Iran’s Guardian Council has announced that it will invite the three challengers in last week’s presidential election: Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaei, to attend a Saturday meeting “to express their ideas and ask any questions in the presence of the Guardian Council’s members.”
Since the election results were announced by the Interior Ministry, the three candidates have all alleged fraud, and Mousavi’s supporters in particular have engaged in massive public protests against the election. Faced with the allegations, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has charged the Guardian Council with investigating the matter.
The Guardian Council says it has begun a careful examination of the complaints, and says that between the three candidates they have received 646 separate complaints about last Friday’s vote. The powerful council has previously offered a partial recount of the vote.
Details of the situation on the ground have been difficult to come by, as the government has officially banned foreign media from reporting on the protests. Some reporters have managed to dodge this ban, but much of the news is coming either directly from the state media or the opposition campaign.
One cannot talk about Iran today, without mentioning the behind the scene grey eminence of Iranian politics, former President Rafsanjani. In Iran, there is an attempt at a coup, a coup of a tight knit corruption-enriched elite against the changes that the populist govenment of Ahmedinejad is trying to push through. This is why this "revolution" is mainly for the rich and by the rich. Rafsanjani took control of the Oil Ministry, good chunk of the "Bazaar", or the foreign trade, "privatized" a university that he now owns, and with big interests in financial sector and agricuture. Ahmedinejad finally pried open the control of the Oil Ministry, so that this massive bleeding of money into corruption channels stopped. Population of Teheran does not represent Iran. Supreme Leader, Ayatolla Khamenei is carefully biding his time. He does have all the aces in his hand, but he may have to wait till the real power behind this storm in the teacup sticks his neck out. So far, only the washed up politician Mousavi's neck is on the line.
This would certainly explain the willingness of the "liberals" to get on Uncle Shmuel's payroll. The Pakistanis recently claimed that the CIA had dumped $400 million into this color-coded revolution.