Religion has been invoked since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran to create a spiritual link between the people and the clerics’ new political system. Now, the ultraconservative ‘radical’ ayatollahs led by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi are evoking religious sentiment in a novel way by saying that the legitimacy of the government is independent from the vote of the people. The regime itself has assumed an air of divine authority. A long-time mentor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mesbah Yazdi wants to replace the “Islamic Republic” with an “Islamic Government”. Under an Islamic Government, a vote by the people for the presidency and the parliament is no longer essential for the legitimacy of Khamenei or any future supreme leader. This represents a major ideological shift in Iran that the reformists are trying to challenge. Mousavi and other reformists believe that if they had not stood up for sanctity of the people’s vote during the election, Mesbah Yazdi’s radical ideology would have been even closer to implementation.
The more people have asked for free elections and political freedoms, the more the radicals have pushed to connect the supreme leader’s rule to the will of God. In July 2010 Ayatollah Jannati, head of the pro-Khamenei guardian council, went as far as saying that “God delivered the leadership to Khamenei.” The reaction by the Iranian intellectuals and youth on the internet was one of mockery. The radicals are attempting to put the supreme leader in a safe position independent of the checks and balances created to hold the supreme leader accountable to bodies such as the assembly of experts, where Rafsanjani is influential.
Ultimately, the supreme leader and his radical allies hope they will no longer need the approval and support of the traditional clerical establishment. However, the increasing tendency to link the legitimacy of the supreme leader to God, the Prophet Mohamed or any other religious foundations, could backfire and render the entire institution of the supreme leader and Velayat Faghih anathema in the eyes of the public.
Many Iranian activists and politicians fear that the radicals led by Mesbah Yazdi will weaken the parliament as a way to ignore the people’s vote in a systematic way. Elections will be increasingly micro-managed by the guardian council, who hand-pick the candidates, preventing even centrist conservatives from running in the next parliamentary elections in 2012. Potential candidates who have been critical towards Ahmadinejad might not be approved. The parliament is resisting such emasculation by targeting Ahmadinejad’s reckless and careless policies and his attempts to ignore the role of the parliament. A vocal minority of parliamentarians has gone as far as to bring a petition of impeachment against the president.
The architect of the IRI, Ayatollah Khomeini once said that the “parliament is on the top of all affairs.”The radical faction inside the Islamic Republic is pushing for a major shift from the will of the founder. The downside of claiming a divine connection to God is that the regime distances itself from two sources of legitimacy in Iran; first, the Iranian people, which is supposed to be represented by a vibrant parliament, and, second, the spiritual and religious source of legitimacy from the clerical establishment.



Moreover,also read green movement and differences it raised after 2009 elections.

__________________
Reality is something you rise above.