Word: ayatullah
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...Iran has an opaque and nearly impenetrable government structure, and it's hard to know who exactly controls the levers in that country. There are two of everything. There is a popularly elected President (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) and a - more powerful - Supreme Leader (Ayatullah Ali Khamenei). There is an Iranian army and a - more powerful - Revolutionary Guard Corps. As recently as two years ago, a senior U.S. diplomat told me, "We don't know anything about what goes on inside that government." But that has changed fairly dramatically in the past year. A special CIA Iran-analysis group, which calls itself...
...defiance a month ago, when Ali Larijani, a diplomat whom European negotiators viewed as a relative moderate, was replaced as chief nuclear negotiator by a close political ally of Ahmadinejad. Sources in Tehran say that switch could not have been made without the approval of Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei - a discouraging fact for those in the West who had hoped Khamenei might be tiring of Ahmadinejad's chest-pounding belligerence...
...Sunni and Shi'ite heartlands, respectively. "The governors of those provinces were literally building trenches on their border, and they are now meeting regularly. You had the highest-ranking Sunni politician in the country, Tariq al-Hashemi, go to Najaf to meet with the leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani. All of this would have been unthinkable only a few months...
...After the war, the IRGC's resources were directed toward reconstruction activities, partly as a way of absorbing the energies of the tens of thousands of ideologically committed veterans returning from the front, preventing any disruptive political activism. Because the Guard reports to Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the bulk of its activities are not subject to parliamentary oversight. This free hand, along with their mandate to patrol the country's borders, has helped members engage in widespread smuggling, according to Iranian analysts. Some of the goods that are smuggled in, such as alcohol, do little harm to the formal...
...damaging detail behind the seizure of 15 British Royal Marines and sailors is that the troops were captured by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Soaked with nationalist ideology, the IRGC is controlled by hard-line cleric Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate font of religious and political power in Iran, and exists in many ways apart from the rest of the Iranian government. The Guards' activities are often a thorn in the side of Iran's Foreign Ministry, which is forced to repair the ruptures in Tehran's diplomatic relations. Nevertheless, the IRGC has been one of Iran...