It's been a week or so that Iran has been publishing news about a "senior" being held in custody.
Yesterday the senior official, who turned out to be former Deputy Defense Minister Alireza Akbari, was executed.
The procedure was very fast and the end is apparently known in advance.
Tehran accused him of spying for Britain, but despite his British citizenship, I would like to suggest the possibility that Akbari was not a spy at all;
The story here is different.
Alireza Akbari.
Another and more appropriate response to the protest, photo: E.P
Akbari is an associate of the one who was Iran's defense minister and is currently the secretary of the National Security Council, Ali Simkhani.
Simkhani is a relatively unusual senior official, a man who is accepted as an interlocutor also on the West.
In 2021, for example, he met in Iraq with the head of the CIA William Burns, a meeting that was supposed to start the stalled nuclear negotiations.
Shamkhani is undoubtedly not a liberal, but there really aren't any in the leadership of the Islamic Republic.
He is a pragmatist.
The pragmatists in Iran acted and always act in relative silence and by forming a coalition between different camps and interests.
They do not call for the realization of a clear and unequivocal agenda, neither for democratization on the one hand nor for a continuous conflict on the other.
Their main goal is the survival of the Islamic Republic.
Simkhani is, as mentioned, a pragmatist in his outlook and a man of great influence in a variety of circles.
So why did they execute his associate?
Yedioth from Iran tells of an attempt to create a new pragmatist coalition of which Shamkhani is one of the axes.
Such a coalition (another senior member is Ali Larijani, who was the speaker of the parliament) aims to challenge the current leadership, especially in light of its failed management of the protests in the country.
happy
Lost an ally, photo: AP
The rulers of Iran at the moment are the revolutionaries, those who strive for constant confrontation with the world.
Many in the leadership in Tehran think that those revolutionaries are responsible for the protests by insisting on the delicate balance achieved by the pragmatists when it comes to the lives of citizens in Iran.
Those senior pragmatists are also convinced that the current leadership is responsible for the failure of contacts with the West to revive the nuclear agreement.
They recognize the rising anger against the Islamic Republic and prepare themselves for an internal struggle to lead it.
When will this fight begin?
This will happen when the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, dies.
He has prostate cancer in a very advanced stage.
This does not mean that he is necessarily dying, but his death is part of the set of considerations of the senior officials of the Islamic Republic from all sides.
One of the demonstrations in Tehran in recent months.
The government weighed down its hand, photo: AP
When he dies, something will happen in Iran that has actually never happened before: a process of electing a new supreme leader without clear direction from above.
Khamenei was designated as the successor by Khomeini.
He is actually the one who leads the Islamic Republic for the absolute majority of its years.
But Khamenei does not have the religious authority and political power to mark himself a clear successor.
Therefore, upon his death, a special body defined in the constitution as the body that elects the new supreme leader, the "Council of Experts", will convene.
This body also has alliances and coalitions that would make "VIP Survival" blush.
But no one can predict the results of the selection process.
Will the "experts" (senior clerics but also politicians) choose a pragmatist?
Will they choose a revolutionary in Tehran?
Alireza Akbari was executed around this struggle, as a signal to Shimhani and his allies to be careful in their criticism and preparation.
What can be learned from this event?
Mainly to prove the weakness and fear of the revolutionaries who now hold the reins of power, who want the Islamic Republic to have a future of constant confrontation with the world.
They are the ones who built the Iranian proxy system and they are the ones whose welfare is further invested in its financing.
They know that large parts of the public, even those who want the fall of the Islamic Republic, hate them, the revolutionaries, in particular.
Most of all, the Iranians want to return to the world and occupy in it what is, for them, the place they rightfully deserve.
The reaction of the revolutionaries who now rule is to increase the blatant violence.
They emphasize their mafioso lines and make "offers you can't refuse" to their opponents in the expected fight over the future of the republic.
An effective dictatorship does not need to use visible force.
This is what a dictatorship does when it has no other choice.
It is worth remembering again that the Islamic Republic is not one piece.
There are sober voices within it whose vision is a sober future, not the destruction of Israel and certainly not "taking over" the Middle East.
As long as the Islamic Republic does not fall, it is good to be aware of the presence of these voices.
Whoever makes his opponent two-dimensional loses to him in the end.
The writer is an expert in the study of modern Iran and revolutionary movements in Shiite Islam from Reichman University
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