The Khomeinist Dome: Iran’s larger nuclear strategy

From Family Security Matters.

The Khomeinist Dome: Iran’s larger nuclear strategy


As a reader of Khomeinist global strategies since the early 1980s, and as I have argued over decades in books and articles, Tehran's regime possesses a much larger nuclear strategy than the simple acquisition of mass destruction weapons. Over the last few years, the United States and its Western allies have been led to focus on the visible part of the Iranian buildup, missing the much greater construct undertaken over several generations of rulers of the same Iranian regime. Since the so-called "Iran nuclear deal" was inked last fall, Washington acts as if it has somewhat halted (or at least slowed) the strategic program of Tehran and thus has been rewarding the Ayatollahs, but the reality flies in the face of this assumption and agreement. Iran's regime is employing a much larger strategy in order to reach the level of an armed nuclear power, and - perhaps ironically - one of the regime's strategic policies is to mislead the international community, particularly the U.S., in its campaign to irreversibly transform itself into a nuclear power.

The Iranian global construct can be perceived as a "Khomeinist Dome." Iran's strategy has been twofold-and sustained over decades, not simply implemented over the past few years and months. The regime has two simultaneous goals. One is to create a defensive sphere over the forthcoming strategic weapon before it is unveiled, and two is to suppress any internal opposition to the regime's policies. The "dome" is a complex integration of Iranian foreign policy: Terrorism backing, using financial luring, exploiting Western weaknesses while at the same time expanding influence in the region so that by the time the greater shield is established, most U.S. and allied measures will be useless.

The regime knew all too well, years ago, that if they produced one atomic weapon (or even two) without being able to protect it, they would run into the almost certainty of military action by the West and/or by Israel to disable it. They were unable to circumvent this strategic theorem for decades, at least since the end of the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-1987. The issue for them was not about obtaining the nuclear weapon, but how to deter their enemies from destroying it. Iran did not have the geopolitical or economic capacities, nor the international stature of either India or Pakistan, to produce large scale numbers of bombs and later announce them the way south Asia's nuclear powers detonated their devices in 1999. Hence Iran's grand strategy to equip itself with the ultimate weapon was different-and thus far successful.

After the Soviet collapse, Tehran knew Israel, or possibly a U.S. administration, would bomb the nuclear installations, not to mention the location of a potential weapon. The Israeli raid on Osirak in 1981 was clear evidence of Western determination to strike at a nuclear weapon in the hands of a dangerous regime. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the coalition's massive response in 1990-1991 also told the Khomeinists that a post-Cold War West is more assertive than under the previously bipolar world. Finally, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003 brought two powerful and hostile armies to Iran's two borders. Tehran's reading of the landscape change was so nervous that it declared itself as abandoning its nuclear ambitions, almost simultaneously with Moammar Gaddafi. The fear of being toppled by outside military forces pushed Iran to hide its nuclear ambitions while awaiting the outcome of the regional evolution.

By 2005, as the U.S. offensive in the Middle East came to a halt, the Iranian regime displayed its hardliner face with the coming of Mahmoud Ahmedinijad to power. From then on, the grand strategy of the atomic conquest went full steam ahead. On one track, Iran activated the production of nuclear material, making Bushehr and its sister sites the center of international focus. Washington responded with targeted sanctions, well-crafted but aiming at pressuring Tehran to halt the project. The failure of the sanctions-only policies to exert a full strategic halt was caused by the inability of the West to support a strong and organized Iranian opposition inside the country with a significant presence in neighboring Iraq. Sanctions to pressure, without a real resistance movement to push the regime into a corner, were doomed to fail and they did.

But the Iranian regime's wider strategy was to create a shield for the nuclear weapons as they were produced. In fact, the Ayatollahs calculated that they would only unveil the weapon if and when it is protected. Hence, while the U.S. focused primarily on the fissile material, the fast track production of missiles was never stopped. The greater dome strategy includes missiles, anti-aircraft systems, geopolitical space and terrorism.

A large missile force, which would target a wide spectrum of cities and sites, has been under construction for years. In addition, the regime has been attempting to obtain advanced anti-aircraft missile systems to protect the potential offensive missiles. And when the two structures are fully ready it will be a greater challenge to eliminate the entire network as it would be armed with nukes and other WMDs while also surrounded with a vast AA system; all the while, the uranium production is moving forward. In parallel, Tehran has been expanding its reach in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Arabian Peninsula and parts of East Africa with its influence and through terror networks. Once the combination of all the above systems is in place, the bomb will come, but not before.

The Khomeinist dome is about preparing for the nukes before they are displayed and claimed. It is about signaling to the West that once the greater Iranian power is asserted, there will not be a first indefensible bomb. Rather, Iran will jump to the level of unstoppable power with a vast network of retaliation as deterrence will have been achieved. Unfortunately, Western posture towards Tehran has only helped in the building of the dome: sanctions worked but were limited, all Iran's other military systems were unchecked, and its interventions in the region unstopped. Worse, a nuclear deal with the U.S. injected time and energy into the regime's veins.

At this point, the regime is out to complete the buildup of its strategic shield while offering to slow down its fissile material production. Once the dome is complete, the nuclear material production will speed up, and by the time the West realizes the maneuver, the Middle East will have changed forever.

Did You Know Iran's Ayatollah Manages a $50 Billion Empire?

You know, I don't remember Mohammed ever imploring his followers to become billionaires.  Perhaps it's easy for a rich man to get into Paradise under Islam.   :smirk:

By the way, where is birth control in the Qur'an?

The story comes from The Telegraph.

Ayatollah Khamenei's £60bn empire includes birth control factory


Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has built a state-run business empire so vast that it includes a factory producing contraceptive pills – despite his urging fellow countrymen to forsake birth control and produce a baby boom.

His growing dominance over the national economy is laid bare in a report that reveals Iran’s top cleric and most powerful political figure to be in command of enterprises worth an estimated $95billion (£60billion).

The figure was uncovered in a six-month investigation by Reuters news agency, which reported that a sprawling network of companies and properties was at his disposal thanks to his control of a state organisation, known as Setad, or the Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam.

The organisation was originally established for charitable purposes, to provide revenues to assist the poor, but has been steadily built up over the years – boosted by a flurry of acquisitions which have included property confiscated from religious minorities, business people and Iranian expatriates.

Now Ayatollah Khamenei has expanded Setad into a “financial juggernaut” that he has used to cement his 24-year grip on power, according to Reuters. Under its orbit are 37 companies reaching into every corner of the Iranian economy – including finance, oil, telecommunications and even ostrich farming.



But the conservative ayatollah’s transformation into an economic powerhouse also threatens to undermine his stated goal of presiding over a rapid rise in Iran’s population, the investigation found. In a glaring contradiction, ATI Pharmed, a pharmaceutical company run by Setad’s charitable foundation, Barakat, embarked on a joint venture in May this year with a Swiss company, the Geneva-based Stragen Pharma, that included plans to produce oral contraceptives.

The initiative – in which the Iranian company has a 66 per cent share – jars with an earlier edict issued by Ayatollah Khamenei to Iran’s health ministry to scrap the country’s liberal birth control policy in an effort to raise the population – now about 75 million – to 200 million.

“The business empire controlled by Iran’s supreme leader had grown so large that it now owned companies whose products Khamenei opposes,” Reuters reported.

The ayatollah’s economic encroachment also had a baleful effect on workplaces, the investigation revealed.

Employees at Parsian Bank, a private bank with more than 100 branches known for its liberal dress codes, experienced a culture shock when Setad’s investment arm acquired a stake in the business in 2006.

Male staff were banned from wearing ties while female employees received warning letters asking: “Why are you wearing jeans? Why are your lips red?”

The growth of Setad’s business interests has attracted the attention of the US treasury, which imposed sanctions on the organisation and the companies under its wing last June as part of the international drive to pressure Iran to abandon its suspect nuclear programme.

The treasury branded Setad — originally formed by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the current supreme leader’s predecessor – as “a massive network of front companies hiding assets on behalf of Iran’s leadership” .

There was no evidence that Ayatollah Khamenei, noted for an austere lifestyle, personally enriched himself from assets worth 40 per cent more than Iran’s latest annual oil income, Reuters reported.

But it said he had used the control as a political lever that enabled him to rise about Iran’s rival political factions.

An Iranian-American's List of Crimes Committed By Iran's Ayatollah and Mullahs

From Family Security Matters.

A Warning to President Obama and Ali Khamenei


It is worse than appeasement to negotiate a "deal" with the Islamic theocrats in the occupied Iran, because any deal struck with these mullahs is only another ruse for them to further their plans. The UN resolutions are nothing more than pieces of paper good for burning, they can pass them all they want, president Ahmadinejad proclaims belligerently.

These Islamists go by their 1400-year-old charter of Allah, the Qur'an, the same charter that they hold in one hand while slashing the throat of an innocent infidel and yelling joyously "Allah is the greatest" the whole time.

To the misguided "Supreme Guide," mullah Ali Khamenei of Iran, a few words are in order.

The civilized Iranians, descendants of Cyrus the Great, find you, mullah Ali Khamenei, and your cabal of Islamists guilty of heinous crimes. A partial list of charges is given below.

Domestically

You do not represent the Iranian people. You are an Islamist terrorist. You are a usurper of power. You are guilty of transforming a noble nation into a world pariah.
You are denying and violating a long-suffering people all its human rights.
You are guilty of beating, imprisoning and torturing a few dozen women who braved participating in a peaceful demonstration pleading for equal family rights, on the recent International Day of Women.
You systematically beat, rape, imprison, and torture all manner of citizens, from school teachers to students to union workers, for daring to raise their voices against the plight to which you have subjected them.
You savagely beat and haul to your dungeons of torture and death over a thousand of the tens of thousands of teachers who had gathered in front of the parliament requesting nothing more than their back pay and living wages.
In late 2009, you ordered the Basij forces, revolutionary guards, plain-clothed and government forces to massacre thousands of innocent people in a mass popular uprising over the fraudulent presidential election of your puppet, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
You direct systematic genocidal measures against all non-Shi'a religious minorities, with Baha'is as prime target, and genocidal actions against political groups; support of international terrorism; demolition of religious sites and cemeteries; for rape, torture, and summary execution of prisoners of conscience; forgery of documents, acts of blackmail and fraud, and much more.
You arrest some Christians; even your Quran calls "People of the Book," for observing Christmas.
You implement barbaric practices of stoning, hanging and amputations for those who are convicted of crimes in your kangaroo courts without due process. You even imprison those few lawyers who rise in the defense of the innocent.
You plunder, mismanage and dole out Iran's national wealth with the result that the great majority of the people are living in poverty. Iranian women are forced into prostitution to survive or simply sold as sex slaves in Persian Gulf states.
Your fascist misrule of nearly three decades has driven millions of Iran's best children to the four corners of the world. Hundreds of thousands of educated Iranians are compelled to continue the exodus, depriving Iran of sorely needed talents at home.
You spend a fortune on the nuclear program that you claim is only aimed for peaceful purposes, while turning Iran into little more than a gas station nation, with its precious oil wealth squandered and its facilities on the verge of collapse through neglect.
You have created a suffocating social atmosphere that has driven masses of the people to the use of hard drugs as a way of numbing their pain.


Internationally

You look far and wide to support any and all terrorists. Your delusional theology mandates the creation of horrific conditions in the world so that your Hidden Imam is compelled to appear and establish his rule.
You spare no efforts at sabotaging any settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis. You arm and train all Palestinian factions such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any and all that come.
You direct similar criminal schemes on your eastern flank, in Afghanistan. You consider any democratic system as the enemy of Islamofascism, and rightfully so.
You work ceaselessly, expand Iran's stolen funds, and do all you can in support of your Shi'a co-fascists Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Your hands are dripping with the blood of thousands of Iraqis, victims of your bloodthirsty kin mercenaries aiming to kill a budding democracy in Iraq next door.
You supplied your mercenaries with armor-piercing projectiles for killing and maiming the coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Your cowardly killing by proxy, used these roadside planted bombs, have taken the lives of hundreds of Americans.
You interpreted the highly subdued reactions of the coalition to your savage actions as indications of weakness. So, you found it in yourself to venture into direct confrontation by capturing lightly armed British sailors and marines in Iraqi waters.
You are responsible for helping Syrian forces slaughter seekers of freedom.
You directly orchestrated an attack on the British embassy in Tehran last month and called the action of your "thugs," "student protests."
You plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, on US soil.


To misguided advocates of negotiation with the devil (mullahs), beware. The mullahs are on an Allah-mandated mission. They are intoxicated with petrodollars and aim to settle for nothing less than complete domination of the world under the Islamic Ummah.

I also reiterate the words of Prince Reza Pahlavi that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei must be held responsible and tried in the international court for crimes against humanity.

OccupyWallStreet Gets the Stamp of Approval From....(wait for it)...Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei

What a feather in the cap for OWS, huh?  To think you now have the praise and admiration of a radical islamist fascist dictator from Iran!  Woohoo!

From the article at CNS News:

The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – the “supreme leader” of Iran – praised America’s “Occupy Wall Street” movement on Thursday, calling it a reflection of people around the world who are “losing their patience” with the dominance of the United States and Israel in the international community.

“Everybody has become tired of this faulty international structure,” Khamenei said in his inaugural address to the Non-Aligned Summit, a gathering of 120 nations now taking place in Tehran.

“The 99-percent movement of the American people against the centers of wealth and power in America and the widespread protests of the people in Western Europe against the economic policies of their governments show that the people are losing their patience with this situation,” Iran’s Fars news agency quoted him as saying.

Kind of funny that the Ayatollah would relate to the "99 percenters" - I wonder where in the mix all of the Christians, homosexuals, women not covered from head to foot, and political dissidents fall in Iran?  All of those hundreds of Green Revolution participants that were gunned down by Khamenei's troops...weren't they a little bit LIKE the OWS?

In typical Muslim fashion, these clowns point their finger at the West while they ignore the puddle of blood on the floor that dripped from their own hands.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Praises U.S. ‘Occupy’ Movement


(CNSNews.com) – The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – the “supreme leader” of Iran – praised America’s “Occupy Wall Street” movement on Thursday, calling it a reflection of people around the world who are “losing their patience” with the dominance of the United States and Israel in the international community.

“Everybody has become tired of this faulty international structure,” Khamenei said in his inaugural address to the Non-Aligned Summit, a gathering of 120 nations now taking place in Tehran.

“The 99-percent movement of the American people against the centers of wealth and power in America and the widespread protests of the people in Western Europe against the economic policies of their governments show that the people are losing their patience with this situation,” Iran’s Fars news agency quoted him as saying.

(The Occupy movement, born in lower Manhattan one year ago, claims to speak for the “99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent. During the fall of 2011, the Occupy movement was charged with antisemitism after several videos showed protesters denouncing Jews.)

“It is necessary to remedy this irrational situation,” Khamenei said, adding that “firm” bonds between NAM member states “can play an important role” in minimizing U.S.-Israeli influence.

Khamenei said the Non-Aligned Movement should take advantage of the “Islamic awakening” – also known as the Arab Spring—to boost its standing in global affairs.

“And finally, we should consider the Islamic Awakening in the region and the fall of the dictatorships in North Africa, which were dependent on America and were accomplices to the Zionist regime, as a great opportunity,” he said.

The ayatollah also emphasized Iran’s intention to proceed with its nuclear program: “I stress that the Islamic Republic has never been after nuclear weapons and that it will never give up the right of its people to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” he said.

Iran’s nuclear activities have been of international concern since the discovery in 2003 that Iran had concealed its nuclear activities for 18 years, in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Many countries contend that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

The summit now taking place in Iran includes 120 developing nations that sought to remain outside the U.S. and Soviet spheres of influence during the Cold War.

U.N. chief meets with Khamenei

As CNSNews.com previously reported, the leaders attending the NAM summit include U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, whose visit to Iran drew mild criticism from the U.S. State Department.

A State Department spokeswoman said earlier this month that Ban’s visit "would not send a good signal." The U.N. depends on American taxpayers for more than one-fifth of its budget.

Ban arrived in Tehran on Wednesday, where he attended a series of meetings with Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“In all these meetings, the Secretary-General conveyed the clear concerns and expectations of the international community on the issues for which cooperation and progress are urgent for both regional stability and the welfare of the Iranian people,” a U.N. spokesperson told a news briefing in New York.

“These include Iran’s nuclear programme, terrorism, human rights and the crisis in Syria,” he added.

“This is very important opportunity for Iran to play a very important role as moderate and constructive leader of the international community in addressing all the challenges,” Ban told reporters on his arrival in Tehran.

The 16th annual NAM summit began on Sunday, Aug. 26 and will conclude on Friday.

The Iranian government said that by hosting the summit -- which includes not only Ban but many heads of state -- it is showing the world that U.S.-led efforts to isolate Iran have failed miserably.

The Day the Muslim Brotherhood Slapped Down Iran's Ayatollah

As if we didn't know it already, there is no unity among Muslims in Egypt and Muslims in Iran - the factions of the Muslim Brotherhood and the mullah regime in Tehran are worlds apart and the speech by Egypt's Mursi at the gathering of pedophile followers in Tehran is creating shockwaves across the region.

This article at Family Security Matters reveals just how far apart the east and the west of Islam truly are.

Tehran Slapdown


With his speech this past week at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran, Egypt's new president, Muhammad Mursi, drew a line in the sand against Iran's hope of creating an "Islamic Awakening Front" under its leadership.

Iran's leaders had spent a great deal of energy preparing what "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei dubbed "the triumph" of Ayatollah Khomeini's version of Islam.

That version de-emphasizes the religious content of Islam to instead highlight a political role.To Khomeini and his successors, anti-Americanism provides the ideological backbone of contemporary Islam; shouting "Death to America" was as important as saying "There is no God but Allah."

In his opening address at the summit, Khamenei spelled out that ideology with a torrent of hate against the American "Great Satan." For him, Islam's ultimate goal is "the destruction of America."

To the Khomeini-Khamenei school, the only valid version of Islam as a faith is the Shiite one as interpreted by the ayatollah. Sunni Muslims are "deviants," partly because they venerate the first caliphs of Islam - Abu-Bakr, Omar and Osman. In the Khomeinist version, all three were "usurpers" who betrayed the Prophet by preventing his cousin Ali from succeeding him.

Each year, Khomeinists organize ceremonies to "expose and denounce" the three caliphs, labeling them "The Dirty Trio" (al-Muthallath al-Mulawwatha). Omar is particularly hated because he led the Arab invasion of Persia. Burning his effigies (Omar-Suzan) is a major feast in many parts of Iran.

Khomeinist discourse now stresses three other themes:

* It wants the recent uprisings in the Middle East to be termed not "the Arab Spring" but "the Islamic Awakening" - and somehow, against all logic, linked to Khomeinism in Iran.

* The second theme is Holocaust denial, coupled with calls for the "elimination of Israel" as a "cancerous cell."

* Finally, Tehran demands "unwavering support" for the Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad.

In his speech in Tehran, delivered during a four-hour stopover, Mursi disappointed the Khomeinist leadership on all accounts.

First, the Egyptian leader took care not to allow any hint of anti-Americanism in his speech, rejecting Khomeini's equation of Islam with politics and politics with hatred for the United States.

Next, Mursi rejected the label "the Islamic Awakening," insisting that uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen be described as "the Arab Spring." The uprisings, he insisted, had been for democracy and human dignity - not for strictly religious reasons, let alone Khomeini's weird version of Islam.

He then turned the knife by asserting that the uprising in Syria is "an extension of the Arab Spring" - not "an American-Zionist conspiracy," as Khamenei claims.

Khamenei has declared the preservation of the Assad regime as one of Tehran's key strategic objectives. Mursi called the Assad regime "oppressive and illegitimate" and threw Egypt's support behind the Syrian uprising.

Nor, to the chagrin of the Khomeinist leadership, did Mursi beat the drums of war against Israel.

Tehran media had promised that the Egyptian leader would cancel the Camp David peace accords and join the Iranian-led "Resistance Front" to "wipe off the Jewish stain of shame." Mursi did none of that. Instead, he said his administration is dedicated to peace and stability in the region.

And Mursi delivered one more slap at the Tehran mullahs. Khamenei had started his address by saluting "the Prophet and his descendants," an old phrase revived by Khomeini that excludes the early caliphs. But Mursi in his speech saluted "the Prophet and his successors," naming the "Dirty Trio" one by one.

The sound of those three names would send shockwaves down the spine of any mullah who has one.

Not surprisingly, Tehran television interrupted its live broadcast of Mursi's address with a gas-company ad.

Mursi made it clear that, post-Mubarak, Egypt intends to reclaim its position as one of Islam's three key powers (along with Iran and Turkey) by rejecting Khomeini's equation of Islam with anti-Americanism.

Some have criticized Mursi's decision to go to Tehran. I think he was right to go - especially with a powerful message that rejects every tenet of the Khomeinists' schismatic doctrine.

Iranians Not Fond of Norwegian Students Lumping the Ayatollah In With Hitler

The poor, poor misunderstood Iranians - you'd figure that when they call for the destruction of Israel and all of the Jews in that country and also have stood fast with their denial of the Holocaust, people would understand better that their supreme leader just CANNOT be compared to Hitler, yanno?!

Well, some Norwegian college students have put up a poster that shows the Iranian Ayatollah grouped in with the likes of Hitler and Stalin and the Iranian embassy in Norway is hopping mad about it. LOL.

The story is from Tundra Tabloids.

IRANIAN EMBASSY IN NORWAY WANTS TO CENSOR NORWEGIAN STUDENTS…….


NRK: Students ‘and Academics’ International Assistance Fund, SAIH currently conducting a campaign in support of student activists across the world, and the controversial poster hanging for hours in many Norwegian higher education institutions.

The head of the press, public relations and culture department at the embassy in Oslo, Mohammad Javad Hosseini who wrote the letter, which SAIH perceive as an attempt to censor them.

Khomeini is in bad company

The Embassy is put off that Khomeini is pictured with famous dictators, but especially the fact that Hitler is in the picture, the Iranians ask SAIH to remove the picture as quickly as possible.

- You have offended the feelings of a great nation, which we believe is on their agenda, it is stated in the letter.

- For your information it Khomeini was the popular leader of the Iranian history. When he overthrew the king in 1979 supported more than 98 percent of the people to him. Since 1979, Iran held elections for parliament and president several times. Embassy condemns again this regrettable action, and expect that the organization does something with this offensive initiative, it is stated in the letter from the Iranian Embassy.

Surprised by the reaction

Deputy Erik Schreiner Evans in SAIH believes the Iranians do not understand what free speech is.

Deputy Erik Schreiner Evans in SAIH said the inquiry was very surprising.

- It shows not only that the embassy does not respect freedom of speech, but they have not understood it. The inquiry illustrates exactly the problem we are trying to focus on, he says.

SAIH refuses to remove the poster, but assured in its answers to the Embassy that the purpose has been to hurt anyone’s feelings or reduce the importance of the popular uprising against the Shah that Khomeini headed.

- SAIH believe that students and student movements are a key in securing and maintaining democratic society, writes SAIH in the letter that is signed by SAIH deputy Erik Schreiner Evans.

- Known to be brutal

- We did not mean to say that there is another connection between the historical characters on the poster than they are internationally known to be brutal, anti-democratic and authoritarian, and that they all have a well-documented history of persecuting and killing political opponents. That, in addition to having familiar faces, is why we chose them specifically for this campaign, it is stated in the response letter.

The letter ends by stating that it is not necessary to remove the poster

- In fact, we think it is surprising and somewhat provocative that you are trying to censor us in this way.

The Feud Between Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah...Iran Turns Into "Days of Our Imams"

And these guys want to rule the world. The rift between Ayatollah Khameini and President Ahmadinejad in Iran continues to spiral downward as now, some of Ahmadinejad's key personnel have been arrested and charged with "sorcery."

It just doesn't get any better than this - boy, it sure wouldn't be an ideal time to go in and disable those Iranians now, would it? (turns off sarcasm).

From the report at Family Security Matters:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s defiance of Ayatollah Khameini, Iran’s Supreme Leader, is no laughing matter. An 11-day strike by President Ahmadinejad has ended with the arrest of 25 of his associates on the charge of sorcery – a charge which carries the penalty of death.

Ahmadinejad’s Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim Masheia, lies at the heart of the controversy. Rumor has it that “Mashaei allegedly occasionally enters a trance-like state to communicate with the Twelfth Imam or will sometimes randomly say ‘hello’ to no one at all and then explain that the Twelfth Imam just passed by.”

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

The rift between President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khameini came to a head in late April. President Ahmadinejad asked the Minister of Intelligence, Heidar Moslehi, to resign due to concerns that Moslehi was stoking criticism of his Chief of Staff.

President Ahmadinejad accepted the resignation of Minister Moslehi on April 17th. However, Ayatollah Khameini refused to accept the resignation. The Iranian news website Azad Negar noted that the Intelligence Minister’s resignation followed Moslehi’s decision to replace the chief of the Intelligence Ministry’s Bureau of Planning and Budget. Notably, the chief of the bureau was a political ally of Ahmadinejad’s Chief of Staff, Mashaei.

The Ayatollah ordered Moslehi to remain in his position. President Ahmadinejad then staged a strike for 11 days that placed the future of his administration in question. Ahmadinejad refused to return to the Presidential Palace to reside over his cabinet meetings with Moslehi present. A sulking Ahmadinejad also canceled an official visit to Qom, a place often described as Iran’s holiest city. These two moves caused 12 Ministers of Iran’s Parliament to call for President Ahmadinejad’s impeachment.

Now you know why the Saudis and Egyptians and Turks treat the Iranians as the misfits of the Muslim world...and it's not completely because the Iranians are Shia. The Iranians are obsessed with this 12th Imam fairy tale and at the same time, they have a history of complete disarray in this propped up governmental relationship between the Grand Ayatollah and the President.

Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and the Ayatollah will order Ahmadinejad impeached and Ahmadinejad will lash out and kill the Ayatollah and then the Ayatollah's followers will kill Ahmadinejad and then about 100 IDF soldiers can walk down the main drag of Tehran and stow some charges onto the nuke plant and boom. LOL ....I know, I know....I'm losing it.

Iran: The Purge of the Hojatieh Society


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s defiance of Ayatollah Khameini, Iran’s Supreme Leader, is no laughing matter. An 11-day strike by President Ahmadinejad has ended with the arrest of 25 of his associates on the charge of sorcery – a charge which carries the penalty of death.

Ahmadinejad’s Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim Masheia, lies at the heart of the controversy. Rumor has it that “Mashaei allegedly occasionally enters a trance-like state to communicate with the Twelfth Imam or will sometimes randomly say ‘hello’ to no one at all and then explain that the Twelfth Imam just passed by.”

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

Following the 2009 elections, Ayatollah Khameini rejected Ahmadinejad’s decision to raise Mashaei to the position of First Vice President. Ahmadinejad eventually relented and made him Chief of Staff.

The rift between President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khameini came to a head in late April. President Ahmadinejad asked the Minister of Intelligence, Heidar Moslehi, to resign due to concerns that Moslehi was stoking criticism of his Chief of Staff.

President Ahmadinejad accepted the resignation of Minister Moslehi on April 17th. However, Ayatollah Khameini refused to accept the resignation. The Iranian news website Azad Negar noted that the Intelligence Minister’s resignation followed Moslehi’s decision to replace the chief of the Intelligence Ministry’s Bureau of Planning and Budget. Notably, the chief of the bureau was a political ally of Ahmadinejad’s Chief of Staff, Mashaei.

The Ayatollah ordered Moslehi to remain in his position. President Ahmadinejad then staged a strike for 11 days that placed the future of his administration in question. Ahmadinejad refused to return to the Presidential Palace to reside over his cabinet meetings with Moslehi present. A sulking Ahmadinejad also canceled an official visit to Qom, a place often described as Iran’s holiest city. These two moves caused 12 Ministers of Iran’s Parliament to call for President Ahmadinejad’s impeachment.

President Ahmadinejad’s political gyrations in support of his Chief of Staff were read as a breach of the traditional power-sharing agreement in Iran. In response Ayatollah Khameini, as the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Establishment of Iran, has apparently chosen to purge the propaganda arm of a millennial cult known as the Hojatieh Society. The Hojatieh’s influence in Ahmadinejad’s inner circle is well documented.

Dore Gold captures the essence of the Hojatieh Society’s political drive for power in his recent release The Rise of Nuclear Iran:

Founded in 1954, its twofold mission was to fight the Bahai faith and pave the way for the reappearance of the Mahdi. It did not accept Khomeini’s doctrine of velayat-e faqih, the rule of the jurisprudent, since the arrival of the Mahdi make a cleric to represent him in the interim unnecessary.

Mubarak’s fall from power in Egypt on February 11th 2011 prompted the Iranian President Ahmadinejad to remark on the Arab Spring,

“This is a global revolution, managed by the imam of the ages.”

Ahmadinejad’s speech in Tehran’s Azadi Square sent alarm bells through the Qom Establishment. If the Mahdi, the Hidden Imam, had indeed returned from his occultation as Ahmadinejad was suggesting, than the institution of the vilayet-e faqih, the beating heart of the Khomeini Revolution, was no longer the source of authority in Iran. The release of an Ahmadinejad-sponsored documentary in mid-March advanced the notion that the Mahdi was orchestrating the Arab Spring.

Conservative clerics in Iran were critical of President Ahmadinejad’s disobedience of the Ayatollah in the wake of Moslehi’s reinstatement.

Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a hardline cleric close to Khamenei, warned that disobeying the supreme leader – who has the ultimate power in Iran – is equivalent to "apostasy from Allah".

Reports indicate that the Ayatollah has told Ahmadinejad to either accept Minister Moslehi’s reinstatement or resign from the presidency. The stand-off has placed Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei at the center of the storm.

"Currently Mashaei is the real president," said Hojjat ol-Eslam Mojtaba Zolnur, the Supreme Leader's representative in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Further Zolnur remarked, “Mr. Ahmadinejad has held on to a decaying rope by relying on Mashaei.”

The row over Minister Moslehi’s reinstatement is further complicated by the release of the March documentary about the Hidden Imam’s return. Conservative clerics have accused Ahmadinejad’s inner circle, including Mashaei, of releasing the video. The return of the twelfth Imam is a sacred event in Shia Islam that velayat loyalists believe cannot be predicted. The fact that the documentary claims to predict the coming of the Mahdi is seen by Khomeinist clerics as proof of a “deviant current” within the ranks of Ahmadinejad’s power brokers.

Ahmadinejad returned to the Presidential Palace on May 1st to contemplate the path forward. By May 5th, the Guardian revealed the Ayatollah Khameini’s moves to place pressure on Ahmadinejad to support the velayat-e faqih:

Since Ahmadinejad's return this week, at least 25 people, who are believed to be close to Mashaei, have been arrested. Among them is Abbas Amirifar, head of the government's cultural committee and some journalists of Mashaei's recently launched newspaper, Haft-e-Sobh.

President Ahmadinejad is not eligible for re-election in 2013. It is believed that President Ahmadinejad is grooming Esfandiar Rahim Masheia to take the keys to the Presidential Palace.
Tradition holds that the Mahdi will return to the earth in a time of great chaos. The Hojatieh Society believes this chaos can be engineered. In that strain, the forced resignation of Larijani on the nuclear negotiation front in October 2007 as well as the firing of Foreign Minister Mottaki in December 2010 foreshadowed the attempt to kick Minister Moslehi to the curb in April 2011.

According to Dore Gold, the belief that the Mahdi’s return was imminent rather than an end-times construct amounted to “an enormous irrational factor” in the Iranian Nuclear question.

The recent death of Osama bin Laden has introduced an unexpected wrinkle in the activities of Islamists in the Arab Spring; however, the ouster of Ahmadinejad would dramatically alter the geopolitical picture of the Greater Middle East.

The U.S. Special Representative of the Central Region, Dennis Ross, has led the way to a U.S.-Muslim Engagement which began in a June 2009 Cairo address which witnessed an open hand of American negotiations slapped aside by Ahmadinejad’s crack down on the Iranian Green Movement. The foundation of the Ross statecraft of engagement was defining Iran as a “rational” actor. After over a year of diplomatic overtures and sanctions activities, in an October 2010 address to AIPAC, Dennis Ross noted:

Iran’s own behavior over the past two years…has demonstrated that it prefers defiance and secrecy to transparency and peace.

In addition to unilateral sanctions from the United States, Ross highlighted the international community’s push to isolate the Iranian Regime:

UNSCR 1929 bans a wide range of Iranian activities including ballistic missile activity, Iranian investment in nuclear industries abroad, and the export of certain heavy weapons to Iran, which the Russians in particular have used as the basis for canceling the sale of an advanced air defense system to Iran.

The resolution provides mechanisms for inspecting Iranian cargo and seizing contraband, and requires member states to exercise vigilance when conducting business with any Iranian entity, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s shipping firm IRISL.

The combination of international pressure and a challenge to the supremacy of the Khomeinist doctrine of the velayat-e faqih has led to the Ayatollah Khameini’s recent push to purge the “irrational” Hojatieh elements from the Tehran regime.

Ironically, in order to establish a presence as a “rational” actor in a bid to claim the title of Superpower of the Middle East, Ayatollah Khameini has chosen to embark on a literal witch hunt.

Ahmadinejad may survive the purge. Indeed, the purge may be nothing more than a dramatic hoax to satisfy Western criticism of Iran’s colorful past in the industry of state-sponsored terrorism. Only a revisionist history of Iran can dismiss the Islamic Establishment of Iran’s support of organizations ranging from Hezbollah to Hamas to Al Qaeda.

At present, the only certainty is that any and all aspirations of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei to win the Iranian Presidency have been sacrificed to the geopolitics of regional hegemony.

The Western world is now witness to the spectacle of the Islamic Establishment of Iran achieving the status of “rational” actor by charging upstarts within its administration of sorcery.

Iran's Khamenei Warns West of 'firm fist' , Threatens Western Leaders

Again, I repeat...this is the leader of Iran who the Obama administration actually wants to sit down with and negotiate....this is the kind of man you wouldn't allow within 10 miles of your family yet our President seeks to sit down across the table from this vermin and talk about reconciliation. Unbelievable. Today, Iran's Grand Pubah, Ali Khamenei decided to try and scare all of the leaders of the West with his latest round of tough talk. Take a look at what this clown had to say from the article at Breitbart:

"The leaders of arrogant countries, the nosy meddlers in the affairs of the Islamic republic, must know that no matter if the Iranian people have their own differences, when you enemies get involved, the people... will become a firm fist against you," he said in a televised speech.

"The Iranian nation warns the leaders of those countries trying to take advantage of the situation, beware! The Iranian nation will react."

I mean, really, what in those statements can Obama find as a government trying to reconcile with the world? Only a fool wouldn't see that sitting down with these asshats would be a total calamity. At some point in time, Barack Hussein Obama is going to again try to make a case why we should sit down and appease the Iranians - his whole strategy is not about trying to rid Iran of nuclear technology for a weapon systems, it's not about trying to protect the U.S. and Israel from nuclear attack...oh no, Obama's strategy is for him to be seen as the first U.S. President to actually sit down with the Iranians...he wants to be see as the "Amazing Reconcilor" - and the Obamatrons of America will hail him so...while the rest of us watch our national security compromised.

So, I ask the question...are you comfortable with your President jeopardizing the lives of your family just so he can enter the Nobel Peace Prize sweepstakes?

Iranian leader Khamenei warns 'meddling' West

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Western leaders on Monday of a "firm fist" in response to their "meddling" in Iran's domestic affairs.
"The leaders of arrogant countries, the nosy meddlers in the affairs of the Islamic republic, must know that no matter if the Iranian people have their own differences, when you enemies get involved, the people... will become a firm fist against you," he said in a televised speech.

"The Iranian nation warns the leaders of those countries trying to take advantage of the situation, beware! The Iranian nation will react."
Iranian leaders have accused the West, particularly Britain and the United States of seeking to destabilise the country in the aftermath of its disputed presidential election.