A reformist Iranian cleric close to the religious establishment in the holy city of Qom says several of the city’s top clerics refused to meet Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad during a recent visit, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports. Go to Radio Free Europe.

Veteran politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, keen to reassert his weakened influence by healing Iran’s post-election rifts, may come under fire from hardliners again when he chairs a meeting of a top clerical body this week.

In recent months followers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have criticized Rafsanjani for failing to give Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei unswerving support in a struggle to crush an opposition movement galvanized by the disputed June vote.

The aftermath of the presidential election, which plunged the Islamic Republic into its worst internal crisis, is expected to be high on the agenda when the powerful Assembly of Experts meets on Tuesday.

“The spirit of dismissal, elimination, insult and slander, which amount to a fatal poison in the country, should be avoided,” Rafsanjani, 75, urged in a statement on Saturday.

The wily former president said the emphasis should be on “unity, commonalities and the guidelines of the Supreme Leader.”  IND: With all due respect, this may have been possible last June, but eight months of brutality, death, torture, and rape, inflicted on innocent people (some with videotaped proof!!!) leave little legitimacy for the supreme leader or his guidelines!

The 86-member assembly, which meets twice a year, supervises, appoints and in theory can sack the Supreme Leader — a never-tested prerogative which hardliners contest.

Its two-day closed session coincides with renewed pressure by the United States and its allies for new U.N. sanctions to deter Tehran from pursuing nuclear work they fear is aimed at making atomic bombs, not just fuel for power plants. Go to Reuters.

One of Iran’s top opposition leaders called Monday for a referendum on whether to strip the ruling system of the right to ban political candidates – a powerful tool used to blacklist liberal voices from key campaigns.

Former Iranian diplomat Mohammad- Reza Heydari, who resigned over Iran’s treatment of post- election protesters, has been granted asylum in Norway.

“The Norwegian authorities have notified my lawyer about their decision,” Heydari said today in a telephone interview from Oslo, where he was the consul at the Iranian Embassy until he quit on Dec. 24. Norway’s Foreign Ministry later confirmed that Heydari was given asylum there, according to a spokesman who declined to be identified in line with government policy.

Heydari is the first Iranian diplomat to publicly resign over the country’s crackdown on political dissidents since the June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Heydari said on Jan. 18 that his life would be in danger if he went back to Iran. He said he and his family still live in their Oslo home and are being protected by Norwegian police. Go to original article.

On February 5, 2010, David Cvach, Mehdi Khalaji, and Ali Alfoneh addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute to discuss developments in Iran that may indicate either lost ground for reform-minded activists or cracks in the very foundation of the Islamic Republic. Mr. Cvach is political counselor for the Middle East at the French embassy in Washington, D.C. Mr. Khalaji, who wrote on the Supreme Leader’s potential to make political compromise in PolicyWatch #1628, is a senior fellow at the Institute. Mr. Alfoneh, who recently wrote on the Basij militia’s impact in Iran (PolicyWatch #1627), is a visiting research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The following is a rapporteur’s summary of their remarks.

Mehdi Khalaji

Two key barometers of the growing divide between the Iranian government and people are the attitudes of the clerical class and the level of regime violence against the protest movement. First, the clerical establishment is very complicated and does not fit the neat “pro-government clerics versus anti-government clerics” division often assumed by foreign observers. Such a distinction cannot actually exist in Iran because Ayatollah Khamenei controls the entire establishment. Every imam in the country is appointed by the government. Those clerics who have recently been critical of the regime (e.g., Ayatollahs Ali Hossein Montazeri and Yousef Sanei) therefore have no significant influence in the establishment, and their offices have been shut down.

Instead, it is the mainstream pro-government clerics whose attitudes deserve the most scrutiny. These clerics are of two kinds. The vast majority are politically docile, distancing themselves from such issues while accepting the advantages of regime patronage. A much smaller minority are politically active and support Khamenei vociferously. In 2005, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad first came to power, this smaller faction was very supportive of him and his hardline positions. Today, however, this characteristically loud group has fallen mostly silent when it comes to the president. As Ahmadinezhad’s popularity plummeted following the June 2009 election, these clerics recognized that it had become too risky to support him publicly and thus did not even send him notes of congratulations upon his victory. If observers begin to suspect that this faction’s support for the regime is eroding further, then Khamenei’s grip on power may become increasingly fragile.

A spike in regime violence also indicates growing fissures. The government has begun to arrest more and more people; currently, an estimated 4,000 political prisoners are being held. The government’s strategy of intimidation has revolved around arresting prominent public figures while torturing and executing relative unknowns. If the regime continues to raise the level of violence against the protesters, the implied message will be clear — Tehran is worried about its ability to control the political crisis. A violent crackdown would hurt the regime’s legitimacy and popularity with the Iranian people and may actually backfire. That is, if the Iranian people see that nobody is safe from the crackdown — not even Mir Hossein Mousavi’s advisors, or the family of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, or the son of the founder of the Islamic Republic’s judiciary system — then they will feel they have nothing to lose and will be even less afraid to protest. Go to Washington Institute.

IND:  A very insightful essay.  Congrats to the “Time staff” for getting such an important piece out at such a critical time.

In a legend that many Iranians hold as truth, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini on his deathbed joined the hands of his chief disciples, Ali Khamenei — who would become Supreme Leader — and Ali Akbar Rafsanjani — the cleric who is now Khamenei’s most powerful rival — and warned that if the two should ever be divided, the Islamic Republic would fall. Since the controversial presidential election in June, the growing rift between the two men has been playing out not only on the streets but also, just as important, behind closed doors in a game of chess that their adherents follow but the moves of which they cannot really see. And a day before the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution is to be celebrated, even as the regime was said to be rounding up would-be demonstrators to preempt disruptions of the official rites, a story has emerged to illustrate the supposed enmity between Khomeini’s two disciples — one that, if not quite beyond rumor, is at least consistent with what many Iranians see as the arc of their country’s apocalyptic melodrama.

The story, which appeared on an opposition website, alleged that Rafsanjani and the Supreme Leader have had a climactic parting of ways, a final end to the pretense of keeping their deathbed promise to Imam Khomeini. The incident reportedly involves the wife of Alireza Beheshti, a close aide of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the presidential candidate who was declared the loser in June to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Beheshti has the status of a living martyr for the opposition and is enduring his second period of detention since the election (he has survived a heart attack in prison). He is also the son of one of the primary architects of the Islamic revolution. According to the website, Beheshti’s wife informed Rafsanjani from a safe hiding place that security forces had attempted to arrest her too. The story then has an enraged Rafsanjani confronting the Supreme Leader, who proclaimed Ahmadinejad to be President, demanding that he bring an end to “shameful actions.”

“It has come to a point where the grandchildren of the first Head of the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic, the innocent martyr Ayatullah Beheshti, must be without their parents during the 10 Days of Dawn [a reference to the celebration of the revolution's anniversary] and must live underground in fear of the security forces,” said Rafsanjani, according to the story, presumably before turning on his heels and storming out of the Supreme Leader’s presence with a swish of his cleric’s robes. Go to Time.

Mohammed-Reza Heydari, Iran’s consul in Oslo, is the first Iranian diplomat to publicly quit and condemn the regime. He revealed that it sought to lure him back to Tehran after rumours of his defection surfaced last week. At the time, the Iranian Foreign Ministry insisted that the rumours were baseless.

In an interview with the Norwegian television channel NRK, Mr Heydari said that he decided to resign after Iranian security forces killed a dozen demonstrators on December 27.

“I hope my friends and colleagues in other parts of the world who see and hear me now and know me will move in the same direction as their people. I hope they will manage to sacrifice some personal interests and rather think of what is in the interest of their people and their nation,” he said.

The Arabic television channel al-Arabiya reported on Sunday that 27 Iranian diplomats had resigned in protest at the crackdown on the opposition, including one in Britain and two each in France and Germany. This has not been confirmed, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that it was unaware of any Iranian diplomat in London leaving. Go to Times UK.

IRNA said a Revolutionary Court in Tehran decided to ban the Hemmat weekly due to “slander and dissemination of lies with the intention of agitating public opinion.”

The Rahesabz opposition website said it was a conservative publication which had been banned also a year ago for insulting Rafsanjani, who remains influential in the Islamic Republic.

The latest issue of Hemmat — the sixth since the previous ban was lifted — carried a front-page picture of Rafsanjani, surrounded by known critics and opponents of the Islamic state, with the headline “All the disciples of Hashemi.”

Earlier this week, the semi-official Fars News Agency said Hemmat had received a warning for carrying the picture.

“Putting the pictures of some respected officials next to some other individuals is inappropriate and a non-professional act and would imply raising accusations against the officials,” Fars said, citing an official statement. Go to Reuters.

Analysts believe that blaming Mr Mortazavi, who has been the public face of the regime’s repression for more than a decade, is a sign that senior figures are exploring possible reconciliation with the opposition Green Movement.

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, however, showed his disapproval of any such moves by appointing Mr Mortazavi on Saturday as head of the regime’s anti-drugs and anti-smuggling unit.

Moderate fundamentalists argue that Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the main opposition leader, opened the door to compromise in his last statement by refraining from calling for the overthrow of the government.

Mohammad Khatami, a former reformist president, also struck a conciliatory tone yesterday, condemning radicalism on both sides.

He insisted that most reformists were loyal to the constitution and to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. Mr Khatami publicly disowned some slogans chanted by the opposition in favour of establishing a secular state.

“The radicals should not be allowed to reign and we should all defend the Islamic republic,” he said. Go to Financial Times.

IND:  The cracks are appearing slowly but steadily throughout the regime’s foundation.  Well worth reading the whole article.

Beatings, arrests, show trials and even killings have failed to discourage Iranians from taking to the streets in protest. But those same tactics may be taking a toll on the government itself, eating away at its legitimacy even among its core of insiders, Iran experts are saying. The evidence? Leaks.

They began in December. Leaks about private meetings of the intelligence services and Revolutionary Guards; an embarrassing memo from state-owned television on how to cover the protests; a note about how the security services have been using petty criminals to fill out the ranks of pro-government demonstrations.

Iran has always been deeply factionalized; even the ideologically grounded Revolutionary Guards is far from monolithic. That may be even more true today, since the outbreak of a political crisis following the disputed presidential election in June. Even among the most ideologically committed, there are signs that some recognize that the government’s iron-fisted approach to the protests is not working, and that it indeed may be backfiring.

“Since June, there has been much anecdotal evidence that suggests deep divisions between the hard-line commanders of the Guards and between the Guards and members of the regular armed forces who are dissatisfied with the election and its aftermath,” said Alireza Nader, an analyst with the RAND Corporation. “The extent of these divisions are hard to gauge, but they have the potential to weaken Khamenei’s grip at a critical juncture.”  IND:  That’s why Israel needs to seriously tone down its belligerent rhetoric and saber rattling.  It ought to provide the Iranian army the space and breathing room necessary to stand up to the Revolutionary guards.  They can’t both challenge the guards and worry about defending Iran.

“There will come a point where people within the system, from the Basij or Revolutionary Guards, will start to question what they’re doing and whether they can continue to be loyal to this regime,” said Michael Axworthy, a former British diplomat and Iran expert who lectures at the University of Exeter. Go to NY Times.

The decision to defrock a dissident ayatollah – widely considered to wear the mantle of spiritual leader of the opposition – has pried open conflicts within the Islamic Republic’s religious core.

The Qom Theological Lecturers Association, a regime-aligned grouping of clerics, mandated Saturday that Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei’s edicts are no longer religiously binding. The ruling was furiously disputed by the rival Association of the Lecturers and Scholars of Qom Theological Seminary and the Association of Combatant Clerics.

“It’ll be tough work [defrocking Sanei],” says Nicola Pedde, director of the Rome-based Institute for Global Studies and a frequent visitor to Iran. “It’ll provoke a massive movement from the clerical side and, possibly, totally and completely religiously delegitimize the regime.”

“With the exception of Ayatollah Nuri Hamedani, who is strongly in favor of the regime, all the objects of emulation are unhappy,” said an Iranian political analyst, speaking on the phone from the seminary city of Qom. “With the exception of [Ayatollahs] Sanei and Mousavi-Ardebili, who issue anti-regime proclamations, the conservative clerics remain silent, even though they oppose the regime.”

“The Shiite theocracy in its present form has failed,” said dissident Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar in a December interview with German magazine Der Spiegel. “I do not know when exactly, but I am convinced that the regime will collapse.” Go to CS Monitor.

High-ranking clerics are undermining Iran’s government from within, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Monday.

A huge majority of “very high-ranking Shi’ites” disagreed with the government and contested its religious values, he said.

“We can all see that the regime is under threat from people who are very determined, Iranians, some of them very religious, from the Shi’ite hierarchy,” Kouchner said on RTL radio.

“Yes, the regime is under threat from internal opposition and I don’t know what it could lead to,” he said. Go to Washington Post.

Americans want Iran to give up nuclear enrichment. At the moment, Iran is consumed with the confrontations between the country’s rulers and street protesters. Iran analyst Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations tells Steve Inskeep that Iran’s foreign policy is being driven by domestic politics. Go to NPR.

A spokesman for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the former presidential candidate and Iran Green Movement leader, charged that the murder of Mousavi’s nephew on Sunday was a targeted assassination designed to send a message to the political reformist…The Islamic Republic has a long history of using family members to put psychological pressure on political prisoners. Former prisoners have said their parents or siblings were brought into adjoining interrogation cells to be tortured within earshot as a means of breaking them.

…Mr. Makhmalbaf claimed on his website that the large number of arrests carried out Sunday night by the Ministry of Intelligence was a byproduct of an internal split in the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). More than 1.000 people were arrested, according to the state news agency IRNA, including high-profile journalists, human rights and women’s activists, relatives of those killed Sunday, and reformist politicians. “The IRGC blamed the Intelligence Ministry for not giving them accurate statistics on how many protesters were expected to turn out for Ashura,” said Makhmalbaf on his website.

Yesterday’s confrontation between the IRGC and the Intelligence Ministry was such, Makhmalbaf charged, that it forced the latter to put into action a program of arresting immediate colleagues of Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami that was not scheduled for another three months. Go to CS Monitor.

The head of Iran’s powerful judiciary has hinted at evidence linking opposition leaders to a seditious “plot” in an apparent escalation of the simmering dispute over June’s presidential election.

“[W]e have enough proof about the leaders of this plot against the system,” Reuters quoted judiciary chief Sadeq Larijani as saying in a report by official IRNA news agency.

While working to establish a broad Green Movement to harness anger over the presidential vote, Musavi has appeared to exercise caution to avoid actions or statements that might provide grounds for action by zealous prosecutors.

His careful approach has prompted some Iranians to question Musavi’s preparedness to lead such a large-scale social movement.

Karrubi last week echoed Musavi’s vow that protests would continue to target the heavy-handed tactics of the current political leadership. Go to Radio Free Europe.