Iranian protests trigger speculation over power

The protests that have broken out in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish girl who died in the custody of moral police in Tehran have not died down even after a month.

Dissident groups said that more than 400 people have been killed by the security forces so far. Is the Iranian political system under the rule of the clerics breaking down?

Most experts on Iran based in the United States and in the United Kingdom do believe that the situation is quite serious, and that there are cracks in the Iranian regime. There have been other violent anti-government protests in Iran as in 1999, 2009, and 2019. But each time the government struck hard and suppressed the protests.

There is evidence that the government does not hesitate to use force to disperse the protesters. And the number of those killed in each round of the outbreak of protests show that the government does not hesitate to harm people to bring the situation under control.

In 1999, seven students were killed, in 2009 72 protesters were killed. And in 2019, the toll mounted to 143.

But this time around, there is a feeling that the protests are based across wide sections of society, from the working class to the lower middle class to the middle class and the protests are spread across 80 cities.

The critics and experts feel that the protests still do not pose a threat to the government because the protest movement is headless, there is no recognizable leader who can guide the movement.

And the experts are of the view that it is futile to expect that a leader will emerge from among the protesters if they continue for long enough. The basic question remains whether the protesters have the stamina to continue longer.

What is an interesting development according to the Iran-watchers placed in the West is that there is no unity in the government.

There is a clear disagreement between the hardliners and the moderates. The hardliners believe that the protests have to be stamped out even if it means harming a lot more people.

The moderates are looking for a compromise. The other major aspect of disunity in the Iranian establishment is the fact the succession battle at the top, and that the Supreme Spiritual leader Ayaotollah Khamenei is pushing for his son, Mojtaba, who is generally disliked.

There is the also the view that Mojtaba is trying to win support among the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Supreme National Security Council. It is indeed a hazardous guess as to the power equations within the establishment. It is however quite true that the Iranian establishment has not been a monolith and that there have been keen rivalries between different groups and individuals. And this was seen in the election of the presidents of the country, from Mohamed Khatami, a polished moderate to Mahmoud Ahmedinijad, the provocative hardliner to incumbent president Ebrahim Raisi, who is termed a “principlist” which places him among the conservatives rather than among the progressives.

The line adopted by the Iranian authorities towards the protesters that this has been promoted by the United States and Israel, and this is the view expressed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The other, slightly modified view, expressed by President Raisi is that the continuance of the protests will lead to terrorist attacks, and the attack in Shiraz is cited as an example. But so far no one in the government has conceded that there is a need to address the grievances of the protesters.

It appears that the authorities feel that the ‘hijab’ question is non-negotiable, though former speaker Ali Larijani expressed the view that the issue cannot be handled in a rigid manner.