Last updated: 2:22 am
July 15, 2009
Posted: 2:12 am
July 15, 2009

The New York Post

JUST over a month after a controversial election split Iran's ruling elite into two openly hostile camps, there are signs that the adversaries may be taking a step back from the brink. A key moment comes Friday, during the traditional mass-prayer congregation held at Tehran University.

It was there, a month ago, that the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei drew a line in the sand by insisting that the opposition accept President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, turn a page and fall into line.

In exchange, Khamenei offered implicit guarantees to drop Ahmadinejad's announced plans for bringing corruption and abuse-of-power charges against some leading opposition figures -- including former Presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, and former Parliament Speaker Nateq Nuri. The chief opposition figures, including the three mullahs in question, boycotted Khamenei's sermon and so far have refused to endorse Ahmadinejad's re-election.

Now, however, Khamenei's offer may have tempted the trio -- who seem to be distancing themselves from Mir Hussein Mousavi, who still claims he, and not Ahmadinejad, won the June 12 election.

In the Soviet Union's heyday, one way of finding out what was going on at the Kremlin was to examine photos of regime grandees attending major public ceremonies. In Khomeinist Iran, attendance at Friday prayers at Tehran University fills the same role.

Rafsanjani is slated to preside over this Friday's ceremony and to deliver the principal sermon. That's significant because the former president, though an "alternate Friday prayer leader for Tehran," has been absent from the gathering for the last 10 weeks. The fact that he's returning is a sign that the authorities are prepared to let him address the crowd in a ceremony broadcast live on national radio and TV. It also means that Rafsanjani must have promised not to step out of line.

More interesting, perhaps, Mousavi -- who had called for a boycott of the campus prayer ceremony -- is now calling on his supporters to turn out en masse this Friday, ostensibly to show that he can draw a larger crowd than his rival.

The interesting question now is who'll attend the gathering and who won't.

Tehran is full of rumors that Ahmadinejad and some of his key supporters among the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders will turn up to show that the election feud is over. My own guess, however, is that Ahmadinejad won't show up for a sermon by a man he has promised to bring to justice.

Khamenei may be anxious to mollify Rafsanjani, Khatami and Nateq-Nuri because mullahs always end up banding together. But Ahmadinejad has no reason to abandon a main plank of his populist discourse -- "cutting the hands of corrupt mullahs."

And despite Mousavi's call for participation, I also doubt that his key reformist supporters will show up. The fact that more than 80 people have been executed and some 4,000 remain in prison makes reconciliation difficult.

But Khamenei and Rafsanjani -- who've alternately been friends, rivals and, more recently, adversaries for more than 50 years -- may be interested in patching up things.

Khamenei knows that at least half the ruling elite doesn't accept Ahmadinejad's legitimacy and that the re-elected president may find it hard, if not impossible, even to get his new Cabinet approved by the Islamic Majlis, Iran's ersatz parliament. For his part, Rafsanjani knows that the millions who marched against Ahmadinejad's re-election didn't do so because they loved Mousavi (a relative unknown) but because they're fed up with Khomeinism.

Yet Khamenei and Rafsanjani may be outflanked by more radical elements in their respective camps.

On Khamenei's side, Ahmadinejad firmly believes that the Khomeinist revolution needs a "second breath," which can only come with a big purge of "corrupt, arrogant and compromising elements" such as Rafsanjani and Khatami.

On Rafsanjani's side, key figures such as Zahra Ranavard (Mousavi's outspoken wife) and Mostafa Tajbakhsh (an ex-deputy interior minister) also hope for a major purge, but this time of elements like Ahmadinejad.

What we are witnessing is the confrontation of two radically different visions of Iran.

One, represented by Ahmadinejad, is of Iran as a vehicle for permanent revolution, in the context of a messianic vision with global dimensions. The other, now represented by Mousavi, is of Iran as an ordinary state looking for a place in the international community and determined to close the chapter of the revolution -- as so many other countries with revolutionary experiences have done.

This Friday's ceremony may help postpone the inevitable confrontation temporarily. Nevertheless, Iran must at some point cure itself of its schizophrenia and decide whether it wishes to remain a cause or wants to become a country again.