A puppeteer's tribute to Iranian democracy

The Boston Globe

The parliamentary elections in Iran this month resemble the work of a clumsy illusionist. A Guardian Council of clerics and jurists disqualified about 90 percent of the reformists who wanted to run. The campaign was confined to a week, and public rallies were banned. Iranian liberals claim the official turnout figure was greatly exaggerated and a certain amount of finagling entered into the counting of votes.

Nevertheless, what makes Iran different from other authoritarian states is that Iranian politicians compete for power in a uniquely hybrid system: democratic institutions draped over a rigid autocracy. The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, invented rule-by-the-supreme-Islamic-jurist out of whole cloth. Thanks to that system, Khomeini's successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rules Iran as a grand puppet master.

All the strings dangle from his hands. The chiefs of the armed forces and the Revolutionary Guards report to him. He has representatives in each of the ministries. All important decisions on foreign and security policy and on Iran's nuclear program are his. And he has ultimate control over the intelligence and security services.

Khamenei's preferred style of leadership is to preserve a balance among contending factions. Unsurprisingly, just such an arrangement emerged this month from the first round of parliamentary elections.

Conservatives, who call themselves "principlists," will control more than two-thirds of the new legislature. But these adherents to the principles of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution are split between backers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and opponents who disdain his economic mismanagement or his belligerent bluster.

The electoral exercise will have little effect on nuclear policy. Some powerful rivals of Ahmadinejad are calling for more supple statecraft on the issue, but any substantive change in policy will have to be decided by the supreme leader, not by Ahmadinejad, and certainly not by the new Parliament.

However, the convenient new balance of forces in Parliament may presage a move by the supreme leader to discard Ahmadinejad. If Iran's economy continues to suffer from inflation, a failure to create enough jobs for young workers, and a lack of desperately needed foreign investment, there will be a claque of hard-line critics in Parliament to lay the blame on Ahmadinejad.

Then if Khamenei casts him overboard as so much excess ballast before next year's presidential election, he can pretend he is doing so not at the behest of Western-leaning liberal reformists, but to shore up the principles of the Revolution.