Free The Ayatollah Begs to Differ by Hooman Majd Page A

authority and popular support while he was alive, but he was careful to ensure that his successors, who could not be guaranteed to enjoy the same privileges, would have an absolute authority that would entrench the Islamic Republic for generations to come. Today, the
valih-e-faqih
, “Supreme Leader,” is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the similarity of his name to his predecessor’s entirely coincidental but guaranteed, as it has over the years, to confuse Westerners. He has, in the years since Khomeini’s death elevated him to the post, carefully balanced his use of what is arguably unlimited power with the cultivation of a public perception that the elected presidents of the republic are responsible for the ordinary welfare and woes of the people, and their general dissatisfaction, if they have any, with their government. It’s a difficult balancing act, one that he plays with enormous skill, for when the people are too happy, as they perhaps were in the wake of the initially extremely popular election of President Mohammad Khatami, he has to ensure that credit for that happiness doesn’t rest entirely with the elected officials; otherwise his very role might come into question. Similarly, a certain amount of dissatisfaction, whether from the left or the right, bodes well for his authority as Iran’s “Guide,” someone who can lead the nation through turbulent times. It speaks volumes about both Iranians’ penchant for dislike of the leaders they elect and the Supreme Leader’s deft manipulation of the political system that Iranians’ disapproval of Khatami’s inability to deliver on his promise of reform was blamed not on Khamenei directly, although Khatami and his allies implied as much at every opportunity and most Iranians understood the limits of the president’s power, but on
Khatami’s
unwillingness to stand up to conservatives and Khamenei, who by the very nature of his job supported the conservative agenda as often as, if not more often than, the president’s. Blaming the weakness of their president rather than the strength of the Supreme Leader, then, stands in contrast to Khatami’s successor’s term, when those Iranians who quickly became unhappy with the state of affairs under President Ahmadinejad blamed him for incompetence and pigheadedness rather than Khamenei for his apparent inability or unwillingness to completely rein him in. The Supreme Leader, it seems, can never lose.

    When I arrived in Tehran in January 2007, the world’s capital of rumors was abuzz with the mother of all rumors: that the Supreme Leader was either dying or already dead. The elections for the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses and theoretically supervises the Supreme Leader, were over in December, and moderate clerics had, contrary to some expectations, done extremely well, but there was still some uncertainty as to whom they would choose to succeed Khamenei, who was, after all, a prostate cancer survivor who at sixty-eight looked even older than his years. Many people, even those with close connections to the highest levels of government, spoke in the inimitable Persian way of treating almost any rumor, no,
every
rumor, as fact until it is proven otherwise, and as if Khamenei’s imminent demise if not his death were very real. Unlike Cuba, say, where the president’s health is a state secret, Iran has no such prohibitions, but it is widely assumed that those in the know would keep the Supreme Leader’s passing quiet, particularly at times of sensitive security for the nation, until a succession had been finalized. What led to the rumors were the facts that Khamenei hadn’t been seen in public for some weeks, hadn’t appeared as he traditionally does at celebrations for the important Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha (marking the end of the hajj and falling on the last day of the year in 2006), and had apparently been taken to the hospital at some point in late December.
    It’s impossible to know if the rumor