Throwing Ahmadinejad under the bus

Thu, 06/18/2009 - 6:09pm

A number of Iran experts have begun speculating that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will have to dump the evidently unpopular Ahmadinejad in order to save himself. The Carnegie Endowment's Karim Sadjadpour picks up the banner here in an interesting interview with CFR's indefatigable Bernard Gwertzman:

The supreme leader's decision to delegate responsibility to the Guardian Council was classic Khamenei in the sense that he doesn't cede authority--the Guardian Council is essentially under his jurisdiction--but he buys time and deflects accountability. He was calculating that if he could buy time, the scale of these protests would gradually diminish. So far, that hasn't been the case. He may eventually be faced with a situation of whether to sacrifice President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose "reelection" he announced, or go down himself with the ship.

It's interesting to note that Ahmadinejad has been strangely quiet of late -- a sign of either overconfidence or muzzling from the top. And then there's this bit of back-pedaling:

Mr. Ahmadinejad released a largely conciliatory recorded statement on state television Thursday, distancing himself from his past criticism of protesters he has compared to angry soccer fans and "dust.'' "I only addressed those who made riot, set fires and attacked people,'' the statement said. "Every single Iranian is valuable. The government is at everyone's service. We like everyone.''

It would be incredibly convenient for Khamenei to wash his hands of this mess and blame all the recent excesses on the president. But would it work?

UPDATE: After this speech, it's going to be hard for Khamenei to walk away from Ahmadinejad. It looks like we're headed for some real brutality now.

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A Real Ruler does Not Bow to Youth in the Streets

by Usama2 on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 7:42pm

Catering to niave youth running around in the streets would be the stupidest move that a ruler could make. G8 countries routinely throw their police forces on protesting youth despite the REAL evidence of fraud and corruptionin the G8.

Quite frankly, after reading the Mousavi spokesman sayin how maturity kills the fathers, how the Guardian council is illegitimate and so forth, and the absence of actual evidence in the recent Mousavi letter to the Guardian council, its quite reasonable to assume Khamenei to treat the protesters as China did the Tiamamen Square protests. Those protests lasted almost 8 weeks wherein the government waited patiently for the protesters to dissperse. 8 weeks of encouraging, no weapons, etc.

A protest that doesn't consider any facet of government as legitimate can only be percieved as dangerous. And since Ahmedinejad apparently won the election regardless of the cries of the people in the street and in the absence of evidence, what ruler would step down when nothing but shouting youth are behind protests?

The Mousavi spokesman literally sounds like someone who rejects the Iranian regime and wholely supports secularism in Iran. The real issue is NOT if Khamenei will step down or force Ahmedinejad to step down. The real issue is whether the protesters will see themselves as the minority that they apparently are - merely elated at the images and experience of the crowd/mob, or will they pit their forces against the silent majority in Iran.