The Mullahs' Secret Battle

AP Photo The uprising's power struggle has shifted from the streets to the backrooms of the government. But The Daily Beast's Reza Aslan writes that, despite rumors, demonstrators are hardly giving up.

Plus, read more insight on Iran's election from other Daily Beast writers.

Rumors of the demise of Iran’s uprising may be premature. On Sunday, thousands of protesters, including Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard and some family members of Ahmadinejad's bête noire, Hashemi Rafsanjani, marched through the streets of northern Tehran chanting, “Where is my vote?”

(You can see a video of the rally here.)

The presence of the prominent women in the rally, including Rafsanjani’s outspoken daughter, Faezeh, who founded Iran’s most popular feminist magazine, Zan (banned by the government in 1999), seems to have left the police and security personnel outnumbered and unsure how to respond. Mousavi himself addressed the crowd, by cellphone—his voice, thin and grainy, amplified by a megaphone.

The fate of Iran depends on which way the clerical establishment falls.

Earlier in the day, Mousavi posted a statement on his Web site urging his followers not to give in to the “lies and fraud” perpetrated against the Iranian people but to show restraint and practice nonviolent tactics in their demonstrations. “The revolution is your legacy,” he wrote. “Be hopeful that you will get your right and do not allow others who want to provoke your anger... to prevail.”

However, despite continuing protests in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Mashad, it is clear that the power struggle inside Iran has shifted from the streets to the backrooms of the government. Indeed, the sheer brutality of the crackdown on protesters has polarized Iranian politics at all levels, forcing Iran’s political and religious elites to take sides.

Yesterday, Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and a close confidant of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, intensified his criticism of both Ahmadinejad and the tactics of the security forces allied with the Revolutionary Guard. Larijani vowed to form a committee to investigate reports of abuse perpetrated against peaceful Iranian demonstrators.

Larijani had previously accused the Guardian Council of siding with Ahmadinejad before the elections, an implicit allegation of election fraud. “Although the Guardian Council is made up of religious individuals,” Larijani told the IRIB, Iran’s official broadcasting agency, “I wish certain members would not side with a certain presidential candidate.” Ahmadinejad’s allies in parliament, rattled by Larijani’s comments, are now calling for his impeachment, an unlikely scenario given the speaker’s close ties with Khamenei, but yet another indication of the deep divisions that have formed inside Iran’s government.

Meanwhile, in comments broadcast Sunday on state television, Khamenei struck a softer tone than he did in his Friday address last week when speaking of the protesters. “I urge both sides not to provoke the sentiments of the youth and refrain from pitting people against each other. This united nation should not be divided, and groups should not be provoked to act against each other. There are legal ways for resolving issues.”

Khamenei’s first public statements in a week seemed timed to correspond with Rafsanjani’s first public appearance since the election. Praising the decision by Khamenei to extend an obviously meaningless deadline for Iran’s Guardian Council to investigate allegations of electoral fraud, Rafsanjani said he hoped that “the authorities in charge are able to investigate all legal challenges with cooperation of candidates and in keeping with utmost accuracy, honesty, and fairness.”