Ayatollah

We haven't lost an administration. We've gained an ayatollah. KEN PRUNIER Alpine

TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday denounced as unjust the supervisory electoral body's disqualification of his top aide from next month's presidential poll and said he plans to appeal to the nation's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad spoke a day after the powerful Guardian Council, which vets candidates, barred the outgoing president's confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the nation's most illustrious political figures, from the June 14 election.

Could it be that Reagan, Ollie & Co. threw in a few Stinger missiles with the 2,000 Hawks for the ayatollah? WILMOR YOUNG Sylmar

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been doubling down on his hard-line message that all but rules out the possibility of direct talks with the United States. In the lead-up to the latest round of the so-called six-party talks on Iran's nuclear program, which begin in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, Khamenei enumerated his reasons in a Feb. 16 speech. Calling Western suspicions of Iran's nuclear program "illogical," "disingenuous" and "insulting," Khamenei characterized the latest efforts by the Obama administration to negotiate directly with Iran as "a marketing ploy" designed to convince Islamic countries around the world that if the Islamic Republic, with its long history of resistance and endurance, finally relented and negotiated, then what hope would they have standing up against the West.

The Ayatollah sentences novelist Salman Rushdie to death for "The Satanic Verses"; 12 European nations respond by imposing diplomatic sanctions on Iran. And what is the U.S. reaction? Khomeini's behavior is condemned . . . by the Writers Guild of America. Perhaps TV's fall season can be held up until he softens his position. JEFF M. ROSS Northridge

TEHRAN - In a highly anticipated decision likely to spark controversy, Iran's supervisory electoral body on Tuesday disqualified two high-profile candidates from next month's presidential race after both were assailed as disloyal to the nation's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The powerful Guardian Council, composed of senior clerics and jurists, gave no reason for barring the would-be candidates, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a confidant of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

TEHRAN - Iranians must wait until next week to find out who will be on the ballot in next month's presidential election, a key electoral panel said Thursday, as it continued to mull the fate of two prospective candidates who have shaken up the race. The Guardian Council, which vets office seekers, said it needed an extension until Tuesday to judge the suitability of the nearly 700 presidential aspirants. A council official told reporters that 10 or more candidates may be approved, a relatively high number that could make it difficult for one to win a majority without a runoff election.

On the Black Hill A Novel Bruce Chatwin Penguin: 256 pp., $16 paper Bruce Chatwin, the brilliant English writer and stylish nomad, died from AIDS-related complications in early 1989. His memorial service, held in a Greek Orthodox church in London on the day that Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Chatwin's friend Salman Rushdie, was a legendary event, mobbed by fans, celebrities and hundreds of journalists. Chatwin was by then a cult ?

AL QASR, Lebanon - Each evening, Ali Jamal and other men in this border town grab their Kalashnikov assault rifles, jump on their motorbikes and ride across the irrigation canal into Syria to protect their homes. The enemies are Sunni rebel "terrorists," he says, who target Jamal and his neighbors because they are Shiite Muslims. "Imagine, these people used to be our neighbors," said the 40-year-old farmer, perplexed by the transformation. "Now they want to kidnap and kill us. " Tensions gripping the villages along the border here between northeastern Lebanon and Syria illustrate the increasingly sectarian nature of the 2-year-old Syrian conflict and the risks it poses for the entire region.

It was disheartening to learn that singer Cat Stevens, a Muslim since 1977, has backed the Ayatollah Khomeini's death threat against Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses" (Morning Report, Feb. 24, and "The Sound and the Fury," March 1). In view of the themes of Stevens' music, it is curious that the artist, now Yusuf Islam, is suddenly intolerant of another artist. To think that a brilliant, sensitive and loving soul such as Stevens' could now deny Christ's most basic message is, in itself, more of an argument against Islam than anything Salman Rushdie could have written.

Ayatollahs seem to just appoint themselves and then start enforcing their own brand of orthodoxy. Grover Norquist has been doing that in the Republican Party for years. Norquist has never been elected to anything. Nobody ever said he should be in charge of the GOP's true religion (although he claims President Ronald Reagan urged him to found his lobbying group, Americans for Tax Reform). But he certainly has been the Republicans' key political theologian, making opposition to tax increases the party's central tenet for more than 25 years.

The war of words between Tehran and Washington intensified Sunday, with Iran's supreme leader crediting the "unified resistance" of the Iraqi people with having forced the U.S. military out of Iraq. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the U.S. withdrawal would constitute "golden pages" in Iraq's history, reported Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency. "Despite the U.S. military and political presence in Iraq, and Washington's pressures on the country, all Iraq people ... said, 'No, to U.S.,' " Khamenei declared in a Tehran meeting with Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdish region.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, congratulated the "revolutionaries" behind the so-called Arab Spring rebellions but warned them against allowing the United States to take advantage of the upheaval, reflecting the Iranian leadership's deep unease with the uprisings that have swept the region. "If the Muslim nations stand against those who interfere in their internal affairs, these nations will experience progress," Khamenei said Wednesday. "But if the world of oppression and world Zionism, including the oppressive regime of the United States, take control, the Muslim world will experience major problems for decades.

A battered Peugeot sedan greeted visitors Saturday to a conference hall in north Tehran. "Professor Massoud Ali Mohammadi, martyred in front of his house," explained an accompanying poster. It was a reference to the mysterious assassination last year of the Iranian physicist, killed when a bomb exploded near his car in Tehran. Iranian authorities have blamed the West for the killing. The Peugeot was the symbolic scene-setter for a two-day conference in the Iranian capital on fighting terrorism.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a public endorsement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday as he looked to resolve a months-long rift among the country's conservative power elites. "While there are weaknesses and problems … the composition of the executive branch is good and appropriate, and the government is working. The government and parliament must help each other," Khamenei said in an address to members of parliament shown later on state television.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, endorsed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday as Khamenei looked to resolve a months-long rift among the country's conservative power elite. "While there are weaknesses and problems ... the composition of the executive branch is good and appropriate, and the government is working. The government and parliament must help each other," Ayatollah Khamenei said in an address to parliament members, later shown on state television. The pronouncement by the country's most powerful figure has followed a period of turbulence between him and his onetime political favorite.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted to send his onetime protege Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an unmistakable message: You're replaceable. The Iranian president had been skipping Cabinet meetings, apparently over Khamenei's decision to overrule his firing of the country's intelligence chief. So Khamenei asked a conservative lawmaker to begin assembling a caretaker Cabinet, just in case the president resigned or had to be removed, said an Iranian official close to the politician. Ahmadinejad eventually returned to work.