Change Lies in Iran's Institutions

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the flames of protest are being slowly smothered in the streets of Iran. Still, even that will leave behind embers of opposition, and the key question in weeks ahead is whether there are any forces within Iran able to keep those embers smoldering.

Anyone who has followed recent Iranian history knows there are two places to look for the answer to that question: the military and the clerical establishment. If cracks in the support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad start appearing in those institutions, the Tehran Spring set off by protests over Iran's presidential election could evolve into a movement with reach and consequence, and not just a short-lived outburst of frustration.

It's hard for any outsider to know what currents run through these two opaque institutions, of course. At this point, though, a reasonable guess is that the clerical establishment is a more likely source of meaningful opposition to the Ahmadinejad regime than is the military -- but that neither is emerging yet as a real force for change.

Look first at the military. Iran essentially has two different military forces -- or, perhaps more accurately, two and a half.

It has a traditional military, the descendent of the Shah of Iran's imperial army, which is in charge of defending Iran's borders and maintaining a traditional military infrastructure.

But the force that has the real power is Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Revolutionary Guard is a parallel military organization set up after the 1979 revolution to ensure that clerical leaders would have at their disposal a force with unquestioned loyalty and a check on traditional military officers, who were suspect because of their roots in the Shah's regime.

During the long and grinding Iran-Iraq war, the Revolutionary Guards also developed a kind of junior offshoot, the Basij militias, to bring more idealistic and fearless young men to the war front. Mr. Ahmadinejad himself is believed to be a former Basij member, and the force now has evolved into loosely organized civilian militias spread across the country.

The Revolutionary Guards appeared to back Mr. Ahmadinejad when he was first elected four years ago, and appear reliably loyal to him now that his re-election has been questioned. Indeed, the Basij have been brutally active in putting down protests.

But this parallel military structure has, as one would expect, bred deep animosity among regular army officers, who resent both their second-class status and the drain of weapons and resources going to the Revolutionary Guards. "It can't be overstated, the hatred the regular army feels for the IRGC," as the Revolutionary Guards are known, says Joseph Lydon, an intelligence briefer for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard who specializes in Iranian affairs.

That means the regular army, with ample reason to resent Mr. Ahmadinejad and his Revolutionary Guard loyalists, is a potential force to power the opposition. One U.S. official says there are reports of "discomfort" among some army officers -- and even among some leaders of the Revolutionary Guard -- at how opposition is being crushed within Iran.

But the regular army has been cowed over the years, and there are no indications of organized opposition taking shape. "The big players in the Iranian military are just standing by and watching," says one analyst. That could change if protesters manage to keep their movement alive, but for now the traditional military seems far more likely to follow a sustained opposition movement than to lead one.

The story might be different inside the nation's clerical establishment, where at least some voices of protest have been heard over the way the presidential election and its aftermath have been handled by Mr. Ahmadinejad and the nation's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

For instance, one cleric, Ayatollah Asadollah Bayat Zanjani, initially called the election a "gross injustice," and in recent days has defended protesters.

But the great hope of reformers is former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is one of Iran's most influential clerical figures and a longtime critic of Mr. Ahmadinejad. He also is chairman of the Assembly of Experts, a group of 86 clerics charged by the Iranian constitution with the task of overseeing the supreme leader -- and vested with the power to remove him.

Mr. Rafsanjani has periodically, but unreliably, been reported to be working behind the scenes to organize clerical opposition to Mr. Ahmadinejad, and possibly to Ayatollah Khamenei. But the hope that Mr. Rafsanjani might lead a charge to overturn the election or force regime change cooled a bit over the weekend, when he issued an elliptical statement calling for a thorough investigation of election complaints, but also saying "suspicious hands" were trying to drive a wedge between the public and the government.

So for now, those hoping for change in Iran, including the U.S. government, are left to wonder and hope, mostly helplessly, about the country's key institutions. "It is utterly impossible to predict revolutions, and the only time revolutions succeed is when the regime loses the will or the capacity to use violence," says Kenneth Pollack, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "And I don't see any evidence this regime has lost its will or capability to use violence."