All posts tagged: Ali Khamenei

Iran officials ‘afraid to bury’ assassinated Supreme Leader months after death | World | News

Iran officials ‘afraid to bury’ assassinated Supreme Leader months after death | World | News

Published by Sam Flores

May 31, 2019 file photo shows, Son of Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba Khamenei, attends a demonstration to mark Jerusalem day in Tehran. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images) (Image: NurPhoto via Getty Images) Reports suggest that Iranian officials are “afraid to bury” the slain Supreme Leader, months after his death. Ali Khamenei, 86, was assassinated in a joint US-Israeli airstrike on February 28, which triggered the Iran war with the US — with his son subsequently appointed as his successor. The cleric’s remains have yet to be interred, breaking with longstanding tradition, according to the New York Post. A security expert has now claimed that the delay stems from Tehran being too fearful to proceed with the burial. The last state funeral for his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989 saw millions of Iranians pour into the streets of Tehran in mourning — yet similar shows of grief for Khamenei were largely absent throughout weeks of airstrikes across Iran that claimed many of the regime’s most senior figure. Read more: Iran …

War will increase religious fundamentalism

War will increase religious fundamentalism

Published by Sam Flores

DURHAM, N.C. (RNS) — Mohsen Kadivar follows the war in Iran with a growing sense of déjà vu. A research professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, he has been living in exile from his native Iran for 18 years. A staunch critic of the regime in Tehran and an advocate for democratic reforms, Kadivar now believes the United States is undergoing a similar descent into authoritarian rule. Kadivar supported the 1979 revolution that ushered in the Islamic Republic, hoping it would bring about a more just society. Things didn’t turn out that way. When he wrote articles and books critical of the regime, the authorities sentenced him to 18 months in the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran. He came to the U.S. in 2008, first to the University of Virginia and then to Duke. But he’s become critical of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. “Journalists ask me, what do you think about the defeat of Islamic Republic?” he said. “And I tell them, what do you think about the defeat of liberal democracy in …

War will increase religious fundamentalism

Why the Iranian regime fights on

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Questioning Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, on Wednesday (March 18), Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., suggested that it might not have been such a good idea to assassinate Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the outset of the U.S.-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic. Here’s the exchange: Reed: “The regime in Iran is now trying to promote the deceased ayatollah as a martyr who should be followed. Does that help them consolidate support?” Gabbard: “Senator, the Iranians are certainly using that as a call to action. The effects of that from an intelligence standpoint remain to be seen.” Reed: “There is a tradition in Shia, though, to honor martyrs. One of their greatest celebrations is the martyrdom of the grandson of Muhammad. Is that correct?”  Gabbard: “That’s right.” Reed: “So we might have played into their cultural biases, erroneously.” That understates what we’ve played into. Khamenei is not just another Shiite martyr. He was believed to be a direct descendant of Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad whose martyrdom …

Mojtaba Khamenei has called for Iranian unity – but he may not be alive

Mojtaba Khamenei has called for Iranian unity – but he may not be alive

Published by Sam Flores

Four days after being selected as Iran’s supreme leader and nearly two weeks into a war that killed his immediate family, Mojtaba Khamenei released his first statement. It was not a speech. It was not a video address. It was a written message read aloud by a state television news anchor. The message warned the US to close its Gulf bases immediately, or the host countries would face further attacks. The Strait of Hormuz should remain blocked. And there would be revenge for every Iranian killed by US-Israeli bombs, including special retribution for the children killed at the girls’ school in Minab, probably because of a US Tomahawk missile. Of course, it was a rallying call to the people of Iran, and a spiky threat to the US and its allies. But it revealed nothing about the condition of the man who commands Iran’s war effort and holds absolute authority over the country’s nearly 100 million people. According to an official speaking from inside Iran, military commanders prosecuting the war have received no orders from …

In Trump’s Iran conflict, it’s prosperity gospel vs. the Quran

In Trump’s Iran conflict, it’s prosperity gospel vs. the Quran

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — The 1979 collapse of the Iranian monarchy coincided with the publication of Christopher Lasch’s blockbuster book of ideas, “The Culture of Narcissism,” a critique of American celebrity, grandiosity and spiritual emptiness. In retrospect, the book explains the reasons Iran’s young radicals rose up against the Shah’s regime and the results of the revolution that put the first ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, in power. It may also explain the reasons for the current war. In the United States, a narcissistic “cult of the self,” as Lasch puts it, tended then (and clearly tends now) to self-aggrandizement and an unhealthy focus on personal image and consumption. The current administration is a case study of the problem, even as it wraps itself in so-called Christian nationalism. In pre-revolutionary Iran, the overwhelming wealth of the monarchy, combined with aggressive modernization, presented Iranians with a worldview tilted toward an unattainable consumerism. They overthrew the Shah and his petrodollar trappings and replaced him with the austere presence of the supreme leader, a position that now appears to have become hereditary. …

Why Vladimir Putin is the biggest winner from the war in Iran – POLITICO

Why Vladimir Putin is the biggest winner from the war in Iran – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

For Russia, the surge in oil prices amounts to an economic windfall at a crucial moment, as the cost of four years of war in Ukraine threatened to spill over into a domestic economic crisis. The assault on Iran may undermine Moscow’s claim to stand by its allies, but it is already benefiting Russia’s economy and, by extension, its war against Ukraine — leaving the Kremlin well placed to emerge as one of the main beneficiaries of the expanding conflict in the Middle East. Economic turnaround Only several weeks ago, the mood among Russia’s economic elite was grim. The Russian finance ministry’s budget plan for this year assumed a baseline benchmark of $59 per barrel of Urals crude, the country’s main export blend. But in January, energy revenues plunged to their lowest level since 2020, compounding a disappointing tax haul. As Western sanctions, high interest rates and labor shortages strained the economy, tension between the finance ministry and the central bank on how to mitigate the damage became increasingly visible. “It was far from a …