[IPS] With the historical Friday Prayer sermon given by former president and current chair of the Council of Experts and Expediency Discernment Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Jul. 17, and the riposte by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei three days later, lines have been drawn in unprecedented ways in Iran.
It is now clear that the Islamic Republic’s ever-present political frictions and cleavages can no longer be managed in ways they have been in the past, either through behind-the-scenes lobbying at the top or selective repression or some combination of the two.
Until the current crisis, politicians like Rafsanjani who have defined the political centre in Iran have always sided with the security establishment because of their preeminent concern for the survival of the Islamic republic.
But, on Jul. 17, Rafsanjani made clear that, beyond his longstanding disagreements with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the direction of Iran’s domestic and foreign policies, he now believes that the approach taken by the government and security establishment in addressing the post-election crisis threatens the very survival of the system.
Recalling the vision of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rafsanjani insisted that “without the people, there is no Islamic rule… The title of Islamic Republic is not used as a formality. It is both Islamic and a republic. They have to be together… If it loses its republican aspect, [the Islamic Republic] will not be realised. …[W]ithout people and their vote there would be no Islamic system.”
That another former president, Mohammad Khatami, followed Rafsanjani with his own unprecedented call Saturday for a national referendum on the legitimacy of the election also signaled the crisis has moved to a new stage.
The inability of the Ahmadinejad government to put an end to or manage street demonstrations and elite dissent is matched by its intransigence in finding non-violent ways to address popular anger over the results of the election.
