iran unfiltered

The hardliner-versus-moderate (these being relative terms, of course) battle over control of Azad University rages on.  In the latest round, Mir Hossein Mousavi's presence at a recent meeting, chaired by Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafanjani, of the school's governing board has provoked outrage among hardliners such as Kayhan editor Hossein Shariatmadari.  Mousavi's membership on the board appeared to have ended with an order from the hardline Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, but it looks as though Rafsanjani and his allies (including the university's head Abdollah Jasbi) are continuing their business as usual. 

RFE/RL has an overview of the ongoing fight and its broader implications for Iran's politics:

The stakes are high -- and not just because of the university's immense assets. Politics and control reign supreme in this dispute. If Ahmadinejad wins, Rafsanjani stands to lose influence in Iran's political scene and the university's campuses could be controlled by the government's security and military apparatus.

Saeed Paivandi, a Paris based sociology professor, says  Ahmadinejad has had an eye on the university since he came to power in 2005.
 
"Ahmadinejad has wanted to take control over the university since he was elected because of the university's assets and facilities, but also because he believes the university is one of the centers of power in the Iranian society that still remains in the hands of his rivals," Paivandi said. 

In an effort to take full control of Azad University (a vast system of 357 schools/campuses throughout Iran and an enrollment of almost 1.4 million students), the hardline ruling faction has amended the university's charter so that the members of the board of trustees are selected by the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, Ministry of Science and the office representing the Supreme Leader in universities.

These amendments surely mean that the days of university head Abdollah Jasbi, an ally of Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani are numbered.  Jasbi has frequently clashed with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and with this development Ahmadinejad seems to have struck the fatal blow.

And just for good measure, the government has removed Mir Hossein Mousavi from the university's board of founders.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Mehdi Hashemi, son of Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is currently living in England.  The Revolutionary Guard mouthpiece Fars initially made this claim, but it has since been confirmed by Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi.  This is another sign that Rafsanjani's increasingly explicit pledges of allegiance to Leader Ali Khamenei have not discouraged the radical right faction from waging war against him.

The past few days in Iran have been marked by a series of meetings of reformist-opposition figures.  These include separate visits by the Imam Line faction (a minority reformist group in the Majles) to Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mir Hossein Mousavi.

In the session with Rafsanjani (a report of which is translated here by Khordaad88), both Mohammad-Reza Tabesh (a senior member of the Imam Line and a nephew of Mohammad Khatami) and Rafsanjani have talked up the importance of Majles in the governing system.  In doing so, they make it clear that they support the role of Majles as a rival center of power and bulwark against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the executive branch.

Mousavi, meanwhile, used the meeting (translated report here) to condemn the current rulers on a number of fronts, including the refusal to seek anything remotely resembling political consensus, by making unfavorable comparisons to the ruling methods of regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini. 

When the regime granted supposedly temporary release to several political prisoners in the days leading up to the Norooz holiday, it wasn't clear whether the releases would in fact only be temporary or whether they would morph into permanent freedom for the individuals involved.  It's turned out to be the former in the case of Hossein Marashi, a close ally of Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, as he has been re-arrested.   

According to the prominent opposition site Jaras, a source close to Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani quotes him as saying that the people should continue with their protests and demands.  The source adds that Rafsanjani has called for a strong turnout on Islamic Republic Day (12 Farvardin; April 1), though he has not made the call public because of the Norooz holiday and "other issues".

As Rafsanjani has publicly been moving closer to the government line in the past month or two, one way for him to hedge his bets and maintain a middle-of-the-road stance may be to use proxies such as this source (or his daughter Faezeh Hashemi, for example) to give messages to the opposition.   

Hassan Lahouti, the grandson of Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and daughter of Faezeh Hashemi, has been arrested after arriving in Iran from Britain, where he is a student.

This comes on the heels of the arrest and sentencing of another Rafsanjani relative, the reformist politician Hossein Marashi, although it's been reported that Marashi was subsequently released for the Norooz holiday.

Update on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 2:45AM by Ali

Lahouti has been released on bail.

Continuing on his mysterious which-side-is-he-really on path, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's latest statement is a point for the opposition: he has criticized the national broadcasting company for its pro-government "factional approach" and has urged a less biased, "national" viewpoint.

If "moderate conservatives" like Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani want to tweak the current system even a little in order to improve its stability, they will almost definitely have to do so without the support of Leader Ali Khamenei.  Khamenei's statements consistently demonstrate the belief that any compromise or change is a sign of weakness and will lead to further trouble; the latest example of this view is his speech to the Assembly of Experts at its recent gathering.  Responding indirectly to the plan put forth by a committee of the Expediency Council (led by Rafsanjani) to take powers away from the Guardian Council, he said:

There is no doubt that the Guardian Council has legal responsibilities.  These responsibilities stipulated in the constitution - which are overseeing elections and determining qualification [of candidates] and the like - must not be attacked.

Translation to would-be reformers: we are happy with our current system of controlling elections - don't try to mess with it.

Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's seeming shift toward the government camp has not been enough to persuade it to stop its campaign of pressure against him and his family: a judiciary official has announced that the legal cases against his children Mehdi Hashemi and Faezeh Hashemi are still pending.

In an interview with Rooz, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's daughter Faezeh Hashemi has dismissed claims that her father's recent actions (in connection with his duties as head of both the Assembly of Experts and Expediency Council) signal that he has sold out the Green Movement and moved fully back into the pro-government camp.  She asks for patience, implying that he is still working behind the scenes, and argues that he still stands by the demands he made in his famous Friday prayer sermon last July.   

The interview also features a question and answer that are quite amusing in their obviousness.  After Hashemi details the short detentions she and other family members have faced in recent months:

Q: Ms. Hashemi, was the quick release of you and your relatives (which did not last more than 30 hours) not due to your relation to Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani?

A: Yes, the possibility exists that they let me go because of my relation to him.

Hashemi also refers to a video currently circulating on the internet which shows her being harrassed by Basij members on December 7 (16 Azar: Students Day and one of the big post-election protests).  Here it is:

Fresh off the boost given to him by the Assembly of Experts' clear show of support during its meetings and in its session-ending statement this week (see here), Leader Ali Khamenei once again takes aim at Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi: 

Those individuals who cannot accept laws and the vote of the majority, and who treat a signal of strength such as the glorious elections with forty million votes as a weakness, in effect throw themselves off this rescue boat [the regime] and lose the ability to participate in the framework of this Islamic regime, which they have lost.

These events strengthen the recent impression that regime figures are increasingly and more enthusiastically rallying around Khamenei and hint at a possible effort to target Mousavi and Karroubi even more directly.  

One of the figures recently moving to get close to Khamenei is that wily old shark Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and with the Assembly of Experts' statement this week Rafsanjani's message to Mousavi and Karroubi is summed up nicely by cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar:

(Rafsanjani while holding the statement in his hand: "You guys are screwed, but I won't suffer even a bit".)

Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's recent pledges of allegiance to Leader Ali Khamenei do not mean that he supports the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or is happy with the current situation: that is the message to be taken from his meeting Saturday with Mehdi Karroubi's son Ali, who was detained and beaten by government security forces on 22 Bahman (11 February).  In recent months, visiting recently released detainees has been a common method of indicating opposition to that detention and more generally to the post-election government crackdown.

A potentially big development: a plan is to be introduced today in the Expediency Council, a body that holds supervisory powers over the three branches of government, that would eliminate the Guardian Council's power to vet candidates for the presidency and Majles, which (at least until last June's blatant vote-rigging) has been the regime's main tool for exercising control over elections. 

The proposal is being pushed by three prominent figures in the Expediency Council: its current head Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohsen Rezaee (the former Revolutionary Guard commander and presidential candidate last year), and Hassan Rowhani (the moderate cleric who was Iran's chief nuclear negotiator under Mohammad Khatami).  It calls for the Guardian Council's vetting role to be given to a new Elections Committee, which would be under the supervision of the Expediency Council.  The Guardian Council would be left with the worthless consolation prize of having one of its members serve on the Elections Committee, and even then only in a non-voting capacity.

One fascinating aspect of this story is that it has been leaked not by the proposal's backers, but rather by its opponents: the ultra-hardline Kayhan and its chief editor Hossein Shariatmadari, who is clearly trying to take the initiative by attacking the plan even before it has been formally announced.  Stay tuned.

In the first installment of a new memoir-like feature on his website, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani gives a detailed account of his pre-revolution activities; an apt title for the piece might be "Khomeini and I" given its focus on the interaction he had with regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini.  But the more relevant part for today's purposes comes at the very end of the piece, when he discusses his relationship with Leader Ali Khamenei.  After some fairly effusive praise of Khamenei, he says:

Throughout our more than 50 years of knowing and working with each other, in particular the 30 years after the revolution and especially in the last one or two years, both Ayatollah Khamenei and I have repeatedly spoken, both in private sessions and public speeches and interviews, of the solidity of our relationship.

His message is clear: I am fully on board with Khamenei (the rumors last July that he was trying to round up Assembly of Experts votes to oust Khamenei sure seem a long time ago, don't they?).  And Khamenei has no problems with me, so all of you hardline attack dogs need to get off my case.

He adds this slightly curious comment though: 

Why should we have differences with one another?  Right now, we sit down once every two weeks and discuss all of the issues of the country.  Since the sessions are not recorded, we have no limitations on what can be expressed.

Presumably his point is to show that he and Khamenei are in regular touch, but that doesn't necessarily ensure that they don't have any differences.  Rather, it's interesting in showing that as one of the 'conservative moderate' figures trying to chart a middle course through the political crisis, he may have the face time to help convince Khamenei to make a move against the Ahmadinejad government for the sake of greater regime stability.