All In The Name Of Allah

clipped from www.strategypage.com January 7, 2008:  Who runs Iran? No one in particular, it turns out. Over the past two years, the senior cleric, Ali Khamenei, has tried to solve the corruption problem by ordering most state owned companies to be privatized (sold off to investors). Khamenei, who has enormous civil and religious power, was ignored. How did that happen? It's all about money.   About ten million of Iran's 70 million people live off the third of the economy that is, technically, owned by the state. These are properties that were seized from the royal family and royalist families 25 years ago. These firms are controlled by the clergy and their Islamic conservative allies. This includes the oil industry, which earns over $80 billion a year. Most of that goes to finance a huge bureaucracy, whose main goal is to keep the clerics in power. All in the name of Allah, of course.