Election Primer: Who Rules Iran?

Mahdi in waiting: The Iranian people appear to be the ultimate sovereign of their paradoxical democracy. Iran's government structure ensures that they're not. (Khamenei.ir)

With the June 12 presidential election in Iran approaching, it's worth asking an obvious question with a far less obvious answer: who rules Iran? It's not the president. Not by a long, long shot.

Iranian politics are arcane, complex and at times contradictory. The Islamic Republic of Iran, in place since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, is neither a strongman dictatorship in the classic sense nor a constitutional democracy as it is understood in the West. Yet Iran has elements of both and more, such as an elected “Assembly of Experts,” comparable to the Vatican’s college of cardinals.

Put simply, Iranian governance is democratic in appearance, theocratic in character and dictatorial in intent, its energies and institutions delegated not from the pluralism of its richly cultured and varied population but funneled quite rigidly toward the safeguard of the Islamic revolution and subservience to it. The system’s complexities is in large part an effective if paradoxical way of disarming criticism of Iranian “democracy” while making it supremely difficult for reformers to break into the system and sway it their way.

Despite the complexities, Iran’s political system can be broken down into its various parts and understood for what it is. As of 2009, virtually every institution and office was dominated by conservatives.

Read the details: "Who Rules Iran? A Primer on the Islamic Republic's Power Structure."