Read Forbes.com: Millionaire Mullahs for a fascinating account of how the mullahs of Iran have moved from “poor clerics of the people” to thugs who control vast amounts of wealth and influence. Their reach extends to shadow enterprises closely tied to international terrorists.
Who controls today’s Iran? Certainly not Mohammad Khatami, the twice-elected moderate president, or the reformist parliament. Not even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei–a stridently anti-American but unremarkable cleric plucked from the religious ranks 14 years ago to fill the shoes of his giant predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini–is fully in control. The real power is a handful of clerics and their associates who call the shots behind the curtain and have gotten very rich in the process.
The economy bears more than a little resemblance to the crony capitalism that sprouted from the wreck of the Soviet Union. The 1979 revolution expropriated the assets of foreign investors and the nation’s wealthiest families; oil had long been nationalized, but the mullahs seized virtually everything else of value–banks, hotels, car and chemical companies, makers of drugs and consumer goods. What distinguishes Iran is that many of these assets were given to Islamic charitable foundations, controlled by the clerics. According to businessmen and former foundation executives, the charities now serve as slush funds for the mullahs and their supporters.
Emphasis mine.
Who can argue with moving the assets of the “evil Empire of the West” to the poor and down-trodden? The problem is that, just as the pigs of Animal Farm, those in power tend to become those who they have replaced. In fact, Animal Farm could do well with a re-write using theocracy as the driving force behind the revolution.
And the chief cleric behind this mess?
Ironically, the man most adept at manipulating this hidden power structure is one of Iran’s best-known characters–Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been named an ayatollah, or religious leader. He was the speaker of parliament and Khomeini’s right-hand man in the 1980s, president of Iran from 1989 to 1997 and is now chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, which resolves disputes between the clerical establishment and parliament. Rafsanjani has more or less run the Islamic Republic for the past 24 years.
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The 1979 revolution transformed the Rafsanjani clan into commercial pashas. One brother headed the country’s largest copper mine; another took control of the state-owned TV network; a brother-in-law became governor of Kerman province, while a cousin runs an outfit that dominates Iran’s $400 million pistachio export business; a nephew and one of Rafsanjani’s sons took key positions in the Ministry of Oil; another son heads the Tehran Metro construction project (an estimated $700 million spent so far). Today, operating through various foundations and front companies, the family is also believed to control one of Iran’s biggest oil engineering companies, a plant assembling Daewoo automobiles, and Iran’s best private airline (though the Rafsanjanis insist they do not own these assets).
Ellipsed out is the fact that the family started out as pistachio farmers. Wow! I didn’t know that pistachios do so well in Iran.
From what I remember, the Mafia started out as a Italian nationalist organization. It appears that the mullahs in Iran are on the same track.
[Note: This is a scheduled post written earlier.]