http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-circle31dec31,0,1974441.story?coll=la-home-center
From the Los Angeles Times

Iran's inner and outer circles of influence and power
The power of Shiite Muslim clergy has eroded in favor of various competing groups within a unique religious, civil, social and bureaucratic framework.
By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 31, 2007

BEIRUT — Iran's supreme leader spoke not with the thunder of a man regarded in his country as God's representative on Earth, but with the exasperated tone of a corporate manager chastising his employees.

Ali Khamenei had ordered his deputies to start privatizing state-owned businesses: the telephone company, three banks and dozens of small oil and petrochemical enterprises.

Jealously guarding their own sources of power and patronage, however, his underlings all but ignored him.

Months passed. Then Khamenei gathered the country's elite for an extraordinary meeting. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Cabinet ministers were there, as were important clerics, the leader of parliament and provincial governors, and the heads of state broadcasting and the Iranian chamber of commerce.

With television cameras rolling, Khamenei told them to pass some laws, sell off some businesses -- and be quick about it. "Those who are hostile to these policies are the ones who are going to lose their interests and influence," he declared.

The system shrugged. By November, nine months after his public scolding and almost a year and a half after Khamenei had first issued his order, almost nothing had happened. According to the Middle East Economic Digest, only two out of 240 state-owned businesses Khamenei targeted had been sold off.

For years, Western analysts have struggled to understand the inner workings of Iran's leadership. To many, it is a government tightly controlled by the Shiite Muslim clergy. But the power of the clerics has steadily eroded. Increasingly, power is distributed among combative elites within a delicate system of checks and balances defined by religious as well as civil law, personal relations and the rhythm of bureaucracy.

Iran analysts struggle to discern which officials have authority and how much. And when Iranian officials make public pronouncements, it often is unclear whether they are expressing established policy or fighting among themselves -- speaking for their own faction or just themselves.

Concentric circles of influence and power that emanate from the supreme leader include the clergy, government and military officials -- and at their farthest fringes, militiamen and well-connected bazaar merchants -- altogether perhaps 15% of Iran's 70 million people.

Even the man regarded in Iran as the highest-ranking cleric in Shiite Islam finds himself constrained and challenged.

Those inside Iran's circle of power, says Ali Afshari, an analyst and former student activist now living in Washington, operate according to unique rules.

"It is not a democracy or an absolute totalitarian regime," he said. "Nor is it a communist system or monarchy or dictatorship. It is a mixture."

Those who matter

In the parlance of Iran's ruling elite, those who truly matter are referred to as khodi, Persian for "one of us."

Khodi accept that Khamenei has a God-given right to rule. At least outwardly, they adopt the values of the senior clerics. They even adhere to a dress code: The men wear white shirts buttoned up to the collar; gray, brown or black suits; and neatly trimmed beards -- the garb of the traditional merchant class. The women wear the single-piece black chadors covering all but their hands and faces.

"In our society there is a red line between khodi and non-khodi," said one political activist. "If you've never been on the right side of that divide, you're considered guilty until proven otherwise. If you're not khodi, you don't have the right to criticize."

Khamenei and his closest advisors are at the center of that power structure, overseeing grave matters of state, including the country's nuclear program and domestic policy, from a huge tree-shrouded compound in downtown Tehran. Each day, the Supreme National Security Council, Khamenei's main think tank, faxes his orders to newspapers, television stations and government officials. Clergy spread the word at homes and Friday prayer sessions.

Surrounding the supreme leader are several powerful committees consisting of dozens of clerics, each established to cement the central role of religion in Iranian politics. The Council of Experts chooses the supreme leader. The Guardian Council vets laws and candidates for public office. The Expediency Council mediates legal disputes.

Next are the leaders of the Revolutionary Guard and armed forces, who are appointed by Khamenei; the elected president; the Cabinet; parliament; senior military commanders selected by the supreme leader; and the senior clerics in the holy city Qom.

Beyond that are governors and other provincial officials, all approved by the president. At the outer rim of khodi are well-connected merchants, militia members and millions of volunteers who make up the government's shock troops.

Included in the system are people with different ideologies and agendas, including the offspring of Western universities and onetime operatives in the shah's intelligence service whom Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini needed to help bring down the shah in the 1970s, defend his revolution and withstand attack from Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

From the beginning, Iran's leaders fought over how wide to expand the circles of power, and how much room there would be to challenge the leadership.

Even those on the outer fringes of power can buck authority, especially if they retain a rank within the religious hierarchy. Despite a moratorium on stoning those convicted of morality crimes, a judge this year in the western village of Takistan ordered the stoning of a man for adultery.

Instead of firing the official, judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi decided the judge had a point: Stoning was, after all, part of Islamic law.

Though ordinary people have limited freedom to criticize the power structure, analysts and officials in Tehran say that the heads of government agencies eagerly devour results of polls about their leaders' performance and Iranians' attitudes toward everything from women's dress to making peace with the U.S. Many of Iran's leaders fear a popular uprising like the one that toppled the shah or the communist governments of Eastern Europe.

One after another over the past decades, Iranian leaders have tried to control this convoluted system -- and failed.

'Many centers of power'

"There are so many centers of power," said a Western diplomat in Tehran, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The system was designed to not let anyone be in total control."

In 1997, Khamenei watched helplessly as the reformer Mohammad Khatami crushed the supreme leader's candidate for president.

Despite his political mandate, the new president subsequently ran up against the power of the military and clerical elite. After his government signed a contract with Turkey to run Tehran's new airport, the Revolutionary Guard swooped in during the ribbon-cutting, shutting the airport and nullifying the deal in a blow to Khatami's attempts to open the country to foreign investment.

Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric who heads the Expediency Council, seemed a shoo-in to replace Khatami in 2005. But he was outmaneuvered by Ahmadinejad and lost the election.

Ahmadinejad found himself hemmed in by opposition to his appointees, including the key post of chief negotiator with the international community over Iran's nuclear program. Parliament has rejected many of his choices.

When Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005, the urbane cleric Hassan Rowhani was fired as nuclear negotiator and disappeared from the spotlight. But after getting rid of Rowhani, Ahmadinejad was forced to give the job to a detested and well-connected rival, Ali Larijani.

In the meantime, Rowhani has made a political comeback.

Analysts said that despite his reputation as a relative moderate, Rowhani probably managed to get Khamenei's ear by exploiting the president's reputation as a populist rabble-rouser who could pose a threat to the supreme leader's power. He delivered a speech criticizing Ahmadinejad's authoritarian style and began appearing regularly on the front pages of state-run newspapers.

"The country is no one's property," he said. "The notion that someone owns the country and its people is our biggest problem and incurable disease."

That same week, Khamenei made a speech saying that no one in the government was above criticism, in effect barring Ahmadinejad from attacking Rowhani and blessing his return to Iran's innermost circle of power.

When Larijani quit this year, the president appointed his own man, Saeed Jalili, as nuclear negotiator -- at least until an advisor to Khamenei complained. Both Jalili and Larijani attended the next round of negotiations with European officials.

Ahmadinejad even has had to rescind some orders on relatively minor issues.

Last year, he extended Eid al-Fitr holidays and eliminated daylight saving time. But people complained loudly of missed international flights and too many days off. The man who challenged Iran's most powerful clerics bowed to public pressure. This year the calendar went back to normal.

No mandate on economy

Khamenei has found that even if the power structure believes he has a mandate from heaven, he can't make it move on economic reforms.

Iran needs to free up billions of dollars from its budget to invest in its ailing oil industry, the source of half of the government's income. However, hundreds of money-losing state-owned enterprises drain the budget. Despite the high cost of oil, the World Bank predicts that Iran will be running a deficit in two years.

Privatization would help raise funds, but it would mean wresting lucrative patronage from the hands of religious foundations, military institutions and well-connected bazaar khodi.

"Khamenei is currently surrounded by intelligence forces, the Revolutionary Guards and the hard-line media," said Mohsen Sazegara, a former Iranian official and onetime khodi who is now a vehement critic and lives in Washington. "They pretend to listen to Khamenei's orders, but they do whatever they want."

Since the 1979 revolution, state-owned factories have been used as recruiting and fundraising centers for Basiji militiamen, who answer to the Revolutionary Guard. They provide jobs for the relatives of government loyalists. One aluminum factory in central Iran provides jobs for relatives of local officials of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, said a Tehran economist who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The businesses Khamenei wants to sell on the stock market also are expected to kick in millions of dollars each year for political and religious events that are part of the Islamic Republic's ideological machinery.

"They ask you politely, 'How much will you donate for the revolution festivities?' or, 'How many workers will you release to participate in the rallies?' " said one executive at an Iranian company.

Managers have found other ways to thwart the privatization plan. After shares of a state-owned aluminum company failed to sell this year, executives removed the offering rather than lower the price.

"There's a very large group of managers who don't want this to happen," said Moussa Ghaninejad, an economist and journalist at Donya Eghtesad, a business newspaper. "They create so many problems that it doesn't get done."

Sometimes, senior officials intervene to halt a sale. Ahmadinejad stopped a recent effort by an Iranian industrialist to buy a state-owned carmaker's share in a private bank.

In a lead editorial, Kayhan, a newspaper representing the views of the conservative leadership, demanded that non-khodi be cut off from the public wealth.Khamenei's own mouthpiece was subverting his goals.

"If you ask me, 'Who is running Iran?' " said one Tehran trial lawyer, "I would say, 'Everyone -- and no one.' "

daragahi@latimes.com

General: Anbar Ready for Handover

Jan 10 06:53 PM US/Eastern
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq's western province of Anbar, hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency for the first four years of the war, will be returned to Iraqi control in March, a senior U.S. general said Thursday.
In a telephone interview from Iraq, Marine Maj. Gen. Walter E. Gaskin, commander of the roughly 35,000 Marine and Army forces in Anbar, said levels of violence have dropped so significantly—coupled with the growth and development of Iraqi security forces in the province—that Anbar is ready to be handed back to the Iraqis.

Thus far, nine of 18 Iraqi provinces have reverted to Iraqi control, most recently the southern province of Basra in December. The process has gone substantially slower than the Bush administration once hoped, mainly because of obstacles to developing sufficient Iraqi police and army forces. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he expects the process to continue.

Gates also said he was encouraged by security gains achieved in Anbar and Baghdad in the year since President Bush ordered an extra 30,000 U.S. troops to those areas of Iraq in what became known as a "surge." Gates said it has created new promise for long-delayed political reconciliation.

"We clearly are hoping that the reconciliation and improvement in the political environment that has taken place at the local and provincial level over the past number of months will now meet further progress coming at the national level," Gates told a Pentagon news conference.

Gates ticked of a list of statistical indicators of recent security improvements in Iraq. He did not mention the plan to return Anbar to Iraqi control in March, but did say the province has seen a remarkable turnaround on the security front over the past year.

"Anbar province, once considered a stronghold of al-Qaida, has been reclaimed for the Iraqi people," Gates said.

Having been largely driven out of Anbar, insurgents shifted first to Baghdad and more recently to the northern provinces of Diyala and Ninewa.

Gaskin said that a provincial security committee under Anbar's governor has been established and has rehearsed procedures for handling any security crisis that might develop.

Under a plan accepted by the Iraqi government as well as the top two American authorities in Iraq—Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus—the U.S. military will transfer control of Anbar to provincial authorities in March, followed by a ceremony in April, Gaskin said.

"We all agree that, based on the requirements, Anbar will be ready by that time," Gaskin said, speaking from his Multi-National Force West headquarters in Fallujah, about 25 west of Baghdad.

The return of security control to Iraqi authorities in March does not mean U.S. troops will leave Anbar. Two Marine battalions, numbering roughly 1,500 troops, that were sent as part of the 2007 buildup are due to leave Anbar in about May, Gaskin said. But he would not forecast any additional cutbacks.

U.S. forces will remain in Anbar, for the time being, as partners with Iraq's army and police.

Nearly five years into the Iraq war, the demand for U.S. combat forces remains high. At his news conference, Gates cited the strain on the military as one factor as he weighs a proposal to send an additional 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan this spring to bolster NATO-led defenses against the Taliban.

"I have asked a number of questions that I expect to be answered before I make up my mind," Gates said. "I am concerned about relieving the pressure on our allies to fulfill their commitments. I am concerned about the implications for the force, and I also am very concerned that we continue to be successful in Afghanistan," and to keep the Taliban "on their back foot," Gates said.

Visiting Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi, appearing with Gates, also mentioned the turnaround in Anbar. He asserted that the situation has improved to the point where Iraqi forces are able to fight on their own, although that is a view not shared by U.S. commanders.

"I can say that the Anbar province, which was the hottest area of Iraq, does not now need any (U.S.) forces because the (number) of the attacks is now zero for months now, the Iraqi minister said, speaking through an interpreter.

As recently as 18 months ago Anbar was the central stronghold of al- Qaida in Iraq, the shadowy insurgent group that U.S. officials say is largely led by foreign terrorists but populated mainly by Iraqis.

What recently has developed into a broad-based backlash against al- Qaida among Iraq's Sunni Arab community began in Anbar in late 2006. Americans recruited Sunni sheiks to help oust al-Qaida from their home turf, and the movement spread to former militants who once fought U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.

Gaskin, who is scheduled to return to his home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., in February when he is replaced by Marine Maj. Gen. John Kelly from Camp Pendleton, Calif., arrived in Anbar in February 2007. That was a turning point in the security situation in the provincial capital of Ramadi. The city is now largely pacified—a state of affairs that few would have predicted a year ago.

Referring to the decision to return all of Anbar to Iraqi provincial control in March, Gaskin, recalling the unsettled situation he faced when first arriving, said, "I didn't expect it to happen so fast."

IRAQI AWAKENING COUNCILS FACE POLITICAL, TERRORIST PRESSURE

By Kathleen Ridolfo

The so-called awakening councils that have been formed in Iraq to fight terrorists are finding themselves under increasing threat from rival political and security groups and terrorists keen on curbing their power. Popular support for the councils, which have been formed in nine of the country's 18 governorates to defend the local population against insurgent attacks launched mainly by Al-Qaeda, remains strong. But, weak institutional support hinders the ability of the councils to integrate their mostly Sunni Arab security forces into the army and police. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda in Iraq launched a campaign last month to crush the councils, which have obstructed the terrorist group's movements on the ground. At least 60 awakening council members have been assassinated since Al-Qaeda's campaign was announced on December 4. Indeed, Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the majority of attacks on awakening councils since December. But the councils are not short on domestic enemies. Politicians, clerics, political party leaders, and appointed officials have tried to curb the rising power of the councils. Critics fear the councils, credited with helping stabilize the most volatile areas of Iraq, could eventually become rogue militias. The U.S. military currently arms and pays the salaries of some 70,000 so-called concerned local citizen groups (CLCs), which are composed of tribesmen loyal to awakening councils. The military has said that some of the CLCs, which are mostly made up of Sunni Arabs, should be merged into the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi security forces. Shi'ite politicians have not greeted the proposal with enthusiasm, as they say that the CLC recruits could be former Ba'athists and terrorists in disguise.
Sunni Arab politicians from the Iraqi Accordance Front (Al-Tawafuq) are also opposed to the Sunni councils. The awakening councils, which are rooted in age-old tribal alliances that come with a built-in constituency, pose a major threat to Al-Tawafuq's viability. The six Al-Tawafuq ministers in the government have been boycotting it since August, though its 44 representatives in parliament continue to perform their duties. In November, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki threatened to replace the ministers with representatives of the Al-Anbar Awakening Council, at which point Al-Tawafuq balked, claiming their representatives were elected and as such, could not be replaced. Al-Tawafuq also contended that awakening councils were not the true representatives of the Sunni Arab population. Another Sunni foe, Harith al-Dari, the head of the Muslim Scholars Association, has claimed the awakening councils are traitors to the Iraqi nationalist cause, because of their alliance with the U.S. military and the Iraqi government. Moreover, it appears the awakening councils, particularly in western Al-Anbar Governorate, have damaged the ability of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, which is sponsored by the Muslim Scholars Association, to operate. A spokesman for the insurgent group recently told an Arab satellite news channel that the group has been damaged as much as Al-Qaeda by the establishment of awakening councils across Iraq.
The most vocal Shi'ite critics of the awakening councils are Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), and cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Fighters from the SIIC's former armed group, the Badr Corps, have filled the ranks of the police and army since 2003, and Al-Hakim fears any large-scale infiltration of Sunni Arabs to the security services will pose a threat to Shi'ite power in Iraq. Al-Sadr, who commands the loyalty of the Imam Al-Mahdi Army militia and has a long-standing rivalry with the al-Hakim family, likewise fears Sunni ascendancy, and has argued that Iraq has no place for militias. A number of Shi'ite clerics have also called into question the role of the awakening councils, on the grounds that the Sunni-led councils may be insurgents in disguise. Al-Najaf-based cleric Sheikh Sadr al-Din al-Qubbanji said in a Friday Prayer sermon on January 4 that awakening councils should be praised for their work as popular committees. But, he cautioned, "To turn awakening councils into militias and into an armed entity that is not under the control of the state and the law is dangerous. A more moderate Shi'ite cleric, Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, told followers: "The awakening of Al-Anbar [whose chieftains established the first awakening council] is unmatched by any other awakening. What some people said to the effect that some politicians are trying to confiscate the efforts made in Al-Anbar is very accurate. The awakening of Al-Anbar was an uprising by the sons of the tribes themselves, and from inside Al-Anbar away from any political interests." The argument that insurgents may infiltrate the security services as council members in disguise has been advanced through a series of articles in Shi'ite newspapers that claim the awakening councils have been infiltrated by members of the Ba'ath Party and Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Prime Minister al-Maliki told the London-based "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" in an interview published on January 5 that intelligence suggests such infiltration. He denied his administration is trying to prevent the councils from being merged into the Iraqi security services, and said the councils have played a significant role in defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq. "It is a deliberate misunderstanding to claim that the government is against the awakening councils. The government is in favor of the awakening councils, but it wants to protect them from infiltration," he said.
"We, as a government, have intelligence information: the Ba'ath Party has ordered its members to join the awakening councils, and Al-Qaeda has ordered its members to infiltrate the awakening councils," he claimed. Al-Maliki said the government's scrutiny of awakening council members "is for their protection from infiltration." Al-Maliki said the infiltration "has been proved, and even those who denied that such infiltration existed are now convinced by the evidence and indications. Under the title of the 'Awakening' they started to kill policemen, commit crimes, kidnap citizens, and stir up sectarian problems. Here, we ought to distinguish between the members of the real 'Awakening,' which we support and stand by and which we will incorporate in the army and the police, and those who exploit this title, and act under the umbrella of the 'Awakening' to practice the same criminal deeds stemming from the policies of the Ba'ath Party or Al-Qaeda." Mustafa al-Juburi, the commander of the southern Baghdad awakening forces, responded to the allegation by telling Al-Arabiyah television on January 5 that the government's evidence is weak and unsubstantiated. Two weeks earlier, Defense Minister Abd al-Qadir Muhammad Jasim al-Ubaydi said at a December 22 press conference that there is a danger the awakening councils will become "a third security entity in Iraq." In response, Al-Anbar Awakening Council member Ali al-Hatim told Al-Arabiyah television the same day that the tribes are governed by their sense of honor and commitment to the state. "There is no need for [al-Ubaydi] to fear us or to use words like 'we will not allow,' for we are tribes, and our weapons are in our hands, and if we see the people of Iraq being wronged or harmed, then we will come to their rescue," al-Hatim said. "We previously announced...that we [formed awakening councils] out of chivalry and came only to help. You cannot turn me into a militia or order me to do something that I feel is wrong.... I am a supporter of the state and the law, and I do not aspire to become a third force like the defense minister said."
Meanwhile, the pro-Ba'athist Sunni website "Quds Press" and the Sunni-led Iraqi Islamic Party's website (the party is a member of the Al-Tawafuq bloc) published reports this week, citing unidentified intelligence sources, that Iran's Qods Force has formed special brigades to assassinate awakening council members. The source said the brigades are composed of rogue Al-Mahdi Army militiamen.
For Sunnis who have been struggling to work their way into the post-Hussein political system, the news is distressing. The perceived lack of government support, particularly from the prime minister, for the integration of Sunnis into the security services, coupled with delays in al-Maliki's proclaimed national reconciliation initiative, only reinforces Sunni perceptions that there is no place for them in the Shi'ite-led government. Should the government continue down this path, the security gains of the past year are at risk of being undermined by renewed sectarian violence once the U.S. military pulls out of Iraq and ends its support of the awakening councils.

WHO ESTIMATES MORE THAN 150,000 IRAQIS KILLED SINCE 2003. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on January 9 that a recent study it conducted in conjunction with the Iraqi government estimates that more than 151,000 Iraqis have been killed due to violence between March 2003-June 2006. The organization said the estimate was based on interviews conducted in 9,345 households in nearly 1,000 neighborhoods and villages throughout Iraq. The study indicated that on average, 128 Iraqis died of violent causes every day in the first year following the U.S.-led invasion. Approximately 115 people were killed daily in the second year and 126 in the third year. More than half of the violent deaths occurred in Baghdad. The WHO study is considered the most comprehensive since the beginning of the 2003 invasion, and exceeded the widely cited death toll of 80,000-87,000 by the Iraq Body Count project, which uses media reports and morgue records to calculate its figure. However, Muhammad Ali, a co-author of the study, stressed that the findings should be interpreted with caution since "assessments of death-toll estimates in conflict situations is extremely difficult." "In the absence of comprehensive death registration and hospital reporting, household surveys are the best we can do," Ali said. Iraqi Health Minister Salah al-Hasanawi said the study indicated "a massive death toll since the beginning of the conflict." SS

IRANIAN POLITICIANS REGISTER FOR PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. Some prominent reformists, including sitting members of parliament and former officials of the government of Mohammad Khatami, registered on January 8 for parliamentary elections set for mid-March, Iranian media reported on January 9. In Tehran, these included Majid Ansari, a leftist cleric and member of the moderately reformist Militant Clerics Assembly; reformist Tehran representative Soheila Jelodarzadeh; the former head of the state planning and budgeting agency, Farhad Rahbar; Mohammad Sadr, a deputy foreign minister in the Khatami government; and Ishaq Jahangiri, an industry minister under Khatami and member of the centrist Executives of Construction party, "Etemad" reported. Some reformists have urged prominent reformist politicians to register for the polls to encourage the public to vote in March. Aspiring candidates have to be approved first by the Guardians Council, a body of jurists that supervises the electoral process. VS