There are reports that Iran's clerical establishment is weighing the option of replacing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a panel of religious officials over his contentious role in the election dispute.
Britain's International Business Times, citing Al Arabiya TV, says the country's powerful, 86 member Assembly of Experts headed by former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is split in its support for Khamenei, and his surrogate, current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The unconfirmed report suggests the Experts have met secretly in Iran's holy city of Qom to discuss a political compromise to the week and a half old political unrest which followed the announcement of disputed presidential election results.
An option they are reportedly considering is a complete change in the structure of the 30-year old Islamic Republic's government replacing the supreme leader with a panel and forcing President Ahmadinejad out of power.
MAYBE...
THIS LINK IS FROM AN IRANIAN FRIEND WHO NOW THINKS MAJOR CHANGE IS INEVITABLE - BECAUSE THE YOUTH WILL NOT BACK DOWN.
Sorry to be so cynical, but anything compromise which includes input from the Mullahs will be shifting the deck chairs around on the Titanic.
ReplyDeletemy iranian contacs disagree with you.
ReplyDeletethey say it may permanently alter role of mullahs on civic/secular life.
the supreme leader role might vanish.
we shall soon see.
my iranian contacts agree that the intl community must get tougher NOW!
we need to out maxium pressure obn the regime.
Iranian contacts have been predicting a lot over the years. It has all seemed pie in the sky, to me.
ReplyDeleteI think the Iranian people are mostly raised/inculcated in an Islamist tradition. They don't know Freedom. They have an inkling of it from the internet, and from those who have been to Europe and America.
Freedom will not come easily to the Iranians.
But, those women who feel so strongly as to beat on cops in the street, over an issue so small as showing a little bit of hair from underneath a veil, they give me hope that Freedom does, indeed, beat in the breast of all Human Beings, even if they have not the words to express the feeling within their hearts.
MY COINTACTS ARE HERE - HAVE BEEN SINCE THE SHAH SPLIT.
ReplyDeleteMANY ARE JEWISH.
SOME ARE JEWS WHO HAVE MARRIED MUSLIMS.
THEY WANT A SECULAR IRANIAN STATE.
AND THOUGHT THAT IMPOSSIBLE LAST WEEK.
BUT NOT NOW.
THIS DIFF?
THE COURAGE OF THE IRANIAN YOUTH.