Will Iran's Latest Protest Movement Tip the Scales?

Geneive Abdo

Politics, Middle East

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may prove to be Iran’s last supreme leader.

Iranian protesters calling for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to step down are crossing new boundaries, placing the future of the system of theocratic government in question.

As the significant demonstrations across the country enter a second week, the focus in the Western media is on the protesters’ economic grievances—the primary reason for the uprising. Although high inflation and unemployment are at the core of their grievances, the protesters are placing blame on Khamenei. Most significantly, many of them were once considered Khamenei loyalists and part of his political base.

Like many other Shia communities across the Middle East, Iranians in large numbers may now be reaching the same conclusion: that having an appointed cleric with unlimited powers running a state is an impediment to democracy, economic prosperity and modernity.

Chants of “down with the dictator” are being heard across Iran since the protests began December 29. Although demonstrators in 2009 and 2010 stomped on photographs of Khamenei, they did not call in such great numbers for his downfall. This public sentiment reflects a well-kept secret in the Islamic republic: many clerics in the religious center of Qom, where some of the protests started, do not agree with the concept of supreme clerical rule, known as velayat-e faqih. This has been true even since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Inside the seminaries, religious scholars believe such a theocratic system is inherently dysfunctional. They always worried that divine rule by one man—a cleric—would be a contraction to the notions of a republic. And while Westerners and some Arab governments tend to paint Arab Shia communities with a broad brush as Iranian loyalists, the truth is many Shia in the Middle East do not believe in supreme clerical rule either.

So will Khamenei, now in his seventies, prove to be Iran’s last supreme leader? Perhaps, but it is highly unlikely he will be unseated before his death. As one Shia leader in a neighboring country explained, “The calls for Khamenei to leave the scene will not happen anytime soon.”