The last few
weeks have seen an unprecedented public dispute between the president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader Ali Khamenei. The dispute
officially erupted over Ahmadinejad’s dismissal of Heydar Moslehi, the
minister of intelligence who was fired by Ahmadinejad (officially he
resigned himself) on April 17, but was then reinstated later the same
day by a direct decree from Khamenei.
The last few
weeks have seen an unprecedented public dispute between the president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader Ali Khamenei. The dispute
officially erupted over Ahmadinejad’s dismissal of Heydar Moslehi, the
minister of intelligence who was fired by Ahmadinejad (officially he
resigned himself) on April 17, but was then reinstated later the same
day by a direct decree from Khamenei. Following Khamenei’s decision to
reinstate Moslehi – that was done in a particularly humiliating manner
first in a personal letter to Moslehi and then in a public address –
Ahmadinejad embarked on an 11 day boycott of his cabinet meetings and
many other official meetings.
Protests in the beginning of 2010A
public war immediately erupted between different media outlets loyal to
one of the two sides. On the one side there were the media outlets
close to Ahmadinejad, the most prominent of those being IRNA (Islamic
Republic News Agency), which tried to downplay the conflict claiming
that there had been no confrontation between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.
On the other side were the pro-Khamenei papers led by Kayhan – the most
influential conservative paper that is also under the direct control of
the supreme leaders’ office – which embarked on a fierce campaign
against the president. Contradictory allegations of fraud and shady
agreements flooded the pages of almost all newspapers.
Many
websites, especially on Ahmadinejad’s side were blocked, hacked or
filtered. The conflict though was not confined to the media alone. Two
people close to Ahmadinejad’s main ally, Esfandiar Mashaeir, have been
arrested. At the same time in Parliament, a motion was passed by 216 of
the 290 members of parliament demanding the impeachment of the
president. Although such motions and resolutions do not necessarily mean
that an impeachment is imminent, they serve to underline the depth of
the conflict.
Real threats were also sent out by all sides. Major
General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Revolutionary Guards’ top commander
said: "the perverted team will definitely rise up against the
Revolution." [The "perverted team" is a phrase recently adopted by
Ahmadinejad’s critics to refer to the president’s chief of staff and
close ally Esfandiar Rahimi Mashaei and his supporters.] Jafari added,
"They will definitely be defeated, but how this will happen is not clear
yet."
The Ahmadinejad side was not passive either. In an article
on Dolat-e Yar by an unknown author, the president’s critics were
threatened. One version of the article divided those critics into three
groups: (1) those who expected him to grant them concessions, especially
economic, and have been attacking him because he refused; (2) those who
sense that Iran is going to experience very difficult economic
conditions this year and are therefore trying to distance themselves
from him; and (3) those who want to paralyze his administration. The
article then threatened that since Ahmadinejad is not prepared to make
any concessions, we may soon see an "astounding confrontation in the
nation, compared to which the sedition [Green Movement] will be child’s
play." At least three versions of the article appeared over a 24-hour
period perhaps marking a farcical retreat by the Ahmadinejad camp. The
second version warned that Ahmadinejad "will destroy" his critics. The
third version posed the rhetorical question, "Will Ahmadinejad destroy
his critics? Only the future will answer the question, and people are
waiting for the answer."
Although the truthfulness of all media
reports is under question in these times in Iran, a report on Saham
News, a website close to Mehdi Karroubi and his National Trust Party,
gives a good picture of scope of the crisis within the state. The
website reported a clash between supporters of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei
near the annual book fair exhibition hall. They reportedly attacked each
other with belts and other items, causing many injuries, according to
the report, and cursed at each other using extremely profane language.
Police reportedly stood aside and watched. Most of the clashes occurred
at the subway station exit next to the exhibition. When a reporter said
to the police sarcastically that, "You have made a great effort [to
separate the two sides]," a policeman responded, "What are we supposed
to do?"
The run up
Clearly the split goes beyond the
dismissal of the intelligence minister. In fact it has been brewing
under the surface ever since the presidential elections in 2009 where it
initially developed. But once matured, the split has developed a logic
of its own.
Only a few months after the elections, when the regime
was still tied up in crushing the movement on the streets, the first
signs of this division were seen when Khamenei issued an order
overruling Ahmadinejad’s appointment of Esfandiar Rahimi Mashaei as his
first vice president (there are eight vice presidents in Iran).
Mashaei,
whose daughter is married to Ahmadinejad’s son, has since then been the
centre of a series of disputes including the present one. For instance
Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari, Revolutionary Guards commander
said a few weeks ago: "[A] diversionary trend [Mashaei] is hiding behind
a popular, accepted and beloved figure [President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad]…This movement will definitely act against the [Islamic]
revolution in the future."
The reason for Mashaei being the target
for most the attacks of Ahmadinejad’s opponents are not just because he
is Ahmadinejad’s closest ally. Most importantly for his opponents,
Ahmadinejad is too difficult to attack. Firstly the conservative faction
put their full weight behind Ahmadinejad during the election campaign
making it hard for them all of a sudden to turn 180 degrees against him.
Secondly, unlike most parts of the regime, Ahmadinejad has a certain
following amongst some layers of the population, although a very weak
and small one.
Ahmadinejad was pulled up from relative obscurity
by the conservatives, probably on the basis of a compromise between the
different factions within the regime, as a presidential candidate in
2005, but he started to develop his own base through a series of
populist measures. As a result he also demanded more control over the
state apparatus and the budget.
It was this endeavour that was
blocked by Khamenei in the summer of 2009. It was clear that Ahmadinejad
wanted a bigger share of power than Khamenei and the rest of the
conservative faction (consisting of everyone else, from the speaker of
the parliament to the high command of the Revolutionary Guards) could
offer. But that didn’t mean that Ahmadinejad and Mashaei have given up
their ambitions.
Over the last two years there has been an
increasing attempt at consolidating power in the office of Ahmadinejad.
When Ahmadinejad realized he could not appoint just any minister he
wanted, he appointed special presidential emissaries to the different
ministries. He tried to do the same in the Iranian embassies around the
world, although he was blocked by Khamenei. In practice he tried to
develop parallel state structures directly loyal to him.
At the
same time he tried to install loyal elements in all the existing
ministries. For instance his foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who
was believed to be more loyal to the supreme leader, was humiliatingly
fired in a public statement while he was on an official visit to
Senegal.
It has also been clear that Mashaei was being primed in
order to run for president in 2013. When asked about this, Mashaei
responded: "Ask about my candidacy for the presidential election six
months before the elections"
Challenging the clergy
In his
quest for state power Ahmadinejad understood that he needed to have a
social base of his own. The protests over the elections were a great
warning for him that he had to differentiate himself from the rest of
the regime, especially the clergy. Thus over the last few years
Ahmadinejad has stepped up his nationalist profile in contrast to the
Islamic one. While underplaying the role of the supreme leader he has
underlined his own role.
An important step in this plan was the
recent release and wide distribution of a DVD entitled “the appearance
is imminent” [The appearance implies the appearance of the Imam Mahdi,
who is supposed to return to earth before judgement day to rid the world
of wrongdoing, injustice and tyranny.] In the Islamic Republic the
supreme leader – or the vali-e faghih – is the representative of the
Imam on earth until he appears. In the DVD it is said that the Imam will
return and that his main aides on earth will be Khamenei, Ahmadinejad
and Nassrallah (the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah). To imply in this
manner that Ahmadinejad, a religious commoner, is equally close to the
Imam as Khamenei is clearly a challenge, not only to Khamenei’s
legitimacy, but to the legitimacy of the clergy and the rule of the
clergy as a whole.
Through these actions, Ahmadinejad has clearly
alienated a great part of the clergy and isolated himself. In the last
weeks all larger Friday prayer sermons have attacked Ahmadinejad and
Mashaei.
Most significantly though, the recent row has turned
Ahmadinejad’s avowed spiritual guide Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi,
against him. Criticizing Ahmadinejad and Mashaei without naming them,
Mesbah said, "If we act lazily, when we wake up that darkness has spread
everywhere and realize that we actually trained those who created the
sedition [the Green Movement]. What is the reason for all the
nationalistic talk of an Iranian school of thought, especially when an
Islamic movement is taken shape in the Islamic world? What is the
motivation…?”
Winning the battle in the short term
As an
act of defiance, Ahmadinejad has fired three ministers in the last few
days and handed control of the ministries to people loyal to him, but it
is clear that the first round of the battle has been won by Khamenei.
Weather there will be a coup d’etat shaped in the form of an impeachment
of the president or another form of transition we don’t know, but it is
clear that Khamenei is now in a favourable position to gain stronger
control over the state apparatus. But what is the cost? The Islamic
republic has never been in a deeper crisis and Khamenei’s – i.e. the
institution of the supreme leaders’ – legitimacy has never been lower.
These
measures and conflicts have been the norm in the Islamic Republic ever
since its bloody inception. The difference today though is that the
revolutionary mass-movement has destroyed all equilibrium within the
regime.
In our article “The Character of the present lull and the tasks of the Marxists” we explained the process last year:
“Contrary
to what they had hoped for, the regime has not been able to unite and
consolidate itself since it was continuously shaken severely from June
until December. On the contrary, internal splits and conflicts keep
devouring the regime from within.(…)
“In "normal" times all
these events [splits, divisions and scandals] might have been ignored
or even accepted, but in a situation where the regime is trying to keep
its base, their constant undermining of the system puts enormous strains
on the relationship between its different sectors. They are all forced
to attack and reveal each other in order to justify their own existence
and defend their legitimacy.”
Over the last period
Ahmadinejad has clearly tried to distance himself from Khamenei and the
revolutionary guards to whom he tried to give all the “credit” of
crushing the green movement. This process has developed to a critical
point today and the present crisis is the product of this.
Crisis in the economy
The
second and utmost important factor pushing the rulers to attack each
other like cannibalistic scavengers is the economy that is no longer
expanding like during the boom years. The Iranian economy is chronically
ill and the latest period with political instability, international
sanctions and global fall in demand and investment has brought to the
fore all its weaknesses.
Lately the IMF has reportedly put the
growth of the last two years to between 0% and 1%. Their prospect for
the next year is close to zero per cent growth. Although investment in
the Iranian economy has multiplied, this was from a record low of almost
$0 in 2009-10.
According to the Tehran Bureau, HSBC, a
heavyweight in the world of finance known for its recommendations for
investments in Iran, has recently published a harsh criticism of the
Iranian economy confirming everything that we have previously written on
these pages. The Tehran Bureau writes:
“The exchange
rate for the rial has been kept relatively stable even as inflation has
continued to register double digits every year. The overvalued currency
has increased imports to unprecedented levels, bankrupting thousands of
domestic producers. All of this contributes to a decline in total
productivity and rising unemployment. As the report notes, real GDP
growth has been slowing every year since Ahmadinejad first took office,
spiraling to "less than 1.5 percent in 2009/2010."“The lethal
combination of slow growth and high inflation places Iran at risk of
stagflation, a harbinger of serious economic crisis. Inflation has been
an endemic problem for post-revolutionary Iran. At an official rate of
13.5 percent, it is now the highest in the region. While this is caused
by numerous factors, including a populist economic policy, the report
names superfluous government spending as the biggest culprit. "In the
last four years, total liquidity has more than doubled," the report
states. In addition, the government’s debt to the banking system has
increased substantially, while non-performing assets held by state banks
have "reached record levels," and "nearly 7,000 businesses have failed
to service their debts." ”
Although the present rise
in oil prices gives Iran a temporary cushion, it is not enough to stop
the disintegrating economy. According to Fars News Agency the state
budget of last Iranian calendar year fell short close to $15b.
Of
course while the rulers fight over the big pieces of the cake the crums
left for the masses are became scarcer by the day. In the last month,
the price of bread rose by another 25 percent, as subsides were further
cut. In the last year food prices have risen by an average of 25
percent. Eggs have risen 97.6 percent, fruit 43.5 (apples 111 percent),
dairy products 5 percent, cooking oil 20 percent, rice 13.4, chicken
12.6 and sugar 9.6. Onions were the only items that fell 31 percent.
According to reformist deputy Mohammad Reza Khabbaz, the inflation rate
could reach 40-50 percent soon. At the same time the minimum wage was
only raised by a meagre 9 percent this year.
According to Alireza
Mahjoub, secretary-general of Worker’s House [the only official and
state trade union federation], said that every year, 1.2 million people
join the ranks of the unemployed in Iran. Other Majlis deputies have
stated that the real rate of unemployment is about 24 percent.
It
is clear that this economic situation not only drastically reduces the
room for manoeuvre for the regime, it also brings more and more layers
into opposition to the regime.
The state of the movement
The
revolutionary movement that erupted after the elections was
effectively, though only temporarily, derailed by the leadership of
Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi who at every step sabotaged the
only practical and logical way forward for the movement – the overthrow
of the dictatorship.
In spite of their thorough sabotage they were
effectively side-lined by the youth in the movement after the
revolutionary overthrow of the Mubarak dictatorship. The result was the
demonstrations on February 14th, 21st, March 1st 8th and 15th 2011.
These days, with hundreds of thousands in the streets, clearly showed
the potential of the movement and its support amongst the masses.
But
the constant sabotage of the top brass of the Reformists played a
treacherous role. Especially their deliberate and firm opposition to
developing a clear programme of social demands and to the call for a
sustained campaign of days of action, managed to hold the movement back
just enough for it not to catch the momentum it received by the
overthrow of the Mubarak and Ben Ali dictatorships.
Despite the
obvious tiredness and disorientation within the movement, the regime,
being itself caught up in a crisis, has not been able to crack down to
consolidate itself. Thus the door has not been closed yet for the masses
to take steps forward and we have seen a continuation of eruptions in
different areas.
The working class steps onto the scene
As
we could see during the days of action in February and March new layers
started bringing their demands to the movement. A very important factor
was the linking up of national movements in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan
which participated massively in the days of action. But more important
than anything was the stepping in of the working class onto the scene as
an independent force.
Firstly the phase III construction workers
of the strategically crucial Abadan refinery went on strike on February
14 – the first day of action – and quickly won their demands. Then the
workers of Alborz Tire, who have been one of the most militant groups
within the last years used the February 21 demonstrations as a cover to
setup their own protest on the Tehran Karaj highway, although their
protests lasted a longer period. But the real breakthrough though was
the 1800 temporary workers at Tabriz petrochemical factory who won a
full victory after a thirteen day strike starting on March 3rd demanding
permanent employment for all and end of temporary contracts.
The
victory clearly inspired workers in the rest of the country. The
petro-chemical industry plays a strategically important part in the
regimes attempts to fight against the international sanctions imposed by
the US. Thus it is no surprise that the workers in this sector,
experiencing increasing employment and a higher priority of their work,
feel strong and confident enough to embark on large scale struggle.
Tabriz,
though would only be the beginning. After the Tabriz victory many
companies came out. Alborz Tires, joining hands with some workers from
Isfahan Steel Complex, continued its struggle staging an 800 strong
protest in front of parliament and thus winning a promise of receiving
all unpaid back wages. Also 1,000 workers at the Pars Paper Mill in
southwestern Iran similarly launched a strike on April 9.
But
overshadowing all these strikes was the strike at the Mahshahr
Petrochemical Complexes, part of the Mahshahr Special Economic District.
Starting from the Bandar Imam unit on the 10th of April, the strike
quickly spread to the whole complex covering more than 10,000
petro-chemical workers.
The Free Trade Union of Iran reports:
“The
workers’ strikes at the Bandar Imam petrochemical complex in Mahshahr,
Iran continued yesterday; however, a new and interesting development has
unfolded: workers from other sectors within the Petrochemical Special
Economic Zone in Mahshahr left their own factories to come together in
front of the Bandar Imam petrochemical complex to join the 2,000 workers
already on strike and physically show their support. The Free Union of
Iranian Workers reports that this escalation in the strike happened
yesterday morning.“The workers from other sectors who marched to
support the Bandar Imam petrochemical workers were confronted on arrival
by security forces who tried to prevent the newcomers from joining the
strikers inside the complex. The workers from other factories, with
their placards and posters already in hand proclaiming their demands,
gathered outside the fences of Bandar Imam factory and raised those
demands: demands for workers’ rights, demands for their wages. From
inside the complex, the petrochemical strikers answered the newcomers by
chanting their gratitude: “Thank you! Thank you!”“According to
the latest news from the Free Union of Iranian Workers, the security
staff of the Bandar Imam petrochemical compound have been supplied with
firearms. The employers, among them the head of National Iranian
Petrochemical Company (government-owned) who is at the same time the
Deputy Minister of Industry, have hastily flown to Mahshahr to try to
manage the situation.“Despite the best efforts of the government
and the workers’ employer, this strike continues to gain momentum and is
becoming stronger and stronger as it continues.”
This
massive strike, demanding the end of temporary contracts as its main
demand, shook the whole of Iran and won its demands within 11 days of
striking.
After the Mahshahr strike, several other strikes have
started with their results not yet reported. Most significantly it was
reported that a strike at an Iron ore mine in the city of Bafgh had
started with 4000 workers who had organized a demonstration of more than
40,000 in the city to support them.
It is clear that the working
class are ready to struggle, but it is lacking a national focal point.
If the workers were linked up with the mass movement on the streets in
the cities the days of the regime would be numbered, but yet again on
May Day when the opportunity was ripe, the so-called leaders at the top
of the reformist organisations refused to call for demonstrations.
Instead they called for all to "discuss the sad conditions of the
workers [sic]"
First as a tragedy then as a farce
In spite
of the treachery of the reformist leaders, in whom we have never had
any illusions, the revolutionary potential of the movement is not
exhausted yet. New layers continue to come on to the scene not because
they are attracted to the liberal programme of the reformists, but
because their living conditions do not give them any other option.
Friedrich
Engels once remarked that history repeats itself, first as a tragedy
and secondly as a farce. Whereas Khomeini resting on different factions,
classes and layers succeeded in crushing one of the biggest
revolutionary movements of the last century, his successor Ali Khamenei,
like an elephant in a China shop, is exposed as powerless in acting
against the rising revolutionary wave of the Iranian masses without
straining his own base, his alliances and the state apparatus and in
doing so reviving the same movement that he intended to crush.
The
difference though is not rooted in the personal characteristics of the
two men rather it is the other way round. Khomeini represented
counter-revolution that had not only the backing of world imperialism,
but even a certain social base. This was within the middle- and peasant
classes the lumpen and, thanks to the Stalinists party leaderships, even
within some layers of the working class. Hence, Khomeini, the confident
man drowning the revolution in blood, had something to base his
confidence on.
On the other side Khamenei, represents the naked
and bare counter-revolution, devoid of the effects of its demagogy,
exposed for what it is in action and unable to feed its own supporters.
Paranoid and helpless, like a scared and cornered animal, he looks out
of the thick glasses with his small staring eyes with no confidence
because he has not been able to crush the mass-movement more than to a
superficial degree.
He might be relieved over his temporary
victory in the internal power struggle, but it is too soon to celebrate,
for although there might be “order” in Iran now, revolution is luring
right beneath the surface. To officially take part in the running of the
country immediately means taking responsibility for its crisis and
placing oneself as the main target for the masses who are hungry, not
only for food but also for a new society.
