Rise of the Sultans
How Far Will Iran's Rulers Go to Consolidate Their Power?
Article Summary and Author Biography
The clerical regime's tampering with the election was nothing less than an attempt to completely take over all aspects of the Iranian state.
AKBAR GANJI is an Iranian journalist and dissident who was imprisoned in Tehran from 2000 to 2006 and whose writings are currently banned in Iran.
Essay
The real decision-maker in Iran is Supreme Leader Khamenei not President Ahmadinejad. Blaming Iran's problems on President Ahmadinejad inaccurately suggests that Iran's problems will go away when Ahmadinejad does.
Reading List
An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on Iranian politics.
Letter From
Iran's disputed election marked the rise of a new power elite. Now, with more protests looming and a nuclear program facing international pressure, can the Revolutionary Guard and its allies sustain their tightening grip on the Islamic Republic?
Iran is a paradoxical nation. On the one hand, its political structure is a fundamentalist sultanism run by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and personified at least in the eyes of the outside world, by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On the other hand, Iran is farther along the path to democracy than most countries in the Middle East. It has a sophisticated political culture: its intellectuals, women, and young people are highly literate, cosmopolitan, and committed to the ideals of democracy, human rights, and nonviolent social transformation. The majority of Iran's population stands against the country's fundamentalist regime.
As I explained in my essay "The Latter-Day Sultan" (November/December 2008), oppression has been the Iranian regime's principal means of sustaining sultanism. The aftermath of the recent presidential election clearly demonstrates this point. The preponderant majority of Iranians voted against Khamenei by voting against Ahmadinejad, Khamenei's factotum and mouthpiece. (See the preliminary analysis of the election published by Chatham House on June 21, 2009, here.) But Khamenei has refused to abide by their choice. In a colossal fraud, his loyalists have counted the people's vote in favor of Ahmadinejad and then dubbed his victory a "divine miracle."
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