Fallout not over
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, surely thought the fallout from the disputed June 12 election would be over by now – fallout that he helped precipitate by embracing the presumed winner before the votes were counted. Instead, his regime is deeply divided and the ruling clerics’ hold on power is weaker than at any other time since the 1979 revolution that brought it to power. Indeed, there are some who believe the country is effectively being run by the security services.
Khamenei endorsed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second four-year presidential term on Monday, making the actual swearing-in a formality.
But the supreme leader’s endorsement was hardly a triumphal occasion; on the contrary, it was a markedly subdued affair.
The event was boycotted by the leaders of the opposition party, two former presidents and the grandson of the Ayatollah Khomeini, architect of the country’s 1979 revolution.
It was not, as is customary, carried live on TV, probably to avoid stirring up the opposition again, and in place of the usual public celebrations, the police clubbed antigovernment demonstrators.
In spite of mass jailings and beatings, the regime has not been able to stop the persistent demonstrations whose purpose has broadened from the original demands for a new election to include social freedom, less repressive rule and investigations of those protesters who died while in prison.
The regime has sought to portray the reformers as tools of the West and the Western press, especially. Khamenei’s government thought it was making that point when it put 100 reformists and an Iranian Newsweek reporter on trial.
The gaunt and haggard defendants were led into the courtroom in gray prison pajamas and denied lawyers. A few read aloud confessions that quite clearly had been coerced.
Ahmadinejad and Khamenei may see this trial as a pretext for outlawing the opposition altogether. That would strip away what scant claim to legitimacy Ahmadinejad has now.