This can't be good

From Borzou Daragahi, Iran's Revolutionary Guard takes command Los Angeles Times 07/06/09

The top leaders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard publicly acknowledged they had taken over the nation's security and warned late Sunday that there was no middle ground in the ongoing dispute over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a threat against a reformist wave led by Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the elite military branch, said the Guard's takeover of the country had led to "a revival of the revolution and clarification of the value positions of the establishment at home and abroad."

"These events put us in a new stage of the revolution and political struggles, and all of us must fully comprehend its dimensions," he said at a Sunday press conference, according to reports that surfaced today.

It's not really clear to me what this means, and may not be clear to the Revolutionary Guard, either. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is still in charge. Presumably this means that the military will not direct the police rather than the civil government doing so. But even that isn't clear from the article.

Gary Sick a few days ago in The Thugs Who Lead Iran's Supreme Leader The Daily Beast 06/27/09 makes it sound like The Revolutionary Guard had been pretty much calling the shots in national policy, including economic policy, for a long time anyway. And he actually knows a lot about Iran.

Meanwhile, Robert Perry reminds us that prolonged dissension within Iran over the results on the recent presidential election there could delay progress on peace negotiations, in Obama's Iran Peace Talk Dilemma ConsortiumNews.com 07/07/09.

Tags: gary sick, iran

| +Save/Share | |