June 13th, 2010 | 
Author: ANN » Iranian parliament MP: Ahmadinejad's position brought …
ann.az12/28/11
“What good did these sanctions bring to the country?,” asks Musavi. “These issues need attention.” After Musavi made the statement, some of Ahmadinejad's supporters attempted to make a clash, however the attempt failed. …
December 22, 2011 – Economic Affairs – Iran Daily Brief
www.irandailybrief.com12/22/11
Ahmadinejad stressed that the Iranian economy was facing no problems and was moving forward smoothly. He said the dropping rate of gasoline consumption in the country was just one achievement of the targeted subsides …
Iran marked its one year anniversary of what most consider to be totally rigged elections that led to demonstrations, torture and death just three days after the U.N. leveled its fourth round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program,
The anniversary passed quietly due mainly to the fact that opposition leaders called of protests to avoid more brutality and possible deaths.
So Has The Opposition Been Quelled?
In spite of many commentators saying that Friday’s quiet streets show that the Green Movement has died, I’d say that it’s simply been muted and that more rage is fomenting just below the surface.
Whatever happens to the Green Party in the future, what it achieved in the past is incredibly important, because it brought about the de-legitimization of the Iranian regime.
The protests by young people, merchants, intellectuals, and religious leaders that took to the streets to protest the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the way in which the regime responded to them convinced nearly all Iranians that the Islamic Republic is neither Islamic nor a republic.
The Iranian regime bases its legitimacy on two fundamental pillars.
1) Spiritual leadership.
2) The will of the people
The First Pillar
When the regime cracked down on the protesters, its brutality and savagery were seen by Iranians and the rest of the world in real time. People witnessed beatings and murders live on their TV screens and read about the rape and torture on Twitter.
Death and torture is nothing new in Iran, but it was previously always carried out quietly and discreetly, and for the most part without the public’s knowledge.
Huge numbers of the deeply religious masses who looked to the State for spiritual guidance either saw the barbarity first hand or later heard about it by word of mouth and they were deeply shocked, and they feel betrayed and are unforgiving.
The Second Pillar
The second pillar upon which the Islamic Republic bases its legitimacy is the will of the people and despite its autocratic tendencies, the Iranian regime goes to great extremes to maintain popular sovereignty, and it is a sign of how seriously Iranians take their elections that more than 70% of the country voted in the last one.
So to hear that the elections were rigged does not sit nicely.
The Straw That’s Breaking The Camel’s Back
Iranian analysts have been warning for many years now about the country’s slow drift toward military dictatorship, and in the eyes of many the Revolutionary Guard’s usurpation of the nation’s police force during the protests confirmed their worst fears.
The transfer of power to the Republican Guard which Iranian law expressly forbids has now been formalized and the Revolutionary Guard currently controls almost all the levers of Iran’s government, and through its subsidiaries in the oil, natural gas, and telecommunications industry, it now controls nearly one third of Iran’s annual budget.
Ahmadinejad And The Mullahs
Ahmadinejad, who was a member of the Revolutionary Guard has been steadily distancing himself from the mullahs who used to run the country, and his cabinet has ceased attending meetings of the Expediency Council, whose members represent the interests of the clerical elite.
Ahmadinejad has stated publicly that, “administering the country should not be left to the Supreme leader, the religious scholars, and other clerics”, and the regime’s religious credentials are now being seriously questioned by some of the most senior religious figures and institutions in Iran.
Before his death, the Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri issued a fatwa calling the government illegitimate, and the hard-line conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who was until recently one of Ahmadinejad’s most vocal supporters is now voicing criticism of the government.
Ahmadinejad’s relationship with the religious establishment has in fact become so strained that some of the most prominent members of the powerful Assembly of Experts, which is a conservative religious body that chooses the supreme leader, boycotted his swearing-in ceremony, as did every single family member of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was the Islamic Republic’s founder.
The Regime Is Rightly Fearful
The regime is deathly afraid of its population since its leaders know full well that the Republic itself came into being on the heels of a popular uprising.
Explicit comparisons of the current regime to the reviled dictatorship of the shah have become commonplace in post-election Iran and not just by the opposition, but by some of Iran’s most reliably conservative politicians including the speaker of parliament and the current adviser to the supreme leader.
In Conclusion
It’s too early to predict exactly what is going to unfold in Iran but it can be said with certainty that Iran is on the verge of the most significant social explosion it has experienced in three decades.
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