IRAN/ELECTIONS: "AN IRGC COUP" NOW FACES THREE

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 ISTANBUL 000220 SIPDIS LONDON FOR GAYLE; BERLIN FOR PAETZOLD; BAKU FOR MCCRENSKY; ASHGABAT FOR TANGBORN; BAGHDAD FOR BUZBEE AND FLINCHBAUGH; DUBAI FOR IRPO E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/17/2029 TAGS: PINS PGOV KDEM PREL IT TU SUBJECT: IRAN/ELECTIONS: "AN IRGC COUP" NOW FACES THREE TIPPING POINTS REF: LONDON 1423 Classified By: Acting Principal Officer Sandra Oudkirk; Reason 1.5 (d) ¶1. (S) Summary: A former IRGC captain maintains that the Iranian regime's claim of an Ahmadinejad presidential victory was "an IRGC coup." He claims to have been told by current IRGC contacts (hinting that they are colonels or brigadiers) that once the IRGC saw on election day that that Mousavi was heading towards an unacceptable victory, it implemented a contingency plan, with Supreme Leader Khamenei's acquiescence, to give Ahmadinejad a fraudulent win. But the IRGC and Khamenei miscalculated the anger and resolve of the protesters, the refusal of key regime figures to accept the outcome, and the international skepticism over election results. The IRGC now fears three tipping points, based on IRGC leaders' experiences leading a revolution 30 years ago: ongoing, growing, and spreading demonstrations; being forced to kill more than a dozen protesters in any one location on any one day; and the risk of a petroleum sector strike. Comment: Given the length of away from the IRGC, we cannot judge authoritatively whether our contact's claimed connections to current IRGC officers are credible, and whether those contacts could have access to these insights. He may be no more than a private Iranian with an interesting opinion. But his views about the IRGC's role track with theories that independent observers have posited about the presidential election outcome and aftermath. His description of the three "tipping points" also has the ring of plausibility. End summary and comment. An IRGC Coup -------------- ¶2. (S) We met June 16 with a former Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) captain (sarvon) who fled Iran in 1999 after converting to Christianity and who now lives illegally in Istanbul, where he works with the Iranian refugee community. Our contact, "Hamid", said he maintains some contacts with a few current IRGC officers he served with ten years ago, hinting that they were at the colonel or brigadier rank but below the IRGC General corps. He claimed these contacts believe he moved to Turkey to pursue business opportunities and they are unaware of his religious conversion. He claims he spoke to two such contacts after the June 12 elections. ¶3. (S) Hamid called the events in Iran since the afternoon of the Presidential on Friday June 12 an "IRGC coup." He claimed that when the IRGC's secret election polling within a few weeks of the June 12 started to reveal the extent to which Mousavi was gaining support, and indeed showed that Mousavi could win a majority of votes even in the first round, the IRGC designed a contingency plan to guarantee Ahmadinejad a fraudulent election victory. The IRGC developed that plan with Supreme Leader Khamenei's acquiescence, and with the direct cooperation of Interior Minister (and former IRGC general) Mahsouli, according to Hamid's account of his conversations with former IRGC colleagues. ¶4. (S) The IRGC's plan, which included falsified voting numbers for every province, preparations to shut down communication links (like text messaging) used by the opposition campaigns, and standing orders for IRGC and Basiji units nationwide to mobilize forcefully against potential demonstrators, remained a contingency plan until the day before the elections, Hamid claimed. When the IRGC saw how huge the "gharbe-zadeh" (west-toxified),pro-Mousavi crowd was in Iran in the final week before elections, IRGC Commander Jafari ordered that a warning be issued on June 10, both to the opposition candidates and to the Supreme Leader, that a Mousavi victory based on such support was not acceptable. (Comment: According to press accounts, on June 10 a message was indeed posted to the IRGC's website under the name of IRGC political chief, Yadollah Javani, warning that the IRGC would not tolerate the formation of a government under the banner of Mousavi's "green movement." End comment.) Hamid said that while Khamenei may have been able to tolerate a Mousavi presidency, the IRGC did not trust that Mousavi would not fall sway to the reformists who elected him, nor did they trust that Khamenei could control Mousavi. ¶5. (S) In the first few hours of June 12, when an unprecedented voter turnout and initial election returns started to signal a likely first round Mousavi victory, Jafari and Mahsouli, with Ahmadinejad's full backing, ISTANBUL 00000220 002 OF 003 informed the Supreme Leader that the contingency plan to ensure an Ahmadinejad victory would be implemented immediately. Hamid underscored that he was told the IRGC informed Khamenei, it didn't ask. (Comment: We find it unlikely that the IRGC would have taken the chance to wait until election day to implement such a significant and complex operation. End comment.) The result, according to Hamid, was the sudden replacement that day at the Ministry of Interior's election headquarters of the day's MoI polling tabulations with "revised figures" supplied by the IRGC, accompanied by the shutting down of opposition communication links and the snap announcement that evening (while polls were still opened) of the final results that indicated a first round Ahmadinejad victory. "The coup was finished by Saturday morning," Hamid said. Met by an Unexpected Push-back -------------- ¶6. (S) The IRGC's "coup planners", many of whom had been directly involved in the violent suppression of student riots in 1999, expected at worst a similar outcome: a few days of isolated, student-led civil disobedience, which they could quickly suppress though sheer force. According to Hamid, this expectation that events would play out similarly to 1999 led them to badly miscalculate. The IRGC and MoI did not anticipate the role the Internet would play in globalizing the scrutiny of security force actions against demonstrators, nor the enduring international skepticism over a 63% Ahmadinejad victory (a similar percentage to what he won in 2005),exacerbated by the widespread credible claims of irregularities. ¶7. (S) IRGC leaders also assumed once the Supreme Leader decreed on election night that Ahmadinejad had won, other regime figures -- including Rafsanjani -- would fall in line "for the good of the system", just like Khatami did in 1999. They did not anticipate that Mousavi or Rezai would refuse to accept the outcome. (The IRGC "didn't care how Karroubi would react", Hamid said.) Mousavi's appearance at the June 15 rally in Tehran, even after having been warned against it, underscored to the Supreme Leader and the IRGC leadership, "a few weeks too late", that opposition among many key regime figures to another Ahmadinejad term was potentially even stronger than those figures' commitment to the Supreme Leader's role as the system's final arbiter. As a result, from Supreme Leader Khamenei on down, the regime is starting to feel deep anxiety that events may be moving beyond their control. Redlines and Tipping Points -------------- ¶8. (S) According to Hamid, the IRGC are most concerned by three potential tipping points, based on their experiences in overthrowing the Shah in 1978-1979: -- Ongoing, growing demonstrations: Since June 12, the IRGC and the regime have been confronted by a steady, perhaps swelling, number of demonstrators, who have not yet been deterred by the threat of violence. If protesters on the order of hundreds of thousands continue to demonstrate, and especially if similar crowds continue in other key areas like Tabriz, Mashad, and the south-west provinces, for more than another week, the IRGC will find itself in "unknown territory", as the 1999 student riots lasted only one week. The shouting from the rooftops already has some regime leaders thinking of 1978-79 rather than 1999. If the demonstrations continue, grow, and/or spread, the "historical analogy" for Khamenei's and the IRGC's leadership of what is happening in Iran now will become the 1979 revolution rather than the 1999 student riots. -- Numbers of killed: The IRGC remains willing to use deadly force against demonstrators, according to Hamid, as it continues to believe that selectively killing "small numbers" of demonstrators will eventually have a chilling effect, as it did in 1999 (when between six and 17 protesters were killed). However, all IRGC leaders also recall the "Black Friday" massacre (17 Shahrivar 1357; September 8, 1978) by the Shah's forces of protesting citizens. Scores or perhaps hundreds of protesters were gunned down, generating national revulsion against the Shah and creating what many considered to be a tipping point signaling the end of the Shah's legitimacy. As a result, the IRGC is afraid of being forced to kill more than a few dozen protesters in any one location on any one day, according to Hamid, for fear it will lose its own legitimacy. ISTANBUL 00000220 003 OF 003 -- A petroleum sector strike: The "Black Friday" massacre of September 1978 was followed one month later by a general strike in Iran's oil industry and other successive strikes, which led to the Shah's exile and Khomeini's return in January 1979. "They all remember this like yesterday. To them this is the model of how regimes are overthrown." If oil and gas workers, especially at Iran's refineries along its southwest coast, strike in coming weeks, Hamid predicted, the regime could break apart over fear of overthrow, as regime leaders become paralyzed over how to stop what many of them will see by then as an inevitable loss of power. If the petroleum workers strike, Hamid said that a regime break-down would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Next steps -------------- ¶9. (S) As regime leaders scramble to avoid those outcomes, and even as their violence against protesters continues, Hamid assessed they will try several "little steps" aimed at reducing popular discontent. Such steps will include a Guardian Council decision after ten days agreeing that some voting irregularities occurred, and reducing Ahmadinejad's victory total to something slightly under 60%; offering amnesty to protesters who did not partake in violence if they cease protesting; and pledging to move forward on engagement with the U.S. However, our contact, speaking personally, felt that such gestures would be "too little, too late", and that only an outcome that included removal of Ahmadinejad as president would end the protests peacefully and effectively. ¶10. (S) Meanwhile, Hamid shared rumors he had heard that Mousavi, President Rafsanjani, and opposition candidate (and former IRGC Commander) Rezai have been actively reaching out to contacts among the IRGC leadership since June 13 to persuade any willing generals to agree not to use violence against protesters. Hamid had heard that Rafsanjani was also trying to offer economic concessions to IRGC leaders to "buy their opposition" to another Ahmadinejad term, but he was having little success. Comments -------------- ¶11. (S) Based on Hamid's interactions with UNHCR in Turkey, and corroborated by separate conversations with several Iranian refugees in Istanbul who know Hamid, we accept his bona fides as an IRGC Air Force captain until 1999, when he fled to Turkey to escape religious persecution. Given his length of time away from the IRGC, however, we cannot judge authoritatively whether Hamid's claimed connections to current IRGC colonels or brigadiers are credible or whether those claimed contacts are sufficiently high-ranking to have access to these insights. He may be no more than a private Iranian with an interesting opinion, and his opinions should be weighed as such. That said, what Hamid told us tracks with theories that numerous independent observers (including reftel) have posited about the Iranian presidential election outcome and aftermath. Hamid's description of the three "tipping points" about which Khamenei and the regime are most worried also has the ring of plausibility, based on similar events serving as tipping points for these same leaders 30 years ago, when they were on the other side of the protests and oppression. We will stay in contact with Hamid as events develop, to seek further possible insights into the IRGC's role as a key regime decision-making body. End comment. OUDKIRK