Word: leaders
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Friday's weekly Friday prayer service at Tehran University will have done a lot more than honor the onset of the Muslim sabbath. The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, led the service himself and called for "peace and tranquility" and an end to the mass protests. He made his remarks in front of many thousands of people either in the campus or lining the surrounding streets in his first public address since the outcome of last Friday's disputed presidential election. He insisted there had been no fraud in the result, describing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election...
...impossible for an outsider, in Iran for 10 days, to sift through the governmental opacity, the contradictory demonstrations, and predict what comes next. It seems likely that no matter how many people flood the streets in protest, the Supreme Leader will continue to back Ahmadinejad. It also seems likely that while Barack Obama should continue to press for negotiations, he shouldn't be too optimistic about the prospect of success...
...situation is all the more dangerous and unpredictable because the election and its aftermath appear to have surprised all the major players, forcing them to improvise their responses to a fast-changing situation. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei appear to have been taken aback by the surge in support for the pragmatic conservative candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The decision to hastily announce what many say was an improbable landslide victory for Ahmadinejad touched off an unprecedented wave of protests that have rocked Khamenei, who has since backtracked by ordering an investigation into claims of voter fraud...
...regime built on clerical authority and "managed" democracy to a tyranny on par with the Shah's. Khamenei will be reluctant to go that route. But his handling of the political crisis thus far will have deepened long-standing skepticism within the clergy about his abilities as Supreme Leader. A harsh crackdown, even if followed by reforms, would solve an immediate crisis, but at the cost of inflicting a possibly fatal long-term wound on the regime...
...Khamenei's "Divine" Retreat? Khamenei blundered when he yoked his position as Supreme Leader - which is typically above the factional fray of the regime's politics - so closely to Ahmadinejad. He issued a barely disguised public endorsement of the candidate and then rushed to proclaim Ahmadinejad's "divine victory" and order all Iranians to accept it. But the mounting instability on the streets appears to have sent Khamenei into retreat as he ordered the Guardian Council to investigate claims of electoral fraud. If the combination of escalating street demonstrations and the politicking of Mousavi's backers inside the regime...