The context of the discussion | On the last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the second one of both yearly meetings of the Experts Assembly took place. This organization is lead by Rafsanjani and it is in charge of confirming or dismissing the Supreme Guide. Such appointment was much expected because according to every media of the regime, Rafsanjani, protector of the Green Movement, is at daggers drawn with the Guide Khamenei. However such assessment is untrue. Both men are old friends and they have always helped each other along politically.

In 1989, when Khomeini died, his brother Rafsanjani enforced an unknown testament which his brother wrote -actually this was a fake- in order to back up the nomination of one of his friends, Khamenei, an obscure mullah who was contested by great ayatollahs, to succeed the leader of the Islamic revolution. The first Experts Assembly of which Rafsanjani was the number 2 ratified such choice. Whenever Khamenei took up this key post with full political powers, he revised the constitution in order to transfer his own powers to the Expediency Discernment Council, an organization which was created and lead by Rafsanjani. The latter, who was then an obscure mullah into the religious hierarchy, became then the political boss of the regime unbeknownst to the great ayatollahs who have been already manoeuvred out of the power under Khomeini by his entourage -small mullahs or militiamen linked with the Bazaar. Given that the members of this Expediency Discernment Council were the 13 initial members of the Experts Assembly, this seemed to be like a coup organized by every members of Khomeini’s entourage in order to keep definitely the power and every privilege unbeknownst to the other members of the clergy. The coup was perfect because the 7 mullahs from the Experts Assembly and among them Rafsanjani -members of the Expediency Discernment Council- protected Khamenei who would then maintain them at the political leadership of the country. During the first months of implementation of such configuration, Mir Hussein Mussavi, member of the Expediency Discernment Council, suggested that the criteria to rise to the leadership of the Experts Assembly couldn’t be the status of great ayatollah or even the affiliation to the clergy and such motion was of course adopted. Thus they opened the assembly to young mullahs or to ambitious militiamen, pawns or the gang of Rafsanjani -still number 2 of the Assembly- in order to reduce the risks of a riposte from traditional clergy.

The objective of such group was to keep the power within the regime. However this implied that the regime would hold out. This is the reason why right after it took every charge, this group which already had a strong hold on the committee of selection of candidatures for elections put the project of reformer candidates forward. But given that the objective was solely to better the regime’s image, in order to explain the absence of progress regarding so-called reforms, the gang of the Expediency Discernment Council retrained the Guide in the role of the great omnipotent baddy who would refuse democracy and changes.

Such a well-oiled system went wrong owing to unexpected events. The first event was the Americans’ decision to accuse the mullahs of nuclear weapon manufacturing in order to increase pressure on Tehran and make it accept to become their regional ally without asking any compensation in the Middle-East. Under the sanctions threat, Khatami signed the Paris Agreement in 2004. In order to not implement such measure, the regime, i.e. the Expediency Discernment Council, decided to change its president.

In 2005, it validated the candidature of Ahmadinejad, the Guide’s candidate, who defeated Rafsanjani and called into question straight after the Paris Agreement. Rafsanjani then became by force of circumstance the enemy of the Guide, which cannot be true.

The second event was the rumour of Khameini’s sickness in 2007. Indeed he wasn’t feeling good because the regime spread for several months his old speeches. He was told to be dying. Rafsanjani, eternal number 2 of the Experts Assembly, thus angled for and obtained the presidency of his peers’ authority in order to be able to sit in the High Council of Transition which is according to the law formed with the president of the Experts Assambly and two great ayatollahs ! He wanted to reduce the risks of revenge that would come from the great ayatollahs who were manoeuvred out of power. But finally Khamenei didn’t die and de facto, Rafsanjani appeared in a strong position to dismiss the one he cannot dismiss.

Lately, a third event happened and it increased the influence those unexpected events. Within the framework of nuclear crisis, in reply to the American pressures which require some compromise, Tehran had the idea of the Green Movement, an internal revolution in favour of Mussavi who was accessorily Khomeini’s right hand man -apologist for the refusal of any compromise with the United States- in order to give some new legitimacy to its current refusal. By simulating a colour revolution, Tehran hoped it would trap Obama : he would acknowledge the Green people as the spokespersons of people and then this would legitimate their own refusal of any compromise ! Obama who was well-advised didn’t express on the matter. In order to break such silence, the conceivers of the Green Movement had the idea to use anti-Khamenei slogans because Khamenei was identified by Obama as the bad person of the regime. Such slogan didn’t loosen the American’s tongue but de facto, Mussavi and Karrubi, both members of the Expediency Discernment Council, became as well the Guide’s enemies. Thus Rafsanjani appeared even more to the front in the role of the Guide’s enemy.

At the end of September, the regime avoided an obvious conflict of interest thanks to the Guide’s announcement in favour of the opposition. Green people then forgot their anti-Khamenei slogans but the regime still needed to obtain Obama’s official acknowledgement of its false colour revolution in order to accredit its refusal of any compromise. Thus it opted for some scenarios of physical abuse of the Green Movement supporters -rapes notably. In those scenarios, the Guide came back in the role of the great baddy who protects small baddies such as Ahmadinejad and his rapist torturers. Indeed he turned again subject to an examination from the Experts Assembly ! In addition, Rafsanjani appeared again in a role which he cannot play.

As it was quite bothered, the regime did some media diversion with the postponed announcement of the arrest of the Jundallah leader. Its media then forgot the obvious confrontation between those both so-called enemies, a confrontation which of course could not happen.

Such as we could expect it, the Experts Assembly didn’t dismiss the Guide ! His dismissing would have been synonymous of the anticipated establishing of a High Council of Transition. Its outcome would have been the naming of a Guide who would be close to the clergy which was expelled from the power since 1979. This would have been a sign of a series of dismissing. However it was also necessary to avoid the start of any criticism, a pretext the hidden out clergy would have used to take its revenge. That’s why not only the president of the Experts Assembly didn’t dismiss the Guide but also he paid tribute to “his brilliant management which rescued institutions” while some people manoeuvred to destroy them by calling into question the regime’s democratic elections and by chanting “hostile slogans in accordance with foreigners’ expectations”.

Mussavi’s reaction | The great interest of such conclusions is that they triggered no indignation. Even not a single one among the pro- Mussavi thousand blogs or websites criticized such conclusions ! No reformer journalist wrote anything about the matter, which is the resounding proof that every internal quarrel and opposition in the regime is entirely artificial.

Mussavi himself gave an interview to his own website in which, instead of howling his pain out for his Movement’s so-called martyrs, he denied having helped the enemies of the institutions. He stated that he always “acted in favour of the regime’s institutions”. This as well didn’t cause any critical article. Everybody pretended he didn’t hear anything because the affair affected the credibility of the boss Rafsanjani. Opportunely, Ahmadinejad the extra told about the existence of Israel, a new diversion to keep minds busy with something else and make people forget about the opposition media’s silence about such affair.

The AFP’s intervention | This triple affair of Rafsanjani’s turnaround, of the Green people’s silence and of Mussavi’s low profile should have been taken into important consideration in Europe or in the United States. But there’s nothing negative about the matter because Rafsanjani and Mussavi are the official representatives of so-called moderates, those people who are used as alibi by the Westerners in order to justify by their people the opportunity to maintain good relations with the mullahs. This is the reason why, in parallel with the absence of any negative comment about the artificiality of the internal opposition, the AFP, other agencies and numerous Western newspapers published articles which attributed to Mussavi acerbic but inexistent words against the mullahs’ regime !

Sentence fabrication | They pretended that Mussavi said : “this is the reign of a sect which confiscated the concept of nationalism”. The quoted sentence doesn’t appear in the text. This is not the first time that press agencies rewrite Mussavi’s statements in order to reduce their Islamist significance.

On the last first January, when the Westerners stated that the Green Movement was in favour of some radical change, Mussavi gave an interview in order to assert his commitment to the regime and to its Islamist doctrine. Then the Westerners censured those words and substituted them with invented words which referred to Mussavi’s nationalism because we know already that the Iranians are attached to such value.

In the present case, the accusation of “confiscation of the concept of nationalism” is something of an attempt to give a popular stature to Mussavi because the sentence doesn’t appear in the interview as it was focused on the attachment to the regime’s institutions.

As revenge, Mussavi referred to an image which was broadcasted lately by the Green people on the web on which we could notice an Iranian flag whose green strip turned blue. This was one of the Green Movement’s media coups but nobody took it seriously because the Photoshop effect was much blatant. In the interview he gave about his attachment to Islamism, leafing through a sentence that called again for holy war against Saddam, Mussavi mentioned such photomontage in order to remind that he is “against the change of the colours of his country” by considering it as “a proof of a sect’s attachment to national values”. There was no mention of “confiscation of the concept of nationalism” but of a “proof of attachment” and as it happened, those words didn’t forgive anybody and they didn’t defend nationalism because shortly before he described nationalism as a sub-series of the regime’s Islamist doctrine. Then he asked the Iranians to boycott the Day of the Fire -a nationalist and anti-Islamist Day which is a yearly outlet to reject the regime.

The AFP and other agencies may modify Mussavi’s words but reality will remain the same. This regime is monolithic, everything is false and artificial : opposition, moderation, reforms. Moreover everything rests on a sole man, Rafsanjani, who is detested by people but also by his peers. Instead of counterfeiting the truth so to have fewer worries about the future of such a regime which is useful but hopeless, we’d rather prepare the future by counting on those who are the most numerous in Iran, i.e. the Iranians.

© WWW.IRAN-RESIST.ORG
The french version of this article :
 Iran : L’AFP a encore sauvé la peau de Moussavi !
 (1ER MARS 2010)