For years the world has been distressed and not infrequently appalled by the behavior of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Everyone has always known, of course, that he wasn’t the real power in Iran, that he didn’t call the shots on really big issues. This was the prerogative of the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There was nonetheless a commonly held notion, or perhaps a commonly held hope, that the President and the Supreme Leader weren’t in total sync. That the President, the boy, might sometimes be at odds, in substance as well as style, with the Supreme Leader, the man.
Today that hoped for distinction on a number of important issues for Iran and the world generally was very publicly dispelled. The man made clear in no uncertain terms that the boy was his boy. That Ahmadinejad fronted the man’s views perfectly. And that anyone who disputed this—most specifically when it came to an election that was clearly rigged to give the boy the appearance of greater democratic credentials—was going to be in big trouble.
So in the next few days we are likely to see a major test of what in many respects in the most revolutionary idea in centuries—theocratic democracy. The mullahs rule Iran, but in theory do so in keeping with the will of the people, and at the people’s ongoing behest. Past theocracies sometimes had the support of most of their people, but rarely if ever tested that support in free elections. The fact that Iran has not only tried to achieve this astonishing fusion but actually practiced it to a certain degree has been quite extraordinary.
Now we’ll see if it can stand up to its greatest challenge. Or if after all of the men (and they’re all men) who rule in the name of God can see in the will of their own people a truer embodiment of righteous governance than their own notions of who and how to run things.
Both the man and the boy may have to be eased from power if Islamic democracy is to keep from becoming just another failed attempt to put a democratic label on a cruel, self-serving authoritarianism.
The cartoon by Taylor Jones, El Nuevo Dia, Puerto Rico, is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.