Your point about so-called “guided democracy” is well made. I too struggle with the contradiction immanent in this expression.

Another article that destroys Ridley’s inane and ill informed claims (this time concerning the urban poor and their vote) may be found here:

http://tehranbureau.com/who-voted-for-ahmadinejad/

The author, Robert Dreyfus, toured Tehran’s poorest suburbs and found scant evidence of support for Ahmadinejad amongst the urban poor electorate.

Why do the clerical elite dislike Mousavi so much? Well, actually, largely they do not. See this article concerning the widening divide amongst the clergy:

http://tehranbureau.com/widening-divide/

and this:

http://tehranbureau.com/grand-ayatollah-rejects-election-results/

However, a faction presently dominant amongst them dislike Mousavi because he favours even the very limited democracy at work in Iran. This faction, associated with Ahmadnejad and his mentor, the repellent ultra-conservative, Ayatollah Yazdi. The following is enlightening:

http://tehranbureau.com/fatwa-issued-for-changing-the-vote-in-favor-of-ahmadinejad/

And the following article is one of the most important written in a long time, explaining very clearly the fascist threat faced by ordinary Iranians from a deeply reactionary and sinister faction within the clerical elite:

http://tehranbureau.com/the-leaders-of-iran%E2%80%99s-election-coup/

In all, I would recommend the following website, as an excellent and informed source:

http://tehranbureau.com/

Finally, one might point to the elitist and definitely anti-democratic strain in a lot of Shi’a Islamic political theory and theology. This was explored quite adequately by (amongst others) the late Hamid Enayat.

Field -you are too generous. Instead of childish and naive I would have said complacent and patronising.”

Well let’s just say childish, naive, complacent AND patronising.

Habibi –

I don’t accept that an embassy cannot operate without local employees. Why ever not?

But I agree with those who query why we should ever have an embassy in a country that regularly announces its intention to destroy two countries that are our ally or friend.

“But (the Iranian) political elite is divided over how Iran should be governed: a transparent democracy where elected representatives enact laws to benefit the people or a ‘guided democracy’ in which a select few make all decisions because they do not trust the masses to make the right ones.”

I am struggling with the concept of “guided democracy”. What is democratic about a regime in which “a select few make all the decisions because they do not trust the masses to make the right ones”.

And why incidentally do the ayatollahs dislike Mousavi so much?

But he only went with BICOM once and over a year ago. How different from one who is hired to play Axis Sally week in week out, to push the propaganda of a blood-soaked regime with similar methods and opinions.

Today, the world, perhaps more self-aware and knowing, is such that totalitarianism (such as that in Iran) can only garner the support of second-rate hacks and failed opportunist politicians with a penchant for self-publicity, ethnic headware, and catsuits.

Indeed, it is one of the great ironic twists of history that the Shi’a clergy, once so loyal to the Persian monarchy that they twisted their own faith in order to lend the latter still greater theological credence, when faced with the elimination of their huge revenues from the feudal land system in the Shah’s “White Revolution”, became the Shah’s greatest enemies. In all, the Iranian peasantry have no reason to love or like the Shi’a clergy of that land.

Anyone who believes that the Shi’a clergy of Iran have held the working people of that country in anything other than more or less open contempt neither knows the history of Iran, nor the history of the Iranian clergy’s perversion of Shi’a Islam in their own often very venal self-interests.

Clearly, it’s an excellent firm, producing quality products, used in a just cause.

No time to chat now, though. I’m off to buy a State of Israel Bond (a good investment in tough times :-)

http://tehranbureau.com/irans-rural-vote-and-election-fraud/

So, given the earlier comments to the effect that even if the urban and rural poor did vote for the clerical fascist regime it don’t make it right (there is a distinction between “is” and “should” that conveniently escapes Ridley and like-minded fellow-travellers) – and now given the fact that at least one fieldworker with over 30 years of experience amongst Iran’s rural poor says that the Persian peasantry hate AsMadAsAHatter too – we must conclude that Ridley is talking utter bollocks… as usual.

Please don’t assume that the majority of Iranians are gullible enough to believe whatever their government tells them– that is, don’t confuse them with Yvonne Ridley. The events of recent weeks have suggested otherwise.