Good Cop, Bad Cop: Conflict at the Top

voteforiran.com
Weekly comment by Shervin Nekuee
Supreme Leader and Head of Judiciary Versus President and Head of IRGC: Different Messages or Different Styles?

It all started on Thursday the 27th duing a speech by Ayatollah Khamenei the supreme leader, to a gathering of representatives from the student division of the paramilitary Basij. Again, the supreme leader insisted on the legitimacy of the election, exactly as he had been since the day after the results were announced. Later, he made two points that can give some space for criticism of the hardliners. First, he talked about “crimes that had been committed in prisons and in the streets by governmental forces,” and he explicitly demanded punishment for those responsible. This was the first time that Khamenei openly and in a publicly referred to harsh violence used by governmental (military and security) forces and explicitly called it a crime. Second, he rejected the accusation that the leaders of the pre-election protests were agents of United States or England. “These accusations have not been proven,” he said. This announcement contradicts the many accusations that the hardliner disciples of Ayatollah Khamenei have been making in the state-run press, in parliament, and even in the trials against the reformists. Former presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani along with the two reformist candidates Mousavi and Karroubi have been repeatedly accused being under the influence of foreign forces. In addition, there has been an increasing demand from hardliners to charge them as the key figures of the protests. The words of Ayatollah Khamanei were interpreted as a first step towards reconciliation with the reform leaders.

The very next day, during Friday Prayers, Ahamdinejad sent a very different signal. In his speech he emphasized that the leaders of the revolt should be punished and not the ordinary people who had been manipulated by them. Although he didn’t mention any names, it was clear that he was accusing Rafsanjani, Khatami, Mousavi, and Karroubi. “These people think they can do anything, they think they own the country,” he said. The contrast in the tone of Ahmadinejad compared to that of Khamenei was backed by the announcement from the chief Commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (Sepah), Jafari. Jafari put a new spin on Khamenei’s statement that the bloody events after the election required investigation. During a press conference on Saturday, he claimed that only 29 people had been died during the postelection-events in Iran and that the vast majority of them were from Sepah or it is paramilitary wing the Basij. According to Jafari, the majority of victims were on the side of the government forces.

However, on the same day the new Judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani announced the formation of an investigative committee to look into post-election events and to deal with the possible “illegal aggression in the streets and in the prisons.” In addition, he announced that they would “punish those who are guilty of crimes despite their position in the government”. He also took a remarkable step and fired Tehran’s notorious prosecutor-general Saeed Mortazavi. Mortazavi has been seen as the key figure behind the massive arrests of reformers, journalists, and intellectuals in the days following the June 12th election. He is one of the intimate advisers of Ahmadienjad and one the most hated hard-line figures among reformists and journalists because of his frequent arrests of those critical of the regime. Mortazavi has been accused by several ex-prisoners of taking a direct role in the torture of prisoners. The new head of the Judiciary, Ayatollah Larijani, replaced Mortazai with a moderate, Abbas Jaafari Dowlatabadi, who was the former head of the judiciary in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
Some commentators see these events as clear signs of a deep split within what used to be seen as a united hard-line front. On the one hand Ayatollah Khamenei, the new chief of the Judiciary, and the head of the Parliament (who is the brother of the new chief Prosecuter) are making clear attempts for reconciliation with Rafsanjani and the reformist leaders. On the other hand, Ahmadinejad and his military allies at the top of Sepah are getting more and more explicit in their calls for brutal suppression of the reformist movement and for the arrests of its leaders thus rejecting any attempts to consider the protestors as the victims of criminal and aggressive acts by the government.
Some other commentators, on the other hand, see in these announcements no contradiction or clash between the different wings of the hard-line group in power. To them this is only a “good cop-bad cop” approach to silence the protestors and activists: one with a gesture of reconciliation and the other with intimidation.