Iran's House Of Cards Teeters On The Brink By Iason Athanasiadis

Even should the Islamic Republic collapse, there is no evidence of a plan for the day after. "It's not a Revolution but a continuous collapse of the institution," said Pedde.

Hamid Ramenzadeh was in the process of applying to study at a British university and join the 150,000 Iranians annually leaving their country when the greatest crisis in the history of the Islamic Republic erupted this past summer. After participating in the extraordinary scenes of social defiance unfolding on Tehran's streets, Ramenzadeh decided to postpone his departure and join the push for reform.

"I felt I had no right to flee the country [and go] abroad when my generation's defining challenge came," he said during a brief visit to Istanbul. "How could I face my colleagues or later my children if I hadn't been on the streets during the crisis of 2009?"

Seven months spent on the streets and university campuses that form the seething backdrop to this movement culminated in December's ‘Bloody Sunday'. Government forces killed at least eight and as many as 37 demonstrators in countrywide violence commemorating the Shiite festival of Ashura. Ramenzadeh has been out on the streets all along, watching the pace of change in demonstrators' attitudes evolve with frightening speed.

"We started with peaceful silent protests but then [the] slogans got more radical," he said. "At first, all we wanted was ‘our vote back,' then ‘our presidency,' and when there was still no answer we demanded ‘Death to the Dictator.' If this continues, I wouldn't be surprised if we start hearing the cry ‘Death to Islam'."

Ramenzadeh's fears that the regime's behavior is jeopardizing ordinary Iranians' faith in Islam have been echoed by the dissident Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar.

"The Shiite theocracy in its present form has failed," he said in a December interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. "I do not know when exactly but I am convinced that the regime will collapse."

This is not to say that Iranians are any less religious today than they were in 1979, when they overthrew the pro-Western Shah and welcomed back Ayatollah Khomeini who ushered in three decades of Islamic rule.

Ramenzadeh was born after the Revolution, one of the 40 million Iranians under the age of 30.
The experience of growing up in an Islamic republic has turned him in a firmly secular direction. But he still represents only a sizeable - though vocal - minority of middle class urbanites mostly clustered in Tehran. By far the largest demonstrations to break out in support of the Green Movement - as it has come to be known - outside Tehran were in Qom on the funeral of dissident ayatollah Ali Montazeri. And January has been marred by claim and counter-claim over who behaved more sacrilegiously on Ashura: the demonstrators for taking advantage of the holy day to protest and then skirmish with pro-regime vigilantes, or the police for assaulting them in the first place.

Ramenzadeh may be committed to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, but the endgame to this political crisis is more likely to be internal reform. Perhaps the controversial President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be dismissed, new elections held, and the post of the Supreme Leader toned down in stature and given a more symbolic, and less powerful, significance.

This would mark a sharp transition from an Islamic Republic dominated by a figure according himself caliph-like attributes as the direct vessel of divine wisdom upon the Earth, into a country practicing a more participatory religious democracy.

Walter Posch, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin says that the religious far right [Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his supporters] want to follow very traditionalist interpretations [of Islamic rule] and not have the kind of council-based consultative government promoted by the pro-Khomeini Islamic leftists."

"These are forums which allow people a modicum of participation in some issues through elections and they're the Islamic Republic's way of embracing the secular element in society," he says.

Bringing the secularists on board may be more necessary now than ever before, as the Islamic Republic continues bleeding legitimacy. After this year's bloody Ashura, opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi, himself a cleric, pointed out that not even the Shah had had demonstrators shot on Ashura.

More than anything else, the lethal violence earned the sympathy of traditionalist segments of society for the opposition Green Movement, earning it a crucial crust of support. "It was a turning point," says Thierry Coville, an associated research fellow at the Paris-based IRIS (Research Center for International and Strategic Studies). "The violence of the riots has stricken the imagination of the people and the conservatives and reformists now know that the situation could take a very dangerous turn."

On this occasion, as in 1979, the majority of the clerics have sided with the people. But unlike then, they are maintaining a politic silence.

"With the exception of Ayatollah Nuri Hamedani who is strongly in favour of the regime, all the marajeh [Grand Ayatollahs chosen by pious Shiites as sources of doctrinal emulation] are unhappy," said an Iranian political analyst speaking on the phone from Qom.

"With the exception of Ayatollahs Sanei and Mousavi-Ardebili who issue anti-regime proclamations, the conservative clerics remain silent, even though they oppose the regime."

Though Khamenei arguably wields the most political power of any Shiite marja, his religious credentials are not as impressive. "The system of marja [singular of marajeh] is very informal," said Siavush Randjbar Daemi, an analyst and doctoral candidate in contemporary Iranian history at London University. "Khamenei has attempted to place it under the state's glass bell and rationalize it, a little like a lieutenant trying to get disorderly generals in order."

The Islamic Republic has safeguarded its religious legitimacy in the past thirty years by extending its authority over disparate clerical networks. It lavishly funds deferential clerics while arresting or intimidating those who challenge its rule.
"Khamenei always had this weakness as Rahbar [Supreme Leader] that he lacked support in the seminaries," said Randjbar-Daemi.

"Now it's worse than ever, with Grand Ayatollah Dastgheib in Shiraz, for example, practically on a war footing with him."

Dastgheib has announced that regime-controlled mosques in Shiraz are invalid for performing prayers, a considerable blow to a regime that defines itself as protecting Islam.
Some methods of defying the Islamic Republic include refusing to deliver the Islamic Republic-mandated agenda-setting weekly sermon at Friday prayers, disputing the Supreme Leader's choice of the day on which Ramadan ends, or removing themselves from Iran to other Shiite clerical centres such as Iraq's Najaf or Pakistan's Multan in self-imposed exile.

The crucial background struggle waged by the government and opposition supporters over religious legitimacy has taken a back seat to the high-profile coverage accorded to street-level political and social tensions. But the religious dimension is crucial in an Islamic Republic where it is customary for the majority Shiite Muslim demographic to select an Ayatollah as a religious and social object of emulation and donate to him a fifth of its income.

This can amount to millions of dollars in the case of the more popular sources of emulation. The debate is playing out against the backdrop of the declining social influence of the clerics.

"Paradoxically, ten years ago everyone in Iran was scared of the clerics," said Nicola Pedde, director of the Rome-based Institute for Global Studies and a frequent visitor to Iran. "Now they in turn are scared of the pasdaran [Revolutionary Guardsmen] and the MOIS [Intelligence Ministry]"

"Those combatant clerics who self-promoted after the Revolution did nothing to replicate their activity and now that they are dying off, they realize there's no generation to follow them."

The Sepah [Revolutionary Guard] has stepped into the breach, carrying out over the past four years what some call a silent putsch. Ahmadinejad has close Sepah connections and appointed a swathe of Iran-Iraq War veterans into sensitive political positions after his 2005 election.

While the Guard itself is comprised of only 150,000 men, its influence is great and it controls lucrative construction, telecommunications, and import-export interests.

The Sepah also controls Iran's sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities and ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Since the summer the Revolutionary Guard has increasingly muscled into the Intelligence Ministry's traditional domain of internal security, establishing a parallel intelligence apparatus for the capital city after President Ahmadinejad forced Intelligence Minister Mohsen Ejhei to resign.

As the slogans get more rejectionist, the psychological war mounts, with loyalists and opposition exchanging claim and counter-claim. But the Islamic Republic appears to be on the defensive for the first time; one diplomat who was in Tehran over the summer described the events as "the first time in 30 years the regime thought it was about to be overthrown."

"The current regime has broken the social bonds that tie it to the public and thus is eventually due to fall," said Bill Beeman, a Persian-speaking Iran expert who is professor at the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. "Killing people on Ashura is a complete symbolic disaster. Even the Shah didn't execute prisoners on Ashura - and these folks are supposed to be religious!"

Even should the Islamic Republic collapse, there is no evidence of a plan for the day after. "It's not a Revolution but a continuous collapse of the institution," said Pedde. "There are elements which are similar to 1979 - their use of public events to promote major clashes, for example, but we don't see any leadership or even a plan of action."