Who really rules Iran?

Isn't the president the top dog?

He is the one who gets popularly elected, appoints cabinets and is answerable to Iran's elected parliament, or Majlis. Yet the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a constitutional democracy as Westerners understand the term. The president remains subservient to a set of institutions dominated by the clerical elite that surrounds Iran's enigmatic Supreme Leader – Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran's politics may be democratic in appearance but its key institutions are dedicated to safeguarding the Islamic revolution.

What is the Supreme Leader's role?

The revolutionary 1979 constitution gives him sweeping powers. Commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he can appoint and dismiss the chief of the general staff, and the heads of the army, navy, air force and Revolutionary Guard. He appoints the heads of Iran’s judiciary, the president of state radio and TV, the executives who supervise the nominally independent newspapers, and the leaders of Friday prayers who act as his mouthpieces at a local level. Ali Khamenei, appointed Supreme Leader after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, now controls some 2,000 clerical commissars who permeate every bureaucracy and act as his enforcers, his eyes and ears. No wonder the Supreme Leader has been called "part pope, part commander-in-chief and one-man Supreme Court".

But is he really so supreme?

In theory he's constrained by the Assembly of Experts, an 86-member conclave of Islamic clerics comparable to the Vatican’s college of cardinals: they meet twice a year (usually in the holy city of Qom), monitor the Supreme Leader's performance and can remove him from office if he's seen to fail in his duties. In practice, they're less of an independent check on his power than they seem. True, they’re elected (for an eight-year term) by direct public vote. True also that the Assembly's deputy chairman is ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Supreme Leader Khamenei's chief antagonists in the present crisis. But the Assembly is dominated by conservative clerics. And that is unsurprising, since eligibility for election to the Assembly is regulated by the 12 theologians on the Guardian Council, half of whose members are appointed by the Supreme Leader himself and half are nominated by the head of the judiciary (also a Supreme Leader appointee) and approved by parliament.

What does the Council do?

The most influential body in Iran, the Guardian Council not only has power to reject candidates for the Assembly; it also approves (or rejects) candidates for the presidency and parliament (before these presidential elections it rejected all but four of around 4,000). Its approval must be sought for all laws introduced in parliament; it can veto any laws passed if these are “incompatible” with Islamic law or the constitution. However, the Guardian Council’s power is itself somewhat limited by the 34-member Expediency Council.

And who makes up this body?

The heads of the three branches of state, clerical members of the Guardian Council and members chosen by the Supreme Leader himself. The Expediency Council's role is to mediate disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council and to serve as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, who in 2005 gave it supervisory powers over all branches of government. Critics see it as the coping stone in the closed arc of power around the Supreme Leader, but that is to ignore the fact that its chairman is perhaps the one person who could force a rerun of the disputed presidential poll.

And who is that chairman?

None other than Rafsanjani, the man defeated by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presi-dential race. Rafsanjani's frustration with Ahmadinejad – the Supreme Leader's protégé - came to a head in this election campaign when Ahmadinejad was allowed publicly to accuse him of corruption. In response, Rafsanjani wrote a letter berating Khamenei for failing to uphold Iran's dignity, implying that the Supreme Leader, normally above criticism, was negligent and possibly involved in plans to steal the election. But last week Khamenei, buoyed by reports that Rafsanjani’s efforts to win support for the "reformist" agenda in the Assembly of Experts had met a lukewarm response, wrong-footed his critic by heaping praise on him in a speech – a manoeuvre many see as designed to make Rafsanjani appear brazen and disloyal.

And what exactly does the "reformist" agenda entail?

It has little to do with support for Western liberalism; it simply reflects the belief of a minority in the ruling clerical elite that to get Iran out of its present economic mess and political isolation, greater political and economic openness is required. In 1997 the reformists scored a surprise victory when Mohammad Khatami, a little-known cleric, won the presidential election with almost 70 per cent of the vote after a campaign focusing on the rule of law and inclusion of all Iranians in the political decision-making process.

How did the reformists fare?

Khatami’s eight years in office exposed the fragility of Iran's democratic institutions. Dozens of newspapers opened, only for most to be shut down by the judiciary. Much of the president's reforming legislation was vetoed by the Guardian Council. The subsequent victory of the conser-vative Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election was partly due to the disillusionment felt by voters: turnout fell from 80 per cent in 1997 to below 51 per cent in 2005. Given the present upheaval, some now hope the Supreme Leader will make a behind-the-scenes deal with the reformists. But as Iran expert Gary G Sick of Columbia University argues, he may no longer have the will – or the authority – to do so. In Sick's view the initiative has now passed to the groups on which he has depended for social control – the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij. ·