More on Understanding Iran: The Conflict is not Just Intra-Elite, but Inter-Institutional
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Monday, June 22, 2009
I have focused on the issue of intra-elite conflict in most of my commentary on Iran, noting that the drama of the street protests is not ultimately where the endgame will be located. A comment to one of my posts yesterday from Matthew Shugart amplified this point by noting that the intra-elite conflict (i.e., the fact that the major players here, i.e., Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, Mousavi and Rafsanjani, et al. are all major long-term elites, and none are outsiders assailing the status quo elites) is also playing out within the state with differing institutional forces in play.
To wit: Khamenei is the Supreme Leader, but Rafsanjani is head of the Assembly of Experts, which oversees the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council. Theoretically the Assembly of Experts (which consists of 86 clerics) can dismiss the Supreme Leader. As such, not only do we have a situation in which elites are at odds, but one in which key elites have independent power resources that they can attempt to deploy to their own political ends. This does not mean that either will be successful nor that the resources in question are of equal power. Indeed, we may find out exactly how supreme the Supreme Leader is before this is all said and done or we may discover that other Iranian institutions are more robust than we might have otherwise thought.
Back to the Assembly of Experts: Matthew wrote about the last election of the Assembly here back in 2006 and noted the following (the whole post, btw, is worth reading):
The one clear formal role of the Assembly of Experts is to select the Supreme Leader when that position becomes vacant. The Assembly also has the formal power to oversee and even dismiss the sitting Supreme Leader, but no one expects that the current occupant of that position, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is in any jeopardy of being removed or seriously restrained by the winners of today’s Experts elections. In the sense that this institution has formal powers of supervision that it is not known to exercise this is, of course, an indicator of less-than-full institutionalization. That is, the relative autonomy of the Supreme Leader from oversight and the apparent security of his (life) tenure suggests “top-down” authority is a good deal stronger than “bottom up,” where the “top” is the Supreme Leader himself. This is a rather unremarkable statement: Almost all popular commentary on Iran assumes that the Supreme Leader is, well, supreme.So is the Assembly of Experts therefore meaningless? Maybe, but I don’t think so. For one thing, one of the reasons its powers are limited is that the candidates for it–while popularly elected–are vigorously screened by a body known as the Guardian Council, which is a panel of twelve clerics, of whom six are appointed by the Supreme Leader and the other six by the elected parliament (Majles). It is easy to look at such top-down screening of candidates for a body like the Assembly of Experts and therefore conclude that the latter must be irrelevant. I would conclude the opposite.
Report: Rafsanjani considering alternative ayatollah council
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Published: 06.22.09, 14:04
Former Iranian President Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered to be the second most important figure in the country's regime, is looking into different ways to end the political crisis in Iran, and is mulling the possibility of setting up a new religious body, Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Monday.
According to the report, the former president and head of the cleric-run Assembly of Experts who is also one of defeated reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi's top supporters, has relocated from the flammable capital of Tehran, to the Shiite holy city of Qom, where the country's religious leaders sit.
The London-based newspaper reported that Rafsanjani arrived in the city a few days ago and met with several religious leaders and members of the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for monitoring Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The assembly came up with a number of possible ways to solve the crisis in the country, that erupted following the June 12 election results which the opposition claimed was rigged. One proposed solution was the establishment of an alternative religious council, made up of several top ayatollahs, in a move against Khamenei.
"This move is meant to protect the regime from the dangers that threaten it," the source quoted by the paper said, citing danger that a deepening of the crisis would lead to greater polarization and put the regime at risk.
The source continued to say, "In light of the constitutional authority Rafsanjani and the Assembly of Experts hold, it is their duty to examine all propositions.