Word: alis
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...Tehran's streets in the aftermath of a disputed presidential election, Iranians - and the smart folks in Washington - know that Iran's presidency is not the seat of executive power. Unelected mullahs hold veto power over the decisions of the elected government, and their Supreme Leader, currently Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, must approve all political policies and make the key foreign policy and security decisions. No one can run for president without the approval of the clerics, and they routinely narrow the field to those deemed acceptable within the parameters of the Islamic Revolution...
...system actually allows the Supreme Leader to present different faces to the world. While he has strongly backed Ahmadinejad, for example, Khamenei also for a time designated one of the president's key pragmatist critics, Ali Larijani, as the point man in negotiations with the West over Iran's nuclear program...
...election, however, suggests that he's ready to break the mold of three decades of governance in the Islamic Republic. Whatever comes next, the events of the June 12 presidential election will be remembered as a turning point in Iran's revolutionary history; a moment when Ayatullah Ali Khamenei rolled the dice...
...news that Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has ordered an investigation into charges of voter fraud in his country's presidential elections has been greeted with skepticism by many in the West. After all, it was Ayatullah Khamenei, who holds the ultimate authority in the theocratic nation, who rushed to embrace incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the victor long before the ballots were counted. But his order to the Guardian Council, the powerful watchdog of the Iranian constitution, to start an investigation may not be as cynical as it appears. (Read a story about how Khamenei is the power...
...think the reformists went too far and did not respect this balance? Khatami's rule came to an end after eight years, but if he had stayed in government, who knows, maybe that balance between the [Supreme] Leader [Ayatullah Ali Khamenei] and other powers would have eventually been reached. But we have a particular system of division of powers in Iran. The Leader has certain powers, and the President has other powers, and balance between these powers is possible...