A body headed by Mohammed Yazdi and composed of the most reactionary clerics will be in charge of selecting new Ayatollahs.
EXCERPTS ON AYATOLLAH COMMISSION:
Following the escalation of protests by Iran’s senior ayatollahs against the regime, some members of the Qom Seminary Teachers Association (the most important organization of clerics affiliated with the regime) are planning to present a new list of “grand ayatollahs” under the supervision of Mohammad Yazdi, Ahmad Jannati and Mesbah Yazdi.
…the Teachers Association’s leaders to identify and announce several grand ayatollahs who are supportive of the government.
According to rumors, the new list of grand ayatollahs will include people such as Jafar Sobhani, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Khoshvaght and a number of other ayatollahs approved by the regime…
For the full story see:
http://www.roozonline.com/english/news/newsitem/ar…
MY COMMENT: I suspect the regime is already aware of plans by top Ayatollahs in Qum to abolish the office of Supreme Leader, so badly tarnished by Khamenei, after the latter die (see link below). Is this a countermeasure? If so it will take time to develop. The hated Supreme Tyrant can’t die soon enough for the people of Iran. His assassination would be a blessing and his death an occasion for national celebration.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/223345
THE REGIME IS PURGING EVERYTHING AND PLACING HARDLINERS EVERYWHERE
Purges have already occurred in academia and in the Interior ministry. When it comes to the media, the regime isn’t satisfied with shutting down all opposition media, banning foreign journalists entirely and making it a crime for Iranians to talk to foreign media. It is even purging its own state media. For example, consider this report from Rooz:
Iran’s Fars News agency is among the media outlets that was mobilized by the Islamic Passdaran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) following the tenth presidential election to support the Ahmadinejad administration and combat the green movement. In January 2008 when the former Fars president Mehdi Fazayeli, who was close to the international affairs secretary at the National Security Council Javad Vaeedi under Ali Larijani, was replaced by an unknown face, Hamidreza Moghaddamfar (who is known at the IRGC as “Hajj Hamid Naseri”), Fars workers could not imagine that the news agency would turn into the interrogators’ main outlet in 2009.
Reporters and Photographers Fired
Moghaddamfar, whose resume carries only the two titles of “media expert” and “strategic management PhD student,” dismissed more than 20 reporter, photographers and staff members soon after taking charge of Fars news agency. He replaced the dismissed staff with unknown faces from amongst student Basij propaganda activists and titled them “reporters” and “analysts.”
One of the dismissed Fars reporters, Yousef Asadi, wrote in his personal blog, “A Village Correspondent’s Blog,” about the dismissal of Fars reporters and staff members following the appointment of the new president: “After the arrival of the new manager, the editor of the political division and many other hard-working Fars reporters including myself suddenly realized that we had been fired. When speaking with the new president, I heard that he had said, ‘No one has the right to protest here, even you, who are my friend.’”
For more on the Rooz article see:
http://www.roozonline.com/english/news/newsitem/ar…
If this isn’t totalitarian fascism, what is it? One thing the Islamic Republic cetainly is not is a republic in any real sense. All so-called “republican” institutions, including the judicial system and constitutional guarantees of right are mere facades–fig leafs to cover the new reality. They have no more power to curb this regime and its as the Roman Senate from the time on Augustus.
That being said, there is one key difference: Augustus and his successors were never so unpopular or lacking in legitimacy as this regime which is rapidly becoming one of the most unpopular in history. On a scale of one to 100, it ranks down there with Soviet puppet governments in Poland, Hungary, etc. Unlike those puppet governments it lacks some equivalent to the Soviet government to send tanks and troops in to assist it’s survival. Of all 20th century regimes it most closely resembles the isolated and hated Ceaucescu regime in Rumania after the Soviet Union fell.
