Word: ayatullah
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...ongoing tumult of Iranian politics, Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has made few public pronouncements - even though he is said to be the main guiding force behind the scenes for those in the regime who are opposed to the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, and President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But on Tuesday, Rafsanjani, looking fatigued and thinner than in recent months, made a rare semi-public speech, covered in part by Iran's official television news. Ostensibly, he called for harmony and promoted unity - notions that probably do not sit well with the activist elements of the protest movement...
...driver is still hauled off to prison. He is held because we are Americans, and the U.S. has signed an accord with the Shah known by Americans as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), and by Iranians as the capitulation treaty. In 1964, when it was signed, the Ayatullah Khomeini railed against the legal inequities of the agreement, which gave American military immunity on Iranian soil: "If someone runs over a dog belonging to an American, he will be prosecuted," he thundered. "But if an American cook runs over the Shah, the head of the state, no one will have...
Since its birth in 1979, the IRGC has been the hardest of the hard core of Ayatullah Khomeini's Islamic revolution. It thrives in confrontation with the U.S. and Israel, and does even better when Iran is at war. The IRGC looks at the 1982-2000 war in Lebanon as its most glorious moment, when its proxy Hizballah forced the West and Israel out of Lebanon. It left Hizballah with the enviable reputation of being the only force in the Middle East to have beaten both the West and Israel. Not to mention that Hizballah is now the de facto...
...parts of the Middle East. But the real point is that in a limited war with the U.S. and Israel, the IRGC could predominate, or at least wear us down to the point that we would decide it's better to settle. (See pictures of the long shadow of Ayatullah Khomeini...
...outside the capital, and deploy massive force, which belies its claims that the opposition is just a disaffected élitist minority. "By attacking the people on Ashura, the government lost its religious legitimacy," says Mohsen Sazegara, one of the founders of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. A former aide to Ayatullah Khomeini, Sazegara now posts videos on YouTube from his home in suburban Virginia giving advice to the Green Movement. Moreover, the costs of such military-style operations are unsustainable, both in their direct expenses and in chasing off foreign investment and support. "Time is on our side," says Sazegara...