Iran seems barely to emerge from one acute political crisis before entering another, a pattern that has exhausted the Islamic Republic at a time when it is facing considerable challenges from its regional and international environments. The Iranian nuclear program faces several obstacles, including complex technical and technological problems, at the head of which is the Stuxnet virus, which took a large number of centrifuges out of commission.
In addition, tight sanctions constrict the importation of certain equipment and compounds necessary to the program, among them measures adopted by both individual countries and the Security Council as international commitment to derail the nuclear work has increased. There are indications, too, that the revolutionary tsunami currently sweeping through several Arab countries could have negative repercussions on Iran's interests and ambitions, both on the nuclear and the regional levels
It is true that the revolutions have successfully brought down two regimes - the Tunisian and the Egyptian - that were allied to the West, and this in a manner that could be in Iran's interest, in the sense that the revolutions appear to indicate the failure of US efforts to impose international and regional isolation on Iran, namely by unraveling part of what is described by some as the "axis of moderation" that Washington attempted to set up in opposition to the "axis of resistance" led by Iran. However, it is also true that the situation is still unfolding and in its early stages, and the benefits that may befall Iran will perhaps only be temporary as the outlines of the "new Middle East" crystallize.
What is important in all of this is that as the entire world has been preoccupied with events in the Middle East, which are the focus of various strategic, economic and security considerations at present, Iran has been caught up in the throes of internal crises. The latest of these has been the dispute that broke out between the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the former rejected the latter's decision to remove Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi from his post, which prompted the president to consider resigning.
The crisis reached an unprecedented level of tension between the supreme leader and the president, despite the strong ties that had previously bound them, and which had led Khamenei to support the president during several internal crises, whether with reformists - and moderates in general - or with rivals from within the conservative movement who continually criticize Ahmadinejad's economic and nuclear policies.
These strong ties have led the president to compare his relationship to the supreme leader to a "father-son" one. All of the above suggests that the current crisis is not a new one, but rather a renewed crisis, and for a number of reasons that have to do with relations among the founding institutions of the Islamic Republic.
Since the establishment of this system, the presidency has been a challenge and a constant headache, due to the sensitive nature of the post, and the fact that many of its privileges intersect with those of other authorities, such as the supreme leader and the prime minister, a position which was eliminated by a constitutional amendment in 1989 after it became clear that the constant power struggle between president and prime minister was creating problems for the administration of the country's affairs.
However, for several reasons, this problem did not become a serious one during the Islamic Republic's first decade. This was due, first, to the personal charisma and status of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as leader of the revolution and founder of the republic, which restricted the presidency's freedoms of action and maneuver. Second, since most of the regime's institutions were still under the control of the revolution's first generation - i.e. Iran was still at the beginning of the revolutionary era - a revolutionary outlook dominated the everyday function of the regime.
Yet a series of internal and external developments combined to change this state of affairs. Internally the most significant of these was Khomeini's death in 1989.
On the external level, it was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the era of bilateral international polarization, which contributed to the decline of ideological discourse both at home and abroad. As a result of these factors, Iran began to transition from revolution mode to state mode, with all that included for state institutions: from this point on, some currents inside the country began to call for increase in the powers of the presidency, particularly in light of the domestic consensus that the sweeping - and by some measures absolute - powers that the constitution bestowed on the vali-e faqih had been exceptions for Khomeini's case and could not be transmitted to his successor.
This consensus was reflected in amendments made to the constitution, as well as in changes introduced to the regime's institutions, after which the office of supreme leader was no longer what it had been during Khomeini's rule. In other words, the supreme leader no longer had the same powers he had held in the past, despite the fact that he remained the most powerful figure in the country.
However, the new constitutional amendments also imposed other partners on the decision-making process, chief of which was the presidency, which was fortified by the arrival of a heavyweight figure from within the regime, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. This led some to imagine that, a decade after the revolution, a process of political change had transformed Iran from a state with a "leadership monopoly" to one with a "dual leadership".
However, this conclusion did not match the reality of the Iranian political scene, in which the republic's supreme leader continues to enjoy almost total power that effectively places him above all other authorities, and in which the president is in second place - and sometimes even in third place, in cases where strong figures reach the top of other influential decision-making institutions.
