Word: khamenei
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After the regime's brutal response to the street demonstrations, an adviser to presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi said he handed out "around a thousand" CDs containing hip-hop and rap tracks with pro-democracy messages. A graffiti artist sprayed "Death to [Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali] Khamenei" - a phrase no one would have dared utter two months ago - on a city bus. And a prominent underground Tehran rock band, Hypernova, now living in exile, created a Web portal, the Freedom Glory Project, to gather support from other Iranian performers for the "green movement." (See a video featuring Hypernova...
Equally remarkable is the fact that many of the protests that continue in defiance of Khamenei's dire warnings weeks ago that those who continue to demonstrate would be treated as enemies of the Islamic Republic are still joined by such notable establishment figures as former President Mohammed Khatami, reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate. Khamenei's red lines have been ignored by the opposition, and his own legitimacy has been questioned as never before, whether by street protesters breaking a taboo by shouting slogans against him, or by key regime figures like former...
...failure of the regime to quiet the streets and to close ranks behind Khamenei in his endorsement of a second Ahmadinejad term is without precedent in the Islamic Republic's 30-year history. As leading U.S.-based Iran scholar Farideh Farhi told the Council on Foreign Relations, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad had assumed that "if they use a sufficient amount of violence, they can put an end to the popular anger that has been generated. [Instead], they continue to be surprised by the resistance that is being shown - not only by major players in Iranian politics, but the people of Iran...
Where the battle lines within the regime initially appeared to be relatively clear-cut - Ahmadinejad, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards on one side, facing off against a coalition of conservative pragmatists and reformists on the other, with each side claiming some support from within the clergy - the picture has grown murkier over the eight weeks of crisis. A number of figures in the conservative clerical and political establishment have begun to question the authorities' handling of the election's aftermath, particularly the crackdown on dissent. And there are clear signs from within the conservative clergy that some feared Ahmadinejad...
Tension between the President-elect and his chief patron flared in public last week when Khamenei ordered Ahmadinejad to fire his chosen deputy, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. Ahmadinejad not only publicly dragged his feet for almost a week in implementing the order, he made his contempt for the Ayatullah's edict plain by immediately reappointing Mashaei as his chief of staff. The President also sacked members of his Cabinet who had insisted that Khamenei's demand be heeded, including the powerful conservative Intelligence Minister. Following that clash of wills, a Tehran newspaper known to express Khamenei's views called the President...