The Revolutionary Guard: Gaining Power in Iran?

          
          The Revolutionaay Guard: Gaining Power in Iran? - T 4E http://www.time com/tim&world/article/O, 8599, 1915918,00,html?xid—r..
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          The Revolutionary Guard: Gaining
          Power in Iran?
          By TIME STAFF Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009
          Reprints 1 diggit
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          Members of the Iranian
          revolutionary guards shout
          anti-Israel and anti-US slogans at
          the weekly Friday prayer sermon
          at Tehran University.
          ATTA KENARE / AFP /Getty
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          The shadowy Revolutionary Guard already oversees a 130,000-
          strong parallel army and run large swatches of Iran's economy,
          from dentist clinics to the cou ntry ‘s controv ersial nuclear program.
          But signs have emerged in recent weeks that the elite military arm
          isn't satisfied: it may just want to run the entire Islamic Republic.
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          The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
          (IRGC), or Sepah for short in Farsi, is widely
          believed to have played a large role in
          orchestrating the crackdown on political
          dissidents and protesters following the disputed
          presidential election. Its political influence
          within the regime has always far exceeded the
          actual army's and has increased exponentially
          since President MahmoudAhmadinejad was
          elected to office in 2005. But the speculation
          among Iranian opposition sources is that, these
          days, the IRGC's powerful patron, whose second
          term began officially last week, has now
          become its puppet, falling under the influence
          of a gang of security chiefs (the so-called “New
          Right”) that harbors schemes to further
          radicalize the regime, or to topple it in a
          military takeover.
          (What's ahcad lorlram's protesters?)
          The IRGC's maneuvering has been quite public.
          On August 9, it was a top Revolutionary Guard
          commander who escalated the ongoing
          confrontation with the opposition leadership by
          calling for their arrest. ‘What is the role of
          [ former President Mohammad] Khatami,
          [ former prime minister and presidential
          candidate Mir-Hossein] Mousavi and
          [ presidential candidate Medhi] Karroubi in this
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          8/13/2009 10:20 AM
        

          
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