"They’re all one and the same" is a phrase that many Iranians repeatedly used (at least) before the election to describe the present rulers and statesmen. But the high number of participants in the recent election and the subsequent unexpected results opened the eyes of Iranians to the full extent of disagreements between their rulers. A nation that, due to long years of a dictatorship and lack of transparency in the governing systems, had been obsessed with conspiracy theories, was suddenly faced with the part of the realities about the country’s leaders. There is a lesson in this for the rulers; that it is indeed the people’s right to be informed.

The 1979 revolution, which broke the dam of imperial dictatorship in Iran, gave power to new rulers that were influenced by a mixture of the traditional religion of the clergy and modern concepts presented by Shariati’s ideas. It’s this very dual nature of this revolution that has occasionally misled some thinkers in the world into fallacy. This is definitely why a philosopher like Foucault has gone so far as to call the progress of this revolution a manifestation of post-structuralism in the twentieth century.

This duality was classified based on the classic universal dichotomy of confrontation between Left and Right. However, neither were the leftists Marxist nor the right liberal! The discussion was over pursuing a socialistic interpretation of Islam or following the Islam of the bazaari’s [traditional market].

Under the charismatic leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, this heterogeneous nature was sustained in a relatively stable balance. Khomeini intelligently understood that only the leftists were able to manage the country in the critical situation of war, but tried to keep both sides satisfied. After his death, Khamenei became the supreme leader but the strong leadership that could maintain the balance vanished. The power struggle gradually leaned toward the traditional viewpoint.

It was at this same stage that power was transferred to a relatively right-wing section of the government and one of the most prominent figures in the establishment, Hashemi Rafsanjani. However, Rafsanjani’s stance was in favor of modern capitalism rather than a traditional market [bazaar]. Rafsanjani’s grip of power was at a cost. In order to reduce some tensions, he had to withdraw a number of strong left-wing managers. He was also forced to give some previous military forces, just back from the war, official management positions in order to increase his executive power. As a result, the contracting activities of the Revolutionary Guards (RG) started in the Khatam-al-Anbia military base and later formed a very strong economic base for this military organization.

In these years, Khamenei, who neither had a strong base among the clergy nor the public popularity of former leader, had no influential role. Gradually, he was also attracted to power and looked for strategic partnerships that eventually led to his alliance with the RG forces.

Meanwhile, the leftists, often referred to as the Imam-liners [i.e. followers of Imam Khomeini], free from executive responsibilities, found a valuable opportunity for educating themselves. The outcome, emerging a few years later, was the Kian group and [Dr. Abdolkarim] Soroush’s students, from the social aspect, and the Strategic Research Center under the leadership of Mousavi Khoeini and Saeed Hajjarian, from the political aspect. They showed up under the name of "reformists". The fundamental changes in their viewpoints were remarkable. The old students of Shariati, who previously pursued their mentor’s idea of establishing a "religious democracy", had taken to secularism after their new teachert, Soroush, after witnessing the paradox in the two words of their original goal. However, at a time when "defying the guardianship of the jurists" was considered heretical, and concepts such as "melting in the leader [guardian]" [referring to such a strong belief in the supreme leader that one would accept whatever may come from him naturally, without questioning] were essential for entering the power structure, they did not fully reveal their new beliefs.

Alongside this ideological evolution in the leftists, the right-wing leaders, who were joyfully ruling in the absence of the first group, shifted from right to center, and finally created a relatively technocratic spectrum that formed the Kargozaran Party under the spiritual leadership of the president, Rafsanjani.

The formation of Kargozaran coincided with the new approach of the Imam-liners. Their consistent goals guided them into a successful coalition that eventually led to the presidency of Khatami. This victory came as a surprise for both the reformists and their opponents. The reformists initially failed to attract Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was the symbol of the authority of the left during the war, as a candidate, thus losing ground to the main candidate of the right wing, Nategh Nouri. By supporting Khatami, the reformists were merely hoping to publicly introduce some of their evolved ideas and eventually have a show of their new role in the political structure, with up to 5 million votes. But the thirsty young Iranian community embraced the reformists and its allies such that, with utter disbelief, this wing’s candidate was sent to the presidential palace in 1997 with great authority. Not to forget was the influential role of Rafsanjani in preventing election fraud at the Interior Ministry.

Alongside all this, Khamenei had filtered the Revolutionary Guards and turned it into a military party under his full control, by putting aside Mohsen Rezaei [the former head of the RG] who was claiming the leadership of a third group that was neither left nor right. Khamenei gradually felt the risk of the reform movement, but couldn’t stand against it since Rafsanjani was supporting it and the fact that he copuld not yet fully entrust the RG. Therefore, he approached the traditional clergy. The right-wing, which was struck by the elections and had lost power, regained its consciousness and quickly organized severe attacks with the support of Khamenei. Among these activities were the serial murders of intellectuals, the July 1999 attack on the Tehran University dormitory, the consequences of the Berlin Conference, and the attempted assassination of Saeed Hajjarian. These attacks became so severe that the reform movement had to retract many of its proposed concepts in order to stay in power. They had to replace "civil society" with "Medinah-tun-Nabi" (City of the Prophet) or "democracy" with "religious democracy.”

Meanwhile, there was a profound disagreement between the reformists and their strategic ally, Rafsanjani. The reformists cautiously [but not whole-heartedly] used the term "establishment" while they meant "country" while Rafsanjani was committed to the running framework. The reformers, while disapproving the concept of supreme leadership and aiming for a secular state, had two opponents: Khamenei and Rafsanjani. Reformists had correctly found out that the main protecting force of the system so far was the first, Rafsanjani. But they made a strategic mistake by supposing that ousting the first from power will force the latter to leave the stage. They started to attack Rafsanjani and unintentionally participated in a game, arranged by the supreme leader Khamenei, to humiliate Rafsanjani in the sixth parliamentary elections in 1999. This event was a turning point in the formation of a new center of power in the shadow of the leader. Khamenei, in a well-orchestrated scenario, forced Rafsanjani to candidacy for the parliament and, on the other hand, further stimulated the reformists to destroy Rafsanjani’s image. With Rafsanjani’s embarrassing defeat in the elections, Khamenei could show off, for the first time, his grip of power and hit his old rival in the face.

The reformists, proud of defeating their first opponent, set the stage to deal with the second, however they were not considering that his newly gained power, in the company of his military party, would not be easy to take over.

Khatami adopted new foreign policies for relaxing tensions and therefore enhanced international relations and the possibility of technology exchanges. Soon, topics related to nuclear energy in Iran became serious but the interesting point was that Khatami’s men had were not advocates of nuclear activities, even for peaceful purposes. Behzad Nabavi, one of the top managers during the premiership of Mousavi, had a remarkable role in the economical decision-making during the [Iran-Iraq] war and even in support of the front line. He was left out of Rafsanjani’s Ministry of Industry, then invited by Zanganeh, Minister of Energy at that time, to focus on establishing the country’s cheapest electricity plants; the gas-fueled combined cycle power plants. He, together with Safai Farahani, established the semi-public MAPNA company, which is currently still an important contractor of such projects.

Many methods of producing energy have no economic justification in Iran because of the cheap in-house fossil fuel. Among these are wind and water generators and nuclear reactors. On the other hand, thermal and gas-powered plants are more justified. The combined cycle plants are more efficient and the cheap gas, which otherwise is directly burned over the oil wells, adds to the commercial value of this type of plant.

During Khatami’s presidency, Nabavi got a key management role again but this time from behind the scenes, similar to what he later fulfilled in the sixth parliament [Majles]. This time Zangeneh was appointed as the Oil Minister and this time with the help of Nabavi’s efforts, they established the most important fossil fuel projects in the Southern Pars gas field. Note that Iran has the second largest gas reserves in the world after Russia. Half of these gas reserves are in Southern Pars gas field shared with Qatar, which has been extracting from this field since 1991. The ministry used all means to advance toward their goal. They changed contract names from "buy-back" to "cross-selling" in order to bypass the Guardian Council and even registered dependent companies in the UK.

Khatami’s statesmen were experts on energy supply. These managers tried to pursue serious projects considering all the rational choices, so they took a few steps towards harvesting nuclear energy with reasonable speed and using internal resources or eventually inviting some Iranian professors from abroad, but they never thought to use it as a threat.

The approach of Khatami’s team towards nuclear energy did not satisfy Khamenei. Khamenei was strongly in favor of building the technology for a nuclear bomb, specifically with the aim of consolidation of power in the region, but could not pursue it under Khatami’s presidency.

The reformists’ competitors succeeded in creating an atmosphere of despair and frustration from the reform process. With their support, a new force grew with the help of populist propaganda that succeeded to win the presidential race. In the beginning, this fresh party was not fully trusted by the supreme leader, but was able to gain Khamenei’s confidence gradually to the extent that he took back the strategic control of the nuclear talks from his fully trusted correspondent, Larijani, and offered it to Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad’s aggressive policies, tough position against world powers, and increase in oil prices, which filled the treasury with cash, created glimmers of hope for Khamenei to satisfy his old desires. But Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement, especially with the economy, severely hit the body of society, such that Mousavi and Khatami became so worried that they personally became involved in rescuing of the country from misery. It went so far that this election campaign became a tragedy for the establishment.

It is obvious that Ayatollah Khamenei has held a major part of power in Iran in the recent years. With Ahmadinejad’s appointment in 2005, perhaps it can be said that less than 10% of the power was outside the leader’s reach. On the other hand, if Mir Hossein Mousavi were to become president, Khamenei’s power would be reduced to about 60%, but he would still be the most powerful figure and in principle could do anything he wanted. So why is Khamenei still supporting Ahmadinejad after this scandalous election?

Economic experts in Iran have predicted that the oil prices will increase towards the end of this year [early 2010] to over 70 dollars per barrel and will stay so for at least three more years. On the other hand, a politician with a soft approach, named Obama, has become the president of a country which leads those opposing the Iranian regime. Khamenei is speculating that with the oil money in the upcoming years and opening talks with the U.S., he can kill some time and make a nuclear bomb.

Unlike what leaders of the world, and especially Obama, think about the foreign policies of Mousavi and Ahmadinejad being identical, Khamenei knows well that Mousavi and his statesmen, who are the same former managers that were against the threat of nuclear energy, will oppose to Khamenei’s desire to develop nuclear weapons. Perhaps that is why Safaei Farahani and Behzad Nabavi are among the first in the recently arrested. One should consider that Mousavi has deliberately pointed out in his campaign that he wants to rescue the country from the crisis caused by sanctions and it certainly is impossible without stopping the underground nuclear research and full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Fortunately, Obama has ruined a major part of Khamenei’s plan by showing harder reactions to the recent events in Iran and the crimes against human rights that are taking place, and particularly threatened that it will overshadow the start of possible upcoming negotiations between the two governments. Let us hope that other countries will also stand consciously against the new game of Iran’s ideological regime.