The 'Eslah-Taliban' -
Farsi term meaning 'Islamic regime reformists', Islamic regime reformists because it has never before been in use in the Farsi language and only has come about since the Islamic regime - are everywhere and closer to you than you would dare to think: next time you visit the laboratory take a little mirror with you and hold it against where the sun never shines from and you will see them there too!! Eslah-Taliban are the winking, eyebrow wriggling, beard stroking chimps, if male, and neck dancing, tail waggling cute little pretty poodles, if female, of the Islamic regime. They are the ones who have kept alive one of the most inept, inadequate, incompatible, and unbelievable regimes that the history of mankind has ever recorded - a regime that would have died of natural causes within 10 political seconds of birth had it not been for the Eslah -Taliban. O yes, they are the ones who have kept feeding the Islamic monster, keeping it alive and warding off any harms that come its way. The Islamic monster would probably die naturally much quicker than you would love to imagine if and once you took away the Eslah-Taliban factor. The Eslah-Talibans have zero power and control of the machinery of the Islamic Regime. They never did and never will. So if you are hoping that they would push away the hardliners one day and take control of the regime, you are like that little camel that dreams of eating cotton seed, sometimes gobbling it and other times seed by seed!* Eslah-Talibans, are like parasites that live off the Islamic regime, their existence depends on the existence of the regime. That is why they ward off any harm that comes in the way of the regime. Eslah-Talab is never meant to take control of the regime: they are meant to guard it from political harm.
Eslah-Talab was coined by the regime soon after the eight year war with Iraq. Iranians had had enough of the war and the regime. The ten year old monster had not had a chance to establish itself. Since its birth, the country had gone from bad to worse and the reason Iranians had not killed it was because of the war with Iraq. Khomeini recognised the importance of the war and even though Saddam Hussein offered a cease-fire two years after the start of the war and when his troops were pushed back to prewar borders, Khomeini insisted on the continuation of the war despite the burden of a huge cost, the benefits in terms of keeping his regime in power longer were also huge. Hence his famous phrase: "keep the oven of the war hot". By the time Khatami, a so called Eslah-talab became the president of the regime, the regime was in trouble. It had not established itself in the way it would had liked to. The damage sustained from the war was far too much for the regime to repair quickly. And in reality, the revolution after 18 years had brought nothing but despair, poverty and death. All the (false) promises of democracy, free electricity, free bread, free this and free that by Khomeini were bursting like soap bubbles. Iranians were ready to explode. On may 23rd, 1997, the regime conceded to appointing (elections in Iran are only puppet shows) an Eslah-Talab as the president. Khatami continued winking, eyebrow wriggling, beard stroking and La Joconde smiling. One day he would talk about democracy to the angry democracy and freedom demanding crowd and a few days later when everything had calmed down he would clarify the situation by declaring his total allegiances to the Islamic constitution, Valih-e-Faghih and the spiritual leader Khamenei. Khatami is nicknamed 'supop' meaning the pressure-releaser.
You will never see another Eslah-Talab in power in the Islamic regime. There is no need for making false promises to keep Iranians at bay. There is no need for a 'supop' safety valve. The regime releases the pressure by public executions, mass arrests for bad Hijab, un-Islamic this and that and by publicly beating and humiliating young Iranians. The monster is well established and is not scared of the angry Iranians any more. All this monster needs to do is to publicly hang a few daring dissidents for crimes never committed or for commitment of acts not punishable by hanging to shut Iranians up. To shut the international community up, it does not need an Eslah-Talab appointed as the president because the monster is very close to its nuclear bomb. All it has to do is to continue the deployment of its chimps and poodles around the globe to dissipate the international community's anger and to suppress its anxiety and to divert its attention from the monster working on its nuclear bomb. Even if a seemingly Eslah-Talab is appointed as the president in the next puppet show presidential election, the monster's policies will remain hardliner.
Eslah-Taliban..Arrrrrghhhh!!!
*This is a Southern Iranian expression. Cotton seeds are camels' favourite dish!
At last....a breakthrough for Iranian pop music: no more domboli cosak!!Arash Sobhani the lead guitarist, singer, song writer of the group Kiosk, the up and coming rock band, is the man who dared to deviate from the well established lowly 6/8 domboli cosak so revered by the conservative Iranian music producers. The 6/8 rhythm is like the very ugly and environmentally pollutant Paykan the Hilman Hunter car of which the same model was reproduced for over 37 years (1967-2005). The 6/8 rhythm otherwise known in Iran as the domboli cosak (a lowly term) is still very popular amongst some Iranian singers in LA. For goodness sake give it up and move on. Rock on Arash.