Word: leaders
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...government has already declared the opposition's protest marches illegal, and in a Wednesday meeting with opposition candidates, Khamenei urged them to "dissociate themselves from rioters" and pursue their complaints about the election results by petitioning the various appointed councils of the regime. But for Mousavi, heeding the Supreme Leader's call to take his supporters off the streets - and rely only on clerical bodies loyal to Khamenei to sort through a contested election - would be to surrender his trump card: it is the street protests that have caused Khamenei to hesitate after doing his utmost to get his ally...
...been at the forefront of brutal attacks on opposition supporters - were there in force. While this created a potentially volatile security situation - just a gathering of hundreds of thousands of people, divided by political faction and stoked by a week of fervor - it also squeezes Mousavi and other opposition leaders politically. Khamenei didn't invite them to prayers to demonstrate their piety; he demanded a symbolic show of loyalty to the Islamic Republic itself, and its founding principle of giving ultimate political authority to its clerical Supreme Leader...
...Whether or not they attended the prayer service, Mousavi's supporters were planning to hold their own rally in Tehran on Saturday. The Supreme Leader's sermon may now contain important clues as to how the basij and other security forces will respond. The opposition candidate's supporters inside the regime are also working hard to reinforce his case for reversing last Friday's announcement. The combination of pressure on the streets and in the corridors of power has already compelled Khamenei to reverse his initial proclamations and order a recount of the vote. (Read "The Man Who Could Beat...
...Supreme Leader may in fact be under competing pressures. The Assembly of Experts, the body of clerics that appoints - and can remove him - is chaired by Mousavi supporter Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is reportedly lobbying the body to intervene. But Khamenei has also thrown in his lot with Ahmadinejad and his supporters in the security forces, who may be in a hurry to bring to an end to the challenge to his second term in office. So Khamenei must hope that he's found a way to lean on the opposition candidates to rein in their supporters, while not being seen...
...founder of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a hard-line Islamic law-and-order collective that briefly ruled Mogadishu for six months in 2006. The ICU succeeded in ejecting the country's warlords from the capital and imposed a modicum of rough justice. But after another ICU leader, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, declared a jihad on neighboring Ethiopia, Ethiopia invaded and toppled...