On 7/21/2015 6:33 PM, gtr wrote:
> On 2015-07-21 22:51:07 +0000, Dr. Edward Morbius said:
>
>>> Do you blame them? They've been trying to crawl out from under
>>> shariia law since 1928, but the West keeps pulling the rug out from
>>> under them. We ousted a democratically elected government and
>>> installed the Shah back in 1941 - and they have been unstable ever
>>> since.
>>
>> That was an unfortunate response to a fear we had of Iran becoming a
>> communist nation.
>>
>> Regrettably we had a similar concern with Iraq and hence Saddam
>> offered us a blocking maneuver.
>>
>> So we set him against the Mullahs...
>
> I don't want to make trouble but this "Mullahs" you refer to. Is that
> some specific group, or are you speaking of any religious leader or
> scholar within Islam? Or are you speaking of the government of Iran?
>

I am obviously referring to the ruling religious clerics of Iran.

Jeebers!

http://ann.sagepub.com/content/482/1/85

Direct rule by Islamic clerics in Iran is an important new phenomenon in
Middle Eastern politics. The legitimacy of clerical rule is based on an
ideology developed from Shiite thought by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
and his neofundamentalist followers. This ideology is embodied in the
Iranian Constitution, which institutionalizes rule by Islamic clerics.
Their sense of legitimacy has been reinforced by Khomeini's commitment
to maintaining clerical rule, by his claim to leadership on the basis of
a divine calling, and by a monopolization of the interpretation of the
sacred law. The principal themes of clerical rule include grandiosity,
an insistence on unity, ascription of hostile motives to the actions of
other states, a preference for military solutions to political problems,
and a belief in ultimate victory. Replication of the Iranian pattern of
clerical rule elsewhere in the Middle East will be problematic without
the emergence of a figure like Khomeini or the assistance of Iran.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/op...tyle.html?_r=0

The nouveaux riches in Tehran drive Porsches, Ferraris and Maseratis and
live in multimillion-dollar luxury apartments replete with walk-in
closets, Bosch appliances and computerized shower systems.

I was stunned when I caught a glimpse of what Iran’s megarich can afford
— on, of all things, a program made by Press TV, an English-language
news organization sponsored and monitored by the Iranian state. It was
not just the wealth that struck me, but how freely Iran’s “one
percenters” flaunted the symbols of Western decadence without fear of
government retribution.

Thirty-five years after a revolution that promised an egalitarian utopia
and vowed to root out “gharbzadegi” — the modern Westernized lifestyles
of Iran’s cosmopolitans — how have some people become so rich?

Much of Iran’s wealth, it turns out, is in the hands of the very people
in charge of maintaining social justice. Hard-line clerical leaders,
together with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (the branch of
Iran’s military in charge of protecting the country’s Islamic
government), have engineered a system where it is largely they, their
family members and their loyal cronies who prosper.