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Moral Crisis Threatens Iran's Revolutionary Guards

(Guardian-UK) Ali Ansari - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made great play of the fact that he has come to sweep away the corruption and rampant materialism of the recent past, restoring the original revolutionary austerity of Iran - and also of the Revolutionary Guards. Yet in practice he has only increased the corruption while removing any semblance of accountability. The guards have long been involved in business, but under Ahmadinejad they have moved from being beneficiaries to taking a controlling share. This has made many of the more senior officers rich. Those lower down the ranks, however, see the moral basis of the guards being eroded by material greed. Ahmadinejad has moved to retire guardsmen, many with years of experience, and replace them with cadres of young, ideologically committed and loyal recruits. Empowered and imbued with an almost immature enthusiasm for confrontation, these new recruits are simply accentuating the existing tensions, as the old guard, bloodied by war and professionalized by experience, look on with disdain at the naivety of their successors. The writer is director of the Iranian Institute at the University of St. Andrews.
2010-06-11 09:16:21
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