Iran’s power dynamics – the old and the new

by Gareth Smith December 17, 2013

written by Gareth Smith December 17, 2013

As 2013 opened, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was struggling to manage an unpredictable and often truculent president in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At the end of 2013, Iran’s supreme leader oversees a president trying to improve relations with the United States, Europe and the Saudis and to instill tighter fiscal discipline. That culminated in the November deal in Geneva to reduce global sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits to its nuclear program. The election of Hassan Rouhani upset those ‘experts’ who see Khamenei as micro-managing most aspects of Iranian politics, security and economy. In reality, Khamenei rarely leads from the front but prefers to wait for consensus — or stalemate, or inertia — to emerge from the interplay of factions scattered around parliament, Qom, the military, intelligence, the charitable trusts and the provinces. Khamenei has been dubbed “Bismarck with a turban” by Ray Takeyh, the former State Department official now at

Gareth Smith

Gareth Smith was a distinguished journalist who reported from the Middle East for over two decades. He served as the Financial Times correspondent in Tehran, where he was the chief Iran correspondent from 2003, following his earlier role as Lebanon correspondent. Throughout his career, Smith covered Middle Eastern affairs for leading media outlets, including The Financial Times, The Guardian, and the BBC. He also contributed as an editor to Executive magazine. His work as a freelance journalist in the 1990s, focusing on the politics of Iran and Iraq, paved the way for his appointment at the FT. In 2009, he relocated to the west coast of Ireland, where he balanced freelance journalism with his passion for nature and the land.

Iran’s power dynamics – the old and the new

You may also like