Word: ayatullah
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...erupted two weeks ago, the mood in Tehran has swung between indifference--the fighting rarely makes the headlines--and resentment over Iran's longstanding sponsorship of Hizballah. True, there have been officially sponsored rallies declaring support for Hizballah, whose leaders pledge religious allegiance to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. But the emotional support for Hizballah common throughout the Arab world is largely absent here...
...incentives offered to Tehran in June. Before the crisis erupted, the momentum seemed to favor advocates of a pragmatic, positive response. But now the radicals are using the U.S.-backed Israeli campaign in Lebanon to push their case for a tough line. As an adviser to a senior conservative ayatullah puts it, "This has strengthened the hand of those who argue, 'If this happened to us, the only thing that would save us is a nuclear deterrent...
...insists violence will abate as more Iraqi soldiers and police deploy, but the U.N. report points out that "new recruits are primary targets of the insurgency." In a rare statement last week, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, called on Iraqis "to unite and forsake hatred and violence. Replace it with love and peaceful dialogue...
...events in the Middle East. Here's my conspiracy theory: It starts with the fact that no one really does know who runs Iran. There are all sorts of competing institutions-governmental and religious and bazaari. There is a secular President, mouthy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a supreme leader, the Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. There is a constitutional tension between those two offices, a tension that may have been heightened in the past year by Ahmadinejad's close relationship with Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Corps is a strange institution. It is an extremist religious militia that exists outside the Iranian...
...someday draw the country into war with its longtime adversary, the U.S. But for all the bluster, Ahmadinejad's powers are constrained. The legal structure of the Islamic Republic places ultimate political authority in Khamenei, 66, who became Iran's religious leader in 1989 after the death of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Because the Iranian Constitution grants the Supreme Leader veto power over the President's decisions, it is Khamenei who has the final say in high matters of state. As a result, the low-profile cleric--he shuns interviews with journalists--is the figure who will probably determine whether...