Word: ahmadinejad
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...Iran DISSIDENTS ON TRIAL Days before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term on Aug. 5, Iran held a mass trial of more than 100 people (above), including a former Vice President and a Newsweek reporter, charging them with rioting, conspiring with foreign powers and trying to foment a revolution after the nation's June elections. Iran claims that many defendants admitted guilt, but critics say that the confessions were forced and that the trial is an attempt to quash the inevitable protests surrounding Ahmadinejad's swearing...
...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...