Styres Iran av en messiansk sekt?

En messiansk sekt som går inn for å fremskynde endetiden slik at den 12. imam vil komme tilbake, har stor innflytelse på dagens Iran. Hojjatieh-sekten ble forbudt av ayatollah Khomeini, men har i all stillhet lykkes å vinne aksept og har manøvrert seg inn til maktens sentrum. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad skal være en hojjatieh.

Det samme skal hans åndelige veileder, ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, være. Iranere ser på Hojjatieh-sekten som “freaks”, men spekulasjonene om at det har skjedd en intern maktovertakelse er mange. Mye blir forklarlig hvis det er hold i en slik teori: valget i juni 2009 blir av mange sett på som et indre kupp. Det er nå en stor og økende kløft mellom Ahmadinejad og Revolusjonsgarden og tradisjonelle, konservative mullaher. Iran blir mer og mer en politistat. At denne staten satser alle ressurser på å bli en atommakt, gir grunn til stor bekymring. Eskatologi – endetidslengsler og atomvåpen er en dårlig kombinasjon.

Hojjatieh Society is a Shia sect, founded in Tehran in 1953 by Shaikh Mahmoud Halabi. The organization was founded to fight against another newly established Shia sect, Baha’i faith. Hojjatieh members share this idea with other Shiite Muslims that the Mahdi (the 12th Imam) will return and will rid the world of wrongdoing, injustice and tyranny. But they believe to hasten the return of the Mahdi, they should quicken the coming of the apocalypse by creating chaos and disorder.

Hashemi Rafsanjani writes in his memoir that during the Shah Regime, Hojjatieh members were reluctant to fight alongside Khomeini supporters. They believed there is no point in creating a revolution and an Islamic Republic without the Mahdi as its leader.
After the Revolution Hojjatieh members were not allowed to participate in the political scene.

They offered Khomeini to cooperate in building the country with their ‘educated young people’ but Khomeini rejected the offer. Khomeini was against Hojjatieh since they rejected his doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist). Hojjatiya Society was forced to dissolve after Ayatollah Khomeini speech on 12 August 1983.

In last 5 years both conservative and reformist politicians have warned that neo-Hojjatieh is reemerging in the corridors of power in Tehran. Two days ago while Iranians were celebrating the birthday of Imam Mahdi, Resalat newspaper wrote “due to tolerance of the intelligence service with Hojjatieh in recent years, some of the active members of this sect are now asking the legal authorization for their activities.”

Hemmelige selskap som intrigerer seg inn har selvsagt lettere for å vinne frem i et regime som er diktatorisk, og som taper legitimitet. Det må se seg om etter friskt blod og nye ideer. Det er stengt mot genuin kritikk og faller for sjarlataneri.

Mange iranere, også tradisjonalister, er skremt av hojjatieh. Det finnes forløpere i iransk historie av fanatikere, som “assassins”, som viser hvor sterk innflytelse en liten gruppe kan ha. Khomeini la selvsalgt selv grunnlaget for en slik ekstremisme, med sin egen versjon av shiismen. Nå har noen tatt stafettpinnen videre, i en enda mer ekstrem retning: obskurantisme, og endetidsfantasier er siste stadium. Men det kan også bety siste stadium for Israel. En skulle tro at etterretningstjenester studerer hojjatieh-sekten nøye, og hvis opplysningene stemmer kan det veie tungt i vurderingene om man skal ty til militære midler.

Flere kjente personligheter har advart mot sektens innflytelse:

One of the very first politicians who warned from Hojjatieh influence in Ahmadinejad administration was Ahmad Tavassoli, a former chief of staff of Khomeini. He claimed in 2005 that “the executive branch of the Iranian government as well as the Revolutionary Guards have been hijacked by the Hojjatieh.”

In September 2005 Mohammad Khatami, the former reformist president of Iran said in Mashad “Those who regarded the revolution, during Imam Khomeini’s time, as a deviation, are now [wielding] the tools of terror and oppression.” Khatami did not name Hojjatieh in his speech but he referred to them as The “shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness” that now have a powerful organization behind them.

A week before the presidential election in June 2009, Hadi Khamenei, the reformist brother of the Supreme leader said unfortunately most of the media are in hands of Hojjatieh supporters and they are propagandizing their ideas about Islam in the society. He said Hojjatieh are using soft war techniques to establish their power.

Michael Leeden gir et grimt bilde av regimets forfall: bazaarene over hele Iran streiker, til tross for at streiken offisielt ble avlyst. Regimet svarer med terror: historiske basarer er brent ned. Det samme skjer med befolkningen i Zahedan, den sunni-muslimske byen i iransk Baluchistan, hvor Jundullah-geriljaen er aktiv. Leiemordere går fra dør til dør og dreper folk. Det er kriminelle som er sluppet ut av fengslet og trent av regimet.

• First of all, there is still no end to the bazaar strike, even though the regime has taken very violent action against the strikers. A large part of the beautiful bazaar in Kerman has been torched (for that matter, regime thugs have taken to setting ablaze large sections of forest land in the region.) Nor will the bazaar strikes end soon, since this week marks religious celebrations that traditionally close the bazaars all over the country.

• The major natural gas pipeline between Iran and Turkey was sabotaged. Enormous damage was done, and the authorities have no estimate as to how long it will be until repair work is finished. Meanwhile the two countries announced plans for a brand-new pipeline.

• Saturday – Sunday night there was a serious fire at the old petrochemical plant on Kharq island. That island is very important to Iran, because it is at once the central point from which Iranian crude oil is exported, and one end of the major pipeline that carries crude and refined products to the mainland. So anything that goes wrong there has immediate consequences both for the national economy and for daily life.

The Brothel Named Iran

Does Hojjatieh Secret Society Runs Iran?

Aesop

@Rustad

Historien her er verd å trykke, men jeg nevner nå en liten betenkning likevel:

Det er som kjent nå sterke krefeter i både Israel og USA som ivrer for angrep på Iran. Så i den forbindelse er det sannsynlig at det vil dukke opp reportasjer som forteller at Iran er en dødelig trussel mot store deler av resten av verden.

Iran er en dødelig trussel mot Israel og landet er styrt av en brutal og kynisk gruppe mennesker, men det betyr ikke at de er suicidale.
Aesop

Mer info:

A game plan to draw the United States into a third war in the Middle East may be quietly unfolding before our eyes.

Late last week, Republicans in the House or Representatives unveiled H.Res.1553, a resolution providing explicit support for an Israeli bombing campaign against Iran. The measure, introduced by Texas Republican Louie Gohmert and forty-six of his colleagues, endorses Israel’s use of “all means necessary” against Iran “including the use of military force”.

…

But Gohemert’s resolution may be an unprecedented development–Congress has never endorsed pre-emptive military strikes by a foreign country. What’s more, this is the minority party signaling to Israel that they can count on Republican support should the President object to Israeli strikes on Iran–as did George W. Bush in 2008. The resolution also explicitly endorses “any means necessary”, a carte blanche for the use of nuclear bunker-busting bombs.

The measure may be overtly political, coming just one week before the Congressional recess in which Members of Congress will return home to their districts to campaign and raise money for the upcoming midterm elections. Democrats and Republicans are in a foot race to demonstrate who can be toughest on Iran. But while Democrats continue to tout newly imposed “crippling” sanctions as evidence of their commitment to pressure, Republicans appear to be moving on to the next phase and are openly endorsing an Israeli strike. Gohmert even argued that instead of sanctions, Congress should have passed his resolution green-lighting military strikes on Iran.

But by encouraging such an attack, supporters of war are effectively working to circumvent the President and his military leadership, who have warned in dire terms against military action in Iran, and instead goading a third country into launching the first strike. Once the bombing campaign has commenced, the authors of this resolution may believe, the US would have few choices but be dragged into war.

In fact, this measure is no small part of a neoconservative agenda to go to war with Iran. The green light resolution is precisely what John Bolton called for two weeks ago in a Wall Street Journal piece that reads as a playbook for dragging the US into military conflict with Iran.

Bolton lays out a game plan in which Congress can “reassure” Israel in order to make a military strike possible. He argued that with “visible congressional support in place”, the President’s concerns about an Israeli strike can be short-circuited.

…

But by endorsing military strikes, supporters of H.Res.1553 are playing games with US national security and could provoke the US into a third war in the Middle East.

…

War with Iran will seem farfetched until it is a fait accompli.

http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/07/29/the_republican_backdoor_to_war_with_iran
Aesop

Argumenter mot et angrep, fra Juan Cole:

…

The likely outcome of an Israeli military strike on Iran is as follows:

Iran will use Shiite operatives and militiamen to kill the increasingly vulnerable remaining US troops in Iraq (once there are less than 50,000 non-combat troops in that country, they are not troops, they are hostages).

Iran will stir up its substantial number of clients in Afghanistan to hit the United States, widening the insurgency from mainly Pashtun Taliban to include fundamentalist Tajiks and Hazaras. The US will remain mired in that war, perhaps for decades, as a result.

Iran will probably bide its time and act in covert and hard to trace ways against US interests in the region. There could be more operations like the Khobar Towers bombing of US troops in Saudi Arabia or the 1983 attack on a Marine barracks in Beirut. All US commercial and government offices in the region would become targets.

A fair likelihood exists that Hizbullah would do something to Israel in revenge, possibly provoking another Israel-Lebanon War. The last war did not go well for Israel, despite its massive military superiority. A fourth of Israelis were forced to move house, chemical gas facilities in Haifa were threatened (and the Dimona Nuclear plant that makes all those Israeli nuclear warheads could be), and Hizbullah had broken Israeli radio encryption and knew all the Israeli army plans beforehand.

Not only would the democratically inclined opposition movement in Iran evaporate, but Muslim fundamentalists in Egypt, Jordan and other US allies would mobilize and perhaps gain in popularity out of anti-imperial solidarity. (Only 6% of ordinary Arabs is worried about an Iranian nuclear bomb, whereas almost all are disturbed by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians).

The price of oil would spike, likely to 2008 highs of $140 a barrel, throwing the world back into Depression.

Once such hostilities began, and given these likely responses, the US could well get sucked into a third major Middle East war, against a country geographically much bigger than either Iraq or Afghanistan, and more than twice as populous as each of them. At another $1 trillion, that cost would push the US into $14 trillion in indebtedness all by itself, and since that is American annual gross domestic product, it could trigger a downgrading of American credit, making the interest servicing on existing and future loans far more expensive and, along with crippling high oil prices, beginning America’s final spiral down into poverty and weakness.

http://www.juancole.com/2010/07/repubs-plot-israel-iran-apocalypse-and-the-collapse-of-the-us-economy.html