Word: ahmadinejad
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...liner bloc that is opposed to reconciliation with the opposition or the West. The IRGC, then, is the most effective power bloc in the country, certainly more cohesive in its top leadership than the conservative political faction, which has seen spats between the Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad. The Revolutionary Guards leadership has a vested financial interest in isolating the Islamic republic from the West - and focusing its sights eastward toward places like China. Indeed, some observers believe the IRGC's economic functions may eventually turn it into an entity like South Korea's government-supported chaebol...
...While Ahmadinejad has always had close ties to the Revolutionary Guards - 14 of his 21 ministers in his first-term cabinet were said to have been veterans of the force - his current position suggests that it is now he who must pay homage to the Guards. When he appointed a seemingly moderate in-law as his Vice President last month, in defiance of the Supreme Leader, the Revolutionary Guards quickly put him in his place, warning that his political future was "dependent on his acceptance of velayat-e faqih [or rule by the clergy, the founding tenet of the Iranian...
...short in Farsi, is widely believed to have played a large role in orchestrating the crackdown on political dissidents and protesters following the disputed presidential election. Its political influence within the regime has always far exceeded the actual army's, and it has increased exponentially since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to office in 2005. But the speculation among Iranian opposition sources is that, these days, the IRGC's powerful patron - whose second term officially began last week - has now become its puppet, falling under the influence of a gang of security chiefs (the so-called New Right) that harbor...
...same day, reports trickled out that, following Ahmadinejad's dismissal of the Intelligence Minister late last month, as many as 20 officials in the ministry who disapproved of the public airing of confessions by political dissidents were purged, including the deputy minister and chief of counterintelligence. The move, according to Hassan Younesi, the son of a former Intelligence Minister, was engineered by Hussein Taeb and Ahmad Salek, two top Guards commanders. "Never has the Intelligence Ministry witnessed such a politically motivated purge since its establishment," Younesi wrote on his personal blog...
While the street action has regained momentum and taken on new strategies, its long-term goal remains nebulous. Is the aim to make the country ungovernable? That is not likely to be the goal of at least one segment of the opposition, members of the established bureaucracy. Threatened by Ahmadinejad's pruning of their ranks over the past four years, they would be happy to see him go; but they also want to preserve the bureaucratic system that is the source of their entitlements and power. Meanwhile, the increasingly brutal encounters between demonstrators and the Basij will only multiply...