The vast majority of Tehran's citizens are working- and lower middle class. These people reside in the urban sprawl of southern Tehran, where out-of-control population growth strains the resources of municipal government and the Islamic Republic as a whole. The province of Tehran has expanded from 6.8 million people a decade ago to a current official count of 10.5 million; the actual population may be closer to 12 million, with more arriving every day. Unemployment is rampant (the official figure for the country is 12.4 percent, but it's probably closer to 20 percent), and there is a growing level of dissatisfaction that has manifested itself politically in recent years.

The political center of Iran used to rest in northern Tehran. However, the 2005 presidential election saw a dramatic shift to the southern neighborhoods, whose voters helped elect one of their own, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Western media have for the most part depicted his victory as evidence of a resurgent religious fundamentalism, but anyone who walks the streets of southern Tehran (where most Western journalists are loath to wander) and visits the workshops and markets will find a much more nuanced reality. In the motorcycle repair shop I walked into I found the owner and customers evenly divided between Ahmadinejad and his principal rival, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani actually won the most votes in the first round, but in the runoff Ahmadinejad shocked everyone by bringing over to his conservative platform the supporters of the reformist candidates. The key factor in his stunning victory was not religious fundamentalism but widespread disillusionment over the state of the economy, coupled with charges of nepotism and corruption surrounding Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad was, more than anything, a reform candidate. This is what swept him into office, and it is on this issue that he continues to be judged today, with decidedly mixed results, by the people of Iran.

For all the attention the Western media give to Ahmadinejad's foreign policy pronouncements, the reality is that his effective influence is limited to domestic issues. The citizens of Tehran I spoke with, from every walk of life, understood this and were genuinely perplexed as to why we in the West treat Ahmadinejad as if he were a genuine head of state. "The man has no real power," a former Revolutionary Guard member told me. "The true power in Iran resides with the Supreme Leader." The real authority is indeed the Ayatollah Sayeed Ali Khamenei, successor to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

According to the Iranian Constitution, the Supreme Leader has absolute authority over all matters pertaining to national security, including the armed forces, the police and the Revolutionary Guard. Only the Supreme Leader can declare war. In this regard, all aspects of Iran's nuclear program are controlled by Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad has no bearing on the issue. Curiously, while the Western media have replayed Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel statements repeatedly, very little attention has been paid to the Supreme Leader's pronouncement--in the form of a fatwa, or religious edict--that Iran rejects outright the acquisition of nuclear weapons, or to the efforts made by the Supreme Leader in 2003 to reach an accommodation with the United States that offered peace with Israel. While Ahmadinejad plays to the Iranian street with his inflammatory rhetoric, the true authority in Iran has been attempting to navigate a path of moderation.

The Supreme Leader's powers are impressive, but they are not absolute. Iran has a system of checks and balances that is played out through two primary bodies: the Guardian Council and the Expediency Council. Until recently the Guardian Council had absolute veto power over parliamentary legislation and was unchecked in the exercise of its oversight responsibilities. However, in 1997 Khamenei beefed up the role and responsibility of the Expediency Council, and it was further strengthened last year; now the decisions of the Guardian Council, if challenged by the Iranian Parliament, can be overturned by the Expediency Council. The Guardian Council is still a dauntingly authoritative body, especially when one considers that the Supreme Leader has the power to appoint half its members (and all of the Expediency Council's). Iran, after all, remains an Islamic republic, which means that the political pulse is generated not in Tehran but some fifty-five miles to the south, in the holy city of Qom.

It is in Qom where many of the religious figures on the two councils reside. They teach at religious schools and have developed their own followings, comprising religious, civil and military officials who have an enormous effect on day-to-day policy. Qom is a very conservative city, and the religious figures who study there reflect this. However, this conservatism does not directly translate into the embrace of strict religious fundamentalism. There is a growing recognition among the ayatollahs who serve on the councils of the need to seek compromise on matters of religion not only to dilute internal dissent but also to better tend to the needs of the country. The greatest reform pressure on these figures comes not from religious students but rather from the traditional watchdog of the Islamic Republic, the Revolutionary Guard.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains very much an enigmatic entity to most Western observers. Born from the tumult of the revolution that swept the Shah from power in 1979, the Revolutionary Guard was the primary defender of the Islamic Republic during its infancy, serving as the country's first line of defense after the 1980 Iraqi invasion and against anti-regime forces, in particular the guerrillas of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or People's Mujahedeen (MEK). The Revolutionary Guard also served as defender of the Shiite faith abroad, playing a pivotal role in the formation of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon after the 1982 Israeli invasion.

Many of the actions of the guard have been cited by the United States as evidence that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. The guard members I spoke with reject this characterization. "We did some pretty terrible things in our early years, but we were fighting for our national survival," one veteran member told me. "The MEK was waging a war in our cities, ambushing our forces, assassinating our politicians and killing our citizens with car bombs. We had to crush them, either in Iran or out. But if we kill an MEK operative in France or Germany, we become terrorists. If America kills an Al Qaeda operative in another country, you are counterterrorists. This makes no sense. We have never targeted or attacked Americans or American interests. We condemned the 9/11 attacks as a crime against Islam and a crime against humanity. And yet we are reviled as terrorists, or even worse, co-conspirators with Al Qaeda. Doesn't America understand that we oppose Al Qaeda and all it stands for? Do you not know that the teachings of Sunni Wahhabism are anathema to the teachings of the Shia faith?"

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next »

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.