The power behind the throne

A New York Times report says "supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not Mahmoud Ahmaninejad, is the real ruler of Iran. That would be good news, if Khamenei wasn't as radical - not to mention batshit insane as his president:

Over time, Khamenei created a system that many political analysts and Western diplomats here say is less a theocracy and more an autocracy, with loyalty to the leader the prerequisite for influence. Khamenei has strong ties to the Basiji militia and the Revolutionary Guards and has won the allegiance of some powerful seminaries in the religious center of Qom by giving them state funds. He also has strong allies in the Guardian Council, which oversees all government decisions, and the Assembly of Experts, which technically exercises oversight of the leader. While Iran's elected officials are subjected to public scrutiny and critical analysis, the supreme leader is not. He is more than a head of state. He is a symbol of two core elements of the Islamic Republic's official identity: revolution and religion. As a result, assessing the leader is a red line in Iran, one few are willing to cross, at least publicly. The Constitution gives the supreme leader near total control of the state, although officials like to emphasize that he is selected by the Experts Assembly, which is elected by the public. The leader appoints all military and security commanders. He has the power to declare war. He must confirm the election of the president. He appoints the head of the judiciary, more than half the members of the Guardian Council, and the head of state television. Still, Iran is not a country ruled by decree. There are multiple power centers and competing agendas that require that major decisions be made after consultation and compromise. And there are people who disagree with Khamenei, though most have seen their power diluted, according to people with first-hand knowledge of the inner workings of the system.

Khamenei has abided by a central rule of Iranian politics: "Anyone who gets power, consolidates power and pushes aside allies, too," said the senior cleric who has a long personal history with the leader and did not want to be identified out of fear of offending him.

With that power, he has defined Iran's agenda. Khamenei supports Iran's absolute right to pursue nuclear energy, rails against the failure of liberal democracy and often talks about the "usurper Zionist regime," just as Ahmadinejad does.

He said at a conference in Tehran in April: "The bitter and venomous taste of Western liberal democracy, which the United States has hypocritically been trying to portray through its propaganda as a healing remedy, has hurt the body and soul of the Islamic Ummah and burned the hearts of Muslims.

"Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib and other secret dungeons and, above all, the cities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, have shown to our nations the real meaning of 'liberty' and 'Western human rights,' the most shameless and impudent propagator of which is the American regime."

Over time, Khamenei appears to have gravitated closer to the fundamentalists.

He has always held conservative values. In a 1996 interview with a hard-line journal, Sobh, he wrote that children should not be allowed to play music. "Teaching music is not in accordance with the Islamic establishment and teaching music to schoolchildren brings corruption," he said.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at September 9, 2006 10:20 AM