Iran: A Regime Built on Sand

By -
Respected investigative journalist and 'Devil's Game' author, Robert Dreyfuss was in Iran for the elections. His go-to, singular account in 'The Nation' of the country's election crisis, paints an unflattering picture of a government abandoning all but a propaganda pretence of democracy:
It was clear by nightfall on election day, June 12, that something was wrong. Across Tehran, troop transports rumbled out of the IRGC's fortified bases. Before the polls had even closed, Tehran took on the air of an occupied city. Later that night, ominously, my cellphone went dead, like everyone else's.
The atmospheric article outlines the breath across Iranian society of alienation from the coup regime:
Besides reformists, students, women and businessmen, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are losing their core constituency: the clergy. And given that Iran is a state run by the priestly class, that might prove their undoing. I spoke to a dozen or so clerics, from low- to mid-ranking mullahs to a few who'd attained the rank of hojatolislam, just below ayatollah. There are hundreds of thousands of mullahs in Iran, perhaps a hundred or more who have attained the rank of ayatollah, and just two dozen or so who have developed sufficient reputation and following to be called grand ayatollah. And more and more of them, including many grand ayatollahs, have joined the opposition.....

Another cleric, who campaigned for Moussavi in dozens of Iranian towns and cities, said that the majority of mullahs had abandoned the president..... Some three-quarters of the grand ayatollahs in Iran support Moussavi, he told me.....

A very well-connected mullah I talked with said that he is a friend and follower of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri..... "Khamenei does not deserve the position that he has," the mullah told me. "He has become a politician, and as a politician he has been corrupted." Describing Khamenei in these terms is extremely unusual, and indicates how much the Ahmadinejad-Khamenei axis has lost its legitimacy.......

To get a sense of what the business community thinks, during election week I attended a forum packed with executives at the offices of Etelaat, a liberal newspaper, where eight former ministers of oil, industry and mining slammed the government over its incompetence....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Advantage Rafsanjani and Mousavi as Opposition Seeks Checkmate

By -
Image
by Fintan Dunne, 29th June, 2009 Influential Iranian former-president, Ayotalloh Rafsanjani has deferred for tactical reasons an emergency meeting of the Assembly of Experts -despite having now secured a majority in favor of convening the powerful clerical body, according to the Iranian political analyst Professor Muhammad Sahimi. In a telephone interview this weekend, Prof. Sahimi said Rafsanjani and Iran's opposition leaders are biding their time to allow social pressures on Iran's government to intensify. Their aims are to split the government and to detach some commanders of the Revolutionary Guard from supporting the hardline government stance on the official election outcome. "And if that happens," said Professor Sahimi, "then stronger actions such as an emegncy meeting of the Assembly of Experts to investigate the performance of the Supreme Leader can be done." The government also now seems to be avoiding a definitive showdown. The deadline to inves...
Read more

Mandela's Conscience Lives: In Thabo Mbeki

By -
Image
Mandela's Conscience Lives: In Thabo Mbeki by Fintan Dunne, 10th December 2013. [ Thabo Mbeki 's dissident Aids stance is supported by] "febrile  New York journalist Celia Farber; former marketing executive John  Lauritsen; Irishman and arch conspiracy theorist  Fintan Dunne .."    " The Triumph of Unreason ," Mail & Guardian, 19 April 2002.   W hen former South African president, Thabo Mbeki arrived to a hero's welcome at  the FNB stadium, in Soweto today,  for  Nelson Mandela's celebration memorial service - he was, in effect, bestowed by the crowd with the mantle of Mandela's Conscience. They stood to chant "Mbeki, Mbeki," with some making bicycling movements with their arms to signal their desire to 'rotate' away from current ANC leader, Jacob Zuma and his deeply corrupted South African presidency. Even the notoriously anti-Mbeki,  Mail and Guardian's associate editor @phillipdewet had to admit:  ...
Read more

Audio Interview: Prof. Scott Lucas

By -
Image
Blood or Politics: What Next for Iran? Despite the official certification of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the victor in Irans presidential election, and despite the relative calm on the streets of Tehran, the country is still seething. Rumours abound of moves by different factions, and the opposition is trying to consolidate a clerical and political platform to take a stand against the government. The main opposition leader, Mir-Hossein Mousavi has now called on his Facebook page for a general strike. Protesters who took to the streets to shed blood for democratic principles are still afire with a zeal for reform. So what next for Iran? Will political pragmatism win out over factionalism? Or will arrests, detentions and street clashes dominate the weeks ahead. Professor Scott Lucas of Birmingham University discusses the likely directions for Iran with Fintan Dunne. Interview Guest: Professor Scott Lucas Scott Lucas is Professor of American Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. He...
Read more