Posted on 06/14/2009 3:23:54 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
(To get a feel for what is going on in the streets of Tehran, watch this linked BBC video clip.)
Last night in London after appearing on Keith Olbermann's show, I got an email from a well-connected Iranian who knows many of the power figures in the Tehran political order asking to meet me. I told him that the only place possible was Paddington on the way to Heathrow -- and there we met.
He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious -- Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a "charade."
But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.
My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.
Likewise, he said, Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Mousavi know this -- and thus are using all of the instruments at their control within Iran's government apparatus to fight back -- but given Khamenei's embrace of Ahmadinejad's actions in the election and victory, there is no recourse but to try and remove Khamenei. Some suggest that Rafsanjani will count votes to see if there is a way to formally dislodge Khamenei -- but this source I met said that all of these political giants have resources at their disposal to "do away with" those that get in the way.
He predicted that the so-called reformist camp -- who are not exactly humanists in the Western liberal sense -- may try and animate efforts to decapitate the regime and "do away with" Ahmadinejad and even the Supreme Leader himself.
I am not convinced that this source "knows" these things will definitely happen but am convinced of his credentials and impressed with the seriousness of the discussion we had and his own concern that there may be political killing sprees ahead.
This is not a vision he advocates -- but one he fears.
-- Steve Clemons
BUMP!
Maybe a separate thread for this call to action (wear green Monday June 15)???
Kinda like our “wear red on fridays”?
dammitdexter Video: Ahmadinejad attacked & escapes on car's roof at Sharrif University today: http://tinyurl.com/m6hz2h #iranelection #Mousavi less than 10 seconds ago from web
Iran is not the backward autocratic society like their Arab neighbors. They had the Shah who moved them very quickly to modernization and they had become a prosperous nation with a good future.
That is until Jimmy Carter turned his back and aided the Islamonazis turning the country into a prison camp.
The mullahs killed more people in a few months than the Shah did his oponents over decades.
Thank you Jimmy Carter.
Actually that was in the back of my mind. It has been that way for years, before the Ayahtolahhs brough them back 1400 years.
Thanks again for the reply. Does not look good for Iran, whatever the outcome. It certainly does not look as if they can count on much meaningful help from us either.
Looks like the mullahs non-Iranian forces are out doing their dirty deeds on the public at large. Time for the Iranians to start to beat the brains out of anyone that they suspect is not Iranian, and connected to the government thugs. Kill a few tens of thousands of the RG and non-Iranian henchmen and things may start to come to a head. The mullahs must be seen as hoping on planes and exiting to their safe havens elsewhere. Better yet. Blow the damn buildings up where the mullahs mostly reside. That would be a nice start on the way to a true westernized Iranian democracy.
If true that is a darned shame.
jamescarr: #IranElection tinyurl.com/lo56ga "Grand Ayatollah Sanei in Iran has declared Ahmadinejad's presidency illegitimate." oh boy. The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan Twitter - 59 secs ago - Link from andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com - 5088
If true at least it shows some of the good folks are willing to go after the bastard. Perhaps tomorrow we will hear he was lynched and set on fire.
"The oil thing" is everything. With out it, the muzzies would be back in their tents.
So we have to manage it for them, as I said in a later post.
With Obama in charge we’ll bail for sure.
Or he’ll turn up at Columbia.
Safe place for him.
We will have to continue with alternative media because I doubt if our MSM would even report it. May the good triumph over evil.
Our “management” cost us the twin towers.
The WH response, at least they are saying something now.
Latest reports on Twitter is that no Iranians are now on Twitter.
Yikes- I wonder how that happened. I read somewhere earlier that Iran was asking twitter to cease all communications in Iran.
Soon there will be on one able to get the truth out..
To the protestors: Keep it up! Put pressure on that regime! This is the news I’ve been waiting years to hear.
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