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Internal Combustion - -

By Abbas Milani

The New Republic
Internal Combustion by
The Iranian regime's biggest threat may come from the inside.
Post Date Monday, August 3, 2009

Ever since the June 12 election, the world has seen signs of serious rifts in the ranks of the Islamic regime in Iran. The main locus of these tensions was between the regime (led by the triumvirate of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps) and regime defectors like Mir Hossein Moussavi, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami, and Mehdi Karubi. The opposition repeatedly stood up to Khamenei, defying his orders instead of accepting them as absolute and final. For this transgression, almost 2,000 people are still incarcerated, and at least 20 have been killed in prison and in demonstrations.

During the past week, the Iranian political crisis took a surprising new turn, when the first major rift in the ranks of the triumvirate who engineered the June electoral coup became public. The crisis began when Ahmadinejad, still not sworn in as the new president--or, more accurately, before the "consultative" vote of the people in the general election had been confirmed by the supreme leader--decided to name Rahim Mashai, a man widely understood to be his intellectual guru and also his son's father-in-law, to the all important position of first deputy president.

Immediately after the Mashai appointment was made public, a chorus of conservative voices demanded its repeal, claiming that Mashai's apparent sins were unforgivable. A few months ago, he had been accused of saying Islam does not have the ability to cope with twenty-first-century problems, and that Iranians have no natural enmity against the citizens of Israel. Ahmadinejad ignored demands for firing Mashai, defending him as one of the most pious men he has ever had the good fortune to meet. Aside from family ties, the two men share a passion for the messianic return of Shiism's Twelfth Imam.

Khamenei soon sent Ahmadinejad a hand-written note declaring the Mashai appointment null and void. It was a Hokm-e Hokumati, the equivalent of a Papal Bull in Catholicism. Even then, Ahmadinejad chose to ignore the order for a week. The delay caused a minor rebellion in the cabinet, with several ministers, including the powerful ministers of intelligence, labor, and Islamic guidance, demanding that Ahmadinejad sack Mashai. Instead of heeding their advice, Ahmadinejad reportedly left the cabinet meeting in anger, sending Mashai back to chair the rest of the meeting. A few days later, he dismissed the dissenting ministers.

Of the group, the firing of Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejeyee is the most sensitive and important, since the ministry has become a surprising weak link in the regime's apparatus of oppression. During Khatami's presidency in the mid-90s, some of the ministry's rogue elements, particularly those responsible for murder of opposition figures, were tried. Under Mohseni-Ejeyee, appointed by Ahmadinejad to the job in 2005, the ministry has been openly opposed to the broadcast of tortured "confessions" of those arrested during last month's protests, all forced to admit that they had been pawns in a Western master-plan for a "velvet revolution" in Iran. Through leaked stories and occasional comments from "inside sources," the intelligence ministry has been supporting the claims of the opposition--that the rebellion has been locally bred (rather than engineered by meddling foreigners), the result of perceived irregularities in the election. It is not surprising that after firing Mohseni-Ejeyee, Ahmadinejad went over the ministry of intelligence and said he was unhappy with their work. Even his effort to appoint one of Mohseni-Ejeyee's deputies as acting minister backfired when the man refused to accept the job. Ultimately, Ahmadinejad has been forced to become the acting minister himself for the rest of his term.

Even after a week-long delay in acknowledging Khamenei's order, Ahmadinejad still did not fully carry



    
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