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The Huffington Post News Editors — 2010-02-08 14:17:00 GMT

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's supreme leader vowed Monday to deliver a "punch in the mouth" to the country's enemies if the opposition goes ahead with major new protests planned for this week, as a senior pro-reform figure was sentenced to six years in prison over postelection unrest.

The opposition has called for a large turnout for protests on Thursday to coincide with celebrations for the 31st anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution. Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi is determined to participate in the demonstration, a step that could escalate tensions, his Web site reported Monday.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced the opposition as "counterrevolutionaries" being used by the country's enemies, the United States, Britain and Israel, and vowed that Iranian unity in support of the Islamic revolution would defeat them.

Iranians "will punch (them) in their mouths to shock them," Khamenei said.

The opposition, he said, was not a part of the Iranian people. "Today, it is clear that those who stand against the great job done by the Iranian nation in the election, are not a part of the people" of Iran.

The opposition claims that Mousavi was the rightful winner of June 12 presidential elections and that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory was fraudulent. Street protests have persisted despite a heavy crackdown by security forces in which hundreds have been arrested.

In the past month, two people have been executed, and death sentences have been announced against nine others accused in the postelection unrest – moves widely seen as an attempt by the court to intimidate protesters.

The semiofficial ISNA agency said Monday that former deputy foreign minister Mohsen Aminzadeh was sentenced to six years in prison by a Revolutionary court – one of the most senior figures yet to be sentenced from a group of 100 reform activists and politicians in a mass trial from the postelection crackdown.

Aminzadeh's lawyer, Abbas Shiri, told ISNA his client was convicted of conspiring to "disturb security" and "spreading propaganda" against the ruling Islamic establishment. Aminzadeh served during the 1997-2005 administration of former pro-reform president Mohammad Khatami.

Gen. Ahmad Reza Radan, the deputy chief of Iran's police, warned the opposition against demonstrations on Thursday, saying slogans and banners deviating from the message of commemorating the 1979 Islamic reovlution will not be tolerated.

He said the paramilitary Basij, the feared street wing of the elite Revolutionary Guard, would be deployed to provide "order and security during the ceremony."

Mousavi, meanwhile, rallied supporters behind the demonstrations.

"While our beloved friends, classmates and teachers are in prison we will take to the streets Thursday with our green signs and show hard-liners we will deliver the Islamic republic from their jail, sooner or later," he told a group of students, according to his Web site, Kaleme.

Opposition supporters, he said, would avoid violence in Thursday's protest.

Thursday's are expected to be the largest protests since tens of thousands turned out for street marches in late December, held to coincide with a major religious holiday Ashoura. Those turned into the most violent clashes since the summer, with at least eight people killed in fighting between protesters and security forces.

Iran OR Ahmadinejad OR Mousavi. - Google Blog Search

Carl in Jerusalem — 2010-02-07 16:25:00 GMT

Iran blames the Jooos for the opposition. No great surprise here: The Ahmadinejad regime is blaming the Jooos for the existence of the opposition Green movement in its country. The regime, evidently anxious about the increasing strength of ... Fars News Agency released pictures of demonstrators in support of the regime, holding pictures of three reform leaders (Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karoubi and Mohammad Khatami) on the three points of a Star of David with the sign ...

Iran OR Ahmadinejad OR Mousavi. - Google Blog Search

Scott Lucas — 2010-02-06 08:08:54 GMT

Inviting foreign journalists to provide media coverage of the anniversary of the 1979 revolution on February 11, 2010 is another part of the deceitful plan of Ahmadinejad's illegal administration. ... The Allaho Akbar cries that will fill the night in Iranian towns will be the cries of people's protests and the start of the march of million green Iranians who will fill the streets at the invitation of Mohammad Khatami, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi. ...

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-02-04 20:53:53 GMT

Press Roundup provides a selected summary of news from the Iranian press, and excerpts where the source is in English. The link to the news organization or blog is provided at the top of each item. Tehran Bureau has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Please refer to the Media Guide to help put the story in perspective.

China warns against talks of Iran sanctions
PressTV| Feb 4

China has warned world powers against threatening Iran with sanctions over its nuclear energy program, saying such a move could prove to be counterproductive.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said on Thursday that threats of sanctions will make it harder to find a diplomatic solution to the Western disputes over Tehran's nuclear program.

"To talk about sanctions at the moment will complicate the situation and might stand in the way of finding a diplomatic solution," Yang said during a visit to France.

He added that Beijing wants the continuation of direct talks between Tehran and the so-called P5+1 -- the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.

While the West is resolute on imposing more sanction on Iran, China and Russia insist that dialogue is the best way to resolve the issue.

"All countries, Iran included if they obey by IAEA rules, have a right to a peaceful use of nuclear energy," said Yang.

Washington and its allies accuse Tehran of pursuing a military nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), however, has repeatedly said that it has found no evidence supporting the allegation.

The IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, confirming the non-diversion of nuclear material in the country's functional and under-construction plants.

Iran also denies the allegation, saying that it needs nuclear energy to produce electricity to meet the country's growing demand.

Taiwanese man charged in US with Iran exports
Washington Post| Feb 4

MIAMI -- A Taiwanese man has been arrested on charges of exporting a series of prohibited items to Iran, including missile components and engines that can be used in unmanned military drones, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Yi-Lan Chen, 40, arranged at least 30 banned shipments to Iran since 2007, according to an affidavit by a U.S. Commerce Department enforcement agent. Most involved "dual use" items that have both commercial and military applications.

"The dual use items allegedly exported in this case could easily be used in missile development and other military components," said acting U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman.

Arrested this week in Guam, Chen waived extradition at a hearing Thursday and will be flown to Miami to face trial, prosecutors said. Court records did not show an attorney yet for Chen, who runs a company in Taiwan called Landstar Tech.
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The Commerce Department's Office of Export Enforcement field office in Miami is involved in several investigations of Iranian entities seeking to obtain banned products from the U.S.

Chen was arrested after arranging to meet with the undercover agent in Guam on Wednesday.

If convicted, Chen faces up to 20 years in prison and $1 million in fines.

Petraeus says strike on Iran could spark nationalism
Reuters | Feb. 3, 2010

A military strike on Iran could have the unintended consequence of stirring nationalist sentiment to the benefit of Tehran's hard-line government, U.S. General David Petraeus told Reuters.

Iran's June election gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term but sparked the worst internal crisis in the Islamic Republic's history, putting internal pressure on a government already facing the threat of more sanctions over its nuclear program.

"There is certainly a history, in other countries, of fairly autocratic regimes almost creating incidents that inflame nationalist sentiment. So that could be among the many different, second, third, or even fourth order effects (of a strike)."

Tensions over Iran's nuclear program have set off speculation that Israel could make good on veiled threats to hit its arch-foe pre-emptively. But Israel's envoy to Washington said in December the U.S.-Israeli dialogue on Iran has not reached the point of discussing the military option.

U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have warned that any strike on Iran would not stop the Islamic Republic from pursuing nuclear weapons. Instead, it would only delay Tehran, an opinion Petraeus said he shared.

Petraeus, commenting on advances of Iran's nuclear program, said: "On the one hand, there is no question that there has been a continuation of various aspects of the nuclear program but I'm not sure it has always proceeded as rapidly as has been projected at various times."

Kahrizak doctor's final cause of death announced
Fararu| Feb.3

The Medical Examiners office announced prescription drug overdose as the Kahrizak doctor's cause of death.

"As we previously announced through judicial authorities, the coroner has announced the cause of the Kahrizak doctor's death as poisoning with [prescription] medication and the report has been sent to authorities," said chief medical examiner Hassan Abedi.

When asked why the ME's office had earlier announced the Kahrizak doctor's cause of death to be homicide or suicide, Abedi expressed surprise.

"I do not know anything about the Kahrizak doctor's homicide or suicide and this is a matter that judicial authorities or the judge should look into."

Preachers want Mashai to keep quiet for one year
Khabaronline| Feb. 3

One week after Esfandyar Rahim Mashai's speech in front of members of the Preachers' Society, state news agencies continue to use the incident to write in support of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's chief of staff.

According to khabaronline, many of the participants in last week's gathering have not been satisfied with Mashai's explanations and some of the participants have requested that Mashai does not speak publicly for at least a year.

Meanwhile, one news agency in a guided interview claimed that the members of the Preachers Society had asked Mashai for forgiveness for misjudging him.

Vaez-Tabasi: Why are seditionists blind?
Tabnak |Feb. 3

The Leader's representative in Khorasan Province, Ayatollah Abbas Vaez-Tabasi, said those who accuse the current Iranian leaders of dictatorship should have experienced the Pahlavi-era repression.

Addressing a crowd of schoolboys in Mashhad of Wednesday, the caretaker of the Razavi Shrine said, "God will not forgive those who accuse the current Iranian leaders of dictatorship; if you had experienced the pre-Revolution situation you would have understood what repression and tyranny means."

"During the Pahlavi era no one dared say a simple sentence that could be considered impolite about the Shah," ISNA quoted Vaez-Tabasi as saying.

"Why are the seditionists blind? Why are they ignoring their human and Islamic conscience in their quest for power and cannot see this free atmosphere that is allowing the younger generation room for growth, development and advancement? Why are they not proud of the establishment's achievements and [our] national accomplishments? They
are entranced by the foreigners. Of course God Willing it is only because of their ignorance."

"Today if one member of the movement opposing the establishment speaks
in my praise, I will be under scrutiny and I will ask myself what have
I done to cause someone against the establishment to praise me. How is
it possible that the heads of Western countries voice support for one
or two individuals, and one who is devoted to the nation, and the
prominence and independence of this country; who loves the leader of
this Islamic society and the constitution does not shudder upon
hearing such words of praise."

"Our dear youth must be thankful for this [positive] atmosphere. I do
not want to say we have no problems and I do not want to say I have no
criticism about the management [of the country] but we must make
calculated judgments and add up the positive and negative points
before giving a score [to the performance of the government]," added
Vaez-Tabasi, who is also a member of the Expediency Council.

The veteran cleric closed by advising against being influenced by
rumors about and insults hurled at the prominent members of the
establishment.

Khatami says letter to Leader was confidential

fararu| Feb 2

A reformist website reported that former president Mohammad Khatami wrote a nine-page letter to Iran's Leader, which was hand delivered Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in the month of Ramadan.

According to Parlemannews, the letter contained Khatami's analysis of the incidents that took place on election day and after the vote.

Khatami concluded his letter by offering a list of solutions he believed would help the country exit its current crisis.

Following the publication of reports on Khatami's letter and speculation about its content, the former Iranian president expressed his dissatisfaction with the rumors, stressing that his letter was a private one and not intended for the public.

Khatami added that he has not revealed the contents of the letter or the response he received as it is morally incorrect for him to be the one to go public with this information.

Ban lifted on parlemannews website
Parleman News>/a<| Feb. 2

The ban on the website belonging to Reformist members of the Iranian parliament has been lifted.

According to reports, following talks between high-ranking members of the Majlis minority bloc and authorities the filtering applied to Parlemannews was lifted.

cartoon
http://news.gooya.com/columnists/archives/099926.php

Ahmadinejad hails Iran's aerospace achievements

Iran fires satellite carrier into space

Prosecutor : Death sentence not final for 9 rioters
|Feb. 2

Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi said the appeals court has yet to confirm the guilt of the nine individuals sentenced to death for moharebeh (militancy).

"As soon as we receive the verdict of the appeals court we will make an announcement," Dolatabadi told ISNA.

Regarding the assassination of physicist Dr. Ali Mohammadi, Dolatabadi said, "Investigations are ongoing in this case and as soon as we reach a conclusion we will make an announcement."

GroundReport.com

2010-02-02 18:11:34 GMT

They say it weakens their role and status at home and in society.

By Sahar Sepehri in Washington (MR No. 22, 01-Feb-10)

Iranian women’s groups and other rights organisations are fighting a much discussed proposed law which they say would encourage polygamy by allowing a man to take a second wife without the permission of the first in certain circumstances.

The proposal comes at a time when the country has been rocked by protests, in which women have played a major part, following the disputed re-election last June of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Although Sharia law permits a man to take up to four wives, polygamy is not widely practiced in Iran and women have enjoyed greater rights and freedoms than in some other Muslim countries. At present, an Iranian man needs his first wife’s permission to take a second.

A so-called Family Protection Law, proposed by the government in 2008, said a man could marry a second wife on condition only that he could afford both wives financially. The parliament dropped that clause following a wave of opposition from women but is now reconsidering a different version of the provision.

The spokesman for the parliament’s Judicial and Legal Commission, Amir Hussein Rahimi, announced recently that the commission had now approved article 23 of the proposed Family Protection Law that said, “A man can marry a second wife under ten conditions.”

The new version still requires the first wife to give permission, though controversially this would not be required under certain conditions, such as if she is mentally ill, or suffers from infertility, a chronic medical condition or drug addiction, in which case the husband can marry another woman. Also if the first wife does not cooperate sexually, the husband can take another wife.

The change is being promoted by conservative members of the parliament as a move that supports Islamic law. A leading conservative deputy, Ali Motahari, said in parliament last year, “Polygamy is Islam’s honour.”

Iranian women still oppose the legalisation of polygamy, saying it weakens their role and status at home and in society. Shahla Ezazi, professor of sociology at Allameh Tabatabai University, conducted a survey in 2008 which showed that 96 per cent of Iranian women do not approve of allowing a man to take a rival wife.

The original plan was dropped after a group of intellectuals, religious, social and human rights activists created a movement to voice their opposition to the law. In September 2008, a group of 50 well-known women, including poet Simin Behbahani, politician Azam Taleghani and lawyer and Noble prize winner Shirin Ebadi, met representatives from the parliament to express their concerns about what they called “an anti-family protection law”.

Islamic organisations such as the Zeinab Association and the Women’s Organisation of the Islamic Revolution also supported the movement. In addition, organisations such as the One Million Signatures campaign, which opposes discrimination against women, played a significant role in mobilising public opinion.

The law was also controversial among government officials and several reformists protested against it openly. Iran’s former president, Mohammad Khatami, called it “persecution”. Even a leading cleric, Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, stated, “If the first wife does not permit her husband to take another wife, the marriage will not be legitimate, even if a man can support both wives financially.”

Nevertheless, the speaker of the parliament, Ali Larijani, has declared that it will consider a slightly amended version of the controversial article.

A lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, “When a government imprisons the women who ask for a change of discriminatory laws, and it persistently proposes a law that encourages men to marry a second wife, it is only natural that women don’t trust such a government.”

A young member of the Centre for Iranian Women, Taraneh Bani Yaghoub, said, “The women’s movement will not remain quiet.”

Iran’s first law that recognised polygamy according to Islamic Sharia law was passed when Reza Shah, who ruled between 1925 and 1941, was in power. In 1970, women activists demanded the secular government of Mohammad Reza Shah outlaw polygamy but despite the government’s positive reaction to their demand, clerics prevented it. In 1975, an alternative was adopted that polygamy was permitted under certain conditions, such as obtaining the first wife’s permission.

Much has changed in Iran since the 1976, when only 36 per cent of women were literate. Now, according to the Statistical Centre of Iran, 80 per cent of women are educated, and almost 1.6 million are university students – half the total and compared to 46,000 in 1976. Women’s education has also brought about a drastic change in their demographic behaviour. A woman’s average age on marriage is 24 while in 1976 it was 18 and the birth rate has dropped by one third compared to 30 years ago.

In addition, despite government restrictions on women, the number of female professionals has increased at around six per cent a year, so that about 2.5 million women were working in 2006, according to official statistics. A large group of educated women – scientists, doctors, academics, writers, artists, cinematographers, lawyers – has shaped today’s Iranian society. For years, these women have demanded legal and social rights and equal treatment with men. They have resisted any law that weakens their rights or degrades their position in society.

They say the proposed new law on polygamy is intolerable, also in the light of other laws on, for instance, divorce, fixed-term marriage contracts for men (or Sighehs), and child custody. Under Iranian divorce law, men can split from their wives under any circumstance, whereas women must have a “valid justification” such as the man’s addiction to drugs. Married men can have as many Sighehs as they wish, whereas women are stoned to death if they have an extramarital affair. In most cases, men also get custody of the children.

While women are angry with the proposed new law, they have also been disappointed by the reaction of key figures of the opposition movement. A recent statement signed by a group of women activists accused defeated presidential contenders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi of ignoring women’s rights and even their existence in their political manifestos. “We believe that women’s issues are a major part of the current crisis and no solution will be achieved unless this issue is included,” they said.

Sahar Sepehri is a journalist and media analyst based in Washington, DC.

TweetMeme - Political News

twitter:@enduringamerica — 2010-02-02 05:36:46 GMT

0630 GMT: Three prominent Iranian authors have been arrested: Reza Khandan, Omid Montazeri, and Alireza Saqafi.0620 GMT: So the big news from the 1st day of the commemorations of the 1979 Islamic Revolution? There was no big news.Perhaps the most notable development was former President Mohammad Khatami joining the calls, albeit implicitly, for people to rally on 22 Bahman on 11 February (see…

0 comments Source: enduringamerica.com

iran election - Google News

2010-02-01 10:14:31 GMT

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FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-30 23:05:56 GMT

Shadow of Extra-Judicial Executions Looms Large over Dissidents

IHR | Jan. 31, 2010

Sixteen defendants currently facing a "show trial" in Tehran have been selected to intimidate specific groups of dissidents and pave the way for applying the charge of Mohareb, or "enemy of God," to large numbers of dissidents and protestors, charges that can lead to their execution, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today. Five of the sixteen defendants prosecuted in the post-Ashura trials of 30 January face the death penalty, having been charged with that crime.

"After the extra-judicial massacre of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, large scale executions of dissidents again loom before Iranians and the world community, this time after transparently political show trials. These trials do not adhere to the most basic standards if justice and rely on the charge of Mohareb to justify sending peaceful dissidents to the gallows," said Hadi Ghaemi, the Campaign's spokesperson.

According to the ISNA news agency, the prosecutor read the charges against the 16 defendants individually (see below). While five of the defendants were charged as Mohareb, the charges against others included assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security and propaganda against the state, charges the Campaign believes are arbitrarily applied to convict critics of the government.

On 29 January, one day after two political prisoners (Arash Rahmani Pour and Mohammad Ali Zamani) were hanged, the hardline cleric and member of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ali Jonati welcomed these executions. Given his prominent position amongst the ruling elite's "hardliner" faction, his statement is interpreted as a green light for further political executions. He explicitly stated that if widespread executions had taken place following the post- election unrest, the protests would not have been prolonged. Addressing the head of the Judiciary, Jonati said at Friday prayers in Tehran: "For God's sake, just as you expedited these two executions, continue on like a man and bravo for these actions."

The authorities did not release the names of the 16 defendants. However, Shekoofeh Montazeri told the Campaign that her brother, Omid Montazeri was amongst those prosecuted in court on 30 January. Shekoofeh's mother, Mahin Fahimi, and her brother Omid Montazeri have been in detention for over a month. Mahin Fahimi is a member of the group Mothers for Peace.

Regarding the statements made in court today, Shekoofeh said that Omid Montazeri 's so-called confession, as reported by Iranian news agencies that identified him only by his initials and as "defendant number three," was not consistent with her brother's usual way of speaking and suggested he had been under physical and psychological pressures. Omid is a journalist and a poet who was detained along with his mother on 28 December 2009. His father was a political prisoner who was executed during the massacre of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.

Shekoofeh Montazeri told the Campaign that her brother has been in incommunicado detention, except for two extremely brief phone calls lasting no more than a minute. She rejected the charges against Omid and said that since the execution of their father in 1988, the family has had no relations with any political groups.

According to reports published in Iranian media, no evidence has been presented against the first three defendants except their admissions that they participated in peaceful protests, and they clearly stated they had no role in violent actions or destruction of property. The only evidence presented against them was one's membership in a student group and their internet communications.

Defendant number two was quoted as telling the court: "Mr. Prosecutor told me to speak here such that it would influence the thinking of those people who are outside."

The Campaign believes that the latest "show trials" are intended to intimidate any citizens who are planning to demonstrate on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution on 11 February. The selection of the 16 defendants appears to address a representative range of political tendencies present in the society at large.

These prosecutions take place as four members of the student association Daftar-e Tahkim (Office to Foster Unity) and seven members of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters, as well as many ordinary detained protestors, are facing the charge of Mohareb for allegedly having relations with the opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq. None of these detainees have access to lawyers, and according to brief calls they have made to their families, they are under heavy pressure to make false confessions.

"Members of the international community were surprised at how the Islamic Republic moved ahead with the two executions of last week to intimidate the protest movement. Both those men were detained well before the elections and were promised if they made false confessions they would be released. Now the international community should know that the Iranian authorities are determined to keep executing innocent people to silence the protest movement," Ghaemi said.

"If we are silent in the face of these show trials based on no evidence whatsoever, we could be facing large scale killings of the young detainees," he added.

The Campaign once more calls on the Iranian government to respect the internationally recognized rights of the Iranian people to freedom of assembly, expression, and press. The Campaign calls for the immediate halt of the trials of protesters that are underway, and the release of all political prisoners.

The detailed charges against each of the 16 defendants, as read by the prosecutor in the court on 30 January, are as following:

-Defendant number one charged with assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security, insulting top government officials, and propaganda against the state through extensive soft war activities against the state;

-Defendant number two charged with assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security and propaganda against the state through membership in the counter revolutionary branch of the student organization Office to Foster Unity (Daftar-e Tahkim Vahdat);

-Defendant number three has neo-communist sympathies and is charged with assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security and propaganda against the state by participating in protests on Ashura and interviewing with foreign media;

-Defendant number four charged with propaganda against the state through membership in the Baha'i sect and assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against the state through participation in the riots following the orders of Baha'i leaders;

-Defendant number five charged as Mohareb through communications with the terrorist hypocrites' organization (Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization);

-Defendant number six charged as Mohareb and Corruptor of the Earth (Mofsed fel-Arz), assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security and propaganda against the state;

-Defendant number seven charged as Mohareb through communicating, sympathizing, and cooperating with the terrorist hypocrites group (Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization) and propaganda against the state;

-Defendants number eight and nine charged as Mohareb and Corruptor of the Earth (Mofsed fel-Arz);

-Defendant number ten charged with assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security, propaganda against the state, insulting top government officials, and disobeying government agents;

-Defendant number eleven charged with assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security, committing arson against public property, and propaganda against the state;

-Defendants number twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen charged with assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security and propaganda against the state by participating in Ashura protests;

- Defendant number sixteen charged with assembly and conspiracy to commit crimes against national security, propaganda against the state, insulting top government officials, participating in the destruction of public property, and disobeying government agents.

Prayers Leader urges displaying executed bodies to stop riots

Khabar Online | Jan. 30, 2010

Orumieh Friday Prayers leader Hojjatoleslam Gholam-Reza Hassani said the bodies of executed dissidents must be displayed in public to prevent further riots.

"In order to prevent further unrest, the bodies of the executed [protesters] must be put on public display in the streets of Tehran," Hassani said. "The tongues of those saying 'Iranian Republic' instead of 'Islamic Republic' must be pulled out, and the hearts of the families of martyrs and those devoted to the establishment will only feel relief when those insulting Ashura are executed."

"Iran is no place for seditionists; they must leave because if they stay they will defile the scared Friday prayers. They are the same people who danced at Tehran's Friday prayers; they have no place in Iran."

"It is hard to bear the fact that the leaders of sedition are being kept safe while they are thinking about overthrowing the rule of the worthy (pious). Why is it that the people's tax money must be spent on the safety of the leaders of the sedition?"

Mohammad Moein's condition dire in prison: lawyer

Parleman News | Jan. 30, 2010

Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, a lawyer who represents Mohammad Moein, the son of a leading reformist, said that his client was not in good health.

According to Etemad, Alizadeh Tabatabaei said that the Moein family was extremely concerned about their son's condition.

Alizadeh Tabatabaei will be representing six Ashura detainees in total: Dr. Ali Arab Mazar, Mohammad Moein, Khaliji (Ali-Reza Beheshti's son-in-law), Mohammad Firouzandehpour (Mir Hossein Mousavi's chief of staff), Mohammad-Javad Mozaffar and Mohsen Mohagheghi (Mehdi Bazargan's son-in-law).

"Despite having legal documents appointing me as their counsel," the lawyer added, "they [authorities] will not accept them."

Khatami meets with Mozaffar Family

Parleman News | Jan. 29, 2010

Former Iranian president Seyyed Mohammad Khatami met with the family of Mohammad-Javad Mozaffar, who was detained following the Ashura protests.

According to the Norouz news Web site, in the meeting that took place, Khatami expressed gratitude for Mozaffar's past cultural and political services.

"In his last contact [with us], Mr. Mozaffar said that his blood pressure was too high, but he does not have a past history of it," Mrs. Mozaffar said.

Mrs. Mozaffar added that her husband had not had any contact with his family in the past two weeks.

Mozaffar was a member of the Center for the Defense of Press Freedom and the founder of Kavir Publications.

Assailants raid Principlist daily's office in Tehran

Tabnak | Jan. 30, 2010

Unidentified assailants have raided the office of the Rahe Mardom (path of the people) daily in Tehran today.

The assailants raided the newspaper's office located on Satari Street, breaking all its windows. The motive for the attack was unknown.

Naser Qadiri is the editor-in-chief of Rah-e Mardom

Grand Ayatollah Mousavi-Ardebili visits Leader

Tabnak Parleman News | Jan. 30, 2010

Shia Source of Emulation Ayatollah Abdolkarim Mousavi-Ardebili came to Tehran on Thursday to reportedly meet and confer with Iran's Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

According to the Jomhouri Eslami daily, Ayatollah Mousavi-Ardebili will also meet with current and former government officials.

Informed sources say Ayatollah Mousavi-Ardebili is in Tehran to discuss the recent developments in the country and to help resolve outstanding political issues.

Some of the meetings were held on Thursday.

Ayatollah Mousavi-Ardebili served in the judiciary during the life of the late Imam, Rouhollah Khomeini. He is believed to be a Source of Emulation close to the Reformists.

Rafsanjani invites all to attend 22 Bahman demos

Fararu | Jan. 30, 2010

In the lead up to the 22 Bahman ceremonies, head of the Expediency Council Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani invited all political parties to participate in the Revolution Day demonstrations.

"Those devoted to the establishment, from whichever party or front, must try to participate in this year's national celebration of 22 Bahman with calm ... as any conflict or violence will be in line with the desires of the enemy," said Rafsanjani before starting the meeting of the Expediency Council on Saturday.

The head of the Assembly of experts also urged the nation to participate in the 22 Bahman demonstrations in a show of national unity aimed at safeguarding the establishment and in support of the Islamic Republic.

"22 Bahman is the central point of safeguarding, strengthening and uniting [the Islamic establishment] and symbolizes the loyalty of the nation to the Islamic establishment and we [Rafsanjani] hope that it [the celebrations, demonstrations] will be held with special grandeur."

Trial of 16 Ashura riot detainees begins in Iran

Press TV | Jan. 30, 2010

The trial of 16 individuals involved in last month's unrest in Iran has started with the prosecutor laying out the charges brought out against the defendants.

The hearing, presided by Judge Abul Qasim Salavati, began with a general indictment against 14 men and two women on Saturday morning at Tehran's Revolution Court.

The prosecutor explained that five of the defendants were facing charges of Moharebeh (enmity towards God), while the others were being tried for taking part in "illegal protests, threatening national security, and spreading propaganda against the establishment."

The indictment said that the latter individuals had targeted the country's security "by encouraging others to rebel."

According to the prosecutor, all the suspects were working in line with the interests of the US and other foreign states that "were seeking regime change in the Islamic Republic of Iran."

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-30 00:39:45 GMT

[ comment ] On Thursday, the Senate approved S2799 -- the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2009 -- which authorizes President Obama to impose sanctions on any entity that exports gasoline to Iran, or helps expand the country's oil-refining capacity by, in part, denying them loans and other assistance from U.S. financial institutions. The legislation is supposedly intended to pressure the Islamic Republic to give up its uranium enrichment program. Even if that were truly the intent of the law, it is misguided.

On Dec. 15, 2009, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the "Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009," which is largely similar to what the Senate just passed. But the Senate bill extends sanctions to companies that build oil and gas pipelines in Iran and provide tankers to move Iran's petroleum. It also prohibits the U.S. government from buying goods from foreign companies that work in Iran's energy sector. So, in effect, the Senate bill imposes sanctions on Iran's entire oil and natural gas industry.

Although Iran has the world's third largest oil reserves, it must import a significant portion of its gasoline to meet domestic demand because it lacks the required refining capacity. Anticipating gasoline sanctions for at least two years now, the Islamic Republic has been working hard to reduce its dependency on gasoline imports, which has gone from 40 percent of total consumption down to 25-30. At least one new refinery is under construction, which will come online in about two years. In addition, as I described in a previous article, Tehran can take several relatively simple steps to further reduce its dependency on gasoline imports.

Although President Obama warned Iran of "growing consequences" over its nuclear program in his State of the Union address on Wednesday, his administration has not shown a great deal of interest in the legislation. In fact, it had expressed strong reservations about the Senate bill.

On December 11, 2009, Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg sent a letter to Senator John F. Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he stated that,

As I testified before the Congress in October, it is our hope that any legislative initiative would preserve and maximize the President's flexibility, secure greater cooperation from our partners in taking effective action, and ultimately facilitate a change in Iranian policies. However, we are entering a critical period of intense diplomacy to impose significant international pressure on Iran. This requires that we keep the focus on Iran. At this juncture, I am concerned that this legislation, in its current form, might weaken rather than strengthen international unity and support for our efforts. In addition to the timing, we have serious substantive concerns, including the lack of flexibility, inefficient monetary thresholds and penalty levels, and blacklisting that could cause unintended foreign policy consequences.

On January 4th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that,

Our goal is to pressure the Iranian government, particularly the Revolutionary Guard elements, without contributing to the suffering of the ordinary [Iranians] (emphasis mine), who deserve better than what they currently are receiving.

This position was reiterated by Clinton on January 11:

It is clear that there is a relatively small group of decision makers inside Iran... They are in both political and commercial relationships, and if we can create a sanctions track that targets those who actually make the decisions, we think that is a smarter way to do sanctions.

P.J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman, reiterated the Administration position on January 5th:

As the Secretary said, one possibility is to focus more specifically on the Revolutionary Guards, the IRGC. We're taking a much more prominent role within Iran. We want to do this in a way that can target specific entities within the Iranian Government but not punish the Iranian people (emphasis mine), who are clearly looking for a different relationship with their government.

Other unnamed Administration officials have been quoted as saying that they are opposed to legislation that hurts ordinary people. For example, on Dec. 29, 2009, Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times reported that,

[U.S.] officials are increasingly concerned that broad sanctions harming ordinary citizens would appear harsh to the outside world and would risk alienating parts of the population with which the West seeks to establish common cause.

Richter quoted an anonymous senior State Department official as saying that, "the discussions [within the State Department] were aimed at making the sanctions as narrow as they can be."

On Dec. 30, 2009, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post reported that an anonymous senior Administration official stated that,

We have never been attracted to the idea of trying to get the whole world to cordon off their economy... We have to be deft at this, because it matters how the Iranian people interpret their isolation -- whether they fault the regime or are fooled into thinking we are to blame.

In fact, on Dec. 15, 2009, Richard R. Verma, Assistant Secretary of State for legislative affairs, sent a letter to Senator Carl Levine, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in which he stated that,

The Department of State is recommending that the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issue a general license that would authorize downloads of free mass market software by companies such as Microsoft and Google to Iran necessary for the exchange of personal communications and/or sharing of information over the internet such as instant messaging, chat and email, and social networking. This software is necessary to foster and support the free flow of information to individual Iranian citizens and is therefore essential to the national interest of the United States.

Though the Administration may be seeking targeted sanctions against the leaders of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), who are the effective power behind the military junta headed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the gasoline sanction will hurt only ordinary Iranians.

Even U.S. business groups warned the administration that the bill would undercut the President's strategy of working with U.S. allies in finding a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program, because the legislation targets companies of U.S. allies doing business with Iran. But the neoconservatives, Israel lobby and its allies in the Senate, such as Senator Joseph Lieberman, were firmly behind it. And what the Israeli lobby wants, the Israeli lobby gets. Thus, the legislation was approved. Indeed, the passage of the legislation was praised by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which called for even tougher sanctions.

The legislation is terrible news for ordinary Iranians that have been struggling to make ends meet, especially since the rigged June 12 presidential election. At least a million Iranians work in the transportation sector and millions more depend on transportation for their work or business -- not to mention the agriculture sector, especially in the remote areas of the country, which also relies heavily on transportation.

It is widely believed in Iran -- and there is considerable concrete evidence for it -- that there is a gasoline "Mafia" linked to the hardliners. They sell the gasoline, which is subsidized by the government, to neighboring countries at a much higher price and make a huge profit from these transactions. The sanction would inevitably lead to much higher gasoline prices in Iran. That would only tighten the gasoline Mafia's grip on the market, hence increasing the power that the IRGC and the hardliners already have. This is the opposite effect that the legislation is supposedly intended to have.

Those who had pushed hard for the passage of this legislation had argued that its resulting hardship would pressure the Iranian people to demand policy changes from the government. But, if this is the true purpose of the legislation (and I highly doubt it), then there is no need for it. There is now little doubt that a great majority of Iranians are deeply angered about what has been happening in Iran in the aftermath of the rigged June 12 presidential election. There have been recurring demonstrations -- often bloody -- daily arrests of political figures, activists, journalists, university students, human rights advocates and ordinary people; thousands have been detained, dozens have been murdered, both in jail and during demonstrations; two men, Mir Hossein Mousavi's nephew and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, have been assassinated; show trials have been held; unjustified sentences have been handed out to detainees; several young people have been hanged, and many newspapers and other publications have been banned. What more motivation do the people need?

In fact, it is such developments that have given birth to the Green Movement which has been gathering strength over the past several months. The Green Movement's leaders -- former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi, and former president Mohammad Khatami -- have opposed sanctions, particularly those that hurt only ordinary Iranians. But while the sponsors of the Congress sanction bill pay lip service to the bravery of the Iranian people and their courage to stand up to the hardliners, in practice they hurt them by imposing such sanctions. And that's because the goal is not to help the Iranian people, but satisfy Israel and its lobby.

Others have argued that tough sanctions will hurt Iran's economy, to the point that it will cripple the hardliners and prevent them from pursuing their nuclear program. But, if this is the true purpose of the legislation, there is again no need for it.

First of all, Iran's nuclear program has significantly slowed down, due both to the internal crisis and the array of technical difficulties it faces. Recently leaked documents reflecting the internal debates within the administration indicate that the Obama administration believes that, even if Iran were to produce a nuclear weapon (at least up to now, there has been no evidence for it), it does not have a breakout capability (that is, the ability to convert its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to highly enriched uranium to make a weapon) for up to three years. This is ample time for both diplomacy and to allow Iran's internal developments to grow.

Secondly, Ahmadinejad's economic policy -- if it can be called that -- has already hurt Iran's economy and the public's economic welfare greatly. Inflation is rampant, to the point that the government is seriously thinking about devaluing the currency, the Rial. Starting on March 21, the Iranian New Year, Ahmadinejad is scheduled to remove all price controls and eliminate all subsidies on basic commodities (i.e., food). Iran's most prominent economists have warned that such actions will increase the rate of inflation to at least 60 percent (from its current official rate of close to 30 percent), further impoverishing millions of Iranians, and driving many businesses to ruin.

Third, Iran has a labor movement that is increasingly stronger and more vocal. The movement is demanding better pay, more labor-friendly laws, uprooting corruption, and cutting the hands of the IRGC from the economy. The labor movement, together with the feminist movement, and the one led by the young people, only add to the strength of the Green Movement.

Therefore, in addition to the illegality of interfering in Iran's internal affairs, Iran's internal developments and dynamics are doing what even the best-intentioned legislation by foreign powers can never achieve -- driving Iranians to push for a democratic political system, supremacy of the rule of law, and a free press that would reveal the depth of corruption and mismanagement by the hardliners and the IRGC, which are the root causes of the terrible state of the economy in Iran.

In my opinion, Iranian people do not need, nor have they called for, foreign interference in their internal affairs, the supposed intention of the gasoline legislation. They can tackle their problems themselves. What they need is moral support and strong and meaningful condemnation of the gross violations of human rights that are daily occurrences in Iran.

If sanctions are to be imposed, they should be designed to strip away the power of the hardliners to block the free flow of information on the internet. If sanctions are to be imposed, they should be designed to isolate the IRGC leaders and their allies in Iran's conservative camp, which implies diplomatic sanctions -- not economic ones that hurt Iranians just when their century-old struggle for democracy is beginning to bear fruit.

FOK!frontpage Nieuws

2010-01-29 17:20:57 GMT

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, een invloedrijke hardliner in de Iraanse geestelijkheid, heeft vandaag gezegd dat meer activisten van de oppositie moeten worden opgehangen. Als daar meteen na de presidentsverkiezingen in juni mee was begonnen, was de rust in het land al lang weergekeerd, zei hij in een preek na het vrijdaggebed. "Wat wij doormaken komt door onze slapheid. Hoeveel mensen heeft het gerecht op 9 juli terechtgesteld?" vroeg Jannati, doelend op een van de zwaardere protestdagen. 'Wij toonden zwakte en toen kwam Ashoura', een sjiitische gedenkdag met opnieuw bijzonder felle protesten op 27 december. "Als je nu zwakte toont, wordt de toekomst erger. Er is geen ruimte voor islamitische genade." Gisteren werden twee Iraniërs opgehangen, omdat ze deel zouden hebben uitgemaakt van een gewapende groep die de regering omver wilde werpen. Ze waren weken voor de verkiezingen opgepakt, maar werden met later opgepakte betogers op een hoop geveegd en tegelijk met hen in een massaproces berecht en veroordeeld. De autoriteiten maakten gisteren bekend dat negen mensen die bij de protesten betrokken waren eveneens ter dood zijn veroordeeld. Jannati prees het hoofd van de rechterlijke macht, Sadeq Larijani, voor de executies van gisteren. Hij spoorde hem aan er meer te laten voltrekken. "Sta moedig recht, omwille van Allah, op dezelfde manier zoals u deze twee personen heeft laten terechtstellen." Vervolgens haalde hij verzen uit de Koran aan, die heersers machtigen hun tegenstanders te doden, onder wie 'huichelaars met kwade bedoelingen en degenen die geruchten verspreiden'. Geestelijke hardliners hebben al eerder opgeroepen tot de berechting en terechtstelling van oppositieleiders als presidentskandidaat Mir Hossein Mousavi, ex-president Mohammad Khatami en oud-parlementsvoorzitter Mahdi Karroubi. De autoriteiten hebben honderden mensen opgepakt, maar activisten van de oppositie gaan sporadisch door met omvangrijke protesten tegen de volgens hen frauduleuze verkiezingsoverwinning van president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Sommigen in de oppositie willen niet alleen het aftreden van Ahmadinejad, maar bekritiseren ook de Iraanse geestelijke leiders, onder wie de hoogste leider ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

openDemocracy

openDemocracy — 2010-01-29 09:57:32 GMT

Author:

Paul Rogers

Summary:

The American-led effort to map Afghanistan’s future neglects the role of the country’s neighbours – and could yet be derailed by events over Iran.

The international summit on Afghanistan’s future held in London on 28 January 2010 produced three main outcomes: a very clear willingness to negotiate with the insurgents, the provision of substantial funding ($140 million) to lure elements of the insurgency from their campaign, and a focus on more rapid training of Afghan security forces. At the same time, it is reported that elements of the Taliban are already engaged in informal talks with United Nations officials.

These proposals represent a remarkable change from the policy of the George W Bush administration, driven by a search for clear military victory in Afghanistan. Barack Obama and his team take a different view: they recognising that the war cannot be won and that compromise is essential. They also make a concession to the Bush approach in believing that a position of military strength is route to securing the best compromise possible - hence the military “surge” that is currently under way. There remains a large question over the effectiveness of this approach; the infusion of more foreign troops could provoke increased resistance by Afghans who see them as occupiers.

Behind the coalition’s shift in policy is the concern that public opinion in the United States and Britain is moving against the war, and that more people in both countries increasingly want their forces to leave. Many other Nato countries may be involved in Afghanistan, but these two states are pivotal: the US for its political and military leadership, and Britain for the size of its own involvement (it has more than twice the number of soldiers in Afghanistan as any other European state), which helps make it a marker for European attitudes as a whole.

The worry about a possible early withdrawal of Nato forces is what prompted Hamid Karzai to speak in London of the need for a longer-term programme (amounting perhaps to fifteen years) of western involvement to ensure a stable country. The sub-text of the Afghan president’s remarks is that a failure of commitment on Nato’s part could ensure Kabul’s fall to the Taliban - with al-Qaida too back in the frame.

The Iran factor

The decisions made in London reflect the Barack Obama administration’s search for a more intelligent and flexible strategy in Afghanistan. But the change of emphasis persists in ignoring another key element of the Afghan reality: namely, the role of important regional states (beyond the most obvious one of Pakistan). For a number of such states - Russia, China and especially Iran – has the capacity to reinforce or help derail western policy towards Afghanistan.

Iran’s position is made highly relevant by a set of factors: the extensive common border with Afghanistan, its political and social involvement in the west of the country, transport links to the Iranian ports of Chabahar and Konarak, and Tehran’s perennial concern over drug-trafficking across the border.

The Tehran government is no friend of the Taliban, in part as its memories of the killing of Iranian officials a decade ago are still fresh. It is suspicious of Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Taliban and sees this as a real obstacle to increasing its own influence in Kabul. This suspicion even extends to a willingness to improve links with India; some analysts identify the development of a Tehran/Kabul/Delhi axis that would cause the deepest of concern in Islamabad (see Kaveh L Afrasiabi, “Iran waits in the wings”, Asia Times, 27 January 2009).

This prospect has added significance in that Iran’s involvement is essential to Afghanistan’s long-term stability - yet (in part because of wider tensions over its foreign and domestic policy) it is the one state most likely to be sidelined in current discussions.

There is a further point to remember here. The United States’s ability to respond to the 9/11 attacks by terminating the Taliban regime within three months had a lot of help from the Iranians; yet Iran promptly found itself part of the notorious “axis of evil” targeted by George W Bush in his state-of-the-union address in January 2002:

"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world… I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as perils draw closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

In June 2002, the president went further in his graduation address at the West Point military academy:

"All nations that decide for aggression and terror will pay a price. We will not leave the safety of America and the peace of the planet at the mercy of a few mad terrorists and tyrants. We will lift this dark threat from our country and from the world."

The regime in Tehran was led at the time by the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami; but the sense of insult from these rhetorical barbs remains embedded in Iranian politics to this day, and is a potent weapon in the armoury of Khatami’s hardline successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters.

The China-Russia factor

The stance of Russia and China is also a neglected factor in western discussion of Afghanistan. In each country, there are two opposing calculations at work. The first is a fear that the Taliban and other radical Islamist groups will gain more power in Afghanistan and be able to spread their beliefs and influence among Muslim minorities in (for example) the north Caucasus and Xinjiang regions. China, with its common border with Afghanistan and its huge investment in mineral-extraction there, remains determined to maintain full control over the Uyghur people, and Russia looks on Chechens and other Muslim-majority communities with suspicion. This leads both countries to want a stable and moderate Afghanistan.

The second calculation, however, is that Moscow and Beijing do not want Afghanistan to be a pro-American state with large US bases at Bagram and Kandahar; neither do they want the Pentagon to maintain close connections with the republics of central Asia. They are well aware that such bases are, from the Pentagon’s point of view, almost the only positive thing to come out of eight years of war; and that for Washington, the US-central Asian link means influence in a key energy-rich region – in the very backyards of two potential rivals to US global power.

Iran, China and Russia – albeit with differing interests and emphases - all want a stable Afghanistan with minimal US influence, whereas India is content to deepen its own links with Kabul and is willingly improving its relations with Washington. Pakistan, meanwhile, is absolutely determined to avoid a pro-American Indian-influenced Afghanistan; the implication is that Islamaband’s bonds with the Afghan Taliban and other groups are far more important than expending excessive effort in controlling its own Islamist paramilitaries.

The Israel factor

The absence of such geopolitical considerations from the discussions in London limits the relevance of the conference there. The Pakistani dimension may receive great attention, but the neglect of Iran, China and Russia is both damaging and little noted.

Iran, as so often, may turn out to be the most important “absentee” – and, again as so often, find itself being written into the story. There are clear signs that the Obama administration is preparing to take a much harder line towards Tehran in the coming months (see Jim Lobe, “Sanctions, ‘Regime Change’ Take Centre Stage”, IPS, 27 January 2010). At the very least there will be a major effort to secure much stronger sanctions at the United Nations Security Council; at most, the administration may withhold any effort to constrain Israeli military action.

The harder line will coincide with Israel’s completion of a major upgrade of its tanker-aircraft, allowing it to extend its capability to undertake long-range air strikes (see Alon Ben-David “Expanded Reach”, Aviation Week, 11 January 2010). Israel already receives routine military aid from the United States equivalent to about 20% of its defence spending, and these military links have recently been further upgraded with congressional permission to the Pentagon to store up to $800 million of war-reserves in Israel - much of it available to Israel for emergency use (see Barbara Opall-Rome, “U.S. Expands War Stocks in Israel”, Defense News, 11 January 2010).

The risk of an Israel/Iran war is rising (see “Israel’s shadow over Iran”, 14 January 2010). But the Iran/Afghanistan connection tends to be excluded from any such scenario. Many analysts have argued that the dangerous consequences of such a war include Iran’s capacity to interfere in Iraq and to disrupt Gulf oil-supplies. These dangers most certainly exist, but it may well be that an even greater impact would be felt in Afghanistan.

The London summit could signal a change in attitude to the Taliban that might just presage some hesitant progress in a complex, costly and divisive conflict. But if there were to be an Israeli attack on Iran, all could be derailed.

Sideboxes

'Read On' Sidebox:

Department of peace studies, Bradford University

Oxford Research Group

Afghanistan Conflict Monitor

Long War Journal

Afghanistan Analysts Network

Foreign Policy - The AfPak Channel

Pajhwok Afghan News

Pakistan Conflict Monitor

Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)

Iran: Consequences of a War (Oxford Research Group, February 2006)

Iran and IAEA

Sustainable Security

Sidebox:

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001

Bradford’s peace-studies department now broadcasts regular podcasts on its work, including a regular commentary from Paul Rogers on international-security issues. Listen/watch here

In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here

Paul Rogers’s books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007) - an analysis of the strategic misjudgments of the post-9/11 era and why a new security paradigm is needed; and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2009)

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Afghanistan

The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

The Huffington Post News Editors — 2010-01-29 14:56:43 GMT

TEHRAN, Iran — A powerful hard-line Iranian cleric on Friday called for the execution of more opposition activists to silence anti-government protests, praising the hanging a day earlier of two men caught up in the leadership's postelection crackdown.

Speaking in a Friday prayer sermon, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the wave of street demonstrations sparked by the disputed June presidential election would not have lasted until now if protesters had been executed early on.

"Whatever we suffered was because of our weakness. How many did the judiciary execute on July 9?" he said, referring to one of the particularly large protest days.

"We showed weakness, so then we had Ashoura," he said, referring to a major protest on Dec. 27. "If you show weakness now, the future will be worse ... There is no room for Islamic mercy."

Iran's judiciary is stepping up death sentences as the leadership intensifies its campaign to eliminate the challenge from the pro-reform opposition movement. Authorities announced Thursday that nine people accused of involvement in protests have been sentenced to death – including five who allegedly had a role in the Dec. 27 protests, which saw a particularly violent clampdown.

Iran's top prosecutor said a new group of protesters and others would soon be brought to trial.

The two men executed Thursday were arrested before the June 12 election on charges of belonging to an armed group aiming to topple the government. But authorities lumped them in with opposition activists arrested during the postelection crackdown.

In his sermon, aired live on state radio, Jannati thanked Iran's judiciary chief, Sadeq Larijani, for Thursday's executions and urged more, saying: "Stand up courageously for the sake of God, the same way you executed these two persons very quickly."

Jannati cited verses from the Quran, Islam's holy book, that he said show Islam permits rulers to kill their opponents, including "hypocrites, those with evil intentions and those who spread rumors."

Jannati is one of the best known hard-line clerics in Iran and frequently delivers the nation's keynote sermon during prayers on Friday. He holds positions on one of the powerful councils of clerics that under Iran's Islamic Republic system vets laws passed by parliament and controls who can run for the legislature.

Hard-liners have called for the trial and execution of Iran's opposition leaders including Mir Hossein Mousavi and former reformist president Mohammad Khatami and former parliamentary speaker Mahdi Karroubi.

Hundreds have been arrested in the heavy crackdown by security forces against opposition protests, but activists have continued to hold sporadic, large street rallies. The opposition says President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory in the June election was fraudulent and call for his removal – though some in the movement have expanded to criticize Iran's clerical leadership.

The two men who were executed – Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani, 37, and Arash Rahmanipour, 20 – were convicted by a Revolutionary Court of belonging to "counterrevolutionary and monarchist groups," plotting to overthrow "the Islamic establishment" and planning assassinations and bombings.

They were arrested months before the election. But they were put on the same mass trial as around 100 opposition activists, protesters and politicians who were arrested in the postelection crackdown – an attempt by the leadership to show that the political opposition is in league with violent armed groups in a foreign-backed plot to overthrow the Islamic system.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-28 22:44:00 GMT

Reflections on Democracy, Non-Violence and Political Change in Iran

[ analysis ] Struggles for democracy generally require three critical ingredients for success: effective and incorruptible leadership, a strategy for mass mobilization and a sense of hope that engenders sacrifice. Last year at this time, none of these existed in Iran. The clerical oligarchy was firmly in control, the Reform movement was in disarray and political apathy reigned supreme. Today, eight months after the disputed presidential election, all three key ingredients are now firmly in place. Defying expectations, Iran's Green Movement (Jonbesh-e Sabz-e Iran) soldiers on in the face of an authoritarian regime whose brutal suppression has failed to intimidate or subdue it. Whether this movement will be triumphant is unknown but what is clear is that an indigenous movement for democracy has delivered a major blow to the Islamic Republic: Iranian politics henceforth will never be the same. How did these three elements come together?

Understanding the origins and the defiant posture of the leadership of the Green Movement requires returning to an event in August 2000 that marked a critical denouement for the reformist-conservative struggle in Iran. At this time, the Reform Movement was in its prime, winning landslide elections at the presidential, municipal and most recently the parliamentary level. Hope for democratic change was in the air as Reformers captured all of the key democratically-contested institutions of the state in quick succession, to the shock and bewilderment of their conservative rivals.

The first item on the legislative agenda of reform-dominated 6th parliament (2000-2004) was to overturn an illiberal press law passed in the final days of the outgoing hard-line parliament. The print media in Iran had flourished during President Khatami's first term and quickly became a bastion of support for pro-democracy activists. Courageous journalists and editors were breaking political taboos by transcending the narrow ideological confines of Iran's post-revolutionary elite consensus. A public sphere was created whereby Iranian society was in full scale debate -- to the mortification of the ruling clerical establishment -- about the relationship between tradition and modernity, religion and democracy and the moral basis of legitimate political authority.

As parliamentary debate on the press law began with the eyes of the nation upon it, the speaker suddenly intervened to halt the proceedings. He announced that he had just received an important summons from the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei demanding that the existing (illiberal) press law not be revised and that all debate on this topic cease immediately. Khamenei's letter -- which angry MPs forced the speaker to read into the parliamentary record -- specifically warned that "should the enemies of Islam, the revolution and the Islamic system take over or infiltrate the press, a great danger would threaten the security, unity and the faith of the people....The current [press] law ... has been able to prevent the appearance of this great calamity, and [therefore], its amendment and similar actions that have been anticipated by the parliamentary committee are not legitimate and not in the interest of the country and the system."

Scuffles and fistfights broke out among rival members of parliament. Several deputies walked out in protest as chaos soon enveloped the parliamentary chamber. The speaker tried to restore calm by reminding everyone that the Supreme Leader's actions were legally permissible. "Our constitution has the elements of the absolute rule of the supreme clerical leader [velayat-e motlagh faghih] and you all know this and approve of this. We are all duty-bound to abide by it." The speaker at the time was Mehdi Karoubi, a 2009 Reformist presidential candidate and today one of the courageous leaders of the Green Movement, famous for exposing a policy of systematic rape in Iranian prisons. His defiance of Khamenei today, in contrast to his deference nine years ago, is worth noting.

After the June 2009 election, and following a week of demonstrations that brought three million people into the streets of Tehran, Khamenei delivered his much anticipated Friday sermon. He publicly endorsed Ahmadinejad as president, declared the election to be free and fair on balance and then went a step further. Similar to his August 2000 intervention, he forcefully demanded a halt to all debate on the topic, declaring the issue resolved while threatening the opposition with violence if their defiance persisted. This time, however, the senior leadership of the reform movement stood firm and boldly defied the explicit wishes of the Supreme Leader. This marked a critical turning point in the relationship between reformers and the Islamic Republican establishment. Their disobedience inspired millions of Iranians and provided Iran's democratic forces with the internal leadership it desperately sought and previously lacked.

By all measures, the leadership of the Green Movement comprised of the troika of Mir Hossein Mousavi (former Prime Minister), Mehdi Karoubi (former Speaker of Parliament) and Mohammad Khatami (former President), can be characterized as relatively mild and measured in their speeches and political statements. All remain loyal to the Islamic Republic, its current constitution and the political theology of Ayatollah Khomeini, albeit emphasizing a democratic and humanistic reading of this legacy. Nonetheless, despite repeated warnings from the Supreme Leader and a growing chorus of hard-line opinion demanding their arrest -- and more recently their execution -- the leadership continues its defiance of established power and its steadfast support for the civil and human rights of their fellow citizens. The future of the Green Movement and any hope for an eventual democratic transition in Iran will be dependent on the ongoing resistance of these leaders.

The strategy of mass mobilization and street protests has at best a tenuous link to Iran's Green leadership. It has been accurately reported that leaders are responding to and being led by society and not the opposite. In his most recent statement to the nation, (No. 17, January 1, 2010), Mousavi explicitly acknowledged the point that protests are occurring not because he has called people into the streets but rather due to the prevalence of "widespread social and civil networks that were formed during and after the election through the people themselves and which continue to self generate." This fascinating development suggests the extent to which the Green Movement has penetrated key sectors of Iranian society based on the existence of underground networks of activists scattered in major cities who rely on the internet and mobile phone technology to spread their message. This also explains why the movement has been hard to crush, notwithstanding the best efforts of the regime.

And finally there is the issue of hope. In a recent in-depth report on the state of human rights Iran after the June election, Amnesty International noted that "human rights violations in Iran are now as bad as at any time in the past 20 years." To date, the Islamic Republic has imprisoned almost every leading opposition figure, human and civil rights activist, student leader and dissident journalist. In fact, it is hard to think of the name of prominent Iranian pro-democracy activist that the regime has not arrested. In its desperation, it even picked up the sister of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi, an apolitical figure, with the sole intention of intimidating her more famous sibling.

Yet notwithstanding this repressive atmosphere replete with show trials, torture, rape, death and threats of mass executions, Iranians who sympathize with the Green Movement today are experiencing a deep sense of hope, cautious optimism and at times exhilaration about the prospects of a better future. There is a general appreciation that a transition to democracy will not emerge without significant sacrifice and a long-term commitment to oppositional activity. A rejection of violent revolution and a commitment to a strategy of nonviolence resistance by necessity demands patience, prudence and time. In the words of Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabashi: "This is not sprint but a marathon."

A realization that there are no quick fixes to the problem of political authoritarianism in Iran is informed by the fact that the Iranian regime, despite being shaken and confused, remains firmly in control of the key institutions of violence, the administration of justice and economic production (largely oil). Evidence that this control has weakened is shaky at best. Moreover, the Iranian regime, in part due to its control over the media, retains significant support in rural and poorer areas of the country including a core group of loyal devotees who dominate the upper echelons of the security forces, many of whom believe that Ali Khamenei is God's representative on earth.

The next stage of confrontation is set for early February and the date could not be more symbolic -- the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Expectations are for a similar repetition of defiant street protests, a harsh government crackdown and then a wave of mass arrests. Meanwhile Iran's Green Movement continues its nonviolent resistance. Its future success will depend on whether the three key ingredients for democratic change -- effective leadership, a strategy for mass mobilization and hope -- remain in place and grow stronger with time.

Nader Hashemi is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies.

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A Hardliner's Hardliner: General Mohammad Ali Jafari

[ profile ] In the spring of 2005, President Mohammad Khatami's second term was coming to an end. Since he could not run a third time, the reformists turned to former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi for the June 17 election. When he turned them down, reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi decided to enter the ring.

Karroubi conducted a strong campaign and was running second to former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the early stages of vote counting. Yet on June 18, he was declared to have finished in third place behind both Rafsanjani and a relatively unknown, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since none of the candidates had managed to get more than 50 percent of the vote, the election proceeded to a runoff, from which Karroubi was disqualified.

IRGC moves into politics

Incredulous, Karroubi wrote an angry open letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, denouncing his son Mojtaba Khamanei, top commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Basij militia for intervening on behalf of Ahmadinejad and accusing them of rigging the vote. He specifically pointed to the IRGC's use of money from eskeleh [meaning they controlled the machinery at Iran's major ports], smuggled goods, and the sugar business reportedly controlled by arch-hardliner Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi.

In addition to Karroubi's claims, it is also widely believed that Khamenei told the IRGC and the Basij commanders to order members of their families to vote for Ahmadinejad, and to take as many friends and relatives as they could with them to the polls.

IRBC consolidates power

As president, Ahmadinejad swiftly initiated an extensive purge of the bureaucracy and appointed his allies in the IRGC to key positions. The appointments indicated the extent of his IRGC network. Comments from Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, then the IRGC's top commander, and others were revealing. Safavi declared Ahmadinejad "a child of the Sepaah" -- the IRGC. His deputy, Brigadier General Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, said that Ahmadinejad's election "was not an accident. It was the result of two years of complex, multifaceted planning." Even Khamenei was reportedly surprised by the breadth of Ahmadinejed's network.

Ahmadinejad's election in 2005 formalized what was already widely acknowledged: that the IRGC wielded great behind-the-scenes power and was seeking to install one of its own at the helm of the government. To demonstrate their strength and influence, the IRGC had already threatened Khatami after the July 9, 1999, student uprising at the University of Tehran dormitories (see below). In May 2004, they humiliated him by closing down Tehran's new international airport after Khatami had formally opened it. It was widely rumored that Khamenei had told Rafsanjani that if he had been elected, the IRGC would have staged a coup to prevent him from taking office, and possibly assassinated him.

Halfway through Ahmadinejad's term, Khamenei made extensive changes in the top command of the IRGC. On September 1, 2007, he replaced General Rahim Safavi with a relatively unknown IRGC commander, Mohammad Ali Jafari, whom he had just promoted to Major General. In turn, General Jafari replaced many of the IRGC commanders. As one of his first acts, he decentralized the IRGC's decision-making process by creating 31 local command centers. He declared that he was taking the step to better prepare the IRGC for the "internal enemy," a greater danger, he said, than the "external enemy."

Events since the rigged June 12 election further revealed the extent to which Ahmadinejad and Khamenei rely on the IRGC and the IRGC-controlled Basij militia to maintain power. When huge demonstrations broke out after the election, the IRGC tried to quell the protesters by using brute force, in part by deploying the Basij, its intelligent unit, and plainclothes agents belonging to a special brigade under the command of the IRGC's intelligence directorate. Since Mohammad Khatami's landslide victory in May 1997 revealed the extent of the hardliners' unpopularity, plainclothes agents have been increasingly used as a blunt tool to keep people in check.

The June 12 election and its aftermath also turned the spotlight on General Jafari, an IRGC commander who gave new meaning to the term "hardliner." He has taken an extremely tough line against the reformists, accusing them of links to foreign governments and concocting plots to overthrow the Islamic Republic through a "velvet revolution." He has repeatedly called for the arrest and prosecution of reformist leaders.

Background

Mohammad Ali Jafari, whose nickname is Aziz, was born on September 1, 1957. Like Saeed Mortazavi, the notorious former Tehran Prosecutor General, Mohammad Khatami, and Israel's former President Moshe Katsaf, he is from Yazd in central Iran. He was born into a family so impoverished that he had difficulty attending elementary and high school. Against the odds, he was accepted to Tehran University School of Architecture in 1977. Khatami's father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khatami, and several other wealthy residents of Yazd pitched in to help Jafari pursue his studies there.

During the Revolution's early stages in 1978, he was active in the demonstrations against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and was arrested and imprisoned. When he was released after the Revolution, he helped found the Muslim Student Association (MSA) in his college at Tehran University, and represented it in the Council at the university-wide level. On November 4, 1979, when the university students who called themselves Muslim Students Following Imam's Line overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Jafari represented his MSA division among those students and participated in the takeover. Alireza Afshar, who is now an IRGC Brigadier General, was the other MSA representative from Jafari's school. Neither was prominent among the
student leadership and remained unnoticed.

'The Imposed War'

On November 26, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the formation of the Basij militia. Jafari immediately joined and initially went to work in its cultural unit. Later he joined the intelligence unit of the IRGC and was dispatched to Kurdistan province in western Iran. In June 1981, he was transferred to the military wing of the IRGC and fought in the Iran-Iraq war.

Views of his wartime track record are mixed. A source in Tehran -- a retired IRGC officer and a college friend of the author -- said that some believe that General Jafari has a distinguished wartime record. Others don't. According to this source, many who hold a negative view of Jafari negatively are among the IRGC commanders who fought bravely in the Iran-Iraq war, but left the Guard in disgust as they saw the force become increasingly politicized and used as an instrument of repression.

On the evening of December 25, 1985, Iran launched Operation Karbala 4, aimed at capturing the port city of Basra in southern Iraq and linking up with the forces that had already occupied Fao Peninsula. The attack was launched in the winter to take advantage of heavy rains, which hindered the Iraqi's far superior armor and air defenses. The Karbala 4 battle did not last long, however, as the Iraqi defenses pummeled the Iranian forces.

Despite its failure, Iran continued the attacks and mobilized the IRGC's most experienced officers for the next battle. At midnight on January 9, 1986, Operation Karbala 5 was launched as what was to be the "final offensive." Iranian forces were very successful in the first three weeks of the operation, but were ultimately repelled when Saddam Hussein resorted to chemical weapons and heavy bombing. By March, Iraq had lost more than 40,000 troops, 700 tanks, and 80 aircraft -- most shot down with the missiles supplied by the U.S. and Israel in what was later known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

On the Iranian side, 60,000 troops were killed, including a quarter of the most experienced IRGC officers. Karbala 5 was the last major offensive by Iran's armed forces.

Jafari was the commander of the war headquarters for the western front, and then the commander of the Najaf Brigade. He was also commander of the Ashura Battalion, deputy commander of the Shushtar Division in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran, and commander of the Qods Garrison.

As an important IRGC commander in the southern front, Jafari is believed to have played a key role in both the Karbala 4 and Karbala 5 operations. He was reportedly badly wounded in both operations; the second injury kept him from returning to the war zone. He was then appointed the deputy chief of operations for the IRGC, and then deputy commander of its ground forces.

Jafari was reportedly an innovative tactician able to design "out of the box" operations. In 2006, the online daily Rooz quoted Major General Gholam Ali Rashid, until recently acting deputy chief of staff of the armed forces, as saying, "In the first few years of the Iran-Iraq war, it was Mr. Aziz Jafari that designed the first surprise operation of the IRGC, without paying attention to classical warfare." Rooz also quoted Major General (retired) Mohsen Rezaei, IRGC top commander between 1981 and 1997 and now Secretary-General of the Expediency Council, as saying, "General Jafari was the most precise commander during the war."

Jafari returned to Tehran University and earned an M.S. degree in architecture in 1992. Through 1993, he also studied at the War University of the IRGC and completed course work specializing in military command. After completing his degree at the War University, he taught there for a time.

The Vienna Murders

As described in a previous article, an assassination campaign in the 1980s and early 1990s targeted many opponents of the Islamic Republic, including those who lived abroad. One victim of the campaign was Dr. Abdulrahman Ghassemlou, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) from 1973 to 1989. He was invited to Vienna to negotiate with representatives of the Iranian government. On July 13, 1989, Ghassemlou and several of his aides -- Abdollah Ghaderi, Fadal Mala, and Mamoud Rassoul -- met with Iran's representatives in a Vienna apartment. The government's delegation was led by Mohammad Jafari Sahraroudi, and included Amir Bozorgnia and Kurdistan's provincial governor, Mostafa Ajoudi.

Ghassemlou and his aides were shot and killed in the apartment. The murders were actually reported to the police by the Iranian delegation, who denied any responsibility and were released after giving their statements. The Austrian police later described them as the probable culprits, by which point they had been expelled from the country.

It has been reported that Mohammad Jafari Sahraroudi was in fact a pseudonym for Mohammad Ali Jafari. If this is true, as the head of the delegation, he had a direct role in the murder of Ghassemlou. But I find the report to be suspect -- it is doubtful that the IRGC would risk an experienced, valuable officer like Jafari for an operation that could be carried out by a low-ranking officer or agent.

Military Background

By 1992, Jafari had risen to the rank of brigadier general. He was appointed commander of the ground forces of the IRGC in 1992, a post he held for 13 years. When Khatami was elected president in May 1997, he had good relations with General Jafari; Khatami even visited the IRGC's ground force military bases.

After Khatami's election, Major General Mohsen Rezaei left the IRGC after serving as its top commander for 16 years. Many IRGC commanders were not happy about his departure, which they saw as resulting from political pressure. Thirty-three of them, including Jafari, issued a statement praising Rezaei for his military services to the nation. Aside from that, Jafari had a reputation for being a professional soldier and uninterested in politics.

The July 1999 uprising at the dormitories of the University of Tehran shook the foundations of the Islamic Republic. The uprising began when popular leftist daily Salaam was banned after it had published a series of reports on attempts by conservatives to restrict the press. The students who protested the ban were attacked by the Basij militia and plainclothes agents. The attacks ignited several days of fierce demonstrations.

After Tehran was finally calm again, 29 top IRGC commanders, including Jafari, wrote a letter to Khatami threatening him if he did not end his reformist policies. It read, in part,

Your Excellency, Mr. Khatami, look at the international media and radio broadcasts. Does the sound of their merriment not reach your ear? Dear Mr. President, if you do not make a revolutionary decision today, and fail to fulfill your Islamic and national duties, tomorrow will be too late and the damage will be more irreversible than can be imagined.... With all due respect, we inform you that our patience is at an end, and we do not think it is possible to tolerate any more.

This is General Jafari's first known political intervention.

Another kind of architect

In addition to being the top commander of the IRGC ground forces between 1992 and 2005, Jafari also directly commanded the Sarallah Garrison in Tehran, which was responsible for the capital's security. Forces from the garrison quashed the July 1999 uprising and arrested many of the reformist leaders after the rigged presidential election of 2005.

That year, Jafari was appointed chief of the Center for Strategic Studies of the IRGC. He
directed the Center to carry out research into the so-called colored revolutions that had taken place in the former Soviet sphere: Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution of 1989, Georgia's Rose Revolution of 2003; Ukraine's Orange Revolution of 2004, and Krygyzstan's Tulip Revolution of 2005. A similar uprising had taken place in Serbia in
2000. The Islamic Republic was worried that the West might trigger a similar revolution in Iran, a threat brought home by regional events in early 2005: Lebanon's Cedar Revolution that lasted from February through April and the Blue Revolution in Kuwait during March, which saw large demonstrations in support of women's suffrage.

Jafari accused the United States of pursuing a policy of soft regime-change toward Iran after failing to overthrow the Islamic Republic through more traditional, aggressive means -- a theme now being repeated by the hardliners. He argued that the most important danger to the Islamic Republic was posed by the "internal enemy," referring to the reform movement. The studies led the IRGC to establish the Al-Zahra and Ashura Brigades, which serve as anti-riot units within the organizational structure of the Basij force.

It was also Jafari who led the successful effort to have the IRGC adopt asymmetrical warfare as its core strategy. In a classical symmetrical warfare scenario, Iran's armed
forces would be easily defeated by the United States. Therefore, Iran had to look for tactics and strategies that could inflict the maximum damage on the enemy without having to fight a direct war, including fighting beyond Iran's borders. Three days after he was appointed the top IRGC commander on September 1, 2007, Jafari said,

Given the enemy's numerical or technological superiority, the IRGC would use asymmetrical warfare capabilities, such as those used by Hezbollah in its 2006 war with Israel in Lebanon. Iranian strategy would also reflect the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Former top IRGC commander Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, who was succeeded by Jafari, said in a September 2007 interview,

At a time when we feel the threats of extra-regional powers, such as that of the United States against the Islamic Republic of Iran, we have revised the structure of Iran's armed forces.... We have designed arms and equipments suitable for extra-regional warfare. We have named this strategy of comprehensive defense the Alavi battle
and asymmetrical warfare.

The IRGC has assumed responsibility for defending the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz employing such tactics.

On January 11, 2007, U.S. forces raided the Iranian consulate in Erbil in Iraq's Kurdistan and arrested five of its staff. Among several officials who escaped the raid was Mohammad Jafari, deputy to Ali Larijani, who was then Secretary-General of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator. It is widely believed that the U.S. forces mistakenly thought that it was General Jafari who was at the consulate and staged the raid in order to capture him.

Ayatollah Khamenei appointed General Jafari to be the top commander of the IRGC on September 1, 2007. Though General Rahim Safavi had implied that he wanted to resign, most analysts believe that he was removed from the post because he was not tough enough. Jafari himself said that after 10 years in the top command position, Rahim Safavi no longer possessed the necessary energy.

General Jafari's appointment as the top IRGC commander generated concern in the West. He was compared to General David Petraeus of the U.S. Army, then in charge of forces in Iraq and now the head of the Central Command, overseeing U.S. forces in the Middle East. A Pentagon adviser described Jafari as "the Iranian Petraeus. He has studied counter-insurgency warfare." CIA and Pentagon analysts were reportedly fearful that Jafari's views were reflected among other senior appointments made by Ahmadinejad.

As soon as he assumed the top IRGC post, General Jafari focused on the "internal enemy" by reorganizing the IRGC. He took two major initiatives: Merging the Basij into the IRGC, making it one of the IRGC's five branches, along with its ground, air, and naval forces, plus the Qods Force, whose mission is beyond national borders.

The second initiative was decentralizing the command structure of the IRGC by creating 31 local command centers, 29 in provincial capitals and two in Tehran. This is now known as the Mosaic Doctrine. The idea is to give flexibility to IRGC commanders to better handle riots and demonstrations, but also to enable the IRGC to better survive a surgical attack by the United States or Israel aimed at decapitating its command structure.

The net effect of the initiatives has been to increase the IRGC's power of the IRGC for intervening in the political process. In many smaller cities and towns, the local IRGC commander is the most powerful man, while the commander of the provincial command centers are more powerful than the governor-general.

Since the reorganization of the IRGC, the "internal threat" has been the dominant theme of the speeches that Jafari has been giving. After he merged the Basij with the IRGC, he declared that both organizations shared the same goal: "guarding achievements of the Revolution." Making clear what that entailed, he said, "For now the main responsibility of the IRGC is to counter internal threats."

In a press conference three days after he was appointed the IRGC top commander, he said that, "The IRGC's responsibilities necessitate a special and flexible force able to counter different types of threats."

Since the rigged election of June 12, Jafari has harshly criticized the reformists and leaders of the Green Movement. On September 2, he quoted Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Khatami's vice president for parliamentary affairs, then in jail, as "confessing" that the reformist leaders had planned to weaken the Velaayat-e Faghih, the backbone of Iran's political system. Jafari claimed that Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, the leftist cleric had stated the previous winter, "We should do our utmost to bring down the Supreme Leader. He must recognize that this is not a country that he can lead in any direction that he wants. Khatami and his group now have a lot of experience."

Jafari added that Abtahi had "confessed" that Khatami, Mousavi's campaign manager, Abolfazl Fateh, and Rafsanjani's son, Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani had said that "winning this election is very different from those in the past. The Principlist camp and the Supreme Leader would not be able to keep their heads up, and this would mean finishing the job." In Jafari's analysis of the "confession", it "implies greatly weakening the Velaayat-e Faghih, or a political system without it. The protests after the elections had been well-planned."

Jafari then continued, "Moreover, Mr. Khatami said in February 2009 that if in elections Ahmadinejad is brought down, the Supreme Leader will, for all practical purposes, be eliminated. If the reformists take over the executive branch, the Supreme Leader will not have much credibility and power in the society. The Principlists' fall will mean the end of power for the Leader and [therefore] we must control the Supreme Leader by defeating the Principlists."

Referring to the presidential election in May 1997 that was won by Khatami by a landslide, General Jafari quoted Behzad Nabavi, a leading reformist who is still in jail, as supposedly saying, "We must try to make Ahmadinejad the candidate of the Supreme Leader that, if defeated, the Supreme Leader would also be defeated. We did this once in May 1997 that was a heavy blow [to the Supreme Leader] and [he] had a hard time recovering from it. Now, we must deliver the final blow to the Supreme Leader. In order to limit the power [of the Supreme Leader and the hardliners] and make it responsive [to the people] [we] must begin from the top of the power [structure, namely, from the Supreme Leader]."

In another press conference on January 11, 2010, Jafari said, "the root cause of what happened in the election and over the past eight months" lies in the differences between "two fundamentally different views, one Islamic, and the other one materialistic." He is, of course right about the existence of two polarized views, except that one supports dictatorship in the name of Islam, while the other advocates establishment of a democratic system and supremacy of the rule of law. He also declared that, "forgiving the rioters, particularly the Ashura day rioters, is not practical, and even if some officials want to forgive them, people will not allow them." Of course, it was the forces under his own command that killed many people, injured many more, and arrested several thousands.

Such positions have made Jafari the toughest hardliner among the hardliners. Men like Jafari who fought for years in the Iran-Iraq war and saw tens of thousands of troops killed and hundreds of thousands injured -- many for life -- have no hesitation in using force against the Green Movement. This is why the Movement must refrain from violence. If the fate of the Green Movement is to be decided by the amount of blood that can be spilled, men like General Jafari will win the confrontation.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-19 10:49:05 GMT

Iran clears Russian fighter jet to fly to Bahrain air show

MNA | Jan. 19, 2010

The flight of the Russian Su-27 fighter over Iran en route to Bahrain has been agreed with Tehran and will take place on Wednesday [20 January], Interfax has been told at the Russian embassy in Iran.

"The issue of the Russian fighter flight to Bahrain has been settled. The aircraft will depart tomorrow," an embassy official has said.

He added that the earlier difficulties had been purely technical and had been caused by the lack of necessary coordination between several departments.

It was reported earlier that the Iranian aviation authorities had refused to let through the Russian Su-27 fighter, which was heading for Bahrain to take part in an international air show.

Iran refuses passage to Russian cargo plane carrying jet to Bahrain

MNA | Jan. 19, 2010

Iran's aviation authorities have refused to
allow a flyover by a Russian transport aircraft which was to deliver to Bahrain a Su-27SKM fighter which has been designated to take part in the first international aerospace exhibition Bahrain International Airshow (BIAS) 2010 which is opening on Thursday [21 January].

"The official motive for the refusal to allow our aircraft to fly over Iranian territory is that relevant requests had not been submitted through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on time. The transport aircraft carrying the Su-27 landed in Astrakhan and is there now," a source in Moscow told Interfax-AVN on Tuesday.

The source said that the Ministry of Industry and Trade had submitted paperwork concerning the participation of the Su-27SKM in the Bahrain air show to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on time.

Nevertheless, the aircraft's passage through Iran's airspace was not fully coordinated. [Passage omitted]

Iran privatization body bans four companies

Siyasat-e Ruz | Jan. 19, 2010

The Privatization Organization carried out an unexpected action and banned four investment organizations from participation in the stock exchange because of their debts. These include Mehr-e Eqtesad, Shasta, Metal Mines Development, and Fulad Pension Fund.

While the implementation method of the Article 44 [privatization] and privatization of the state companies are criticized by various classes of society, the Privatization Organization performed an unexpected action and banned some buyers, who had debts from their past trading and had not paid the instalments, to participate in a market for fresh offers.

The story of this new season of the Privatization Organization started when some buyers of the general blocks such as Melli Mes, Fulad-e Mobarakeh, Iralco, and Traktorsazi were not able to pay the six-month instalments, which were for 20 per cent cash money of over 100bn tomans [100m dollars] trades on time, and they were required to be pressurized by the Privatization Organization.

Iranian president rides bicycle to mark Clean Air Day

Fars News Agency | Jan. 19, 2010

The Iranian president has made a short bicycle ride in Pardisan park in Tehran together with a group of government members, state radio reports.

After that Mahmud Ahmadinezhad and government members visited children's art exhibition held in connection with Clean Air Day.

The Iranian president is due to make a speech at the Social Hall of Pardisan park at the presence of activists of Clean Air Week [on 19 January].

Iran to launch new range of satellites

Fars News Agency | Jan. 19, 2010

Brigadier General Vahidi, the defence minister, has said that apart from Tolou satellite a new range of satellites will be launched during Fajr celebrations (1 to 11 February - anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution).

According to a report by the defence correspondent of Fars, Brigadier-General Ahmad Vahidi, the minister of defence and logistics of the armed forces, on the sidelines of the nineteenth international conference on the Persian Gulf talked to reporters and commented on the launch of Tolou satellite during Fajr celebrations. He said: "At the moment a few teams are involved in the production of this satellite and the team involved in the construction of Omid satellite will also launch their new product."

In response to a question about the possibility of an attack by America on Iran's nuclear facilities, Vahidi said: "There have been contradictory reports about this and because of these threats Iran built Fordo nuclear site which has better security conditions. We do not think that America will act unwisely and attack Iran."
Regarding ties with Turkey the defence minister said that defence relations between the two countries are being strengthened day by day adding: "Turkey's decision to prevent the Israeli military exercise in that country was a major defence step in this region and it was welcomed by Iran."
Regarding America's decision to set up a defence shield in Turkey, the defence minister said that the issue was "ambiguous" and the American politicians "are not able to determine a specific prospect on the issue". "We do not think that our friends in Turkey take any actions which are against Iran", Vahidi added.

Iran police say public help in arresting "rioters"

Reuters | Jan. 19, 2010

Iranian police say tip-offs from the public helped the force to arrest 40 people who took part in violent anti-government protests last month, an Iranian news agency reported on Tuesday.

In a bid to track down people involved in the protests on Ashura, the day of ritual Shi'ite mourning that fell on December 27, police have published pictures of scores of suspected rioters and asked the public to help identify them.

The move was a clear warning to the pro-reform opposition and a further sign of the hardline authorities' determination to put an end to demonstrations that have continued to rock the Islamic Republic since last year's disputed election.

Iran says may hit Western warships if attacked

Reuters | Jan. 19, 2010

Iran's defence minister warned on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic could strike back at Western warships in the Gulf if it were attacked over its nuclear programme, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Ahmad Vahidi said there were now more than 90 war vessels in the Gulf -- a waterway crucial for global oil supplies -- and that they had created a "military environment" there.

They included submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers, he said during a conference in Tehran on the Gulf.

"What is the reason underlying the deployment of this many warships and what aim are they pursuing ... are they arrayed against Iran?" Fars quoted Vahidi as saying.

Iran finds traces of terrorists behind Khoy attack

Press TV | Jan. 19, 2010

Iran's security forces have found traces of the terrorists who were involved in the recent assassination of Khoy Prosecutor Vali Haji-Qolizadeh.
"Security and police forces launched an investigation into the incident in the wake of the attack and arrested four suspects in connection with the assault," Khoy's Governor Ebrahim Mohammadlu said.
"Following the attack, the Security Council of the West Azerbaijan Province held an emergency meeting and the security forces are hard at work to identify the elements behind the terrorist attack," he added.

Iran signs 1 bln eur deal with German firm-report

Reuters | Jan. 19, 2010

A state-owned Iranian engineering company has signed a 1 billion euro ($1.44 billion) deal with a German firm to help improve Iran's gas distribution grid, a semi-official news agency reported on Tuesday.

Mehr News Agency, citing the head of Iran's Gas Engineering and Development Company, did not name the German firm which it said had agreed to manufacture, install and commission 100 gas-fuelled turbines and turbo-compressors. It did not say when the contract was signed.

The report came a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Iran faces further sanctions unless it changes stance in talks over its nuclear programme. ($1=.6945 Euro) (Reporting by Hashem Kalantari; writing by Fredrik Dahl; editing by Jon Loades-Carter)

Iran leader warns opposition ahead of revolution day

Reuters | Jan. 19, 2010

Iran's supreme leader called on the opposition on Tuesday to distance itself from the Islamic Republic's Western enemies, in a warning ahead of expected new anti-government protests next month.

Tension has risen in Iran after eight people were killed in clashes between the security forces and opposition supporters on Ashura, the ritual day of Shi'ite mourning that fell on December 27.

It was the worst violence in the major oil producer since the aftermath of last year's disputed presidential election and was followed by the arrests of scores of pro-reform figures in a fresh crackdown by the authorities.

Iran raps UN inaction over kidnapped diplomats

Press TV | Jan. 19, 2010

The Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, has criticized the international organizations, including the United Nations, for their inaction to determine the fate of four kidnapped Iranian diplomats in Lebanon.

"Unfortunately, due to the reluctance of the international organizations and related sides, particularly the Zionist regime, our all efforts and actions regarding the issue remain unclear," Mottaki was quoted as saying.

During the invasion of Lebanon on July 4, 1982, four Iranian diplomats were kidnapped by militiamen and Israeli forces at an inspection point in northern Lebanon.

Iran leader warns opposition ahead of revolution day

Reuters | Jan. 19, 2010

Iran's supreme leader called on the opposition on Tuesday to distance itself from the Islamic Republic's Western enemies, in a warning ahead of expected new anti-government protests next month.

Tension has risen in Iran after eight people were killed in clashes between the security forces and opposition supporters on Ashura, the ritual day of Shi'ite mourning that fell on December 27.

Jaras says Ebrahim Yazdi's life is in danger

Gooya | Jan. 18, 2010

Ebrahim Yazdi's friends and family have appealed to the international community to mediate his release due to concerns about his declining health condition.

Yazdi, who was the interim Iranian government's foreign minister in 1979, is 79 years old and suffers from various health conditions. He underwent surgery a few months back and was treated for cancer abroad two years ago.

One of Yazdi's close friends told Jaras on condition of anonymity, "We ask all philanthropists of the world and international communities to help us with the release of our secretary general so that he can seek medical attention."

"We are very concerned about him," he added.

Yazdi was arrested for the third time this year at 3 a.m. on Dec. 28 -- one day after the Ashura protests in Tehran.

Yazdi, who was arrested for 72 hours after the June 12 presidential election despite his poor physical condition, has come to be known as Iran's most senior political prisoner.

Trial of five Ashura protesters begins in Tehran

Gooya | Jan. 18, 2010

The trial of five Iranians indicted in connection with the Ashura protests commenced in branch 15 of the Revolution Court in Tehran.

Judge Mohammad Salavaati presided over the case and began the session by stressing that based on the request of Iran's Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei only God and the Quran would be taken into consideration in this trial.

After reading the charges, a video of the Ashura protests was screened.

Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jaffari-Dolatabadi appeared in court at 11:10 am.

Judge Salavati asked reporters not to use the names of the defendants in their reports.

Photographer Atashi arrested with husband

Gooya | Jan. 18, 2010

A report suggested that photographer Mehraneh Atashi has been arrested along with her husband.

One of Atashi's close friends told BBC Persian that security officers took Atashi and her spouse Behrang Tonokaboni into custody on Jan. 12, 2010 after searching her residence and confiscating her personal belongings including her computer.

Atashi's friend claimed that her husband had contacted his family and informed them about their arrest.

The reason for the arrest of the Atashi couple is not yet known.

Following the Ashura protests in Tehran, the crackdown on Iranian figures has surpassed journalists and non-political personalities have been taken into custody.

Among the detainees are Farhang-o Ahang editor-in-chief Behrang Tonokaboni, Farhang-o Ahang columnist Arvin Sedaqat-Kish and literary critics Ardavan Tarakmeh and Khalil Darmanki.

Nabavi appeals 5-year jail sentence

Khabar Online | Jan. 18, 2010

Behzad Nabavi's lawyer said that his client's case had been referred to branch 54 of the Tehran Province Appeals Court.

"After the initial verdict was handed down, an appeal was lodged on behalf of Behzad Nabavi and presently the case has been sent to branch 54 of the Tehran Province Appeals Court," Saleh Nikbakht told ISNA.

He added that while Mrs. Nabavi had requested a leave from prison for her husband for medical purposes, "so far this request has not been met with approval."

Branch 15 of the Revolution Court sentenced Nabavi to five years in prison.

Iran's Leader criticizes IRIB performance

Khabar Online | Jan. 18, 2010

Iran's Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei criticized the state broadcaster for poor coverage of the news about the return of the recently released Iranian diplomats from Iraq.

In a meeting with the Iranian diplomats who had been arrested by U.S. forces in Erbil, Iraq, Ayatollah Khamenei said IRIB had not done its duty in covering the news of the diplomats' return to the country.

According to the Panjareh weekly, Iran's Leader was unhappy with the way Iranian media covered the incident.

Mohajerani: I'm ashamed

Tabnak | Jan. 18, 2010

Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami's Minister of Culture and Islamic guidance slammed the stance recently adopted by Akbar Ganji.

Ayatollah Mohajerani reacted to Ganji's remarks about Shia religious beliefs, saying, "Such worthless remarks do not merit a response."

"Ganji's slandering of the Imams and the Imam Mahdi (Messiah) has caused me serious doubts about my signing of the letter by five Iranian intellectual expats, as I do not want my name to be placed alongside [that of] the holder of such views and I feel ashamed about this."

IRIB struggling to sway reformists to attend live debates

Khabar Online | Jan. 18, 2010

Amid efforts by the Iranian state broadcaster to calm the country's political atmosphere by holding live debates, officials have been trying to convince reformist figures to go on air.

The biased post-election performance of the IRIB has not only drawn criticism from even Principlists, who are in favor of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but it has also resulted in the refusal of reformist figures to participate in IRIB-hosted debates.

A number of reports have suggested that the broadcaster has been trying to persuade reformists to appear in its live debates.

The presenter's relative impartiality in the debate between Alireza Zakani and Javad Etaat has been interpreted as a green light for reformists to participate in the debates.

Mashhad bomber had no political affiliation

Khabar Online | Jan. 18, 2010

The Mashhad Governor's office said that adventurism had prompted three youths to detonate a bomb in the city's Ostandari Square.

Amirollah Shamaghdari said that the three youths had chosen the bombing site solely because they were familiar with the area, adding, "The individual who lost his life in the bombing had purchased the explosives from a local supply store."

Shamaghdari added that the friends of the bomber had tried to persuade him against such a dangerous act but were unsuccessful given the bomber's characteristics and family problems.

Shamaghdari urged youngsters and youth to not play with explosives in the lead up to and on the last Wednesday of the year dubbed "Fireworks Wednesday."

He pointed to the vigilance of Khorasan Razavi Province security and civil forces, saying, "Our province enjoys great complete security and stability, and any acts aimed at provocation or disrupting social order will be harshly dealt with."

Ahmadinejad questions finishing work for the day

Khabar Online | Jan. 18, 2010

The IRGC daily claimed that a number of Ahmadinejad ministers and aides have complained to the Iranian president about their heavy workload.

According to Jahan, the Iranian cabinet members complained about their heavy workload and extensive provincial tours as well as the constant criticism directed at them.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in response pointed to the government's chief responsibility of serving the nation and said, "We must all make every effort to serve the people regardless of the extensive criticism [directed at us] because fatigue and disappointment have no meaning in the present circumstances."

He jokingly added, "A while back I needed to speak to one of the ministers at 10 p.m. when I learned he had already gone home for the day. I called him and told him that in this government going home at 10 p.m. has no meaning."

The Iranian president asked his staff to continue working with energy.

The New York Review of Books

2010-01-14 21:45:00 GMT

Haleh Esfandiari

Zahra Rahnavard waving to supporters during a campaign rally for her husband, Mir Hussein Moussavi, at Haydarniya Stadium, Tehran, June 9, 2009 (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

It is entirely appropriate that two women have become the iconic symbols of Iran’s protest movement. Thanks to cell phones and the Internet, millions of people around the world saw footage of the blood-soaked face of the young Neda Agha Soltan, as she lay dying on a Tehran street, shot by security forces during a peaceful demonstration. But even before last June’s rigged presidential election, Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi, had gained international renown as the first woman in Iranian history to campaign alongside her husband—making speeches of her own and taking a strong stand on controversial social issues.

Ms. Rahnavard has caused a stir, but also set an example. An author and educator in her own right, she was the first female chancellor of any Iranian university—she directed Alzahra University in Tehran from 1998 until 2006—and has served as a political advisor to former president Mohammed Khatami. During the campaign, she was outspoken in calling for reform and also courageously endorsed the demands of the One Million Signatures campaign, a women’s rights movement whose leaders have been attacked and arrested by the Iranian authorities.

Following her example, the wives of the other candidates began to appear on the campaign trail as well. Women were active in the campaigns of the two leading opposition presidential candidates; and when hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets after Ahmadinejad was, improbably, declared the winner, women marched alongside the men, braving assaults and intimidation from the riot police, paramilitary forces, and knife-, club- and chain-wielding goons the government sent after the demonstrators. As an activist friend wryly told me, “They treated us equally. They beat, clubbed and arrested us just like the men.” (In a sign of the growing weight of the women’s vote, President Ahmadenijad—his legitimacy in serious doubt—sought to mollify this constituency by nominating three women to his cabinet, though parliament confirmed only one of them.)

Women have in fact been at the forefront of resistance to an intrusive state ever since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. In the early years of the revolution, they resisted the new regime’s attempt to force them out of the workplace and universities. They found subtle ways—such as showing a bit of hair and wearing shorter robes in pastel colors—of challenging the restrictive dress code the government imposed on them in the name of Islam. They refused to stay segregated, whether in the university classroom or in taxis. Today, more women than men win admission to universities in competitive state-wide examinations, and this trend has so alarmed some members of parliament in recent years that there has been talk of legislation to impose quotas: affirmative action in the interest of men!

In the mid-1990s, women flocked to support the reform-minded administration of President Mohammad Khatami, accounting for, in part, the large majorities by which he won his two terms in office. With the One Million Signatures campaign, launched in 2006 and aimed at collecting a million signatures for a petition protesting discriminatory legislation against women, the women’s movement entered a new phase, implicitly calling for a revision of laws rooted in the basic principles of Islam. Arrest, trial, heavy fines, and imprisonment have not deterred the leaders of this campaign, who come mostly from the broad middle class and have gone to small towns and villages as well as the large cities to collect signatures.

The participation by women in the latest series of protests marks another notable development. Women have shown themselves ready to do what had generally been regarded as ‘men’s work.” Despite the risk of beatings, injury, arrest, even death, they have continued to take a leading part in protests and demonstrations. The demonstrators’ chant, “we are men of war,” has changed to “we are men and women of war.”

When I was held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin Prison in 2007, I was questioned at length about the women’s rights movement; my two interrogators seemed alarmed and befuddled by it. They certainly feared its potential: how else to explain the harsh way in which officials have dealt with the women collecting signatures for a simple petition? But my interrogators also told me they feared a backlash if they used excessive force to disperse female demonstrators.

That was three years ago. Now, the gloves are off. The sight of tens of thousands of women marching alongside men in demonstrations last June seems to have unnerved the authorities. Under the increasingly brutal regime of Ahmadinejad’s second term, Iranians have seen young and middle-aged women clubbed, dragged across pavements, and hustled into vans by police and official thugs in plain clothes. Rahnavard has steadfastly condemned the brutality of the security forces.

Only last week, mothers of young men and women who have disappeared in prisons or other government black holes, and who have been gathering every Saturday in a Tehran park to demand news of their loved ones, were beaten and arrested by security men. They have since been released but some may be asked to appear in court. Such scenes are now seared into the memories of Iranians; they will come back to haunt the regime for years to come.

The Corner on National Review Online

webmaster@nationalreview.com (Michael Rubin) — 2010-01-14 13:46:10 GMT

More reaction to assassination of nuclear physicist Ali Mohammadi, from today's Iran News Round Up:

* Rafsanjani condemns, but does not make allegations against foreign enemies as perpetrators of the crime, warns instead against "a new round of conspiracies."

* Pres. Mohammad Khatami condemns "the evil hand which has perpetrated this crime," but fails to make mention of foreign enemies.

* Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani says it is the Mossad and the CIA and not the Monarchist Association who are behind the assassination.

* Despite the Revolutionary Guards' attempt to depict the late scientist Ali Mohamamdi as a regime supporter, JARAS documents that Mohammadi had signed an open letter criticizing the Revolutionary Guards and Law Enforcement Forces attack against Tehran University dormitory.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-12 14:46:24 GMT

[ opinion ] What is now known as Iran's Green Movement was born on June 13, 2009, in reaction to massive electoral fraud during the Islamic Republic's tenth presidential election. The aftermath of the elections sent shockwaves throughout the regime, especially as many believed the government was desperate to show internal solidarity and legitimacy ahead of potentially historic negotiations with the U.S. administration.

Following the election, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the reformist contenders-turned-opposition leaders, gave their blessings to the impromptu civil protests. In the past seven months, they have endorsed and even taken part in a number of the demonstrations. This itself represents a turning point in Iranian politics. Since President Mohammad Khatami ushered in a Reform movement in 1997, the Islamic Republic's reformist statesmen had never directly sided with student protesters and other civil society forces or participated in their contentious politics.

Notwithstanding the Reformists' integral role in confronting regime hardliners, it is still unclear who is really providing political guidance to the Green Movement: the symbolic leadership triangle of Mousavi-Karroubi-Khatami, or the invisible grassroots network of activists, including students, bloggers, neighborhood activists, women, the expatriate community, and political pundits. While the seventeen official statements issued by Mousavi have at times endorsed a return to the original values of the Islamic Revolution and the post-1979 constitution, the radicalization of the slogans on the streets -- which increasingly challenge Khamenei, and to a lesser extent the Islamic Republic system -- as well as the recent use of violent methods of resistance against security forces during Dec. 27's Ashura protests, suggest a different reality.

In fact, the grassroots perform a viable, innovative and semiautonomous role in the dynamics of the Green Movement. In the past seven months, the Green Movement has waged a fairly successful nonviolent war of attrition against the ruling power bloc. Its participants have engaged the state's security forces in numerous street confrontations in a calculated, decentralized approach. The repeated use of violence against nonviolent protesters will, inevitably, demoralize some of these forces and, in fact, has already resulted in internal dissention among the security forces' rank and file as well as the regime elite. Yet as much as this pragmatic approach may have minimized the impact of the repressive apparatuses (police, Basij militia, vigilante groups, etc.) on the movement, it is hardly a blueprint for a democratic transition.

However, the grassroots efforts do not diminish the contributions of the ipso facto leadership, which provide the movement some degree of coherence, political symbolism, and a foothold in the hardliners' camp for the clerical establishment to bring pressure on the ruling elite from within. In terms of articulating the demands and slogans of the movement, they administer a "spiritual" and hands-off style of leadership. The current leadership and their religious followers prefer a reformed Islamic Republic, without an interventionist Supreme Leadership and its associated organs. They opt to increase the system's "republicanism" and render the political process more competitive and rational. More secular-oriented Iranians, however, hope to see a truly secular democracy in Iran, with free elections and a new liberal-democratic constitution.

What is missing is a political leadership that provides a more specific platform for change as well as a clear vision for a democratic Iran. This inadequacy stems from two facts: Mousavi and Karroubi never anticipated to be in the leadership positions of a movement challenging the very system they contributed to in the past three decades; also, while acknowledging the movement's internal diversity, they do not want to alienate any segment by providing a set of do's and don'ts associated with a political platform.

However, the absence of a democratic political platform is becoming more of a concern these days, when new rumors of the pending arrests of current leaders are reverberating throughout Tehran. In such an event, who would fill the political void? Now that the original electoral demands are becoming less relevant, what new goals or issues would define the Green Movement? While some of the periodic declarations issued by Mousavi have contained positive guidelines, they have largely remained at the level of generalities: a firm commitment to the causes of the movement; condemnation of the illegitimate administration of Ahmadinejad as well as of the brutalities committed by the authorities; respect for pluralism in the movement; and the need for legal reforms in the Islamic Republic system.

Mousavi's January 1 declaration took a step in the right direction in delineating demands more clearly. The five-point demands included an indirect call for the impeachment of Ahmadinejad by Majlis and a reference to free elections with preconditions such as freeing of political prisoners and freedom of political parties, assembly, and the press.

Nonetheless, controversial statements have periodically surfaced in Mousavi's declarations, mainly of concern to the secular-democratic forces. First and foremost, he has framed the Green Movement as essentially Islamist, cloaked in a Shiite political culture that offers a return to the ideals of the 1979 Revolution, while presenting an infallible image of Ayatollah Khomeini. Meanwhile, Mousavi has remained silent about the specific concerns of various civil society forces, such as women's, workers' and minority rights groups, perhaps overconfident in the capacity of the present Constitution to address the current problems of discrimination and authoritarianism.

While Mousavi and his supporters try to justify such a minimalist approach by invoking the power of the hardliners and the more religious segments of society, they hardly provide a convincing argument from the vantage point of secular-democratic forces in Iran. The current leadership needs to redefine itself through integrating other democratic forces, particularly, representatives of the traditionally excluded, including women, secularists, Islamic liberals, and other minority groups.

If Mousavi is unwilling or unable to take on this inclusion of forces under the Green banner, these groups may ultimately be pushed to form a grand democratic "rainbow coalition." Such a coalition would need to address two major concerns: First, how to end all forms of discrimination currently built into the Islamic Republic's constitution, and second, the promise of open, competitive, and free elections.

Whether the current leadership is willing to address these concerns depends on a number of factors: to what extent splinter forces within the conservative "principalists" are willing to desert Ahmadinejad and side with the Greens, or at least show a willingness for compromise; how the duration of the war of attrition may allow secular-democratic demands to become more vocal; and finally, how new leadership presents its political philosophy in the event of the arrest of present leaders.

Mehrdad Mashayekhi is a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-09 13:57:21 GMT

A Response to Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Flynt Leverett directs the New America Foundation's Iran Initiative and is a professor of international affairs at Pennsylvania State University. Hillary Mann Leverett heads Strategic Energy and Global Analysis, a political risk consultancy. Together, they publish the Web site "The Race for Iran." Having spent years in the intelligence community, they are both are considered Iran experts.

[ comment ]On January 5, 2010, Flynt Leverett and his wife Hillary Mann Leverett wrote a New York Times op-ed piece entitled "Another Iranian Revolution? Not likely."

In this opinion piece, the authors attempt to prove that the opposition Green Movement in Iran is weak, disorganized, leaderless, and even lacking a sense of what it wants. They also claimed no clear process exists for the Green Movement to access in order to achieve any of its goals.

This is not the first time that the Leveretts appear to have bought into the hardliner's propaganda. For example, immediately following the rigged June 12 presidential election, Flynt Leverett appeared on PBS with Charlie Rose in which he opined that Ahmadinejad had won fair and square. The couple then asserted the same in an article published by Politico and entitled, "Ahmadinejad won. Get over it."

The basis of the argument was a poll that had been taken weeks before the election. Although the poll itself was indicative of the people's thinking, the Leveretts chose to ignore the facts in order to proclaim Ahmadinejad the winner.

The hallmark of the Leveretts' articles and opinion is ignoring hard facts, and buying into propaganda of Iran's hardliners in order to promote their own agenda for dealing with Iran, which involves ignoring human rights issues and the brutality suffered by Iranians fighting for democracy under the current regime.

The op-ed begins,

Let's start with the most recent events. On Dec. 27, large crowds poured into the streets of cities across Iran to commemorate the Shiite holy day of Ashura; this coincided with mourning observances for a revered cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who had died a week earlier. Protesters used the occasion to gather in Tehran and elsewhere, setting off clashes with security forces.

Important events, no doubt. But assertions that the Islamic Republic is now imploding in the fashion of the shah's regime in 1979 do not hold up to even the most minimal scrutiny. Antigovernment Iranian Web sites claim there were "tens of thousands" of Ashura protesters; others in Iran say there were 2,000 to 4,000. Whichever estimate is more accurate, one thing we do know is that much of Iranian society was upset by the protesters using a sacred day to make a political statement.

First, there are just too many video clips that show tens of thousands of protesters, and quite possibly even larger numbers, participated in the Ashura demonstrations. Second, the 2,000-4,000 figure is only what the government claimed. Third, if the number of the demonstrators was small, why then saturate Tehran and other large cities with thousands
of police officers, members of the Basij militia, intelligence units and plainclothes agents? Fourth, given the relentless violence the hardliners have used against demonstrators
over the past nearly seven months, many, many more people stayed home who would have otherwise participated in the demonstrations.

Fifth, no rational person has claimed that the government is imploding. I, for one, have always argued that the hardliners do have a social base (albeit a narrow one), but significant because they are armed to the teeth. Moreover, unlike the Shah and his supporters, they have no place to flee and so will likely remain a force in Iran. The struggle for change and democracy is akin to a Marathon, not a sprint. No sane person is under the illusion that in a few months people will get their wishes fulfilled. However, it is difficult to deny the impact the demonstrations have had in shaking up the Iranian government, causing division even within the regime. In fact, there has never been so much squabbling in the conservative and hard-line camps. There have never been so many glaring fissures
in their ranks. Many conservative ayatollahs who used to support the hardliners have either fallen silent, or have voiced their opposition.

It is difficult to argue that the government in Iran is in the same strong position as a few years ago, before Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, or even a few months before the election in June. This government is responding to its own fear. This is a regime that is no longer willing to even allow gatherings for traditional Islamic events, or mourning for the dead because it has very good reason (and intelligence) indicating that they will probably erupt into massive anti-government demonstrations. This is a regime that has made sweeping arrests encompassing political activists, journalists, and human rights advocates. It has (ineffectively) set up Stalinist show trials for some and kept scores of others locked up without any charges. This is a regime that secretly buries the people
who are killed in the demonstrations or in detention or snatches their bodies from the hospital. It is one that has taken to executing political prisoners for their part in the protests.

Vastly more Iranians took to the streets on Dec. 30, in demonstrations organized by the government to show support for the Islamic Republic (one Web site that opposed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election in June estimated the crowds at one million people). Photographs and video clips lend considerable plausibility to this estimate -- meaning this was possibly the largest crowd in the streets of Tehran since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's funeral in 1989. In its wake, even President Ahmadinejad's principal challenger in last June's presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, felt compelled to acknowledge the "unacceptable radicalism" of some Ashura protesters.

I have no idea which video clips the Leveretts watched. But from all the credible information that I have been able to gather, including video, eyewitnesses accounts from people I trust in Tehran, and back-of-the-envelope calculations based on the number of people who could fit in the area of the demonstrations, it is much more plausible that up to 200,000 people participated in the pro-Ahmadinejad rallies on December 30.

Even in a confidential document leaked out of the Interior Ministry, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, the Interior Minister, had estimated that 350,000 participated in the demonstrations.

Besides, who do the Leveretts think participated in pro-government demonstrations? Most of the demonstrators had been bussed in from towns close to Tehran, or were members of the Basij militia, or government employees who had been coerced into attending (many leaked confidential letters ordering them to attend). In fact, there are strings of buses pictured near demonstration sites. There was also plenty of free food and soda distributed by the government (not teargas).

What objective analyst would construe this forced counter-demonstration as a sign that the hardliners are popular?

So, unlike what the Leveretts claim, the counter-demonstrations were not the largest crowd since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's funeral in June 1989. That distinction belongs to the peaceful demonstrations on June 15, 2008, three days after the rigged election, when at least 1.5 million people, and quite possibly many more, took part. (This is again based on how many people would fit in the demonstration area, which was much larger
than the December 30 demonstrations).

The focus in the West on the antigovernment demonstrations has blinded many to an inconvenient but inescapable truth: the Iranians who used Ashura to make a political protest do not represent anything close to a majority. Those who talk so confidently about an "opposition" in Iran as the vanguard for a new revolution should be made to answer three tough questions: First, what does this opposition want? Second, who leads it? Third, through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran?

In the case of the 1979 revolutionaries, the answers to these questions were clear. They wanted to oust the American-backed regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and to replace it with an Islamic republic. Everyone knew who led the revolution: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who despite living in exile in Paris could mobilize huge crowds in Iran simply by sending cassette tapes into the country. While supporters disagreed about the revolution's long-term agenda, Khomeini's ideas were well known from his writings and public statements. After the shah's departure, Khomeini returned to Iran with a draft constitution for the new political order in hand. As a result, the basic structure of the Islamic Republic was set up remarkably quickly.

Beyond expressing inchoate discontent, what does the current "opposition" want? It is no longer championing Mr. Mousavi's presidential candidacy; Mr. Mousavi himself has now redefined his agenda as "national reconciliation." Some protesters seem to want expanded personal freedoms and interaction with the rest of the world, but have no comprehensive agenda. Others -- who have received considerable Western press coverage -- have taken to calling for the Islamic Republic's replacement with an (ostensibly secular) "Iranian Republic." But University of Maryland polling after the election and popular reaction to the Ashura protests suggest that most Iranians are unmoved, if not repelled, by calls for the Islamic Republic's abolition.

With Mr. Mousavi increasingly marginalized, who else might lead this supposed revolution? Surely not Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who became a leading figure in the protests after last summer's election. Yes, he is an accomplished political actor, is considered a "founding father" of the state and heads the Assembly of Experts, a body that can replace the Islamic Republic's supreme leader. But Mr. Rafsanjani lost his 2005 bid to regain the presidency in a landslide to Mr. Ahmadinejad, and has shown no inclination to spur the masses to bring down the system he helped create.

Nor will Mohammad Khatami, the reformist elected president in 1997, lead the charge; in 1999, at the height of his popularity, he publicly disowned widespread student demonstrations protesting the closing of a newspaper that had supported his administration.

Now, here is a fundamental contradiction in the Leveretts' argument, in addition to them buying into the hardliners' propaganda. The Green Movement is strong enough that may force replacement of Ahmadinejad and other top officials, but it still is disorganized, leaderless, weak, and does not know what it wants?

A predictor of what Iran wants may be found in the demographics: 70 percent of Iran's estimated 75 million population are under the age of 35. That is 52 million people. The literacy rate in Iran is between 85 and 90 percent, including 3 million university students, 60 percent of whom are female; 24 million of which regularly use the internet -- 100,000 of which keep blogs. This represents some of the largest numbers (relative to the population) in the world. Iran has a strong feminist movement, a strong movement led by university students, and a relatively strong labor movement. This is a nation that is well connected internationally, and produces every year some of the brightest students who
are practically stolen by the most prestigious universities around the globe, including MIT and Stanford.

A nation with such characteristics does know what it wants, and that is the difference between now and 1979. In 1979 Iranians knew that they did not want the Shah and his regime, but there was no consensus on what they wanted. Some, like the author, wanted a democratic republic. Some like Mehdi Bazargan and his comrades advocated a democratic Islamic republic, some wanted a socialist state, and the hard-core and conservative supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini wanted an Islamic government.

But, the present movement no longer wants Islam to be an excuse for suppressing and oppressing the population, and interfering in their private life, nor an excuse to divide the population into khodi and gheyr-e khodi [one of ours and theirs, or insiders and outsiders]. It wants, at a minimum and to begin with, the demands declared by Mousavi in his Statement No. 13, including a free press, free elections, fair trials in the presence of a jury, freedom to assemble and stage peaceful demonstrations. The Green Movement wants the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) to keep from
intervening in the economy, politics and the judiciary, intervening in elections, and an unconditional release of all the political, establishment of private radio and television stations to counter the propaganda by the hardliners (in accordance with article 44 of the
Constitution), equality of all citizens, and more. If these goals are realized, the nature of the Islamic Republic would change fundamentally, eventually leading to a democratic republic.

How long, or why, must Iran's educated, young, and dynamic population either support, or at least quietly go along with a government that ranks the university students with one, two, or three stars -- depending on their level of political activities -- and prevents them
from continuing their studies (based on their numbers of stars); turns the universities into military bases and homes for hooligans; denies them jobs and careers that they deserve if they are gheyr-e khodi; strips them of their basic rights, has no qualms about killing or imprisoning them, and forges a negative reputation for Iran in the international
arena? Just to give an example, these Stalinist courts "convicted" Dr. Ahmad Zeidabadi and gave him a sentence of 5 years in prison, 6 years in internal exile, and a ban on writing and giving speech for life, only because he has courageously written the truth of what is happening.

Even from a purely economic view, how long should such a population accept a 20 percent unemployment rate and percent inflation rate, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and their cronies loot and pillage Iran's national resources?

Who leads the Green Movement? The symbols are Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and former President Mohammad Khatami. The hardliners recognize them as the leaders of the movement, and most people in Iran and a significant fraction of Iranians in the Diaspora recognize them as such. The Green Movement is pluralistic. It includes radicals as well
as conservatives. The trio stands right in the middle, and has done an admirable job of leading, but also listening to what the people want.

The trio is no longer what they used to be. If they were, they would have retreated a long time ago. Khatami has increasingly taken tougher positions. Karroubi has been incredibly courageous in revealing the crimes committed by the hardliners after the election, and declaring that even the Shah did not commit such crimes -- a taboo in the Islamic Republic -- and Mousavi has not only not retreated one inch from his position, but also become firmer. He has grown tremendously with the Movement. He declared in his January 1 statement that he is ready to die for the cause, and Karroubi and Khatami have repeatedly declared that they are ready for anything, and will be willing to pay any price for defending people's rights. How much stronger can leaders get?

The process by which the Movement intends to achieve is through peaceful demonstrations, social pressure and, if necessary, strikes until the hardliners retreat and agree to the demands. No dictatorship enters negotiations with the opposition unless under tremendous pressure. At the same time, the hardliners cannot continue killing and
jailing people with no end in sight. Continuing these practices will not only make the people angrier, but also expand the fissures in the conservative camp, which will ultimately lead to total instability. At the international level, the supporters of the movement will reveal the crimes of the hardliners and the violations of human and citizen
rights of the Iranians, and push for their condemnation by the international community.

Many of the Westerners who see the opposition displacing the Islamic Republic emphasize the potential for unrest during Shiite mourning rituals, which take place at three-, seven- and 40-day intervals after a person's death. During the final months of the shah's rule, his opponents used mourning rituals held for demonstrators killed by security forces to catalyze further protests. But does this mean that a steady stream of mourning rituals for fallen protesters today will set off a similarly escalating spiral of protests, eventually sweeping away Iran's political order?

That is highly unlikely. First, Ayatollah Montazeri had unique standing in the Islamic Republic's history; it is not surprising that the coincidence of his seven-day observance with the Ashura observation would have drawn crowds. His 40-day observance -- which will fall on Jan. 29 -- and the early February commemoration of the 1979 revolution might also encourage public activism. But there is nothing in the Islamic Republic's history to support projections that future mourning rituals for those killed in the Ashura protests will elicit similar attention.

For example, in late 1998 four prominent intellectuals were assassinated, allegedly by state intelligence officers, prompting considerable public outrage. Yet the mourning rituals for the victims did not prompt large-scale protests. In 1999, nationwide student protests were violently suppressed, with at least five people killed and 1,200 detained. Once again, though, the mourning dates for those who died did not generate significant new demonstrations. Likewise, after the presidential election in June, none of the deaths associated with security force action -- even that of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose murder became a cause célèbre of the YouTube age -- resulted in further unrest.

The Green Movement does not need to use the traditional mourning on the 7th and 40th days after death to demonstrate, nor is what led up to the 1979 Revolution an exact blueprint for change. The opposition in this case has developed its own strategy by using official occasions to demonstrate. The Movement has already used Qods [Jerusalem] Day, November 4 [anniversary of the take over of the U.S. embassy], 16 Azar [December
7, which is university student day], the day [July 17] that Rafsanjani led the Friday prayer (that forced the hardliners not to allow Rafsanjani lead the prayer again), and others. Many more are coming up. Would it not be highly embarrassing to the hardliners if on February 12, the anniversary of the Revolution, there are large-scale demonstrations with people chanting "death to the dictator"? Yet the Green Movement has adopted such a calendar strategy.

Also, other resources are available to the opposition that didn't exist in 1979, for example, the Internet. Communication has vastly revolutionized over the past 30 years with social networking sites and cell phones. And while they cite the impact of YouTube in exposing Neda Agha Soltan's death, the Leveretts have a narrow understanding of the impact. If it did not result in further unrest, that may have been because the unrest already existed--the demonstrations continued. But she became a symbol for the movement and the whole world.

Clearly, the opposition is able to take advantage of new technology. To assume that a revolution, hard or soft, must follow the same exact protocol of its predecessor ignores the influences of the times, and the differences of a generation.

Further, the comparison to 1998-99 is inappropriate. That was the beginning of the Khatami era, when people hoped he would deliver on his program of reform. In 1999 the population had not yet experienced the Ahmadinejad years and looting of the nation's
resources by the IRGC, while having to deal with joblessness and high inflation, not to mention all the repression. Thus, when the reformists staged a sit-in in the Majles in 2004 to protest their disqualification from running for the 7th Majles, people did not support them. The same people voted for Ahmadinejad in the second round of the 2005 election.

But, the next year, in the elections for city council, Ahmadinejad's own group received only 4 percent of the votes and shouts of "death to the dictator" was already being heard at
universities. Those were the first signs that Ahmadinejad and the hardliners were in trouble.

In keeping with this pattern, the seven-day mourning observances for those killed in the Ashura protests generated no significant demonstrations in Iran. Clearly, comparisons of the Ashura protests to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, projecting a cascade of monumental consequences to follow, are fanciful. The Islamic Republic will continue to be Iran's government. And, even if there were changes in some top leadership positions -- such as the replacement of Mr. Ahmadinejad as president by Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Parliament, as some Westerners speculate -- this would not fundamentally change Iran's approach on regional politics, its nuclear program and other matters of concern.

The Obama administration's half-hearted efforts at diplomacy with Tehran have given engagement a bad name. As a result, support for more coercive options is building across the American political spectrum. The president will do a real disservice to American interests if he waits in vain for Iranian political dynamics to "solve" the problems with his Iran policy.

As a model, the president would do well to look to China. Since President Richard Nixon's opening there (which took place amid the Cultural Revolution), successive American administrations have been wise enough not to let political conflict -- whether among the ruling elite or between the state and the public, as in the Tiananmen Square protests and ethnic separatism in Xinjiang -- divert Washington from sustained, strategic engagement with Beijing. President Obama needs to begin displaying similar statesmanship in his approach to Iran.

The speculation that Larijani would find himself president is as inconceivable an outcome as predictions go (especially with his brother as the head of the judiciary). Nevertheless, the premise of the Leveretts' argument shows that they favor the type of diplomatic strategy that ignores human rights issues, as we have in China. When the Tiananmen Square massacre took place then-President George H.W. Bush, former ambassador to China (named so in 1974 by President Nixon), largely ignored the incident and refused to stand up for student demonstrators willing to give their lives for democracy, for although he stated that he "deeply deplored the use of force," he did not go so far as to jeopardize China's most favored trade status.

To use China as a model for diplomatic strategy with Iran is to ignore the differences between these two countries, the state of affairs in Iran, and the ability for hardliners to engage sincerely in diplomacy with the West. Already the carrots offered by the West have largely been ignored by the current regime. The Leveretts assumption that a similar strategy would produce the same outcome in US relations with Iran is naïve and ill informed.

A better opportunity for diplomatic engagement would come about through a change in leadership in Iran, with leaders able to serve the interests of their country and people and not simply cater to their own power through oppression and brutality.

The fact is, most Iranians support diplomacy with the Islamic Republic provided that, (i) the gross violations of human rights of the Iranians are put on the table and be given a weight equal to those of all other important issues, and (ii) sincere and determined diplomacy is used, and not merely as window dressing in order to set the stage for economic sanctions and possibly war, which almost all Iranians oppose.

The Leveretts refuse to take into account an understanding of Iran, its history, and social movements. It appears they have spent too much time talking to supporters, propagandists, and representatives of Iran's government in the U.S. in order to farm "facts" that support their own agenda. But they have spent little or no time to study the
Green Movement and its demands, roots, appeal, breadth, and depth. They seem content to publish pieces with propagandists for the hardliners in Tehran in order to legitimize a brutal regime, for they fail to provide a diplomatic solution for dealing with an oppressive government in turmoil. Instead, they boast only of the ability to ignore the uprisings of democracy in the name of diplomatic relations as they construct a sturdier version of a straw man, and claim Iran is much more a monolith than the facts attest.

World news : Middle East roundup | guardian.co.uk

Saeed Kamali Dehghan — 2010-01-07 16:30:01 GMT

Extending sanctions and increasing support for external opposition is no solution to Britain's troubled relations with Iran

The Conservative MP Brian Binley is wrong about Iran. In his article for Cif yesterday, he uses the British government's handling of the Peter Moore case to accuse it of having an appeasement policy towards the Iranian regime. The Foreign Office can be reproached for denying Iran's involvement in Moore's kidnapping, but this doesn't mean that it has a softly-softly approach to Tehran in general, nor that Britain has "a blinkered view" of Iran's negative role in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, it is true that Iran is strengthening its influence in the Middle East. It is providing financial and technical assistance to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and has been accused of backing the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Nor can Iran's influence in Syria and Iraq be denied.

However, Binley's depiction of Iran's support for the Taliban in Afghanistan is a gross exaggeration. When he claims that the "Tehran-backed" Taliban inflicted the bloodiest year of the conflict yet on British troops in 2009, he is overestimating Iran's influence in order to criticise the British government for inviting Iran to London's conference on Afghanistan later this month.

In reality, Iran's relationship with the Taliban is far from clear. Iran helped the US and Britain with their first attacks on Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 against al-Qaida and its Taliban supporters. In those days, when reformist president Mohammad Khatami was in power, Iran joined India, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in a concerted front to help the US with its war against terrorists in Afghanistan.

Iran's Shia regime and its support for Shia groups in the region have also made the Taliban Sunni extremists angry. Jundallah, an insurgent Sunni group based in south-east Iran – which has claimed responsibility for many military actions inside the country – is believed by the Iranian government to be a Pakistani Taliban-backed terrorist group. Yet, recent reports that some members of Bin Laden's family are in Iran make it difficult to judge where Iran stands in Afghanistan today.

Tehran will indeed be one of the biggest foreign policy issues for Britain in 2010, but the solutions Binley proposes would worsen the situation in Iran and help the Iranian government to crack down on the opposition movement.

Binley is mistaken in thinking that the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) represents the Iranian opposition movement. It does not even represent most of the Iranians in exile. The NCRI and its president-elect Maryam Rajavi are not popular within Iran and its opposition movement. More support for the NCRI would only put Iranian protesters into more trouble as it would allow Iranian officials to link them with the NCRI.

"A wider range of targeted sanctions" is the worst possible solution to relations with Iran. Having its embassy's local staff intimidated and imprisoned, and two of its diplomats expelled from Tehran, the British government has been facing a difficult time in Iran, too. By using the term "appeasement", Binley underestimates the difficulty of developing an effective policy towards Iran.

The British government is now clearly aware that Iran is a tough issue to deal with. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government loves sanctions, loves to have the British Embassy in Tehran closed and is happy to let the nuclear issue divert attention from its human rights abuses. It's time for western politicians to be wiser and more attentive when considering policy towards Iran. British MPs should be careful when deciding how to support Iran's opposition movement. It's time for Iranians to struggle for their own future and hasty, harmful polices should be avoided by western politicians.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

View from Iran

Tori (noreply@blogger.com) — 2010-01-07 00:18:00 GMT

There may be more than one way to stop Iran, but is there any way to stop the folly on NYT's op-ed page?

OK, there is so much wrong with the Leverett's op-ed piece in the New York Times that I didn't even know where to start. So I went through the article expressing my dismay at its content almost paragraph by paragraph. Forgive my ranting and grammatical errors.

THE Islamic Republic of Iran is not about to implode. Nevertheless, the misguided idea that it may do so is becoming enshrined as conventional wisdom in Washington.

The Islamic Republic is imploding. It’s been imploding for years. The system is cracking apart under the great force of a population that wants simple things: the freedom to kiss in public; the freedom to make fun of their president and their religious figures; the freedom to surf the Internet. These may seem like trivialities, but when you live in a society like Iran’s where all are restricted and where offenders can be harshly punished, they gain importance.

For President Obama, this misconception provides a bit of cover; it helps obscure his failure to follow up on his campaign promises about engaging Iran with any serious, strategically grounded proposals. Meanwhile, those who have never supported diplomatic engagement with Iran are now pushing the idea that the Tehran government might collapse to support their arguments for military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets and adopting “regime change” as the ultimate goal of America’s Iran policy.

I have been for engagement for years. But there is no more room for engagement. We needed a president willing to engage with Iran ten years ago. This regime does not want to be engaged, they want to be isolated. The regime will never negotiate in good faith. They have proven this time and time again. Any negotiation with the US will be a charade at best.

We now know that there really is a huge population willing to be talk with us. While the regime may not fall today or tomorrow, it will fall. And when it does, I hope that my government has chosen to be on the right side of history.

When 3 million people in Tehran dared to take to the streets on June 15th , we entered another phase of history. Any one of us who has spent time in Iran knew what a watershed moment that was. And when I write dared, I mean dared. There is no one in Iran who is naïve enough not to know what kind of personal risks demonstrating creates. Those risks have become even greater since the initial demonstrations. State sanctioned rape, torture, and the threat of execution are very real.

Let’s start with the most recent events. On Dec. 27, large crowds poured into the streets of cities across Iran to commemorate the Shiite holy day of Ashura; this coincided with mourning observances for a revered cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who had died a week earlier. Protesters used the occasion to gather in Tehran and elsewhere, setting off clashes with security forces.

Important events, no doubt. But assertions that the Islamic Republic is now imploding in the fashion of the shah’s regime in 1979 do not hold up to even the most minimal scrutiny. Antigovernment Iranian Web sites claim there were “tens of thousands” of Ashura protesters; others in Iran say there were 2,000 to 4,000. Whichever estimate is more accurate, one thing we do know is that much of Iranian society was upset by the protesters using a sacred day to make a political statement.
The writers show how little they know about Iranians and about the situation. There was an incredible amount of security on the streets of cities all over Iran. Shots were fired into the crowd early in the day. I invite them to play a thought game: how many people would have turned out had there been a minimal security presence. I also invite the authors to remember that there was no call for organized opposition either at the funeral of Montazeri or on Ashura.

Vastly more Iranians took to the streets on Dec. 30, in demonstrations organized by the government to show support for the Islamic Republic (one Web site that opposed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in June estimated the crowds at one million people). Photographs and video clips lend considerable plausibility to this estimate — meaning this was possibly the largest crowd in the streets of Tehran since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s funeral in 1989. In its wake, even President Ahmadinejad’s principal challenger in last June’s presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, felt compelled to acknowledge the “unacceptable radicalism” of some Ashura protesters.

Pulease. There is no way a pro-government demonstration can ever be valid when the right to opposition demonstration does not exist. I invite the authors to remember that no one claims that there are no pro-government factions in Iran. Of course there are. There are millions of people dependent on the government for aid and work. The fact is, many of the demonstrators were paid up to 200,000 tumans each. (OK, this is hearsay from a friend who knows people who got paid). It was a day off, for God’s sake. Children and civil servants were bused in as were dependent families.

The focus in the West on the antigovernment demonstrations has blinded many to an inconvenient but inescapable truth: the Iranians who used Ashura to make a political protest do not represent anything close to a majority. Those who talk so confidently about an “opposition” in Iran as the vanguard for a new revolution should be made to answer three tough questions: First, what does this opposition want? Second, who leads it? Third, through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran?

In the case of the 1979 revolutionaries, the answers to these questions were clear. They wanted to oust the American-backed regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and to replace it with an Islamic republic. Everyone knew who led the revolution: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who despite living in exile in Paris could mobilize huge crowds in Iran simply by sending cassette tapes into the country. While supporters disagreed about the revolution’s long-term agenda, Khomeini’s ideas were well known from his writings and public statements. After the shah’s departure, Khomeini returned to Iran with a draft constitution for the new political order in hand. As a result, the basic structure of the Islamic Republic was set up remarkably quickly.

Wow. What a simplistic view. I am not an expert on the revolution, but even I know that this is wrong. Many in Iran were fighting for a communist state, others for a socialist state, others for a Marxist state. They decided to unite behind Khomeini and were indeed shocked by his later policies. In fact, there were two years of relative freedom before the Islamic state cracked down and showed its true colors.

Beyond expressing inchoate discontent, what does the current “opposition” want? It is no longer championing Mr. Mousavi’s presidential candidacy; Mr. Mousavi himself has now redefined his agenda as “national reconciliation.” Some protesters seem to want expanded personal freedoms and interaction with the rest of the world, but have no comprehensive agenda. Others — who have received considerable Western press coverage — have taken to calling for the Islamic Republic’s replacement with an (ostensibly secular) “Iranian Republic.” But University of Maryland polling after the election and popular reaction to the Ashura protests suggest that most Iranians are unmoved, if not repelled, by calls for the Islamic Republic’s abolition With Mr. Mousavi increasingly marginalized, who else might lead this supposed revolution? Surely not Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who became a leading figure in the protests after last summer’s election. Yes, he is an accomplished political actor, is considered a “founding father” of the state and heads the Assembly of Experts, a body that can replace the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. But Mr. Rafsanjani lost his 2005 bid to regain the presidency in a landslide to Mr. Ahmadinejad, and has shown no inclination to spur the masses to bring down the system he helped create.

Iranians do not want to go back to the beginning that is what scares them about revolution. They want reform of their system. Evolution, not revolution. Unfortunately, this regime has shown that it will not allow that.

Nor will Mohammad Khatami, the reformist elected president in 1997, lead the charge; in 1999, at the height of his popularity, he publicly disowned widespread student demonstrations protesting the closing of a newspaper that had supported his administration.

Many of the Westerners who see the opposition displacing the Islamic Republic emphasize the potential for unrest during Shiite mourning rituals, which take place at three-, seven- and 40-day intervals after a person’s death. During the final months of the shah’s rule, his opponents used mourning rituals held for demonstrators killed by security forces to catalyze further protests. But does this mean that a steady stream of mourning rituals for fallen protesters today will set off a similarly escalating spiral of protests, eventually sweeping away Iran’s political order?

That is highly unlikely. First, Ayatollah Montazeri had unique standing in the Islamic Republic’s history; it is not surprising that the coincidence of his seven-day observance with the Ashura observation would have drawn crowds. His 40-day observance — which will fall on Jan. 29 — and the early February commemoration of the 1979 revolution might also encourage public activism. But there is nothing in the Islamic Republic’s history to support projections that future mourning rituals for those killed in the Ashura protests will elicit similar attention.

For example, in late 1998 four prominent intellectuals were assassinated, allegedly by state intelligence officers, prompting considerable public outrage. Yet the mourning rituals for the victims did not prompt large-scale protests. In 1999, nationwide student protests were violently suppressed, with at least five people killed and 1,200 detained. Once again, though, the mourning dates for those who died did not generate significant new demonstrations. Likewise, after the presidential election in June, none of the deaths associated with security force action — even that of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose murder became a cause célèbre of the YouTube age — resulted in further unrest.

Once again, I ask, have the writers been paying attention? It’s 2010, not 1998. The regime knows the mourning ritual protest well and has been cracking down on funerals and public mourning. This opposition cannot use the same playbook that the first Islamic revolution used. They have to be more creative. They are using different actions to show dissent. It’s more clever and subtle than a few mourning demonstrations.

In keeping with this pattern, the seven-day mourning observances for those killed in the Ashura protests generated no significant demonstrations in Iran. Clearly, comparisons of the Ashura protests to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, projecting a cascade of monumental consequences to follow, are fanciful. The Islamic Republic will continue to be Iran’s government. And, even if there were changes in some top leadership positions — such as the replacement of Mr. Ahmadinejad as president by Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Parliament, as some Westerners speculate — this would not fundamentally change Iran’s approach on regional politics, its nuclear program and other matters of concern.

The Obama administration’s half-hearted efforts at diplomacy with Tehran have given engagement a bad name. As a result, support for more coercive options is building across the American political spectrum. The president will do a real disservice to American interests if he waits in vain for Iranian political dynamics to “solve” the problems with his Iran policy.

Then he should not wait in vain, he should show support for the grassroots civil rights movement in Iran.

As a model, the president would do well to look to China. Since President Richard Nixon’s opening there (which took place amid the Cultural Revolution), successive American administrations have been wise enough not to let political conflict — whether among the ruling elite or between the state and the public, as in the Tiananmen Square protests and ethnic separatism in Xinjiang — divert Washington from sustained, strategic engagement with Beijing. President Obama needs to begin displaying similar statesmanship in his approach to Iran.

Iran is not China and never will be China. China is home to one-quarter of the world’s population and owns much of the US debt. Face it, we have no leverage in China. Three million people in Iran took to the streets on June 15th. More than 1% of Iran’s total population demonstrated together, took risks together. This movement is far from dead. Just because the authors do not know the names of its future leaders does not mean that they do not exist.

The Corner on National Review Online

webmaster@nationalreview.com (NRO Staff) — 2010-01-05 15:21:55 GMT

“What is the most important reason for the decline of Iranian soccer?” Following a series of humiliating defeats for the national team, Iran’s popular Channel 3 program 90 Minutes invited viewers to express their opinion through text messages. The viewers had the choice between three options: “1. Weak management,” “2. Technical weakness of the coaches,” and “3. Decline and farewell of the golden generation of soccer players.”

As soon as the program went on air, the Iranian opposition, the Green Movement, urged viewers via the Internet and text message to vote for the third option. Much to the surprise of the host of the television program, 75 percent of the poll’s respondents did so. This is an ingenious example of the opposition’s expressing its discontent in an atmosphere of censorship of the press, and it’s a good indicator of how strong that movement has grown. Were free elections held in Iran, the current regime would be in danger of losing power.

That’s why the Islamic Republic’s political leadership is bound to ignore opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s five-point plan to solve the political crisis in the country: Responsible government, free and fair elections, freedom to political prisoners, freedom of the press, and the right to establish political parties.

Mousavi’s five points amagine the near-impossible, It may be too late for the Islamic Republic to correct the past and reform itself. Here Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government besponsible, the crisis would not have gone this far. The Islamic Republic’s ten-year track record of “guided elections” ahows that the regime is fundamentally incapable of allowing free and fair elections. Under current circumstances, free elections would bring radical reformers into office, rather than cautious reformers like Mousavi, Mehdi Karrubi, and former Pres. Mohammad Khatami, who still try to operate within the framework of the system. Freedom of political prisoners would certainly go against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guards’ advisers, who try to terrorize the public into submission, while freedom of the press and allowing political parties would bring the certain collapse of a regime what has based its power on state control of information and suppression of independent political parties.

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the regime leadership considers Mousavi’s plan a suicide pill rather than a medicine. Having cornered itself and lacking political instruments to solve the current crisis, the Islamic Republic is left with few other means but use of extreme force and terror to secure its survival. For the time being, terror seems to be the preferred method of the commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, who may even consider the current crisis a welcome opportunity to purge the regime of undesirable elements and authorize the ideological armed forces to intervene even more actively in the political, economic, and spiritual life of the Islamic Republic. At some point, even the Supreme Leader may find himself a puppet of the Revolutionary Guards, authorizing mass murder of the public. The Intelligence Ministry’s prohibition against cooperation with more than 60 non-governmental organizations including leading think tanks in the United States, on charges of their being engaged in “subversive activities” in Iran must be seen as legitimizing more pressure.

However, denial of internal divisions does not solve the legitimacy crisis of the Iranian regime, imagined foreign enemies no longer rally the public around the flag, and it is doubtful that the Iranian population can be terrorized into submission for long, since increased terror is bound to radicalize the society in the fight against the oppressive state.

-- Ali Alfoneh is a visiting research fellow at American Enterprise Institute.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-04 14:18:39 GMT

[ opinion ] The Tehran-based Parsine news Web site recently reported about the possible move of the Khomeini family to the holy city of Najaf in Iraq.

According to the report, the Khomeini family has been troubled by the hardliners' attack during former president Mohammad Khatami's Ashura sermon.

There are two reasons why this was particularly painful for Ayatollah Khomeini's family. First and foremost, Khatami is related to the Khomeini family. His brother is married to Zahra Eshraghi, one of Khomeini's grand daughters.

The other is that the attack took place in Ayatollah Khomeini's former neighborhood of Jamaraan, in northern Tehran. The fact that the attackers did not respect the sanctity of the place was doubly painful for the Khomeini family.

Even if the move to Najaf does not materialize, one can not ignore the recent assaults against the family of the former Supreme Leader of Iran. There were already reports that the offices of Hojatoleslam Val Moslemin Seyed Hassan Khomeini, the former Supreme Leader's grandson, were attacked and its windows smashed after the Ashura demonstrations by the opposition.

Attacking the offices of Khomeini's grandson in Iran would be similar to pro Fidel Castro militia attacking the property of Che Guevara's family in Cuba. Not only would it be highly disrespectful, it would also show a clear split in the identity of the revolution, where those who associate themselves with the founder of the Islamic Republic are no longer seen as allies. It can also be taken as a sign that the original views of the revolution are now frowned upon.

And they are right. When it comes to the role of the military in politics, Khamenei's view of the revolution is different from that of Khomeini. The Islamic revolution's founder tried to keep the military away from politics and not to give them too much of a say.

Khamenei, on the other hand, believes and encourages the opposite. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is now present more than ever in politics. This is witnessed by the fact that so many of the members of Ahmadinejad's cabinet are former members of this force, or its people militia branch, known as the Basij. There is also the recent slow takeover of the Iranian economy by the IRGC.

The question is: can the Khomeini family pose a real challenge to Khamenei and Ahmadinejad?

The answer here goes back to the all-important issue of Khamenei's succession.

The fact remains that no one has a clear idea as to who will replace Khamenei. During Khomeini's term, his succession was decided in 1985, four years before he actually died. Even if the issue had not been decided, if you had asked any Iran observer about possible replacements, they could mention with some degree of certainty that it would be either Montazeri, Khamenei or Rafsanjani.

However, these days, the answer is much less clear. First and foremost the Assembly of Experts whose job is to select the next Supreme Leader has still not voted on this important issue. Secondly, today, in comparison to Khomeini's time, the possible choices are far less obvious. Some experts believe that Khamenei's son, Mojtaba, could be the successor. Others say Ayatollah Shahroudi. However the degree of confidence felt about predicting such an important question is far less than at Khomeini's time.

The fact that Khamenei has not allowed the Assembly of Experts to choose his successor could be because he is sure about his health and the fact that he is going to be in charge for a number of years to come.

However one cannot rule out the possibility that merely addressing this question could lead to more infighting within the regime. With domestic instability and opposition against him at its highest, the last thing he needs is more infighting at the top political echelons.

Or, it is possible that Khamenei has made his choice, and it is the Revolutionary Guards itself.

Although this may sound controversial, it is still a logical choice. Since the 1979 revolution, no Supreme Leader has ever been against the political interests of the clergy in Qom the way Khamenei has. So why give the reins to the people whose power he has tried to trim?

Also, allowing the IRGC to take over would protect the interests of his family more than allowing the clergy to continue to fill the role of Supreme Leader. His son Mojtaba is far closer to the IRGC than the clergy in Qom. Such protection will mean that once he dies, Khamenei's family won't suffer the same fate as the Khomeinis.

Should the Khomeini family move to Najaf, it would be a severe embarrassment for Khamenei and his regime. However it's unlikely to change his succession plans.

When the future of the Khamenei dynasty is so intricately intertwined with the military, there is little that the Khomeini family can in fact do. This is because he doesn't see the current battle as only against himself. He also sees it as against his immediate family and their fortunes after his death.

With Ahmadinejad's election in 2009, Seyyed Ali Khamenei decided to put all his eggs in the military's basket. Moving them does not seem like an option that the Supreme Leader will pursue.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-04 04:54:15 GMT

The hardliners' plan to exploit the events of Ashura to arrest the leaders of the Green Movement -- Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammad Khatami -- appear to have been defeated, at least for now.

After counter-demonstrations by the supporters of the hardliners on Wednesday, December 30, the nation was in a state of suspense. People were worried about what was coming next. But Mir Hossein Mousavi issued his Statement No. 17 on Friday, January 1, in which he said he was ready to die for the cause of the Green Movement and listed a minimum number of demands that must be met in order to move the country to a calmer state. The Statement has already caused considerable squabbling among the hardliners, and deepened fissures in their camp. As the outspoken reformist journalist Abbas Abdi said, "Mousavi has thrown the ball into the hardliners' court."

On Sunday, January 3, five important religious intellectuals issued a joint statement in which they declared their full support for the leaders of the Green Movement in Iran, and listed ten demands that they believe must be met in order to get the country out of deep crisis. The ten demands include the five that Mousavi had already listed and are, in fact, practically identical with what he had listed in his Statement No. 13.

The five signatories are Dr. Ali Akbar Soroush, the distinguished Islamic scholar; Dr. Mohsen Kadivar, a student of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, a progressive cleric, and an outspoken critic of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (for which he was jailed a few years ago); Akbar Ganji, the investigative journalist who was imprisoned for six years, Ataollah Mohajerani, former Majles [parliament] deputy and Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance in the first Khatami administration (a short period Iran enjoyed a relatively free press), and Abdol-ali Bazargan, son of former Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, a well-known Islamic thinker.

The statement begins by declaring that,

Six months ago millions of Iranians demonstrated [peacefully] in the streets, in order to regain their rights that, through the treacherous elections, had been taken away from them, and to protest against all the insults and belittling by the government. The security and military establishment responded to the peaceful demands of the people violently and ruthlessly, and tried to prevent people from being present in the public domain and debate, and attempted to link the Green Movement with foreign powers and aligned with their policies.

The hardliners thought that they could, by a bloody crackdown on the legal uprising, put an end to the people's protests, as they had done in the past. But, despite all of their efforts, the flames of awareness burned higher and the sounds [crying for] reforms [grew] louder; the Movement became stronger by the day.

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who over the past five decades and particularly the last six months, had defended the fundamental rights of the citizens of the nation, and left the people under the most critical condition, shined as the spiritual leader of the Movement. His death gave new life to the Movement and revealed all the injustice that had been done to him, which angered the nation even more as the month of Muharram was coming, a month that is for demanding [people's] fundamental rights and rising up against dictatorship and oppression. People's protests, following the long historical tradition in Shiism culture, were at their height on Ashura, and the informed nation [of Iran] that has learned from the life of Hossein [the 3rd Shiite Imam and a most revered figure in Iran, who was killed in October 680 in his war against the dictator of the time] targeted the oppressor of our era [meaning the hardliners and Ayatollah Khamenei]...

The statement continued,

It is clear that the extremists in the ruling elite resort to violence because they know that they lack a broad social base of support and a secure future. They want to accelerate the occurrence of the "final confrontation" and "the day of reckoning [the day that they finally put down the uprising]," in order to force the ambivalent forces within the political establishment to accept the fait accompli, and reduce the great forces of democracy to violent rioters.

But, what this regime has done has angered and hurt deeply across a wide social strata, from young people, women, and religious and ethnic groups, to intellectuals, clerics, academics, workers, and political activists. The talk of "the enemy's conspiracy" by the unjust Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Khamenei] over the past 20 years and its [mis]use for inventing [imaginary] enemies and creating fissures among the people (such as [saying]: the press is the enemy's base; the intellectuals work for the enemy; the Green Movement is a colored conspiracy of the enemy for overthrowing [the regime]) have transformed [in the Leader's view] a great part of the nation to the enemy's front which must be oppressed by the organs of oppression.

This is a reference to what Ayatollah Khamenei has been preaching since he was appointed the Supreme Leader in 1989. Anyone or any group that has criticized him and his policies has been accused by him of being linked to an imaginary enemy that he has never described or identified. The statement then continued,

We believe, as a small part of the nationwide Green Movement, that at this point in time, the demands of the Movement can be summarized as follows, which can be used as the basis for the future mobilization of the movement and its relation with the ruling group. A part of these demands has already been mentioned by Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi in his Statement No. 17 that, in view of the difficult political condition of the country, represents the minimum demands. We fully support the positions of the leaders of the Movement in Iran (Mousavi, Karroubi, and Khatami), and believe that the optimal demands of the Green Movement of the Iranian people at this point are as follows.

1. Resignation of Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [as the president] and holding a new presidential election under the supervision of neutral organs; abolish the vetting process of candidates [by the Guardian Council] and formation of an independent election commission that includes the representatives of the opposition and protestors, in order to draft the rules and regulations for holding free and fair elections.

2. Releasing all the political prisoners, and investigating the torture and murder of the protestors over the past several months in open courts in the presence of a jury and the attorneys of their [the victims'] own choice, and compensating those who have been hurt and their families.

3. Free means of mass communication, including the press, the internet, voice [radio] and visage [television]; abolishing censorship and allowing banned publications [such as dailies] to resume; expanding non-governmental TV and satellite channels; ending the filtering of the internet and making it easily accessible to the public, and purging liars and provocateurs from [national] radio and television.

4. Recognizing the rights of all the lawful political groups, university student and women movements, the NGOs and civil organizations, and labor unions for lawful activities and the right to peaceful protest according to Article 27 of the Constitution.

5. Independence of the universities [from political meddling and intervention]; running the universities democratically by the academics themselves; evacuating the military and quasi-military forces from the universities, and abolishing the illegal Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution [that interferes in the affairs of the universities].

6. Putting on trial all those that have tortured and murdered [people], and those who ordered the past crimes, particularly those over the past several months.

7. Independence of the judiciary by electing [rather than appointing] its head; abolishing illegal and special courts [such as the Special Court for the Clergy]; purging the judiciary from unfair judges, and banning judiciary officials from giving political speeches and carrying out orders of higher officials [the president and the Supreme Leader], instead of implementing the laws fairly and neutrally.

8. Banning the military, police, and security forces from intervening in politics, the economy, and culture, and ordering them to act professionally.

9. Economic and political independence of the seminaries, and preventing politicizing the clerics to support the government, and banning the use of Friday prayers sermons for issuing [by the clerics] illegal and anti-religions orders.

10. Electing all the officials who must become responsive to criticisms, and limiting the number of terms that they can be elected.

The statement ends by declaring that,

Not meeting these [legitimate] demands of the Green Movement and increasing the [violent] crackdown and oppression will not only not help us to pass the [present] crisis, but will also deepen the crisis with painful consequences, for which only the Supreme Leader will be responsible.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-03 19:09:35 GMT

Update on Ashura arrests

Tehran Bureau | Jan. 3, 2010

Approximately 500 protesters who had been arrested during the Ashura demonstrations have been jailed at the infamous Jail 59 at Eshratabad military base in central Tehran, according to a source.

At least two of the detainees have reportedly died, including a young girl whose body was transferred to an unknown location. Jail 59 was used in the 1990s to imprison and torture leading political figures, such as members of the Nationalist-Religious Coalitions, and distinguished journalists such as Dr. Ahmad Zeidabadi.

Under pressure by the reformist-dominated 6th Majles, the jail was shut down, but it has apparently been reopened again. -- Muhammad Sahimi

Supreme Leader's relatives rumored to be among arrested in Mashhad

Ayandeh | Jan. 3, 2010

In a raid on the Azad University of Mashhad, plainclothes agents and radicals injured a number of people and took a group of others into custody, among them Seyyed Sadra Mirdamai, a student believed to be related to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

Other unofficial sources had reported the arrest and detention for several hours of professor Seyyed Hossein Mirdamadi, the maternal uncle of Ayatollah Khamenei.

It appears, however, that the arrest of the Supreme Leader's uncle and his son Seyyed Sadra were unrelated.

According to Ayandeh, Hossein Mirdamadi, who is a professor of philosophy and Islamic Studies in Mashhad, was arrested and released after a few hours. However, his personal belongings, which had been confiscated, had not been returned.

The Supreme Leader's mother was the daughter of one of Mashhad's prominent clerics, Seyyed Hashem Najafabadi Mirdamadi.

Photo caption: From right to left 1. Ayatollah Mohammad Vaez-zadeh Khorasani (the former head of the Council for Solidifying Religions and brother-in-law of the Supreme Leader); 2. Ayatollah Taleghani; 3. Seyyed Hossein Mirdamadi; 4. Mehdi Bazargan. Location: the office of Islamic Engineers Society.

Khomeini family may immigrate to Iraq

Asr Iran | Jan. 3, 2010

Members of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's family may immigrate to the holy city of Najaf in Iraq, according to reports.

According to Parsineh, it is not clear whether the Khomeini family had decided on an indefinite immigration or a temporary one. The report said Hojjatoleslam Seyyed Hassan Khomeini and the rest of the Khomeini family have decided to relocate to Najaf and have informed some of their close friends about the decision.

The recent raid on the Imam Khomeini Hosseiniah in Jamaran in the middle of Mohammad Khatami's speech has reportedly rankled Hojjatoleslam Khomeini. The Jamaran Hosseinyeh is where the late founder of Iran's Revolution received visitors and addressed the nation.

Hojjatoleslam Khomeini has been absent from most official ceremonies held at the Imam Khomeini mausoleum since the June 12 election.

The report added that prominent Principlist and reformist figures who have found out about the Khomeini family's decision have been trying to convince Hojjatoleslam Khomeini to reconsider his decision.

[*Throughout history, when the ruling establishment has been unjust in its treatment of the nation, prominent clerics emigrated from the country as a show of protest.]

Ayatollah says Qom association hurts faith

Rahe Sabz | Jan. 3, 2010

The Qom Theological Lecturers Association (Jameh-e Modarressin) issued a statement on Saturday stating that Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, a Shia Sources of Emulation, has been stripped of those credentials. The statement was signed by the head of the Qom Seminary Mohammad Yazdi.

In response to inquiries about the statement, Ayatollah Amini, a member of the Qom Theological Lecturers Association, said, "I haven't participated in Jameh-e Modarressin meetings for four years and I don't view such things [JM meetings and decisions] to be in the interest of the seminary or faith."

It appears that the JM statement about Ayatollah Sanei was issued without the knowledge of the Association's other members.

JM member says Sanei decision was not political

Parleman | Jan. 3, 2010

A member of the Theological Lecturers Association said anyone who questioned the Jameh-e Modarressin statement demoting Ayatollah Yousef Sanei as a Source of Emulation, was dead wrong.

The unnamed JM member told Parleman News that "whoever thinks that the JM action was political or extreme, ghalat kardeh [has no damn right to think that way]."

When asked by the Parleman News reporter about the rumor that the disqualification of Ayatollah Sanei was the personal decision of Mohammad Yazdi, the unidentified official responded "[in] the meeting that I am aware of, [there] was consensus."

"As I am ill and not feeling well, I do not participate in the [JM] meetings but in the meeting that I am aware of, there was consensus."

Qarebaghi launches smear campaign against Sanei

Ayandeh | Jan. 3, 2010

Ali Akbar Qarebaghi, a member of the Assembly of Experts, said Ayatollah Yousf Sanei is not a Source of Emulation and lacks the credentials to issue decrees (Fatwa).

Qarebaghi said that while Ayatollah Sanei was one of Imam Khomeini's disciples, "his decrees do not correspond with accepted principles from a juristic perspective."

"[Ayatollah] Sanei is either purposefully issuing wrong decrees to show his enmity, which amounts to debauchery, or he is not acquainted with juristic and inferential principles in which case he does not have the right to issue decrees," Qarebaghi told Fars News Agency.

"It appears that [Ayatollah] Sanei is supporting a group of materialists and material-seeking people who have risen against the establishment of the Islamic Republic," he said.

He stressed that serving as a Source of Emulation requires skill in Islamic sciences, absolute piety and a rejection of materialism. "Therefore [Ayatollah] Sanei lacks the conditions to be a source and to issue decrees," he said.

"[Ayatollah] Sanei has a certain simplicity that has caused some [individuals] to have influence over him and control his actions," he claimed.

Authorities close Ayatollah Sanei's office in Gorgan

Aftab News | Jan. 3, 2010

After a group dressed in shrouds congregated outside Ayatollah Yousef Sanei's office in Gorgan and caused altercations, authorities closed the Grand Ayatollah's office.

On Saturday JM issued a statement saying Ayatollah Sanei was not qualified to be a Source of Emulation. Ayatollah Sanei's office declined to comment on the statement until it was known whether all members of the Association shared in the opinion.

Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli, a former Qom Friday Prayers leader, reacted to the statement by saying that he has not been in contact with the JM for a while.

Another Qom Friday Prayers Leader, Ayatollah Amini also said that he had not participated in any JM meetings for the past four years.

Hosseinian: Sanei accused Ahmad Khomeini of assassination

Iran Press | Jan. 3, 2010

Lawmaker Ruhollah Hosseinian said the JM was right to disqualify Ayatollah Yousef Sanei as he lacks the characteristics of a Source of Emulation.

"It was wrong for Mr. Sanei to write a treatise because he lacks juristical knowledge and the behavioral characteristics of a source as cited in oral tradition," he claimed.

"Mr. Sanei talks of affiliation to the Khomeini family while he once altercated with one of the Guards in front of the Imam's home and threw his turban on the ground in rage and accused Hajj Ahmad [Khomeini] of being an assassin," he said.

"For example, there is a verse in the Qoran that says your adopted children are not considered your sons but Mr. Sanei, despite the Qoran ruling, has issued a decree saying that adopted children are like birth children and adoptive children are mahram."

In Islam a woman is not required to wear hijab in front of a husband or blood relations such as her father, uncles, and grandfathers.

"A person, who despite the clear Qoarinc ruling, issues a decree is not eligible to be a Source of Emulation. He [Sanei] has become a name due to political issues otherwise everyone knows that he does not have juristical qualifications," he said.

Judiciary vows speedy punishment for Iran rioters

Press TV | Jan. 3, 2010

Iran's judiciary chief promised Sunday to "quickly and firmly" follow up the recent unrest in the country and deal with rioters who violated the sanctity of the Ashura mourning ceremony.

"Iran's judiciary will not fall short in performing its duties and will investigate the events quickly and firmly," Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani said in a meeting with judiciary officials.

He described last week's riots as an "improper" move and said, "Rioters claim they are protesting the result of the presidential election whereas they are in fact opposing the Islamic establishment."

He asserted that the judiciary body will issue "fair" verdicts and said, "Fair ruling should be based on legal and religious frameworks."

Ayatollah Larijani said that rioters who desecrated the Ashura mourning ceremonies would be punished soon.

Iran certain of foreign involvement in riots

Press TV | Jan. 3, 2010

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said Sunday it has become evident for the country that the recent anti-government riots were led by foreigners.

"The rioters are encouraged and supported by Britain, the US and the Zionist regime [Israel]," Mohammad-Najjar told reporters. "The involvement of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), enemies and those who seek to take revenge on the Islamic establishment during the past 30 years is quite clear."

He underlined that a number of MKO members, whose organization is branded as a terrorist group by many countries around the globe, had been arrested. He said they would be appearing in court soon.

Najjar said the massive participation of the people in rallies on Wednesday across Iran showed they want the judiciary to take action against rioters.

Iranian journalist gets prison term, desert exile

AP | Jan. 3, 2010

An Iranian journalist lost an appeal Sunday against his conviction on charges of spreading propaganda against the ruling Islamic establishment and was sentenced to six years in prison and five years of internal exile in a remote desert town.

The court also confirmed a lifelong ban on political activity for the prominent reporter, Ahmad Zeidabadi, who was also once a student activist.

Ali Golzadeh Ghafouri, 86

Obit | Jan. 2, 2010

Ali Golzadeh Ghafouri, an important religious progressive, legal scholar, author, and retired professor at Tehran University passed away. He was 86. He was a member of the first Majles after the 1979 Revolution, as well as the Assembly of Experts of the Constitution that drafted the Islamic Republic constitution. His two sons were executed in 1981, and his daughter and son-in-law in 1988. After the 1981 execution, he left Majles and politics. -- Muhammad Sahimi

Slider photo: LGOIT.com

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2010-01-02 00:09:58 GMT

[ analysis ] The funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri on Dec. 21, and the Ashura demonstrations on Dec. 27, marked a turning point for Iran's democratic movement. The demonstrations showed that even after a violent six-month crackdown on peaceful protesters, political figures, journalists, and human right advocates, the Green Movement has not been weakened, but that it has strengthened and expanded to many cities and towns around the country. This is already a significant victory for the Green Movement. The question is: where is the Green Movement going to go from here?

First off, let's be realistic. Many Iranians would like to believe that the hardline regime is in its death throes. But such optimism must be tempered. The hardliners' ability to maintain power through force has not been diminished and is likely to outlast the Islamic Republic's crisis of legitimacy. The struggle for democracy in Iran is a Marathon, not a sprint. There is still a long way to go.

Reports indicate that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has moved anti-riot armored vehicles into Tehran and other large cities. This means that although the Green Movement is much stronger than at its inception, the near future may not bring an all-out victory or defeat, but cycles of unrest and repression, unless the Movement takes its next steps carefully and realistically. What are those steps?

First and foremost, the Green Movement must continue to act in a nonviolent manner. The call for nonviolence has angered some. Perhaps they don't realize that the nonviolent nature of the Green Movement has been the most important reason for its success so far.

It should also be noted that there is a vast difference between self-defense -- which is legitimate -- and adopting violence as a tactic, which can only hurt the Green Movement. The former scenario means that the Movement defends itself -- physically, if necessary -- when attacked; the latter implies that the Movement goes on the offensive and employs force and violence. The two are not identical.

But how would violence hurt the Green Movement?

First, if violence is imposed on the hardliners, they will fight to the end, simply because they have no place to go. When Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was being toppled thirty years ago, his core supporters could move to Europe or the United States -- and many did. There are no such options for the hardliners. They have no place to go. I doubt that even the government or people of Syria or Shiite-controlled areas of Lebanon or Iraq will be hospitable toward them.

Add to this the mentality of many of the top IRGC commanders who believe that they should have been killed more than two decades ago in the Iran-Iraq war and who look upon their survival as a sort of "bonus." Many have no fear of losing their lives, which makes them even more dangerous. They will not don women's clothing to escape Iran the way Abolhassan Banisadr, the Islamic Republic's first president, did after he was sacked in June 1981. I believe most, if not all of them would refuse exile, even if they had such an option (which they do not).

In September 2007 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took the unusual step of abruptly replacing the top IRGC commander Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi and replacing him with Major General Mohammad Ali (Aziz) Jafari. Why? Because General Jafari firmly believes that the West wants to create a "velvet revolution" in Iran to overthrow the Islamic Republic. As one of his first acts, General Jafari decentralized the decision-making process for the IRGC commanders by creating 31 local command centers in the 31 provincial capitals around the country. He made it clear that he was taking that step to be better prepared to confront the "internal enemy." He said he viewed the "internal threat" more dangerous than the external one, another indication that the IRGC was prepared for battle.

Second, if the Green Movement turns to violence, we may see Tehran's equivalent of the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre in China, when thousands were slaughtered by the Chinese army. Indeed, China has supplied the IRGC with the same anti-riot armored vehicles that it used on the students. We should keep in mind that the Chinese democratic movement was also very strong at the time (although provocations by foreign countries were also influential in those events); after the slaughter, however, the movement was essentially destroyed. In summary, the IRGC is ready to fight to the end, should the Green Movement resort to force.

Third, the fact that a Tienanmen-style event has not yet occurred, may indicate that even within the higher IRGC echelons there is a split on how to deal with the crisis. If the IRGC high command had been unified, we would have probably seen the use of violence on a much larger scale. At the same time, we have not witnessed the arrest of some key figures yet.

After former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was supposedly defeated by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the second round of the 2005 presidential election, Ayatollah Khamenei reportedly told him, "If you had won the election, the IRGC would have assassinated you." So the fact that Rafsanjani and the people around him, who are deeply despised by many of the hardliners, have still not been arrested may be yet another strong indication that the IRGC high command is not unified. We should keep in mind that after Banisadr's 1981 ouster, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini appointed Rafsanajani as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces until the end of the war, which enabled him to foster close relations with many of the young IRGC commanders who are now in high positions.

Similarly, despite much rhetoric against Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and former president Mohammad Khatami, they have not been arrested yet, even though the hardliners at the top of the IRGC command, such as Brigadier General Yadollah Javani (head of the political directorate of the IRGC), General Jafari, and Brigadier General Seyyed Masoud Jazayeri (deputy chief of staff of Iran's armed forces), have repeatedly called for their arrest, as well as the arrest of Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, the leftist cleric who is viewed by the hardliners as the key figure behind the scene.

We should add to this the fact that the regular army has been totally silent. The only notable figure in the regular army that has spoken out is the chief of staff of the armed forces, Major General Hassan Firoozabadi [who is actually a physician], a close friend of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. During the Iran-Iraq war, Ayatollah Khamenei (who was the president at the time) frequently visited the war front and forged a friendship with some of the commanders, including General Firoozabadi. But, aside from him, the regular army has been completely silent.

Fourth, violently confronting the IRGC and the Basij militia might lead to a civil war, pitting the people and possibly a large part of the regular army against the IRGC and the Basij. Given that ethnic minorities make up a significant part of the population, and have been suffering for decades (before and after the 1979 Revolution) as a result of cultural and economic discrimination at the hands of the central government, a large-scale confrontation between the people and the armed forces may stoke separatist tendencies among the minorities. It is certainly true that the vast majority of the people consider themselves first and foremost Iranian, then a Turk, Kurd, Lor or other ethnicity, but there are also extremists among ethnic minorities who harbor separatist tendencies, and are supported by foreign powers, in particular Israel.

A group based in Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan, that refers to Iran's Azerbaijan provinces as "southern Azerbaijan," advocates a merger with the Republic of Azerbaijan -- never mind that it was the Republic that was actually part of Iran up until 1828. The group was treated with political significance by the George W. Bush administration.

Another group called the Ahwaz Liberation Organization, which says it wants to liberate "Arab Khuzestan" from Iran, is reportedly supported by British agents.

Then, there is the Jundallah group that claims to fight on behalf of the Baluchi people. Though it says that it harbors no separatist claims, one can never be sure what may happen if Iran is thrown into total chaos, particularly given the support that the United States is believed to have provided it. Add to this the fact that right-wing Israeli politicians, and even academics in the United States (such as Bernard Lewis of Princeton University), have spoken favorably about breaking Iran up for years. Israel, in particular, has been active in Iraq's Kurdistan for years.

We must keep in mind that more than three decades ago, when the 1979 Revolution was gathering steam, the Cold war was at its height, Iran was in the Western camp and shared a long border with the Soviet Union. Therefore, its territorial integrity was guaranteed. In the event of a conflict now, I am not sure that would be the case. Perhaps the only factor that can prevent such a potential danger is for the Green movement to remain nonviolent.

It is often claimed by those who support economic sanctions against Iran that they can eventually lead to the downfall of the Islamic Republic. The example often cited to bolster their argument is South Africa. Aside from the fact that there have been many cases in which sanctions had no effect -- Iraq, Cuba and North Korea, to name just a few -- the apartheid regime gave up power in South Africa because the White minority came to realize that resisting the Black majority would be futile and lead to a loss of political and economic power anyway. At the same time, the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela and his comrades had assured the White leaders that there would be no campaign of revenge against them either. Sanctions actually played only a small part in bringing down the apartheid regime.

Similarly, the split in the IRGC high command, and the silence of the regular army, must be used to advantage. The rank and file of the armed forces and the Basij militia must come to the realization that the rule of the hardliners is no longer tenable, and that if the confrontation continues, they will eventually lose everything and be faced with nowhere to go. That will not be possible if the Green Movement turns violent. Only a nonviolent confrontation will be able to attract a great number of the armed forces.

Next, the Green Movement needs a national leadership team. It is true that the Movement has so far been a horizontal one, meaning every supporter has acted as a sort of local leader, but a national movement also needs national leaders. It is one thing to send e-mails and Tweets inviting people to take part in demonstrations, but what is really needed is to form a leadership team and prepare it for transition to a new stage of the struggle, or even for a new government. An important reason for the success of the 1979 Revolution was that it had a recognized leader and a leadership team [as opposed to what happened after the Revolution.]

Who are some of the possible candidates for the leadership team? Some say that the leaders will emerge from the ranks of the youth, particularly those in the universities. This is both idealistic and naïve. Iran is a complex country in one of the most turbulent regions of the world. It faces significant problems with the international community over such important issues as its nuclear program. These facts alone illustrate that Iran and the Green Movement need experienced leadership.

As always, there are the pretenders. The monarchists, for example, advocate Reza Pahlavi for this role. But he has lived his entire adult life outside Iran, and monarchy has no significant base of support in Iran. The Mojahedin Khalgh Organization (MKO) also likes to make claims to the leadership. But in addition to its numerous acts of treason against Iran and Iranians, its structure is strikingly similar to the Islamic Republic: It has a Supreme Leader (Masoud Rajavi) and an Ahmadinejad-style "president" (Maryam Rajavi).

Then are also pretenders to the leadership like Mohsen Sazegara and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who keep sending messages "to the people Iran," as if they were the true leaders of the Green Movement, but in fact are trying to position themselves to become one. But Sazegara opposed voting in the June 12 election, had close relations with arch-hawks such as Michael Rubin [an advocate of sanctions and possibly war with Iran] at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has been no friend to the Iranian people. He had close ties with the Washington Institute for Near East for Near East Policy, an offshoot of AIPAC, before gravitating toward the Green Movement out of pure opportunism.

This leaves us with the reformist leaders in Iran. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri was the true spiritual leader of the Movement before his untimely death, but there is no question, at least in my mind, that Mousavi, Karroubi, and Khatami currently symbolize the Green Movement. Among the three, Karroubi has been the most outspoken, Khatami the most cautious, and Mousavi the most prudent.

But all three have grown with the Movement. Khatami no longer just alludes to the excesses of the regime, but has taken increasingly firmer positions against it. Mousavi no longer uses the language of the 1979 Revolution [except for tactical reasons sometimes], and has taken increasingly tougher positions as well. For him, just as for many Iranians, this is no longer about the rigged election, but the future of Iran. And, Karroubi, though always frank, has taken unprecedented positions in the Islamic Republic. Just recently he said that the crimes committed on Ashura were not even something the Shah ever did.

Up until recently, the jury was still out on whether the trio truly led the Green Movement. It was particularly unclear whether Mousavi was truly interested in fundamental changes, or even had what it took to stand up for it. Two important points about Mousavi must be considered.

One, by all indications, he is recognized by most of the supporters of the Green Movement inside Iran, as well as the hardliners, as the symbol and the leader of the opposition. What some Iranians in the Diaspora -- particularly the monarchists -- claim is that "he is just an excuse." That is absurd. True, he was an excuse for such Iranians in the Diaspora, but I do not believe he was, or is for those living in Iran. The manner by which he has handled the assassination of his nephew on Ashura, refusing to issue a statement about it, saying there is no difference between his nephew and other martyrs of the Movement, has only added to the respect that most people in Iran have for him.

Second, Mousavi's role in the political killings of the 1980s is exaggerated. He was not in charge of the judiciary, nor did he control the Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC, which carried out the executions. He does bear a tremendous moral responsibility and at some point he must clarify his own thinking about the killings and his silence throughout the years. But, without meaning to take away any significance from those historical and catastrophic events, I believe that at the moment that is not the most urgent issue at hand.

In my view, Mousavi's most recent statement issued on Thursday has truly demonstrated his political skill and has elevated him to the true national leader of the opposition. Some say that by implicitly recognizing Ahmadinejad's government he has in effect retreated. This is simplistic thinking and absurd for at least three reasons.

One, accepting a government as a reality is not the same as accepting its legitimacy as a product of an election free of fraud. The hardliners control all levers of power -- money, military, executive decision-making, the judiciary, and the propaganda machine that is the Voice and Visage of the Islamic Republic (the national radio and TV networks). The only real power that the Green Movement has is its infectious popularity.

Second, it is naïve to believe that the hardliners do not have any social base; they do. They are probably supported by up to 20 percent of the population -- and armed to the teeth. If we are to believe the various leaks out of the Interior Ministry right after the rigged June 12 presidential election, Ahmadinejad had received about 11 million votes, representing 25 percent of eligible voters, which is also consistent with what the internal polls of the reformists had indicated.

Third, immediately after seemingly accepting the reality of Ahmadinejad's government and after declaring that he was not afraid to die for the cause of the people and the Green Movement, Mousavi mentioned the "uncommon support" that Ahmadinejad received, meaning the support by the IRGC and Ayatollah Khamenei himself. In other words, Mousavi was saying that without that support, the government will be immediately revealed to be shaky at best. In addition, Mousavi mocked Ahmadinejad's performance, and sarcastically pointed out that, although it is him and his comrades that are accused of having links with foreign governments, it is Ahmadinejad that has sent congratulatory letters to the leaders of the same nations. He also said pointedly that,

Suppose that through arrests and violence, silencing people and shutting down the [reformist] newspapers and [other] means of mass communication, calm and silence return to society. What are you [the hardliners] going to do about [the fact that] people's judgment about [the legitimacy of the] political establishment has changed? What are you going to do about the destruction of the legitimacy [of the political system]? What are you going to do about the world's rebuke and astonishment about so much violence that [your] government has used against its own people? What are you going to do about all the unsolved economic problems that due to the utter incompetence of the government continue to deteriorate? Based on what base of competence, national resolve [for supporting the government] and effective foreign policy are you going to remove the shadow of foreign powers that demand more concessions and [approve more] resolutions [at the United Nations Security Council]?

Thus, it is clear that Mousavi has only nodded to the fact that there is a government, however illegitimate, with much power behind it. Besides, this nod to the [illegitimate] government creates more divisions in the conservative camp. Many in that camp are not happy about what is happening, truly believe that the nation is in a deep crisis, and want to do something drastic about it.

Mousavi waited until after Wednesday's pro-government counter-demonstrations by the hardliners, in which he, his comrades, and the entire Green Movement were threatened with physical annihilation, to issue his statement. This was very clever and prudent. Mousavi's goal, as I have also emphasized in my analyses, is to keep the Movement peaceful, hopeful, and upbeat, which explains why he issued his statement after the counter-demonstrations.

Once the issue of the leadership has been settled -- and it seems to have been -- the next important issue is organization at the national level. The Green Movement demonstrated on Ashura that it was willing to pay any price to to resist the military-clerical dictatorship and advance democracy. Such an expression of readiness by the people must be reciprocated by the leadership by presenting them with ideas and solutions for the crisis that represent national consensus. It is clear that the hardliners have been trying their best to prevent the emergence of such a consensus, but it is the task of a true national leadership to develop the solution, regardless of the pressure and difficulties.

The first step toward developing such a consensus is, in my opinion, for Mousavi to lay less emphasis on religious aspects of his thinking; I say this as a practicing Muslim myself. No one can expect Mousavi to set aside his religious thinking and system of belief, but it is not unreasonable to expect him not to emphasize a "true religious government," even if he thinks that it can be democratic, and instead emphasize those aspects of his thinking that foster national unity. Mousavi is a true patriot and, therefore, there is nothing wrong with emphasizing Iranian patriotism.

At the same time, the strength of the Green Movement should be its acceptance of different schools of thought. People from all walks of life with all shades of thinking support the Movement. On Ashura, people demonstrated their national unity, regardless of their different ideologies. I have no doubt that some may still believe that a "true" Islamic Republic (however it might be defined) can be democratic, but there are others, who probably outnumber the first group, that do not believe so. This fact must be recognized by the leadership and, in particular, by Mousavi. All Mousavi needs to do is remind himself of the 1979 Revolution. At that time too there was a national movement. Many practicing Muslims, such as the author, supported the Revolution precisely because they thought that it would lead to the establishment of a democratic republic.

I perfectly understand Mousavi's caution. Religion still influences a significant segment of the population, particularly in small towns and villages. Why else would hardliners use violence on Ashura to force people to defend themselves, and then use their own violence as an excuse to stage counter-demonstrations -- under the pretext that the religious tradition has been insulted -- and call for physical elimination of the opposition? But what Mousavi should do is de-emphasize a religious political structure, not reject religion all together.

If these principles are recognized, then, Mousavi's nine demands as stated in his most recent statement can be used as the basis for continuing to advance the Green Movement. The nine demands are,

1. Formation of a truth commission, such that its findings and verdicts are accepted by all sides, for investigating the violations of the law and fraud during and after the election, and punishing those who were responsible.

2. Revising the election law in such a way that free and fair elections can be held.

3. Identifying and punishing those who were responsible for the crimes that have happened in all organs of the government, including military, police, and the media.

4. Helping those who have been hurt after the election, especially those who have lost their loved ones, release from prison of all the campaign workers and political activists, dismissing the bogus charges against them, restoring their credibility, and ending all the threats against them.

5. Putting into practice Article 168 of the Constitution by defining precisely what constitutes a political offense, and using a jury when the offenders are put on trial.

6. Guaranteeing freedom of the press, and changing the one-sided behavior of the Voice and Visage in order to eliminate all the limitations on its programs, so that the political parties can use the Voice and Visage to express their positions regarding various issues, and revising the law that governs the Voice and Visage, to make it responsive to people's demand.

7. Putting in practice Article 44 of the Constitution regarding privatization, so that private radio and television can also be created.

8. Passing legislation to forbid the military from intervening in political as well as economic affairs.

9. Releasing all the political prisoners.

Note that in his latest statement, Mousavi mentioned five of the nine demands as the starting point, but also said that other demands can be added.

By acting in such a prudent manner, Mousavi has put the onus on the hardliners and elevated himself to the level of a true national leader of the Green Movement. He has also made it clear that he wishes for the Green Movement to remain nonviolent. By advancing national unity and democratic principles, as well as de-emphasizing religious aspects of his thinking, Mousavi can be the best figure to lead Iran's march toward democracy.

Iran OR Ahmadinejad OR Mousavi. - Google Blog Search

Farideh Farhi — 2010-01-01 06:00:52 GMT

According to this narrative, by aiming to defeat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the election, the Green Movement led by Mussavi, Karrubi, former president Mohammad Khatami, and children of current Expediency Council and Council of Experts chair ...

Fil de presse - Le Devoir

Libération — 2009-12-31 05:00:00 GMT

Avec les événements de dimanche, a-t-on atteint un point de non-retour en Iran?: Absolument. On a franchi un cap à la fois en ce qui concerne la violence de la répression mais aussi celle des manifestants contre les forces de l'ordre. Jusqu'à présent, les trois leaders de l'opposition, Mir Hossein Moussavi, Mehdi Karoubi et Mohammad Khatami [l'ancien président] faisaient tout pour que le mouvement demeure non-violent. Les mots d'ordre prônaient l'organisation de manifestations pacifiques. Et c'était très efficace. C'est comme cela que la contestation a pu s'étendre dans tout le pays, y compris dans de petites villes. Comme à Arak, qui a voté majoritairement pour Ahmadinejad à l'élection de 2005 et a basculé dans le camp de l'opposition. Mais, hier, certains manifestants disaient qu'ils n'en pouvaient plus de la violence de la répression et qu'il leur fallait réagir. Cette radicalisation comporte des risques: elle va pousser les Iraniens ordinaires à ne plus descendre dans la rue. Et les dirigeants iraniens à réprimer plus durement encore. Au point que cela pourrait créer des frictions au sein de la police. Le Guide de la révolution aurait pu intervenir pour limiter cette répression mais il a préféré faire la sourde oreille.

Correio Braziliense

2009-12-30 11:43:00 GMT

Um dia santo marcado por protestos e manchado por mortes foi o bastante para expor uma vez mais as fraturas no establishment político, religioso e militar da República Islâmica. Ainda sob o impacto das manifestações do último domingo, quando os muçulmanos xiitas (majoritários no Irã) celebravam o martírio de um de seus líderes mais venerados, porta-vozes da facção mais linha-dura do regime pediam “pena máxima” para os dirigentes da oposição reformista. Mas ao menos uma importante autoridade, um conservador definido como “pragmático”, estabeleceu distinções entre os adversários — e um limite para o exercício da contestação.

“O Majlis (Parlamento iraniano) quer que os serviços secretos e as autoridades judiciais prendam as pessoas que insultam a religião e imponham a elas a pena máxima, em particular aos que destruíram bens públicos”, discursou ontem o presidente do Legislativo, Ali Larijani. Veterano da cúpula do regime, até o ano passado envolvido nas negociações internacionais sobre o programa nuclear, Larijani fez carreira à sombra do líder religioso supremo, o aiatolá Ali Khamenei, expoente da facção conservadora. Mas o presidente do Majlis deixou claro que vê diferenças entre os adversários da República Islâmica e os que lutam para reformá-la em benefício da sociedade civil. “Estabelecemos uma distinção entre os movimentos políticos que representam a esquerda dentro do regime e os contrarrevolucionários.”

A esquerda mencionada por Larijani corresponde à coalizão reformista que nas eleições de junho apresentou o líder reformista Mir Hossein Mousavi para desafiar o presidente Mahmud Ahmadinejad, protegido de Khamenei. A reeleição de Ahmadinejad foi recebida com denúncias de fraude generalizada e uma onda de manifestações reprimidas com violência. A oposição voltou às ruas no domingo, aproveitando a procissão da ashura, que marca a morte do imã xiita Hussein, e os confrontos se repetiram nas ruas de Teerã. Entre os oito mortos está um sobrinho do candidato reformista, Ali Mousavi, cujo corpo desapareceu do necrotério na segunda-feira.

Ameaças
As divergências do presidente do Majlis com a linha dura começam pela morte do jovem oposicionista: segundo a polícia, ele teria sido assassinado “por terroristas” e nem teria participado das manifestações, embora o cineasta Mohsen Makhmalbaf, que vive em Paris e é expoente dos círculos intelectuais que contestam o regime, tenha garantido que Ali Mousavi recebera ameaças de morte dias antes. Mais pronunciada, porém, é a diferença de tom no que diz respeito ao tratamento dos reformistas. “Os que estão por trás da sedição atualmente em curso no país são mohareb (“inimigos de Deus”), e a lei é muito clara sobre a punição prevista para eles”, declarou o aiatolá Abbas Vaez-Tabasi, que representa o líder supremo na província de Khorasan. A Constituição prevê a pena de morte para os mohareb, e outra voz que pediu a execução para os líderes oposicionistas — sem distinções — foi o aiatolá Ahmed Khatami, orador oficial das orações comunitárias em Teerã.

As dissonâncias entre “pragmáticos” e “duros”, que dominam as instituições desde que o reformista Mohammad Khatami passou a presidência para Ahmadinejad, eleito pela primeira vez em 2005, atestam o paradoxo descrito por um alto diplomata brasileiro que acompanha de perto a aproximação com o Irã. “É uma sociedade muito mais complexa e com muito mais nuanças políticas do que qualquer um dos países vizinhos”, disse esse diplomata, referindo-se aos vizinhos árabes da República Islâmica. A despeito dos “rasgos teocráticos” do regime e dos limites acanhados para a oposição, se comparados aos parâmetros do Ocidente, o Irã “tem eleições disputadas de verdade”, segundo essa fonte, e “uma sociedade civil organizada e participante, como ficou demonstrado nas manifestações de junho”.

Pressão externa
Apontados pelos líderes do regime iraniano como instigadores dos protestos do último domingo, os governos ocidentais condenaram a repressão aos manifestantes e a onda de prisões de opositores. França e Reino Unido pediram a pronta libertação “das pessoas presas injustamente”, atendendo à pressão de manifestações que se sucedem diante das representações iranianas em diversas capitais europeias, como Berlim e Bruxelas (foto). A resposta do presidente Mahmud Ahmadinejad não demorou: ele acusou os dissidentes de “seguir o roteiro traçado” pelo Ocidente e prometeu que eles “fracassarão”.

O chanceler iraniano, Manouchehr Mottaki, abandonou a linguagem diplomática e disse que Londres receberá de troco “um murro na boca”.

Análise da notícia
República é a questão
A crise política mais aguda e prolongada nos 30 anos desde a revolução islâmica diz respeito àquele que é seu traço mais marcante, do ponto de vista da história iraniana: em 1979, depois de mais de 2 mil anos de monarquia (quase sempre despótica), os aiatolás instituíram o regime republicano. Este o amálgama que propiciou a coalizão, quase inverossímil, entre setores laicos da oposição à dinastia Pahlevi — desde liberais até a extrema esquerda — e o clero xiita. Todos sob o manto onipotente do aiatolá Khomeini, inspirador da insurreição pacífica.

É a noção da república que está novamente em pauta nos protestos que se repetem agora, passados seis meses da contestada reeleição do presidente Mahmud Ahmadinejad, sob as bênçãos do líder religioso supremo, o aiatolá Ali Khamenei. Entre os manifestantes que saem às ruas de Teerã não faltam aqueles que almejam pôr abaixo a teocracia, mas é provável que sejam ainda mais numerosos os partidários de reformas nos marcos do regime. Desde os primeiros meses e anos da revolução, eles disputam espaços, em especial no Parlamento, com a linha-dura conservadora e autoritária.

A aliança tácita entre “contrarrevolucionários” e reformistas, selada sob bombas de gás e cassetetes, coloca em questão os limites da República Islâmica. Mais concretamente: até onde pode ir o poder da cidadania e a partir de que ponto se impõe a tutela do establishment militar-religioso. (SQ)

Fúria no Paquistão
O governo paquistanês pediu ontem “calma e moderação” aos líderes dos muçulmanos xiitas, minoritários em relação à corrente sunita, enquanto multidões saíam às ruas de Karachi, capital econômica do país, para sepultar os primeiros dos 43 mortos no atentado da véspera, quando um homem-bomba atacou a procissão xiita da ashura. Pela manhã, bombeiros ainda combatiam as chamas que destruíram parte do comércio da cidade, atacado pelos fiéis enfurecidos com a carnificina.

Embora nenhum grupo tenha assumido a autoria do ataque, as suspeitas apontam na direção de militantes ligados à rede terrorista Al-Qaeda e seus aliados talibãs. Ambos são de confissão sunita e, embora se declarem em guerra com o Ocidente, cometem com frequência atentados contra a minoria xiita, acusada de “heresia”. O ministro do Interior, Rehman Malik, vê na sucessão dos acontecimentos o desenrolar de um complô para desestabilizar o governo e o presidente Asif Ali Zardari, mas insinuou que também os xiitas têm responsabilidade na onda de violência. “Acreditamos que se tratou de uma conspiração, de uma ação planejada”, disse o ministro. “E aqueles que se voltaram para o vandalismo não passam de infiéis sob o manto de manifestantes.”

A terça-feira amanheceu com a maior parte dos postos de gasolina de Karachi fechados e o centro comercial ainda fumegando, resultado dos incêndios iniciados pouco depois do atentado. De acordo com os bombeiros, dois edifícios comerciais ruíram e um terceiro apresentava risco de desabamento. “Nosso escritório ficou totalmente queimado, tudo destruído”, lamentava Saleem Khan, dono de uma locadora de automóveis. Karachi é um dos focos principais de tensão entre sunitas e xiitas, que representam 20% da população, mas se concentram na região.

O presidente Zardari, aliado ao Ocidente no combate aos fundamentalistas, pertence ele próprio à elite econômica e política xiita de Karachi. Ele é viúvo da ex-premiê Benazir Bhutto, morta em um atentado no início de 2008. O pai de Benazir, o também ex-premiê Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, foi deposto em 1977 pelo general Zia Ul-Haq, aliado dos fundamentalistas sunitas, e enforcado dois anos mais tarde. Embora o clã lidere um partido declaradamente laico, tem origens religiosas xiitas, expressas, entre outros símbolos, no nome do patriarca: Zulfikar era o nome da espada usada por Ali, genro do profeta Maomé e primeiro imã (guia) do xiismo.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2009-12-29 20:32:17 GMT

Dec. 29, 2009

Qoba mosque in Shiraz under Basiji attack

Raheh Sabz

Militia forces that had been surrounding the Qoba Mosque in Shiraz since early Tuesday morning mounted attacks on the mosque where Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Mohammad Dastgheib delivers sermons.

Basijis and plainclothes agents chanted slogans against Ayatollah Dastgheib, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammad Khatami and attacked the mosque with bricks and stones.

Ayatollah Dasteghieb's students positioned themselves inside the mosque and tried to keep the 'invaders' from entering the sacred place of worship. A group of the Grand Ayatollah's supporters rushed to the scene to help safeguard the mosque.

Ayatollah Dastgheib issued a statement of warning on Monday against the illegal behavior of authorities and a crackdown on protestors.

Ayatollah Dastgheib is a Shia Source of Emulation and a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body tasked with appointing a new Leader for the Islamic Republic in the event of the Leader's death.

Ayatollah Dastgheib studied under Grand Ayatollahs Rouhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's revolution, Seyyed Mohammad-Reza Golpayegani and Hajj Seyyed Ali Akbar Khoei.

Larijani raps US, UK over Tehran protests

Press TV

Iran's parliament speaker condemns US and British officials for their reactions to disturbances in Tehran, saying that they orchestrated the "sacrilegious" events.

Addressing the parliament on Tuesday, Ali Larijani said that Iran was not surprised about the stance that Washington and London had taken towards the anti-government protests, which were held during Sunday's Shia Muslim ceremonies of Ashura.

According to Tehran chief prosecutor general Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, seven people were killed in the clashes that broke out between security forces and demonstrators in Tehran on Sunday.

The Tehran police headquarters said that the police forces neither used violence nor fired a single bullet on Sunday.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2009-12-28 15:30:09 GMT

Body of Mousavi's nephew taken from the morgue

Gooya | Dec. 28, 2009

Security and civil forces took the body of Seyyed Ali Mousavi from the Avicenna Hospital morgue [supposedly] to prevent his funeral procession from turning into a widespread protest.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi's nephew was reportedly shot dead in the anti-government protests in Tehran on Ashura.

"They have taken my brother's body from Avicenna hospital and wherever we look for him we can't find him," Mousavi's other nephew, Seyyed Reza, told Parleman News.

"No one is claiming responsibility for taking the body and they are not answering us," he said.

"Until we find the body [of my brother] all funeral ceremonies are off."

"Whenever my brother's body is found we will use the media to inform people about the ceremony."

Bodies being held for investigation

Parleman | Dec. 28, 2009

The Islamic Republic News Agency said authorities were holding the body of Mir Hossein Mousavi's nephew, Seyyed Ali Mousavi, along with the bodies of other victims of the Ashura protests to complete investigations.

IRNA stressed that the circumstances of Ali Mousavi's death were suspicious, adding that his body would be held to complete investigations and find more clues in the case.

Contrary to reports by Kayhan and Raja News, which claimed Ali Mousavi was killed in Kalej Avenue, IRNA said that he was shot to death in Enqelab Square.

IRNA stressed that Ali Mousavi's relation to the opposition leader, the bullet and gun used to kill him, as well as other evidence suggested that assassination teams had killed Ali Mousavi.

Paris based filmmaker claims Mousavi's nephew killed in front of home

Makhmalbaf | Dec. 28, 2009

Mir Hossein Mousavi's international spokesperson wrote on his Web site late Sunday that the opposition figure's 43-year old nephew Seyed Ali Mousavi was assassinated in front of his home Sunday and was not shot during protests as initially reported.

Mr. Mousavi was run over by a sport utility vehicle in front of his home, Paris-based Mohsen Makhmalbaf wrote on his personal Web site. Five men then emerged from the car and one of them shot Mr. Ali Mousavi through the chest, he said. Security agents told Mr. Mousavi's family late Sunday that they would be taking his body to the Kahrizak medical facility and warned the family that they could not have a funeral, according to Mr. Makhmalbaf.

Iran police close metro station in capital

BBC Monitoring | Dec. 28, 2009

The Shahid Beheshti, Motahari and Haft Tir metro stations have been closed by order of law enforcement officials.

According to a Jaras reporter, police presence has intensified in central Tehran and there have been intermittent clashes in various locations, particularly near Haft Tir square.

Karroubi attacked by plainclothes agents on Ashura

Gooya | Dec. 28, 2009

Opposition cleric Mehdi Karroubi was attacked by plainclothes agents upon leaving Tehran's Ayatollah Ghaffari mosque where he had attended the Ashura ceremonies with his family.

According to Salaam News, assailants attacked Karroubi's car and shattered the windshield. The assailants fled the scene after people came to Karroubi's aid.

IRIB bars radio host from building

Parleman | Dec. 28, 2009

Shahin Mahinfar, a veteran Iranian radio host whose son was killed in the Ashura protests, has reportedly been barred from returning to work at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

According to an IRIB security personnel, after news about Mahinfar's son was reported by the media, a fax was sent to security guards at all IRIB entrances ordering them to deny her entry until further notice.

Over 1,000 protestors arrested on Ashura in Tehran

Gooya | Dec. 28, 2009

More than 1,000 protestors were arrested by riot police in the unrest that broke out in Tehran on Ashura.

A human rights organization placed the number of detained protestors transferred to Evin prison at 1,100. Prisoner overflow caused authorities to transfer the detainees in handcuffs and shackles with military buses to an unknown location.

Iran cracks down on opponents after deadly protests

AFP | Dec. 28, 2009

Iranian security forces on Monday arrested seven anti-government figures in a crackdown launched a day after at least eight people were killed in fierce clashes in Tehran, opposition websites said.

Those rounded up were two outspoken critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, three aides to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, including his top adviser Alireza Beheshti, and two aides to reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatami, the websites said.

The security force raids are certain to further antagonize the opposition, which has defied the authorities to stage noisy protests at every opportunity since Ahmadinejad was returned to power in a disputed June presidential election.

State-run English language Press TV on Monday put the death toll from the clashes at eight, quoting an official with Iran's Supreme National Security Council. It did not specify in which cities the victims were killed.

Basij forces threaten detainees with rape

Rahe Sabz | Dec. 28, 2009

One of the detainees of the Ashura protests said that Basij forces violently assaulted protestors in custody and threatened them with rape.

The unnamed source told Jaras that he had been among the group of detained protestors who had been transferred to the Meqdad Garrison in Azadi Street.

According to the source, they had been blindfolded and forced to squat for hours. The Basijis had verbally and physically assaulted them, and threatened them with rape.

The unnamed source told Jaras that the militiamen had taken away their shoes and released a group of the detainees after sunset.

Names of Ashura victims announced

Ayandeh | Dec. 28, 2009

Iranian police announced the names of the eight victims of the Ashura protests in Tehran, stressing the suspicious circumstances of these deaths.

The names announced are as follows:

1. Mehdi Farhadirad, 34; cause of death: shot in the face by 25 shotgun pellets.

2. Mohammad-Ali Rasekhinia, 40; cause of death: shot by a hunting rifle.

3. Amir Arshadi, 30; cause of death: unknown.

4. Shahram Faraji, 30, cause of death: unknown.

5. Seyyed Ali Mousavi Habibi, 42, cause of death: gunshot wound.

6. Jahanbakht Pazouki, 50; cause of death: unknown.

7. John Doe, 31; cause of death: knife wound.

8. Jane Doe, 43; cause of death: fall or auto accident.

Ashura protests 'pre-planned scenario' by foreign media

BBC Monitoring | Dec. 28, 2009

During its 10:30 GMT news bulletin on 28 December, Iranian radio reported on public "condemnation and abhorrence" at the "insult of Islamic sanctities" on Ashura, the tenth day of the mourning month of Moharram, which coincided with 27 December.

In a report, a correspondent reported on foreign media coverage of the incidents and riots in Tehran on the day of Ashura and said that the media's extensive coverage of the incidents showed that the unrest on this day was a "pre-planned scenario."

He said that foreign media such as BBC Persian TV had become so infatuated with Ashura that they broadcast "Ashura teasers." He said that BBC experts had announced that Iranian police had told the organizers of Ashura processions not to bring the mourning groups to the streets, and had said that Ashura processions are government sponsored. The correspondent described such comments and announcements as "orders" which even the organizers of Ashura mourning processions in Iran hadn't heard of.

The correspondent said: "It was after these call ups that Ashura was chosen as the day of riots and the opposition cheered and shouted slogans against the people's sanctities."

In another report, a correspondent said that various Iranian organizations, associations and societies had condemned the unrest which occurred in various areas of Tehran and had demanded that the "rioters" be dealt with firmly.

In an interview with Iranian radio, Hojjat ol-Eslam val Moslemin Hoseyni-Bushehri, the deputy head of the Qom Seminary School's Lecturers and Teachers' Association, said that the people could not tolerate incidents such as the ones which occurred in Tehran on Ashura especially after "they realize that foreign enemies are supporting, planning, and preparing the stage for such incidents."

According to the radio, in a statement another cleric Ayatollah Vaez-Tabasi, a representative of the supreme leader and the head of the Khorasan Seminary School, has condemned the incidents and the insulting of Islamic values and sanctities. Iranian radio also reported that the Majlis Principle-ist faction has also called for those elements behind the unrest to be brought to justice and dealt with firmly.

The correspondent also quoted the commander of the Tehran Law Enforcement Force [LEF] as saying that in a few areas of Tehran, the LEF had used anti-riot kit and equipment to deal seriously with and disperse the rioters who were insulting Islamic sanctities, and had not used any fire arms.

The correspondent confirmed that five people were "suspiciously" killed during the riots and a number of other people were injured, and added that experts were determined to identify the "suspicious" elements in these incidents.

Iranian radio also reported that the Majlis Supreme National Security and Foreign Policy Committee was to hold a meeting tomorrow to study the Ashura incidents in Tehran. The radio quoted the rapparteur of the committee as saying that the Iranian interior minister and other security officials had been invited to exchange views with the Majlis deputies on the issue.

Police did not use bullets during riots

Ayandeh | Dec. 28, 2009

The reformist Ayandeh News Web site has reported that according to eye witnesses the Iranian Law Enforcement Force [LEF] did not use bullets against protesters during the riots in Tehran yesterday.

According to an Ayandeh correspondent, two eye witnesses said the two people killed near the Kalej Passover in central Tehran yesterday were shot from a close range by a pistol carried by plain-clothed agents.

Iran arrests reformist cleric

Rahe Sabz | Dec. 28, 2009

The head of the Researchers and Teachers of the Qom Seminary School, a reformist group, has been arrested.

Governmental news agency Borna said: Seyyed Hossein Mousavi-Tabrizi and some other members of the Researchers and Teachers of the Qom Seminary School were arrested.

Ayatollah Taheri's son and Khomeini son-in-law arrested in Isfahan

Ayandeh | Dec. 28, 2009

The son of Ayatollah Seyyed Jalaloldin Taheri, the Leader's former representative in Isfahan, has been arrested.

Mohammad Taheri, who is married to one of the Khomeini granddaughters, was arrested Monday.

Ayatollah Taheri, who was formerly Isfahan's Friday Prayers Leader, was denied permission to hold a memorial service for Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri last Monday.

Iran's prominent rights activist arrested

Ayandeh | Dec. 28, 2009

According to the Iranian news Web site, Ayandeh News, prominent human rights activist Emadeddin Baqi was arrested in his home this morning.

Baqi is the head of the Society for the Defense of Prisoners' Rights in Iran.

In a separate report, Ayandeh News announced that three reformist figures who worked for the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi were also arrested today.

According to this Web site, the arrested individuals are the people in charge of Mousavi's office, Foruzandeh, senior advisor of Mousavi, Mohammad Baqerian and the head of Mousavi's election headquarters, Qorban Behzadiyanejad.

Daughter of Ezatollah Sahabi arrested

Rahe Sabz | Dec. 28, 2009

The daughter of Ezatollah Sahabi, Haleh, was arrested by security forces in front of her home.

Haleh Sahabi was also arrested and held for a few days in June after the protest in Baharestan Square.

Since this morning at least 10 political activists have been arrested.

Mousavi aides arrested

Parleman | Dec. 28, 2009

Three of Mir Hossein Mousavi's aides were arrested following the protests that engulfed Tehran on Ashura.

According to Parleman News, Alireza Beheshti Shirazi, Qorban-Ali Behzadian Nejad and Mohammad Baqerian were arrested on Monday morning.

Journalist Mostafa Izadi detained

Advar News | Dec. 28, 2009

Writer and journalist Mostafa Izadi was detained, following a raid of his home by security officers.

Izadi worked for the Sobh-e Emrouz daily. He formerly wrote for the Etemad-e Melli daily, and was the editor-in-chief of the Ava weekly. He was arrested in 2000 on charges of propagating Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri's ideology.

He has also authored a biography of Ayatollah Montazeri.

Son of Mostafa Moein arrested

Parleman | Dec. 28, 2009

The son of Mostafa Moein, former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami's science minister, was arrested in the Ashura unrest in Tehran.

According to Parleman News, Mohammad Moein was assaulted and arrested on Ashura and transferred to an unknown location.

Qadyani arrested, Armin still free

Kalameh | Dec. 28, 2009

Following the unrest on Ashura, security officials arrested Abulfazl Qadyani but were unsuccessful in detaining Mohsen Armin as he was not
home.

Qadyani is a member of the Islamic Republic Mujahedin Organization (IRMO).

According to Parleman News, Armin, who is the IRMO spokesman, was not home and could not be taken into custody.

Report of Behshti, Mousavi Tabrizi's arrest rejected

Khabar Online | Dec. 28, 2009

After reports suggested that Alireza Hosseini Beheshti and Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi had been arrested, rejection statements were issued. After the news broke of the arrest of Mousavi Tabrizi, who heads the Assembly of Qom Seminary Professors and Scholars, Fazel Meybodi, one of the members of the clerical organization, rejected the report.

While some sources had reported the arrest of Mohammad Ali Ayazi, an AQSPS member, Khabar Online found the report to be baseless after contacting Ayaazi.

It has been reported that Beheshti has been summoned by authorities. However, no news has been received about his arrest.

Website rejects arrest of three reformists

Khabar Online | Dec. 28, 2009

Khabar Online has rejected the news of the arrests of Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi, Ali Reza Hosseini Beheshti and Mohammad Ali Ayazi.

Hossein Mousavi Tabrizi and Mohammad Ali Ayazi are members of the Theological Lecturers Association of Qom. Ali Reza Hosseini-Beheshti is the senior adviser of the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

According to Khabar Online, Beheshti has received a summons but has not been arrested.

Prosecutor says no one killed, arrested in Tabriz

ISNA | Dec. 28, 2009

The prosecutor of Tabriz announced, "During Ashura's ceremony in Tabriz no one was arrested, and people held mourning ceremonies in a calm, normal and usual way."

In an interview with ISNA's reporter of judicial affairs, Yahya Mirza-Mohammadi said, "In these ceremonies no clashes erupted and not even a single individual was killed."

Russia Concerned by events, regrets allegations of interference

BBC Monitoring | Dec. 28, 2009

Text of "A commentary by the Department of Information and Press of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia in connection with reports about opposition demonstrations in Iran" by Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website on 28 December:

We are concerned by the events that have been taking place in Iran in recent days. Unfortunately, we have to state that the clashes between demonstrators and law-enforcement forces in Tehran and a number of other towns of the Islamic Republic of Iran have exacerbated the political situation in the country.

In our opinion, the main thing in such a situation is to exercise restraint, search for and find compromises on the basis of the law, make political effort to prevent further escalation of internal standoff.

We deeply regret that against this uneasy background false reports are being circulated about an alleged involvement of Moscow in the domestic political processes in Iran. We are sure that this is being done by those opposed to the development of Russian-Iranian cooperation, those who are trying to cause damage to the friendship and understanding between our peoples through such provocative actions. Russia's position of principle is well known. We have not interfered and are not interfering in Iran's internal affairs, or those of any other state for that matter. We are sure that the Iranians are capable of sorting out their problems and hope that they will successfully overcome them.

[Dated] 28 December 2009

[A member of the Foreign Ministry Department of Information and Press has also said, as quoted by Interfax: "We received with regret reports from Iran about clashes that have led to a loss of life." "We call on all the political forces of Iran to refrain from violent action and bloodshed," he said.]

Iran reformist daily to close down soon

Raja News | Dec. 28, 2009

Citing Parsineh news Web site, the conservative news Web site Rajanews has reported that the reformist daily, E'temad will close down soon.

Rajanews has reported that the paper will close down due to "its political stances and serious financial problems."

E'temad has been publishing since seven years ago. Its managing director is Elias Hazrati, former MP for Rasht and Tehran, and a senior member of the reformist National Trust Party.

Iran bars single women from working in gas field

AFP | Dec. 28, 2009

Iran has barred single women from working for a state firm that operates a huge gas field and petrochemical plants on the shores of the Gulf, the Fars news agency reported on Monday.

"Oil Minister (Masoud Mirkazemi) has emphasised that single women should not be present in Assalouyeh," the deputy director of the Pars Special Economic Energy Zone Company, Pirouz Mousavi, said. Mousavi did not elaborate on whether any women had yet been laid off as a result of the order.

More than 18 months ago, Iranian newspapers carried an instruction by the company requiring that "single employees start creating a family." As being married is one of the criteria of employment, we are announcing for the last time that all female and male colleagues have until September 21 to go ahead with this important and moral religious duty," the instruction said.

As in the oil and gas industry through much of the world, most Iranians working in the hydrocarbons sector are single males. Sexual relations outside of marriage are illegal in Iran, for the most part a traditional society where young people are normally encouraged by their families to marry in their 20s and swiftly bear children.

Since hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, there has been a crackdown on all behaviour regarded as un-Islamic, and dress codes and Muslim mores have again been strictly enforced.

Ayatollah Dastgheib condoles Mousavi, calls for meeting people's demands

Dastgheib.ir | Dec. 28, 2009

Shia source of Emulation Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Mohammad Dastgheib sent a message of condolence to Mir Hossein Mousavi and called on the establishment to meet the logical demands of the nation.

"It was heard that Mr. Engineer Mir Hossein Mousavi's nephew Seyyed Ali Mousavi Khamenei and a few others were martyred in clashes in the month of *haram [Muharam] and on Ashura.

"I would like to, firstly, offer my condolences to Mr. Engineer Mir Hossein Mousavi, a believer in God, the prophet and the Imams (PBUT) and a devotee of the revolution and to his family.

"Secondly, I request that authorities track down the murderers and try them.

"Thirdly, for the umpteenth time I request that the legitimate and logical demands of the God-fearing ... nation be taken in to account; use the Qoran, tradition and constitution as the final order; free the prisoners; and stop this illegal and anti-religious acts committed in
the name of safeguarding the establishment."

He urged religious scholars to call the establishment to virtue and dissuade it from vice and convince the establishment to act according to the law so that the revolution would not wither away at the hands of fanatics.

Muharam is one of the four Islamic months on which bloodshed is forbidden according to the Qoran.

Abdollah Nouri's brother, two nephews arrested in Isfahan

Gooya | Dec. 28, 2009

Despite the police ban on holding any religious ceremonies on the eve of Ashura in Isfahan, no clashes were reported.

According to Jaras, around 3 p.m. yesterday, plainclothes agents responded to people with violence. In the protests in the streets of Isfahan's Hosseinabad, 400 to 500 people were arrested and transferred to the local prison -- a large group of them are still in detention.

Abdollah Nouri's brother Habib, 50, and his son Reza as well as his other nephew, Mehdi, were among the detainees.

Martial law imposed on Najafabad

Gooya | Dec. 28, 2009

After the unrest in Najafabad escalated, police imposed martial law on the city which is the birthplace of the late Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri.

According to Jaras, at 9 p.m. Sunday night police patrolled the town and announced from loudspeakers that martial law was in place, ordering people not to leave their homes.

Reports of sporadic clashes in central Tehran

Rahe Sabz | Dec. 28, 2009

A few minutes ago [earlier today], sporadic clashes started in Tehran's Haft-e Tir Square.

According to a Jaras reporter, the police are trying to disperse people by batons. Hundreds of police special forces have been deployed with their vehicles to the square and other avenues of Tehran.

Video: Obama's Iran message

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2009-12-28 18:55:28 GMT

Or a second coup?

[ comment ] Former president Mohammad Khatami called the June 12 election a "velvet coup" against the people of Iran. Now as the Green Movement gains momentum, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) seems poised to stage a second such coup.

As predicted, the Green Movement came out in force on December 27, the day of Ashura. Even before the day had ended, the IRGC, its intelligence unit and the Ministry of Intelligence had rounded up political figures, journalists, university activists and others. The police announced the arrest of 1100 people in Tehran on Sunday alone.

In an apparent warning to the Reformist leaders, those arrested included their children and key aides:

Haleh Sahabi, a daughter of Ezatollah Sahabi, leader of the Nationalist-Religious Coalition; she had also been arrested after the rigged June 12 presidential election;

Mohammad Taheri, a son of Ayatollah Seyyed Jalaloddin Taheri, a progressive cleric and close friend of the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri;

Mohammad Moein, a son of Dr. Mostafa Moein, former Minister of Science and Research in the administration of Mohammad Khatami, a former Majles deputy, and a reformist candidate in the 2005 presidential election;

Habibollah Nouri, a brother of Abdollah Nouri, Khatami's Interior Minister and an outspoken reformist. In addition, his son Reza and nephew Mehdi have also been arrested, all in Isfahan, where it is estimated that up to 500 people were arrested yesterday.

Leila Tavassoli, a daughter of Mohammad Tavassoli, a leading figure of the Freedom Movement, a reformist group, and Tehran's first Mayor after the 1979 Revolution. Tavassoli is a niece of Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi, the leader of the Freedom Movement.

In addition to these arrests, Mir Hossein Mousavi's nephew, Seyyed Ali Mousavi Habibi, was shot dead on Ashura. Reports indicate that he had been threatened for several days prior to this religious holiday. His body was snatched by a security agent from Ibn Sina hospital and transferred to an unknown location.

Among the journalists arrested were:

Mostafar Izadi, who worked for the reformist daily Etemad [trust]. He was the founder and managing editor of Ava [sound], a reformist publication from 1997-2000. It was closed by the hardliners for "propagating [Grand Ayatollah] Montazeri's thinking." He has also published a book about Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.

Dr. Alireza Beheshti, the managing editor of Kalame [word], Mousavi's official site. He is a son of Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Beheshti, a close aide of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the first judiciary chief after the 1979 Revolution killed in a bomb blast in June 1981.

Emad Baghi, the distinguished investigative journalist and head of the Society for the Defense of the Rights of the Imprisoned. He has already been jailed twice in the past. When he was arrested at his home today, he told his family that, "he would be strong in jail, and resist pressure [by hardliners]." The security agent arresting him reportedly responded that "He [Baghi] will not live that long to resist."

The university activists arrested include,

Dr. Mohammad Sadegh Rabbani, a retired chemistry professor at the University of Tehran, who was active in human rights issues;

Hashmatollah Tabarzadi, a university activist who has spent an aggregate of seven years in jail;

Mehdi Arabshahi, Secretary General of Daftar-e Tahkim Vahdat [Office for Consolidation of Unity (OCU)], Iran's most important organization for university students;

Rashid Esmaili, a member of the central committee of the OCU;

Reza Nikookar and Mehdi Ebrahimi, two university activists at Sari University [in northern Iran], and

Twenty five university activists at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad [in northeastern Iran]; it is not even clear where they have been taken.

These are in addition to Majid Tavakoli and Milad Asadi, two well-known university activists who were arrested after large demonstrations on 16 Azar (December 7), Iran's Student Day. In addition, Salman Sima, Mehrdad Bozorg, and Kouhzad Esmaili, members of Advar-e Tahkim [an organization representing the graduates of the OCU] had been arrested a short time earlier. The president of Advar, journalist Dr. Ahmad Zeidabadi, and Abdollahh Momeni, a former president of the organization, have been languishing in jail for months.

Of those arrested, the following represent the second layer of leadership of the Green Movement (they are close aides and senior advisers to Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammad Khatami):

Morteza Haji, former minister of education in the second Khatami administration, and head of BARAN, the NGO that Khatami established for promoting dialogue;

Reza Rasouli, deputy to Haji;

Ghorban Behzadinejad, Mousavi's campaign manager;

Mohammad Bagherian, a senior aide to Mousavi;

Ali Forouzandeh, Mousavi's Chief of Staff;

Dr. Ebrahimi Yazdi, leader of the reformist Freedom Movement, who was also arrested for three days after the June election as well;

Abolfazl Ghadyani, a member of the central committee of the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organization (one of the most important reformist groups), who was also active against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi before the 1979 Revolution;

Seyyed Abolfazl Mousavian, Secretary General of the Association of Teachers and Researchers of Qom, a reformist clerical organization.

Reports indicate that security agents had gone to the home of Mohsen Armin, the spokesman for the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organization, to arrest him, but he was not home. So his arrest appears to be imminent.

Even family members of those who lost their lives to political violence have not been immune from arrest. Zohreh Tonekaboni, Mahin Fahmini and her son Omid Montazeri have been arrested. Both women have been active in the Mothers for Peace group, an NGO for mothers who have lost children as a result of political violence or war. Fahmini's husband Hamid Montazeri was executed in the summer of 1988.

At the same time, the regime's propaganda machine has been laying the foundation for an a harsher and more violent crackdown on the Green Movement. The Guardian Council [a constitutional body that supervises elections and vets candidates for most elections] issued a harshly-worded statement demanding harsh punishment for those who 'insulted Islam and [made a mockery of] Ashura day," and in particular the "leaders of the sedition," a reference to the Green Movement. This, in itself, represents a gross violation of the laws that govern the work of the Council, which is supposed to be totally neutral.

Right-wing Web sites and publications are replete with stories about "insults against Islam and Ashura." One even claimed that "the holy Qoran had been burnt" on the day of Ashura.

Hard-line Majles deputies had a meeting with the representatives of the Ministry of Intelligence at 6:30 a.m. on Monday, December 27. An unidentified source called for the arrests of the "leaders of the sedition," a reference to the trio: Mousavi, Karroubi and Khatami.

These events suggest that the hardliners wanted a bloody confrontation with the demonstrators on Ashura to justify a subsequent crackdown. As Mehdi Karroubi said in a strong statement that he issued last night, "Even the Shah respected Ashura and did not attack the demonstrators," a reference to Ashura in 1963 and 1978, when large demonstrations against his government were allowed to take place.

Ayatollah Mohammad Dastgheib, an ardent supporter of the Green Movement and a strong critic of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on the clerics to break their silence and protest the actions of the hardliners on its own people.

The coming days are going to be critical. The hardliners are tightening their rein over the leaders of the Green Movement. Earlier reports had indicated that the regime had postponed arresting the leadership of the movement. But the huge turnout for the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri and subsequent demonstrations, as well as the events of Tasua and Ashura, demonstrated once again that the Green Movement has not been contained. In fact, despite a brutal six-month crackdown, it has grown and spread to many other parts of the country.

For the Movement to continue to grow, I believe people should not resort to violence. Bloody confrontation with security forces will have two very negative consequences for the Movement. First, it gives the hardliners justification to use violence on even a larger scale. If the fate of the current standoff between the people and the hardliners is to be decided by violence and violence only, the hardliners will defeat the Movement, since they have the instruments of coercion at their disposal.

Second, it may prevent members of the Ministry of Intelligence, and the Basij militia from breaking ranks and joining the protesters. The Green Movement will succeed when even the rank and file of the IRGC, Basij militia and intelligence agencies recognize that the rule of the hardliners is no longer tenable.

World news : Middle East roundup | guardian.co.uk

Massoumeh Torfeh — 2009-12-28 19:00:01 GMT

With the regime and its emboldened opponents stepping up the pressure, Iran faces more bloodshed and instability

The situation in Iran has reached the point of no return. The opposition has been calling for weeks for the downfall of the Islamic Republic and the removal from power of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His own supporters have demanded the "harshest possible punishment for the instigators of unrest". Judging by the video footage and photos distributed via the internet, despite the brutal clampdown of the last six months the opposition does not appear frightened. The demonstrators are directly confronting the police and security forces. Many police officers have been injured in the clashes of the last two days together with scores of opposition injuries and eight deaths on Sunday – Ashura – a day on which in Islamic tradition no blood is to be spilled. Some of the pictures of those killed on Sunday are as gruesome as last summer's images of Neda Agha Soltan.

Different layers of the opposition, the reformist Islamists as well as the more modern, possibly secular young activists and academics – and artists, musicians and journalists – have been enraged over the past few weeks. Students – always at the forefront of democratisation movements in Iran – were not allowed to mark their national day on 16 Azar (7 December); high-ranking reformist ayatollahs in Qom and Isfahan were not allowed to mourn the death of the highly respected Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. Several ayatollahs and leading opposition figures who have spoken out in defence of human rights, the right to demonstrations, and for a free media, have been threatened with losing their positions, and accused of "collaboration with western conspiracy". Hundreds of high-ranking opposition figures were arrested on Sunday and Monday, and many who are in detention received long prison sentences.

However, despite their unprecedented techniques of distributing information and mobilising support, the opposition still lacks a clear statement as to where it is going and what it would do were it to topple the regime. It also lacks a leader accepted by all. Activists argue that if they did have such clarity the entire machinery of the state would ensure their leadership was obliterated. And it is true that the military arm of the regime is killing and arresting at random.

It is also true that Khamenei no longer has any of his seasoned advisers – such as former presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, or the former speaker of the parliament Mehdi Karoubi. He sidelined them all when supporting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the presidential elections. Over the past six months the supreme leader has also lost crucial links with the reformist ayatollahs and clergy in the holy cities of Qom, Isfahan and Mashhad.

The leader is now surrounded by the hardline clergy, right of centre politicians, Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia, who are calling for direct confrontation. This can only lead to further bloodshed. The opposition is now calling for more strikes and attacks at important centres of power such as the state TV, where clashes took place yesterday. And February sees the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic. There is talk of a military coup by the Revolutionary Guards if the situation does not settle down.

Iran is facing a long period of political instability; and with increasing tensions in neighbouring Pakistan, plus the volatile situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, regional security appears more precarious than any time in the recent past.

Massoumeh Torfeh

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

FT.com - Iran

2009-12-28 16:56:25 GMT

At least three allies of Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and two aides to Mohammad Khatami, the former president, have been detained, while several reform-minded clerics in the holy city of Qom, were also held

de Volkskrant | Laatste Nieuws

2009-12-28 11:11:00 GMT

TEHERAN - Medewerkers en adviseurs van de Iraanse oppositieleider Mir Hossein Mousavi en de hervormingsgezinde oud-president Mohammad Khatami zijn maandag opgepakt. (15:16, 28-12-09)

World news: Iran | guardian.co.uk

David Batty, Robert Tait — 2009-12-28 12:48:47 GMT

• Second day of clashes between authorities and reformists
• At least nine dead, including the nephew of opposition leader

Clashes between the Iranian authorities and the reformist movement continued today following yesterday's crackdown which that left at least nine dead, including the nephew of the main opposition leader.

Police fired teargas on crowds mourning Ali Mousavi, a nephew of Mir Hossein Mousavi, and arrested a further seven reformist activists, including Ali Riza Beheshti, the opposition leader's closest aide, and Ebrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister, according to Iranian opposition websites.

"A group of Mousavi supporters have gathered in front of Ibn-e-Sina hospital where his nephew's body was kept ... Police fired teargas to disperse them," the Norooz website reported.

The latest crackdown comes after reformist demonstrators were killed during anti-government rallies marking Ashura, one of the holiest days in the Shia calendar. The unrest was one of the bloodiest confrontations between the government forces and pro-reform protesters since the disputed presidential election in June. The brutal tactics of the police and security forces were condemned by another opposition leader, Mahdi Karroubi.

Karroubi posted a statement on an opposition website asking how the government could spill the blood of its people on the sacred day of Ashura. He said even the former government of the last shah respected the holy day.

"What has really happened that spilled the blood of people on the day of Ashura and gets a group of savage individuals confronting people?" he asked the Rah-e-Sabz website. The shah, who was overthrown in 1979, was widely hated, and comparing a rival to him is a serious, though common, insult in Iranian politics.

Opposition websites reported at least seven arrests today. The Parlemannews site said three of Moussavi's top aides were arrested. Security forces also stormed a foundation run by Mohammad Khatami, a reformist former president, and arrested two people, a foundation official said.

Yazdi and the human rights activist Emad Baghi were also arrested, according to the Rah-e-Sabz. Yazdi, who served as foreign minister after the 1979 Islamic revolution, is now leader of the banned but tolerated Freedom Movement of Iran. The arrests could not be independently confirmed.

Early reports put the death toll from yesterday's riots at five, but the state-controlled Press TV website reported that the number of dead had risen to eight while another report put the number of dead as high as 15. The real figure is likely to be much higher as the authorities have previously seized the bodies of protesters and hidden them. People have also taken the injured home rather than to hospital, which could also conceal the true extent of the casualties.

Some accounts of Sunday's violence in Tehran were vivid and detailed, but they could not be independently confirmed owing to government restrictions on the media. Police said dozens of officers had been injured and more than 300 protesters arrested.

Many demonstrators seemed not to have anticipated such harsh tactics by the authorities, despite police warnings of tougher action against any protests.

It was Iran's worst outbreak of violence since June's election, which the opposition claims that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole through mass fraud. But yesterday's events differed from previous clashes in a way that seemed to herald further turmoil.

By using lethal force on a day meant to honour one of Shia Islam's holiest figures, Imam Hossein – seen as a martyr in the fight against oppression – the regime may have undermined its claim to uphold Iran's religious traditions. The violent response of the protesters to the security forces was also unprecedented and suggested that many are becoming fearless in the face of state repression. While many demonstrators in the post-election protests covered their faces, footage from videos shown yesterday on YouTube showed most people with their faces exposed.

Amateur video footage purportedly from the centre of Tehran showed an enraged crowd carrying away one casualty, chanting, "I'll kill, I'll kill the one who killed my brother." In several locations, demonstrators confronted security forces, throwing stones and setting their motorcycles, cars and vans ablaze, according to video footage and pro-reform websites.

Protesters tried to cut off roads with burning barricades. One police officer was photographed with blood streaming down his face after he was set upon by the crowd.

There were unconfirmed reports that four people died in protests in Tabriz in north-west Iran, the Rah-e-Sabz website said. Clashes were also reported in several other cities, including Isfahan, Shiraz, Arak, Mashhad, Babol and Najafabad.

The US national security council spokesman, Mike Hammer, yesterday denounced Tehran's "unjust suppression of civilians".

Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister, which currently holds the presidency of the EU, expressed concern about the "increased repression" in Iran.

"A regime secure in its own legitimacy has no reason to fear individuals' rights to express their opinions freely and peacefully," he wrote on his blog yesterday.

David Batty

Robert Tait

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

de Volkskrant | Laatste Nieuws

2009-12-28 11:11:00 GMT

TEHERAN - Medewerkers en adviseurs van de Iraanse oppositieleider Mir Hossein Mousavi en de hervormingsgezinde oud-president Mohammad Khatami zijn maandag opgepakt. (12:15, 28-12-09)

Mbl.is - Fréttir

2009-12-28 10:27:42 GMT

Nokkrir af helstu fylgismönnum Mohammad Khatami , klerks og fyrrverandi forseta og Mir Hossein Mousavi, leiðtoga stjórnarandstöðunnar í Íran, hafa verið handteknir í dag í kjölfar mótmælanna í Teheran. Mjög er á reiki hversu margir hafa látist í átökum við lögreglu og her en talið er að þeir séu um fimmtán talsins. Fleiri hundruð mótmælendur eru í haldi lögreglu.

post-gazette.com - News

2009-12-28 07:00:00 GMT

TORONTO -- Police officers and militia forces clashed with demonstrators in central Tehran all day Saturday and then again in northern Tehran in the evening, where the government forces shut down a speech by former President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist leader.

FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau | PBS

2009-12-28 01:44:02 GMT

[ feature ] For two months, life in a religious family or for those in a small town in Iran seems to have come to a standstill. No weddings, no talk of new engagements or "khastegari," no big parties.

People do not purchase new furniture, and housewives have suddenly stopped discussing the need to buy new household appliances.

These are the months of Moharram and Safar, the first and second months in the Islamic Calendar. Moharram begins with the death of the Shia Imam, Imam Hossein, and is commemorated yearly throughout Iran. The month of Safar ends with the death of Prophet Muhammad, along with the death of the second and eighth Shia Imams, which is why these are months of mourning with little "shogoon" (luck) to begin life's important tasks like getting married or purchasing a new home.

The greatest event held is the one to commemorate the death of Imam Hossein in what is believed to be a defining moment in the existence of Shia Islam as we know it today. Hossein Ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Mohammad, along a small group of soldiers, fought the army of Yazid -- the tyrant caliphate -- who had declared the prophet's successor. The legitimacy of the caliphate and the leadership of the Islamic community were central to this conflict.

According to Shia Islam, Hossein's army of roughly seventy men was defeated by the enemy, and the body of the dead, including Hossein, was later mutilated. To commemorate and mourn this loss, ceremonies are held across the country, starting from Day 1 of Moharam (10 days before the death of Hossein) and go on every night, until the date of his death, on the 10th of Moharram.

The Islamic state has invested heavily in the story of Hussein and his martyrs to the point that the story has become a hallmark of the political establishment and the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war, as well as the political assassinations of the early 80s in which a number of notable figures are compared to the martyrs of Hossein.

The defining message of these ceremonies is the rise of the oppressed against tyranny, and while the state has been able to present itself as the oppressed side for three decades, this year, that narrative has fewer followers.

Every year, around this time, a big black cloth is draped in every street corner, in every city. Aside from the mosques, which hold their own ceremonies, huge black tents called "tekkiyeh" are erected. Young boys in the neighborhood gather every night and organize their own events.

Moharram is a social event as much as a religious one. It is also a festival of spectacular proportions with music, song and dance. Every afternoon is permeated by pounding drums, along with the warm, whining voice of a man singing in the distance. Little tables are put out in street corners and young boys, wearing black with green scarves around their necks, hand out milk or tea or sharbat (sweet drinks).

Every night, after the drums and singing, a large group of men walk out into the neighborhood, beating on their chests in rhythm or using small, dangling chains to self-flagellate. A singer walks in front of the group along with men carrying drums, as they gather in song. This crowd is the notorious "dasteh" (group), the long line of mourners which hits the streets nightly.

The state has feared these groups for the first time this year. Ashura has always given people an excuse to mobilize spontaneously, without permits and without excuses. Across Iran, the ceremonies are held in various ways and with varying customs. A myriad of customs take place within Tehran alone.

In uptown Maydan-e Mohseni (Mohseni Square), boys and girls gather for an "Ashura Party," as they call it. A singer sounding much like the famous Iranian pop singers, Siavash Ghomeishi or Sattar, intones for the martyred Imam Hossein, while mourners dressed in their best, pancaked in makeup or hair lathered in grease, laugh away and exchange phone numbers.

In midtown Maydan-e Haft-e Tir (Seventh of Sqaure), boys and girls go their own way and the adults indulge in serious "azadari" (mourning). But downtown, particularly near the bazaar, the "real" thing takes place. Teenage boys in jeans and Nike T-shirts, young and old men in various wardrobes chant away while all the time hitting their backs with small metal chains. Everyone is in serious mourning, and there is no joviality. The women -- tagging along, as usual -- listen to the singer's voice, talk and cry.

This year however, everything was different. Zanjan, Isfahan and Tehran have been the sites of demonstrations great and small for the past few days. Rumors circulated of the formation of a "Council for Moharram Crises" to crackdown on any anti-government protests.

This was later denied by Tehran's police chief.

But this crackdown has been felt across the country. Husseiniyeh Ershad, the famous mosque Ali Shariati, once delivered fiery speeches. Now led by reformists, it has been shut down. Across Iran, mosques and tekkiyehs have been closed. Tekkiyehs in Mohseni Square were forced to close because of crowds shouting "death to the dictator" in the midst of the ceremonies. Some streets in Tehran, which have traditionally been flooded with mourners, are ghostly quiet.

A state which has always heavily promoted and advertised these ceremonies is now trying its best to control them. And it has been able to contain and silence the mourners systematically. Few groups (dastehs) have been able to go out into the streets at night. This is unprecedented in the past 30 years.

The noon of Ashura (the tenth of Moharam when it is believed Hossein was killed), the most important event in the 10-day ceremonies, was the site of countrywide protests. I was part of the demonstrations planned from Imam Hossein Square to Azadi Square.

I was near Hafez Bridge and in that area, militias scattered among the protesters fired tear gas and shots in the air, but until 1:30 p.m. when I left, things were peaceful. People had made small fires in the street and were trading cigarettes to blow smoke in each other's eyes and mouths to alleviate the stinging of tear gas.

The protesters came prepared with flags and instruments of Ashura, and local mosques and tekkiyehs were deserted, their members having joined the protests. A few times, when some demonstrators engaged in joyful claps or chants, others in the crowd discouraged them from doing so -- not wanting to be seen as anti-religious by pro-government supporters.

This was cause for much riot when Mohammad Khatami was a candidate a decade ago and Mir Hossein Mousavi had earlier sent a warning asking demonstrators to respect the mourning rituals.

Demonstrators were heard shouting: margh bar dictator: "death to the dictator."

Vasiyateh Montazeri, margh bar dictatory: Montazeri's legacy was to fight dictatorships.

Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein

Azast azast emrooz, roozeh azast emrooz, mellateh sabz-e Iran, saheb azast emrooz: today is a day of mourning, the green nation of Iran is mourning today.

Een hameh lashkar aamadeh, aleyheh rahbar aamade: This army has come to stand against the Leader.

Ma ahleh Koofeh nistim, Hossein tanha bemanad: We are not like the city of Koofeh [the city, which, according to Shia tradition, neglected to join Hossein's army], we will not leave Hossein alone Ma ahleh Koofeh nistim, poshteh Yazid beestim: We are not the city of Koofeh, we will not stand with Yazid.

Een mah, mah-e khooneh, Yazid sarneghoone: This is the month of blood, Yazid will fall.

The demonstrators on Hafez Street reported that Enghelab Square was the site of bloody confrontations, but people still managed to remain calm. They had formed links which would bring news and reports from other parts of the protests. If militias had crowded in one neighborhood, they discouraged others from entering those areas and found other routes.

One could only feel humbled standing in those crowds. Young and old, families, pregnant women, grandmothers, the disabled, children, women veiled from head to toe and young girls with vibrant makeup -- one could catch glimpses of everyone in those lines. Tear gas flowed everywhere, and although we burned inside, the crowd was bursting with life.

Under Hafez Bridge, thousands of demonstrators gathered, carrying green ribbons, pulling them out from under their veils or jackets and holding them up high, chanting in unison when the crowds formed.

Smoke drifted aimlessly, and our eyes and throats continued to burn, but the crowd felt neither hopeless nor scared. I was shocked to later witness and hear about other parts of the demonstrations.

As far as my eyes could see, I saw thousands of protesters in peaceful harmony without a hint of violence. But even on a day like this, one can see how divided this city has become. I left the demonstrators early to go to a mosque in uptown Tehran where a diverse population always gathers. While the mosque is located in uptown Tehran, the population is very diverse because the mosque is run by organizers from the province of Khuzestan in Southern Iran and thus people from this province who live across Tehran gather there.

I had left the smoke and dirt and screaming voices only to come upon obedience and silence. Standing in this place, it was as if nothing had ever even happened. It was almost impossible to believe that I was in the same city, in the same country, only a half an hour away from the protests...

... Until you catch little hints and glimpses of resilience. In the long lines, we women stood for food. One woman wearing a green scarf around her neck shouted, "The lord to bless Ayatollah Montazeri's spirit" and to "ask the lord to protect our young who are on the streets today." A number of women responded in agreement. But some women beside me were from the other camp and bickered under their breath: "Since when do women interfere in politics?," they asked.

I responded: "Why can't women interfere in politics?"

One answered: "They can, but political gestures are not appropriate for mosques."

I said: "But today is Ashura, what is more appropriate than remembering the young who are arrested, beaten and killed in our own country right now?"

She explained: "These are all lies and rumors."

I said: "My friend was killed. It wasn't a rumor."

They turned their heads and stopped talking.

Over the microphone, we heard the speaker ask the crowd to say praise to "the great leader Ayatollah Khamenei" and there was a loud respond in unison, as great as the ones for Ayatollah Montazeri just a few minutes before.

This city is truly divided.

The cell phones have stopped working. I know nothing of what is now going on in the demonstrations. This crowd is calm and quiet. You could stand here and think everything is business as usual. You could live this tumultuous day without hearing or seeing a hint of protest.

Shamsolvaezin, renowned Iranian journalist, told the BBC about the state media's coverage of the demonstrations today: "They prepare reports as if they live on a different planet."

It is not state TV, but people who live on very different planets these days. And this is the irony of it all. You can live in Tehran today in the midst of war and chaos. You can live in Tehran oblivious to it all. I saw a magnificent protest today bursting with life and hope and peace (and tear gas). But there was blood, too, and chaos and death.

Tehran is on fire and enveloped in smoke tonight. Mohseni Square is under siege by militias, and the frightened, bloody demonstrators are seeking refuge in people's homes. The militias have been crowding the square since the afternoon, shouting and wielding batons at anyone who fails to move swiftly past them. Families are out in the streets again carrying grocery bags, to show that they have an excuse for passing through. Kaj Square and upper Valiasr are scenes of demonstrations and clashes with guards. Just a few hours earlier all our neighbors opened their doors to bloody and bruised demonstrators.

Tehran will not sleep tonight. It will burn in fire and smoke and blood. But that is the Tehran I have come to know. In this same city, many will lay soundly in slumber. Many will sleep never having heard these cries or never having felt the sharp, stinging batons. We truly do reside on different planets it seems, while still working and studying and living in the same city. The question is, when or how will these different planets collide?

Archive photo.

CNN iReport - Latest

larena — 2009-12-27 19:19:59 GMT

TORONTO — Police officers and militia forces clashed with demonstrators in central Tehran all day Saturday and then again in northern Tehran in the evening, where the government forces shut down a speech by former President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist leader. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image European Pressphoto Agency Iranians flagellated themselves on Saturday in Tehran for Ashura, a day of Shiite mourning that erupted in protests. Related The Lede: Video of Iran Militia Disrupting Former President’s Speech (December 27, 2009) The demonstrators, who defied an official ban and turned a Shiite ceremony into a protest, underlined the government’s inability to suppress the opposition despite the use of violence. Protests have continued since a disputed presidential election in June, and a large one is anticipated on Sunday, the culmination of the Shiite holiday of Ashura. Witnesses and an opposition Web site said the police and Basij militiamen beat and arrested protesters in central Tehran. The police fired tear gas at protesters in three central squares — Imam Hussein, Enghelab and Ferdowsi — the opposition Web site Jaras reported. The militia forces attacked protesters with batons and chains, the Web site said. Government forces also attacked cars whose drivers had honked in support of the protesters, and smashed their windows. Many vehicles’ license plates were taken away. “They beat up people relentlessly although many were in mourning groups for Imam Hussein,” said a witness, who spoke via Skype on the condition of anonymity. “I saw many people with bloody noses or limping away. It was clear that they particularly targeted women and savagely beat them.” The clashes came during the Iranian observance of Tasooa, an important Shiite holiday that falls just a day before the culmination of the Ashura mourning observances marking the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The chief of the national police, Ismail Ahmadi Moghadam, said Saturday that security forces would use “minimum violence” against protesters, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported. He said, “We will confront them forcefully, which means we will identify the leaders and will arrest them.” In the evening, about 50 vigilantes armed with chains, batons and pepper spray disrupted a speech by Mr. Khatami at Jamaran Mosque in Tehran, the home mosque of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Thousands of opposition supporters converged on the neighborhood, witnesses said, and government forces fired tear gas and threatened to shoot if the protesters did not leave. “As the number of protesters increased, the government forces quickly brought in more forces and waged a very savage attack on people,” said a witness, interviewed by telephone. “I saw a 23-year-old woman stabbed.” Late Saturday night, the mosque was still surrounded by the riot police and Basij militia forces, and it was not clear if Mr. Khatami was still inside. The mosque sits next door to the house of Ayatollah Khomeini, many of whose relatives have sided with the opposition in this conflict. This year, for the first time, the government canceled the Shiite mourning ceremonies at Ayatollah Khomeini’s shrine, which were to have taken place in conjunction with the holidays on Saturday and Sunday. Government forces also raided the building of the student news agency ISNA, where some of the protesters had sought shelter, Jaras reported. Reuters reported that an ISNA employee’s skull had been fractured. A video posted on an opposition Web site showed protesters on a public bus on Saturday chanting, “This is the month of blood, Yazid will fall.” The chant was a reference to the villain in Shiite Islam, Yazid, the caliph who killed Imam Hussein in a battle in the year 680. Some protesters have been referring to the Iranian authorities as Yazid. The police took the extraordinary measure of searching people’s bags in subway stations leading to downtown Tehran to confiscate anything green, the color representing the opposition. They also checked residents’ cellphones and confiscated those with images from the protests, Jaras reported. Opposition supporters have been posting cellphone videos of protests on opposition Web sites. The government also jammed satellite television channels beamed into Iran, and Internet speed was excruciatingly slow, a Tehran resident said. Protesters vowed to show up on Sunday in larger numbers. Large protests for Ashura had been planned for weeks, but the day also coincides with the traditional seventh day of mourning for a senior cleric, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who died last week. The government has banned mourning ceremonies for Ayatollah Montazeri, who became a revered figure for the opposition for his outspoken criticism of the government. The opposition Norouz Web site also reported that there would be a protest by families of former senior officials who had been detained since the disputed election in June.

SOURCE THE NEW YORK TIMES.

NewsTrust - Most Recent Stories

2009-12-27 08:00:00 GMT

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Dec. 27 (News Analysis) - The background for the big news in Iraq, Iran and Pakistan on Saturday and Sunday is the Shiite mourning season. Saturday was the 9th of the month of Muharram and Sunday is the 10th. These ritual dates in the Shiite calendar commemorate the surrounding and then killing of Husayn b. Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at Karbala in Iraq in 680 by the armies of the Umayyad caliph Yazid. During Muharram Shiites tell the story of the passion of Imam Husayn, the martyr, which many feel is redemptive rather as Christians believe they are saved by the sacrifice made by Jesus.With the spread of Shiism in the past decades, Ashura is commemorated widely in the world. Abbas Djavadi remembers when these religious ceremonies, involving sermons, poetry, story-telling, public processions and in extreme cases bloody self-flagellation, were largely apolitical. But with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran and then decades later the rise of the Shiite crescent after the Bush administration overthrew secular Arab nationalism in Iraq and presided over the rise of fundamentalist Shiism, Ashura is highly politicized. It is politicized in two ways. It is a marker of Sunni-Shiite conflict, and it is an arena for contention over its meaning among competing factions of Shiites.In Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims walked to the holy city of Karbala under strict security. In recent years, Sunni Arab guerrillas have targeted Shiite processions with bombs. Even with good security and bomb-sniffing dogs this year, a few bombers targeted pilgrims in Baghdad on Saturday, killing a handful and wounding more. On Friday, pilgrims had been killed in East Baghdad and in Karbala. The guerrillas are targeting Shiite pilgrims to protest the Shiite take-over of Iraq under Washington's auspices.In the cities of Isfahan, Kermanshah and Shiraz in Iran, the political opposition used the 9th of Muharram processions to protest what they called the tyranny of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Some chanted against the very principle of clerical rule. They were cracked down on by police and paramilitary basij forces. pro-regime elements also interrupted the sermon of former president Mohammad Khatami. Sunday things are set for a clash between reformists and the regime.In Pakistan, the federal army was deployed throughout the country to protect Shiites on the 10th. The Pakistani Taliban against whom the current government is fighting are extremely anti-Shiite. A low-intensity bomb was set off at a Muharram procession in Karachi on Saturday, wounding 13 persons. Presumably the culprits were radical Sunni extremists.End/ (Not Continued)

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RealClearPolitics - Homepage

2009-12-27 13:41:38 GMT

Nazila Fathi, NY Times
TORONTO  Police officers and militia forces clashed with demonstrators in central Tehran all day Saturday and then again in northern Tehran in the evening, where the government forces shut down a speech by former President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist leader.Iranians flagellated themselves on Saturday in Tehran for Ashura, a day of Shiite mourning that erupted in protests. The demonstrators, who defied an official ban and turned a Shiite ceremony into a protest, underlined the government’s inability to suppress the opposition despite the use of violence. Protests have...

Boston Globe -- Today's paper A to Z

Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post — 2009-12-27 04:49:32 GMT

Iranian security forces clashed with antigovernment protesters in a district of northern Tehran yesterday after a speech there by opposition leader and former president Mohammad Khatami, one day before a scheduled larger protest at the climax of a major Shi’ite religious commemoration.

The Lede

By ROBERT MACKEY — 2009-12-27 05:14:28 GMT

In Tehran, members of a pro-government militia broke into a mosque where former President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist leader, was speaking, forcing him to break off before concluding his remarks. Video appearing to show the incident was posted on YouTube.

post-gazette.com - News

2009-12-27 05:00:00 GMT

Iranian security forces clashed with anti-government protesters in a district of northern Tehran yesterday following a speech there by opposition leader and former president Mohammad Khatami, one day before a scheduled larger protest at the climax of a major Shiite religious commemoration.

World news : Middle East roundup | guardian.co.uk

Robert Tait — 2009-12-27 00:05:25 GMT

Trouble is expected as opposition supporters gather in Tehran, with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordering a crackdown on any challenges to his rule

Iran today faces the prospect of a bloody Sunday after opposition supporters clashed violently with security forces yesterday at the start of a key religious ceremony that had been identified beforehand as a dangerous flashpoint.

Amid ominous signs that political tensions were reaching breaking point, reformist websites reported that special forces fired teargas and attacked crowds gathered in some of Tehran's main thoroughfares to begin two days of commemorations for one of Shia Islam's holiest figures. The opposition website Rah-e Sabz reported confrontations in Enghelab, Haft-e Tir and Imam Hossein Squares. Unconfirmed accounts told of disturbances breaking out between Ferdowsi Square and Valiasr crossroads and between Choobi Bridge and Shahmirzadi Hosseinieh.

Government forces were said to have smashed the windows of cars whose drivers honked their horns in support of the protest. Security forces chased protesters into the premises of the student news agency ISNA, off Enghelab Square, and beat them with chains and batons, Rah-e Sabz reported. The Iranian Human Rights Activists news agency said there had been at least 10 arrests.

Deutsche Welle's Farsi-language website carried reports of further clashes in Isfahan, Tabriz, Kermanshah and Ahvaz. Internet speeds in Tehran were said to have slowed to a crawl.

The reported disturbances came amid evidence that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered a crackdown on any challenges to his leadership during yesterday's Tasua ceremonies and Ashura, which is today.

The Observer has learned that the authorities have cancelled all leave for police and emergency services over the two days in anticipation of violence, while hospitals have been put on full alert to expect multiple casualties. The order is effective until midnight tonight.

"Cancelling leave means we are in for a very violent time," a paramedic said. "The authorities are very scared. They are prepared for everything and anything."

The move came after the opposition Green Movement had vowed to stage demonstrations during the ceremonies – held to mark the death more than 1,300 years ago of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hossein.

The continuing crackdown since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bitterly disputed re-election six months ago has limited the opposition to holding protests on state-sanctioned occasions that the government is unable to ban.

This year's Ashura has been given added piquancy because it coincides with ritual seventh-day mourning ceremonies for Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the Green Movement's spiritual leader and one of Khamenei's fiercest critics, who died last Sunday aged 87.

Government fears have been further raised by the opposition's depiction of Montazeri as the modern incarnation of Hossein, who is revered in Shia Islam as a symbol of resistance against oppressive rulers. Montazeri spent the last 20 years ostracised by the theocratic hierarchy but re-emerged as a significant opposition figure after denouncing Ahmadinejad's victory as fraudulent and the subsequent suppression as "un-Islamic". The potent symbolism of his death was displayed last Monday when hundreds of thousands of mourners turned his funeral into the biggest opposition rally in months, despite stringent security.

An attempted mourning event by Montazeri supporters last Wednesday was broken up by riot police and plain-clothed agents using batons, teargas and pepper spray.

The cancellation of leave for emergency workers raises the chilling possibility of more lethal methods being used today. Leave was also cancelled in the weeks after the election, when scores of protesters were killed and hundreds more were injured after security forces were ordered to use extreme force.

The orders included permission for some members of the hardline basiji volunteer militia to shoot protesters, according to the paramedic.

On 20 June – a day after Khamenei had warned of a brutal reaction if unrest continued – the Tehran ambulance service's internal radio system confirmed that at least 47 people had died, many from gunshot wounds.

Among that day's dead was Neda Agha Soltan, a female protester who became a symbol of the demonstrations when her dying moments were caught on film after she had been shot by a sniper.

The government put the death toll on 20 June at around a dozen and says about 30 people died overall during the post-election unrest. It has denied giving orders to open fire on demonstrators.

But the paramedic said: "Out of every 100 basijis, 10 of them would have permission to shoot. We knew this because we were based alongside them. As eyewitnesses, we could see two or three of them shooting. I saw a basiji on the roof of a five-storey building shooting at people. He was ducking down and then coming up occasionally to shoot.

"The shooting was so severe that we ambulance workers were warned by the Revolutionary Guards to be careful we weren't shot. They would come to us for medical help, bandages and so on, and as a sign of appreciation they would say: 'If you're going to such-and-such street, be careful because they are going to be shooting from the roofs.' The city was like a war zone."

Some analysts have warned that increasing violence and mounting casualty figures are inevitable as Khamenei seeks to quash a revolt that has swollen beyond anger over the election into a revolt against his leadership.

In a graphic indication of the personal nature of the protests, demonstrators have begun to compare him to the Umayyad Caliph, Yazid, who was responsible for Hossein's death in AD680 and is a symbol of cruelty and moral corruption in Shia Islam.

Protesters in Tehran were yesterday heard chanting: "Khamenei has become Yazid and Yazid is now rehabilitated." The slogan was a new variant on existing anti-Khamenei chants, which include: "This month is the month of blood, Seiyed Ali [Khamenei] will be overthrown."

"Yazid was affected by drunkenness caused by wine and Khamenei is today ignoring the role of people in religion because he is drunk on power," Ebrahim Mehtari, an opposition activist who fled to Turkey after being raped and tortured, told the Observer. "If he carries on trampling on people's rights, he will be classified in the same category as other blood-spilling tyrants."

Mehdi Khalaji, an Iranian analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, warned that Khamenei would resort to ever more brutal methods to preserve his leadership. "Mohammad Khatami [Iran's reformist former president] was asked during a visit to Washington last year why he hadn't done more to resist Khamenei," he said. "He replied that it was because Khamenei is determined to fight his enemies if they come to the streets and that he is ready to kill up to 200,000 people. There are many pieces of evidence that confirm Khatami's understanding that Khamenei is prepared to kill more people.

"But it is Khamenei who has radicalised the opposition movement. His statements and behaviour have become more and more provocative and this has hurt the emotions of the people."

Montazeri's death removed one of the last sources of vocal clerical opposition to Khamenei. Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, another pro-reformist critic of the regime and a putative successor to Montazeri, is seen as less substantial.

"The Shia clerical establishment is under the thumb of Khamenei," said Khalaji, a former Qom seminary student. "Even those who don't like him don't dare criticise him because they want to preserve their economic interests. What they think isn't important."

Among the opposition – still nominally led by the defeated reformist presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi – the initial aim of reversing the election has been replaced by the more far-reaching goal of reforming the Islamic system to eliminate the supreme leader's role, which gives Khamenei the final say on all matters.

"The Green Movement is not after unseating or deposing anybody from power," said Mehtari. "It wants the elimination of those currents that stand against people's rights. This includes Mr Khamenei, who determines his own right.

"I don't know if the state is still prepared to cover its hands in blood or not. But the more blood that is spilled, the more people will come out. This movement involves people from all spectrums of society. Those who shout in the streets range from labourers to the rich. They don't share a social class but they share a trampled right."

Robert Tait

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