On August 19, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad submitted his list of cabinet nominees to the Majlis (Iran’s parliament). The president’s choice of individuals clearly shows his preference for loyalty over efficiency, as he fired every minister who, while strongly supportive of him on most issues, opposed him recently on his controversial decision to appoint a family relative as first vice president. Ahmadinezhad’s drive to install loyalists involves placing members of the military and intelligence community in the cabinet, as well as in other important government position. Despite the president’s positioning, Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, remains in firm control of the country’s vital ministries.

Cabinet Approval

On August 23, the Majlis will either approve or challenge the president’s cabinet appointments. Ahmadinezhad has a relatively free hand to choose the majority of cabinet seats, but the country’s key ministries — intelligence, interior, foreign affairs, defense, and culture and Islamic guidance — are, in all practical terms, preapproved by Khamenei before the president submits their names. As such, the Majlis is all but guaranteed to accept these particular individuals. The president is also empowered to directly appoint the secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security (SCNS) — the individual responsible for Iran’s nuclear dossier and negotiations — but because this position is of particular importance to Khamanei, it also must be preapproved.

Economic and Foreign Affairs

Ahmadinezhad’s nominations suggest that he is not bothered by the ongoing criticism of his foreign policy and economic agenda, since the ministers of foreign affairs, industries and mines, economic affairs, cooperatives, and roads and transport will remain unchanged. Masoud Mir Kazemi, previously the oil minister, is the president’s choice to become minister of commerce. Ahmadinezhad is also expected to reappoint Said Jalili as secretary of the SCNS — a development that seemingly dims hope for a change in Iran’s nuclear strategy.

IRGC in Charge of Internal Affairs

Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said recently, “There was a perception that confronting hard threats was the top priority, but after careful study, we came to the conclusion that it was the IRGC’s duty to confront the regime’s soft threats, including cultural, economic, political, and social ones.” Ahmadinezhad’s first presidential term was characterized by the ascendance of the IRGC into Iran’s political system. Considering the makeup of the president’s new cabinet nominees, this trend — backed by Jafari’s suggestion that the IRGC should take over crucial political and cultural government positions — will continue into Ahmadinezhad’s second term:

Interior minister. Sadeq Mahsouli, the outgoing interior minister, was not renominated. Known as a “billionaire IRGC general,” Mahsouli was the main Iranian official responsible for the controversial presidential election in June. By replacing him, Ahmadinezhad may be trying to prevent further Majlis discussion of the election, since there would be considerable debate about the minister’s record. The president was likely also dissatisfied with Mahsouli’s handling of the election, with the widespread allegations of fraud and popular street demonstrations. The man nominated to succeed him, Mustafa Mohammad Najjar — a career IRGC man — was Ahmadinezhad’s defense minister for four years and has a close relationship with Khamenei.

Culture and Islamic guidance minister. Mohammad Hosseini comes from the intelligence community, and if confirmed by the Majlis, he can be counted on to follow his predecessor, Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi, in putting restrictions on publication houses, the press, the movie industry, and the arts in general.

Oil minister. Masoud Mir Kazemi was the head of IRGC Center for Fundamental Studies for many years.

Defense minister. Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi is connected to Iran’s Qods Force, and he, along with Mohsen Rezai, former IRGC commander-in-chief, and Ali Fallahian, former intelligence minister, is wanted by Interpol for involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina.

Intelligence minister. Heydar Muslehi is a cleric who was Khamenei’s representative in the IRGC and Basij militia, and was the head of Endowment and Charity Organization. He was trained in the Imam Khomeini Institute for Education and Research, which is run by Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a radical cleric in Qom. In a recent speech to Basij members, Mesbah Yazdi, who is known for his support for Ahmadinezhad, stated that “obedience to the president is obedience to the Hidden Imam and God.” Despite Muslehi’s inexperience in the intelligence business, the Majlis is not likely to question Ahmadinezhad’s decision, since Muslehi was presumably preapproved by Khamenei.

Gap Widens Between Clerics and Ahmadinezhad

Ahmadinezhad considers himself an authentic representative of pure Islamic ideology, one that has no need for clerical guidance on political issues. As such, the relationship between Ahmadinezhad and Iran’s clerical establishment has soured over the years — though not so with Khamenei, who is more of a politician than a cleric.

Ahmadinezhad’s nomination of three women to his cabinet — for the ministries of health, education, and welfare and social security — could exacerbate these tensions. Many members of the Majlis consider these female nominees unqualified, and many conservative clerics in Qom, such as Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi, see the move as a violation of Islamic law.

A major episode that revealed the depth of the clerical-Ahmadinezhad split was the president’s unconditional support of Rahim Mashai, who is closely related to Ahmadinezhad by marriage. Mashai drew the ire of the conservatives when he said that Iran has no quarrel with the people of Israel, even though it may dislike the state of Israel. In the last weeks of his first term, Ahmadinezhad appointed Mashai, then director of the Cultural Heritage Organization, as his first vice president. Facing unprecedented clerical and conservative pressure — and the opposition of many previous cabinet members — Ahmadinezhad did not reverse his decision until Khamenei intervened and forced him to do so. The president then appointed Mashai as his chief of staff, the head of the president’s office. In addition to his statements on Israel, the clerical establishment dislikes Mashai because he, along with Ahmadinezhad, believes in the imminent return of the Mahdi (the Twelfth Imam) — an event that would make the clergy superfluous.

Conclusion

Ahmadinezhad’s list of cabinet nominees reveals his self-confidence and readiness to be challenged by the predominately conservative Majlis. Leading Majlis figures have already expressed concern about Ahmadinezhad’s potential nominees, but the president ignored their objections. Reportedly, he believes that since he received more votes than all the Majlis members combined, he should not have to compromise with them. Ahamdinezhad’s new cabinet nominees are also the result of unofficial coordination with Khamenei. Although the Majlis will likely disagree with some of Ahmadinezhad’s selections, the president’s first-term policies will essentially continue into his second term, as evidenced by the same people occupying key ministries — with Khamenei’s approval — and the increasing number of IRGC and intelligence personnel taking top government positions.

This article was first published in the website of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

BY MEHDI KHALAJI , ROBERT PASTOR
Rarely does a country have such a clear choice as Iran did on June 12. On that day, nearly 40 million people voted for a president. The incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pledged to continue his economic policies and his anti-Western, Holocaust-denying, nuclear-confrontational approach. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, promised economic reform, increasing openness with the West, human rights, and nuclear negotiations.

While some polling stations were still open, the Interior Ministry declared Ahmadinejad the winner by a landslide. The opposition rejected it, and despite arrests and beatings, the protests have continued. Ahmadinejad’s and Mousavi’s supporters both proclaim their candidate won.

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But to all others, it is clear there were substantial irregularities. Although Ahmadinejad’s crackdown appears designed to end questions about his legitimacy, even conservative clerics are demanding answers from the state. Here is what we know happened — and a plan to prevent fraud in the next election.

Using even a minimal standard, there are good reasons for Iranians not to trust election results. The president-controlled Interior Ministry conducts elections in Iran. It denies opposition observers access to polling stations and counts the votes. Only half of Mousavi’s observers were permitted to observe polling stations in the capital city of Tehran; they had even less access in the rest of the country. None of the observers were permitted to see whether the ballot boxes were empty when the vote began. Nor were they permitted to accompany the mobile ballot boxes, which collected nearly one-third of the votes. And no Mousavi or impartial observers accompanied the ballot boxes from local wards to the provincial committees and finally to Tehran for the count.

Before the election, the reformists’ Committee for Safeguarding the Votes expressed concern that 54 million ballots were printed — millions more than for past elections and 8 million more than the number of eligible voters. Moreover, some ballots did not have serial numbers. About 40 million people voted, but no one accounted for the other 14 million ballots.

The Committee for Safeguarding the Votes also said it found a large number of Mousavi votes after the election, including some in the northern forests of Iran. It surmised that these votes were removed from the boxes and replaced with votes for Ahmadinejad. Mousavi himself claims he has evidence that the total number of votes exceeded the number of eligible voters by as much as 40 percent in more than 170 constituencies. Some of the party observers claim ballots for Ahmadinejad featured the same handwriting in the same ink.

These accusations of fraud are credible. Even the conservative Guardian Council has acknowledged that as many as 3 million votes might have been fraudulent. But, given the way the system operates, no one knows with certainty how many votes were legitimate and how much fraud occurred.

In many other countries with rigged electoral systems, opposition members boycott. That did not happen in Iran — and now, millions are risking their lives to compel the authorities to count their votes accurately. As the protest moves to its next phase, the country could stave off a crisis by agreeing to four fundamental electoral safeguards.

The single most important step is to transfer election responsibilities from the Interior Ministry and the Guardian Council to a nonpartisan and independent national election commission. Iran should also create a nonpartisan elections court, composed of judges and lawyers. All the major political parties should have a veto on nominees so as to ensure that the judges are acceptable to all the parties.

Second, the Election Commission should certify the candidates according to clear and fair criteria, and they should prevent any intimidation, and guarantee access to the entire electoral process by domestic and international election observers. Domestic observers are absolutely essential to assuring a free election and detecting fraud; and international observers help the process by magnifying the voice of the domestic observers.

Third, the ballot boxes should be opened for all to see before the election begins, and observers should accompany mobile and other ballot boxes through the day.

Finally, counting should occur at every polling site. Observers should watch the count, sign the declaration of results, and keep a copy. The final announcement should publicize the results of each of the polling stations, so that people can detect any vote discrepancy.

Much else needs to be done to build confidence in the electoral process and assure votes are counted fairly. But if these four fundamental elements of electoral reform are accepted and implemented, the next election in Iran would be much freer and fairer. The reforms would also allow Iranians and the world to locate and denounce any fraud. The opposition has asked for a new election, but without these four reforms, that is unlikely to be any fairer than the previous one. Only with such reforms can Iranians know when their votes count, and when their voices are stolen.

What role should the West and the United States play at this time? It is obvious that Ahmadinejad and his allies would like to blame all of Iran’s problems on the West — especially the United States and Britain. The government’s case against the opposition is that its members are surrogates of the West. For these countries to be seen as meddling in Iran’s affairs would be counter-productive.

On the other hand, the democratic community cannot be silent; it needs to find the most appropriate and legitimate way to express its support for democracy in Iran and elsewhere. The best way to reconcile these two somewhat conflicted messages — avoid meddling but provide more support for Iran’s democrats — is if the world’s great Muslim democracies, which have diplomatic relations with Iran — like Indonesia and Lebanon — to carry the message. Those countries should propose a resolution to the U.N. Human Rights Council, calling for an end to repression and for genuine electoral reform.

It now appears that Ahmadinejad will try to consolidate a hard-line government and will ruthlessly suppress all legitimate protest movements. If he chooses this path, he will further undermine his efforts to win legitimacy.

The battle for reform has just begun. The only question is when it will prevail. Within Iran’s regime, a group of clerics holds that the Islamic Republic should be genuinely democratic. In the end, the major hope for democracy will depend on their acknowledging the flaws in the electoral system and deciding to reform it.

Mehdi Khalaji is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of Apocalyptic Politics; on the Rationality of Iranian Policy.

Robert Pastor is a professor and co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. He developed the election-monitoring initiatives of the Carter Center in Atlanta and has organized the observation of elections in about forty countries.

This article  was first published in Foreign Policy

This article is written for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Widespread reports suggest that Sadeq Larijani, a young and inexperienced cleric with close ties to Iran’s military and intelligence agencies, will officially replace Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi as head of the Iranian judiciary on August 16. This appointment is particularly significant, since the judiciary in Iran wields considerable power — albeit through the approval of Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — and has a great deal of latitude to make decisions without reference to law or Islamic concepts, especially when “safeguarding the interests of the regime” is deemed necessary.

Who is Sadeq Larijani?
Born in 1960 in Najaf, Iraq, Sadeq Larijani is the son of Grand Ayatollah Hashem Amoli and the son-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid Khorasani, currently one of the most widely followed marjas, “sources of emulation” whose rulings are regarded as binding by devout Shiite believers. Larijani’s two older and well-known brothers — Ali Larijani, speaker of the Majlis (Iranian parliament) and former nuclear negotiator, and Mohammad Javad Larijani, the deputy head of the judiciary, former deputy foreign affairs minister, and mathematics graduate from the University of California, Berkeley — are also married into respected clerical families: Ali is the son-in-law of the late Morteza Motahhari, an ideologue of the Islamic government, and Mohammad Javad is the son-in-law of Hassan Hassanzadeh, an ayatollah in Qom. Khamenei, at one point the supervisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), became intimate with the Larijani family during Ali’s several-year post as deputy commander of the IRGC.
Sadeq justifies his lack of political experience in a short autobiography on his website. Because he “felt that the West’s cultural invasion was no less important than a military invasion,” he decided to prepare himself for “confronting the cultural invasion,” in part by learning English. He used his new language skills to translate several philosophical works, such as an article by Karl Popper on the philosophy of science and G. J. Warnock’s Contemporary Moral Philosophy, the latter of which he annotated and critiqued from the Islamic point of view. Sadeq first made a name for himself by criticizing religious intellectuals such as Abdulkarim Soroush and eventually became one of the main voices of the Islamic Republic. Larijani taught courses on Islamic ideology, both at the seminary in Qom and at various IRGC bases around the country.
In 2001, Sadeq Larijani was the youngest jurist ever to be appointed to the Guardian Council, the twelve-person body responsible for approving all laws passed by the Majlis and for supervising elections. In the course of his Guardian Council activities, he has tried to remain under the radar by avoiding public appearances and media interviews. He has also made every effort to keep his relationships with Khamenei, the intelligence apparatus, and the IRGC under wraps.

Militarizing Iran’s Institutions
In his twenty years in office, particularly in recent years, Khamenei has replaced military, political, economic, cultural, and clerical officials with a new generation of politicians and clerics who owe their political or religious credentials to him. The IRGC and intelligence apparatuses became the main avenues through which young ambitious men loyal to Khamenei could enter the political scene.
Although most of these new politicians and clerics are close to Khamenei, they are not traditional clerics with independent political and religious credentials, such as those who participated in the 1979 Revolution. Instead, most of the new generation began their careers in the military, the IRGC, and the intelligence services. Notable examples include Ahmad Khatami (no relation to former president Muhammad Khatami), an influential intelligence agent who is now a member of the Assembly of Experts and the Friday prayer Imam of Tehran; Ahmad Salek, Khamenei’s representative in both the Qods Force and IRGC intelligence and a member of the Militant Clerics Society of Tehran; Hossein Taeb, the commander of Basij militia and former head of IRGC intelligence; and Sadeq Larijani.

Khamenei’s Judiciary
Khamenei keeps close control of the Iranian judiciary: he not only appoints its head, but also gives unofficial recommendations to other high-ranking judiciary officials. Often a micromanager, Khamenei has been known to go over the judiciary’s head, exemplified by his recent order to close the Kahrizak detention center in Tehran (a move that usually requires a court order). Critics say the closure was meant to prevent a Majlis investigation into abuse of the facility’s prisoners — most of whom were arrested following the postelection demonstrations.
Although the Iranian constitution states that the judiciary supervise all juridical and legal processes, some bodies, such as the Special Court of Clerics, work under Khamenei’s direct supervision outside the judiciary’s framework. Moreover, even though the IRGC, Basij, police, Intelligence Ministry, and Special Court of Clerics run many of Iran’s detention centers, the judiciary has no jurisdiction over any of them. Further complicating matters, Khamenei is constitutionally the final arbiter in any dispute between government officials, with the right to overrule Islamic law when necessary to safeguard the interests of the regime. As such, the judiciary uses Islamic law as the basis for its decisions only when Khamenei sees such use as not in conflict with the regime’s interests — as he defines it.
Not only is the judiciary empowered to ignore Islamic law, it also bypasses the country’s criminal law, particularly in politically related cases. This has led to harsh criticism by secular lawyers as well as clerics in the last two decades. In an open letter to Hashemi Shahroodi, for instance, published in Ettelaat newspaper on August 2, Ayatollah Mustafa Mohaqeq Damad, a prominent scholar of Islamic law, criticized the concept of the “interests of the regime,” complaining, “The bitter taste of what happened in the judiciary under you, especially in recent days, would not be forgettable for Iranian people … Under you, the judiciary, which is the pivot of society’s security, is not only shaken but destroyed.”
Conclusion
Iran’s judiciary — under the watchful eye of Iran’s top leader — has a great deal of power to shape the country’s legal system and environment. Sadeq Larajani’s ties to the IRGC and intelligence agencies provide ample reason to believe that he will use his new powers to crack down even further on human rights and civil liberties than did his predecessors. Moreover, Larijani’s appointment signals that the judiciary, the IRGC, and the intelligence agencies will be more closely aligned then ever. Presumably, this state of affairs indicates that traditional ayatollahs deeply trained in Islamic law — but who are not members of the intelligence-military-political circles — will have a lesser role in government in years to come. Given the unstable situation in postelection Iran, such a scenario could be a recipe for continued and ongoing chaos.