Iran’s Green Protests: Elite power struggle intensifies as Supreme Leader nears death

[Hannah Bell]

In the midst of an historic uprising of the working class in North Africa and the Middle East directed against the region’s authoritarian US-backed regimes, Iran’s bourgeois Green opposition has sought to relaunch itself. However, the Green demonstrations have failed to galvanize broad popular support—indeed, they have been shunned by the working class and urban poor—and consequently have been readily contained by the security forces of the Islamic Republic and aligned militia.

The recent Green demonstrations were the opposition’s first major attempt in almost a year to challenge the government on the streets. With a view to promoting the false association between Iran’s opposition and the democratic aspirations of the masses, the western press and the Green leaders have pointed to the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa as the catalyst for the latest opposition campaign. In fact their real motivation is the deepening power struggle within Iran’s elite under conditions where Supreme Leader Khamenei—who, as his title suggests, wields vast constitutional powers and has long sought to arbitrate between the contending bourgeois factions—is reported to be gravely ill and possibly near death.

By mobilizing their supporters in the streets, the Green leaders were hoping to bolster the position of former president and billionaire businessman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani has been at the center of power in Iran since a faction of the Islamic clergy spouting a Shia populist theology and acting on behalf of the Iranian bourgeoisie hijacked the revolution that swept the Shah from power in 1979. But he now appears to be on the verge of losing all his positions within the Islamic republic.

Rafsanjani and his family backed Mousavi’s 2009 bid to unseat Ahmadinejad, who first won the presidency in 2005 by defeating Rafsanjani in a run-off, with several of Rafsanjani’s children demonstrably participating in the post-election protests that sought to overturn the results of the 2009 election. While Rafsanjani ultimately said he deferred to Khamanei and accepted the results of the contested election, he has repeatedly called for conciliation with the opposition—an accommodation presumably to be reached at the expense of Ahmadinejad.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/iran-m08.shtml

[Tunkamerica]

1. But won't his Midi-Chlorians just move on to the next Jedi?

[malaise]

2. Have you seen this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12673821
<snip>
Iran's Rafsanjani loses post as chair of state body

Iran's former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has lost his position as head of a powerful clerical body, reports say.

Mr Rafsanjani had chaired the Assembly of Experts, which selects the supreme leader and supervises his activities, for the past four years.

But he was criticised by hard-liners for being close to the opposition.