Last Supreme Leader?

President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. and its partners have begun to discuss ”consequences” after Iran apparently rejected a nuclear deal. Nonetheless, U.S. officials insist that negotiations have not run their course yet. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office has released a cost estimate (PDF) on the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (H.R. 2194), estimating $2 million in implementation costs.

Geneive Abdo contends that while the events of this summer have strengthened hardliners in the short-term, the opposition has succeeded in ensuring Ayatollah Khamenei will “be the last all-powerful Supreme Leader of the Islamic republic, even if the theocratic system manages to survive this tumult.”  According to Abdo, clerics in Qum, led by Ayatollah Montazeri, are currently debating how to remove Khamenei’s post of velayat-e faqih which sits uneasily within the traditional Shi’ite ambivalence to political power.

Meanwhile, Tehran Bureau relays a report from an “informed source” that Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani is purportedly seeking to replace President Ahmadinejad. The Bureau also cites an Afghan newspaper article that accuses Ahmadinejad of acting like “one of the world’s many Sultans who empty the treasury, not to render the frontier region habitable, but to bring it under his own control.”

Mark Bowden reminds us that the 1970 Iranian revolution was originally nationalist and set up a secular provisional government, but the hostage crisis provided an opportunity for Ayatollah Khomeini to Islamicize the revolution and the government. Now, Bowden argues the mullahs are placed in a difficult position: the methods they must use to maintain their power are the very methods of the Shah that compelled the people to march in the streets and propel the mullahs into power.

Such methods have led judicial authorities to investigate the “suspicious” death of Ramin Pourandarjani, a doctor who voiced his concern over allegations of prisoner abuse. Nonetheless, Europe and the U.S. have remained largely  silent over human rights abuses in Iran, as explored by Edith Novy.

Finally, Babylon and Beyond has also picked up on the story of Iranian opposition activists lobbying Time Magazine to name Neda Agha-Soltan as Person of the Year.