Ayatollah Ali Rafsanjani Was No Iranian Moderate

Forbes ^ | 2/3/17 | Slater Bakhtavar

[freedom44]

And this is precisely why change to the Iranian regime will never come from within it. It cannot. Absolute dictatorial regimes – be they religious or otherwise – are structured for the purpose of perpetuating themselves. They are not democratic in nature, subject to the will of the people they rule or even of the people within them. Any true moderate or reformist influences will not enjoy a fair and equal opportunity to advance based on the merits of their ideas in the eyes of their peers. They will be silenced and stamped out as “heretical”.

Iran desperately needs a new form of government – one that actually represents its young, progressive, overwhelmingly non-fundamentalist population. But it is from those people themselves that change must come. Relying on a brutal and repressive government to alter itself substantively is naive madness.

And this is why the death of Ayatollah Ali Rafsanjani is no blow to the cause of Iranian freedom, nor was his life a boon to same. The government of Iran mourns the passing of a comrade who, though perhaps not perfectly orthodox, was ultimately one of them. It is the people of Iran who celebrate his death.

[pissant]

He certainly seemed more grounded than ahmajinadad.

[Olog-hai]

All it takes is a restrained tongue to seem so. But he, like Rouhani, was just as radical and fanatical as people like Ahmadinejad and of course their first “Supreme Leader” Khomeini, never mind the current one Khamenei.

[Brad from Tennessee]

When Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989 his funeral in Tehran was shown on U.S. TV. At one point in the funeral procession, fervent followers were so anxious to touch Khomeini’s casket they jostled until the casket turned over and Khomeini’s body landed in the street.

At the time I lived in Orlando, Florida where a local radio station launched a contest for listeners to pick a song that best described Khomeini’s funeral.

The winner was Loudon Wainwright III’s “Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road.”

Take a whiff on me, that ain’t no rose
Roll up your window and hold your nose
You don’t have to look and you don’t have to see
‘Cause you can feel it in your olfactory

You got your dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
And it’s stinking to high heaven