I have not run across this elsewhere, but I have not been looking either. If the mad mullahs of Iran are executing officers who are war heroes, it is a worrisome sign of what they are planning for the population. If it was just a matter of tightening control over the Army, they could just ‘retire’ the offending officers. Executions mean they want to remove any possibility forthcoming orders are not followed or troops switch sides in a showdown. I am worried they are preparing for a major pogrom with an end result of yet another set of unrecorded mass graves in the deserts of Central Asia.
I have been getting conflicting information on what might happen if it comes to a confrontation ala Eastern Europe. An Arab friend feels that the majority of the country is not of the urban middle class and the country folk are absolutely loyal to their tribal leaders and very fundamentalist. A physicist friend with urban contacts tells me the balance is not so clear cut and during the previous Iranian Revolution the liberals simply got double-crossed by the fanatical mullahs with whom they had a temporary common cause.
Perhaps members of our commentariat or some Arab friends could lend insight into what might happen if push really does come to shove in Tehran.
For the second time in the last 5-6 months the governors of the regional districts have banded together to disagree VERY strongly with the dictats coming down from on high. They will probably be next on the list, with the mullahs finding some devious way to remove them and their threat to the theocratic dictatorship.
Perhaps members of our commentariat or some Arab friends could lend insight…
Uh, don’t you mean Persian friends?
Blush. I of all people should not have made that mistake since a woman whose father was Iranian was part of the Grateful Dead music scene in Pittsburgh and she and her boyfriend were both good friends of myself and one of my closest friends in Pittsburgh of the time. So I know this. Perhaps this is just one of those days when I should be forced to go out and drink Guinness rather than post nonsense.
As Napolean said “pour encourager les autres”.
Of course our Arab friends are *still* welcome to post, as well as our Persian friends!
It seems like you’ve been hittin’ the Guinness already, dog.
Charlie,
Wasn’t it Voltaire who said that, concerning some British admiral who was hanged?
It looks more to me like panic, and the prelude to civil war.
While we’re doing pedantry, Byng was shot.
On the main topic: How reliable is the source? Speculation piled upon propaganda is not usually very useful. (Goes on to speculate…)
That nasty regimes turn on their own to enforce loyalty and maintain public terror is not in doubt. Others go in for internecine faction fights.
There’s no sign of this lot having a plan recently. They are now preoccupied with maintaining stasis, rather than pursuing a revolution. So, if true, killing insiders is more easily explained as sporadic infighting that will go away, or a sign of weakness prefiguring further splits, than a prelude to mass murder of the general population.
Sounds just like what Stalin did to the Red Army, in the years leading up to the German invasion…
Interesting also that there would be a purge in the ranks as the IAEA is – allegedly – about to embark on thorough inspections….Surely, a coincidence.
Persians hate being mistaken for Arabs. It really chaps their hide. Expect to get some hate mail 🙂
Speaking of Stalin, that great, old time Engllishman Alistair Cooke recounted an event regarding Good Old Joe. When the Polish ambassador told him that two Russian officers in Poland of a certain rank, perhaps colonel, were heard making unflattering remarks about him, Stalin had several hundred Russian officers in Poland of that rank put to death, immediately.
Just gotta like a guy like that.
Joel
If the Mullahs turn on the Cosmopolitan Class, you would probably see another Cambodia, only on a much larger scale. This could get very ugly.
Yahoo has just posted a news
item: One third of the Majlis – their legislature – have walked out in protest of the impending elections. Most of the liberal candidates have been disqualified by the Guardian Council – (What a name! I hope Tony Blair isn’t reading this). Apparently the same Praetorian guard units that have just been decapitated will have to supervise this election.
Perhaps the effects of the Iraq war are spreading farther than we expected.
So they finally did walk out as threatened? It has been building up for some weeks. I fear they are approaching the Rubicon in Tehran. ‘A Revolutionary Situation’ .
Pray to whatever gods that it resolves as peaceably as most of Eastern Europe.
Mullha murders! As long as religion and politics are mixed, the righteous Mullahs will indiscriminately kill thousand in the name of their God Allah, There is nothing new about this it has gone on for over a thousand years. When one lives in a culture where life has no value and the only love one can demonstrate is the love for Allah! What else can one expect. They are sick and one only has to look in the eyes of a Mullah to see absolute insanity. They are a scourge on mankind and humanity and the only answer is to destroy them all. The Koran does not advocate killing and in fact does not condone it in any way. These contrived thoughts are nothing more than the ravings of maniacs and the world should know that!
Unfortunately (especially for those that live there), events in Iran, at least as far as the US media are concerned, seem to go on under the radar for the most part: only the occasional newpaper or TV piece – the blogosphere, of course, being an exception – and little real journalistic analysis of what could be shaping up as the next Middle East crisis spot: and a bloody and awful crisis it could tuen out to be, too.
“Revolutionary” regimes (however long-established and hidebound they might become) are typically prone to use any and every sort of violence they can to hold on to power: and the kleptocratic mullahs ruling Iran seem quite unlikely to prove an exception.
Jewel:
From From PLO Terrorist to Lover of Zion
Are there any Islamic scholars reading here? It would be interesting to know how jihad is treated in the hadith. There is an old Islamic tradition of scriptural analysis that alllows for the fact that the Prophet’s message changed over time during the years of the establishment of the faith. That the conquest of Arabia complete the interpretation might change is highly significant to everyone, except the Islamist [less confusing term needed] loonies. It’s they who insist that God can’t cope with change, and doesn’t do subtlety or metaphor,so that every word they attribute to Him is literally and eternally applicable as they see fit in the whole of the world.
Are there any Islamic scholars reading here? It would be interesting to know how jihad is treated in the hadith.
There is an old Islamic tradition of scriptural analysis even in the Sunni branch that allows for the fact that the Prophet’s message changed over time during the years of the establishment of the faith. That the conquest of Arabia complete the interpretation might change is highly significant to everyone, except the Islamist [less confusing term needed] loonies. It’s they who insist that God can’t cope with change, and doesn’t do subtlety or metaphor,so that every word they attribute to Him is literally and eternally applicable as they see fit in the whole of the world.
We shouldn’t take the pronouncement of a radical Sunni cleric as representing or binding the position of Iran’s mullahs. Theirs is a different sort of authority, mpre of an apostolic succession. Their approach is that of a paranoid ruling clique: the Church militant vis-a-vis the Puritans. The existence of hierachy is a hope for reform in the longer term. The clergy’s influence can be moderated and will wane collectively.
Are there any Islamic scholars reading here? It would be interesting to know how jihad is treated in the hadith.
There is an old Islamic tradition of scriptural analysis even in the Sunni branch that allows for the fact that the Prophet’s message changed over time during the years of the establishment of the faith. That the conquest of Arabia complete the interpretation might change is highly significant to everyone, except the Islamist [less confusing term needed] loonies. It’s they who insist that God can’t cope with change, and doesn’t do subtlety or metaphor,so that every word they attribute to Him is literally and eternally applicable as they see fit in the whole of the world.
We shouldn’t take the pronouncement of a radical Sunni cleric as representing or binding the position of Iran’s mullahs. Theirs is a different sort of authority, more of an apostolic succession. Their approach is that of a paranoid ruling clique: the Church militant vis-a-vis the Puritans. The existence of hierachy is a hope for reform in the longer term. The clergy’s influence can be moderated and will wane collectively.
Sorry for multiplication of posts. Since your design changes I am being told on each occasion that I’m missing a Turing code every other time I click “Post”, which is very confusing.
I noticed that Michael Ledeen, at National Review Online mentions the Dozdoozani execution in one of his articles today (near the bottom of the article). Difficult to determine if he got his info from the daneshjoo.org web site or not.