A combination of file pictures shows Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (L) addressing the faithful at the weekly Muslim Friday prayers at Tehran University on June 19, 2009 and President, Hassan Rouhani at a press conference in Tehran on June 17, 2013. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]As soon as Hassan Rouhani was elected president of Iran in June 2013, many predicted a new round of acrimony within the ranks of the Islamic Republic’s ruling elite. That prediction was based on the perception that the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been forced to accept Rouhani’s election. Having succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani was, after all, a man who sold himself to the electorate as a moderate with a plan to overhaul Iranian policies both at home and abroad.
There is, however, a very significant caveat. It was not that Khamenei could not have stopped Rouhani’s ascendency to the presidency: he could have done this simply by using the veto powers belonging to the office of the Supreme Leader to bar Rouhani from running in the first place. Instead, Khamenei must have seen a Rouhani presidency as an opportunity for Iran to turn a page in its relations with the outside world. Khamenei was not necessarily that interested in restructuring Tehran’s foreign policy priorities, but was led onto this path out of fear that the international sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear policy would eventually tear Iranian society—and the regime that leads it—apart.
For most of the past year, Rouhani and Khamenei have striven to focus on the common ground they share, while somewhat willfully downplaying the many differences that plague their awkward inter-factional relationship. In many ways, it has worked. Rouhani has focused on foreign affairs and was able to strike an important nuclear deal with world powers in Geneva last November. Some of the hard-line voices associated with Khamenei did not like the agreement in the slightest, but the Supreme Leader backed it and that was enough to seal the deal from Tehran’s end. In the meantime, Rouhani played a highly cautious game when it came to domestic political matters. He did not want to pick a public fight with Khamenei the way his two presidential predecessors, Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had done. Rouhani calculated such a spat could only undermine—if not outright kill—his broader ambitions for his presidency.
This awkward co-existence at the top echelon of power, however, is becoming increasingly difficult to gloss over. Rouhani himself now appears willing to spearhead a process where his moderate faction square up to some of the orthodoxies that have long been held dear by Ayatollah Khamenei and his cohorts. The latest example of this new dynamic centered on the question of the role of women in Iranian society. In a speech on International Women’s Day, Khamenei in essence called the question of gender equality a flawed, Western concept alien to Islamic culture. Rouhani and his close associates, including elder statesman (and former president) Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, quickly countered and called for “gender equality” instead. The defiance coming from the moderate wing of the Iranian regime was bare for everyone to see.
There are those who see such defiance not as tactical disagreements, but as examples of how Rouhani’s strategic goals are actually very different from what he let on in the past. The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohammad-Ali Jaafari , did not mince his words when he said that “some people do not show their true intentions.” Of course, everyone knew who the “some people” were. Last week, another IRGC commander warned of the danger posed by “those seeking to establish a secular government” in Iran. In the last year, Rouhani has often defended himself by telling his hard-line critics that he has “the ear of the Supreme Leader.” But the latest bickering over the role of women in society and other divisive issues suggest that Rouhani might soon find Khamenei to be far less accommodating in the future.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
