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The recent Iranian "elections" were obviously rigged to make sure Khamenei's stupid little worthless puppet was re-elected. Election rigging unfortunately is not unique to Iran but is far more widespread than most people realize or dare think about. It is a phenomenon of rich and poor countries alike..........USA, India, and lastly the Soviet Union being a simple classic example........with 99% voter turnouts sometimes, and all voting for the same party.
Elections are in their simplest form about power and elite groups jostling for power, influence and loot,............ where the will of the people save a few countries is actually irrelevant. But a charade must be presented for the consumption of the ordinary man, and so it is with most elections.
So what is the big deal with Iran? Well its been 30 years since the UNISLAMIC regime came to power. Thousands of people executed by the UNISLAMIC regime around 1979, civil war with lefties the Tudeh party around the early 1980's left a 100,000 dead or executed; a 1,000,000 killed fighting Iraq, and quite a few others killed by the UNISLAMIC regime since.
Mullah Iran is quite simply the worst regime the Iranian people have had to endure, covering a history of 2500 years. Past regimes were maybe incompetent, maybe corrupt, but never incompetent, corrupt AND tyrannical.
Mullah Iran's governance is poor, living standards are significantly down since 1979, but it relies on the tricks of meaningless populism/sloganeering, religious piety (Shia nationalism) and simple state terror (street thugs such as the Basij-----boys on motorbikes armed with chains and knifes)-------that is the sum total of the "legitimacy" of the UNISLAMIC regime. The billionaires and millionaires in the country are the mullahs, who sell poor Iranians to the Gulf as sex slaves for profit.
That such a bad regime should still be in power is indeed very sad. The Revolutionary Guard and the VEVAK ensure that the regime stays in power, but the writer below omits the critical backing of Western powers especially in Europe who help maintain the mullah regime. Without this covert help from Europe, the mullah regime with its corruption, and complete ineptitude would have disappeared from the page of time long time ago. Largely illiterate (by Western standards) Mullahs running Iran by themselves is a misnomer; it is an incorrect description of the real power structure in Iran...............Ahmedinejad has no real power but is a mere front; behind him is the mullahs, and the officials from state security VEVAK, and the Revolutionary Guards, and ultimately behind them the backing of the UNISLAMIC regime by certain European powers.
Iran requires a revolution from within to topple this evil alien regime that is in power in Tehran now. Then a new leadership needs to be established consisting of civilians ONLY, from within Iran.
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Iran Update: Khamenei on the Way Out?
by Hossein Askari
from National Interest
Writing on this site on June 17, I indicated that Ayatollah Khamenei had decided to interfere in the presidential election because he and his backers (the intelligence services and the Revolutionary Guards) were afraid of a takeover by Hashemi Rafsanjani if Mir Hossein Moussavi won the presidential election. So Khamenei and his backers preempted the possibility that he might be replaced as supreme leader by rigging the election in favor of their man, Ahmadinejad. After the election and the initiation of protests, it appeared the regime had two options, with neither boding a promising future—a total crackdown against dissent and closing of clerical ranks or mandating new elections. The government largely adopted the former option. But the clerics did not close ranks as expected and a critical rift that may be irreparable has developed. An increasing number of powerful clerics and technocrats now see only one available option for saving the clerical system without unimaginable bloodshed—replacing Ayatollah Khamenei and soon. Let’s fill in the blanks.
Even before the election, a number of clerics and technocrats felt that the Islamic Republic was in serious trouble. Corruption, economic mismanagement and consolidation of all levers of power by Ahmadinejad, with the supreme leader’s support and blessing, had gone too far. The Islamic Republic was no longer distinguishable from a corrupt run-of-the-mill dictatorship. What made it even more troubling to some of these religious scholars was that it was all being done in the name of Allah and Shia Islam.
The election and its aftermath took matters onto another plane of abuse for these scholars. The poll results were so fraudulent as to insult human intelligence. Khamenei abused his position by prematurely confirming Ahmadinejad’s victory, treating the opposition with little regard and, worst of all, attributing it to “divine intervention.” The brutal crackdown caused much agony among religious scholars. Some scholars saw their religious influence continually eroded under the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad system. Some might have even seen all of this as shame brought upon Shia Islam. But above all, religious scholars saw the recent actions of the regime as a perversion of everything Islamic. Iran and Shiism were loosing face rapidly, not only among other Muslims, but also in the world at large. No true religious scholar could sanction the regime’s actions as Islamic.
Thus the statement on Saturday by a group of relatively senior religious scholars (Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum) that the election was a fraud and the government illegitimate has further undermined the regime’s mantle of religiosity. Many members of the group are students of Grand Ayatollahs Montazzeri and Saneii (who have already forbidden collaboration with the regime) and are teachers and researchers at Mofid University in Qum. Some members marched with the protesters after the elections. Their actions and statements are essentially targeted at all of Iran’s Grand Ayatollahs, to push them into collective action against the regime. Some members of the group have even gone as far as arguing for dissolution of the whole system, including the velayat-e-faqih. The Republic will now have an increasingly harder time defending its “Islamic” designation. It is religious illegitimacy, not the absence of democratic values, which will eventually undermine the regime in Tehran.
Still many, if not most, religious scholars in Iran uphold the clerical system introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini. They and much of the Iranian public may want the system preserved, but this may be difficult, if not impossible, with Ayatollah Khamenei as the supreme leader. He has in the eyes of many betrayed Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision and legacy. A replacement for Ayatollah Khamenei will have to be made soon if further defection and bloodshed is to be forestalled and the system preserved.
While Hashemi Rafsanjani covets the post of supreme leader, he won’t ascend to the position under the prevailing circumstances. The clerics, with the support of the intelligence services, the Revolutionary Guards (including the Basij) and the regular military, will have to settle on a true Islamic scholar who has no political ambitions, who is not corrupt, who is dedicated to Islam and who can restore Iranian and regional faith in the regime. While the new supreme leader will be the public face of the Islamic Republic, the day-to-day responsibilities of the office will in all likelihood be in the hands of seasoned politicians, such as Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The regime is at the proverbial “tipping point.” The United States and the West should act cautiously if they are to support the aspirations of the Iranian people.
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Hossein Askari is the Iran Professor of Business and International Affairs at the George Washington University.
The idiots who play the game from Iran via Turkey?, is plastic bags, and bags in general and the number 3. Now imagine a 40 year old with a beer belly running off with somebodies bag containing their lunch and nick nacks, into the sunset in broad day light--------the mullahs in Iran can and do, and so can you.
