As events in Iran take interesting turns and the West tries to figure out what is actually going on - made difficult because Western journalists are effectively barred from reporting there, assuming they can even get into the country - trying to figure out who the main "actors" are in the unfolding "story" is not without its difficulties.
Who's who, and how they line up, has been laid out by Gabriel Winant writing in Salon:
"Strange methods are required to figure out who's up and who's down in hermetically sealed foreign regimes. During the Cold War, Kremlinologists would guess at the state of Soviet politics by puzzling over the parade order of Communist Party officials or the arrangement of portraits on the wall.
Iran, however, is only partially closed off: It was, after all, a nationwide presidential election that triggered the current crisis, which itself involves millions of people out in the streets -- clearly a mass popular event. Trying to understand what in the hell is going on, then, means paying attention to a strange blend of elite and mass-level behavior. Calling Iranian politics "byzantine" doesn't quite do the trick, because all Byzantium really had going on was palace intrigue. Tehran is that, plus Twitter.
Based on what we can discern from afar, we've done our best to piece together rumor, gossip and expertise into something like a coherent picture of Iranian factional politics. Welcome to the labyrinth."
Winant proceeds approximately from right to left here.
Who's who, and how they line up, has been laid out by Gabriel Winant writing in Salon:
"Strange methods are required to figure out who's up and who's down in hermetically sealed foreign regimes. During the Cold War, Kremlinologists would guess at the state of Soviet politics by puzzling over the parade order of Communist Party officials or the arrangement of portraits on the wall.
Iran, however, is only partially closed off: It was, after all, a nationwide presidential election that triggered the current crisis, which itself involves millions of people out in the streets -- clearly a mass popular event. Trying to understand what in the hell is going on, then, means paying attention to a strange blend of elite and mass-level behavior. Calling Iranian politics "byzantine" doesn't quite do the trick, because all Byzantium really had going on was palace intrigue. Tehran is that, plus Twitter.
Based on what we can discern from afar, we've done our best to piece together rumor, gossip and expertise into something like a coherent picture of Iranian factional politics. Welcome to the labyrinth."
Winant proceeds approximately from right to left here.
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