaqih
Regardless of the possible good intentions of the new prime minister,
his power is conditioned by the judiciary and legislative branches,
dominated by conservatives and ultraconservatives, torn between them by
fierce struggles, plastically expressed by the contrast between the two
conservative candidates Jalili and Qalibaf, who waged a no-holds-barred
war, which led to their defeat. While the conflict continues, the
country's courts resume issuing death sentences and prison sentences for
opponents, while the spiritual authority of the jurist Velayat-e faqih
(in Persian: ?S ??? ? S ???, "guardianship of the jurist") or more
precisely "cognitive authority (absolute) of the jurist", the Supreme
Leader of the revolution, provides for the government of the State. Ali
Khamenei.
As a Muslim jurist, as a religious expert of the law (shari'a), which is
directly emanated by God, he considers himself the authentic interpreter
of it, in his role as mujtahid. Therefore, he has the task of
supervising every action of the Parliament which must conform to what
the jurist (faqih) believes to be the correct interpretation of the shari'a.
This is an ancient concept of the Twelver Shiite tradition that
recognizes the role of guidance (or even of "custody", of "guardians")
of the faqih, the Islamic jurist, over the community of believers. From
this intuition a complex institutional system is born and takes shape
that is typical of Iranian Shi'ism that uses dissimulation and the
dualism of decision-making processes to manage power.
If this is the articulated and complex structure, it is necessary to
explain how the decision-making processes develop. Well, they are the
result of continuous and constant mediations between the different
components and factions of the clergy, of the politics of the Pasdaran
and of other pressure groups. These are dynamics that in the West we
would describe as consociative, which seek to balance the relationships
between the different power groups in such a way as to conceal the
different weight of the components and factions, to present a unitary
image of the management bodies of society.
In fact, continuous meetings and gatherings follow one another in a
logic that we would say is typical of the clergy, to the point that it
is difficult to perceive and reconstruct the decision-making processes.
The final result of this institutional technique is that there are few,
about 45-50 individuals, mostly ecclesiastics, who are part of the
restricted circle that actually holds executive power, without too many
formalities and institutional rigidities, even if they do not officially
hold important institutional positions.
In light of these considerations, it is clear that the de facto power of
the president is very unstable: in this, Iran is a modern and "Western"
country because even in the West, those who actually manage power are
economic and lobbying circles that operate independently of the
occupation of institutional positions (see, for example, what is
happening in the United States). The consociative nature of the
government structure means that almost the entire Iranian political
spectrum is represented within the various bodies, from moderate
reformism to the most extreme conservative radicalism. These forces have
historically shared a common value that has favored their duration over
time at the top of the State: that of protecting the Islamic Republic
and its revolutionary principles through partial, constant closure to
the outside. Hence the need for continuous "restricted and separate
meetings" aimed at reaching a point of agreement and balance. This
should lead external observers to avoid reading the electoral results as
a more or less decisive victory of conservatives or progressives, of
secular or clerical components. If this is the overall picture, the
Supreme Leader of the Revolution plays a dual role: as an exponent of
the inner circle and also as an impartial mediator between the factions,
implementing a collegial management of power that in fact conflicts with
the totalitarian theory of velayat-efaqih. Furthermore, the inner circle
of power that the President does not influence is the expression of an
articulated structure of the economic and social components of society
that divide the control of affairs. It is a system of vertical
attribution of power that should prevent the emergence of areas of
conflict or overlap, allowing a controlled management of the market
economy in which the bonyad operate. We are referring to the
"foundations" - the equivalent in the Shiite world of the waqf or hubus,
typical of Sunni countries - in fact managed by people coming from the
Pasdaran who have in their hands about 70% of the Iranian economy. These
are members of the popular militia with a strong religious imprint,
desired by the clergy at the time of the revolution, which today manages
the powerful and articulated military and economic system that
represents the backbone of the revolutionary institutional system.
As happens with all revolutionary militias, once the "heroic" phase of
the revolution was over and management of power was acquired, this
organization gradually "became bourgeois" and produced a managerial and
bureaucratic class that lives increasingly independently from the
political and ideological project that produced it, in this case the
Iranian theocratic system. In this context, we must now identify the
forces that are pushing for a gradual normalization in a "moderate"
sense of the Iranian revolution, once the "heroic" and radical phase
represented by Mahmud Ahmadinejad, President of the Republic from 2005
to 2013 and personified today by the two conservative candidates Jalili
and Qalibaf, seems to be exhausted.
Today the country is in the hands of the Pasdaran who manage a huge and
complex system of military industries, industries that produce consumer
goods and provide social services; as a whole the system constitutes a
sort of State within the State, with an ability to direct the vote and
to exert an unparalleled influence in the country. Although loyalty to
the head of the State has never been officially questioned, many and
increasingly evident are the political positions within the Pasdaran,
among which, in recent years, moderation and pragmatism have prevailed.
One can speak of a moderate shift among those involved in the management
of economic activities, with the support of a significant part of the
members of the purely military structure and especially of those
inserted in the administrative ganglia of the country. The "niche"
units, cells and radical groups inclined to support fundamentalist
choices and Islamic revolutionary principles, remain on increasingly
conservative and hostile positions. Among these, the groups linked to
Ansar-e Hezbollah, a "plainclothes" paramilitary force, sadly known for
being used to quell protests and reformist tendencies, stand out; the
Jerusalem Brigade and the Basij volunteer militias, established to carry
out special and secret military operations, for example by offering
support to Õizbullåh in Lebanon, or to intervene in Iraq and Syria
against Sunni militias and Daesh troops, to quell internal revolts and
any opposition to the regime.
But to understand what is happening today, it is necessary to remember
that the Iranian revolution is not the work of all the Shiite clergy,
but only of a minority that we could define as "fighting", gathered
around Khomeini, who did not resort to the top of the Shiite clergy, but
to its youngest and most politically active members, under the guidance
of an ayatollah.
The "fighting clergy" therefore did not operate as the expression of a
unitary and national Shiite religious movement, but as a separate and
dissident rib. Even today there are many high-ranking members of the
Iranian Shiite clergy who blame or openly condemn both the mixing of
politics and religion and the very principle of velayatefaqih, the
spiritual, institutional and constitutional cornerstone of the Islamic
Republic of Iran.
Today this component, if only for anagraphic reasons, seems destined for
extinction, while we do not see emerging dolphins or young ayatollahs
capable of taking up its legacy also due to the fact that the command
group of the religious component of the regime has progressively become
more and more isolated. It no longer has, as in the time of Khomeini, a
figure capable of personifying marja'iat, or the Supreme Guide of the
revolution. Ali Khamenei was acclaimed ayatollah, but his ijtihad (legal
credentials) is the object of criticism and considered not very
authoritative on a religious level.
On the other hand, the most erudite component of the Shiite clergy has
always shown partial, if not total, opposition to the totalizing vision
of the velayat-efaqih. Even more controversial is the representativeness
of the marja (literally those who are "sources of inspiration"), and
consequently of the great ayatollahs, or ayatollah-uzma. It follows that
the alternative in the management of power and the new leaders could
have come from the environment of the Pasdaran - mostly secular and made
up of technocrats - who would have ended up freeing themselves from the
velayat-efaqih, which already constitutes an obstacle to their ambitions
to become the ruling class. Thus the Iranian revolution - like all
revolutions that have become power - would have been submerged by
technocracy and the management apparatus of the State and the economy.
On the other hand, at the origins the Iranian revolution was only
partially "Islamic" and predominantly secular and lay in the composition
of the forces that determined it. Some of the motivations that had
genuinely pushed millions of people to rebel against the Shah were
betrayed, imposing on the country a political and religious experiment
that was regressive with respect to its development.
Women's struggle and class struggle
However, the new president's rise to power coincides with a significant
event: the death sentence of Sharife Mohammadi, 45, a trade union
activist, by the Revolutionary Court of Rasht, a town in the northwest
of the capital, on the political charge of "treason". According to the
Islamic Republic, this charge applies to those involved in the "struggle
and armed action" against the fundamental principles of the regime.
Sharife, a woman and trade unionist, is accused of belonging to the
Coordination Committee for the Creation of Labour Organizations, founded
in April 2004 by political and trade union activists. The court accuses
the Committee of being affiliated with the Communist Party of Iranian
Kurdistan, Komleh, which opposes the Islamic Republic with the aim of
creating a federal Iran, a project strongly opposed not only by those in
power, but also by Iranian public opinion.
Defending Sharife is above all the union of Vahidi, the public transport
company of Tehran, which considers the accusations false and
instrumental and demands the immediate release of the unionist who is
very active in the demands in the company. Also supporting her is a
document signed by 16 women political prisoners locked up in the
infamous Evin prison, including Nasirn Mohammadi, a Nobel Prize winner.
The accusation is not unusual because beyond the charges it aims to hit
and repress those vanguards who in the workplace, despite the strict
surveillance exercised by both the police and the management bodies,
support the struggles for better living and working conditions. The
growing unease of the population makes those in power believe that the
time has come to intimidate and force women to stop demanding their
rights, both as women and as workers, if they want to prevent the
movement "Women, Life, Freedom" from gaining ever greater consensus.
We must not forget that Iran is a country with a largely young and very
young population, that the traditions of struggle of the workers'
movement and of women themselves are well rooted and have produced the
economic and social growth of the country. The problem of Iranian
national identity is also very lively and significant: we must not
forget that the recent popular uprisings, the women's protests in the
streets began in the areas inhabited by the Kurds, the Belucci and other
ethnic groups and then spread throughout the country. The women's
struggle has managed to act as a glue and unify a discontent that is
present in a segmented way and so Iranians of different ethnic groups
have protested for the rights of all. What is important is to be able to
see the originality and the historical and global significance of this
struggle. The men who take to the streets in many cities know well that
the fight for women's rights is also the fight for their own freedom:
the oppression of women is not a special case, it is the moment in which
the oppression that permeates the entire society is most visible. Even
the protesters who are not Kurds clearly see that the oppression of the
Kurds places limits on their own freedom: solidarity with the Kurds is
the only way and an obligatory passage for freedom in Iran. A positive
outcome of the mobilization is possible only if the fight for civil
rights is combined with economic ones and all the conditions are there
due to the reduction of well-being and the impoverishment of society as
a whole.
In our opinion, these are significant signals that Pezeshkian must
consider, as he tries to form his government. The Iranians do not have
great hopes for changes in social rights, but everyone hopes that the
new president will be able to improve the situation, especially the
economic one.
The Editorial Staff
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/07/20/lenigma-iraniano/
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A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
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