Daily News Channel
When the severed heads of seven French Trappist monks were found in a remote region of Algeria on May 30, 1996, many people around the world considered it perhaps the most gruesome act that Algerian jihadists had committed in their battle against the Algiers regime.
Observers with a working knowledge of Iranian politics have largely been able to shrug off President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bluster and bullying, knowing the diminutive President must still answer to a far more powerful figure: Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. Since 1989, the shadowy cleric — a former president himself — has sat at the apex of Iran’s complex hierarchy as the final word in all political and religious matters.