Word: clerical
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Observers with a working knowledge of Iranian politics have largely been able to shrug off President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bluster and bullying, knowing the diminutive President must still answer to a far more powerful figure: Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. Since 1989, the shadowy cleric - a former president himself - has sat at the apex of Iran's complex hierarchy as the final word in all political and religious matters. The massive protests roiling Tehran in the aftermath of the June 12 elections have underlined both the vast sweep of Khamenei's powers and, perhaps, its limitations. After hailing Ahmadinejad...
Intelligence failures are more understandable today than they were in 1979. At that time, Washington stubbornly stood behind the regime of secular and autocratic Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, despite the rebirth of religious fundamentalism among millions of Iranians and their yearning for an obscure Muslim cleric living in exile: Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence officers blanketed Tehran but ignored the gathering storm. It was a massive blunder. Khomeini swept into power and transformed Middle East politics and alliances. His supporters seized the American compound and its occupants, an act that has frozen bilateral relations in a state...
Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei called for Iranians to unite behind the cleric-led ruling system despite rival demonstrations and street clashes between supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his reformist opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who says Ahmadinejad stole re-election...
Khamenei, Iran's ultimate authority, says that representatives of all four candidates should be present for any limited recount of disputed ballots, which the country's cleric-led Guardian Council said Tuesday it would be willing to conduct. -Ali Akbar Dareini and Nasser Karimi...
...million reward for information leading to his capture, describing Mehsud as a "key al-Qaeda facilitator." And over the past week alone, he claimed responsibility for five separate terrorist attacks, including the bombing of a luxury hotel in Peshawar and the killing of a vocal anti-Taliban cleric in Lahore. (See pictures of the hotel blast in Peshawar...