The revolution's eleventh hour?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei probably knows that Mir Hussain Mousavi won last Sunday's presidential elections in Iran. Why did he then hastily side with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before backtracking a few days later and calling for a partial recount?

It may be nearly impossible to get a concrete answer to this question but one interpretation could well be that the Iranian leadership could not possibly accept two defeats in the space of a week. In the aftermath of the devastating results of parliamentary elections in Lebanon, Tehran was not ready to send President Ahmadinejad packing, fearing for its carefully managed image in the Muslim World.

With more than a million Iranians demonstrating against the regime, and several casualties, the Islamic Revolution is faced with its own Thermidor. This revolutionary term refers to the calendar month in the French Republican Calendar named after the French word thermal, which comes from the Greek thermos (heat), and which will most likely describe the roasting to which Iranian clerics may be subjected. Historians of revolutionary movements focus on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794), when Maximilien Robespierre was guillotined and the Reign of Terror ended. While Ahmadinejad will not face a similar fate, Iran will most likely witness a sharp swing of its political pendulum, towards something resembling its Khomeini period.

Regrettably, the Iranian Supreme Leader may have committed a minor error of judgment on Monday, when he described Ahmadinejad's election to another four-year term as "a massive success", "a feast", even a "divine blessing", which redefined nerve. While there were no doubts as to Khamenei's favouritism, what was strange was his dismissal of massive vote-rigging. All three losing candidates, Mousavi, Mohsen Rezai and Mahdi Karroubi, who managed to gather a total of 14.2 million votes compared to Ahmadinejad's 24.5 million, posted strange numbers.

Preliminary figures gave Mousavi 13,216,411 ballots (33.75 per cent of the total). On the surface, this was quite possible, especially because Ahmadinejad probably dominated in rural districts. Still, what defied logic were the numbers attributed to the other two losing candidates, Rezai and Karroubi. Rezai, an independent conservative from Khuzestan and former commander of the Pasdaran (Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution), secured a mere 678,240 votes (1.73 per cent of the total). Karroubi, a cleric representing the Etemad-e-Melli, gathered even fewer votes with 333,635 (0.85 per cent). In a country where the Pasdaran are held in high esteem, it is nigh impossible that one of their own would manage so little support.

In the event, both Mousavi and Rezai have now requested the clerical body that oversees elections, the Guardian Council of the Constitution, to examine claims of widespread fraud and, according to its spokesman, Abbasali Kadkhodai, a certification of the elections would be forthcoming within seven to 10 days to determine whether the Sunday plebiscite "was a healthy election or not".

The Islamic Republic of Iran celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and Khamenei must balance its authoritarian theocracy with an undeniable level of democratisation. This is the chief reason why he ordered the investigation into alleged tampering. The 'landslide victory' has been met with scepticism from Iranians who refuse to be taken for fools.

At this point, Khamenei's decision is quite simple - he either stands by Ahmadinejad or saves the Islamic Revolution, for it is clear that the two are largely incompatible. In the past, Iran managed to hold a series of free parliamentary and presidential elections that distinguished it from dictatorships that ensured incumbents 98.9 per cent of the vote. Some of its favourite sons, including Hojjatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami lost, which illustrated that Tehran was not a banana republic. In short, few coup d'états occurred and many are now wondering why the Ministry of the Interior was surrounded with internal security troops last Sunday even before the ballots were counted. Why did the Ahmadinejad government interrupt internet communications and censor foreign media outlets? Why have we seen Basij militias on motorcycles chasing and beating demonstrators? Why were dozens arrested and imprisoned simply because they opposed the head of state?

Many opponents of the Ahmadinejad government are too young to remember the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah. They are old enough to ask questions, however, including the two pertinent ones: What has Ahmadinejad done during the past four years to serve the Islamic Revolution, and have his domestic and foreign policy initiatives advanced Iranian interests by a single iota?

It is now up to the Guardian Council, led by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, to save the revolution.

Jannati will easily manoeuvre the six Islamic jurists appointed by the Supreme Leader, but will have a more difficult time with the six clerics picked by parliament. Presumably, some of these individuals will be influenced by Speaker Ali Larijani, who is not an Ahmadinejad fan, and, more importantly, former president Rafsanjani. The latter previously raised the possibility of an emergency meeting of the Assembly of Experts, a deliberative body of 86 mujtahids (scholars of Islamic law) charged with electing the Supreme Leader and supervising his activities, to scrutinise Khamenei's conduct.

Such a meeting may create an opportunity to revisit a sore issue. The challenge for Khamenei is that if Tehran cannot live up to its democratic traditions, it risks an 'Iranian Thermidor'.

Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is a commentator and author of several books on Gulf affairs.