Iran speculation

Thought I'd offer my two cents on the Iran chaos.

By far the most interesting theory I've heard as to what really happened in Iran's election is the "coup scenario":

Scenario Two: There has been a coup. Ahmedinejad and the security services have taken over. The Supreme Leader has been preserved as a figurehead, but the structures of clerical rule have effectively been gutted and are being replaced by a National Security State. Reports that facebook, twitter, text messaging and foreign TV broadcasts have been blocked, that foreign journalists are being expelled and that large concrete roadblocks (the kind that require a crane to move) have appeared in front of the Interior Ministry all feed a sense that what we are now seeing was pre-planned. Underlying this is the theory that Ahmedinejad and the people around him represent a new generation of Iranian leadership. He and his colleagues were young revolutionaries in 1979. Now in their 50s they have built careers inside the Revolutionary Guard and the other security services. They may be committed to the Islamic Republic as a concept, but they are not part of its clerical aristocracy and are now moving to push the clerics into an essentially ceremonial role. This theory in particular seems to be gaining credibility rapidly among professional Iran-watchers outside of the country.

This has the ring of truth to me. Rumor has it that Khamenei (and Rafsanjani, the moneyman oligarch allied with Khamenei) backed Mousavi. When the results came in, the theory goes, the Revolutionary Guards pounced, forcing the clerics at gunpoint to hastily (and sloppily) alter the results.

This scenario is convincing to me because it fits with my guesses about the real course of Iranian politics since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. That revolution was really two revolutions - an uprising of the leftist urban elite against the petro-dictatorship of the Shah, and a follow-up power grab by the mullahs. Iran went theocratic because it wasn't very urbanized when the revolution came; hordes of illiterate poor farmers answered the mullahs' call and beat in the heads of the civilizaed urbanites. After that, the decade-long national struggle of the Iran-Iraq war cemented the Islamic Republic's power, much as World War 2 strengthened Stalin.

But the war against Iraq created a new power in Iran - the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran's regular army, gutted by the mullahs' purges and strangled by a Western embargo, performed terribly against Saddam's mechanized divisions; the Revolutionary Guards, whose zeal protected them from purges, and who fulfilled many irregular/asymmetric roles, did much better. The Guards became Iran's real army. And after the disruptions of war and the mullahs' dismantling of the old economy, a statist system sprung up in which the military - i.e. the Guards - grabbed the "commanding heights" and wormed their way into nearly every sector and industry. This pattern of military control of the economy is a classic one - it's been seen in Indonesia, Burma, many Latin American countries, and to a certain extent Russia and China.

When the 90s came, and the threat of Saddam was removed by Desert Storm, Iran's urban elite dared to raise their heads once again. The result was the Khatami decade, in which liberals slowly eroded the mullahs' power. Seeing the writing on the wall, and deprived of any convenient wars or revolutions to whip up angry farmers, the mullahs did the only thing they could - they called in the brute squad, i.e. the Revolutionary Guards. Ahmadinejad's election was part of that. The Guards took over the cities, shuttering liberal newspapers, imprisoning enemies of the regime, etc.

But the brute squad then found itself in control of all the real power in the country. The mullahs held nominal control - and their buddies and cronies still got the most plum government contracts and sinecures - but their authority was based purely on factional politicking and moral appeals. The Guards looked around and said "Hey - we have all the guns!" So slowly, grindingly, they started replacing the mullahs' friends with their own, the mullahs' politicians with their own, the mullahs' companies with their own. That's what's been happening the last decade, as Ahmadinejad became the face of the nation and eclipsed Ayatollah Khamenei.

So the mullahs again did the only thing they could do - they cut a deal with the liberal reformists, the Guards' main enemy. That bargain was represented by Mousavi, who was a mullah-allied conservative but won the hearts of the urban reformists. The election was the mullahs' gambit to oust the Guards from absolute control of the country. And the Guards pushed back. Which brings us to today.

So where does Iran go from here? If this historical tale I've spun turns out to be accurate, then it's pretty clear that the mullahs' days as the country's real power are numbered, if not already over. Whether urban reformers or the military dictatorship of the Guard wins out depends largely on whether Ahmadinejad can afford a massive bloody crackdown. That's why he's in Russia, begging for help from the Big Boys of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization by talking up anti-American solidarity. If he can get guaranteed Russian military protection from U.S. intervention and guaranteed Chinese investment in his country's economy, Ahmadinejad can afford to crack some heads. If not, he'll have to cut a deal.

Which means that our best move is to stay out of it, and heavily encourage China and Russia to stay out of it as well. If the Great Powers refrain from propping up Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the reformists have a chance.

Update: This NYT article basically supports my story...