All Blog Posts from World Watch

Iran's elite military force, the Revolutionary Guard, has become the spine of a "military security government with a facade of a Shiite clerical system," according to an expert interviewed by The New York Times.

Rasool Nafisi, an Iran expert who recently co-authored a study on the Guard for the RAND Corporation, argues that the military wing has greatly extended its power in Iranian politics and society amid the chaos following the contested June 12 presidential elections.

At left: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accompanied by Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, right, and Chief of the Revolutionary Guard's general staff Ali Akbar Ahmadian, left, listen to the national anthem as he arrives for a meeting of Revolutionary Guard commanders in Tehran in a Sept. 11, 2007 file photo.

The Times article says the Guard is much more than a division of Iran's military — it has control over the country's missiles and at least some control over the nuclear program, but it also generates huge wealth through business enterprises ranging from laser-eye surgery to black market trading.

And the Guard is a great benefactor of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (a former member himself), who opposition leaders claim stole the election through massive, organized fraud.

Since he took office, according to The Times report, the Guard has won some 750 government contracts — none of which are subject to oversight by Iran's Parliament.

The Guard's fast-growing tentacles, which touch every aspect of Iranian life, combined with its lead role in the post-election crackdown on opposition voices, "has led many political analysts to describe the events surrounding the June 12 presidential election as a military coup," according to the paper.

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the senior dissident cleric in Iran's religious establishment, has issued his harshest condemnation of the Islamic Republic's leadership since the disputed June 12 election.

Mondtazeri never names Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei directly in his remarks, but he has long been an outspoken opponent of both Khamenei and the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Montazeri says "those who have lost, religiously and reasonably, the credibility for serving the public, are automatically dismissed, and the continuation of their work has no legitimacy."

The Grand Ayatollah also says Iranians have a religious right and duty to protest their leaders, if those leaders violate the tenets of Islam by usurping power.

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Reports that Iran's ruling regime has put the country's most feared, hard-line prosecutor in charge of interrogating arrested protesters and journalists have raised the ire of human rights groups and the Canadian government.

Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's prosecutor-general since 2003 and a judge previously, has been implicated by several inquiries in the death that year of a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist who was arrested, tortured and then killed in custody.

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Track The Latest Coverage Of Iran's Election Upheaval.

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