Who Is Winning The Behind The Scenes Power Struggle in Iran?

Khamenei certainly has the power to crush the street demonstrations in Tehran-- as he appears to have done yesterday by letting the Revolutionary Guards off their leashes. But he may be more worried about Qom, the Iranian Vatican City and home of the Assembly of Experts, which hires and fires Supreme Leaders and is headed by Khamenei's arch-rival-- pistachio baron (and one of Iran's richest men) Ayatollah Hashemi Rasfanjani.

To recap yesterday, there is now no doubt that the election was stolen. although this morning the Guardian Council-- headed by the Ann Coulter of Iran-- announced that they would not annul the results of the tainted balloting. Mousavi, in the face of more violence, is calling on Iranian patriots to keep up the pressure and Ali Shahrokhi, head of parliament's judiciary committee, said Mousavi should be prosecuted for "illegal protests and issuing provocative statements." There is talk of a general strike, probably the only way to bring down the regime. (Thanks to the shameful partisan opportunism of McCain, Graham, Lieberman, Pence, and other mini-presidents in Congress, the Khamenei regime is accusing the protesters of being duped by the U.S., the same way the U.S. staged a coup in Tehran 55 years ago.)

Iran Monday accused the West of supporting "rioters" in widespread street unrest that has rocked the Islamic Republic since a disputed June 12 presidential election.

"The promotion of anarchy and vandalism by Western powers and media is by no means acceptable," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told a news conference. He did not rule out the possible expulsion of some European ambassadors in Tehran.

...Referring to the tight race between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush in 2000 and other U.S. Presidential elections, Qashqavi said:

"No one in that race encouraged the American people to stage a riot or anything like that and it was actually the (U.S. Supreme Court) that solved the issue."

Back to the goings on behind the curtain, the paranoid coterie around Khamenei is fairly certain that "Rafsanjani has been in the holy city of Qom, working to assemble a religious and political coalition to topple the supreme leader and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." Khamenei is no longer seen a the father of the country and a spiritual leader above the fray, but as a grubby political operative and a bloody dictator. He was a real image problem with the clergy and many are offended that he has repeatedly characterized the election as a "divine assessment" of Ahmadinejad’s popularity.

Now that Ayatollah Khamenei has become inexorably connected to Ahmadinejad’s power grab, many clerics are coming around to the idea that the current system needs to be changed. Among those who are now believed to be arrayed against Ayatollah Khamenei is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shi’a cleric in neighboring Iraq. Rafsanjani is known to have met with Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani’s representative in Iran, Javad Shahrestani.

A reformist website, Rooyeh, reported that Rafsanjani already had the support of nearly a majority of the Assembly of Experts, a body that constitutionally has the power to remove Ayatollah Khamenei. The report also indicated that Rafsanjani’s lobbying efforts were continuing to bring more clerics over to his side. Rafsanjani’s aim, the website added, is the establishment of a leadership council, comprising of three or more top religious leaders, to replace the institution of supreme leader. Shortly after it posted the report on Rafsanjani’s efforts to establish a new collective leadership, government officials pulled the plug on Rooyeh.

Meanwhile, the Al-Arabiya satellite television news channel reported that a "high-ranking" source in Qom confirmed that Rafsanjani has garnered enough support to remove Ayatollah Khamenei, but an announcement is being delayed amid differences on what or who should replace the supreme leader. Some top clerics reportedly want to maintain the post of supreme leader, albeit with someone other than Ayatollah Khamenei occupying the post, while others support the collective leadership approach.

To a certain degree, hardliners now find themselves caught in a cycle of doom: they must crack down on protesters if they are to have any chance of retaining power, but doing so only causes more and more clerics to align against them... [A] showdown could come later this week. One of the country’s highest-ranking clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri has declared three days of mourning for those who have died in street protests. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s declaration could bring thousands of Tehran residents back out into the streets starting on June 24.