Possible candidates in Iran's upcoming presidential election. Top row (left to right): Ali Akbar Velayati, Muhammad-Baqer Qalibaf, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, Mohsen Rezai. Bottom row (left to right): Manouchehr Mottaki, Hassan Rouhani, Ali Larijani, Mohammad Reza Aref. (DSK/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]The turban, the hat or the cap? That is the million-dollar question for Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, as he prepares for the presidential election in June.
The turban represents the clerical class, known as the muam'am, the cap the military, and the hat Iran’s professional classes, also known as the mukalla. Backing a presidential candidate from each of the three classes carries with it its own risks and rewards, and Khamenei will have to consider carefully to whom he will lend his support.
In the 1990s, he was not powerful enough to have a decisive say in the election of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as president. Nor did Khamenei succeed in stopping Rafsanjani from propelling one of his acolytes, Muhammad Khatami, into power in 1997. In 2005, Khamenei is rumored to have backed a former national police chief (and current Mayor of Tehran), Muhammad-Baqer Qalibaf, for president. If true, the supreme leader's hopes were dashed when Qalibaf came fifth in the first round. In 2009, Khamenei was forced to back Ahmadinejad after the storm of protest over the defeat (allegedly by electoral fraud) of Mir Hussein Mousavi—Khamenei’s bête noire for more than two decades.
What kind of headgear the future president wears—the turban of the cleric, the cap or beret of the military officer, or the hat of the professional—could be of crucial importance for the future of the regime, and with it the supreme leader himself. Of the six men who have served as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran so far, three have been men of the cloth and thus wearers of the turban.
Turban complications
The turban represents the Shi'ite clergy that, ever since its creation in Iran almost four centuries ago, has had an ambivalent attitude towards the exercise of political power. Broadly speaking, turbans come in two contrasting colors. A white turban means that the man who wears it is not a descendant of the Prophet, and thus is of non-Arab origin. In contrast, the wearer of the black turban is marked as a descendant of the Prophet through one of the twelve imams of Twelver Shi'ism.
The semiology of turbans is still more complicated. Students of theology are allowed to wear very thin turbans, denoting their position as novices. A hujjat al-Islam, or mid-ranking mullah, can wear a slightly fatter turban. The very fat turbans that require several yards of cloth are reserved for the grand ayatollahs. Rafsanjani’s white turban marked him as someone of non-Arab origin. Khatami and Khamenei both wear black turbans, as did Khomeini, denoting their Arab descent on the paternal side.
The experience of the past three decades shows that many of the most senior clerics are not eager to enter the realm of politics. Once in power, however, a man with a thin turban could quickly thicken his headgear and grow a longer beard to bolster the religious aspect of his image. When first elected president, Ayatollah Khamenei was not a particularly senior cleric, but was promoted so that he could succeed Ayatollah Khomeini.
So, will Khamenei try to regain the presidency for the ‘turban tribe,’ as the mullahs are known in Iran? Several mullahs have already indicated their intention to become candidates. Among them is Ali Fallahian, a former minister for intelligence and security and a long-time associate of Khamenei.
Nevertheless, Khamenei might think twice before propelling a mullah into the presidency. Having too many turbans at the top would lend more credence to the claim that Iran is a theocracy with mullahs monopolizing power. A turbaned president could be dangerous for Khamenei for other reasons. If he is substantially younger than Khamenei, the mass of opportunists, careerists and technocrats who form the majority of people in and around any political structure might decide to rally around the new president as the man of the future and distance themselves from an ageing supreme leader as the man of the past.
Ali Fallahian, however, presents a problem. He remains on Interpol’s wanted list for his alleged role in the bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aries, Argentina, in 1994. The turban wearers who make the most credible presidential candidates are former presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami, as well as former interior minister Abdullah Nuri. Rafsanjani and Khatami are already so bitter about Khamenei’s mistreatment of them that, if elected president again, they would certainly not allow him to project absolute power.
Rafsanjani, it seems, has taken his falling out with Ayatollah Khamenei to heart. Reports have emerged of a meeting with a number of regional governors in which several attendees tried to persuade him to run for the presidency once more. Rafsanjani reportedly responded that the breakdown of trust between Khamenei and himself made this a bad idea, despite what he sees as the debt Khamenei owes him for helping him reach his current position. As a result, he is said to have told his backers and that he will not stand for election.
If Khamenei wishes to mix the turban with the nuclear program, he could advance another pawn: Hassan Rouhani, a sixty-three-year-old mullah who led the nuclear negotiations under Rafsanjani and Khatami. A mid-ranking cleric who studied chemistry in Britain, Rouhani lacks the stature of Rafsanjani, Khatami and Nuri, and thus would pose no threat to Khamenei. For a decade, Rouhani was secretary-general of the High Council of National Security, and thus close to the military and intelligence services. If the mullahs wish to keep a tight control on all aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, Rouhani could be their man. A political centrist for the most part, he impressed European governments with his negotiating skills during the tortuous negotiations over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Former British foreign secretary Jack Straw has described Rouhani as “a capable diplomat, and a man we could do business with.”
The recent announcement of his candidacy created a brief buzz among observers of Iranian politics. While it is far from being clear if he has the active backing of Khamenei or not, most observers concede that the two men respect each other.
The hat option
So, what about going for a hat this time? Here, too, Khamenei faces many problems. All three hat-wearing presidents have caused problems for the turbaned supreme leader. The first one was Abol-Hassan Banisadr, who took the title “sayyid” to denote his descent from the twelve imams, and who used his position as the son of an ayatollah to seek a limitation of the powers of the supreme leader.
His relations with the then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, soured within months, leading to a breakdown in relations. Khomeini issued a nine-word fatwa sacking Banisadr as president, a move that highlighted the absolute supremacy of the supreme leader. The second hat-wearing president, Muhammad-Ali Rajai, was assassinated within weeks of his election and thus had no time to develop an attitude towards the supreme leader. However, his speeches and writings reveal him as a disciple of Ali Shariati, a sociologist and intellectual whose main slogan was “Shi'ism without mullahs!”
The third hat-wearing president is the current one, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has ended up re-casting himself in the unlikely role of a Persian nationalist while, at the same time, trying to accelerate the return of the Hidden Imam. Ahmadinejad has even gone as far as to claim that it is as part of an “Iranian School” that Islam has the most relevance to Persian civilization.
The hat is the symbol of Iran’s Westernized elites, who started to secure a power base in the middle of the nineteenth century and ended up dominating the government from the first decade of the twentieth century until the revolution in 1979. Thus, it is possible to argue that a majority of Iran’s urban middle classes might prefer a hat-wearing president, especially now that the prestige of the idea of clerics holding political power is at its lowest in decades.
But would a young and energetic hat-wearing president not mobilize the urban middle classes behind a program of reforms that could include constitutional changes? And could such changes not include the abolition of the post of the supreme leader, thus transforming Iran into an "ordinary" republic?
To be sure, Khamenei could propel some hat-wearing non-entity into the presidency, thus transforming the future president into an appendage of the Office of the Supreme Leader. Several such characters have already thrown their hats into the ring. Among them is former foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who made a name for himself when Ahmadinejad sacked him in a most humiliating manner. Another hat-wearer is Ali Akbar Velayati, who acts as Khamenei’s foreign policy advisor. A third possibility is a former speaker of Iran’s parliament, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, who has the added advantage of being related to Khamenei through marriage. All three might appear attractive to Khamenei because they lack charisma. At the same time, none of them has a support base of his own.
Outside those three, Khamenei might wish to exploit the Amoli–Larijani network of mullahs, business tycoons and security agents by pushing Ali Ardeshir Larijani, the current parliamentary speaker, into the presidential chair. However, that too would be a high-risk strategy. The Amoli–Larijani network may be more interested in protecting its own business interests than the system of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist). If the family felt its own interests were endangered, it might show little hesitation in throwing the supreme leader to the wolves.
According to the current buzz in Tehran circles, Khamenei is tilting toward the hat solution. Having a hat as president would represent no threat to his clerical status within the regime. At the same time, it would present a better image of the Islamic Republic abroad while throwing a sop to Iran’s sulking middle classes, who feel shut out of power. According to some reports, admittedly unverified ones, Khamenei would like the post to go to Velayati.
Velayati, who served as foreign minister for almost sixteen years, is deeply loyal to the supreme leader. At the same time, he is unlikely to cast a shadow on Khamenei’s authority because he has no power base of his own. Recently, Khamenei appointed Velayati as secretary-general of the Islamic Awakening Movement, with the mandate to “export” Iran’s model of Islamic government to the so-called Arab Spring countries.
Hat and turban together
During the 1978–1979 revolution, the people of the hat cooperated with the people of the turban to drive out the shah. The arrangement worked for a while, as the people of the turban allowed the people of the hat to fill major positions of power, including those of the president and prime minister of the Islamic Republic. The people of the turban stayed in the shadows or, at most, were assigned middling positions in government. Gradually, they realized that running a government is no big deal.
Within a year, the people of the turban decided to reverse the arrangement and take all the big jobs. For years, clerics held various key positions, such as president of the republic, chief justice, minister of security and intelligence, minister of the interior, speaker of parliament, minister of justice, and minister of culture and guidance. At the same time the muam'am also headed other key institutions, such as the Council of the Guardians of the Revolution, the Expediency Council, the Assembly of Experts, the Supreme National Security Council, and many others.
Turbaned heads are also present in every government department at the national and provincial levels. In the provinces, turbaned heads act as a counter-force to the hat-wearing governors appointed from Tehran. Last but not least, the position of the supreme leader is reserved for a turbaned head, although, theoretically at least, a hat-wearer could also fill it.
Where the caps are
The cap is the symbol of the military. Traditionally, and unlike most “developing nations,” Iran’s military has never tried to seize power for themselves. Of the thirty-eight men who served as prime minister in the hundred years before the 1979 revolution, only four had been former military commanders. Even then, in every case they owed their appointment as prime minister to royal edicts, aside from the involvement of some members of the military in the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh. The military’s culture of political neutrality, however, may be changing. Iran’s regular army, a shadow of its past, retains a strictly apolitical posture. As long as it gets a decent budget and is not interfered with in a scandalous manner, the regular army is content with its role as the defender of the nation’s frontiers.
It is also proud of the role it played in defeating the Iraqi invasion of 1980 and winning a kind of semi-victory in the eight-year-long war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The generals who run the regular army make a point of adopting a low profile and studiously steering clear of political issues. Some observers believe that the regular military may be playing a long-term game, keeping itself as a kind of last resort to assume leadership at a moment of grave danger for the country. Whether this is the case or not, the fact is that at the moment the regular army remains out of the political game.
The same is not true of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In the past decade, the IRGC leadership has demonstrated its political ambitions in a more assertive manner. There is no doubt that IRGC commanders played a crucial role in putting Ahmadinejad into the presidential chair. They were handsomely rewarded. Ahmadinejad brought several figures linked to the IRGC into his Cabinet in a variety of ministerial posts, such as Sadegh Mahsouli, the former minister of labor, and Rastam Qasemi, the current oil minister. He also carried out a massive privatization program, selling state-owned concerns at nominal prices to companies controlled by IRGC leaders.
Over the past two decades, three former IRGC senior officers—Ali Shamkhani, Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf and Mohsen Rezai—have tested the waters in three presidential elections. Neither had the charisma or the weight to make much of an impression. However, their candidacies helped normalize the presence of a cap-wearer in a presidential election.
Both Qalibaf and Rezai are likely to throw their caps in the ring once again, although arguably neither has the charisma to mobilize a genuine power base. A dark horse in this field is General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a former IRGC commander and a senior military aide of Ayatollah Khamenei.
From an institutional perspective, the senior ranks of the IRGC are not overly concerned that the president be a former general. He could even be a hat or turban wearer. From their perspective, the important thing is that the next president remains aware of the fact that, without support from IRGC, there could be no president, no supreme leader and no Islamic Republic.
There is one other factor to consider. The IRGC commanders might not want to assume direct leadership at a time of economic meltdown and sociopolitical uncertainty. Why should they step in and assume responsibility for more than thirty years of mismanagement and poor governance by the turbans and their hat-wearing myrmidons?
Reviving the debate
So, why is the turban, hat or cap debate being revived at this point in time? There are at least three reasons. The first is that the ruling mullahs hate being called “mullahs,” a term that reminds the rest of the world of the Afghan Taliban and its spiritual leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar. Iran’s ruling mullahs prefer to be seen as Third World revolutionaries, fighting imperialism and one day hopefully wiping Israel off the map, rather than forcing women into burqas or measuring the length of men’s beards. Many within the ruling establishment believe that it is wiser to let a hat-wearer act as president of the republic, thus helping change the image of the regime as one dominated by the mullahs.
In any case, under Iran’s current constitution, the president of the republic holds little power of his own even though he is head of the executive branch of government. He can be dismissed by the supreme leader, who is the real head of state. The president of the Islamic Republic is a sort of prime minister who is directly elected by the people but can exercise no power without the permission of other mullah-dominated institutions. Thus, changing the regime’s image by electing a hat-wearer as president would in no way undermine the real hold that the revolutionary mullahs have on power. Having allowed hat-wearers to replace turban-wearers as speakers of Iran’s parliament did not lead to any reduction in the power of the ruling clerics.
The second reason is that many Shi'ite clerics are seriously concerned about the negative impact of clerical rule on Iranians’ view of Shi'ism, and indeed of Islam itself. Their argument is that people may project any anger generated by political or economic failures onto religion. A hat-wearing or cap-wearing president could act as a kind of human shield, taking the flak for the government’s failure.
The third, and perhaps the most important, reason is that a strong segment of the revolutionary establishment consists of hat-wearers and cap-wearers who are beginning to feel frustrated at the prospect of never getting any of the big jobs. These are people who joined the revolution in their teens, took the American diplomats hostage, manned the firing squads against the enemies of the revolution, helped suppress rebellious ethnic minorities, including the Kurds and Turkmen, and fought in the Iran–Iraq War. Many of them have improved their credentials by marrying into clerical families. And, yet, because they are not mullahs, they have until now had little hope of reaching the highest rungs of the ladder.
A Divided establishment
The establishment is clearly divided as to whether to stay with the turban or try on a hat or a cap next June. The incumbent president, Ahmadinejad, is out of the race because he is not allowed to stand for a third consecutive term. However, some observers believe that Ahmadinejad is trying to position one of his allies as his successor in an Iranian version of the Putin–Medvedev scenario in Russia. The man in question is Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who has cultivated his image as a Sufi and humanist who is at the same time in contact with the Hidden Imam.
Deeply impressed by the late Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad and his faction are trying to develop their own brand of petro-populism. This is why, at the start of his presidency, Ahmadinejad invited the children of Che Guevara to a conference in Tehran.
The Iranian media controlled by Khamenei’s office has been attacking Ahmadinejad and his “deviant faction” in increasingly bitter tones, indicating the supreme leader’s concern about a serious challenge to his authority.
In all this, the elephant in the room is the Iranian people, who might seize the opportunity provided by the presidential election to vent their anger and frustration, as they did in 2009 with the Green Movement. The ruling establishment takes this threat very seriously. This is why it has mobilized its apparatus of control and repression to reduce the risks of another popular revolt. Hundreds of people have been arrested, including many journalists and human right activists. Every effort is made to block or reduce access to the Internet and prevent the use of emails and social media. With help from Russia, special units have been trained and equipped for crowd control. Prominent figures of the Green Movement remain under house arrest, and potential dissidents such as Nuri and Khatami have had their passports revoked and their movements inside Iran restricted. They have also changed parts of the electoral law, especially to prevent the Ahmadinejad faction from using the state machinery to arrange a victory for its own candidate.
Nevertheless, a surprise is still possible. Massive fraud of the kind routinely practiced in the past three decades is far more difficult today. Therefore, even if the regime manages to arrange a victory for its favorite candidate through fraud, it would be less convincing than was Ahmadinejad’s so-called landslide win in 2009. Also, Iranians may decide to boycott the poll en masse. That would be another serious blow to the regime’s already-damaged legitimacy. On the other hand, inspired by people-power, Iranians might turn up to vote for the candidate they identify as the one least supported by Khamenei.
Obviously, the best outcome for Khamenei would be a mass voter turnout that leads to the victory of his handpicked favorite in an election in which all candidates are pre-approved. However, even then, the problems of this peculiar system, which wishes to be a theocracy and a democracy at the same time, will remain. The Iranian system is like a double-headed eagle: it looks lofty but cannot fly in any direction without tearing itself asunder. The next president would face the same question that all his predecessors faced: am I here because the people chose me, or because the supreme leader appointed me?
