Given the widespread grip on power that the hardliners have maintained since 2005, why should their power decline in the future? The short answer lies with the performance of the hardliners since they came to power three years ago. They have alienated much of the country’s intelligentsia. Students, university graduates, professionals, intellectuals, writers, journalists, artists and many similar social groups have turned increasingly critical of the hardliners’ overall policies during the past three years. Civil servants, the urban middle class and the politically powerful bazaar merchants have increasingly turned against the hardliner government of Ahmadinejad.
Politically, too, the hardliners have been in retreat. The reformists, the left, the so-called liberal-religious nationalist groups such as "nehzat azadi", Hashemi Rafsanjani and his influential political groups, all now oppose the hardliner government. In fact, Ahmadinejad’s policies have turned many conservatives as well as more moderate and pragmatist hardliners against his government. There is yet another powerful and influential group that has become openly critical of the hardliner president and some of his decisions: during the past two years, a number of senior clerical leaders have voiced their opposition to some of Ahmadinejad’s decisions.
Last but by no means least is the Iranian parliament, or Majlis. The 300-member assembly that was inaugurated in July 2008 elected Ali Larijani by a large majority as its speaker. Since the conservatives have a considerable majority in the present majlis, Larijani’s election was an implicit message of defiance to President Ahmadinejad. …
It was against this irony that Hashemi Rafsanjani, the leading moderate Iranian leader, warned last month that the failure of the present government would not simply constitute the defeat of a particular political group but rather would be interpreted as the failure in practice of radical Islam when it had all the power at its disposal. Access the full article>>
