Obama Is Misreading Iran Domestic Turmoil

The White House is misreading the signals from Iran’s turmoil and may find itself in a box by the September deadline President Barack Obama has set to intensify pressure if Teheran does not offer cooperation.

Following the street demonstrations contesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election, Iranian domestic politics have changed fundamentally and the country has entered a backstage civil conflict among powerful groups of ruling clerics.

Unlike the George Bush administration, Obama is willing to talk to Iran but wants early concessions to stop its nuclear programs and covert meddling in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere.

Failing positive gestures, Obama has said he will try to give pain to Iran through intense international pressure. The White House thinks it is in a position of strength because it sees the recent street protests as proof of the yearning for democracy of ordinary Iranians. It hopes that the forces of reform and freedom are now so strong that the slow domestic process has begun of dethroning religious conservatism and inflexible nationalism.

Non-Americans familiar with Iran disagree. While the yearning among urban middle class Iranians for freedom is real, it was not the main fuel of street protests. They grew from middle class anger at the regime’s corruption and economic mismanagement.

This urban anger was manipulated by senior Iranian clerics, who amassed personal wealth and power usually through corruption over the past three decades. They want to oust Ahmadinejad not because of their love of democracy but because he is the front person for another group of younger clerics who want to dislodge their power.

In normal times, the senior clerics are impregnable because of patronage and wealth. But Ahmadinejad has strong links with rural and small town Iran and the urban poor who thirst for social justice and have little respect for the urban middle classes. So he poses a credible threat.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has allied himself with Ahmadinejad because he sees an opportunity to weaken some clerics who are kingmakers in Iran’s highest ruling councils.

Khamenei’s main target is former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who heads the Assembly of Experts that appoints and removes the supreme leader. Rafsanjani also chairs the Expediency Council, the only body capable of thwarting the Guardian Council, which decides who will run for parliamentary seats.

Rafsanjani and some other powerful clerics support Mir Hossein Mousavi, the recent Presidential election’s runner-up. But most of them faced allegations of corruption and personal enrichment well before the elections.

The Obama White House and US media continue to support Rafsanjani as a moderate and reformer more likely to negotiate in good faith with the West about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and role in its region.

This is a mistake because Rafsanjani is not a democratic reformer. Instead, he has long led a group of clerics trying to protect their privileged positions and wealth. Within Iran, poorer Iranians, who far outnumber the middle class and westernized students, see Ahmadinejad as the real reformer because they believe he is trying to improve social justice.

Ahmadinejad’s main strength is his powerbase in the feared Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia. Both are well-armed paramilitary groups that operate as a terrifying secret service and a special force above the law. Iran’s formal army is a prudent bystander to the sometimes violent power struggle among various power centers within the clerics. But if push came to shove, it is likely to side with its paramilitary colleagues. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, acting joint chief of the armed forces, has already spoken out against the demonstrators.

In 1989, Khamenei succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Revolution. He was appointed as a compromise with the expectation that he would be malleable enough to allow the other powerful clerics to go about their business.

But Khamenei took a first step to secure power relative to Rafsanjani and his cohorts after American troops entered Iraq. He pushed the grab for Presidency by Ahmadinejad, an outsider without a clerical background but with strong roots in the Revolutionary Guards. He is doing it again.

Whether Ahmadinejad runs the Iranian economy into the ground through populism and over-spending remains to be seen. He may also open the doors to new corruption by a different set of clerics. But he is currently perceived as a leader who cares more for the poor and non-urban masses than top clerics.

Eventually, Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani living in Najaf, Iraq, may be the most important influence in this internal power struggle. Najaf is the holiest site of Shiite Islam and the burial place of Imam Ali, founder of Shiite Islam and a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad. Khomeini, founder of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, lived there in exile for 16 years.

Al-Sistani, who has been in Najaf for over 50 years, is silent so far. He believes the religious establishment should not tell government what to do but should remain influential in social affairs. In contrast, theocrats in Iran believe all political power should be concentrated in their hands to ensure purity of Islamist belief and behavior.

But Najaf clerics are the ancient guardians of Shiite Islam. They will not remain silent if democracy seekers in Iran try to take the country too far towards Western values. They are closely watching the domestic power struggle.