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Weekly Updates"The Shark" and "The Crocodile" are the names of two powerful men in Iran now engaged in a latent war which will decide the fate of WuF. The real names of these two men will be revealed later on in this section. But what is important to know now is that both are equally as powerful, which makes their war the main focus of attention among the Iraqis in particular and among the Ja'fari Shi'ites of the Muslim world in general. Gradually, but apparently quickly, the latent war is coming to the surface and will be keenly watched worldwide. This is not only because of its relevance to whatever will happen to the GME in the years to come, but also in view of the Iran's wide exposure to the Internet which has enabled people all over the world to see whatever has been happening to Iran since June 12 and its dramatic and bloody aftermath (see news25IrnPresElectJun22-09).
The Arabs, for example, are subdued in their reactions to Iran's turmoil, wondering why their own struggles have been ignored by the West. But this schadenfreude comes to a tentative halt with the Arab regimes' allergy to popular movements demanding freedom, especially peaceful ones in which every move and every cry is instantly transmitted in this era of digital communication.
In each Arab country, regimes are scared and the people are wondering: Could this happen here? Is the courage of young Iranian protesters on behalf of Moussavi and Karubi a model to follow, or does the supremacist-guided repression curb enthusiasm for freedom? Images like the distressing video immortalising young Neda Agha-Soltan as she lay dying in Tehran, murdered on June 20 by a Basiji militiaman who shot her in the chest, have triggered conflicting emotions and sad questions on whether she died in vain.
The war between "The Shark" and "The Crocodile" is over the Shi'ite theocracy's need to keep exporting its revolution to the rest of the Muslim world and then, after a "Shi'itisation" of the overwhelming Sunni majority, to control the entire globe. The cost of this export is way beyond Tehran's financial means, with over 20m of Iran's population of 71+m wallowing in abject poverty. Indeed, the theocracy's nuclear and external ambitions under Khamenei have become so expensive that even the Soviet Union could no longer afford and collapsed in late 1991. Just before the June 12 elections, Ahmadi-Nejad boasted with huge confidence that Iran had become "not merely a big power in the [GME] region, but a global super-power". In one of the TV debates before June 12 Moussavi asked Ahmadi-Nejad how long Iran could keep on stretching itself beyond its means and at the expense of its people.
Now there is a difference from the way a scared Khamenei is behaving to the way an over-confident Ahmadi-Nejad is expressing himself, which suggests that someone (The Crocodile?) in between is moving both. Revelling in his "re-election" and responding to Barack Obama's comments about the Iranian repression, Ahmadi-Nejad on June 25 told the US president he must apologise for his interference before any dialogue between the two men can take place.
However, over 100 MP and Speaker Ali Larijani on June 25 boycotted a celebration for Ahmadi-Nejad at the presidential palace and only 70 other MPs attended. So did Tehran Mayor Muhammad-Baqer Qalibaf. Although both are still close to Khamenei, Qalibaf and Larijani are part of a third force opposed to Ahmadi-Najad and Musbah-Yazdi, and the two have been high-ranking IRGC officers. Qalibaf was an IRGC commander and also served as chief of the police. Both ran for president in 2005.
On his website on June 25 Moussavi said he will expose "the criminals who rigged the vote" in the most daring defiance of Khamenei, Ahmadi-Nejad and their allies. He called for public protests to continue but insisted on their being peaceful. In Qom, Grand Ayatullah Hussein-'Ali Muntazeri on June 25 issued a fatwa calling for the public protests to continue and for Khamenei to be toppled, already having declared WuF as being an illegitimate. Moussavi said those who rigged the elections were behind the subsequent bloodshed. He said he will reveal to the public many other things which were incriminating the rulers.
On the eve of the June 12 vote, it was said, top IRGC commanders went to Moussavi's home and asked him whether or not he will continue to fund and arm Iran's Lebanese Shi'ite offshoot Hizbullah, its Sunni allies Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the banned Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), Syria's Alawite/Ba'thist regime and other anti-US/anti-Israel forces in the GME. Moussavi is said to have told them he will only outline his position on this after he has won the June 12 elections. The IRGC commanders left his home convinced that Ahmadi-Nejad had to win at any cost, even by force. Hence the war between The Shark and The Crocodile.
The Crocodile is the name given privately to Musbah-Yazdi, the most intolerant among the Ja'fari theologians who believes Iran should take on the world on behalf of the 12th Imam, al-Mahdi, who should then return to Earth to rule it in justice. He has nothing but contempt for the Iranian people and has never believed in legitimacy of elections. Musbah-Yazdi has repeatedly said that allowing the public a voice in elections only serves to sully God's laws.
So the current uprising is challenging the legitimacy of WuF, which places Khamenei as "God's deputy on Earth". From the standpoint of the supremacists, the need to crush this uprising stems from their fear that the revolt is challenging WuF's very survival. The excuse for the uprising is the voting irregularities, but the real complaints go very deep, to the very nature of the system. If the supremacists can suppress this uprising - and they might - then the regime will have become a tyranny. But once the election crisis is gone, the legitimacy will be gone because not many will be convinced that the regime is sanctioned by God.
Thus a nation has stirred. Provoked, it has risen. "Silence equals protest", said a banner at one of the huge but mostly silent rallies on June 15-16. The vast crowds in one in Tehran - estimated at more than 2m - on June 15 moved in a hush of indignation, anger distilled to a wordless essence.
In greater numbers than ever before, Iranians in various cities bought in to the sliver of democracy offered by an autocratic system whose ultimate loyalty is to "the will of God" rather than that of the people. Almost 40m voted on June 12. Now, their votes flouted, many have crossed over from reluctant acquiescence to the theocracy into opposition. That was a fundamental shift.
Whether Musbah-Yazdi is backing Khamenei or keeping him hostage to his world-view is a tight secret within the theocracy. The Shark is ex-President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani who is putting his weight behind Moussavi. Rafsanjani, a billionaire with the rank of ayatollah, is chairman of the Assembly of Experts (AoE) and of the Expediency Council (EC), the two most powerful institutions in the theocracy. Rafsanjani is a father of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and has many allies in Qom, Mashhad and other important centres of Ja'fari religious authorities in Iran.
The AoE consists of 86 high-ranking theologians elected by the people. It elects the supreme leader, supervises his performance and has the power to have him replaced by someone more qualified, if it can prove that Khamenei has violated one of the basic WuF rules. Khamenei did violate one these rules just a few hours after voting ended in the evening of June 12 as he declared Ahmadi-Nejad the winner in a "divine" turn of events - that was many hours before the counting of the votes were to end, with protesters later claiming the authorities never bothered even to open the ballot boxes.
Khamenei violated WuF's constitution by allowing the IRGC and the Basij to play a highly visible role in the voting, by banning the subsequent protest demonstrations and by allowing the IRGC and Basiji forces to quell the rallies by force, with 32 young people killed and hundreds of reformists arrested on June 20 alone. He re-affirmed his siding with Ahmadi-Nejad during his Friday prayers sermon on June 19. He made it clear then that Ahmadi-Nejad was his preferred candidate. He spoke at the mosque of Tehran University under a banner which read "The Word of God". The EC is the ultimate arbitrator between any of the theocracy's institutions in dispute. Moussavi and Karubi, being among its members, have called for the EC to take up their charges as they have said they had no confidence in the GC. Karubi on June 25 said Ahmadi-Nejad's position was illegitimate. Moussavi is virtually under house arrest, however, as his home is surrounded by IRGC officers and intelligence agents disguised as civilians. This limits his movements and those of his backers.
It was thanks to Rafsanjani's extensive lobbying upon the death of Imam Khomeini in 1989 that Khamenei was elected to this top post by the AoE. Elected as AoE chairman in 2007, Rafsanjani had been listing Khamenei's violations since 1989. The first violation was done months after his election when, once having consolidated his power, he got WuF's constitution amended to include the word "absolute" before mention of his powers. Rafsanjani has since lengthened the list to the extent that he now is said to be able to have Khamenei impeached and replaced by a person more qualified or by a collective leadership.
Through most of the first two weeks after June 12, Rafsanjani was in Qom, Mashhad and other centres of religious learning quietly lobbying the AoE's key members for a showdown. Musbah-Yazdi is a member of the AoE. But Mesbah-Yazdi is not popular among the theologians of Qom. While some say most other AoE members are independent who could vote either way, others claim that Rafsanjani has already secured a majority against Khamenei and Musbah-Yazdi.
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