Over the weekend, there was a fierce battle involving U.S. troops in Afghanistan. On Monday, in the eastern city of Khost, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated his explosives in front of the citys electric power headquarters. Seven civilians were killed and another 30 were wounded.
As the battles intensify and the suicide attacks increase in Afghanistan, the Taliban is in talks with the Afghan government — and on some level, with American officials.
Charles Sennott is a veteran foreign correspondent and now executive editor of the Web site GlobalPost. He recently spent two and a half weeks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and joins Martin Savidge to discuss the talks and their chances of success.
On the surface, the turmoil in Iran has been rooted in anger over the disputed election — but a deeper religious struggle is also taking place within Iranian politics.
Former two-term president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who currently heads the Assembly of Experts — which has the authority to oversee the supreme leader — and Ayatollah Khamenei are thought to have a strained relationship.
Throughout the campaign, Rafsanjani was very critical of President Ahmedinejad. Recently, his daughter, Faezed Hashemi, was arrested while speaking to a crowd of hundreds at a rally in support of Ahmedinejads main rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
Geneive Abdo of The Century Foundation joins Martin Savidge to discus the power structure in the Islamic Republic and how important the clerical struggle really is.
On a related note, the Eurasianet Project finds that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the leader Assembly of Experts, may be poised to outflank the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It is believed that Rafsanjani controls 65 of the 86 members of the Assembly of Experts.
Looking past their fiery rhetoric and apparent determination to cling to power using all available means, Iran’s hardliners are not a confident bunch. While hardliners still believe they possess enough force to stifle popular protests, they are worried that they are losing a behind-the-scenes battle within Iran’s religious establishment.
A source familiar with the thinking of decision-makers in state agencies that have strong ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said there is a sense among hardliners that a shoe is about to drop. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — Iran’s savviest political operator and an arch-enemy of Ayatollah Khamenei’s — has kept out of the public spotlight since the rigged June 12 presidential election triggered the political crisis. The widespread belief is that Rafsanjani has been in the holy city of Qom, working to assemble a religious and political coalition to topple the supreme leader and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“There is great apprehension among people in the supreme leader’s [camp] about what Rafsanjani may pull,” said a source in Tehran who is familiar with hardliner thinking. “They [the supreme leader and his supporters] are much more concerned about Rafsanjani than the mass movement on the streets.”
Ayatollah Khamenei now has a very big image problem among influential Shi’a clergymen. Over the course of the political crisis, stretching back to the days leading up to the election, Rafsanjani has succeeded in knocking the supreme leader off his pedestal by revealing Ayatollah Khamenei to be a political partisan rather than an above-the-fray spiritual leader. In other words, the supreme leader has become a divider, not a uniter.
Iranians protesting against the results of the June 12 presidential vote face multiple state security groups whose aim is to lay down the law.
From the Revolutionary Guards, the most formidable force, to the Basij, a paramilitary group loyal to the government, security forces have been on the streets since the polls opened.
Now, as Al Jazeera’s Roza Ibragimova reports, the security forces say they will no longer tolerate the unrest.
In a rare and exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Mustafa Abul-Yazeed, al-Qaeda’s third in command, said it would use Pakistan’s nuclear weapons agains the United States.
Al Jazeera’s Shiulie Ghosh spoke with Michael Griffin, an al-Qaeda expert about Abul-Yazeed’s comments and their implications.
A third of all internationally invested private wealth is kept in the tiny landlocked country of Switzerland, where tax evasion is not recognised as a crime.
But Switzerland is defiantly standing behind its policy of banking secrecy, despite a global attempt to crack down on tax havens.