asianaffairs

UNITING IN DEATH: The funeral of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri December 21 saw a hundred thousand anti-regime demonstrators out on the streets and the unrest shift from Tehran to the holy city of Qom

The December 21 funeral of a senior Iranian cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, became the occasion for opponents of the clerical regime to stage large-scale protests in the city of Qom, headquarters of the country's clergy (located about 125 kms from the capital, Tehran). Montazeri, an aging but respected and influential opponent of the regime, died December 19 at the age of 87 after two decades of opposing the regime he helped found. Initially, Montazeri was the designated successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, but after a few years of disagreements with Khomeini over the growing authoritarian nature of the regime, Montazeri was removed from his position in 1989. His removal came three months before Khomeini's death and the election of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has since held the post of supreme leader.

Montazeri's death comes at a time when the regime is at its weakest domestic point since its founding in early 1979. The regime's current problems can be traced back to the 2004 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which sparked an intra-elite battle that has been steadily intensifying between the president's ultra-conservative camp and his pragmatic conservative opponents. The rift between the two rival conservative camps became public after the controversial June 12 elections earlier this year, which resulted in Ahmadinejad getting a second term.

Unprecedented demonstrations against Ahmadinejad and his main patron, Ayatollah Khamenei, took place in the weeks following the election. The government — through a dis-proportionate use of force — was initially successful in containing the protests. Fearing that the unrest and the government's reaction could tear the Islamic republic apart, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashmi Rafsanjani — the main mover and shaker behind the unrest and the regime's second most powerful cleric — decided to dial back from his earlier strong opposition to the vote's outcome.

For a while it seemed that the regime had prevailed and opposition from both state and society had been effectively dealt with, even though pockets of dissent never quite disappeared. In recent months, however, there has been a revival of anti-government protests indicating that the temporary lull on the streets didn't mean that all was well. The initial wave of protests and the way the regime violently suppressed them had in fact worsened the fissures in both state and society.

Under internal pressure to scale back its use of force, the Ahmadinejad administration adopted a more relaxed attitude toward demonstrators that provided an opening for the growing opposition to try and push the regime further into a corner. The onset of Muharram, a month of public religious mourning for Shia Muslims, and the demise of Montazeri further put the regime on the defensive and emboldened its opponents.

The result is that the unrest has spread from Tehran to Qom, a city that symbolises the clerical foundations of the regime. Protests against the clerical regime are unheard of in Qom. Stratfor sources said that demonstrators numbered more than a hundred thousand on December 21 and that many senior clerics who until now have remained neutral may jump into the fray.

Clearly, the regime has not only been unable to stamp out the unrest, the turmoil is growing and has now reached the bastion of the clergy. Furthermore, the regime, which allowed the protests to take place largely undisturbed, is now on the defensive. This doesn't mean that the Islamic republic is necessarily crumbling, but clearly it is in deep trouble.

The turmoil, though much more mature than what it was in the summer, is still nascent. There are many moving parts with unclear futures. What is obvious, however, is that the current situation can't persist. Something has to give.

This is undoubtedly Tehran's foremost internal threat, and it comes during its biggest foreign policy challenge. Tehran is fast approaching the year-end deadline to accept a United Nations deal and relinquish control over its stockpile of indigenously enriched uranium or face the threat of crippling gasoline sanctions or worse: U.S. or Israeli military action — or both. One option for the regime is to remain defiant and provoke war in an attempt to try to consolidate itself on the home front.

But there are no guarantees that Iran's already incensed public won't fault the regime for plunging the country into war. On the other hand, the perception of capitulation to international pressure could end up exacerbating the domestic unrest. It is not clear whether the Islamic republic will fall, but the current elite in charge is truly between a rock and a hard place.

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