The evidence of Khamenei’s belief can be found in his public speech in Qom on January 9, “The current conditions in Iran are the same as Badr and Kheybar, and not Shaab-e-Abu Talib,” Khamenei said.

According to Islamic history Shaab-e-Abu Talib is a region in Saudi Arabia, where during the early days of Islam, the Prophet Mohammad and his followers were forced to live under an economic and social blockade for three years. According to Islamic literature, the situation was so bad that “they had to tie rocks to their stomachs” in order to alleviate the pain resulting from prolonged hunger.

Similar language emerged in an unprecedented statement by Mahmoud Bahmani, head of Iran’s Central Bank, announced on December 21, 2011, “We have to manage the society in a way to survive for two years. Just like if were trapped in Shaab-e-Abu Talib.”

Khamenei dismissed the head of the Central Bank’s statements, but by recognizing the situation similar to Badr and Kheybar, he has indirectly confessed that the Islamic Republic is isolated domestically, regionally, and internationally.

However, he believes, just like the Prophet of Islam, he should face his opponents with the small army at his disposal.

The Battles of Badr and Kheybar were two important battles fought by the Prophet of Islam against the enemies of the newly-established religion. He fought the enemies, despite the small size of his army, and was victorious in both battles.

Despite the current harsh economic conditions, this history indicates Khamenei is hopeful that by adopting the policies of “patience and endurance” and “threats against threats,” he and his supporters could stand against the United States and the West.

The threats coming from Iran, such as closing the Strait of Hormuz, influencing Arab states in transition, publishing reports about capturing U.S. spies, and increasing the levels of domestic oppression are all tactics used by Iran in order to deal with the internal and external crisis.

By threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, the clerics in Iran are hoping to force the United States and the West to take a step back. They also hope to intimidate the regional countries and demonstrate Iran’s military might in order to improve their shaky legitimacy internally.

Iran has welcomed the recent developments in the Arab world with this strategy. The Islamic Republic is trying to convince its people that the citizens of the Arab world have chosen the same path as Iranians chose thirty-two years ago.

In the meanwhile, the Islamic Republic is trying to exploit its deteriorating relationship with the United States. Iran is holding the United States responsible for the majority of its own flaws, shortcomings, and internal problems. The regime has also tried to connect the members of the opposition to Western governments in order to legitimize the harsh repression against activists fighting for change.

His devotees, only one day after the storming of the British embassy in Tehran, confessed that they were “deceived” by a seven-member council whose members belong to the student basij (affiliated with the IRGC) in Tehran universities.

After two years of silence, Hassan Alaei, former IRGC Navy Chief, in a controversial op-ed published in Ettelaat newspaper, a publication under the direct supervision of Khamenei, implicitly advised the Supreme Leader to learn from Mohammad Reza Shah, who was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution. Alaei suggested that the oppression of the regime’s critics should be stopped.

For more than 10 months, a great number of Khamenei’s supporters have been clearly declaring that the Supreme Leader’s personal support for Ahmadinejad was a mistake. They believe that Ahmadinejad “deviated” from the political mainstream and plans to force the clergy from the country’s power structure.

In the meantime, after the implementation of the first phase of the subsidy reform program and the recent set of sanctions, Iran’s economic situation is more dreadful than ever. According to Asadollah Asgar Oladi, the head of Chamber of Iran-China Commerce, the inflation rate is close to 40%. Asgar Oladi warns that if the situation continues during the next six months, the country may face supply shortages.

The international sanctions on Iran, imposed due to the country’s defiance of UN Security Council resolutions on its nuclear program, are expanding day by day.

After nearly six years of establishing sanctions against Iran due to its nuclear program, Fereydoun Abbasi, Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy, admitted that some Iranian nuclear scientists are not willing to cooperate with Tehran on nuclear projects due to risks of sanctions.

Despite all the internal and external problems, the Islamic Republic has reacted to the recent set of Western sanctions with the “threats against threats” strategy.

Iran’s actions and statements show us how worried the government is of internal opposition and a threat of external wars.

Contrary to what the Iranian government claims, the foundations of its legitimacy have been shaken due to the crackdown of the protesters following the 2009 presidential election. Threatening the United States and the West and repressing the people domestically is not a sign of bravery. These actions are signals of an internal fear expressed in various forms by the Islamic Republic.

Behnam Gholipour is an Iranian journalist with more than 15 years of experience. He has written for various Iranian publications such as Abrar, Tose-eh, and Etedal. Gholipour also worked as a political analyst and reporter for Radio Zamaneh. He is currently the chief editor of the Digarban website.

While Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was touring the UN last week, delivering acerbic speeches and giving interviews, back home in the Iranian parliament questions were raised not about Ahmadinejad himself, but about the institution of the presidency in total, and whether there is a need for a president alongside the Supreme Leader’s office.

On September 20, Parliamentary Deputy Hamid-Reza Katouzian announced that “some [prominent] political analysts are pondering the lack of necessity for a president in a country like Iran blessed with velayat-e faqih (supreme clerical rule) and a great leader [like Ayatollah Khamenei].” According to Katouzian, the idea is to do away with the office of the president, and to create a parliamentary system where the parliament would choose the prime minister. This may seem surprising, but in fact is in line with the incessant calls by the IRGC and the conservative camp for the absolute rule of Khamenei as the sole ruler of the country. The Supreme Leader himself amplified this new movement recently by interpreting the meaning of the constitutional term “absolute rule of the faqih” as a flexible definition, which allows for ever-increasing role of the faqih “in new realms.”

These new concerted efforts shed light on the cause of continuous disagreements that have existed between the Supreme Leader and the three presidents of the Islamic Republic since he took office. To wit, Rafsanjani was accused of being corrupt; Khatami was accused of succumbing to the West, and later as being close to the “seditious” ring; and Ahmadinejad is purportedly connected to the “deviant” circle, bent on dismantling the institution of Vali Faqih. It is likely that those presidents have not been good enough for Khamenei because of his grand design to do away with the institution of the presidency altogether, and to put an end the dual rule by an elected president and an unelected Vali.

It is unlikely the office of president will disappear by the next election in 2013, when Ahmadinejad’s term expires. However, in this revisionist model, the parliament will be in charge of choosing the prime minister. It is likely that Ayatollah Khamenei had this in mind when he “complained” in April about the lack of discipline in the parliament. Taking a leaf out of Chairman Mao’s Red Book, the Ayatollah argued that the legislative body that supervises the nation needs to be supervised itself. Dominated by arch conservatives, mostly former members of the IRGC, the parliament followed suit, and voted for a new internal regulation for self-censorship.

The regulation stipulates five punishable offenses for the deputies, the third of which is “Breaching national security, and conducting [unlawful] clandestine activities as defined by the law enforcement [officials].” These are code words for voicing opposition. This regulation paved the way for “legal” interference of the Judiciary in the legislative body and the arrest of parliament deputies for their words and deeds. This new regulatory procedure curtails the remaining freedom of speech of the deputies, and slyly overrides article 86 of the Constitution that gives them immunity from persecution for their speeches made in the parliament. By assigning the role of choosing the prime minister to such a parliament, which is already enfeebled by the vetting power of the Guardian Council (itself selected directly and indirectly by the Supreme Leader), there will be no other voices in the country but the one coming out of the Supreme Leader.

Dissolution of the Plan and Budget Organization that took place in the first term of the Ahmadinejad presidency was possibly another step to do away with any form of supervisory institution in the country. The Supreme Leader probably hatched the idea when the sixth parliament, dominated by the reformists such as Ali-Akbar Mousavi- Khoeini, demanded transparency from the large endowments under the Supreme Leader’s office. Khamenei could thwart that effort at the time, and the idea was buried in the seventh parliament, which convened with a majority of conservative deputies.

Formation of a different state?

A radio station asked me some time ago about Ayatollah Khamenei’s vision of an ideal state. The reporter said that Khamenei does not get along with any president. What is he looking for? What kind of state does he have in mind? I answered that the ideal state for Ayatollah Khamenei is already in place, and that is his Beit or office. What the reformists used to allude to metaphorically as “the shadow government” now is the real government. Prominent members of the Supreme Leader’s office, such as Seyed Ali-Asghar Hejazi, Vahid Haghani, Mohammad Mohammadi-Golpaygani, Ali-Akbar Velayati, Yahya Rahim-Safavi, Mohammad-Ali Aziz-Jafari, Qassem Soleimani, and a subset of members from various security and military forces and religious commissars are now running the country by decree.

The statement by the parliament deputy Katouzian may be the harbinger of what Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Mir-Hussein Mousavi’s warned about right after the 2009 election debacle. They said that plots were hatched to build a “different state,” replacing the present Islamic regime. Probably they were alluding to this new state, a military-clerical state where Vali takes off his cloak to dun his old military fatigues he wore so proudly during the war against Iraq. Ayatollah Khamenei cut his teeth in the war front as the informal deputy commander of unconventional warfare. He has more military and security experiences than ecclesiastical studies. In the matters of war and security, Khamenei is probably more seasoned than many IRGC leaders.

The imagined new regime, led by the military-clerical Supreme Leader Khamenei will continue to take advantage of Shiite lore as an effective means of creating solidarity in the ranks, spreading fear in the name of religion, and using the knowledge of performing religious rituals as the litmus test for gauging loyalty to the regime. While the IRGC members, retired or active duty, run the state, the government will showcase a prime minister and a cabinet drafted by the subdued parliament. But two hurdles remain: The name of the Islamic Republic needs to be changed to reflect the removal of presidency, and a referendum has to be held to change the Constitution.

Changing the country’s name after just 32 years since the last name change is odd, but African countries do the same often with no major problem, except for some international confusion.

Removing the office of presidency by a plebiscite may prove to be more problematic: The last revision of the Constitution was put to referendum in 1988 coinciding with the transition of power from Ayatollah Khomeini to Khamenei. It removed the office of prime minister, among other changes. Then the war weary Iranians paid not much attention to the grave changes that were being made which largely changed the nature of the law.

This time may prove to be different. Iran’s urban dwellers have sought various opportunities in recent years to show their resentment. A push toward constitutional amendment with the clear intention of enhancing the Leader’s power may prove to be not that easy; and it could provoke another large scale and potentially destructive mobilization against the regime.

Rasool Nafisi, a professor at Strayer University, is a specialist in Iranian politics and the clerical establishment.

The real fight was not about cabinet ministers. It was part of a test of wills between the Ahmadinejad loyalists, especially those in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and the ruling clerical establishment over ideology, religion, the survivability of the Islamic republic, as well as Iran’s influence in Arab states now in transition. Khamenei appeared to believe that the cocky, alarmist Ahmadinejad, who in recent months had been boldly advancing an Iran with minimal clerical influence run by the IRCG and inspired by Iranian nationalism, not Iranian revolutionary Islamism, had to be slapped down. Otherwise, the Islamic republic, as it has existed since the 1979 revolution, risked extinction. It might seem counter-intuitive, but Khamenei’s survival and that of the clerical system is in the West’s interest. The alternative — a highly militarized state run by the Revolutionary Guards — would be much worse.

Since his election to a first term in 2005, Ahmadinejad had carefully courted Khamenei, his most powerful advocate in the volatile world of Iranian politics. In June 2009, in a rare but highly symbolic moment, Ahmadinejad became the first president in the Islamic Republic to kiss the hands of the Supreme Leader during his second inauguration ceremony. But no longer. Ahmadinejad embarked on another new trail by becoming the first president in the republic to publically disobey the Supreme Leader. Angered by Khamenei’s interference in the management of his cabinet, the president staged a boycott and did not show up for work for 11 days.

Khamenei and other powerful figures have clearly come to believe the president poses a very real threat to the system. This has prompted even many of Ahmadinejad’s ardent supporters to side with Khamenei. Reactionary cleric Mesbah Yazdi, a long-time mentor of the president, turned against him and criticized the president for challenging supreme clerical rule, the foundation of the Islamic political system. “Some people introduce themselves as supporters of Velayat (supreme clerical rule) but in reality they act otherwise,” Yazdi said. “The restoration of anti-clerical thinking could be the next great sedition in this country,” he said, clearly demonstrating his fears of a plot to do away with, or at least weaken, Iran’s political clergy. Other reactionary clerics have gone as far as to throw the president in with Iran’s “enemies,” a category usually reserved for Israel and the United States.

As much as Khamenei detests the United States, he will always prefer “soft power” to a military confrontation, whether it is with Israel, the United States, or regional rival Saudi Arabia. This is not the case for Ahmadinejad and his partisans inside the IRGC whose members have gained greatly in both political and economic influence. Ahmadinejad is still believed to have powerful supporters inside the Corps, despite comments made last week by Maj Gen Mohammad-Ali Jafari, the commander of the IRGC, warning the president to “stay away from deviant factions,” a term used to refer to Ahmadinejad’s Chief of Staff and close confidant, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaiee. Many high-ranking officers and the rank and file of the IRGC share Ahmadinejad’s radical views and political ideology and have greatly benefitted from his government’s policies in the past six years. They will stop at little to provoke Israel and empower Iran’s regional proxies, which include Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

While the two factions have disagreed in the past on nuclear negotiations with the United Nations, their real differences revolve over the future direction of Iran’s Islamic system, with the nuclear program only a proxy arena for waging those deeper political battles. The President’s pretenses of reaching out to engage the United States and Western governments solely to increase their power internally, with the hope that the power structure might change and Khamenei might be the last Supreme Leader.

Ahmadinejad and Mashaiee, whom the president hopes will succeed him when his term expires in 2013, envision a future Iran devoid of Islamic orthodoxy. This attempt to take Iran in a new direction has prompted accusations from high-ranking clerics that Ahmadinejad and Mashaiee are influenced by religious “deviants” who believe in supernatural powers and djinns, or spirits. In fact, in the past Mashaiee has said he can interpret for himself the Islamic texts, such as the Koran, and does not need the clergy — an enormous threat to the clerical establishment’s claim to religious sanction for their hold on power. In response, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi told a group of IRGC officers and staff that, “In order to learn the religion, one must go to scholars of the religion and not to exorcists and monks. Which wise person would accept learning the faith from exorcists and monks instead of scholars of the faith?”

Not only would Ahmadinejad and Mashaiee’s vision lead to the marginalization of Iran’s clerics, but it would also make it far less likely that Iran could exert influence in Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon, Palestine and continue to call the shots in Iraq. Without the clerical establishment, Iran would have no religious or moral authority to interfere in these countries, where Iran seeks to extend its political influence in the name of Islam. This is definitely bad news for the United States and other Western governments, which worry that Iran will succeed in extending its influence in the Arab world, particularly after the Arab uprisings.

While this is a downside to Khamenei’s triumph in the power struggle, his victory has preserved a system the West might not understand but one that so far remains somewhat predictable. Such is the state of affairs inside Iran’s regime that Khamenei and the conservatives the United States once called “hardliners” are now a safer bet than the wild card that is Ahmadinejad.

Arash Aramesh, a researcher for the program, contributed to the article.

Hardliners criticizing Ahmadinejad argue that a “deviant” movement has taken hold from inside the administration and the perpetrators of this movement want to change the “ideological basis” of the Islamic Republic.

The critics are referring to a movement that is lead by Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaiee, President Ahmadinejad’s close friend, mentor, and current chief of staff. Mashaiee, according to his fearful critics, is accused of having formed an organization called “Path of Truth” in order to eliminate clerics from Iran’s Islamic government. Mashaiee has never confirmed the existence of such an organization but his conservative critics claim that Mashaiee has unholy and heretical “messianic” beliefs and that he is trying to set up the stage to succeed Ahmadinejad as Iran’s next president in 2013.

The 51-year-old Mashaiee is an electrical engineer by training, but spent most of his career in Iran’s security apparatus. He has no formal seminary training but claims to have new ideas and teachings in the Shiite school of Islam. It is believed that some of President Ahmadinejad’s most controversial remarks such as claiming that the “return of the Hidden Imam is imminent” were influenced by Mashaiee’s teachings and ideology. Recently, a CD-ROM video called “The Return is Imminent” was widely distributed in Iran, which angered many senior clerics. The film claims that Ahmadinejad is facilitating the return of the Hidden Imam. Conservatives believe that Mashaiee was behind the filming project and argue that Mashaiee is trying to strengthen his political fortunes by appealing to the Iranian people’s belief in religious notions such as the Hidden Imam.

In recent years, Mashaiee adopted a number of positions that angered the establishment and Iran’s senior clerics. His most famous remarks were uttered in July of 2008, when as the head of Iran’s tourism agency, he confessed his love for all the people around the world, including the people of Israel. His comments angered Iranian officials who believed Israel was their greatest enemy. Despite fierce criticism, President Ahmadinejad decided to promote Mashaiee in his second term and appointed him Vice President. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued an order and demanded Mashaiee be removed.

Last week, President Ahmadinejad removed Mashaiee as the director of the presidential office and compound, but kept him as his Chief of Staff; a position that would allow Mashaiee to play a great role in the day to day affairs of the administration. And he can continue to stage his future political campaigns from the closest office to President Ahmadinejad.

A number of hardliners and conservatives have warned Ahmadinejad that they will stop supporting his government if he does not cut off all his ties with Mashaiee. Some former Ahmadinejad supporters have already changed their minds and have begun to work against their once favorite president.

Ghasem Ravanbakhsh, a famous hardline cleric with close ties to the government, wrote in his personal blog that conservatives and principlists loyal to Supreme Leader Khamenei must “weep” for their past support for Ahmadinejad, expressing the high level of dissatisfaction among hardliners with President Ahmadinejad’s relationship with Mashaiee.

A group called the Hezbollah Coordination Council, composed of hardliners loyal to Khamenei, issued a statement recently in which they threatened to “reveal” the dirty secrets of Mashaiee and his supporters, should President Ahmadinejad continue to support him. Even Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, who was once one of Ahmadinejad’s staunchest supporters, said in a speech that the danger of Mashaiee was “the greatest danger that has ever threatened Islam.”

The current situation has split the conservative camp. Supporters of the clergy and their continued presence and involvement in political affairs are on one side, and supporters of President Ahmadinejad and Mashaiee are on the other. This polarization has cost the government many loyal supporters. Therefore, it is expected that a massive, comprehensive, and harsh political cleansing process will begin to rid the Islamic Republic of conservatives who may cause problems in the upcoming parliamentary election.

It is unclear which faction will win this fight, but it is certain that both sides will use everything in their political and non-political arsenals to hold onto power. Ahmadinejad still enjoys the support of large segments of Iran’s security and intelligence forces. The IRGC, at least some very powerful circles within the Guards, are pleased with Ahmadinejad. But new tensions, especially within the ruling conservative camp, can deal major blows to the Islamic Republic’s unity and long-term survival.

Ashkan Parsa is the pseudonym for an Iranian journalist who left Iran less than five months ago.