The culmination of a coup

More analysis that the Iranian political upheaval really has little to do with good pro-democracy protesters and a faction of supportive mullahs against the bad hard-line mullahs and various thuggish elements among the security forces. I have written before about how little sense it makes for Khamene’i to go all in to guarantee up-front (as these results were pre-determined based on how quickly they came out with an official version) a win for Ahmadi-Nejad. If the power really was in the clerical Council, they could easily have controlled Mousavi, who would not have challenged the basic internal and foreign policies of the government. His “reform” credentials had to pass muster with the mullahs. He only became more outspoken as events began to unfold and the outcome briefly hung in the balance. It appears that now he is backing down, which likely is an omen of things to come.

This article provides a plausible solution to the puzzle of Khamene’i’s support for A-jad. As I have written in previous posts, the whole matter may be a military coup that was ongoing over some time, as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps took the final steps to consolidate power, a process ongoing for years and hastened under the A-jad presidency. The mullahs, under that analysis, are merely window dressing for those who, after suitable purges, will be in control of the country in a neo-fascistic corporate state. The IRGC and their patrons (or tools) Khamene’i and Ahmadi-Nejad could not allow even the appearance of momentum for a “reform” movement, which would imply division or factions among the ruling clique. And, as has been written since Plato’s Republic, a guardian class and rule by an absolute philosopher king can permit no intra-class rivalry—or even the appearance thereof. Such weakness is the cause of instability in society, which presents a threat to the ruling class.  When the “philosopher king” also sees himself as divinely-ordained, any challenge to his control becomes not only a political issue, but one of apostasy. In a religion such as Islam that is, in its founding and history, a “political” religion, such apostasy poses concrete threats to the legitimacy of the ruler. That would explain the remarks of another mullah that the arrested protesters must be dealt with cruelly and their leaders executed.