More than 18,000 people have been arrested for participating in anti-regime protests across Iran in the last two and a half weeks, with many calling for an ousting of the country’s current leadership.
The exiled son of Iran’s last shah has sought to position himself as a credible opposition figure, encouraging Iranians to go out and protest. Reza Pahlavi is based in the US, and experts have told CNN he is a divisive figure who has not detailed how he would lead Iran if he got into power.
How does the country’s political system work, and what does political opposition inside the country actually look like?
Iran has a dual political system, Maryam Alemzadeh, an associate professor in the history and politics of Iran at the University of Oxford told CNN.
The electoral part of this system, made up of the president’s office and parliament, “resembles some western democracies,” she said, but it is “overseen and manipulated by the non-electoral part,” which is made up of the office of the supreme leader and many institutions under his direct control.
“The latter severely limits who can run for elections for any office of significance, and has free rein in presiding over the elected part’s decisions and actions,” Alemzadeh said.
Another “lesser-known complication” in the country’s political system is “the level of informality prevalent within Iranian political and – more importantly – economic infrastructure,” the professor continued.
“Ad hoc, non-professional, and opaque decision-making has been a feature of the ruling institutions” since the country’s revolution in 1979, she said, which has made “understanding the nuances and predicting the moves of the leadership difficult.”
In terms of domestic opposition, the Iranian government “has actively and effectively suppressed any attempt for organized opposition at home over the past decades,” arresting and silencing any leaders that emerge, she said.
“Even non-political NGOs, unions, student groups, and anything that could resemble a bottom-up order has been quashed. As a result, neither leadership nor grassroots organization can be expected, and protests are left contingent on ad hoc individual or collective decisions of the protestors,” she said.
Though Pahlavi has emerged as a potential opposition leader, the extent of his appeal is debated, according to Alemzadeh.
“While Pahlavi is nominally the most prominent opposition leader, the extent of his preparation for actual governance is very questionable,” she said. If the current regime in Iran did collapse, “it is not clear how Pahlavi plans to deal with remnants of the Islamic Republic – e.g., its massive police and security apparatus, its spider web of corrupt individuals benefitting from the system, and its relatively small but existing lay supporters,” she said.
