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22 November 2007

One toke over the line

-- Q -- What's flat, black and glows in the dark?

-- A -- Well, if nobody puts the brakes on Madman Ahmadinejad... that'd be Tehran...

And, it seems, Iranians in high places are starting to get it.
The attack would be difficult to imagine without at least tacit support from Ayatollah Khamenei.

In a hard-hitting editorial on Wednesday, the Tehran paper said the president's treatment of his critics was immoral, illogical and illegal.
In an autocratic theocracy like Iran, where every piece of news is filtered through the ruling elite... that's a very public slap in the face.
Such a direct personal attack against President Ahmadinejad is indeed rare in official media in Iran.

It shows that the Iranian president is not only losing support among ordinary people because of economic hardship, he is also angering part of the establishment for using the nuclear issue to bolster his personal power.
This one is worth watching.

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RELATED: The dogpile gets larger
Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator sharply criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denouncing the prosecution of a former member of his negotiating team and accusing the hard-line leader of trying to eliminate rivals.

The comments by Hasan Rowhani, published Thursday, were the latest in the blow in the mounting rivalry between Ahmadinejad and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful figure in Iran's clerical leadership.
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LAST WORD: That's gonna leave a mark
-- WASHINGTON -- Massive, devastating air strikes, a full dose of "shock and awe" with hundreds of bunker-busting bombs slicing through concrete at more than a dozen nuclear sites across Iran is no longer just the idle musing of military planners and uber-hawks.