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The arrest of Ibrahim Yazdi, the Khomeini regime's former Foreign Minister, marks an unprecedented rise in the feuding within the clerical regime.
During the mullahs' 18-year rule, Ibrahim Yazdi had always underscored his own and his group's loyalty to the clerical regime. While the Ministry of Guidance usually prevented foreign reporters from contacting personalities not affiliated with the government, it recommended interviews with Yazdi
Yazdi's arrest demonstrates that the state of Iran's theocratic regime is so fragile that it can no longer tolerate even its close allies.
The move also proves that not only
did the holding of the OIC summit in Tehran fail to ease the power struggle
among the mullahs, but it escalated their infighting.
Elusive in Iran: Real Power, The Christian Science Monitor, December 15
Tehran - Campaign promises made it sound as if utopia were just around the corner.
An Iran led by moderate cleric Mohamad Khatami, voters were told, would bring change. Tough Islamic restrictions would be eased - especially for women - and the gangs of bearded ideologues enforcing them would be replaced with the rule of law.
Jobs would be created, and Iran's isolation from the outside world would end.
… But slow progress is raising doubts about Khatami's ability to control Iran's complex political system.
Those who cast their ballots with such high hopes for change - the young "children" of the 1979 Islamic revolution… are becoming disillusioned. … Iranians have new nicknames for their leader (Khatami), calling him the Smiling Nun or the Emperor's Consort "because he is relegated to opening flower shows."
An unexpected obstacle appears to have come from former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose support was critical in ensuring Khatami's victory, but who has leaned to the right… This has created a troika of rulers led by Iran's conservative spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. By many accounts, President Khatami is a distant third in the power lineup.
"The establishment lost the election,
but they have not lost power," says a senior Western diplomat in Tehran.
"Khatami has been artful in talking up his mandate, but he's not a politician,
and so far he has been widely checkmated - or at least checked." … many
analysts say that in the current power struggle Khatami is racing against
the clock - and the staying power of high expectations…
Tehran District Major Sentenced to Jail, Agence France Presse, December 14
TEHRAN - A district mayor in Tehran has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison on charges ranging from embezzlement to keeping "decadent" video movies at home, newspapers reported on Sunday.
Mohammad Hashemi Mahimani is also banned for life from taking a government position, they said.
He was among several district chiefs arrested several months ago in a corruption scandal surrounding the Tehran municipality. Four other district mayors have already been sentenced to lengthy jail terms.
Tehran mayor Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi
has also been summoned to court several times to answer questions about
his possible role in the scandal, but has not yet been tried.
Iran's Venture in Image Rehab, The New York Times, December 14
TEHRAN - ... One question still difficult if not impossible to answer is whether overtures like those on display last week encourage moderation or coddle the worst elements in Iran. U.S. views have veered from one extreme to the other, with little success on either end of the spectrum.
The effort to reach out to Iran reached its most absurd and embarrassing proportion with the secret arrival in 1986 of the Bible- and cake-bearing mission led by Robert McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, to which Iranian officials turned their backs. Since then, Washington's pattern has been to turn its own back on Iran until it forswears, for one thing, its support for violent opponents of a broader Middle East peace....
Misgivings within the Sunni-dominated Islamic world of Iran's Shiite regime still run so deep that few if any of those who attended were doing so to demonstrate wholehearted support for Iran's domestic and internal policies.
Many were motivated first by obligations to an Islamic organization they hope can wield increasing weight, and perhaps second by a curiosity about Khatami, a man who had been unknown to many of them. Tiny oil-rich monarchies like Kuwait and Bahrain that have embraced U.S. military protection remained skeptical of their giant neighbor's claims that it has no hostile intentions. "There are a lot of lookers but no buyers," a European diplomat said...