Why Iran's conservatives are airing their dirty laundry

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | July 28, 2009 | Iason Athanasiadis

[DGHoodini]

Istanbul - In the final days before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's inauguration next week, splits among the country's conservative elite have become increasingly conspicuous. Sometimes portrayed as a lackey for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he appears to be jockeying for power and authority - publicly defying Ayatollah Khamenei, sacking his intelligence minister less than a week before his Cabinet would have been dissolved anyway, and angering fellow conservatives by pressing for the broadcast of confessions forced from political prisoners.

(snlip)

There's an internal power struggle going on," says a Tehran-based political analyst with ties to Iran's intelligence ministry who requested his name not be used. "Ahmadinejad went to the intelligence ministry and pressed them to focus more on the angle of how this was a foreign-backed velvet revolution and to release some of the confessions they had secured in prison among the arrested."

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It is important that the intelligence minister, the second most important person in the cabinet after the president, was sacked," says Ms. Esfandiari,

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"This means that the Revolutionary Guard is taking over many of the duties of the intelligence ministry."

The Revolutionary Guard showed where its loyalties lie with a Sunday statement supporting the broadcast of confessions by state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

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n a sign of widening divisions within the clerical elites, Parleman News also reported that a group of senior Grand Ayatollahs critical of the regime's handling of the political crisis were planning to journey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf in Iraq - a move that would be taken as an insulting vote of no confidence in Khamenei's handling of the postelection situation. Just two of the nine Grand Ayatollahs resident in Iran have welcomed Ahmadinejad's election while the rest maintained a brooding silence.

[arthurus]

What seems to be occurring is Amahdinejad is completing the next stage of the Islamic Revolution. He is consolidating his power and moving against the old revolutionaries. He is Stalin to Khomenei’s Lenin, Napoleon to Robespierre and the Committee.