Recent media reports about Iran suggest that President Ahmadinejad has run slightly afoul of the clerics in that country's Council of Guardians. Most specifically, the Imam Khamenei has publicly criticized the president's statements about Iran's nuclear program and his government's failure to stop inflation in Iran. Khamenei, for those who don't know, is the Supreme Leader of Iran, which means that, he reviews every political decision made by the Iranian legislature and the president according to the Koran and its interpretations. He has issued a fatwa that states the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islam. He has also supported the economic subsidies of basic goods and shelter and free medical care for all Iranians--two programs currently existing in Iran This support stems from the Koran's teaching that those who can afford it must pay zakat to help the poor, although the institutionalization of it through Tehran could be considered part of the Islamic government's successful attempts to remove leftists and their thought from the revolutionary regime by renaming their programs and then killing the left.
Like those that exist in any country, there are those in Iran's ruling elites who would like to see all subsidies ended, with Iran incorporating itself into the neoliberal model of economic Darwinism. In other words, those with the money and connections would reap great profits while the poor and working people would suffer. The former president Rafsanjani is one of these men, so it seems ironic that he would be in favor with Khamenei if Khamenei is to be believed. Rafsanjani, for those who don't know, was part of the original troika of clerics (along with Ayatollah Khomeini and Mohammed Husseni Buheshi) that forced the left and the moderates out of the revolution and established a dictatorship of the clerics.
A recent tactic from Washington as it seeks to motivate the people of the US for another war in the Middle East is its claim that Iran is arming the various insurgent groups fighting US troops in Iraq. The people pushing this story (specifically Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno) have even gone so far as to tell the press that the US military has traced the serial numbers found on some captured weapons back to Iran. Now, even if this were true, there is more than one possible explanation for these serial numbers. The one that springs first to mind is that SCIRI, an Iraqi party supported by the United States since before the invasion with a militia known as the Badr Brigades that was trained in Iran, has many of these such weapons. Consequently, it is quite possible that the weaponry supposedly captured by US troops and traced back to Iran was stolen from the Badr Brigades.
Other possible explanations could be that the rumored weapons don't even exist, were bought on the black market, or were planted by anti-Iranian forces in Iraq or US intelligence. In short, this claim rings as hollow as the yellow cake uranium claims made by the White House as it lied the US into war with Iraq. On the other hand, if it is true to some degree, that wouldn't be unusual. After all, even the US insurgency against the British was funded by the French.
This is what we get from our "War President" and we will pay, and pay, and pay, and.... with our wealth and lives. As long as we let him, that is.
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