THE TELEGRAPH

Ayatollah Khamenei: The Ultimate Victim?

The political unrest in Iran, though presently directed against Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, could, the longer it persists, turn against its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Telegraph writer Con Coughlin holds Khamenei, who had been at loggerheads with all his previous elected representatives, is responsible for Ahmedinejad’s “meteoric rise”. Unlike in past political crises, Khamenei now faces a formidable opposition, and is also under criticism from Iran’s leading theologians. Unless he offers a “conciliatory gesture”, the Supreme Leader, Coughlin feels, could soon be staring at “his own day of mourning”.

INDEPENDENT

History Suggests the Coup Will Fail

Comparisons have been drawn between the present uprising and the 1979 revolution. But Patrick Cockburn, who reported during the period, feels the present uprising is different. The ’79 revolution was carried out by a broad coalition that had “religious conservatives at one end and Marxist revolutionaries at the other” and Ayatollah Khomeini had emerged a visible alternative to the Shah. The revolution, besides being Islamic, was the “story of refusal to bow to injustice, of resistance to oppression and martyrdom”. But today, Ahmedinejad, with almost the same percentage of votes he had won in 2005, is a popular leader and is unlikely to surrender as the Shah did 30 years ago. And added to it, the political forces at work are different today and the protestors have “the odds heavily stacked against them”.

JERUSALEM POST

The Internal Balance of Power

“One would need a heart of stone not to be moved by the scenes emerging from Iran” is how Jonathan Spyer begins his analysis of the current events in Iran. But three facts are to be kept in mind for a “cool and dispassionate” analysis. The present struggle is one within the boundaries of Islamist regime, and not against it. Even if a popular leadership emerges, the present regime possesses both the “will and the means to ensure its survival”. And third, no such popular leadership currently exists in Iran. Moussavi and Ahmedinejad are “representatives of rival streams”, but within the “ruling elite”. And hence, Spyer concludes, “the Islamist regime in Iran is almost certainly not in danger”.

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