Power struggle in Iran

The current power struggle is within the dominant conservative strain in the Iranian elite. Hard-line clerics and their supporters in the security services view Ahmadinejad and his protégé, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, as dangerously liberal on social issues and in their approach to the US and Israel, and dangerously unorthodox on Islam. The views of the two camps on the nuclear programme are not far apart, although direct negotiations are said to be more likely with Ahmadinejad as President than with a replacement from Khamanei’s supporters.

In fact, the power struggle is not so much about policy as about the personal power of two politicians facing each other across the fault line in the Islamic Republic: the contradiction between theocracy and republicanism. Analysts describe the present split in the regime as serious. Ahmadinejad is likely to be impeached or, at least, to be unable to impose his candidate as his successor.

Ahmadinejad’s probable defeat may result in a further consolidation of the power of the hard-line clerics surrounding Ayatollah Khamanei and, particularly of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). This development would take Iran further down the road to being a military/clerical dictatorship. How far Iran can go in that direction without provoking a serious popular uprising is not clear. As long as the Revolutionary Guards remain loyal to the Supreme Leader, Khamanei’s position will remain virtually unassailable, but the Revolutionary Guard’s power is increasing relative to the Supreme Leader, too.