By Alastair Crooke, Conflicts Forum, July 9, 2009
"The troubles that followed the Iranian Presidential elections have – with rare exceptions – been misread by the Western press and policymakers; it was not an East European model ‘colour revolution’; nor was Presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi’s movement an uprising of liberal westernised sympathisers against the principles of the Iranian Revolution – albeit there were some who are hostile to the Revolution amongst his supporters. Iran’s Revolution is not about to implode as a result of this election, but we may expect changes at the top.
Recent events stemmed not from a genuine popular uprising, although plainly for some in north Tehran it was very real; but arose from a dispute between certain ‘Old Guard’ clergy, centred around Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who all assumed power in 1979, and who were deeply angered and threatened by President Ahmadinejad’s assault on their personal wealth, and by the latter’s claims that it was these senior clerics’ pursuit of their own narrow self-interest, at the expense of ordinary people, that was the root cause of Iran’s economic woes....."
"The troubles that followed the Iranian Presidential elections have – with rare exceptions – been misread by the Western press and policymakers; it was not an East European model ‘colour revolution’; nor was Presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi’s movement an uprising of liberal westernised sympathisers against the principles of the Iranian Revolution – albeit there were some who are hostile to the Revolution amongst his supporters. Iran’s Revolution is not about to implode as a result of this election, but we may expect changes at the top.
Recent events stemmed not from a genuine popular uprising, although plainly for some in north Tehran it was very real; but arose from a dispute between certain ‘Old Guard’ clergy, centred around Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who all assumed power in 1979, and who were deeply angered and threatened by President Ahmadinejad’s assault on their personal wealth, and by the latter’s claims that it was these senior clerics’ pursuit of their own narrow self-interest, at the expense of ordinary people, that was the root cause of Iran’s economic woes....."
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