Ayatollah ali Khamenei reported as gravely ill

[southsider2k5]

http://pajamasmedia.com/2006/12/special_to..._supreme_le.php

 

Ayatollah’s health fails as Iran power struggle grows

 

by Michael Ledeen

 

Three days ago, Iran’s dictator, Supreme Leader Ayatollah ali Khamenei, was rushed to the vast medical facility traditionally known as “Vanak” hospital (it now has an Arabic name that means “the 12th Imam Hospital”), a 1,200-room facility that saves half of its beds for the leadership.

 

Khamenei is known to be suffering from cancer, and taking considerable quantities of an opium-based pain killer. He has lost more than 17 pounds in the past ten months, and was told last spring that he was unlikely to see another New Year (In the Iranian calendar, the New Year begins at the end of March).

 

Khamenei first complained of chills, and then broke out in a cold sweat. He lay down to rest, and began to lose feeling in his feet, at which point his aides got him to the hospital.

 

Amidst maximum security, and under orders that the event be kept secret at all costs, the theocrat was placed in one of the luxurious suites reserved for the country’s most important figures. Khamenei’s blood pressure and pulse were alarmingly low, and his physicians at

 

first feared some sort of hemorrhage. But they could find no trace of internal bleeding, and concluded that he had had some sort of cardiac crisis.

 

Khamenei is still undergoing tests and receiving maximum attention. It is clearly a serious problem because he wanted to leave the hospital, only to be talked out of it by the doctors. The precise gravity of his condition is not known, but the argument over the wisdom of moving him to his own home suggests it may be quite serious.

 

My sources for this information are a very knowledgeable Iranian cleric plus another Iranian who has previously provided strikingly accurate stories from the highest levels of the regime in Tehran, suggesting that a major crisis may be underway in Iran.

 

The Power Struggle

 

The Supreme Leader has good reason to keep his condition secret, and to seek to demonstrate he retains his ability to rule the country. Khamenei knows that his regime is riven by intense conflict, some of which has been dramatically exposed in recent weeks in the run-up to the election of a new Assembly of Experts (the clerical body whose main responsibility is the selection of the Supreme Leader).

 

News of Khamenei’s heart problems, especially if they turn out to be life-threatening, would undoubtedly catalyze the battle at the highest levels of the regime to control the choice of his successor. Recent events document both the intensity and the violence of the power struggle.

 

On November 27th, a military aircraft–an Antonov 74—headed for a military site near Tabriz crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran. Nearly forty deaths were reported, including several top leaders of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s elite military organization. The dead included some of Khamenei’s closest allies and advisers, and their loss was a serious blow for him.

 

Most Iranians–who are in any case reluctant to believe in accidents when the mighty are killed–are convinced the plane was sabotaged, especially as this is the latest in a sequence of spectacular airplane disasters, producing high-level military casualties.

 

About a week earlier, a military helicopter came down, killing all six people on board. Last January, Ahmad Kazemi, the Revolutionary Guards’ ground commander, and seven other senior officers, were killed in the crash of a French-made Falcon, a small executive jet, near the Turkish border. Barely a month before, yet another military aircraft, a C-130, came down near Tehran airport, hit a ten-story building, and killed 115 people (mostly journalists).

 

A week ago, the Majlis (the national assembly) passed a law effectively reducing the presidential term of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nezhad by a full year. This was universally seen as an attack in favor of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadi-Nezhad’s most visible political rival, and a candidate to succeed Khamenei.

 

Meanwhile, as reported in Iran Press News, the ongoing public challenge to the regime itself continues unabated.

 

On Wednesday, thousands of students demonstrated on the campus of Tehran University, chanting “death to despotism,” and “death to the dictator.” And in Mazandaran Province, up by the Caspian Sea, thousands of angry workers protested in front of Ahmadi-Nezhad himself, announcing they were starving and demanding the government honor its promise to improve the lot of the poor.

 

As yet, news of the Supreme Leader’s medical problems has remained a secret, known only to a handful of trusted aides and colleagues. But it is only a matter of time before Khamenei’s condition becomes public knowledge. With unknown ramifications to the stability of Iran and the region at large.

[Balta1701]

I believe this could seriously increase Ahmadinejad's power in that nation.

[southsider2k5]

I believe this could seriously increase Ahmadinejad's power in that nation.

 

Either he'll be able to consolidate power, or this is the big openning the moderates have been waiting for. I don't think there is much in between right now. Especially with the situations between Sunni and Shiites all over the middle east, the potential for revolution is there.

[sox4lifeinPA]

world war...5 or 6 or whatever the count is here we come.

[southsider2k5]

Interesing follow up on what the situation is like inside of Iran. One of the articles I read a while back compared Ahmadinejad to Bill Clinton as being much more popular outside of his own country, and being very polarizing inside of it. It sounds like there might be something to that.

 

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/11/0...7.ypfkzp5b.html

 

Iran students heckle Ahmadinejad

Dec 11 8:03 AM US/Eastern

 

Iranian students have disrupted a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a prestigious Tehran university, setting fire to his picture and heckling him.

 

"Some students chanted radical slogans and inflamed the atmosphere of the meeting" at the Amir Kabir University, said the semi-official Fars news agency on Monday, which is close to Ahmadinejad.

 

"A small number of students shouted 'death to the dictator' and smashed cameras of state television but they were confronted by a bigger group of students in the hall chanting: 'We support Ahmadinejad'," it said.

 

It was the latest in a series of student demonstrations in recent days, the first time in least two years that such protests have taken place on this scale at Iranian universities.

 

Ahmadinejad responded by describing those students chanting the slogans as an "oppressive" minority.

 

"A small number of people who claim there is oppression are creating oppression and do not let the majority hear (my) words," he said.

 

According to the student news agency ISNA, Ahmadinejad responded to the students' chants of "students can die but they do not accept degradation" by lashing out at the United States.

 

"Today, the worst type of dictatorship in the world is the American dictatorship which has been clothed in human rights," he said.

 

"Our students are free and they fight and die but do not accept the foreigners' missions or bend to them," he added.

 

"It is my honour to burn for the sake of the nation's ideals and defend the system," Ahmadinejad was quoted as telling protesters who set fire his picture, ISNA said.

 

"Americans must know that even if Ahmadinejad's body is burnt a thousand times for this purpose, Ahmadinejad will not retreat even a centimetre from these ideals."

 

The Iranian president's speech was also interrupted by firecrackers, ISNA said.

 

A group of Amir Kabir's top students had earlier expressed objections to the government's economic and political agenda as well as "confrontation with student activists and ridding universities of independent lecturers".

 

"Bankrupting the country's industry, inflation, distribution of poverty, defacement of the country's international image and playing with the nation's fate in diplomatic issues," were among the points brought up in a statement.

 

"University is alive and criticises the government," it added, according to ISNA.

 

The incident came after hundreds of Iranian students protested at Amir Kabir on Sunday to denounce a crackdown on a reformist-led university association, according to the ISNA news agency.

 

Between 2,000 and 3,000 students also demonstrated at Tehran University on Wednesday to mark students' day, chanting slogans such as "for freedom and against despotism", ISNA reported at the time.