New York, United States — As the streets of Iran burn with rage following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, and rumors of 83-year-old Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei’s failing health fill cyberspace, the world is abuzz with questions about the Islamic Republic.
Can the clerical regime survive these protests, the latest and perhaps a gravest challenge to their absolute control since the brutally-crushed Green Movement of 2009? And if they do survive, at what cost? More importantly, after Khamenei, who? That seems to be the biggest question, given his age and health. No successor has been named as yet.
These are uncertain times. Whither Iran then?
Time is ripe for a change, according to the prominent Iran expert Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. But it might not be the change the people of Iran are hoping and protesting for. Alfoneh predicts the clerical regime could slide towards a military dictatorship with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) holding absolute sway.
“I do not believe that the Islamic Republic is about to collapse,” said Alfoneh, author of ‘Political Succession in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Demise of the Clergy and the Rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’, as he discussed the situation in Iran in a forum organized by the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“I do believe there will be changes in Iran, but it will not be the regime collapsing – it would be the transformation of the Islamic Republic from a regime where the clergy make the political decisions and the IRGC protects it against internal and external enemies, into a military dictatorship.”
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Alfoneh also does not believe the regime will make any concessions to the protestors and expects a brutal crackdown in the coming days and weeks, once Iran President Ebrahim Raisi returns home from the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“Right now, I do not see any prospects for the Islamic Republic accommodating the wishes of the brave women of Iran,” he said. “They believe, and they have seen with their own eyes, that the Shah’s regime, when it was challenged, it tried to accommodate the protesters. The Shah’s regime freed political prisoners, freed the press and they could write, more or less, whatever they wanted. His last Prime Minister even dissolved SAVAK, Iran’s intelligent service. All those moves emboldened the domestic opposition and actually hastened the collapse of the imperial regime.
“The Islamic Republic has learned that lesson and they will not be giving into pressure from the opposition. They believe that if they give concessions to the opposition, for example, by abolishing mandatory hijab, there will be more demands from the protesters. This is why I do fear that the suppression of the protest will be much harsher in the coming days and perhaps weeks.”
Alfoneh also attempted to explain the succession process as per the Iran constitution, which was not followed when Khamenei took over the reins of the state in 1989. Excerpts from the discussion:
Situation is worrying because there is no designated successor
“We are talking about Ali Khamenei and political succession in Iran because he is 83 years old. He was hospitalized last week and there were some rumors that his health was deteriorating. Mr. Khamenei has no successor designate, which means that unlike the American President, who has the Vice President and then the Speaker of the House in line of political succession, the Islamic Republic will be immediately thrown into a political crisis if the leader of the Islamic Republic is no longer capable of running the state or perhaps dies.
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“Besides that, there is also some concern about the next leader being found according to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, or will some strong group within the regime impose its candidate on the system. Mr. Khamenei himself, he cheated. He did not follow the rules of succession according to the Constitution.”
How did Ali Khamenei cheat the system?
“Mr. Khamenei did not live up to the Constitutional requirements, which require the Supreme Leader to be a source of emulation, a so-called Marja-e-Taqlid. He was just a junior cleric. So what they did was to say that Mr. Khamenei was going to be a temporary leader, something that does not exist in the Constitution. You are either a leader or you’re not a leader. Once he was elected temporary leader, he changed the Constitution retroactively, so he would be living up to the new Constitution’s requirements.
“These are the things that I’m expecting next time around. The constitution would be changed retroactively to live up to the qualifications of whoever wins the struggle for power within the system of Islamic Republic.”
“Fundamentally, there are two reasons for which Iranians take their protest to the streets. One is bread and the other is freedom, and there are two different groups usually expressing these demands. The middle class has traditionally protested in order to get more freedoms, and the underprivileged classes have been protesting because of economic reasons. We have seldom seen cases where both groups united in a joint front against the regime. But now, these two groups seem to be coming together and that is why the Islamic Republic is in trouble,” says the prominent Iran expert Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at Arab Gulf Institute in Washington.
What does the Iran constitution say about succession?
“If you follow the Constitution, what would happen is an interregnum where a group of three individuals would be ruling the Islamic Republic That interregnum council would be composed of the President of the Republic, the Head of the Judiciary and one theologian from the Guardian Council. These three individuals would be the so-called collective leadership for a short period of time. And within this short period of time, which is not defined further in the Constitution, the Assembly of Experts should elect a successor to Mr Khamenei.”
What are the qualifications needed to be the Supreme Leader?
“The Supreme Leader needs to live up to certain qualifications as explained in the Constitution, but all those qualifications are very subjective. For example piety. How do you manage to judge if an individual is pious enough to become the leader of the Islam Republic?
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“At one of the discussions of the Constitution, there was one of the senior clerics joking that in the Islamic Republic, we are so technologically advanced that we have even invented a piety meter. Just like the Westerners have a thermometer, we have a piety meter for our leaders.”
What is the Assembly of Experts and the Guardian Council?
“The Assembly of Experts is a body of 88 men, which is tasked with discussing and revising the constitution of the Islamic Republic. They are also tasked with electing the leader of the Islamic Republic. We are told that right now, they are discussing… they are trying to identify suitable candidates to succeed Mr. Khamenei. But very few members of the Assembly of Experts are aware of who those candidates are, and the larger public has no idea of who those individuals may be.
“When Mr. Khamenei was elected leader back in 1989, no one – no one outside of a very, very small group of individuals was aware that Mr. Khamenei was a candidate. It came as a shock to the entire world because he did not live up to the basic qualifications in the Constitution. What happened was a political coup and a very small group managed to impose its candidate on the system and its entirety.
“The Guardian Council is a different body. The Guardian Council is an institution that selects and needs to verify and vet individuals who try to run for various offices in the Islamic Republic including the Assembly of Experts, so that ideologically undesirable elements are not elected to office, and Mr. Khamenei himself is very careful about purging these two councils of elements with whom he disagrees.”
What about the ongoing protests? How will it pan out?
“Fundamentally, there are two reasons for which Iranians take their protest to the streets. One is bread and the other is freedom, and there are two different groups usually expressing these demands. The middle class has traditionally protested in order to get more freedom, and the underprivileged classes have been protesting because of economic reasons. We have seldom seen cases where both groups united in a joint front against the regime.
“But now, these two groups seem to be coming together and that is why the Islamic Republic is in trouble.”
Will the protestors succeed? Or will the Republic’s “infrastructure of suppression” prevail?
“The big question obviously is about the infrastructure of suppression that the Islamic Republic has developed, and the Shah’s (regime) lacked in 1979. Back then, they committed the same mistake as Bashar al-Assad (of Syria) did by sending the regular military into the streets of Iran. These people were not trained in suppressing domestic unrest. They were professional soldiers. The Islamic Republic is not committing that mistake. But the big question still to me is if we will have people who simply do not follow orders. We have seen many cases of policemen, members of the law enforcement forces in the course of the past couple of days, not fighting.
“On the other hand, we have yet to see large forces of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij starting this serious suppression of the protesters, which I suspect has to do with President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to New York. As soon as he’s back in Tehran and there will be less of a scandal in the United States and in the international community, less focus on Iran, this regime, they will use a greater degree of violence.”
The regime has nowhere to flee, so it is a fight for survival
“And I do not believe that it is just like the Shah’s regime. This regime has nowhere to flee and they will fight, and it is going to be a very, very ugly period of time.”