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Princes of Persia

(New York Post) Amir Taheri - The Larijanis, dubbed by Time magazine "the Kennedys of Iran," have captured a number of powerful positions within the Khamenist regime. Ali is speaker of the Islamic Majlis, Iran's fake parliament. Sadeq, a mullah, is chief justice. Muhammad-Jawad is advisor to the supreme guide. Baqer is dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Tehran and supervises the family's extensive business interests. Fazel, a diplomat at the Iranian embassy in Canada, is there to look after the family's investments in North America and Europe and supervise contacts with "friendly circles" in Washington. Current configurations in Iran's Byzantine power game show that the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei has all but broken with his erstwhile protege President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In Tehran, the even money is on Ahmadinejad being deposed or forced to resign before the end of his term in 2013. However, the supreme guide needs a potential replacement as president. Tehran sources suggest Ali Larijani, who is the son of Grand Ayatollah Hashem Amoli, a close associate of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the regime. Ali was only 20 when the 1979 revolution happened. Guided by his father, he became a mullah and joined the newly created Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), where he proved his loyalty to the new regime by taking part in firing squads executing regime opponents. The Larijanis have tried to adopt a pragmatic image, as opposed to Ahmadinejad's militant ideology. They see Ahmadinejad, the son of a blacksmith, as an outsider who is challenging the Khameneist aristocracy's domination of Iranian political and economic life. The Larijanis also oppose Ahmadinejad's radical foreign policy based on the assumption that Iran could drive the U.S. out of the Middle East and create an Islamic "superpower."
2011-06-03 00:00:00
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