Ever since Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shia dissident Nimr al-Nimr was met with violent protests at the Saudi embassy in Iran, the two already hostile countries have been at diplomatic loggerheads. But while Saudi Arabia’s actions suggest a unity of purpose at the highest level, the Iranian reaction has not been uniform.
The Iranian government has severely criticized the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic missions. President Hassan Rouhani attributed the attacks to “rogue elements” who “want to damage the dignity of the Islamic Republic.”
By contrast, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and officials close to his office such as Tehran’s leader of Friday prayers, have tacitly or openly supported the protesters.
The official media, meanwhile, is similarly divided with reformist and pro-government newspapers and websites taking a critical but more measured line while conservative media and those close to the security and intelligence establishments have adopted a more aggressive tone.
These conflicting reactions stem from the deep ambivalence at the core of the Iranian state, which combines centers of power both popular and divine.
That contradiction is reflected in the country’s official name: the ‘Islamic Republic’ of Iran. This means that different and often competing ideological factions are constantly trying to dominate the state and its vast economic resources, and to shape Iran’s strategic direction both internally and externally.
Such rivalries can become particularly intense at critical domestic junctures and produce unintended consequences. The massive 2009 protests after the re-election of Mahmood Ahmadinejad, widely perceived as a fraudulent election, was a glaring example of how the intensified factional strife at the top of the Iranian regime can make it vulnerable to popular radicalism from below.
Iran might soon find itself in a similar situation.
Trouble Brewing
Elections for both the parliament and the “assembly of experts“ are set for February 2016, and both are highly significant. If reformist candidates can enter into the parliament in large numbers, the Rouhani government will be further empowered to pursue its cautions but strategic rapprochement with the west.
Iranian conservatives fiercely oppose this. In fact, ever since the start of the nuclear negotiations with the United States, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his supporters have covertly and sometimes publicly tried to prevent the use of what he at the time described as “heroic flexibility“ as a license for normalizing relations with the United States.
