Whom isn't that mad, and who NO ONE LISTENS TO ANYWAY!!!!
As I shake my head, readers, I am just astounded at the level of shit Zionist propaganda that is shoveled at the American people!
"Many hands at the helm in Iran; Clerics' power steadily eroding" by Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times | January 6, 2008
Yup, but it's an Islamofascist dictatorship, blah, blah, blah!
BEIRUT - Iran's supreme leader spoke not with the thunder of a man regarded in his country as God's representative on Earth, but with the exasperated tone of a corporate manager chastising his employees.
Ali Khamenei had ordered his deputies to start privatizing state-owned businesses: the telephone company, three banks, and dozens of small oil and petrochemical enterprises.
Jealously guarding their own sources of power and patronage, however, his underlings all but ignored him. Months passed. Then Khamenei gathered the country's elite for an extraordinary meeting.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Cabinet ministers were there, as were important clerics, the leader of parliament, provincial governors, the heads of state broadcasting, and the Iranian Chamber of Commerce.
Khamenei, with television cameras rolling, told them to pass some laws, sell off some businesses - and be quick about it:
"Those who are hostile to these policies are the ones who are going to lose their interests and influence."
Privatizing state industries? How American of him!
The system shrugged. By November, nine months after unleashing his public scolding and almost a year and a half after Khamenei had first issued his order, almost nothing had happened. According to Middle East Economic Digest, only two out of 240 state-owned businesses Khamenei targeted had been sold off.
For years, Western analysts have struggled to understand the inner workings of Iran's leadership. To many, it is a government tightly controlled by the Shi'ite Muslim clergy. But the power of the clerics has steadily eroded. Increasingly, power is distributed among combative elites within a delicate system of checks and balances defined by religious as well as civil law, personal relations, and the rhythm of bureaucracy.
Oooooooh, we are told such lies by the government and its Zionist-controlled organs of state propaganda!
Iranian analysts struggle to discern which officials have authority and how much. And when Iranian officials make public pronouncements, it often is unclear whether they are expressing established policy or they are fighting among themselves - speaking for their own faction or just themselves.
Concentric circles of influence and power that emanate from the supreme leader include the clergy, government and military officials, and at their farthest fringes, militiamen and well-connected bazaar merchants: altogether perhaps 15 percent of Iran's 70 million people.
Even the man regarded in Iran as the highest-ranking cleric in Shi'ite Islam finds himself constrained and challenged. Khamenei and his closest advisers are at the center of the power structure, overseeing grave matters of state including the country's nuclear program and domestic policy from a huge tree-shrouded compound in downtown Tehran.
In the system are people with different ideologies and agendas, including the offspring of Western universities and onetime operatives in the shah's intelligence service.
You mean, WESTERN SPIES or TERRORISTS are in Iran?
While average people have limited freedom to criticize the power structure, analysts and officials in Tehran say the heads of government agencies eagerly consume results of public opinion polls about their leaders' performance and Iranian's attitudes toward everything from women's dress to making peace with the United States.
Pfffffft! We have been SOOOOOOO LIED TO!
The Iranians are JUST LIKE US!!!!!!
Only they seem more responsive to their people than Bush does to his!
Many of Iran's leaders fear a popular uprising like the one that toppled the shah or the Communist governments of Eastern Europe.
Yeah, not like the U.S would supporting a COUP or anything!
Khamenei has found that even if the power structure believes he has a mandate from heaven, he can't make it move on economic reforms.
Iran needs to free up billions of dollars from its budget to invest in its ailing oil industry, the source of half the government's income. Hundreds of money-losing state-owned enterprises drain the budget, however. Despite the high cost of oil, the World Bank predicts that Iran will be running a deficit in two years.
I'm sitting here wondering how Iran can be such a threat to us!
Just another ZIONIST LIE we were told, huh?
Privatization would help raise funds, but it would mean wresting lucrative patronage from the hands of religious foundations, military institutions, and well-connected insiders.
So how is Iran different from stinkfuck Amurka?
The businesses Khamenei wants to sell on the stock market are also expected to kick in millions of dollars each year for political and religious events that are part of the Islamic Republic's ideological machinery."
Stock market? Iran has a STOCK MARKET?
WTF?!
You know I won't likely be purchasing these shit rags tomorrow, right?
I am TIRED of reading ZIONIST LIES with my morning coffee, readers!
