At some parties the buzz is all about who’s there. The big issue at President Ahmadinejad’s inauguration was who wasn’t there.
There was a distinct lack of former presidents – no Khatami, no Rafsanjani. He wasn’t doing well on former parliamentary speakers either. No member of the late Imam Khomeni’s family.
Lots of no-shows from the Assembly of Experts and the parliament. According to the state-run Press TV, only 13 of 70 members of one reformist parliamentary faction turn up and several of them walked out when the president started speaking.
Which all goes to show that what’s happening in Iran isn’t the foreign-sponsored “velvet revolution” which the president claims, but a huge chasm right down the middle of the power elite.
Now he has two weeks to appoint a cabinet, which won’t be easy. His appointment of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, his son’s father-in-law, as vice-president was vetoed by the supreme leader.
For a week, Ahmadinejad defied his patron, until he had stirred up so much anger amongst his conservative supporters, he had to change his mind. So he made Mr Mashaie head of his personal office instead.
Then he tried to sack several ministers until someone pointed out that meant he no longer had enough to make a government, so he promptly reinstated a couple.
It’s a mess. How can he govern? On Monday the supreme leader called Ahmadinejad “brave, hard-working and wise” but Kayhan, the newspaper which tends to reflect the supreme leader’s views, called him a “man of little knowledge with a malleable Islamic vision”.
And in the background all the time, the issue of the prisoners. Hundreds, possibly thousands, from senior clerical figures like Mohammed Ali Abtahi to random demonstrators picked up on the streets.
When he appeared in court on Saturday, Abtahi looked gaunt, while his speech was rambling and incoherent. He confessed to vague and ill-defined crimes. His wife says he’s been tortured and drugged.
The protesters used to keep themselves going by shouting “Don’t be afraid, we’re all together!” Today they turned the slogan into a threat, yelling at passing basij and any other members of the regime who might be listening: “Be afraid! Be very afraid! We’re all together.”