With a Friday prayer sermon by a former president and a call for a national referendum on the government’s legitimacy by another, the drama and crisis in Iran following the disputed elections are not over yet. When he spoke on Friday, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said many Iranians have doubts about the election and the aftermath was a “crisis.” On Sunday, the reformist former president Mohammad Khatami praised Mr. Rafsanjani’s words and said a referendum would help restore trust in the Republic. The actions breathed new life into the opposition.
Mr. Rafsanjani is an influential cleric believed to be the second most powerful person in Iran and his speech was historic. He called for the release of people arrested during recent protests and the removal of restrictions on the press and free speech. In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Shaul Bakhash, a professor at George Mason University, said Mr. Rafsanjani “was cautious, but the reaction has been quite electric and perhaps unintentionally, he reopened the whole debate. He strengthened the hand of the opposition and kept alive the claim that the election was tampered with and is in some ways illegitimate.”
After Friday prayers, Roger Cohen, a columnist for The New York Times, argued that popular anger has not abated and “protest and debate in Iran will continue for some time.”
Mr. Rafsanjani’s speech, however, was barely shown on Iranian public television. Elham Gheytanchi, a teacher of sociology at Santa Monica College, and Babak Rahimi, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego, wrote in Foreign Policy that the government’s stifling of dissent and attempts to discredit the opposition show that “Iran’s crisis of legitimacy has reached its apotheosis.”
Of course none of this means the opposition has the upper hand. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader who has openly supported President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and confirmed the results of the election, warned critics on Monday. “The elite should be watchful, since they have been faced with a big test. Failing the test will cause their collapse,” said Khamenei. “Anybody who drives the society toward insecurity and disorder is a hated person in the view of the Iranian nation, whoever he is.”
And while there have been disagreements among elite clerics, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps seems committed to Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. The Revolutionary Guards enjoy economic, political and social power and play an important role in quelling dissent.
Karim Sadjadpour, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted that “the institution of the Revolutionary Guards has eclipsed the institution of the clergy, in terms of their political and economic clout. So while the cleavages amongst clerical elite is certainly significant, what would be a far more fatal blow to Ahmadinejad and Khamenei would be open dissent amongst the Revolutionary Guard elite, which we haven’t yet seen.”
For more, listen to The NewsHour discussion with Afshin Molavi, a fellow at the New America Foundation, and Hooman Majd, the author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran.
Photo from Ali Rafiei/AFP/Getty Images and clip from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
