Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour

Here's an interesting bit of Iranian politics:

"As Iran’s top man sponsoring Islamic groups abroad like Hezbollah and Hamas, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour looks like a man who should be close to the current regime’s heart.

"Not a bit of it. Although a staunch supporter of exporting the Islamic revolution, Mohtashamipour’s political sympathies at home have for years lain with the opposition. In the June 2009 presidential ballot, he ran an election monitoring body to try to ensure opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi was not cheated of votes.

"This seemed to be the last straw for the regime, which paid him back in April 2010 by dismissing him from his post as secretary-general of Iran’s Committee for the Support of the Intifada, which operates under parliamentary supervision.

"Although the motive may have been political, Mohtashamipour's dismissal also reflected the growing divergence between those like him who support Hezbollah and Hamas out of ideological principle, and other establishment figures who see such groups merely as pawns in the bigger game of advancing Iran’s interests abroad."

Mohtashamipour's career and where things are at now is worth reading more fully, and reinforce the sense that the 2009 elections have represented a major turning point in modern Iranian history.