In Iran, Winds Of Change Are A Gentle Breeze
There are reports that Iran's clerical establishment is weighing the option of replacing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a panel of religious officials over his contentious role in the election dispute.
Britain's International Business Times, citing Al Arabiya TV, says the country's powerful, 86-member Assembly of Experts — headed by former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — is split in its support for Khamenei, and his surrogate, current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The unconfirmed report suggests the Experts have met secretly in Iran's holy city of Qom to discuss a political compromise to the week-and-a-half old political unrest which followed the announcement of disputed presidential election results.
An option they are reportedly considering is a complete change in the structure of the 30-year-old Islamic Republic's government — replacing the supreme leader with a panel and forcing President Ahmadinejad out of power.
That would be a decidedly dramatic upheaval by the Assembly, and many observers see such a radical change in Iran's politics as unlikely — especially given the current regime's continued defiance in the face of street protests. A swift crackdown has led to a great reduction in the number of opposition protesters taking to the streets in recent days.
More likely to emerge from the clerics is some sort of compromise which would allow Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to remain in their current positions.
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, one of the last Western journalists to be forced out of Iran, told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric that Iran is ungovernable right now because it is split — "half love Ahmadinejad and half loathe him."
"It will be up to the ruling clerics to try and figure out how to get the two sides to cooperate," explained Palmer who has been to Iran to cover the country several times during the last five years.
She said the clerics "may try to cramp Ahmadinejad's style" to placate the opposition movement — which could include allowing greater social freedoms.
"But all these are delay tactics," added Palmer. "The fact is 70 percent of this country is young. Most of them have had enough. They want Iran to rejoin the world."
Asked of the likelihood that this most recent political upheaval would simply subside and Iran would return, in the long run, to the status quo, Palmer replied without hesitation: "Not a chance."
"Iran is going to be utterly transformed 10 to 15 years from now."