Battle Royal
fate similar to that of former President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt: out of power and imprisoned. (Mubarak’s son, Gamal, lost the Egyptian military’s support because of his desire to wrest back economic control, which played no small role in the military’s willingness to offer Mubarak as a sacrificial lamb in January 2011 at the height of the so-called Arab Spring.) If they succeed, the government will have centralised a great deal of power, not unlike how Xi Jinping has consolidated government power in China after successfully cracking down on the perks that the People’s Liberation Army enjoyed in recent decades.
Disagreement among political factions is course in Iran. But this is not just disagreement. This is shaping up to be a battle royal for power, and the stakes are extremely high.
The government has a clear view of Iran’s future, one that does not include Iran becoming a de facto military dictatorship. The military may have had to play a large and necessary role in rebuilding the country after the revolution and the subsequent 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, but Rouhani, himself a Rafsanjani acolyte, does not think this should be a permanent state of affairs. After making the Iran nuclear deal with the United States, he is now focusing on getting his domestic affairs in order. With the IRGC involved in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, it is an ideal time for Rouhani to make his move.
par
for
the
How Rouhani’s moves intersect with events over the past week are worth considering. The hijab protests were not particularly novel or important; they have happened sporadically in the past.
The anomaly was that Iran’s Centre for Strategic Studies, a think tank that functions as the research arm of the presidency, released a report a few days after police arrested 29 people in connection with the protest. The report – from 2014 – states that 49.8% of the Iranian public opposed compulsory head covering for women. The release of the study so soon after the hijab protests is either highly coincidental or a clear sign from the Rouhani government that it not only opposes hard-liner views on issues such as these, but that it is also not afraid to make its opposition public.
Perhaps, then, there was more to the December protests than first met the eye. Perhaps elements of the IRGC, dissatisfied with Rouhani’s moves, wanted to demonstrate its indispensability and to remind the administration that it better not get too ambitious in its privatisation plans. And perhaps the Rouhani administration sought to take advantage of the situation by turning the focus back on the IRGC, using the momentum from the protests to blame the current system for the lack of economic progress and as justification for more intense reforms. There are a number of “perhapses” in this paragraph, and at this point, this is little more than a theory. It’s a plausible theory, but a theory nonetheless.
In any case, one question in all of this is to what extent, if any, these events will change Iran’s foreign policy.
The preliminary answer is not much. Iran continues to press its advantage in the Middle East after the weakening of the Islamic State and the survival of the Assad regime. Via the IRGC, Iran continues to support proxies in Iraq and Syria. Israel has become so concerned with Iran’s moves that it is threatening war against Lebanon for becoming a de facto Iranian missile factory. In addition, Iran is reaching out to Hamas, an old friend it has been on the outs with in recent years, seeking to reclaim some of its influence in the Gaza Strip.
None of this has been limited by the domestic unrest in Iran, or in the now accelerating government campaign to curtail the power of the IRGC and similar organisations at home – at least, not yet.