Mick Hartley

Amir Taheri looks at the Iranian election results:

With the results of the twin elections held in Iran last week officially established, it is clear that the electorate have dealt the ultra-radical President Ahmadinejad his first significant political defeat….

The first and politically more important election concerned the choice of 86 mullahs to form the new Assembly of Experts (AOE) who has the task of electing and , if need be, dismissing the “Supreme Guide.” Since the “Supreme Guide” holds almost unlimited powers under the Islamist constitution, many analysts regard it as the true powerhouse of the Khomeinist system.

Elected for eight years, the new AOE may well choose the next “Supreme Guide” before it term ends in 2014. The incumbent, Ayatollah Ali Khamenehi, although aged only 66, is said to be in declining health that might force him to step down at some point.

Before last week’s election, however, the possibility of an early end to Khamenehi’s career as “Supreme Guide” had become a hot topic in Tehran’s political circles. There was a feeling that President Ahmadinejad, representing a new generation of radical revolutionaries with military and security backgrounds, was planning to seize control of the AOE and use it to replace Khamenehi with his own religious guru, a certain Ayatollah Muhammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. All that was needed for Ahmadinejad’s alleged scheme to be implemented was a change of 17 seats in favour of his faction in the AOE….

However, it was clear that Ahmadinejad has failed to secure the extra 17 seats he reportedly needed to win control of the AOE. Wore still, his ultra-radical faction suffered other humiliations. His ostensible guru, Mesbah-Yazdi came way down the list of those elected in Tehran while Ayatollah Hussein Gheravi, the faction’s standard-bearer in the key province of Khorassan, where the holy city of Mashhad is located, failed to win a seat. However, possibly the worst blow to Ahmadinejad was the election of former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a mullah-cum-businessman he had handily defeated in presidential election in 2005. […]

The power struggle in Tehran, however, is far from over. In the other election, held for municipal councils throughout the country, the ultra-radical faction led by Ahmadinejad did better. With more than 90 per cent of the results confirmed, Ahmadinejad and his allies, standing on separate lists, appear to have won control of councils in 27 of 30 provinces with some 73 per cent of the votes at national level. The conservative faction, led by Rafsanjani and his two protégés, former President Muhammad Khatami and former Parliamentary Speaker Mahdi Karrubi, collected 18 per cent of the votes at the national level and won control in two provinces. The remaining province, Tehran, the biggest in terms of population was won by a splinter group from Ahmadinejad’s faction, led by Muhammad-Baqer Qalibaf the outgoing mayor of the capital.

The blow dealt at Ahmadinejad is primarily a Tehran phenomenon. The capital city, with a population of some 15 million, is the stronghold of middle classes that have been frightened by the president[‘s] incendiary rhetoric and alleged cravings for a “Clash of Civilisations” that could lead to war. […]

Rafsanjani, possibly Iran’s wealthiest man, represents the fears of the middle and upper classes that have seen the economy on the verge of collapse, businesses frozen and the outflow of capital turned into a flood, since Ahmadinejad’s election. But it is hard to see what the Rafsanjani faction can do against an administration that has managed to maintain its base among the urban poor and remains popular within the segment of the Iranian population that still believes in the Khomeinist revolution.

The impact of Ahmadinejad’s defeat in the AOE elections on Iran’s foreign policy is even harder to gauge. Rafsanjani and his faction have no means of directly influencing decision-making in that field. But they could serve as a channel of communication between the European Union and Khamenehi and persuade the latter to offer at least some of the concessions needed to defuse the crisis over Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions.

However, that possibility may force Ahmadinejad to heat up his rhetoric further and adopt an even more aggressive posture to prevent any deal brokered by the European Union.

As always in Iranian politics under Khomeinism, good news comes mixed with bad. Ahmadinejad is wounded but still very much alive. And that, according to Machiavelli, is when a political animal is at his most dangerous.