(The Newest Deal) | March 12, 2010
Masoud Shafaee
As the Persian Nowruz New Year fast approaches and Iran’s post-election crisis enters its ninth month, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani remains as mercurial a figure as ever in Iranian politics. True to his nickname of Kooseh, or “The Shark,” Rafsanjani has been paying lip-service to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei [...]

Previously, when posting selected headlines, we published one selected headline per post. Iran News Now will be trying out a new format for our selected headlines over the next few days. Based on your feedback we may continue with this format moving forward. Basically, we will publish a daily list of selected [...]

NOTE: This is a live-blog article in which updates are being made in real-time as information comes in. To read this in chronological order, read from the bottom up.

Sadness to me is the happiest time
When a shining city rises from the ruins of my drunken mind
Those times when I’m silent and still as the earth,
The thunder of my roar is heard across the universe.
Rumi

It has now been almost six months since those fateful days in June when the people of Iran shattered the [...]

(Rooz Online)
November 20, 2009
By Ali Farokhi
Following the escalation of protests by Iran’s senior ayatollahs against the regime, some members of the Qom Seminary Teachers Association (the most important organization of clerics affiliated with the regime) are planning to present a new list of “grand ayatollahs” under the supervision of Mohammad Yazdi, Ahmad Jannati and Mesbah [...]

(Newsweek)
Future Perfect
The clerical establishment has become so sick of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that they will not replace him when he dies.
By Geneive Abdo | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Iranian reformists and liberals worldwide can be forgiven for thinking that the election and crackdown last summer strengthened the hardliners. In the short term, they’re right: Mahmoud [...]

From Mowjcamp.com:
Ever since the fraudulent Presidential Elections in Iran in June 2009, the role of Shiite clerics from Qom and even Iraq in standing up to the coup government of Ahmadinejad and its backers has been unprecedented throughout the 30 year history of the Islamic Republic to say the least.

Indeed the positions held by senior [...]

In an extraordinary series of comments, the Supreme Leader’s official representative in the Revolutionary Guards Corps has made the headlines again by claiming that neither the people nor the Assembly of Experts are able to oust the Leader from power as he has been “chosen by God” for this position.

While the Green Movement can’t count on Rafsanjani to support them unconditionally (far from it in fact), the situation has some light at the end of the tunnel in that Rafsanjani is likely seething with anger at how Khamenei is handling things. His interests will be aligned with those of the Green Movement insofar as sharing the goal of neutering Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and the IRGC, but they will likely diverge when this is accomplished. The people want freedom. Rafsanjani wants a comfortable life for Rafsanjani and family

As the Machiavellian plots continue to unfold in the power structures of Iran, one thing remains certain: the quiet that we are experiencing right now from the people does not mean that they have been silenced. Far from it, this is the quiet before the storm. The Green Movement is alive and well and in waiting for the next opportunity to put a stick in the eye of this regime.