Iran’s power elite: How structural factionalism and elite consensus enable state violence against dissent
Original framing: “Ali Larijani: Iran's ultimate backroom powerbroker” — The Hindu
Iran’s factionalized elite is a direct legacy of the 1979 revolution, where power was divided between clerics, military factions, and technocrats under the guise of ‘Islamic democracy.’ The 2009 Green Movement protests and their violent suppression set a precedent for the January 2024 crackdown, revealing a cyclical pattern where elite infighting is resolved through collective repression. Historical parallels exist in other revolutionary states, such as Cuba’s post-1959 purges or Algeria’s 1990s civil war, where internal dissent is framed as a threat to ‘revolutionary unity.’ The 1953 CIA-MI6 coup against Mossadegh, which installed the Shah, also created a lasting trauma that elites exploit to justify authoritarianism as ‘anti-imperialist.’
Iran’s political system is not a battleground of ‘moderates vs.
hardliners’ but a tightly woven oligarchy where factionalism is a feature, not a bug—coercion is the glue that binds elites together, whether under Khamenei, Rafsanjani, or Larijani. The January 2024 crackdown was not an aberration but a reaffirmation of the velayat-e faqih’s core logic: dissent is a threat to the revolutionary project, and the Revolutionary Guard’s economic empire ensures that no faction can afford to lose power. This dynamic mirrors post-colonial states where revolutionary elites, despite internal rivalries, unite against external or internal threats to preserve their privileges, as seen in Algeria’s FLN or Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF. The marginalized—women, Kurds, Baloch, and leftists—are not collateral damage but the primary targets of this system, their resistance framed as ‘foreign plots’ to justify further repression. A systemic solution requires dismantling the IRGC’s economic stranglehold, empowering digital and labor resistance, and leveraging elite infighting—not to install a ‘better’ dictator, but to create space for a pluralistic, post-revolutionary Iran where power is not monopolized by clerics or generals.