Iran's crisis

It is far from over

Street anger may be fizzling, but infighting at the top could yet harm the regime more

AFTER just a week of heart-stirring popular defiance has Iran’s new-found spirit of liberty already been broken? The demonstrations in the wake of what still seems to have been a fraudulent election victory for the country’s gruesome incumbent president inspired awe; but as The Economist went to press their size appeared to have sharply dipped. The expression of dissent in rallies in a string of cities around the country seems to have subsided. It is still too soon to say whether some fresh incident may reignite mass anger in the near future, bringing millions back onto the streets, even forcing a rerun of the election. But the authorities, the security forces and their militia thugs, the baseej, sadly seem to have cracked enough heads to squash any immediate hope of setting aside a dodgy election, let alone ending rule by clerical fiat.

However, the courage of millions of ordinary Iranians will not have been in vain. The old establishment has not yet won and the crisis is far from over (see article). That is because the balance of power has shifted against the status quo.

Whatever the true result of the election, it is now plain that there is a vast constituency, even if it is not yet provably a majority, crying out for freedom. Mir Hosein Mousavi, the so-far-thwarted chief challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had been duly vetted by the clerical authorities as a proponent of their rule. But many of the millions who voted for him plainly hoped he would offer more freedom. As the old ruling circle has turned against him, even threatening him with imprisonment, he has boldly refused to bow out.

The legitimacy of the Islamic Republic has been spectacularly tarnished, both at home and abroad. Its claim to act as a beacon for Muslims, especially oppressed ones, in the region and around the world, has been ridiculed. Most dramatically, the position of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been sorely undermined. Once he posed as standing above the electoral fray, but he has now firmly come down on the side of repression and electoral fraud.

Perhaps the most damaging feature for the ruling clergy is the struggle that has broken out—for the first time so publicly—at the very top of the power structure. Forces loyal to Mr Khamenei and his bellicose president are now pitted openly against reformers and pragmatists backed by a former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, hitherto considered Iran’s second-most-powerful man, who, with another former president, Muhammad Khatami, a frustrated reformer, has outspokenly backed Mr Mousavi. So, even if the security forces manage to keep the dissenters off the streets, a bitter argument over the leadership of the ruling system will rage on. That battle may itself weaken if not topple the regime.

The world must watch and wait

Much as reform is to be desired, there is in truth little that outsiders can do to bolster the reformers. Barack Obama has rightly expressed greater outrage as the crisis has worsened. So have the leaders of Europe. But the American president has also been right to resist the temptation to call for the regime’s downfall or take sides in the power struggle, let alone back Mr Mousavi for the presidency. That would play into the hands of those Iranians already trying to paint the challenger and his supporters as tools of the conspiratorial West. Plainly, business as usual cannot yet resume. But Mr Obama’s prime aim is to persuade Iran to stop getting a nuclear weapon. To achieve that, he must still, sooner or later, seek to re-engage with Iran’s government, whether it is led by a Holocaust-denier or a reforming Islamist who, when all is said and done, shares his rival’s desire for Iran to obtain a nuclear capability.