{"id":4031,"date":"2011-06-01T18:39:28","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T18:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=4031"},"modified":"2011-06-01T18:39:28","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T18:39:28","slug":"jung-in-tehran-aka-enantiodromia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=4031","title":{"rendered":"Jung in Tehran, aka “enantiodromia”"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — Ahmadinejad vs Khamenei, Jungian enantiodromia ]<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

\"quo-enantiodromia-in-tehran.gif\"<\/a><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The western press, on the whole, has covered the recent tussle between Iranian President Ahmadinejad <\/strong>and his superior, the Ayatollah Khamenei<\/strong>, in political terms — as a power struggle between a President who wants increased authority for the Presidency and a Supreme Authority who isn’t about to relinquish his Supremacy.<\/p>\n

It is also a theological struggle, and the LA Times<\/a> nicely weaves the two strands together in commenting:<\/p>\n

At its heart is a possible future struggle for power between the firebrand president and Khamenei’s conservative clergy, who are wary of Ahmadinejad’s messianic strain of Islam and his incendiary populism. They worry his tendency for explosive talk could threaten their long-term interests, if not render them obsolete.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Putting it bluntly, the arrival of the Mahdi <\/strong>\u2013 or a strong populist current holding the opinion that Ahmadinejad is the Mahdi’s trusted lieutenant, chosen to prepare the way for his coming \u2013 would disenfranchise the clerics of Qom<\/strong>, who ultimately derive their authority from the Imam Mahdi’s absence.<\/p>\n

The fairly recent discovery of a video, apparently prepared by Ahmadinejad’s supporters and proclaiming the Mahdi’s “soon coming”, seems to have heightened the tension\u2026<\/p>\n

Having said that, it’s my impression that Ahmadinejad is losing this tug-of-war, that he doesn’t have the popular groundswell of support he would need to go up against the Supreme Authority and win, and that consequently, his Mahdist “messianic strain” is losing power and credibility.<\/p>\n

Which in turn should mean that the West has less to fear from Iranian Mahdism\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Glenn Beck<\/strong>, take note.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Putting that another way, it seems that the extreme Mahdism of Ahmadinejad is resulting \u2013 ironically enough, by enantiodromia <\/strong>\u2013 in a backlash from Khamenei that appears likely to depotentiate and dissipate it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — Ahmadinejad vs Khamenei, Jungian enantiodromia ] . * The western press, on the whole, has covered the recent tussle between Iranian President Ahmadinejad and his superior, the Ayatollah Khamenei, in political terms — as a power struggle between a President who wants increased authority for the Presidency and a Supreme […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242,46,622,526,627,87,93,623,241,436,533,446,523],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ahmadinejad","category-analytic","category-apocalyptic","category-charles-cameron","category-doublequotes","category-foreign-policy","category-iran","category-mahdist","category-pasdaran","category-psychology","category-religion","category-shia","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}