Ali Larijani, Speaker of Iran's Majlis parliament and a political rival to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has long been considered a conservative "wild car" in Iran's political scene. While Larijani is close to Supreme Leader Khamenei, his relatively more pragmatic approach as nuclear negotiator (before he resigned after clashing with Ahmadinejad) and his passion for Western philosophy (he is the author of four books on Emmanuel Kant) have created a belief in some that Larijani is ultimately a rationally acting politician, cut from a different cloth than the fundamentalists of the so-called "New Right" that have come to dominate Iran during the last five years.This initially gave hope that Larijani would be able to use his clout as a regime-insider to pave the way for reconciliation between Khamenei and the opposition. In fact, Larijani -- apparently unaware of the regime's plans to rig the election -- is said to have called to congratulate Mousavi on his "sweeping victory" on election night, prior to when Ahmadinejad was officially declared the victor. Soon thereafter, Larijani even hinted (ever-so-subtly) that many Iranians questioned the election results. "The opinion of this majority should be respected and a line should be drawn between them and rioters and miscreants," he said. He was also one of the forces said to be behind the now-moribund "National Unity Plan" and also agreed that a special parliamentary panel "should look into whether jail rape allegations are true or false."
Larijani ultimately cowed to hardliners despite convincing evidence that protesters were raped while detained, however, stating that "the issue of detainees being sexually abused is a lie." Since making those comments in August, he has clearly come out and unconditionally backed the regime as the crisis plaguing the country has deepened, likely due to his close affinity to Khamenei (and despite his differences with Ahmadinejad).
Most recently, in the wake of the tumultuous protests that rocked Iran last week on Ashura, Larijani came out even more forcefully against the opposition, seemingly leaving no room for future compromise. Telling members of Majlis that officials should “arrest offenders of [Islam] and mete out the harshest punishments to anti-revolutionary figures with no mercy," Larijani went onto echo the regime's fall-back rebuttal to the massive protests that have become a Tehran-fixture as of late: that they are composed of and funded by Western powers. "US and British officials' disgraceful comments about the sacrilegious events of Ashura are so disgustingly vivid that they clarify where this movement stands when it comes to destroying religious and Revolutionary values," he said.
All of this means that Larijani appears to now be unequivocally putting all of his chips on the table and siding with the regime. This may be out of loyalty to Khamenei in his most beleaguered hour, or it may stem out of a genuine desire to see the reformists in Iran marginalized. Whatever his reason, as the number of fatalities among protesters rise and as the Islamic Republic's chances of survival fall, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the head of Iran's parliament has pledged his allegiance to a dying regime rather than preserving a possible way out of the current crisis gripping the country.
And so, as the Green movement presses on in challenging the authority of an increasingly vulnerable Islamic Republic, and as Larijani continues to lambaste Iran's vibrant opposition as foreign agents and "infidels," history may likely end up placing the supposedly 'enlightened' politician in the same grouping as Ahmadinejad and other hard-right ideologues. Should this come to be the case, Larijani may come to wish that he had lived by the words of Emmanuel Kant, the philosopher he so reveres. "By a lie, a man annihilates his dignity as a man."
