The National Council of Resistance of Iran issued a statement on Tuesday and said that reports from within the Iran's regime indicate that the powerful mullah Ahmad Azari-Qomi, in recent letters to the regime's leaders, including Rafsanjani and Khatami, lashed out at Khamenei and Rafsanjani. He was subsequently expelled from Qom's Theologians Society which is controlled by Khamenei.

The NCR statement said: The infighting among the various factions of the mullahs' regime have taken on unprecedented dimensions since Khatami's election. This uncontrollable trend, as noted by NCR President Massoud Rajavi, has expedited the developments in favor of the Iranian Resistance and brought closer the prospect of the overthrow of the mullahs' religious, terrorist dictatorship by the National Liberation Army of Iran.

Regime's Moderation Is Only A Mirage, NCR, November 12

Following the escalation of conflicts within the regime's highest leadership, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Head of the Council for the Discernment of the State Exigencies, hastily warned against undermining the velayat-e faqih and described it as the "primary executive pillar and guarantee for the survival" of the regime.

His comments come after rival factions within the regime have openly attacked and brought under question Khamenei and the principle of velayat-e faqih. Comparing the regime's current state with the period immediately after Khomeini's death, Rafsanjani laid bare his fear of the regime's overthrow. He stressed that without the velayat-e faqih, the regime will become "vulnerable."

Rafsanjani's remarks today reflect on the one hand the unprecedented escalation of the power struggle among the ruling mullahs. On the other hand, they display the clerics' fear over the rise in public discontent, and the expansion of the activities by the Resistance's nationwide network and the Mojahedin's military operations inside Iran.

The statements made by the regime's former president further reveal that the claims about this regime's moderation are but a mirage and that Iran's ruling religious, terrorist dictatorship has no way but to step up repression and export terrorism to confront its various crises.

Soccer Debacle Kicks Off Political Blame Game, Agence France Presse, November 11 

Tehran—The Iranian football [soccer] team's humiliating defeat against tiny Qatar has touched off a hot political debate in the Islamic republic with many calling for a revamp of the country's sports leadership….

Several conservative MPs have asked for a probe into the sports organization, while others have openly called for the departure of its director Mostafa Hashemi-Taba, a moderate also serving as a vice president to Khatami.

The campaign has provoked a backlash from the moderate-leftwing faction…

The radical Salam newspaper on Tuesday attacked the conservatives and their leader, parliamentary speaker Ali-Akbar Nateq-Nuri, accusing him of seeking to make political gains from the sports event….

Censorship Plagues Iran Filmmaker, Associated Press, November 11

It's not easy making a movie when characters of the opposite sex can't touch, or even get too close. Or when women must be shown covered from head to toe, even when sleeping in bed….

Tahmineh Milani, one director willing to speak out in public, points to a rule by censors that characters of the opposite sex may not touch…. What's toughest on realistic films is the rule that women characters must follow the Islamic dress code at all times…

Still, recent Iranian movies have won international praise for their simple but frank appraisals of social issues in Iran's restrictive society….

Those films generally have been popular in Iran, too.

But getting them shown is no easy task…

Getting an OK for a film means innumerable trips to the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance, which censors movies. There Milani had to take abuse for being not only a woman but "just different from them," she said…..

She even blames a miscarriage on the stress of dealing with the censors -- and the hundreds of times she had to walk up and down the ministry's stairs -- to get approval for her last movie, "Kakado." It took four years.

Back to Brief on Iran