The Future of Iran as a Republic

Interesting overview and op-ed from Al Jazeera...

Thirty years after the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran - if one can still call it a republic - is at a crossroads.

What has been manifesting itself on Iran's streets since the disputed presidential elections is not only the electorate's collective feeling of injustice and rage, but also the religious-political elite's underlying divide over the future of the velayat-e faqih and its entire political system....

Unfortunately, by committing itself to the rule of law and playing by the rules, the reformist movement [from 1997 to 2005] never questioned the very foundations of Iran's ambiguous political system and ultimately failed to change what one could call power-based law into rights-based law.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005, the extent of human rights violations in Iran intensified dramatically.

Iranians had not only lost an advocate of liberties and democracy, but were now faced with a government which aimed to achieve the very opposite by implementing the original radical Islamist tenets of the Revolution.

Militarisation of politics

The chief architect of Ahmadinejad's ideology is the hardliner cleric Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi.

Time and again, Yazdi has questioned the legitimacy of the concept of republic within an Islamic system and he continues to advocate totalitarian rule of the jurist consult over the people, who he considers unable to form any social contract with the state.