Word: ayatullahs
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...regime has repeatedly charged that the recent unrest is a plot by foreign powers, particularly Britain, to orchestrate an uprising against the theocracy. On the eve of the pivotal vote, Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei expressed concern about a "soft" or "velvet" revolution, the term originally used to describe the 1989 overthrow of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. (See the top 10 players in Iran's power struggle...
...Britain has been the focus of particular hatred. Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei called it "the most evil" among Iran's enemies in his speech a week after the elections, when he unequivocally backed Ahmadinejad. Under Winston Churchill, Britain engineered the 1953 coup that brought down the democratically elected government after it nationalized Iran's oil, until then largely owned by British Petroleum. Understandably, many Iranians still see Britain as a credible culprit. In a piece titled "How Did England Mount the Green Wave?" the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) analyzed London's interference in Iran's elections based...
...reporting on Neda Agha Soltan - the 27-year-old woman whose death on video has made her an icon of Iran's protest movement - it says the paper failed to mention "evidence" by the Intelligence Ministry "which points to some foreign government's planning of this scenario." Ayatullah Ahmad Khatami, a conservative leader of Tehran's Friday Prayers, accused the protesters themselves of killing Neda: "Any intelligent person seeing the film gets it ... the way they've shot it from where the woman's car is." Iran's ambassador to Mexico reckons the killing could be the work...
...President has been measured in his response to Iran's elections, and has escaped direct criticism from the Iranian regime. With Obama now a more elusive target, Iran has redirected the full force of its anger at the E.U. (See pictures of the legacy of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini...
Both the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards Corps (or Sepah) were founded in the first year of the Islamic republic in 1979, following a decree by Iran's first Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. "From the start, the Sepah was about building a popular army, one that had the duty to protect the Islamic republic from within," explains Moshen Sazegara, a founder of the Revolutionary Guards who later fell out with the regime and currently resides and works as a journalist...