Iran's Supreme Council corralling Ahmadinejad?

[Roland99]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6507451.stm

Noticeable by his absence in all this is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

From the Iranian side, the crisis has been managed by the country's Supreme National Security Council, the highest body dealing with such important matters.

Its decisions are approved by Ayatollah Khamenei, and all senior officials take part in its meetings.

President Ahmadinejad's silence may suggest that the clerical leadership is deliberately keeping him out of this matter in order to ensure that situation is not inflamed by his usual hardline rhetoric.

I hope that is truly the case. It's a shame that Ahmadinejad has run his mouth off so much. It just feeds perfectly into the failed neocon ideology but those insane bastards will continue to use him as "justification" for military action against Iran.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Ahmadinejad follows orders.

I don't understand what the ruling council is up to but I also do not believe the theory that Ahmadinejad is a rogue element.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. and reports continue that Khameni is deathly ill

although you won't hear it from our MSM.

[Strelnikov_]

7. That would explain a lot

On edit: The Brit incident has not made much sense to me once it pushed beyond a few days.

As I posited last night in the thread of one of our resident scolds, who is holding the Brits?

Regular Army? Revolutionary Guards?

And who is the group holding them answering to. Supreme Leader? President? Parliament? Splinter group in the Guardian Council?

I am starting to think they have some, well, problems in their command and control structure.

Which means, well, we have problems. Hard to negotiate when you do not even know who you are dealing with.

And more important, hard to game possible retaliatory responses when you have no idea who will be directing the response.


If indeed there is a power vacuum/struggle going on, these indeed are very dangerous times.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

8. yet we hold how many, 5? of their embassy people, INVITED BY IRAQ?

I suppose that we look as crazy.

ON one hand, we have little prada clad Condi prancing and screwing up in the muddle east, yet, we have Darth and Abrams and other neocons undermining even her limited efforts.

No wonder no one trusts america any more. there is nothing to trust.

[Igel]

9. That story had a lot of movement to it.

Diplomat personnel at a consulte eventually became "people that had applied for diplomatic credentials at a building that would be a visa/immigration center."

But there was also some detentions of personnel--certainly diplomats, arguably Revolutionary Guard--in Baghdad. People like to believe that "diplomats" and "Revolutionary Guard" are mutually exclusive, just as we think that no CIA agent could ever operate out of an embassy unless they were evil scum ... right?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

10. the screwier our actions appeared, the less we heard

After a while, they just quit talking about it.

THAT speaks volumes

[Strelnikov_]

3. Ah-jad is a swarthy Tony Snow

But, yes, they do seem to have been muzzling him recently. Maybe the Guardian Council has come to the conclusion that he is as bat-shit crazy as his Doppelganger, Chimpus Maximus.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/iran_power/html/supreme_leader.stm

[Ian David]

4. Is Ahmadinejad off riding his bicycle somewhere? n/t

[mmonk]

5. That is the way it is. He has no power in that system

when it comes to such matters. But many pols here in the US still exploit the ignorance of their system that exists here in the US to ratchet up the rhetoric and create an essential bad guy to get the public on board.

[Wiley50]

6. President Ahm-mad-n-I-jihad must be really pissed n/t