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Clash of the ClericsIran's ayatollahs fight over the future of the Islamic republic.

By Henry NewmanPosted Wednesday, June 24, 2009, at 5:25 PM ET

Read more from Slate's coverage of the Iranian election and its aftermath.

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Henry Newman is a Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics. A resident of Connecticut, he has lived and studied in Tehran.
Photograph of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri by Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images.
COMMENTS

The Revolutionary Guard and the Basij operate under Khamenei's sanction. This is the system which, by appearances, Khomeini put in place in 1979, the irony being lost on him that it mimicked the rule of the Shah fairly closely. The loophole for reformers is in whether the system is set up for security forces to swear loyalty to the office of Supreme Leader or to the man (Khamenei) occupying it. If the former is true, and if Rafsanjani can succeed in deposing Khamenei, as "rumor" suggests he may be trying to do, their power could potentially be co-opted to support the reformers.

-- Oenomaus
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