Back story to the Iranian crackdown

Dear readers: please note that yesterday's post noting the chilling assertion by the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari , that "the IRGC must play a deciding role in the preservation and continuation of the revolution" has been updated with context from a prophetic Fall '08 article by Ali Alfoneh tracking the IRGC's rise to power under Ahmadinejad after a two-decade struggle to reign it in. Alfoneh's article includes this from a Sept. 2007 speech by Jafari:

The mission of the Guards is guarding the revolution and its achievements against internal threats … The current strategy, which has been clarified by the leadership of the revolution, differs from the strategies of the [war] years. The main mission of the Guards today is countering internal threats.