Re-reading Khoeiniha in Tehran
IRD- The unprecedented protests that broke up following the 2009 presidential elections provided an opportunity for the Principalist camp of Iranian politics to rake up old contentions and make a decisive attempt to oust from Iranian politics archrivals. Two former presidents, Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Rafsanjani, were effectively marginalized, and only managed to keep relevant through minimal, calculated appearances while Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the leaders of the Green Movement, were eventually put under house arrest. There was also one man whom the Principalists did their best to put in spotlight; but he belonged to the backstage, and resisted instigations to come to the fore. Mousavi Khoeiniha was called a revisionist, seditionist, ex-Marxist, godfather, and eminence grise (the last one a title once bestowed upon Akbar Rafsanjani by Reformist rivals) after the elections. A monograph was published about his political life, with the telling title “The Hallucination of Politics” that cast doubt about his revolutionary credentials and his real intentions since the beginning of his political career.
The septuagenarian ayatollah has had better days though. In fact, his political résumé during the first decade of Islamic Revolution when the Islamic Leftists enjoyed, or at least purported to do so, a degree of preferential treatment from the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomeini. They held a majority in the parliament and the cabinet headed by Mir Hossein Mousavi, and controlled key positions in the judiciary. Within this period, Mousavi Khoeiniha served as deputy-speaker of the first parliament, member of the Assembly of Experts, Prosecutor General, and member of the Council for Revision of the Constitution. However, he might be best known for the takeover of the US Embassy in November 1979. Khoeiniha was known as the spiritual leader of the revolutionary group who seized American diplomats, namely the Muslim Student Followers of Imam [Khomeini’s] Line.
After the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 and leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei, Khoeiniha, disappointed for not being appointed as head of the judiciary by the new Supreme Leader, was introduced as director of the Council for Strategic Studies, an office under the supervision of President Akbar Rafsanjani, from 1990 to 1993. The council became an unofficial think-tank for the marginalized Left, a locus for their metamorphosis into Reformists, and a site for strategizing their comeback into power, which was accomplished with Mohammad Khatami’s presidency in 1997.
Khoeiniha’s bigger move during the Left’s hibernation was publishing the Salaam daily. Within the restrictive political atmosphere of Rafsanjani’s presidency, the newspaper served as the main voice of dissidence against the liberal economic policies of Akbar Hashemi. It also turned into the main channel for supporting Mohammad Khatami during his presidential campaign and surprise victory in June 1997. Salaam lost its charm shortly after Khatami’s election, when new media -more professional and liberal in attitude- started publishing and soon attracted the attention of Iran’s politically hyperactive civil society. However, the newspaper re-asserted its position in the summer of 1999, when it published a document claiming that the restrictive Amendment of Press Law draft on the agenda of the fifth conservative-dominated parliament was originally proposed by Saeed Emami, former deputy minister of intelligence charged with chain murders of Iranian secular intellectuals, who had died in custody earlier in prison. Salaam was immediately shut down by the judiciary on charges of publishing a confidential document. But its closure sparked off five days of demonstrations and unrest which started from the Tehran University and were a prototype of the 2009 political upheaval. Khoeiniha was tried in the Special Clerical Court later, something he probably did not expect regarding himself as a member of the Revolution’s Old Guard.
Mousavi Khoeiniha made a brief reappearance in 2003 at another critical period. The Guardian Council, chaired by the staunch anti-Reformist cleric Ahmad Jannati, had barred the majority of Reformist nominees from running for the 7th parliamentary election, among them 70 incumbents of the sixth parliament. “We will break the plot of obscurantism” a Reformist newspaper quoted Khoeiniha. Using the word obscurantism (tahajjor in Persian), Khoeiniha had actually returned to the discourse of his political patron, Ayatollah Khomeini, in whose worldview obscurantists were those who viewed Islam as an apolitical set of rituals, not a driving source for reform of the society. Mousavi Khoeiniha was now using the term to describe his political rivals as the ones who did not trust in, and limited, people’s political choice through disqualification of candidates. Ironically, Mousavi Khoeiniha used the term fetneh (sedition, plot) to describe the situation; a term which six years later was used over and over against him and his companions. He did not succeed in ‘breaking the fetneh’ however, and Principalists swept the parliament. The next successful steps for his political opponents came with presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and winning the parliamentary election in 2007 (again with disqualification of some major Reformist candidates), before the 2009 presidential election.
The increasingly polarized presidential campaigns of 2009 eventually turned into a duel between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi and marginalized the two other candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaei. Both the leading candidates were supported by powerful forces, lining up against each other with a mixture of current interests and old hostilities. With wisdom of hindsight, the zero-sum game played by both sides left little room for a smooth conclusion to the election.
Association of Combatant Clerics, the major Leftist clerical organization that was led by Mousavi Khoeiniha, took a strong stance from the beginning of post-election protests, claiming vote manipulation, calling for annulation of the election and strongly objecting the treatment of demonstrators by security forces. Their unprecedentedly sharp tone that bespoke of the brinksmanship strategy provided the Principalists with an opportunity to foreground the role of Mousavi Khoeiniha, besides Hashemi Rafsanjani, as the backstage orchestrator of the post-election protests. “The most influential figure of the Left”, as the Principalist Panjereh Weekly wrote, who “possesses undeniable charisma among the modern strata of Reformists” was accused of siding with the counter-revolutionary forces and Western powers, plotting to undermine the Supreme Leader, and instigating the political system to use violence against the protestors.
Along with this, his political records underwent a significant re-reading in the light of post-election developments. His revolutionary credentials were challenged, and his role in leading the US Embassy seizure was re-contextualized. It was said that the embassy takeover was in fact his personal plan, rooted in his ‘Marxist’ bent and his dubious relations with the Soviet Union, and Ayatollah Khomeini was only forced to accept it as a fait accompli .
Mousavi Khoeiniha kept largely silent throughout this period. The news revolving around him were either rumors ‘leaking’ out of his meetings with fellow Leftists, or his replies to questions asked by the readers of his short-lived official website. In a belated response, the ayatollah once complained that the volume of accusations were such that he couldn’t manage time to see which ones he should deny and which one he should explain about.
With the presidency of Hassan Rouhani a breathing space may have been provided for the Reformists who were on the brink of complete ouster from politics after the 2009 presidential elections. True it is, that still news leak out of Mousavi Khoeiniha’s private meetings, but he can appear on the news headlines for other topics, for example when he says “I’ve never taken cash subsidies,” while Iranian citizens are eying Hassan Rouhani carrying out the second phase of Iran’s subsidy reform plan.
By: Ali Attaran