The only thing worse than doctrinal [Iranian] theocracy might be a kind of lay theocracy done on the fly – there’s a predictable awfulness to the current Iranian regime that could potentially worsen were it subject to interpretive awfulness. ~Kevin Sullivan

The latest reported clashes between Ahmadinejad’s circle and the Iranian clerical establishment have provoked some interesting reactions in the West. Somewhat like Geneive Abdo, Kevin is more inclined to see Khamenei and the clerics prevail in this feud for the reason he gives above. If Ahmadinejad’s faction actually supports an end to clerical rule, they would be opposed to theocracy as such, so the choice would seem to be between a more secular authoritarianism and the status quo, but Kevin’s point remains valid. On the other side, Prof. Jamsheed Choksy sees the anti-clerical faction aligned with Ahmadinejad as preferable:

So the struggle for Iran’s future is being forcefully joined by factions on both sides of the secular and clerical divide. The secularists, led by Ahmadinejad and his heir apparent, Mashaei, recognize the pressing need for Iran to rejoin the community of nations — even at the expense of the Islamic Revolution. The fundamentalists, led by Khamenei, remain xenophobic and hostile to the West. They see the Islamic Revolution as the only means to keep themselves in power and their society under religious rule.

Prof. Choksy cites an article by Reza Aslan from earlier in the year in which Aslan challenges the conventional view of Ahmadinejad:

Is it possible that Iran’s blustering president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long thought to be a leading force behind some of Iran’s most hard-line and repressive policies, is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalize, secularize, and even “Persianize” Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country’s more conservative factions? That is the surprising impression one gets reading the latest WikiLeaks revelations, which portray Ahmadinejad as open to making concessions on Iran’s nuclear program and far more accommodating to Iranians’ demands for greater freedoms than anyone would have thought.

Abdo, Choksy and Aslan all agree that the anti-clericals would have an effect on Iranian foreign policy if they prevailed over the clerical establishment. Here is Abdo:

Not only would Ahmadinejad and Mashaie’s vision lead to the marginalization of Iran’s clerics, but it would also make it far less likely that Iran could exert influence in Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon, Palestine and continue to call the shots in Iraq.

However, because Ahmadinejad represents a “wild card,” and his allies would be less inclined to use “soft power,” Abdo considers his anti-clerical nationalist faction to be more dangerous. Abdo writes:

Many high-ranking officers and the rank and file of the IRGC share Ahmadinejad’s radical views and political ideology and have greatly benefited from his government’s policies in the past six years. They will stop at little to provoke Israel and empower Iran’s regional proxies, which include Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

For Choksy and Aslan, it is because Ahmadinejad and his circle “recognize the pressing need for Iran to rejoin the community of nations” and because they might end clerical rule that they seem to hope that the secularists come out on top. Their interpretation of the foreign policy implications doesn’t seem to mesh very well with Abdo’s, but their assessment of the Iranian secularists around Ahmadinejad seems to make more sense. What makes me somewhat skeptical of these broad claims is that Abdo, Choksy, and Aslan are all describing the two factions in such a way as to make the one that they prefer seem less threatening and more amenable to Western policy goals. This was the mistake that many analysts made when discussing the Green movement as well. No matter which regime faction prevails inside Iran, we shouldn’t expect major improvement or deterioration in Iran’s foreign policy. Just as was the case during the 2009 protests, we are looking at factions struggling over the internal nature of the Iranian government. Western claims that one faction or the other would be “good for us” almost seems like a later justification for picking one side or another in a political conflict that may not have any effect on how Iran relates to other states.

I don’t have a “rooting” interest in Iranian intra-regime feuds, but it might be useful to use this feud to examine some common assumptions about Iran and other authoritarian regimes. There has been some awareness for a while now that the Iranian regime is not monolithic. However, only very recently has there been an acknowledgment that political actors inside the regime can be ruthless, power-hungry, and also interested in changing the regime’s internal policies.

It has been interesting to see how quickly supporters of engagement with authoritarian regimes abandon the idea of engagement the moment that the regimes engage in crackdowns against internal opposition. The reason for this is not just a political calculation that pursuing engagement with a brutal authoritarian regime seems distasteful. There is another assumption that brutal authoritarian regimes will not make diplomatic deals with other states, because outsiders intentionally confuse internal and external policies. There is also an automatic assumption that “reformers” do not engage in crackdowns. Therefore, if there is a crackdown, there cannot possibly be any interest in internal reform. This is taken for granted in the Syrian case. It may be true of the Syrian regime, but everyone assumed that it was obviously true of Ahmadinejad as well, and that may not have been entirely accurate.