A video snippet from last week's panel hearing before the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia offers us some interesting insights on what an internal compromise could look like in Iran:
The exchange between Rep. Fortenberry (R-NE) and the panel experts (which included, among others, WINEP Senior Fellow Mehdi Khalaji) is a valuable one, but we get to brass tacks around the 3:50 mark, when Fariborz Ghadar outlines what a power-sharing deal may entail. Those items, in short, are:
- A Reduction of the Supreme Leader's power.
- More opposition members in the Majlis.
- Ayatollah Rafsanjani assuming more power and serving a more "active" role as mediator.
While I do believe such a hypothetical compromise would require fewer ballot restrictions, I find the other two items rather unlikely. For one, Rafsanjani is already serving as a governmental mediator on the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts. Unless a compromise were to somehow grant more authority to those bodies, I simply don't see how he could be any more of a balancing figure in the already inefficient and dysfunctional Iranian government. Plus, Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad, to my knowledge, despise each other. You can't really be a mediator if you can't stand to be in the same room as those you're attempting to temper.
Truth is, the Iranian government has been trying to figure out a way to streamline its decision making for years now. The solutions tend to be what we in the West call 'Big Government' ones; if one government institution isn't working, just create another one! The result is a layer cake of councils, committees, assemblies and so on which overlap and obstruct the other like the design of a plaid sweater. The system is a check upon a check upon a check, with everyone stalemating each other into irrelevance.
The other problem, perhaps needless to say, is Ahmadinejad himself. He is the crux of the Green Movement's ire; the tie that binds. Anything that might validate his authority and position will likely be deemed unacceptable by the opposition.
There is, however, a way to neuter the presidency, and that's by strengthening - and diversifying - the Majlis, or parliament. Khamenei could do this by weakening or calling for a national ballot initiative on the Guardian Council. Weaken or eliminate that body altogether, and the Majlis could become more diverse and serve as a true check against the president, the supreme leader and, perhaps, the IRGC. This would by default strengthen the position of speaker, making yet another perfunctory executive role for Rafsanjani or whomever unnecessary. Again, Iran's problem isn't a dearth of deliberation, but its gluttonous surplus of it.
It may better serve the Green Movement to distance itself from Mousavi et al. and become a faceless movement, but targeting various executives for national ills only further panders to the notion that everything will improve if only so-and-so were deposed, or if so-and-so had won the presidency. The country's history is a connect-the-dots of iconoclasts: Pahlavi, Mosaddegh, another Pahlavi, Khomeini, Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and so on. We are all guilty at times of viewing history (and progress, for that matter) through the lives and actions of the individual. Iran's time line is no different. But a focus on legislative reform could set Iran on a wiser path toward more thorough constitutional reform, and hopefully a freer and more democratic society.
(h/t K-Lo)
