Ordered to use these three things as what critics call "tools of gamble" - i.e., what the IRGC calls "divine missions" - and, on behalf of
the theocracy's supreme guide, the IRGC has added to Safawi Iran four "external provinces": Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
Internally,
the theocracy's legitimacy remains in hot dispute between advocates of the late Imam Khamenei's application of Wilatat ul-Faqih (WuF - i.e, the rule of a chosen guide who claims to represent God through deputising for the missing 12th Imam al-Mahdi) and both the nationalist camp and the quietist theologians who argue that religious men should not rule.
But President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, whose second and final term ends in August 2013, belongs to a nationalist current which wants
the theocracy to end.
By contrast, Iran's regime is split as
the theocracy's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is in conflict with the country's reformist movement - now represented loosely by centrist President Hassan Rowhani.
It is urging those who are behind the current price war to stop and begin cutting OPEC and non-OPEC crude oil supply as Brent has begun to descend towards $50/barrel, more than half the break-even level for
the theocracy's huge requirements.
But the Iranian negotiators for this deal face many pit-falls, some of which could be very dangerous for
the theocracy.
But Iran's Lebanese unit Hizbullah has become one of the main drains on the financial resources of
the theocracy; this is because Hizbullah has sent most of its best fighters to join Assad's side of the Syrian war.
The Saudi-led Sunni front in the 57-state OIC for a Muslim world of 1.6bn people, where Iran's theocracy is the only Shi'ite member, says equally as serious a threat from political Islam as ISIS are
the theocracy's Safawi extremists.
The Saudi VIP was referring to
the theocracy's founder Imam Ruhullah Khomeini.
Qom-based theologian Hassan Khomeini, the 43-year-old grand-son of the late Imam Ruhullah Khomeini who in 1979 succeeded the Pahlavi shah and later founded
the theocracy but died in June 1989, was last week barred from running for a seat in the 88-member Assembly of Experts (AoE) elections due on Feb.
Liberal Ja'fari experts in Beirut say that, theoretically, Iran's nuclear plan is part of
the theocracy's geo-strategic goal to control the world as called for by its Safawism.
But
the theocracy's Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei in early 2013 had given the green light for the secret Iranian negotiations with the US - then brokered by Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Sa'id (see his profile in omt8OmanWhoFeb24-14 to gmt8OmanWhoFeb24-14).
