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Karroubi was certainly not the first senior figure to protest Mojtaba Khamenei’s intervention on behalf of the extreme right. Before him, Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri, another former Speaker of the Majles and a close aid to Ayatollah Khamenei, had quietly protested the younger Khamenei’s meddling in the political process. (Nategh Nouri, a mid-rank cleric, heads the Supreme Leader’s Office of Inspection)

In the last year before the 1979 Revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei and two other clerics, Abbas Vaez Tabasi and Sayyed Abdolkarim Hasheminejad, formed a sort of leadership ring that led most of the demonstrations and political activities against the Shah in Mashhad and the Khorasan province, which was Iran’s largest province at that time.

Vaez Tabasi is now a powerful cleric who runs the shrine of Imam Reza (the Shiites’ 8th Imam), in Mashhad. He is believed to be a Rafsanjani ally.

After delivering his landmark sermon last Friday, Rafsanjani left for the city of Mashhad to consult with senior clerics there, particularly ayatollah Vaeze Tabasi (the head of the memorial of the Shiite’s eight saint in that city) and other clerics such as Safi Golpaygani and Makarem Shirazi (both of whom are on a visit to the city) about the post election crises that has erupted in Iran. Among those who came to welcome Rafsanjani in Mashhad were Mohammad Javad Mohammadizadeh, the governor of Khorasan province, ayatollah Elm-alhoda, the Friday prayer leader of Mashhad, seyed Ahmad Alavi, the deputy of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Ghods

It should be noted that in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s latest trip to <st1:place w:st="on">Mashhad</st1:place> recently, senior cleric Vaez Tabasi notably refrained from welcoming him.

In a related news, reformist website Moje Azadi (Wave of Freedom) wrote that ayatollah Khamenei plans to meet with a number of senior clerics in Qom (including ayatollah Javadi Amoli and ayatollah Amini, both Friday prayer leaders of Qom). It is said that he will be talking about his support of Ahmadinejad and discussing options for a political solution to resolve the current crises, among other topics.

n early March when parliament, in an unprecedented move in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history, rebuffed the president’s move to lift state subsidies on essential items, including electricity and bread, and offset the higher prices with straight cash handouts to needy citizens.

When the president insisted on an "all-or-nothing" version of his subsidy plan, parliament had little choice but to reject the project, although the legislature did end up passing a $279 billion preliminary budget.

out-of-control spending has blown a gaping hole in the budget so that the country will face an estimated budget deficit of $46 billion.

working hard to establish a public profile apart from hardliners led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and from progressives led by aggrieved presidential challenger Mir Hussein Mousavi.

The Larijani coalition is also gaining the backing of so-called traditionalists among the Islamic clergy. So far, the new faction has not enunciated a philosophical platform,

Ali Larijani is emerging as the public face of the faction, but behind him stand his very influential brothers and other relatives, according to a well-connected source. One of Larijani’s brothers is Sadegh, who is one of the 12 members of the powerful Guardian Council. Another is Mohammad Javad, a physicist and prominent political strategist. The Larijanis’ cousin, Ahmad Tavakoli, a prominent rightist politician and a member of parliament, is also believed to be an important player in the faction, as is Ali Motahari, another prominent rightist political operator who is Ali Larijani’s son-in-law.

With the reappointment of Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, Hashemi Samareh and Masoud Zaribafan to several key posts in the new administration, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued with his insistence on using close friends in the tenth administration.

hmadinejad also appointed Samareh Hashemi as his senior advisr and Masoud Zaribafan to head the Martyrs Foundation.  Previously, he had appointed Akbar Salehi to head the Atomic Energy Agency following Gholamreza Aghazadeh’s resignation. 

In another appointment, Baghaei was appointed to head the tenth administration’s Cultural Heritage Organization.  Also, it was announced that Parviz Davoudi will serve as the president’s advisor.  Mehrdad Bazrpash, who has been with Ahamdinejad since his time as Tehran’s mayor, was promoted from presidential advisor to vice president and head of the National Youth Organization.

Ahmad Khatami, a hardline cleric who strongly backed Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s “landslide” victory, has called on the president to reverse his decision.Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, one of the most influential religious leaders, on Wednesday joined the calls when he said in a religious decree that anyone who had said Iran was “a friend of [the] Israeli people” would “surely lack legitimacy” and such an appointment should be “corrected as soon as possible”.Fundamentalist parliamentarians have threatened the government with a vote of no confidence on other appointments unless Mr Mashaei steps aside.

Reformist papers have said that the premature appointment of a controversial figure before the government had been fully sworn in was a tactical move by the president to distract attention from the post-election protests

On Monday, June 15, in what may have appeared as a slight softening of his initial enthusiastic response to the official results of the presidential election, Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, called for a “careful” evaluation of complaints submitted by reformist challenger Mir Hussein Mousavi to the Guardian Council.  Subsequently, on Tuesday, the Speaker of the Council, after meeting with representatives of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponents, announced the Council’s readiness to conduct a recount of votes from any and all disputed voting districts.

“I have written a letter to the Guardian Council and described the various irregularities,” he announced, “even though I have no hope in the Council. Many of its [twelve] members did not preserve their neutrality during the election process and openly supported the incumbent candidate.” Mousavi’s proposed solution is not a recount, but a cancellation of the results and a new election altogether

For his part, Mohtashamipour proposed the formation of what he labeled a Truth-finding Committee to investigate electoral irregularities and allegations. The Committee, he insisted, would consist of three representatives of Grand Ayatollahs (maraje’ taqlid), four persons representing the candidates, one employee of the Interior Ministry who has proven his neutrality during the election, one member of the Guardian Council with similar conditions accompanied by a university law professor and an unbiased judge as recommended by the Bar Association, the Attorney General, the Head of the Judicial Branch, and the Head of Iran’s General Inspection Organization. As none of the Grand Ayatollahs have supported Ahmadinejad in the election, the arrangement would severely limit the authority of both the Council and the Interior Ministry.

Meanwhile, media reported Wednesday that Iran’s supreme leader handed a humiliation to the president, ordering him to dismiss his choice for top deputy after the appointment drew sharp condemnation from their hard-line base. The move by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appeared to show his need to keep hard-liners’ support even at the cost of angering the president, a close ally – at a time when Khamenei is facing unprecedented opposition after the disputed June 12 election.

The supreme leader is believed to informally weigh in on senior government appointments behind the scenes. But he does not have a formal role in approving appointments and it is extremely rare for him to order an official’s removal.

The opposition website Rooz Online carried what it said was an interview with a man the government had shipped in to Tehran to quell the demonstrations. He said he was being paid 2m rial (£122) to assault protesters with a heavy wooden stave, and that other volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces, were being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran.

During a campaign gathering in Tehran, the hardline head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, threw his support to Mr. Ahmadinejad, as well.

Karroubi has gained some notoriety among the four candidates for proposing a novel economic plan which would grant shares in Iran's oil wealth to all Iranian citizens.

Karroubi who has faulted the Secretary of Iran's Guardian Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati for canvassing support for President Ahmadinejad, urged the council to comply by its supervisory obligations.

criticized the recent statements of the IRGC Chief-Commander, Major General Mohammad-Ali Jafari about the division of Basij into two segments -- military and non-military -- the second which has reportedly been allowed to be involved in political activities.

The harsh responses and treatment that intelligence and judiciary officials of the Islamic ‎Republic of Iran have embarked against a group of political and social activists who have ‎been promoting the idea of international monitoring of Iran’s forthcoming presidential ‎elections on June 12, 2009, indicate that they view this issue to be a red line not to be ‎crossed, and if done would not be tolerated. ‎

intelligence-judiciary agents to prevent a regular meeting of ‎the members of the Committee for Free, Healthy, and Fair Elections

ayatollah Khamenei, the leader of Iran, has directly engaged ‎himself in the issue by barring, through harsh and threatening language, presidential ‎candidates and their supporters from questioning the integrity of the elections.

On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12. Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull  them into complacency But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link) Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i  publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.

The willingness of the regime simply to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud represents a historic shift in Iran’s Islamic revolution. All previous leaders at least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran’s leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power. The Iranian opposition, which includes some very powerful individuals and institutions, has an agonizing decision to make. If they are intimidated and silenced by the show of force (as they have been in the past), they will lose all credibility in the future with even their most devoted followers. But if they choose to confront their ruthless colleagues forcefully, not only is it likely to be messy but it could risk running out of control and potentially bring down the entire existing power structure, of which they are participants and beneficiaries.

At a press conference around midnight, Mousavi declared himself "definitely the winner" based on "all indications from all over Iran."

"It is our duty to defend people's votes. There is no turning back," Mousavi said, alleging widespread irregularities.

Bringing any showdown into the streets would certainly face a swift backlash from security forces. The political chief of the powerful Revolutionary Guard cautioned Wednesday it would crush any "revolution" against the Islamic regime by Mousavi's "green movement."

Foreign capital is fleeing to Dubai, and Tehran’s stock market has fallen by twenty per cent since May. Curiously, Ayatollah Khamenei issued an edict in October that gave sweeping new powers to Rafsanjani, who runs a government body known as the Expediency Council—a move widely seen as an effort to rein in Ahmadinejad. The new President, in other words, may be too hard-line for even the Supreme Leader.

Amid talk that the recent election was a silent coup carried out by elements of the hardline Revolutionary Guard after eight years of reformist rule, Western embassies have been scrambling to understand what the Hojjatieh stands for and to what extent the influence of its teachings will be felt in the new government's domestic and foreign policies.

The Islamic society he belonged to at Alm-u Sanat University where he attended was an extreme traditional and fundamentalist group that contained a large number of students from the provinces and maintained grass-roots links with the Hojjatieh. The society's anti-leftism also chimes with reports that Ahmadinejad was pushing for a takeover of the Soviet Embassy alongside or instead of the US compound in Tehran during the 1979 revolution.

Haqqani theological school