Word: ayatollahs
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...With their joyous yellow election campaign posters flashing daisy flowers with the slogan "Progress is not only our dream, it's our plan!" this new coalition including some old-time conservatives loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini won a landslide victory. Although some 58 of the 290 seats in the majlis (parliament) remain to be filled, the Abadgaran have already secured an unprecedented 25 of Tehran's 30 constituencies. Its upbeat campaign and a ticket listing little-known professionals, the Developers? promises to pursue social and economic improvements within the Islamic-Iranian framework appeared to have convinced a majority...
...even as he blamed foreign extremists, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite majority, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, also held the U.S. responsible for failing to provide adequate security. Shiite warnings against being provoked into sectarian reprisals against their Sunni countrymen were accompanied by a restatement of the urgency of restoring Iraqi sovereignty...
...provisional government created through carefully selected caucuses by insisting that Iraqis be allowed to vote for the body that writes their constitution. Compromising on the Basic Law, and even on how to constitute the interim authority that takes the baton from Bremer on July 1 was relatively simple for Ayatollah Sistani and his supporters, since they recognize these as a caretaker arrangement bridging the brief interlude between the transfer of sovereignty and the holding of elections. Because they make up almost two-thirds of Iraq's population, the Shiites see a democratic election as the best means to prevail...
...business privatizing state industries, doling out oil contracts, concluding treaties or taking any other decisions with long-term consequences. And the Shiite leadership wants the terms of the provisional government's mandate, and a strict timetable for elections, spelled out in a UN Security Council resolution. The Shiite Ayatollah wants the UN to play the leading role in Iraq's transition to sovereignty, he told a German magazine last weekend, and he expects it to oversee and supervise the election process...
...Sunnis are trying to avoid, and some of them are ready to die to avoid it. The Kurds are digging in their heels and demanding to be recognized as a de facto state within a state. Bremer, forced into an increasingly tricky balancing act, had initially hoped that the Ayatollah's objections could be overcome with some tweaking of the caucus plan, but Sistani brought his supporters out into the streets to make clear that it was a recipe for instability. The deadlock prompted Washington to turn...