Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Man behind the "throne"

One of my earliest political memories is about a controversy involving U.S. President Eisenhower's closest advisor, Sherman Adams. (I'm not only an old geezer, I was abnormally interested in politics at an early age.) Hints of scandal and intrigue surrounding a chief executive's inner circle are nothing new and keep popping up. Now there's one involving Ahmadinejad's closest advisor.

The president's awkward friend

IN THE summer of 2009 Iran’s divided conservatives came together to save the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after his disputed re-election provoked huge street protests by the reformist Green Movement. To have lost Mr Ahmadinejad to a liberal “plot” would, they judged, have imperilled the Islamic Republic which succours them all.

All the same, many conservatives are far from enamoured of Iran’s president. Challenging him, however, is turning out to be a different matter. Barely a year into his second and constitutionally final term, his future is again the object of dark speculation, only this time by people who once professed to be his friends. His immediate entourage, in particular, is being castigated and none more so than the man whom, it is thought, Mr Ahmadinejad would like to succeed him: his old friend and relation by marriage, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai.

As the president’s closest adviser, the slim, handsome, self-confident Mr Mashai has come to represent all that traditionalists in Shia Iran find odious about Mr Ahmadinejad’s presidency…

In August Mr Mashai caused perhaps his biggest rumpus to date, when he urged hundreds of expatriate Iranians, who had been invited to Tehran at government expense, to act as propagandists for a national ideology, as opposed to an Islamic one…

Mr Mashai is a member of a new diplomatic team that Mr Ahmadinejad has set up independently of the foreign ministry, which is controlled by the supreme leader…

In Mr Ahmadinejad’s view, Iran’s refusal to buckle under increasing international sanctions aimed at halting its progress towards becoming a nuclear power qualifies it as a world player on a level with the old enemy, the United States…

Whatever his ambitions abroad, Mr Ahmadinejad is playing a high-risk game at home. He has offended conservatives by appearing to condone less-than-Islamic dress for women, and has presided over a breakdown in co-operation between the government and parliament. Sanctions are starting to hurt, with investment dropping in key sectors, including oil and gas. The most painful of the president’s cuts in subsidies has yet to come into effect.

This dispute at the heart of Iran’s ruling establishment may seem arcane. After all, both Mr Ahmadinejad and his traditionalist opponents agree on the need to repress the Green Movement and to press on towards nuclear self-sufficiency. But the president fits uncomfortably into the country’s power structure, which rewards collegiate effort under the supreme leader’s benevolent tutelage. Although the president professes his undying loyalty to Mr Khamenei, his own patent ambition and his friend’s theology have led him perilously close to open defiance.

From the American and Western point of view, the very opacity of Iran’s leadership structure—and the continuing feuds within it—have made diplomacy harder. Indeed, it is unclear who indisputably runs the show, though the supreme leader still has the final say. It is plainly more complex than a struggle between conservatives and reformers.

Ayatollah Khamenei has tried his best to end the infighting, but his authority is limited by his record of support for Mr Ahmadinejad, which may be all that stops parliament from impeaching him...