Ehteshami: 'Mousavi has already missed his opportunity'

The Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi remains adamant that president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election victory should be annulled. Professor of international relations Anoush Ehteshami thinks the moment may already have passed.

"At last Thursday's mourning ceremony, Mousavi should have called for a general strike on Saturday. This would have marginalised Supreme Leader ayatollah Khamenei's Friday prayer sermon, during which he demanded an end to the protests, and it would have been up to the Ahmadinejad camp to make the next move," Ehtesham, an Iranian-British professor of international relations at the university of Durham in Britain, says.

"I think when we look back on these events in the future, we will come to see that Thursday as a missed opportunity for the Mousavi movement. Now they are busying themselves with legal wrangling and political games behind closed doors. Ayatollah Rafsanjani [a powerful ally of Mousavi] is talking to the clerics, and Mousavi is talking to his religious supporters and so on. But once you get caught up in political deal-making within the regime, you can no longer claim this is a political protest about the demand for new elections."

The only thing that could still change the situation, Ehteshami believes, is if the position of the Supreme Leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is challenged. It is his job after all to safeguard the Islamic republic and to guarantee its security and stability.

Do you expect Khamenei to be challenged?

"At the moment there are no signs that this will happen. But because the situation is so dynamic, and because we know that there are some in the religious establishment who are in favour of annulling the election result, the Supreme Leader's position is not entirely safe. But it is not very likely. I don't think anyone in the opposition is prepared to shake the system so hard that it becomes ungovernable; don't forget that these people are part of that system too."

Until now, Iran was like a democracy wrapped inside a dictatorship, with an elected parliament and president but an appointed supreme leader. Will it now become a real dictatorship?

"I think it will have a much more military face from now on. There will be a cabinet of hawks and the regime will do its best to crush dissident points of view. The interesting to look out for is the make-up of the parliament, which has to approve any new cabinet. Parliament was already critical of Ahmadinejad and his cabinet, and parliament speaker Larijani is not happy with the present situation. The president is not out of the danger zone yet. Parliament could still pass a vote of no confidence, which could force the Supreme Leader to reconsider the case. Then Rafsanjani would have an important role to play again as the president of the Expediency Council, the official arbitrator in case of a dispute between parliament and the Guardian Council. So there are a couple more steps that need to be taken before Ahmadinejad can be sure of his victory."

Why was Mousavi not allowed to become president? Surely, the regime could have easily put him on a leash?

"The Supreme Leader has had many differences of opinion with Mousavi. And the Revolutionary Guard wanted Ahmadinejad. They don't want someone like Mousavi in charge of the nuclear negotiations and the dialogue with the Americans."

Is a deal with the US still possible under these conditions?

"President Obama is facing stiff resistance from Congress over what's happened in Iran. The Iranian-Americans are eloquent and powerful. And Obama is supposed to stand for change and a new generation. It will be morally difficult for him [to make a deal] with a president who is clearly illegitimate, and who we now know has blood on his hands."