Theocratic disarray

The Financial Times

A leader at the summit of power risks the legitimacy of the regime by betting it on a divisive figure. He rams the decision through against an enraged opposition that feels it has been robbed at the polls. When that leader then falls out publicly with his favoured acolyte, something is badly amiss. So it is in Iran, where the cohesion of the theocracy has cracked to the point where its core constituency is up in arms as well.

In recent days, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader at the apex of the system, has publicly ordered Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the mercurial president re-elected in what looked like massive vote-rigging, to get rid of his vice-president. Mr Khamenei, whose constitutional position in the Islamic Republic makes him answerable to God rather than the citizens of the republic, compromised his exalted position by backing Mr Ahmadi-Nejad. His decision came in spite of a surge of civic opposition in June’s disputed election and its riotous and bloody aftermath. So what – on earth – is this all about?

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad took nearly a week to obey the Supreme Leader, prompting even his hardline supporters to threaten publicly to pull the plug on him. Amid sniper-fire from across the width of Iran’s arcane political spectrum, the president has not even be able to assemble a cabinet. He denounced a plot on Friday to drive a wedge between him and Mr Khamenei, to whom he protested fealty: “It is like a relationship between a father and his son”, he said. If so, why this need to say so?

The extent of post-election brutality and the loss of legitimacy has now reached beyond the ranks of reformists and pragmatic conservatives, already championed by former premier Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the losing candidate, former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and leading Shia clerics. The beating to death in prison of Mohsen Rouhalamini, son of a leading fundamentalist, has spread revulsion at the lawless turn of events into the ranks of the theocrats. Hundreds of those arrested in recent protests are being released; Mr Khamenei has ordered the closure of the notorious Kahrizak prison.

A regime that, despite its claim to divine mandate, has always set great store by popular legitimacy, is trying desperately to recover it.

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad is due to be inaugurated next week but his future is very far from guaranteed.

The US and the west, watching the disarray in Tehran but aiming to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions and anchor it within a new detente, should stick to this working hypothesis. Mr Khamenei and his entourage took such a costly risk at the elections because they fear the engagement tactics of Barack Obama. They trust only themselves to negotiate with him.