Iran's mullahs divided

Shia Muslims believe that the reappearance of the twelfth imam, who vanished in the ninth century, will herald an era of peace and justice. But nowhere do Islamic texts explain clearly how people should rule themselves in the meantime. Instead, Iran's 1979 revolution conferred temporal power on the religious scholar who best combined qualities of theological learning and political acumen—the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The resulting arrangement, known as the "guardianship of the jurist," has always been contentious. Now, as the dust settles on Iran's worst unrest in a quarter of a century, a long-dormant dispute over the system shows signs of a revival—with potentially dramatic ramifications for the world's only Shia theocracy.

Reformist presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi continue to allege vote rigging in June's election, which was officially won by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But both remain loyal to Khomeini's system, even if they are critical of the alliance it has engendered between Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini's successor as supreme leader. By taking sides in the election, they say, Khamenei has abandoned his traditional position of grandfatherly neutrality in internal politics. Crucially, a number of Iran's 20-odd grand ayatollahs, based in the seminary town of Qom, 90 miles south of Tehran, seem to agree. Several have emerged as cheerleaders for the opposition since the poll.

This is an important departure. Grand ayatollahs, whatever their private beliefs, rarely interfere in day-to-day politics. But in an exceptionally strong statement in mid-June, Ayatollah Asadullah Bayat-Zanjani advised Moussavi to regard his opponents as the representatives of an "erroneous and deviant type of thinking" that is the "enemy...of god's religion," while Ayatollah Sanei, perhaps the most progressive of the grand ayatollahs, declared "morally and legally redundant" some of the "confessions" extracted from jailed election protestors.



Behind such statements many detect the lobbying of former President Rafsanjani, himself a cleric. It is widely believed that Rafsanjani has urged the ayatollahs to boycott the new government and, perhaps, challenge the political pre-eminence of Khamenei himself. The deterioration of Rafsanjani's once close relationship with the supreme leader whom he helped manoeuvre into office is now a new and important feature of Iran's political life. Early strains were seen during the campaign when Ahmadinejad launched an unprecedented personal attack on Rafsanjani. And while Khamenei later criticised the move he admitted that his political views were closer to those of the president than his old revolutionary comrade.

Over the last 20 years Khamenei has built alliances with his fellow clerics. Qom's religious institutions have received a generous share of Iran's oil revenues, and the flow of middle-ranking clerics into government and the judiciary continues. But spanking new seminaries and officials in turbans belie tensions that have been growing since Ahmadinejad's election four years ago. Sceptical of his millenarian zeal, some members of Qom's elite regard the president with suspicion. One grand ayatollah even seems to have endorsed the dissemination of a private film showing Ahmadinejad boasting in a speech that he had been crowned by a "celestial halo"— painting the president as a religious eccentric. And according to one well-connected cleric, in June's election the grand ayatollahs and their supporters voted for Moussavi by a margin of three to one.

Many clerics nowadays also doubt the utility of the guardianship of the jurist system as a means of keeping the clergy pure. According to a common complaint, the clerical class has been trivialised by political leadership, with the popular esteem it once enjoyed tarnished by engagement with Iran's corrupt and inefficient economy. Some popular films in Iran incorporate a new archetype: the unloved mullah, mocked by the people he is supposed to be serving.

For his part, the president's deference to the clergy seems confined only to the supreme leader himself. Clerical prestige was eroded during his first term, with power flowing instead to the revolutionary guard and the basij, the ideological militia. During the government crackdown on 20th June, when several protesters were killed, troops of basijis psyched themselves up before trotting into battle with the chant: "death to the opponents of the guardian of the jurist!"

Supporters of both Moussavi and Rafsanjani would like the supreme leader to be more circumspect in his powers, which are all but limitless under the constitution. Meanwhile, the rift within the clergy grows increasingly acrimonious. From his exile in America, Mohsen Kadivar, an influential cleric who in the past has challenged the theological underpinnings of the guardianship system, compared those who were killed in the post-election protests to the martyrs who fell during the movement to oust the last shah.

So, Iran is in the throes of another wrenching debate about the clergy's role in politics. In the past, as now, both sides have enjoyed the support of senior clerics. And while all parties claim public allegiance to Khomeini's institution, it seems inevitable that the current crisis will weaken the guardianship system. But underneath this is an extension of an older dispute, dating back to the early 20th century, which pits those who want an Iranian head of state to be an absolute ruler against those who favour a restricted role, within constitutional bounds. And as the streets quieten, and Iran prepares for the fasting month of Ramadan, reformist Iranians can only be reminded of the obstacles still lying between them and the elusive prize of constitutional democracy.