How the Supreme Leader uses his status in order to reinforce his, almost, boundless power
The status of the Supreme Leader of Iran exists ever since the Islamic Revolution (1978-1979) and it implies that the person designated as so detains a total power over every aspect of the country. Iran is a theocracy based on Islam. This means that the law is founded on the rules of this religion. Therefore, “all civil, penal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political, and other laws and regulations must be based on Islamic criteria” (art. 4 of the Iranian Constitution). The law must respect the Shari’ah that encompasses the principles of Islam. Iran’s theocracy is based on the theory of velayat-e faqih that was developed in the nineteen seventies by Ruhollah Khomeini, first Supreme Leader of Iran from 1979 to 1989.
In order to understand how the Supreme Leader interacts with other influential personality, one must know how Iran’s sphere of power are composed. The Constitution of Iran explains the different institutions within the political body. Firstly, Iran’s parliament, called the Islamic Consultative Assembly, is elected directly by the people. However, the clerical authorities make sure the candidates are loyal to the regime. “The Islamic Consultative Assembly can establish laws on all matters, within the limits of its competence as laid down in the Constitution.” (art 71 of the Constitution). The Assembly of expert, for its part, is mostly in charge of appointing the next Supreme Leader when one dies. Iran also has a president. He “must be elected from among religious and political personalities possessing [specific] qualifications” (art 115 of the Constitution). The Supreme Leader is not supposed to show its preference for one candidate of presidency over another. Nonetheless, by expressing support to the neoconservatives, Khamenei did not follow this tradition and it resulted in a decrease of its credibility as a neutral figure that it supposed to be above political debates. The Council of guardians is an institution controlled by the Supreme Leader and that itself has control over other institutions. For example, “The Guardian Council has the responsibility of supervising the elections of the Assembly of Experts” (art 99 of the Constitution). Lastly, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (the IRGC) is an independent branch of the Iranian army. It is not included in the Constitution but its power has been increased by Khamenei and its members tend to become part of the political sphere. In reality, the Supreme Leader is above all these branches of Iran’s political system and nothing prevents him to use his influence on their decisions.
In the case of the Supreme Leader (Vali-i Amr), its current status comes directly from velayat-e faqih. Therefore, the Supreme Leader has to be a clerical. Although his power comes from his religious position, he not only has a religious power but also a political and a military one. His political power encompasses the executive, judiciary and legislative branches. He can as well control the media. In other words, the Supreme Leader possesses an unlimited and solid power in his country and those who criticize him in public can be judged and imprisoned for crime.
In order to understand the current political situation and the ideology of Khamenei, it is important to have information on the main political streams in Iran. During the 1979 Revolution, four groups participated to the end of the regime of the Shah. Khamenei was part of Fadaian Islam known to be “the most extreme and the most violent fundamentalist group” (Kazemzadeh, p.445). After the overthrow of monarchy, the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) made sure to impeach all non-fundamentalists to access positions of power in the new regime.
Currently, the majority of the Parliament is conservative but, once more, their dependence and insignificant power is explained by the position of the Supreme Leader. Zweiri and Aljohara underline this by saying that the person elected “rely on financial and political assistance from Khamenei’s apparatus” (Zweiri and Aljohara, p.481). Today, there is a political stream that is less conservative than the other. They put less importance in the religion as being the only root of the law and they are in favor of a political sphere whose legitimacy would come more from the citizens than it is currently the case. Nonetheless, since the 2009 elections, Iran faces an increase of the power of the conservatives. Lately, frustration had been felt among the population, especially from the youth that did not experience the regime of the Shah. They consider that the current regime is not providing correct living conditions. Nonetheless, the killing of general Soleimani by the US in 2020 helped the Iranian government to gain more support from the population.
