ordering the political elite to be civil to one another.
Khamenehi has avoided taking any position favoring either the Majlis or President Ahmadi-nejad on the subsidy issue itself. Khamenehi’s own goal is clearly to keep the political pot from boiling over and to prevent anger from splitting the ruling establishment.
The Majlis approved the budget for the new year last month after voting that Ahmadi-nejad must start his shift from subsidies to welfare more slowly than he wished. Ahmadi-nejad asked to devote the equivalent of $40 billion to cash welfare payments this year, but the Majlis cut that to $20 billion. Deputies complained that the rapid shift planned by Ahmadi-nejad would set off raging inflation.
A few months ago, the deputies had voted to spread the shift over five years rather than the three years Ahmadi-nejad had planned. Ahmadi-nejad’s request for $40 billion appeared to be a ploy to front-end the shift and put the bulk of the change in the very first year.
Ahmadi-nejad has been furious since the Majlis cut his budget request for welfare this year in half. First, he demanded that the Majlis change the number back to $40 billion; then he demanded a national referendum to let the people decide. The Majlis rebuffed him on both counts.
The public does not seem to be much taken by the debate, but the political elite has been up in arms. That is what brought Khamenehi’s intervention.
He first intervened a few weeks ago, before Now Ruz, saying that the Majlis needed to cooperate with the president and that the president needed to know that he was obligated to carry out whatever the Majlis enacted into law. That solved nothing. The fury on the contending sides only exploded anew after the holiday break.
Khamenehi called in the political leadership Monday. They were seated on the floor, crammed into a small room, while Khamenehi sat in a chair and counseled them.
He expressed his hope that the parties would reach a consensus over the subsidies-to-welfare law so that “the people may taste the results of all the struggles of their officials.”
He called for more “coordination” between the Majlis and the Executive Branch. He said, “Greater coordination does not mean that officials must ignore their personal opinions. However, differences of opinion should not spike the wheels of the country or create divisions.”
He smiled gently on the men seated at his feet, appearing in many ways like a father counseling his unruly children to lower their voices and stop punching each other.
“We should act in a way that we can answer before God for our actions,” he counseled. Then he led the men in prayers.
The subsidy issue now dominates political discourse. It appears that the political elite believes it has successfully suppressed the opposition that broke out after the June elections and can now get back to the normal pre-election squabbling.
`Before the meeting with Khamenehi, Ahmadi-nejad complained bitterly that the subsidy law as approved by the Majlis was riddled with major problems. He suggested that he might just put the plan that he wanted into effect, while Majlis deputies shouted that he would then be violating the law.
Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani wrote the president a letter saying that refusal to implement a law after its enactment by the Majlis was not becoming behavior for the executive in an Islamic system.
Ahmadi-nejad has said repeatedly that to implement the law as enacted by the Majlis would harm the country. There are some who suspect that he is plotting for failure, that he will in the end implement the law as passed by the Majlis—but then open up on the Majlis with all his guns as soon as there is a problem, which is certain to happen with something as complicated as this program for making cash payments to all of Iran’s 18 million households.
The Majlis also reasoned that there would be problems implementing the plan. But it calculated that the problems would be smaller and more manageable if fewer subsidies were removed in the first year and lower payments were made to the public.