Lindsey Hilsum
Our International Editor posts from Iran. Part of the News from Iran Blog.

Who runs Iran?

So who’s in charge round here? I wish it were so simple. Iran has the most arcane and complex system of government I have ever tried to decipher.

It works on any number of levels. Some bodies are elected and some are not. Some are conservative and some reformist. Those who are political enemies may be family friends or have business interests in common. Any foreigner who thinks they understand the power structure is seriously deluded.

Two broad strands of political thought – reformist and conservative – run through everything. This means that Iran frequently has more than one policy on the same issue, because one seat of power may follow one line while another espouses a different, even opposing, view.

Foreigners frequently deal with reformists in ministries, and think they have a query or an issue sorted, only to find that some other group of powerful people is really running the show.

For example, one of our teams went off to film an event the other day, having received press cards and written permits from Ershad, the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which deals with journalists. But Revolutionary Guards stopped them en route and refused to accept the Ershad permits, requiring the go-ahead from their own leaders. Ershad is run by reformists; the Revolutionary Guards by conservatives. Ershad welcomes foreign journalists; the Revolutionary Guards don’t.

Two policies; one group of frustrated journalists.

Iranians who say their country is more democratic than many others in the Middle East are right, because the President and Parliament are elected by universal franchise and that doesn’t happen in, say, Saudi Arabia or Syria. But councils of unelected clerics have more power and the unelected Supreme Leader, Ali Khamanei, has ultimate power. So not so democratic after all.

The man who’s had the most coverage recently is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected last June. He sets the tone, so while his controversial comments on Israel and the Holocaust may not have marked a change of policy, they gave a signal that Iran was taking a more confrontational stance.

The President’s room for manoevre is limited by two councils of unelected clerics – the Guardian Council and the Expediency Council – and the elected Parliament. There is also another group of clerics, which is elected, called the Assembly of Experts.

Confused? You should be. The limits to Presidential power were exposed during the government of the reformist President Mohammed Khatami. He was countered at every turn by conservatives in all those bodies and by the Judiciary and Revolutionary Guard, who are also very powerful.

There are important economic centres of power too. The “bonyards” are foundations, run by clerics, which administer economic projects and businesses worth billions of pounds. Then there are the bazaaris, the traditional merchants, who also wield economic weight and have links with powerful clerics.

Maybe a graphic would help, but the best I could do would be a tangled web with the Supreme Leader as the spider spinning in the middle. Don’t take this as the last word. I observe, I take notes, I talk to people and ask questions. But I would never make the mistake of saying I really understand how power works in Iran.

'I’ve come here to defend Iran to my last drop of blood'

To Ayatollah Khomeini’s shrine for a rally ahead of the IAEA meeting in Vienna tomorrow.

The shrine, just south of Tehran, is an enormous complex and building site. Blue domes and golden minarets emerge from scaffolding and half constructed dormitories for pilgrims.

The cavernous hall is lined with blue plastic and posters which I suspect would read better in Persian than in English. My favourite reads: “The government council! If you’re happy with such resolutions, if you are celebrating the issue of such resolutions, issue more resolutions to be happy but know that you cannot prevent the scientific progress of our country.”

The ceremony begins with a revolutionary song and uniformed guards laying a wreath at Khomeini’s tomb. (10 minutes later the wreath has been whisked away.) A few thousand people have turned up, bussed in from different parts of Tehran.

Many are elderly, carrying pictures of sons killed as martyrs in the war with Iraq in the 1980s, while others are in wheelchairs, injured veterans of that conflict. They are the “isgaron”, those who would go to any lengths to protect the nation.

They have been told that nuclear power is a nationalist and Islamist cause so they support it. But nuclear power isn’t real to them – what matters is their own suffering, the loss of children and health in the war with Iraq, a conflict most in the west long forgot but which is ever fresh in people’s memories here.

I ask a couple of old women in traditional all-encompassing black chadors if they know anything about the IAEA meeting in Vienna tomorrow. One asks if it’s something to do with the Islamic Revolution. The other says she knows nothing. “The big men, the politicians know about that. I’m from a martyr’s family. All I know is that I’ve come here to defend Iran to my last drop of blood,” she says. A war veteran in a wheelchair tells me that such meetings are all about powerful countries oppressing weak countries like Iran.

All journalists in town – national and international – have been told to turn up because President Ahmadinejad is going to speak. Cue much grumbling when he doesn’t show. The Minister of the Interior gives a long speech about a battle which occurred during the time of the Prophet, supposedly a parallel to today’s struggles with America and Europe.

Outside, on the concrete courtyard, they have erected a styrofoam model of Natanz, Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility. I meet the designer who tells me he got the detail from an aerial photograph, including a rather splendid aluminium reactor on which he writes “nuclear energy” in Persian, in case anyone was in doubt.

A young man explains to me that nuclear power is Iran’s right and the technology is useful for medicine, agriculture and many other things. Everyone denies that Iran is building a bomb. Anyway, they don’t need to, according to a chap sitting in the shrine with his baby son, listening to the Minister speak from the platform.

“Long before we ever wanted to get nuclear energy, the people sitting here had become atomic bombs themselves,” he explains. “Those you see on the platform are bigger bombs. I’m very serious. We are atomic bombs and those up there are hydrogen bombs.”

I think I know what he means. In the war with Iraq, a million Iranians, many young men, lost their lives, sent in huge human waves to certain death. The culture of martyrdom, deep in the Shi’ite religion, was reinforced. The people who come to this kind of rally see war as a form of self-sacrifice for a cause, not the continuation of diplomacy by other means. In their eyes, Iran has no need of sophisticated weapons if it has willing martyrs.

None of which cuts any ice with the Board of Governors of the IAEA, as they meet to discuss the latest report on Iran’s nuclear activities and decide whether to refer the Islamic Republic to the UN Security Council.

Relentless inertia of Iranian bureaucracy

We are sitting in the offices of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance waiting for our letters of permission.

These are crucial documents. If you're caught filming without them, then the Basij - volunteer police who operate outside the uniformed security forces - may arrest you. (In my experience, they may do so anyway, but with a letter you have some chance of talking them out of it.)

A general letter allows you to film in public places like streets and bazaars, but if you want to film anywhere else, like a shrine or a government facility, you need a separate letter. With three Channel 4 News teams making films about everything from basketball to nuclear power, that's a lot of letters.

We sit and wait. After about an hour, two eastern-looking men walk in and greet us. They are wearing red lapel pins decorated with a familiar face - it's Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader. The visitors are the outgoing Tehran correspondent of the North Korean News Agency, trying to get credentials for his replacement.

Correspondent One speaks a little broken English and no Farsi; Correspondent Two does not speak at all. By strange coincidence, we have just picked off the Ministry bookshelf a glossy tome with a picture of mountains and blue sky on the cover - it is that international best seller, the Farsi translation of 'Kim Il Sung: Memoirs of a Century.'

After another hour, the North Koreans retire hurt, unable to handle the relentless inertia of Iranian bureaucracy. They have filled in forms but received no credential. Our translator writes down in English and Farsi the address of the Ministry so that Correspondent Two will be able to find his way back to pick up his press card after Correspondent One has returned to the blue mountains of Pyongyang.

After three hours of waiting, we get all our pemits. Ha! We have more stamina than the North Koreans.