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Iran in Turmoil

By Larry Johnson on June 14, 2009 at 8:50 PM in Current Affairs

(Bumped up from earlier today)

The Friday election in Iran has settled nothing and appears to have unleashed a set of forces that will keep the country in turmoil for some time to come. There are a couple of articles worth reading.

First up is Steve Clemons, who writes:

Last night in London after appearing on Keith Olbermann’s show, I got an email from a well-connected Iranian who knows many of the power figures in the Tehran political order asking to meet me. I told him that the only place possible was Paddington on the way to Heathrow — and there we met.

He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious — Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a “charade.”

But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this “coup by the right wing” has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can’t deal with the current crisis and can’t deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran’s revolutionaries.

My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits — and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

(read the rest here)

Salon has a piece from an anonymous source who believes that Ahmadinejad and his cronies have pulled off the equivalent of a rightwing coup. According to Anonymous:

It’s becoming increasingly clear that this was a palace coup, a palace coup in the style of Peru’s Fujimori. The Guardian Council has to accept the election results. All eyes are now on Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has apparently just resigned as chairman of the Expediency Council. He was the sole member of the original “yaran” of Khomeini, or Khomeini’s original team, with power and influence. Hossein Mousavi is under house arrest.

In the streets, the mood is incredibly tense and eminently explosive. In Vali Asr square Saturday afternoon, under darkening skies, crowds had gathered as well as cops. It was as if each side knew that a fight had to occur but were uncertain when to start. Cops made the first move by occasionally running into the crowd with batons swinging, telling them to leave the area. People would bolt then rush back, cat and mouse, cat and mouse. They weren’t just running away, though. I personally witnessed a cop fall to the ground after he swung his baton. Immediately two young men jumped on top of him and began pounding on him, then ran away. Trash cans are being set on fire, folks are busting windows, chanting “death to the dictator.” The chants have not yet escalated beyond this point — the demand is that their vote be respected.

This could be significant. We certainly have an opening now in Iran if we play it smart. Now is the time to try to help the opposition to Ahmadinejad organize and sustain operations. But this must be done in a way that the Iranians fighting the mullahs are not portrayed or perceived to be agents of the United States. One thing is certain–Iran is not a monolith of religious fanatics.

The video (here) is worth your time.