Gathering the news about Iran's 2009 National election in one place.

Ruhollah Khomeini

Who will lead? – Tehran Bureau

Posted Thu, 2009-06-25 13:45 by IRelec09

Who will lead? – Tehran Bureau: Via Tehran Bureau.

[TEHRAN BUREAU] While Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini lived, his political and religious pre-eminence meant his word was law. Many Iranians still assign him an aura of infallibility.

But Ayatollah Khomeini left behind a political system with checks and balances. One of these is the power of the Experts Assembly, a clerical body chaired by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to remove the supreme leader (rahbar), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

With tensions between Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Khamenei exacerbated by the presidential election, this power of the Experts Assembly (majlis-e khobregan) may explain why Rafsanjani has reportedly been spending time in Qom, the centre of the clerical establishment.
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Iran's Steely Chief Cleric Steps Forward

Posted Fri, 2009-06-19 23:32 by IRelec09

Iran's Steely Chief Cleric Steps Forward - washingtonpost.com: Via washingtonpost.com .

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who warned at Friday prayers of continued demonstrations leading to "bloodshed," has held the title of supreme leader of the revolution for 20 years, twice as long as the man for whom the title was created. In laying down an ultimatum to protesters demonstrating against alleged vote fraud, Khamenei showed the steel that got him the job.

Thirty years ago, Khamenei's mentor, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, swept to power in Iran when the monarch running the ancient country backed away from a similar challenge. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's decision to flee in the face of a rising revolt left the country to Khomeini, a coal-eyed cleric whose righteous persona and unquestioned religious credentials personified the 1979 Islamic revolution he instigated from exile and dominated upon his triumphant return.

But when Khomeini died 10 years later, he left no successor. The grand ayatollah widely expected to follow him, Hossein Ali Montazeri, lost his place by expressing revulsion at violence committed in the name of the revolution.

"I surely would follow you up to the entrance of hell," Montazeri wrote to his mentor, Khomeini, in 1988, when political prisoners were being hanged by the hundreds each day. "But I am not ready to follow you in."
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Iran analysis: protest draws comparisons with 1979 revolution

Posted Mon, 2009-06-15 23:39 by IRelec09

Iran analysis: protest draws comparisons with 1979 revolution: Via Telegraph UK.

The brave decision by defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi to join a huge rally protesting against the result of last week's election has inevitably drawn comparisons with the heady events that took place during the Iranian revolution 30 years ago.

In 1979 the Shah of Iran was unceremoniously dumped out of office after large crowds took to the streets of Tehran and the country's other major cities to protest at his despotic rule. The unrest resulted in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini being installed as Iran's undisputed leader and launching the Islamic revolution that would transform the dynamics of the modern Middle East.
Fast forward three decades and the street protests that have erupted throughout Iran have raised hopes that the country might once more be on the brink of a seismic shift in its political landscape.

Cries of "Death to the Shah" have now been replaced by regular chants of "Death to the Dictator",
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