Inside Story: Iran's Power Struggle
Inside Story, discusses with Mohammed Syed Marandi, professor of political science at Tehran University; Mehrdad Khonsari, a former Iranian diplomat; and Majoob Zweiri, an expert on Iran

Emirate Power Struggle Threatens Stability in Wake of Monarch's Death
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A Gulf emirate whose stability is vital to Western interests has been plunged into a political crisis following the death of one of the world's longest-serving monarchs.

Sheikh Khalid al-Qasimi (left) and Sheikh Saud (right), who deposed him as Crown Prince and de facto ruler in 2003. Photo: The Daily Telegraph
Ras al-Khaimah is a strategic western ally that sits on the Straits of Hormuz, the world's most important seaway, and is just 60 miles across the water from Iran. Sheikh Khalid al-Qasimi, the elder son of the late ruler, Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammed al-Qasimi, was on Wednesday night holed up in his palace, claiming to be the rightful successor, while troops were marshalled outside to enforce the claim of his younger brother, the Crown Prince Sheikh Saud.

Sheikh Khalid accuses Sheikh Saud, who deposed him as Crown Prince and de facto ruler in 2003, of allowing the emirate to be used as a route to smuggle banned goods, including nuclear technology, into Iran, and is appealing to his family to put him in charge.

But the federal authorities of the United Arab Emirates, of which Ras al-Khaimah is part, immediately pledged their "full support" to Sheikh Saud yesterday morning. Within hours, Sheikh Khalid's palace was surrounded by military vehicles.

Were it not for its closeness to Iran, the long struggle for power between the two brothers would seem like something from the writings of Lawrence of Arabia rather than a means of organising government in a fast-modernising nation. But 20 per cent of the world's oil supplies pass through the Straits of Hormuz and the monarch's death comes as Iran is stepping up its influence across the Middle East. >>> Richard Spencer in Dubai | Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Iran’s Power Struggle

Power Struggle Hits Iran Intelligence Agency
THE WASHINGTON TIMES: ISTANBUL | Beyond the power struggle playing out on the streets of Tehran is a complex battle for control of Iran's intelligence ministry -- a pivotal institution in the regime's repression of dissent.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who began a second term this week, fired Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei late last month after Mr. Ejei objected to the president's efforts to name an in-law as first vice president.

The departure of Mr. Ejei, a hard-line cleric close to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two other Khamenei loyalists and nearly 20 other high-ranking officials appeared to weaken the leader's hold over the ministry and strengthen the power of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's elite military force.

The Guards have been heavily involved in the crackdown on dissent since the disputed June 12 presidential election, and there is an unconfirmed report that the force has created a parallel intelligence service called Tehran intelligence. Mr. Ahmadinejad and many of his closest allies are Guards veterans.

Mr. Ejei was responsible long before the elections for jailing numerous Iranians and Iranian-Americans on charges of promoting a so-called velvet revolution. However, he apparently was not loyal enough to Mr. Ahmadinejad. >>> Iason Athanasiadis | Thursday, August 06, 2009

As Iran Calms, a Struggle for Political Power Intensifies
Clerics during prayers in June. Many religious leaders have not spoken out in support of Iran’s president or supreme leader. Photo: The New York Times
THE NEW YORK TIMES: CAIRO — The streets of Iran have been largely silenced, but a power struggle grinds on behind the scenes, this time over the very nature of the state itself. It is a battle that transcends the immediate conflict over the presidential election, one that began 30 years ago as the Islamic Revolution established a new form of government that sought to blend theocracy and a measure of democracy.

From the beginning, both have vied for an upper hand, and today both are tarnished. In postelection Iran, there is growing unease among many of the nation’s political and clerical elite that the very system of governance they rely on for power and privilege has been stripped of its religious and electoral legitimacy, creating a virtual dictatorship enforced by an emboldened security apparatus, analysts said.

Among the Iranian president’s allies are those who question whether the nation needs elected institutions at all.
Most telling, and arguably most damning, is that many influential religious leaders have not spoken out in support of the beleaguered president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, even among those who traditionally have supported the government, many have remained quiet or even offered faint but unmistakable criticisms.

According to Iranian news reports, only two of the most senior clerics have congratulated Mr. Ahmadinejad on his re-election, which amounts to a public rebuke in a state based on religion. A conservative prayer leader in the holy city of Qum, Ayatollah Ibrahim Amini, referred to demonstrators as “people” instead of rioters, and a hard-line cleric, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, called for national reconciliation.

Some of Iran’s most influential grand ayatollahs, clerics at the very top of the Shiite faith’s hierarchy who have become identified with the reformists, have condemned the results as a fraud and the government’s handling of the protests as brutal. On Saturday, an influential Qum-based clerical association called the new government illegitimate. >>> Michael Slackman | Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Keys to the Kingdom: Inside Saudi Arabia's Royal Family
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: The crown prince is seriously ill, and Saudi Arabia's normally secretive royal family is openly clashing over who will take the throne, reports Hugh Miles

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington for 22 years, is at the centre of speculation over the royal succession. He has not been seen in public for weeks. Photo courtesy of The Independent on Sunday
A dispute over Saudi Arabia's royal succession burst into the open yesterday, revealing a power struggle in which one of the most senior princes in the oil-rich kingdom is reported to have disappeared. The prospect of instability in a country that is not only the world's largest oil exporter but also a key Western ally at the heart of the Middle East will cause serious concern in Washington, London and beyond.

Rumours are rife over the position of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, 60, son of the heir to the Saudi throne, who has not been seen in public for weeks. Prince Bandar is better known abroad than almost any other member of the Saudi royal family, not only for his extravagant lifestyle, but because of his daring foreign policy initiatives during 22 years as the Saudi ambassador in Washington, where he played an important role after 9/11 and during two Gulf wars. His absence from public life comes at a sensitive time in Saudi Arabia: his father, Crown Prince Sultan, is gravely ill with cancer, throwing the succession to King Abdullah into question.

One theory in political circles in Riyadh is that Prince Bandar was seeking to oust King Abdullah before Prince Sultan dies, thus placing his father on the throne. Other rumours claim that Prince Bandar is ill, or that he angered King Abdullah by dabbling in Syrian politics without authorisation. The Saudi embassy in London could not be contacted for comment last week, but this weekend political tensions in the kingdom came dramatically to the surface.

On Friday night King Abdullah unexpectedly announced the appointment of one of his half-brothers, Prince Nayef, the 76-year-old interior minister, to the post of second deputy prime minister, which had been left vacant. This was immediately taken as an indication that he would become crown prince when Prince Sultan dies or becomes king. But yesterday Prince Talal, another senior figure, publicly demanded that the king confirm that the appointment did not mean Prince Nayef would automatically become the next crown prince. Such public disagreement among senior Saudi royals is highly unusual. Another indication of friction among the many descendants of the founder of Saudi Arabia, … >>> Hugh Miles | Sunday, March 29, 2009

Turkey: Political Stability Hangs in the Balance
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Generals arrested as coup conspirators, a court on the verge of banning the ruling party: The power struggle in Turkey between Prime Minister Erdogan's Islamic-rooted AKP and the secular, old-guard Kemalists is intensifying -- at the cost of political stablity.

Ali Ercan’s world swarms with enemies. The gray-haired professor of nuclear physics and deputy chairman of the Kemalist Thought Association (ADD) has to worry about reactionary Islamists, separatist Kurds, suspicious Armenians and Greeks, capitalist Americans and of course the European Union, with its constant pressures to reform. A bodyguard stands in front of Ercan’s small office on Gazi Mustafa Kemal Boulevard, round the clock.

Inside, a brass plaque greets visitors: “Turkey will never belong to Europe! She will never give up her sacred sovereignty!” Ercan, 55, came up with the slogan himself. Now he wants the words etched on his gravestone, he says. The Europeans come in for particular blame in this “dark and dangerous time which our country is living through.” Who else have encouraged Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Islamicize Turkey through “reactionary religious forces,” he says. Who else have pushed Erdogan to sell off Turkey economically and erode its national sovereignty?

Many Turks think the same way. It was Ercan’s association that drummed up massive demonstrations last year against Erdogan’s conservative Islamic-rooted government. Hundreds of thousands gathered in front of the Atatürk Mausoleum in Ankara to demonstrate against the election of Abdullah Gül, a onetime fundamentalist, as president and to rail against the foreign “neo-colonial powers” that backed him. The ADD is a sort of think tank for Turkey’s patriotic conservatives -- and a refuge, above all, for retired military leaders. Coup Plot Intensifies Ankara’s Power Struggle >>> By Daniel Steinvorth in Ankara | July 7, 2008

THE INDEPENDENT:
The Big Question: Why Is Tension Rising in Turkey, and Is the Country Turning Islamist? >>> By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul | July 8, 2008

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