The Gandhian Moment

Ramin Jahanbegloo – published in Dissent Magazine on June 20, 2009

WITH THE refusal of Iran’s political establishment to re-run the elections, more repression and violence seems inevitable. However, what we are witnessing since the first demonstrations against the results of the presidential elections might very well be considered as a major nonviolent movement in a Gandhian style. There is already an evident similarity between the civil disobedience movement in today’s Iran and successful nonviolent movements led by Gandhi in India in the 1920-1940s and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States in the 1950-1960s.
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Iran’s Clenched Fist Election:  What’s next for US policy

The Carnegie Endowment For International Peace

Policy Discussion held on June 25, 2009 in Washington D.C.

With demonstrations across Iran subsiding under a brutal security crackdown, and opposition leaders hoping to turn protests into strikes and other acts of civil disobedience, Carnegie hosted leading Iran experts Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Abbas Milani, and Karim Sadjadpour to discuss the aftermath of the election and its implications for U.S. foreign policy in the region.  David Ignatius moderated the discussion.

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Speaking out against violence in the Iranian Parliament

On June, 28, 2009, Masoud Pezeshkian, a member of Iran’s parliament spoke out against violence and torture.  (Video is in Farsi with English in closed captions.)

Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian speaks against government actions in Majlis by using Imam Ali as the example. Imam Ali is the son in law of Prophet Mohammad and is considered the role model of Iranian citizens. His birthday is celebrated as father’s day in Iran. Dr. Pezeshkian in his speech uses Imam Ali’s letter to Malek Ashtar that specifically tells him what he should not do just because he is in position of power exactly what the government of Iran has been doing these past few days.

Iran ‘must free UK embassy staff’

Published by BBC News on June 28, 2009

The European Union has demanded the immediate release of Iranian staff at Britain’s embassy in Tehran detained on Saturday over post-election unrest.

EU ministers meeting in Greece warned that “harassment or intimidation” of embassy staff would be met with a “strong and collective” response.

Iranian media reported the detention of eight local staff at the UK mission over their alleged role in the unrest.

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband dismissed the allegations as baseless.
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Iranians rally at Ghoba (Qoba) Mosque

Mousavi supporters join Beheshti commemorators

Published by Press TV – Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:36:24 GMT

Hundreds of Iranians have gathered in a mosque to commemorate the martyrdom of former chief justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti.

Supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi also marched down Tehran’s Shariati Street from north to south and silently gathered outside the Ghoba Mosque — where the event was being held.
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In Iran, the protests have quieted, but the protesters are simmering

Iranian security forces on motorcycles make their presence known on a Tehran street. Postelection rallies have quieted, but such patrols have been common, as authorities keep an eye out for would-be demonstrators.

By Borzou Daragahi for the Los Angeles Times - June 27, 2009 23:20 PDT / June 28, 10:50 Tehran time

Iranians who demonstrated against the election results are not moving on. They are biding their time, weighing their options — and seeing their government in a dramatically different light.

TEHRAN — The young men and women enter Haft Tir Square tentatively.  Their pace slows as they discreetly glance around. They spot the club-wielding uniformed security officials and plainclothes Basiji militiamen, scan the square for other would-be demonstrators. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear All,

Despite the continuation of uncertainty, and the heavy presence of anti-riot police on the streets of Tehran and other major cities, all the correspondence from the country shows that the general mood is improving. Somehow people have crossed the threshold of fear. But the main reason is that although large demonstrations are not allowed anymore, other events indicate that this protest is far from over.  I hope this window brings you some of the reasons for this interpretation.

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The Abduction

By MICHELLE MAY in Tehran/Dubai | Tehran Bureau | 24 June 2009

[TEHRAN BUREAU] The day after the Supreme Leader delivered his Friday prayer at Tehran University the streets of Tehran felt eerily quiet. Although friends translated his prayer to me, I went to a net café to read western analysis of what the Ayatollah said. I tried to access CNN online, but the government had slowed down the internet to keep Iranians feeling isolated that week. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fellowship of Reconciliation joins 35 national organizations in letter to Iranian leaders on ending the violence

June 24, 2009

To the Iranian Leadership: End the Violence Immediately

To:  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, U.N. Ambassador & Permanent Representative Mohammad Khazaee

We are leaders of organizations representing tens of thousands of U.S. citizens who love Iran: its people, culture, poetry, and land. Some of our members have traveled in recent years to the Islamic Republic of Iran to build relationships between our cultures, and have returned home with images and stories of wonderful new friends and your land’s admirable humanitarian and religious cultures. We passionately urge peace between our countries, and deeply regret the unfortunate history of U.S. intervention in Iran and its sovereignty. We believe all nations and peoples have the right to live free of the threat of unjust foreign interference in their internal affairs.
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Stephen Kinzer

guardian.co.uk, Monday 22 June 2009

By reviving memories of an ousted leader, Iran’s protesters are signalling

they want to win reform without US intervention

Protesters displaying pictures of former prime minister Muhammad Mossadeq alongside presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during demonstrations in Iran last week.

Carrying a picture of Mossadeq today means two things: “We want democracy” and “No foreign intervention”. These demands fit together in the minds of most Iranians. Desperate as they are for the political freedom their parents and grandparents enjoyed in the early 1950s, they have no illusion that foreigners can bring it to them. In fact, foreign intervention has brought them nothing but misery.

The US sowed the seeds of repression in Iran by deposing Mossadeq in 1953, and then helped bathe Iran in blood by giving Saddam Hussein generous military aid during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Militants in Washington who now want the US to intervene on behalf of Iranian protesters either are unaware of this history or delude themselves into thinking that Iranians have forgotten it. Some of them, in fact, are the same people who were demanding just last year that the US bomb Iran – an act which would have killed many of the brave young protesters they now hold up as heroes.

America’s moral authority in Iran is all but non-existent. To the idea that the US should jump into the Tehran fray and help bring democracy to Iran, many Iranians would roll their eyes and say: “We had a democracy here until you came in and crushed it!”

President Barack Obama seems to grasp this reality. During his recent speech in Cairo, without mentioning Mossadeq by name, he conceded that “in the middle of the cold war, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Then, after the current electoral protests broke out, he avoided the hypocrisy of righteous indignation and confined himself to saying that “ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide.“