Iran Watch: Breaking the Rubicon Cord

This conjunction of destinies has not always been a happy one for Rafsanjani, as was illustrated during his eight-year presidency or during the reform period.

Last week, 17 July, was an entirely different affair, though. On this historic occasion, the two - the man and the country - seemed to march  to a rare harmonious beat. As several observers have noted, there was no going back after this. New battle lines were drawn, new battle postures were assumed, and the Rubicon cord was broken.

In the days right before 17 July, the mass protest movement was showing signs that it was beginning to fray somewhat. A massive police crackdown coupled with a severing of ties with its leadership had been taking a heavy toll on the protesters' morale and fighting spirit. Fewer and fewer people dared to protest in the streets, and calls of "Allah Akbar" from the rooftops were becoming rarer and rarer by the day. Then there was Rafsanjani's speech: a sudden shot in the arm.

For Rafsanjani, the 17 July speech marked a decisive break with a 30-year record of striking a balance between the different factions and refraining from taking sides. It was also the start of a new phase in his political career.

In the days before the speech, the hardline press had put two important conditions for Rafsanjani: to endorse the election results and to re-acknowledge Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's power. Rafsanjani called the results of the election into question and failed to express fealty to the Supreme Leader at all. In fact, he mentioned Khamenei's name only once in passing, and even then without using the usual honorific superlatives despite the fact that Khamenei had earlier half-apologized publicly to Rafsanjani in a deferential manner. Rafsanjani also called for the release of the detainees and urged the country's leaders to proffer sympathy to the families of those killed by the police. As such, he highlighted his new conversion as ‘the man of the people.’

Aside from these parameters, there are certain aspects to the speech that is sure to assign it to posterity. Rafsanjani made a bold intervention in Koranic and exegetical interpretation on the all-important issue of legitimacy for an authentically Islamic state. Citing known references, he asserted that both the external pageProphetcall_made and external pageImam Alicall_made were of the opinion that legitimacy derived from popular sovereignty. "The people conferred legitimacy," he said. He immediately followed this up by claiming that "the people have doubts about the last election."

According to a religious scholar who spoke to ISN Security Watch on condition of anonymity, this is not a mere issue of academic or scholastic disputation among Shia clerics, but it has historic ramifications.

"Hashemi [Rafsanjani] has articulated a modern democratic position on the nature of an Islamic government," he said, adding: "This may not seem like a revolutionary idea to many people but it is, because it is coming from one of the chief architects of the Islamic Republic."

According to the cleric, Rafsanjani almost certainly has the backing on this of small but important section of the religious hierarchy.

As for the rest of the grand ayatollahs, there are indications that they are taking a neutral position in both the crisis and the present debate. According to reliable sources, they are worried that Khamenei's reckless policies of allying with the Revolutionary Guards against the people could potentially backfire and result in an extremely dangerous situation like civil war or disintegration - a result that would permanently undermine Shia Islam as a world religion.

The response from the hardliners was fierce and harsh. Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the head of the powerful Qum Theological Teachers Association, lambasted Rafsanjani the next day on doctrinal-theological grounds, accusing him of undermining the clerical unity and weakening the state. "Who are you to ask for the release of the rioters?" Yazdi asked. He went on to offer a counter-theory for the legitimacy of an Islamic state. "Mr Rafsanjani is mistaking legitimacy with popularity," he said. According to Yazdi, legitimacy derives not from the will of the people in Islam but the sanction of Allah.

On the political front, Khamenei took it upon himself to open a frontal attack on Rafsanjani's new political position. In a major speech on 20 July, Khamenei warned the elite to tread carefully or risk failure and clearly targeted Rafsanjani, saying "In the eyes of the entire Iranian nation, any person at any level or with any title who wants to push the society towards unrest is a hated individual."

Within days, Rafsanjani's website at the Expediency Council ran an old report drafted by the Shah's secret police dating back 40 years of a speech by Rafsanjani at a mosque in which he had said that in the path he had chosen, "fear had no place."

At this moment, while the contours of this titanic fight for the future of the Islamic state are becoming less unambiguous, it is, nevertheless, impossible to predict the final outcome with any degree of certainty simply because there are a huge number of variables at play.

That said, some significant post-sermon jockeying has already started. First, Khamenei is scheduled to meet with a number of important Qum ayatollahs - like Qum Friday Prayer Leader Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, who had expressed misgivings about the election. Yazdi and his allies are also busy lobbying other clerics in Qum and elsewhere.

Rafsanjani flew to the holy city of Mashhad where he met with three high-ranking clerics including two grand ayatollahs and a key political player, Ayatollah Vaez Tabasi, who controls a multi-billion-dollar empire attached to the Imam Reza Endowment in Mashad. The latter is particularly incensed at Khamenei because four years ago some hot-headed seminarians connected to the arch-conservative Mesbah Yazdi had tried to unseat him by accusing him of corruption: Khamenei had remained silent.

In this connection, Hassan Khomeini, the much-respected grandson of the country's founder, has left the country in order to avoid attending re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's inauguration next week. Rafsanjani and others have also indicated they plan to boycott the event.