The Ayatollah's Ticking Time Bomb

      This weekend I caught up on the new season of Entourage and as usual, the boys didn't disappoint.  Subsequently, a trusted advisor and I became engaged in the intellectual exercise of determining what dictator's entourage partied hardest.  Stalin and Hitler are obvious failures; the former was constantly killing off his buddies and the latter was probably just a belligerent buzz kill.  Mao didn't attract enough women with that oversized mole.  If The Last King of Scotland was accurate Idi Amin might have been decent, but the paranoia was a bit much.  Kim Jong Il came under consideration, mainly because of the Swedish prostitutes and air-delivered lobsters, but the social seismologist can't be seen with any man in 10 centimeter platform shoes.  Ultimately, the prize should go to a Latin American like Fulgencio Batista, if only because of the Latin women and easy access to cocaine.  

       One definitively boring entourage would be the Ayatollah Khomeini's.  Veiled women and a ban on alcohol don't make for good parties.  Perhaps because of the perpetual sausage fest, the Iranian regime has been blowing off steam in the form of an aspiring nuclear program. Unfortunately, Iran just got a lot more dangerous for everyone after what looked like a potential electoral victory for a reformist candidate turned into a near revolution. Until now Khomeini's successor, Khamanei (promotions were obviously based on similarity of name) and President Ahmadinejad have been forced to placate what is a far more liberal public because of Iran's limited democratic system.  They were generously freed from that constraint after they negated any claim to democratic legitimacy.  Fraudalent election or not (and it was), the brutal repression the conservatives in the Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia dealt out shows they are prepared to use any means in ensuring conservative leadership for the Islamic Republic.  Rig one election, the next one is sure to be a fraud.  The Guardian Council, the body which determines whether a candidate is eligible to run or not, will now carefully weed out anyone who might become another Moussavi.  The reform movement has gone from the verge of running the country to marginalization. 

      Because internal politics in Iran are more a series of bureaucratic maneuvers than anything resembling a democracy, its important to understand the inner workings of the government.  Before, the reformists (led by guys like former presidents Mohammed Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani) acted as a kind of check on the abrasive foreign policy of Ahmadinejad and co.  Despite the upper hand of conservatives, the presence of reformists throughout government ensured that Ahmadinejad's actions didn't quite match his speeches in venom.  Khamanei always leaned conservative but came out explicitly in support of the conservative wing and has allowed decisive action against what should be understood as the more responsible faction.  Khamanei is no longer the facilitator of compromise he was supposed to be; conservatives are firmly in charge and there's no one to to placate.  The reform movement can't fall back on public protest since violence is now a standard conclusion to public gatherings. 

Besides the fact that a vital check on conservative power in Iran has been removed,  the fact that popular dissension continues to simmer in back alleys and on rooftops at night means that a clash with Israel or the West is more valuable than ever.  Authoritarians love an excuse to crush dissent in the name of unity.  Reform would clearly be the last thing on every Iranian's mind in the event of an attack on the country's nuclear facilities.  Reformists and conservatives disagree on a lot of things, but they do agree on Iran's right to possess nuclear facilities for civilian energy purposes, which is the current excuse for the program.  The reformists would quietly be put down while the moral immediacy of their cause would be lost in the flood of nationalist sentiment after such an attack.

       This shift in Iran's internal dynamics has significantly increased the danger of a meltdown in the Middle East.  Its our goal at the SS to analyze subtle shifts in an effort to foresee the massive fallout that sometimes ensues.  The trigger remains an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.  The main thing standing in front of such a strike was the American diplomatic effort, which now appears to be canceled after the CIA engineered those street protests via Twitter.  The crackdown means Iranian conservatives dictate a far more reckless policy without heed to popular concern or reformist question. Today we hear from the Revolutionary Guard that Iran will attack Israel's nuclear facilities if they are attacked, ensuring that if Israel attempts a strike there will be some level of warfare between the two.  With hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu recently taking office as Prime Minister in Israel, it appears the perfect storm is brewing.  It's basically a guarantee that Israel won't allow Iran within a year of building an atomic weapon before it takes matters into its own hands.  Looks like we're left to wait and see...