Iran: Reformists crave reconciliation

international | anti-capitalism | other press Monday August 08, 2011 13:04 by John Cornford

Yassamine Mather is interviewed by  Mark Fischer on developing divisions in the Iranian Regime and the failure of the leading reformists to challenge the existing institutions. Full text at link.

Given its potential importance, it seems odd that there has been so little said in the western media about the ongoing conflict between Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supreme religious leader, Ali Khamenei. Why is this?

It can perhaps be explained by the attitude of the US administration, which seems to be playing a waiting game. Obviously, they will have followed these disputes, but they expect the system to disintegrate without much intervention from the US and at the moment they have other countries to worry about in the region.
 
However, this is a serious, ongoing struggle which shows no signs of abating and has actually started a process of political differentiation within the green movement between leaders looking for ‘reconciliation’ with the regime and the more militant, intransigent sections of its base. A number of developments indicate the scale of the crisis.

Just a month ago, Hamidreza Tarraghi, a member of the conservative Motalefeh party, announced that Iran’s supreme leader, ayatollah Khamenei, had appointed a panel to investigate “legal violations committed by the current administration”. Over the last two years, the majles, Iran’s Islamic parliament, has repeatedly accused Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government of violating the constitution. The Iranian president has countered by asserting that his administration is among the most law-abiding in the history of the Islamic Republic.
 
However, since Ahmadinejad’s well-publicised dispute with Khamenei over the appointment of ministers, every word that has passed the lips of the Iranian president has prompted criticism from the Islamic Republic’s clerical elite. Most recently, 100 MPs presented the speaker with a petition to summon him before parliament to answer questions over ‘irregularities’, such as the delay in establishing new ministries and accusations of being part of a so-called “deviant current” - the term used to describe the ideas of Ahmadinejad’s controversial chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. Meanwhile, a number of Ahmadinejad’s closest allies, including his nominee as deputy minister for foreign affairs, have been arrested and accused of financial corruption or links to the “deviant current”.
 
When ultra-conservative clerics called for the abolition of co-education in universities for the new academic year, Ahmadinejad attempted, bizarrely, to position himself amongst the ‘modernisers’. He called for the immediate cancellation of plans to segregate the sexes at selected universities and called the move “shallow and unwise” on his website