[sugarpop]

Iran's Military Coup
"So let’s get this straight. We are supposed to believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected in Iran’s presidential election last week by a 2 to 1 margin against his reformist rival Mir Hossein Mousavi. That this deeply unpopular president, whose gross mismanagement of the state budget is widely blamed for Iran’s economy hovering on the edge of total collapse, received approximately the same percentage of votes as Mohammad Khatami, by far Iran’s most popular past president, received in both 1997 and 2001? That Mousavi, whom all independent polls predicted would at the very least take Ahmadinejad into a runoff election, lost not only his main base of support, Tehran, but also his own hometown of Khameneh in East Azerbaijan (which, as any Azeri will tell you, never votes for anyone but its own native sons)…and by a landslide. That we should all take the word of the Interior Ministry, led by a man put in his position by Ahmadinejad himself, a man who called the election for the incumbent before the polls were even officially closed, that the election was a fair representation of the will of the Iranian people.

Bullshit.

...Yet the brazenness with which this presidential election was stolen by Ahmadinejad’s supporters has caught everyone in Iran, even the clerical establishment, by surprise. Indeed, I am convinced that what we are witnessing in Iran is nothing less than a slow moving military coup against the clerical regime itself, led by Iran’s dreaded Revolutionary Guard, or Pasdaran, as the organization is called in Iran. The Pasdaran is a military-intelligence unit that acts independently from the official armed forces. Originally created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to be the supreme leader’s personal militia, the Pasdaran has been increasingly acting like an independent agent over the last decade, one that appears to no longer answer to the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei..."

...It is the Pasdaran that controls Ahmadinejad, not the mullahs. Indeed, it was precisely fear of the Pasdaran’s rising political and economic influence that led to the “anybody but Ahmadinejad” coalition we saw in this election, wherein young, leftist students and popular reformists like Mohammad Khatami joined together with conservative mullahs and "centrists" like Rafsanjani to push back against what they consider to be the rampant militarization of Iranian politics. There is a genuine fear among these groups that Iran is beginning to resemble Egypt or Pakistan, countries in which the military controls the apparatus of government...

...What is abundantly clear, however, is that the days in which power in Iran rested in the hands of a single individual (the supreme leader) or a single group (the mullahs) are over. For better or worse, the new power base in Iran is the Pasdaran.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...military-coup/


Ayatollah Khamenei Orders Probe Of Iran Election Fraud
"...Mousavi said another rally was planned for Tuesday in north Tehran, the hub of his youth-driven campaign and now a nerve center for his opposition movement.

This is the type of spreading unrest most feared by Iran's non-elected ruling clerics, who control all important decisions but are rarely drawn directly into political disputes. A long and bitter movement against Ahmadinejad could push the dissent past the presidency and target the theocracy itself.

It also has the potential to embolden some members of the ruling inner circle, such as the powerful former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who strongly opposed Ahmadinejad in the campaign.

"That sets you up for a tremendous split," said Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It could be tremendously destabilizing because if the office of (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) is damaged, then the whole shape of leadership ... moves into flux."

There's widespread belief that Khamenei _ the successor of the Islamic Revolution patriarch Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini _ will do what it takes to keep the system intact..."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_215489.html


A Coup Manual: What We Should Know About Iran's Election
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omid-m..._b_216461.html


It was amazing to see the video of all the people taking to the streets protesting this election. Of course it is a fraud. I hope Reza Aslan is wrong and the power doesn't rest with the military now, because if Iran really turns into Pakistan, we are really in deep trouble. I don't have the fear of Iran that some people in this country have, but Pakistan is turning into a very dangerous situation with al qaeda taking over. If that happened in Iran too, and I'm not saying it would because I believe the people of Iran are much more pro-western and America-friendly, and educated, but if the military takes charge then who knows. *heavy sigh*