DSeid
July 3, 2009, 6:02pm
221
The candidates are I think almost besides the point tagos .
I’d go far as to say that even the preservation of some small democratic input into the power structures of Iran is not the most important issue.
The most important issue is where the balance of power lands behind the curtains that are just flittering open some now. How much that changes when all this is done may or may not have much correlation with much else that is more obvious but portends more for the future rights of the people in Iran, their future economy, and both regional and world stability than whether or not TweedleDee is annointed over TweedleDummer.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but change is coming to Iran. And I say it’s sooner rather than later. (In the order of under/over a year.)
Which is good, because I’m not looking forward to the other option: a Saudi/Iran War.
E-Sabbath:
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but change is coming to Iran. And I say it’s sooner rather than later. (In the order of under/over a year.)
Which is good, because I’m not looking forward to the other option: a Saudi/Iran War.
That never seemed to bother England and France.
DSeid
July 4, 2009, 3:44pm
225
A war by proxies? Well, Iran has hers but who is to be Saudi Arabia’s champion on the field of dishonor?
DSeid
July 4, 2009, 3:51pm
226
Within Iraq maybe? Lobbing bombs and shutting down each others shipping in the Gulf maybe?
Well, the Saudis just ordered a small load of F-15 Silent Eagles, to go with their F-35s. Silent Eagles aren’t perfect, but they are relatively… cheap.
I’m not really sure about what’s going on, but I think things are destabilizing, and the shia/sunni divide is part of it, but so is the increasing hard-line in Iran. You don’t think the Saudis like the increasing theocratic hard-line coming out of there?
E-Sabbath:
Well, the Saudis just ordered a small load of F-15 Silent Eagles, to go with their F-35s. Silent Eagles aren’t perfect, but they are relatively… cheap.
I’m not really sure about what’s going on, but I think things are destabilizing, and the shia/sunni divide is part of it, but so is the increasing hard-line in Iran. You don’t think the Saudis like the increasing theocratic hard-line coming out of there?
The Saudis have their own problems there. As I understand it, the only viable political opposition at present is the ultra-Wahabists, to whom the House of Saud is not theocratic enough.
Then there’s the problem that Saudis in the northeastern corner of the country (near Iraq) are mostly Shi’ites.
DSeid
July 5, 2009, 5:33am
229
More religious leaders break ranks with Khamenei.
The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.
A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible.
“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” …
… The clerics’ statement chastised the leadership for failing to adequately study complaints of vote rigging and lashed out at the use of force in crushing huge public protests.
It even directly criticized the Guardian Council, the powerful group of clerics charged with certifying elections.
“Is it possible to consider the results of the election as legitimate by merely the validation of the Guardian Council?” the association said.
Perhaps more threatening to the supreme leader, the committee called on other clerics to join the fight against the government’s refusal to adequately reconsider the charges of voter fraud. The committee invoked powerful imagery, comparing the 20 protesters killed during demonstrations with the martyrs who died in the early days of the revolution and the war with Iraq, asking other clerics to save what it called “the dignity that was earned with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs.”
DSeid
July 5, 2009, 12:50pm
230
And Rafsanjani pops into public again.
“People from across the country participated in the elections, with excitement,” ILNA quoted Rafsanjani as saying in Saturday’s story. “But unfortunately the events that occurred after that and the difficulties created for some left a bitter taste, and I don’t think that any wakened consciousness would be satisfied with the resulting situation.”
He referred to the recent expressions of opinions across the country regarding the election crisis as a reflection of a power struggle “at the highest levels of the system.”
“I hope that with proper management and fortitude, in the next few days, we can be witnesses to the betterment of the situation, resolution of the difficulties and the decrease in the number of the families waiting for their loved ones,” Rafsanjani said. “We must think about safeguarding the long term interests and benefits of the system.”
Although Reuters reports he explicitly says no power struggle.
Such are the hints we have at the potentially least shitty ways forward and the meaningful power battles, as Khamenei loses his control of the clerical establishment.
Interesting article about the possibility of a compromise deal.
The regime is severely divided over what strategy to follow next. Some hardline factions are openly calling for a Tiananmen Square-style solution to the crisis. The more farsighted individuals and factions are counseling caution. They are concerned that imposing martial law and killing innocent people could alienate the faithful and turn the traditionalist clerics of Qom against the government. Yet, as the July 9 clashes with the police demonstrated, the protest movement is taking root in the society, and if it goes unchecked, it could be just a matter of time before it spreads to other cities and localities. Moreover the continuation of the movement is driving a stake into the heart of the official ideology of the guardianship of the jurist which is premised on the pseudo-infallibility of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. By repeatedly ignoring Khamenei’s injunctions to recognize the Ahmadinejad government and to cease their protests, Moussavi and his Green Wave movement have struck a devastating blow to the guardianship of jurist ideology, which posits a direct-line descent from God to the Prophet to the Hidden Imam to Khamenei.
What’s more, the Ahmadinejad government will likely have a tough time in the next four years managing the economy and the state while a robust civil disobedience movement is thriving in the country. Already, Tehran’s economy has entered a mild recession, dragged down by the weeks-long protests and the symbolic acts of resistance such as withdrawing money from government-owned banks.
The protest movement has robbed the government of much of its international legitimacy in its dealings with the outside world. But according to the academic, the Green Wave movement has very little chance of toppling the regime or, even if it did manage to do so, remaining in power given that there are up to a million hard-core supporters of the regime in Iran. “There are officially 140,000 individuals who have signed up for suicide missions,” said the academic. “Of these perhaps 5 percent could be said to be serious candidates for the job. That is roughly 7,000 individuals. Who could run a country with 7,000 such individuals in a permanent state of opposition?” According to this scholar, the present situation is a lose-lose game for the Green Wave in the long term. “A compromise solution would be the best possible deal for Iran–one that ends the dictatorial rule of the hardliners while giving them a share of the control over the political and cultural life according to their social weight in society.” Moussavi is said to favor this solution himself. Last month in a verbal exchange with a Grand Ayatollah who had urged moderation on the Green Wave, Moussavi indicated some vague interest in a compromise deal if the Grand Ayatollah would personally intercede in the negotiations.
To Allah’s ears . . .
Interesting article.
The green color adopted by the Mousavi supporters and the cries of “Allah akbar!” that resonate from the roofs of Tehran in the evening darkness show that protesters see this as the repetition of the 1979 Khomeini revolution, undoing the revolution’s corruption and returning to its roots. It is not only programmatic; it concerns even more the crowds’ modes of activity: the emphatic unity of the people, creative self-organization, and improvisational articulation of protest. It is a unique mixture of spontaneity and discipline: the ominous march of thousands in complete silence. It is a genuine popular uprising of the deceived partisans of the Khomeini revolution.
There are several crucial conclusions to be drawn from this insight. First, Ahmadinejad is not the hero of the Islamist poor, but a genuine, corrupted, Islamo-Fascist populist-an Iranian version of Italian President Silvio Berlusconi. Ahmadinejad’s mixture of clownish posturing and ruthless power politics causes unease even among the majority of ayatollahs. His demagogic distribution of crumbs to the poor should not deceive us. Organs of police repression, a Westernized PR apparatus and a strong nouveau-riche class—the result of the regime’s corruption—stand behind him. In fact, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not a working-class militia, but a mega-corporation, the strongest concentration of wealth in the country.
There is a clear distinction between Mehdi Karroubi and Mousavi, the two main candidates opposed to Ahmadinejad. Karroubi is a reformist, proposing the Iranian version of identity politics and promising favors to all particular groups. Mousavi is something entirely different. His name stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream that sustained the Khomeini revolution. Even if this dream was a utopia, it’s important to recognize in it the genuine utopia of the revolution itself. The 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to just hard-line Islamist takeover—it was much more.
<snip>
Whatever the outcome, we are witnessing a great emancipatory event that doesn’t fit the frame of the struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If today’s cynical pragmatism inhibits our capacity to recognize this emancipation, then the West is entering a post-democratic era, getting ready for its own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.
See also this one, speculating that Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi may be a candidate to replace Supreme Leader Khamenei (who is suffering from leukemia).
SA and Iran don’t even have a common border. What form would a war take?