Civil war in Iran?
Roger Cooper In weeks like this, when Iran seems determined to establish an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for political violence, it is worth recalling that the systematic use of assassination as a political weapon was the invention of a mediaeval Iranian sect, Precursors of the Aga Khan's Ismailis. Hasan al-Sabbah, their founder, was born near Teheran and carried out his campaign of terror from the 'eagle's nest' of Alamut, not far away.
The original assassins, devotees of Hasan, who Marco Polo says were promised Paradise whether their mission succeeded or not, were more effective, at least in the short term, than their counterparts in Iran today. Orthodox caliphs and sultans tried in vain to dislodge them and it was not until almost two centuries later that their Power was broken, by Hulagu and his Mongol hordes.
It is not at all clear who is in the 'eagle's nest' now, directing operations against the mullah-led elite that now rules Iran. If the Purpose is to destroy the entire leadership of the regime they are unlikely to succeed, for new candidates — probably no less qualified than their predecessors. — are at this moment putting themselves forward for the posts of president and prime minister, left so spectacularly vacant when Mohammad Ali Rajai and Mohammad Javad Bahonar were blown to bits last Sunday.
After all, just over a year ago, Rajai was virtually unknown. A former maths teacher, who as Minister of Education presided over a purge of teachers and the Islamicisation of school text-books, he was hardly a man of national stature. When Abol-Hasan Bani-Sadr, whose dismissal last June started the present crisis, blocked Rajai's appointment on the grounds that he was unqualified, many Iranians agreed. In office, however, he won a reputation as a man of ability and compassion, and was the natural successor to Bani-Sadr. Bahonar, Who had a Western-style doctorate of Philosophy as well as the title Hojjat-olEslam, just below that of Ayatollah, was one of the five founders of the ruling Islamic Republican Party (IRP) and a better-known figure, but few would have Predicted their rise to the country's two highest posts.
The point is that there are probably quite a few Rajais and Bahonars around, perhaps In the cabinet or lurking in the corridors of Power. As Ayatollah Khomeini put it in his inimitable style, 'The two men will be replaced by volunteers ready to be martyred'. It is as certain as anything ever can be in Iran that within the next six weeks or so the Islamic Republic will have its third President and fourth prime minister both indirectly chosen by Khomeini, as their predecessors were.
This should not lead one to minimise the loss to the establishment caused by the bombing. Even in Iran Khomeini's instant politicians need time to blossom fully, and time is something the regime is now desperately short of. The credibility of a government whose security is so lax must also have suffered a setback.
But none of this is likely to make the ruling clique change its policies. A truce with the opposition is unlikely since Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Majlis speaker who is the most powerful politician left, ended his funeral oration with the cry 'Death to the counter-revolutionaries'. But nevertheless, Ayatollah Khomeini may have been hinting at a truce when he said, two days later, that the killings should not lead officials to ignore the laws of Islam. It is a chilling thought that unless the authorities are restrained by this warning they may wish to show their lack of fear by executing hundreds of the 'counter-revolutionaries' they hold in jail, mostly young men charged with possessing leftist publications, which until recently were openly on sale.
Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the two bombings and the dozen or so assassinations or attempts on the lives of prominent and not so prominent politicians. But it certainly looks like the work of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, the Islamic Socialist guerrillas. Over 600 Mojahedin supporters have been executed in recent weeks. They have the motive, then, and the opportunity could easily have been obtained by infiltrating their young followers into the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards, who are responsible for the security of top officials and public buildings. Rafsanjani, who is a member of the three-man ruling council that, will hold power until a new president is elected, blamed Iraqi agents and American imperialists for the bombing, but this should be seen as a ritual denunciation of Iran's current enemies, rather than a formal accusation. Foreigners have always been convenient scapegoats in Iran.
But the finger-pointing does not end there. Ayatollah Khomeini has implied that the bombing was ordered jointly by Bani Sadr and Masud Rajavi, the Mujahedin leader who fled with him to Paris. Both deny the charge, and it is unlikely that Bani Sadr commands enough support in Iran to mount such an operation. No official has yet blamed the armed forces, but it is cer tainly a possibility that the sophisticated technology for the bombings was provided by military personnel. But despite frequent purges of the armed forces there is little evidence that they have been involved in politics. The recent hijacking of an Iranian naval vessel in the Mediterranean was the work of military men in exile. It was a pointless exercise that in fact helped the regime in public opinion terms. If there was military complicity, the objective might well have been so to destabilise the country that the military would be forced to restore civil order and could then stay on to recreate a secular nationalist order.
But even this Turkish-style solution to Iran's problems seems unlikely. The armed forces are still demoralised, despite their reasonably good performance against the Iraqi invaders. The top echelons fled, were executed or retired soon after the Shah's departure, and many of the middle-level officers suffered a similar fate last summer when Bani-Sadr (now posing as a liberal na tionalist) concocted plot and coup rumours. Those left are unlikely to risk death by premature action when their own rank-andfile are still firmly committed to Khomeini's concept of revolution.
In his latest speech the Ayatollah appears to have realised the potential danger from this quarter, however. He has appealed to the armed forces to 'fight for Allah', and guard their revolutionary fervour. Kho meini also claims that Iran is united but here he is on shakier ground. True, there is no open opposition to a regime that claims a monopoly of spiritual and temporal or thodoxy, with jails or the firing squad as the only alternatives. But beneath the surface there is considerable dissent, not only from the banned guerrilla organisations and the middle-class nationalists, who either loathe or distrust the clergy, but from the ethnic and religious minorities whose dreams of freedom have been shattered.
Their hour has not yet come, and may never come. For Iran is still a country where religious fervour, or mass hysteria, depending on your viewpoint, can draw a million people into the streets for the funeral of two men of whom a year ago they had scarcely heard.
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