Iran: Are cracks appearing?

It is not wholly clear if the massive nationwide anti-regime protests, starting December 28 last year, which rocked Iran very hard indeed for under a week, officially taking a toll of 22 lives, have exhausted themselves. What we have is a Sunday statement from the country’s Revolutionary Guards, the nearly all-powerful security force, that “tens of thousands” of security personnel, including the police, were deployed to end the protests. This gives us an idea of the scale of the disturbances.

Unconfirmed reports for the past two days have suggested that former hardline President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who appears hostile to the present government headed by President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate inclined toward a liberal worldview, has been taken into house arrest for “inciting violence”.

This has lent to speculation whether the ruling unelected priestly elite of the ayatollahs, led by the 77-year-old Ali Khamenei, who has been in place for 22 years, is now seeing cracks. It is also not clear whether Mr Ahmedinejad, if really guilty of incitement, or others who may have helped provoke the protests, have foreign backing, including those of Western and Arab elements. Iran’s economy has done reasonably well since the sanctions were lifted in 2015 but unemployment remains high. The protesters were by and large working class people. They questioned Iran’s regional military involvement in Syria and Iraq — which has raised Tehran’s stock — and pointed fingers not just at President Rouhani but also Ayatollaah Khameini. Given India’s close involvement with Iran economically and politically, New Delhi cannot afford to take sides between Tehran and its foreign opponents.