Little Green Footballs has busted Reuters for cropping out an “activist’s” knife from a photo taken on board the Mavi Marmara. The original photo, published by Turkey’s Hurriyet (and, to their credit, by AP) clearly shows one of a group of “activists” standing over a wounded Israeli soldier (in the lower right corner of the [...]
Iran’s Hidden Revolution
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The New York Times yesterday published a piece in their Op-Ed section by Danielle Pletka and Ali Alfoneh, entitled, “Iran’s Hidden Revolution“.
The look at the uprising from a perspective that so far I haven’t seen many others use. Their analysis is that while everyone saw the external aspect of the uprising, namely the people protesting the election and futilely trying to bring down the government, another more successful revolution was taking place behind the scenes as a result.
The successful revolution that hardly anyone is talking about is the rise of military dictatorship in place of what was a theocratic government. While the power had been with the mullahs prior to Ahmadinejad’s rise to the presidency (his predecessor, Rafsanjani, had been a cleric as well), Ahmadinejad, a former officer in the Revolutionary Guards, has been successful in slowly shifting the power of government.
According to the article, Ahmadinejad was able to
consolidate power and to promote his brothers in arms. Fourteen of the 21 cabinet ministers he has appointed are former members of the guards or its associated paramilitary, the Basij. Several, including Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, are veterans of notorious units thought to have supported terrorist operations in the 1980s.
This creeping militarization has not been restricted to the central government: provincial governors, press commissars, film directors, intelligence officers and business leaders are increasingly former members of the guard. The elite force controls much of the economy either directly — the Basij has rights to oil extraction — or through proxy companies like Khatam al Anbiya, which dominates construction throughout Iran.
As the power shifted from the clerics to Ahmadinejad and the military, the clerics would fall in line and essentially give their “approval” of his policies to save face—to survive—and avoid any showdown. According to the article, the rapid ratification of the election results is another example of just that:
Many have been struck by the crudeness of the recent vote rigging, with reformist candidates losing even their hometowns. The unusually speedy certification of the election and Ayatollah Khamenei’s quick blessing — “a divine miracle” — only served to underscore an obvious sham.
With the uprising stifled and Ahmadinejad and the military on top, this has only served to hammer the final nail into the coffin of the clerics and to complete the power shift from the clerics to the military under Ahmadinejad.