In February 1979, the Iranian revolution was made against the secular political system of the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and because the change is the main feature of the revolution , the Iranian, Republican , political system led by “clergy” was established based on the concept of the Velavat-e faqih (rule by the Islamic jurist) in Shiite thought of twelve Imams , The Twelvers , the twelve Imams are the true successors to the Islamic prophet Muhammad according to the theology of twelvers ,the twelve Imams are exemplary human individuals who are not only rule over the community with justice, but also are able to keep and interpret sharia and the esoteric meaning of the Quran to become the political system that is a system religiously like a religious systems of governments that prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages. What is surprising in this revolution, although it was taken place in the last quarter of the twentieth century, but it imposed on the Iranian people a political system that simulates the European past of its all harsh experiences rather than to emulate the future.
The most urgent task after the revolution is to enact a new constitution to replace the basic laws of 1906. This action to stimulate the disproportionate conflict to some extent between Khomeini and his followers on the one hand, bent on institutionalizing their concept of velayat-e faqih, and Mehdi Bazargan, official Prime Minister, and his supporters of liberals and Islamists on the other hand, aspirants that the Constitution be along the lines of the Constitution of the former President of France, Charles De Gaulle of the French Fifth Republic. They imagined the Republic to be Islamic by the name and democracy in its content.
In the first of April / May 1979, it was held a referendum to establish an Islamic Republic, and the result of the vote was 99 percent yes with the Islamic Republic. They took part in the vote up Twenty million of the 21 million who they are among the electorate, and with this result , the vision of Khomeini overcame the vision of Bazargan on the drafting of the Constitution, as it contained 175 items and forty amendment were added after the death of Khomeini. the Constitution of the Islamic republic of Iran was adopted by referendum on 2 and 3 December 1979 and went into force until the return of the Mahdi. Articles of the constitution in its preface awarded khomeini many titles such as Grand Ayatollah, Supreme Faqih ( top jurist) , Supreme Commander, Supreme Leader, leader of the revolution , the founder of the Islamic Republic, inspiring the oppressed, and the most powerful of all this, the imam of the Islamic nation. Shiites have never before , never given people alive this sacred title in its inclusion about infallibility. Khomeini is being announced as the Supreme Commander for ever .
A constitution grants the Supreme Commander a wide range of authorities. He was free “to determine the interests of Islam,” “setting the general guidelines of the Islamic Republic”, “overseeing the implementation of policies,” and “to mediate between the executive, legislative, and judicial authorities .” He is able to grant a general amnesty and the isolation of presidents, and also examine the candidates for this post .As the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, he can declare war and peace, and the mobilization of the armed forces, and to choose their leaders, and the holding of a national security council. Moreover, he was free to appoint a senior and influential spectrum of officials outside the formal state structure, and includes radio and television network manager, supervisor on Friday Imams, and the heads of the new religious institutions, especially the Mustadafeen (vulnerable ) institution that replaced Pahlavi institution, and through that is the appointment of the chief editors of the two main newspapers – Ettelaat and Kihan-.
Moreover, he was free to appoint the head of the judiciary, as well as judges of the lower courts, and the prosecutor, and most important of all these six clerics from among the twelve members of the Council of guarding of the constitution . This the Council has the power to “veto” on laws passed by the legislature body if he saw that they were incompatible with the spirit of the Constitution or the Sharia . He also has also the authority to check candidates for public posts , including the Council. Subsequent modification has given to the supreme leader additional authority to set the Expediency Council; to mediate between the Council and the Council of Guarding of the constitution.
With this broad spectrum of powers, Khomeini got the constitutional powers that were not imagined by Al-shah era . It has resulted in a revolution in Iran in 1906 a constitutional monarchy; the revolution in 1979 has resulted in an authority worthy for the Italian leader Musulini . Iran , with these powers granted to Khomeini according to the Iranian constitution, has become the state of one man, who reduced in his person all state institutions to re-apply the principle of ” I am the State and the State is me “which is one of the most expressive principles for the absolute rule of the state. The French King Louis XIV of France had embodied it on reality during his reign, which lasted more than four decades (1661 -1715 m) to establish the system of absolute monarchy individual while Khomeini founded (1979 m -1989 m) the system of absolute Republican individual .
In order to avoid a constitutional vacancy after the death of Khomeini which may negatively affect the stability of the Republic of Iran and to overcome this situation, the Iranian constitution provided for the establishment of the Assembly of Experts after his death to appoint the great religious figure , or if this character were not exist, meanwhile , he will be replaced by the command council made up of three or five jurists. It also stated that it is possible to dismiss them if deemed unable to carry out their duties .With the death of Khomeini in the third of June 1989, the rule was moved smoothly to the khamenei with powers of Khomeini with the virtue of the clerics who ran the house of the velavat-e- faqih , including Ri Shahri . Here, we wonder how he was able , the true ruler of the Republic of Iran to fix pillars of his rule where, especially if we know that he did not have the religious qualifications “degree of required diligence” to replace Khomeini as it was with the other top scientists who were not in favor of the policies of Khomeini as Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazero noting that Montazeri is to be considered one of the largest religious authorities in Iran which his positions have given him more independent policy of rigidity and popularity at the same time until he died on the nineteenth of December 2009.
The rule of Khamenei to Iran is based on the theory of the tent, he is above all the authorities in Iran and moves the political scene also from the highest place , depends in his rule on fixed pegs , well established and including the first Wedge : the Revolutionary Guard, which is the guiding institution that owes him by allegiance, noting that the idea of the establishment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops go back to the era before the revolution in Iran, when Khomeini was in exile in Paris. Where Palestinians were close to the Ebrahim Yazdi, offered the establishment of military force fighting the army of Shah if the revolution takes long time , as happened to the Algerian and Vietnamese revolutions. Yazdi was the current Secretary General of the opposition Freedom Movement of Iran, as senior adviser to Khomeini at the time. However, the fall of the Shah in February 1979 surprised Khomeini, who did not know the plan only two months after the revolution.
In fact, the loss of confidence in the army of the Shah – despite all the playoffs, which included leaders and cadres – was the main motivation for the Khomeini to agree to the establishment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces , where he created land, sea and air forces which became as parallel to the Iranian army. All attempts have failed to mix the two forces in one national army for the past three decades. The Revolutionary Guards since its inception is a rigid ideology Foundation, participated in the suppression of non-Persian ethnic groups and the people of different opinions , and even in the imposition of the veil on the Iranian women in the eighties of the last century.
According to its founders , we can monitor three stages in the life of the Revolutionary Guards during the past three decades and what is concerned for us in this article is the third phase which is the Khamenei stage , the use of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij (mobilization of the Guard) to suppress the reform movement in Iran, which its leaders were partners in government with Khamenei and rigid factions . The process has started since the era of former President Mohammad Khatami (1997- 2005) and has reached its climax in the crushing of the uprising of Green Movement, led by Mirhossein Musawi and Mehdi Karroubi in 2009 as the Revolutionary Guards rigged of vote in favor of the preferred candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad. It has appeared two years ago on the social networking a secret video in which the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, speaks about the role and responsibility of the military establishment to prevent the rise of any candidate who belongs to the reformist camp. The use of Leader Ali Khamenei to the Revolutionary Guards forces against his former allies, namely reformers is due to the loss of the support of the religious establishment first , and charisma Second, unlike Khomeini, who enjoyed of both . As he turned the Revolutionary Guards to a party and militia belongs to him to suppress his political opponents . And the Guard men are spread in many of the decision-making centers and its institutions in Iran, of which, the Shura Council, the Foundation for the Mustadaafeen ( vulnerable ) , and the army, and the ministry.
Despite the decline of the sanctity of the clergy by the Revolutionary Guards during the past three decades, but there is a kind of balance governs the relationship between the Revolutionary Guards and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Khamenei has the upper hand and control of the Revolutionary Guards forces so as not to allow any commander of these forces to stay in office for only five years, but if he does not feel the presence of the danger that threats to his military authority. Khamenei usually changes the land, sea and air forces commanders of the Revolutionary Guards whenever he feels there is a danger ahead, where he has clergy representatives in both the Revolutionary Guards and the military departments who are considered eyes for him. Iran did not know the ample record of military coups, but the Iranian political arena has not seen in the monarchy nor the republican era – any successful military coups, such as those in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Pakistan. Therefore, the absence of traditions of the military coups, and the presence of a military establishment competitor to the Revolutionary Guards which is a regular army, it is unlikely that the Revolutionary Guards will make a military coup against Khamenei. It is usually reliable in Iran on reformist or revolutionary movements to bring about a change in political power in the country.
The second wedge is embodied by representatives of Khamenei in the inside and outside of Iran, in terms that the representatives inside Iran are deployed in all aspects of the state and its institutions including the Revolutionary Guards and the Shura Council and the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts and the bazaar and they are also deployed in the provinces as they are “spies for Khamenei” against his political opponents, and it is through his representatives ,he knows all the details of the political leaders and the pulse of Iranian society and orientations . A broad and in Islamic countries in which there are among their citizens those who are embracing Shi’ism and especially the twelvers , such as Iraq and Lebanon, as Hassan Nasrallah , a representative of Khamenei in Lebanon, and Mojtaba Hosseini , his representative in Iraq, and others, because they work to promote the idea of velayat-e faqih, which serve to enhance the influence of Ali khamenei outside as God’s representative on earth and His Messenger. They also collect “five funds” and send it to him , and this is undoubtedly a blatant interference in the affairs of other countries and so such a representative of Ali Khamenei does not appear only in the weak and vulnerable countries such as Iraq and Lebanon today.
By the virtue of those two wedges , the tent ie Khamenei rules Iran with an iron fist, despite the inflated wealth and the wealth of his family, inwhich the financial activities are run by his son Mojtaba and the lives of well-being he experienced on the contrary to Khomeini’s life and also despite the grumbling of the Iranian people of this wealth and extravagance, but it is not allowed at all to criticize him and his family by the Iranian media, or any institution in the state whether it is governmental or private, and who dares from opponents to criticize him or his son, “Mojtaba”, his fate is known either in depths of detention or murder and in the best conditions of exile or escape, this tent and his son are put at the rank of sanctification, so non- exposure to them seem to come in the context of the broad understanding of the principle of velayat-e faqih, or Guide of the Revolution! The tent of Iran allowed to criticize the children and grandchildren of Khomeini and any other official.
At one phase of his reign Khamenei depended on Hashimi Rafsanjani to consolidate his tent pegs as the partnership brought them together , and this partnership was broken when Rafsanjani hinted after an official visit to Beijing, to the admiration of the Chinese model of economic development. He has talked about cutting subsidies for food, fuel, and gasoline, and reduce the financial support of religious institutions, and the development of these institutions under the supervision of the State, and the privatization of companies that were nationalized in 1979, and to allow citizens living abroad to carry a foreign nationality, holding conferences for foreign investors and Iranian expatriates, and the granting concessions relating to lands to foreign oil companies, similar to the contract with the American company Conoco by a billion dollars. Rafsanjani also spoke about the ease of the labor law including working to make the property more profitable projects, and the drafting of a new investment law to allow foreigners to own up to 45 percent of the companies. And most important of all, his support for each of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi in the presidential elections in 2009, and also supported the reformist movement that emerged against the backdrop of rigging process by Khamenei in favor of Ahmadinejad Mahmoud , his candidate, and there was a motivation for this support and it was to get rid of the control of the Revolutionary Guards on economic activity in Iran, and this was another reason for Khamenei to breake up his partnership with Rafsanjani.
However, with this complete control of Leader of the Revolution Ali Khamenei on the State and the Iranian society that has no Revolution command Council and this is surprising in all the revolutions of contemporary history, as every revolution has Command Council revolution as the case in Egyptian revolution in 1952, for example, but he seems deeply aware of the risks of the existence of such a Council on his decision to stay in the rule of Iran, and non-existence such Council to ensure to continue more in his rule and protect him from the conspiracies may be hatched against him by members of the Revolutionary Command Council in the case of its presence. The non-existence of this Council in which there are no longer conflicts between its elements does not deny the existence of a hidden internal conflicts between the Revolutionary Guard, which has the support of Ali Khamenei and the Ministry of the Ettelaat which belongs to the Presidency of the Republic and this conflict may be increased for influence inside Iran after the death of Khamenei.
In conclusion, there are those who believe that the Iranian Republic is a democratic state because of the availability of some appearances of the life of democracy in it , such as elections at the level of the presidency and parliamentary elections, these appearances are no more than being a formal ones where, the Iranian state in its essence and the texts of its constitution items , is a dictatorial State which is no different from the dictatorial countries prevailed in most of the countries of the international community in modern history, so by the acquaintance on the Iranian Constitution carefully , one will realize that he does not establish in any way for the democratic state to the extent that consolidates to the state of one individual.
Rawabet Center for Research and Strategic Studies