Ahmadinejad’s grip is slipping. The ayatollah is losing ground. And the military is on the rise. Gary Sick on how Obama should handle the aftershocks of a political earthquake.

(Gary Sick | The Daily Beast | 27 November 2009) - Iran is at a revolutionary juncture, one of those hinge moments in history when an explosion of actions and debates produces towering outcomes—often unintended—that bend the course of events the way a black hole in space bends a beam of light. In the tumult of these moments, it is almost impossible to know how it will end; only in retrospect does the outcome appear inevitable.

This hinge moment began on 22 Khordad—June 12 on the Western calendar—the date of Iran’s electoral debacle. On that date, all the old rules changed and a new set of rules began to be devised. There is evidence of deep political fissures among the ruling elite and signs of fierce debate. At the moment, Iran’s political leadership finds it convenient to pretend that all is as before. But in fact, there has been a political earthquake and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is moving to consolidate its power. Before it is over, we may see a new strongman emerge from the military, as has happened in so many other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere when the political status quo was shattered and everything was in flux.

Before it is over, we may see a new strongman emerge from the military, as has happened in so many other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere when the political status quo was shattered and everything was in flux.

Iran, of course, has experienced such hinge moments before: notably the 1979 collapse of the shah and the replacement of his monarchy with a revolutionary Islamic government. Its effects extended far beyond the borders of Iran. I was in the White House at the time when Iran invaded the American embassy in Tehran and held its occupants prisoner for 444 days. That action arguably insured the defeat of President Jimmy Carter and the election of Ronald Reagan. It also indelibly imprinted an image of a fanatical, hostile Iran on the psyches of Americans who watched it play out as the first major U.S. foreign policy crisis to be televised live and broadcast into the living rooms of every family in the United States.

Part of the problem that Washington had in attempting to negotiate an end to that deadly dispute was the absence of an address in Iran. We knew that the hostages had been taken by a group of radical students; we knew that the revolutionary regime had thrown its support to the students; we knew that the supreme revolutionary authority was Ayatollah Khameini, but he would not talk to us, and the Iranians who did talk to us proved to have no real authority.

Today I am experiencing a back-to-the-future moment.

The election debacle on 22 Khordad was in my view the final, bungled stage of what was intended to be a gentle coup propelling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the pasdaran, into a position of unassailable power behind the scenes. The amazing rise of the Green Movement, under the almost accidental leadership of Mir Hossein Moussavi and later Mehdi Karroubi, threatened to upset these plans, and panicked efforts to prevent it brought the pasdaran out of the shadows and into the full glare of international attention.

The pasdaran had begun playing an overtly political role a full decade earlier. Its insinuation into the economy of Iran had been widely observed for years. It also controlled the nationwide paramilitary force known as the basij. Its association with a radical faction of Iranian clerics, led by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, who preached that the word of the Supreme Leader in Islamic Iran was absolute—the very voice of God—was well known. But the election of 22 Khordad propelled the pasdaran into an active role in domestic politics, just as it forced Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader who is supposed to remain above politics, to align himself with a specific political faction and thereby sacrifice his legitimacy as an objective arbiter.

I am personally convinced that the Revolutionary Guard Corps is now rapidly becoming the dominant force in Iranian politics—greater than President Ahmadinejad, and greater even than Ayatollah Khamenei himself, though the pasdaran and others continue to pay lip service to his “leadership.” I base this judgment, among other things, on the fact that senior leaders of the pasdaran no longer have any compunction about taking positions that differ from those of the President or the Supreme Leader; yet neither the President nor the Supreme Leader ever dare disagree with the pasdaran. But if that is true, who exactly is calling the shots?

The political decision-making apparatus of the pasdaran is totally opaque. It is possible to conjecture a circle of dogmatic officers together with a narrow faction of clerical advisers who share a belief in the divine right of rulers. But it is impossible to give a list of the members of this circle, let alone the process by which they arrive at policy positions.

This uncertainty is what reminds me of the days of the revolution and the murky operations of what was then the Revolutionary Council. The U.S. government spent a tremendous amount of time and effort during the hostage crisis trying to identify the key members of the Revolutionary Council and to develop channels for communicating with this central policy-making body.

The results were less than satisfactory, partly no doubt because the group was itself a mirror image of the political chaos after the Iranian revolution. The Council had a fairly well established membership, but influence on specific policies varied from one moment to the next according to the shifting political winds, and there was no reliable process by which decisions were taken and implemented. There was, in short, no reliable address where a U.S. initiative might be registered and acted on.

It is 30 years later, and we have arrived at another hinge moment in history. And the Obama administration has a serious problem, scarcely discussed but eerily familiar. How do you engage with Iran when there is no reliable address in Tehran?

Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and is the author of two books on U.S.-Iranian relations. Mr. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa and the Mediterranean.

Protesters chanting slogans at an opposition rally at the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery outside Tehran on Thursday.

By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI (New York Times, July 30, 2009)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Thousands of people gathered in Tehran on Thursday to commemorate those killed in Iran’s post-election crackdown, but a vast deployment of police officers used tear gas and wooden batons to disperse them, in some of the largest and most violent street clashes in weeks.

The mourners gathered at the freshly-dug graves of protesters, including Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman whose bloodied image has become an icon of the opposition movement. As opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi arrived at the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, the police barred him from entering, and angry mourners chanted “Neda lives! Ahmadinejad is dead!” referring to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, witnesses said.

Later, large crowds massed in several areas in central and northern Tehran, but riot police mostly beat them back, and there were reports of a number of arrests.

Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, at a memorial in Tehran that turned into an opposition rally.

Opposition leaders had hoped for a vast and peaceful public outpouring, despite the withering summer heat and the Interior Ministry’s refusal to grant permission for the gathering. Outrage over the deaths in prison of several protesters has spread to Iran’s hard-liners in recent days, and Thursday was a day of unusual symbolic importance: the end of the 40-day mourning period after Ms. Agha-Soltan and others were killed.

But the authorities, after releasing 140 detainees on Tuesday in an apparent effort to defuse the issue, were equally determined to prevent a broad show of popular discontent. Hundreds of police officers surrounded the mourners at the cemetery, and riot police officers began gathering in force in central Tehran early in the day.

On Wednesday, the leader of the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran, Abdullah Araghi, issued a stern warning against any public mourning ritual, saying, “We are not joking — we will confront those who want to fight against the clerical establishment,” the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

Some opposition supporters were heartened by the turnout on Thursday. “You see they never thought this many people would turn out in the heat like this,” said a 45-year-old woman at the cemetery, where thick crowds of people chanted slogans deriding President Ahmadinejad as a dictator and calling on him to resign. “They can’t stop it now.”

On Thursday, Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former president, became the latest prominent figure to speak out forcefully against prison deaths and abuses that occurred during the crackdown.

“Crimes have taken place and people have died,” Mr. Khatami told a group of lawmakers. “Our people, young women and men, have been treated in ways that if it had taken place in foreign prisons, everyone would be screaming that it must be confronted.”

Conservative figures in Parliament have made similar comments, and at least two investigations of the prison abuses are underway. A number of senior hard-line figures attended a mourning service on Tuesday for one of those who died in prison, Mohsen Ruholamini, the son of an adviser to Mohsen Rezai, a conservative presidential candidate, the Tabnak Web site reported.

On Thursday the government made another conciliatory gesture, moving Saeed Hajjarian, a prominent reformist who is seriously ill, from prison to a “state-owned” house with proper medical facilities, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported. Two other detainees, a political activist and a journalist, were also released, opposition Web sites reported.

Public anger is rising at a difficult time for Mr. Ahmadinejad, who won the election on June 12 in a landslide that opposition supporters say was rigged. This month Mr. Ahmadinejad refused a direct order from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to drop a contested cabinet appointment. That provoked many hard-liners, who have warned that he may not last as president if he does not show more respect for the revered Ayatollah Khamenei. The deputy ultimately withdrew, but Mr. Ahmadinejad then named him chief of staff. Some on both sides of Iran’s political divide have linked the prison abuse to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s flouting of Ayatollah Khamenei’s authority, hinting that a broader lack of accountability is the problem. Lawmakers have complained that they were not given access to the those arrested after the election, who are widely believed to be under the control of the Revolutionary Guards. Many in the opposition say the election amounted to a coup by the guards, where Mr. Ahmadinejad spent formative years.

“This is the only way that we can stop everything from falling into the hands of the Revolutionary Guards,” said a 29-year-old physiotherapist who came to the cemetery. “You see, now they don’t even take notice of the clerics, it’s gone that far.”

The mourning ceremony quickly turned into a tense standoff between the police and opposition supporters. At one point, mourners gathered around Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist cleric and presidential candidate. The police surrounded them, apparently trying to intimidate Mr. Karroubi, who spoke to the crowd without a megaphone.

A police officer raising his baton to disperse protesters at an opposition rally at the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery outside Tehran on Thursday.

Later, after Mr. Moussavi was denied entry by the police, mourners began chanting angry slogans, and the police charged with their batons, leaving many people bruised and bleeding. A number of people were arrested, including two prominent filmmakers, Jafar Panahi and Mahnaz Mohammadi, Web sites reported.

“I was telling them not to beat this girl — she was on the ground — and then they hit me on the legs,” said a 45-year-old woman, who was sitting on the grass, recovering. “If only these dead would rise up and help us.”

Later, many of the mourners headed to central Tehran to regroup at the Grand Mossalah, a vast prayer hall. But the police had closed the station that is nearest the hall, witnesses said. Instead, the mourners got off one stop before the station, and were met by riot police officers wearing protective gear and clutching bulletproof shields. The police charged at the protesters, scattering them, witnesses said. Similar confrontations took place throughout the evening as protesters gathered in Vanak Square and other places. As in earlier protests, young women were often at the forefront, hurling rocks at riot police officers and shouting in their faces.

“It is clear from the number of people that they have not felt intimidated by the arrests and killings,” one witness said. “The crowd is still as large as it was weeks ago, and you see people from all classes and ages.”

Robert F. Worth reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Nazila Fathi from Toronto.

By ROBERT F. WORTH (Published in the New York Times on July 28, 2009)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Some prisoners say they watched fellow detainees being beaten to death by guards in overcrowded, stinking holding pens. Others say they had their fingernails ripped off or were forced to lick filthy toilet bowls.

The accounts of prison abuse in Iran’s postelection crackdown — relayed by relatives and on opposition Web sites — have set off growing outrage among Iranians, including some prominent conservatives. More bruised corpses have been returned to families in recent days, and some hospital officials have told human rights workers that they have seen evidence that well over 100 protesters have died since the vote.

On Tuesday, the government released 140 prisoners in one of several conciliatory gestures aimed at deflecting further criticism. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a letter urging the head of the judiciary to show “Islamic mercy” to the detainees, and on Monday Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, personally intervened and closed an especially notorious detention center.

But there are signs that widespread public anger persists, and that it is not confined to those who took to the streets crying fraud after Mr. Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory last month. Several conservatives have said the abuse suggests a troubling lack of accountability, and they have hinted at a link with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s recent willingness to defy even the venerated Ayatollah Khamenei.

“Why did things have to go so far as to require the personal intervention of the supreme leader?” said Ali Mottahari, a conservative Parliament member. “If we are satisfied just to close one detention center, these people will continue to do what they have done elsewhere and nothing will change.”

Although the government has played down the scale of the prison abuses, some detainees’ relatives have come forward recently to confirm them, mostly to opposition-linked Web sites that have provided credible information in the past, including roozonline.com and gooya.com.

Some deaths have been further documented with photographs or videotapes. Hospital officials have described receiving bodies of those killed in protests, with the total far in excess of 20, the government’s initial figure. It is difficult to confirm such reports independently, given the restrictions on reporting in Iran.

The anger has spread from opposition supporters into Iran’s hard-line camp in part because of the case of Mohsen Ruholamini, the son of an adviser to the conservative presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai, who died in prison after a severe beating. A bitter political dispute among conservatives over Mr. Ahmadinejad’s cabinet decisions may also have helped fuel the issue.

The prison abuses have also galvanized the opposition movement, whose leaders asked for permission to hold a mass mourning ceremony on Thursday in honor of those killed since the election. The Interior Ministry on Tuesday refused permission for the gathering, but the main opposition leaders, Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, said they would hold a public ceremony anyway, several Web sites reported.

Thursday is a day of unusual symbolic importance because it will be 40 days since the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman whose death during a demonstration was captured on video and ignited outrage across the globe. The 40th day marks an important Shiite mourning ritual; similar commemorations for dead protesters fueled the demonstrations that led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Questions about the prison abuse have gained more importance in recent days, not only because of the opposition’s public protests but also because the stories have multiplied. One young man posted an account on Tuesday of his ordeal at the Kahrizak camp, which was ordered closed on Monday by Ayatollah Khamenei.

“We were all standing so close to each other that no one could move,” he wrote in a narrative posted online. “The plainclothes guards came into the room and broke all the light bulbs, and in the pitch dark started beating us, whoever they could.” By morning, at least four detainees were dead, he added.

In another account posted online, a former detainee describes being made to lie facedown on the floor of a police station bathroom, where an officer would step on his neck and force him to lick the toilet bowl as the officer cursed reformist politicians.

A woman described having her hair pulled as interrogators demanded that she confess to having sex with political figures. When she was finally released, she was forced — like many others — to sign a paper saying she had never been mistreated.

Mr. Moussavi spoke out Monday in unusually strong and angry terms, accusing the government of brutality and irreligion, and warning that its conduct toward the detainees could set off a much greater reaction.

“They cannot turn this nation into a prison of 70 million people,” Mr. Moussavi said, adding later that “the more people they arrest, the more widespread the movement will become.”

The prisoner release on Tuesday appeared to be the act of a government desperate to defuse the issue, coming just one day after the head of Iran’s judiciary promised that the detainees’ cases would be expedited. Government officials say that of at least 2,500 people arrested in the postelection crackdown, about 150 remain in prison.

In announcing the release, Saeed Jalili, the secretary of the National Security Council of Iran, sounded a defensive note, saying that those still in jail “are people for whom there are documents stating they were in possession of firebombs and weapons, including firearms, and who had caused serious damage to public property.”

But Mr. Mottahari, the lawmaker, said Tuesday that those responsible for the deaths of detainees must also be identified and punished. Others have gone further, saying the prison abuses suggest a government lurching dangerously out of control.

“Those who have turned this society into a police state and have ordered the use of force have to be held accountable,” said Hamid-Reza Katouzian, a hard-line member of Parliament. “The police and the Ministry of Intelligence have told us that they are on the sidelines, and we do not know who is responsible or accountable.”

Mr. Katouzian is a close friend of Mr. Ruholamini’s family, and his comments appeared to reflect personal outrage over that case. But his remarks also echoed a broader, longstanding concern about the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia taking over law enforcement functions and acting beyond the knowledge of legislators.

Senior clerics have also weighed in, warning that tolerating such injustices could endanger Iran’s theocracy.

“The shameful recent events have distressed everyone and been a source of worry for all those who love their country and the Islamic republic,” said Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Mousavi Ardebili, adding a plea for the government to release detainees.

The number of those killed since the election is impossible to determine, and it includes at least a few members of the Basij militia as well as protesters. One human rights group, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said it spoke to doctors in three Tehran hospitals who registered the bodies of 34 protesters on June 20 alone. Other doctors have provided similar accounts and have estimated a death toll of at least 150 based on corpses they saw.

Earlier this month, family members of missing demonstrators were taken to a morgue in southwest Tehran where they reported seeing “hundreds of corpses” and were not allowed to retrieve bodies unless they certified that the deaths were of natural causes, according to accounts relayed on Web sites and to human rights workers.

Robert F. Worth reported from Dubai, and Sharon Otterman from New York.

Iason Athanasiadis interviewed by Joe Rubin on Frontline/World’s iWitness,  24 July 2009

This is not your expected tale of a three-week stint in an Iranian prison. Photojournalist Iason Athanasiadis-Fowden, who was in Iran covering the recent disputed elections and massive protests that followed, was trying to leave the country ahead of his visa expiring when he was arrested and charged with espionage. He spoke to us over Skype from his parents’ home in Greece shortly after being released from prison. 

As you will see, there are moments in his retelling that are both humorous and terrifying. The fact that Athanasiadis-Fowden has spent several years reporting from Iran, speaks the language, and understands the culture certainly helped his cause.

His work frequently appears in The Washington Times and is supported by our partners at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

His work frequently appears in The Washington Times and is supported by our partners at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

More Reporting from Iason Athanasiadis-Fowden

Nieman Reports: Understanding Iran: Reporters Who Do Are Exiled, Pressured or Jailed

Athanasiadis-Fowden describes the shifting fortunes of reporters in Iran and, in particular, the work of American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi, who was jailed for several months in Iran earlier this year on charges of spying. She was released in May.

Tehran Bureau

This online magazine and virtual reporter’s bureau has become a vibrant destination for news about Iran since the election protests began in June. Much of the context comes from ex-pat Iranian journalists wanting to provide a deeper more nuanced coverage of their country’s political crisis.

Pulitzer Center: Iran on the Edge

Blogging for the Pulitzer Center, Athanasiadis-Fowden wrote regularly about the growing social and political turmoil in the Islamic Republic prior to his arrest in June.

On Saturday July 25, people around the world have the opportunity to support the people of Iran in their struggle for democracy, freedom and basic human rights by attending rallies in dozens of cities around the world.

For more information on the over 100 cities joining the worldwide day of action, please visit, www.united4iran.org. See the United4Iran YouTube video. 

Dear All,

It is now believed that the Friday rally [w]as bigger than a million [people].

New developments are reported in Iran around the clock. While there is frustration, there is also hope that some positive changes will result.  Please see the PeaceWithIran.com posting for photos of recent demonstrations.

36 Army Officers Arrested

Quoting Persian websites, Mr. Mousavi’s Facebook [site] reported – hours ago – that on Friday (July 17) 36 army officers were arrested in Iran because they planned to attend Mr. Rafsanjani’s sermon wearing their uniforms as a sign of the opposition of the army to the way members of the Basij have treated peaceful protesters in Iran.  While these officers were arrested before taking their action, their plan may represent the feeling among a larger segment of the army which has not made its sentiments public yet.  For more on this, please see the July 19 article, “36 Army officers arrested over protest plan,” in the Guardian (UK).

Meet Ahmad Na’eemabadi

During the July 17 march to the Friday prayer, some people carried silently the images of their loved ones lost during the Basij attacks after the disputed election.

Many protesters carried pictures of loved ones killed. Meet one of the many lost, Ahmad Na'eemabadi, in the photo above.

Reactions to the Friday Event

In Iran, Mr. Rafsanjani’s Friday sermon was embraced by the reformists and blasted by the hardliners. To see one perspective on Mr. Rafsanjani’s presentation outside Iran, click on the link to The Guardian (UK) editorial, “Iran: Words to Heed,” published on July 18, 2009.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Controversial Appointment

On Friday, Mr. Ahmadinejad who was in Mashhad, made a very controversial appointment. To replace his first deputy who had resigned on Thursday, he appointed Mr. Karim Mashsha’i. Mr. Mashsha’i is a relative of Mr. Ahmadinejad and is seriously disliked by the major clergy as well as the President’s hardliner allies.

Hunger Strike In Front of the United Nations

A group of Iranian academics, activists and intellectuals – with no attachment to any particular group or organization – are going to go on hunger strike from July 22 to 24 in front of the U.N. to express their deepest concern and support for those arrested in Iran since the elections. I am very sorry not be able to personally join them. I hope you express [your] support for their important action. Please visit their website: http://www.strike4iran.com.

Reports Political Prisoners May Be Executed

Just had an e-mail from a friend in Iran [stating] that phone contact with prison[er]s [in Iran] has led to [rumors and suspicions that political prisoners are to be executed].

According to unconfirmed [reports],  post-election political prisoners are in danger of being executed if they do not confess to various crimes and sign letters of apology. An e-mailer, who report[ed] this news [after] a phone call with a prisoner, says the accusation for these executions is “smuggler and drug dealer.” “Please let the amnesty international and other human rights organizations know” says the e-mailer “that innocent people are being executed and their only crime is seeking freedom and asking for a just and fair election in Iran.”

I do hope that this unconfirmed [report] is not true.

Siemens may loose hundreds of millions of dollars

According to Washington Times July 17 article, “Seimens risks losses due to Iran ties,” because it cooperated with Nokia in selling equipment to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government to spy on dissidents.  The following is an excerpt:

One of the world’s largest engineering firms, Siemens, could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in sales to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) because it sold Iran equipment used to spy on dissidents.

California politicians and Iranian human rights advocates say in awarding contracts, officials should take into account the fact that the German company participated in a joint venture with Nokia in 2008 to sell Iran’s telecommunications company a monitoring center that, according to the joint venture’s own promotional literature, can intercept and catalog e-mails, telephone calls and Internet data.

Political pressure because of Iran’s recent crackdown on post-election protesters, as well as the country’s advancing nuclear program, could affect a vote next week on who will supply rail cars for Los Angeles County.

Iranians and Cinema

Before we [got] into these election specials, the Windows on Iran series attempted to portray the diversity of the Iranian culture through the arts. This is a good time to share with you a clip made by Iranian documentary makers in reaction to the current events:

And while we are on the topic of cinema, an interesting short documentary about the acclaimed Iranian [female] filmmaker, Tahmineh Milani, who has made gender and Iranians women’s issues the center of her films. The only corrective I’d offer is that contemporary Iranian cinema has produced other fearless filmmakers including Rakhshan Banietemad who is interviewed briefly in this documentary.

Good Night,
F.

Fereshteh Ghazi, contributor to  roozonline.com, July 14, 2009

While no one in the Islamic Republic judiciary is willing to take responsibility for the mass arrests following the June 12 coup, authorities from the judiciary are putting pressure on families of detainees to prevent them from conducting interviews and talking about their loved ones.

While no one in the Islamic Republic judiciary is willing to take responsibility for the mass arrests following the June 12 coup, authorities from the judiciary are putting pressure on families of detainees to prevent them from conducting interviews and talking about their loved ones.  Several of the families emphasized to Rooz that “judge Haddad, who is in charge of the detainee cases related to the post election crises, has threatened the families that if they spoke to anyone about their detainees, they would not be given any news about their loved ones and their detentions would be lengthened.”

Judge Haddad heads Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran and has presided over the cases of many political activists, journalists and students in recent years.

More Pressure on Hajjarian

A day after it was announced that Saeed Hajjarian’s family was not willing to accept the release conditions set by Saeed Mortezavi for the release of this member of the Participation Front, Saeed Hajjarian’s son, Mohsen Hajjarian, was arrested at his father’s house.  According to those close to Saeed Hajjarian, Mohsen’s arrest was intended to exert more pressure on his father.  One person close to Hajjarian told Rooz, “We expected to see Mr. Hajjarian’s release this week due to his specific medical condition, but unfortunately what took place was the arrest of his son.”

Ordered and Excused

The family of Abbas Mirza Aboutalebi, head of the Reformist Front and Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s campaign director in Tehran have no information of Aboutalebi’s whereabouts either.  They have not yet been told who has arrested the vice president of the Unity (“Hambastegi”) Party or where he is being held.

The wife of this political activist told Rooz, “When the officers came, my mother was at our house.  We were all shocked that they were arresting the children and soldiers of the revolution.  My mother asked the officer why they were arresting someone who had spent thirty of his best years for the regime?  The officers responded that they were ordered to do so and said they were excused.”

Tajik at Evin’s Ward #209

Abdolreza Tajik, a journalist who has written for most of the reformist newspapers, has been behind bars since June 14.  This journalist’s sister, Parvin Tajik, told Rooz that his brother is held at Evin Prison’s Ward #209, adding, “Since his arrest, my brother had two short telephone conversations with us earlier on, asking us both times not to be worried.  In response to our questions about his conditions, interrogations, etc., he remained silent and then the call was abruptly disconnected.”

Noting that her brother has not called in two weeks, Mrs. Tajik said that she was extremely worried about the journalist’s condition, adding that both of Mr. Tajik’s attorneys, Mr. Soltani and Mr. Dadkhah too had been arrested, and that he therefore remained without any defense representation.

Judge Haddad in Charge of Detainees

Blogger and women’s rights activist Kaveh Mozaffari was arrested while accompanying his mother-in-law to the hospital.  Kaveh Mozaffari’s wife, Jelveh Javaheri, told Rooz that Kaveh Mozaffari’s name is on the list of detainees taped to the Evin Prison wall, adding, “Today, I visited Mr. Sobhani, the prosecutor in Kaveh’s former case and he said that Kaveh’s case was in the hands of Judge Haddad who would make the final decision in the case.”

Noting her concerns about her husband’s condition, she said, “Our main problem is that we don’t know what the health conditions of our loved ones are like, and whether they are subjected to beatings, abuse etc.”

Noting the pressures exerted on the families of detainees, she said, “There are 14- and 15-year-old teenagers amongst the detainees and their families are extremely worried about them.”

No News from Masoud Bastani

The family of Mahsa Amrabadi, a pregnant journalist who is behind bars along with her husband Masoud Bastani, are deeply concerned about the condition of their loves ones.  Like other families, this family too is under pressure not to speak publicly about its case.  A person close to this family told Rooz, “We know nothing about Masoud Bastani, and have had only one single short telephone conversation with Mahsa since the arrest.”

He added, “The cases must go through the normal legal channels and the interrogations must end.  We are not given any news until the interrogations are over.”

She added, “Mahsa is held at Evin Prison’s notorious Ward #209, but we know nothing about Masoud and don’t know where he is held.”

Zeidabadi Family’s Privacy Violated

On the other hand, Ahmad Zeidabadi’s wife, Mahdieh Mohammadi, published an open letter to the head of the country’s judiciary, arguing, “For what charge is a person who must be regarded as a member of his society’s elite kidnapped from his house, and why is no institution required to be held responsible for this?”

In this letter, Mrs. Mohammadi addressed head of judiciary Shahroudi, “A few days after Mr. Zeidabadi’s arrest, four muscular, intimidating and of course strange men came to our house and asked to enter; while only I and my children were at our house.  The intruders were unable to enter our house; but my children were shaking from fear for hours and kept asking, why can’t we feel safe in our own house?”

By Michael Slackman and Nazila Fathi, published July 4, 2009 in the New York Times.

CAIRO — An important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult.

“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”

The announcement came on a day when Mr. Moussavi released documents detailing a campaign of fraud by the current president’s supporters, and as a close associate of the supreme leader called Mr. Moussavi and former President Mohammad Khatami “foreign agents,” saying they should be treated as criminals.

The documents, published on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site, accused supporters of the president of printing more than 20 million extra ballots before the vote and handing out cash bonuses to voters.

Since the election, the bulk of the clerical establishment in the holy city of Qum, an important religious and political center of power, has remained largely silent, leaving many to wonder when, or if, the nation’s senior religious leaders would jump into the controversy that has posed the most significant challenge to the country’s leadership since the Islamic Revolution.

With its statement Saturday, the association of clerics came down squarely on the side of the reform movement.

The group had earlier asked for the election to be nullified because so many Iranians objected to the results, but it never directly challenged the legitimacy of the government and, by extension, the supreme leader.

The earlier statement also came before the election was certified by the country’s religious leaders, who have since said that opposition to the results must cease.

The clerics’ decision to speak up again is not itself a turning point and could fizzle under pressure from the state, which has continued to threaten its critics. Some seminaries in Qum rely on the government for funds, and Ayatollah Khamenei and the man he has declared the winner of the election, incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have powerful backers there.

They also retain the support of the powerful security forces and the elite Revolutionary Guards. In addition, the country’s highest-ranking clerics have yet to speak out individually against the election results.

But the association’s latest statement does help Mr. Moussavi, Mr. Khatami and a former speaker of Parliament, Mehdi Karroubi, who have been the most vocal in calling the election illegitimate and who, in their attempts to force change, have been hindered by the jailing of influential backers.

“The significance is that even within the clergy, there are many who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the election results as announced by the supreme leader,” said an Iranian political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

While the government could continue vilifying the three opposition leaders, analysts say it was highly unlikely that the leadership would use the same tactic against the clerical establishment in Qum.

The backing also came at a sensitive time for Mr. Moussavi, because the accusations that he is a foreign agent ran in a newspaper, Kayhan, that has often been used to build cases against critics of the government.

The editorial was written by Hossein Shariatmadari, who was picked by the supreme leader to run the newspaper.

The clerics’ statement chastised the leadership for failing to adequately study complaints of vote rigging and lashed out at the use of force in crushing huge public protests.

It even directly criticized the Guardian Council, the powerful group of clerics charged with certifying elections.

“Is it possible to consider the results of the election as legitimate by merely the validation of the Guardian Council?” the association said.

Perhaps more threatening to the supreme leader, the committee called on other clerics to join the fight against the government’s refusal to adequately reconsider the charges of voter fraud. The committee invoked powerful imagery, comparing the 20 protesters killed during demonstrations with the martyrs who died in the early days of the revolution and the war with Iraq, asking other clerics to save what it called “the dignity that was earned with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs.”

The statement was posted on the association’s Web site late Saturday and carried on many other sites, including the Persian BBC, but it was impossible to reach senior clerics in the group to independently confirm its veracity.

The statement was issued after a meeting Mr. Moussavi had with the committee 10 days ago and a decision by the Guardian Council to certify the election and declare that all matters concerning the vote were closed.

But the defiance has not ended.

With heavy security on the streets, there is a forced calm. But each day, slowly, another link falls from the chain of government control. Last week, in what appeared a coordinated thrust, Mr. Moussavi, Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Khatami all called the new government illegitimate. On Saturday, Mr. Milani of Stanford said, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani met with families of those who had been arrested, another sign that he was working behind the scenes to keep the issue alive.

“I don’t ever remember in the 20 years of Khamenei’s rule where he was clearly and categorically on one side and so many clergy were on the other side,” Mr. Milani said. “This might embolden other clergy to come forward.”

Many of the accusations of fraud posted on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site Saturday had been published before, but the report did give some more specific charges.

For instance, although the government had announced that two of the losing presidential contenders had received relatively few votes in their hometowns, the documents stated that some ballot boxes in those towns contained no votes for the two men.

Michael Slackman reported from Cairo, and Nazila Fathi from Toronto.

Protesters in Iran walk past a poster of former president Khatami and reform party leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi. (Photo: Reuters)

Story posted by Reuters on Wednesday,  July 1, 2009 1:42pm EDT.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Moderate former president Mohammad Khatami criticized the outcome of Iran’s disputed election and called for the release of people arrested since the June 12 vote in a hard-hitting statement on Wednesday.

Khatami was the third leading pro-reformer to publicly denounce the vote and its turbulent aftermath since Iran’s top legislative body on Monday confirmed the victory of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Two defeated moderate candidates — former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi and pro-reform cleric Mehdi Karoubi — both say the election was rigged in the incumbent’s favor and have called for it to be annulled.

Khatami, who was president from 1997 to 2005, supported Mousavi’s presidency bid during the campaign.

“Many people voted because we called for a high turnout. With this result and the way of confrontation (with post-election protests) you can be sure that even us (reformers) cannot ask people to take part in the next election,” he said.

“This is not in the interest of the establishment,” he added.

Reformist sources say scores of leading reformers have been detained in a crackdown since official election results released on June 13 sparked the gravest street unrest in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Riot police and religious Basij militia have suppressed huge demonstrations in which at least 20 people were killed.

“If you want to calm the atmosphere, why are you carrying out mass arrests? Oppressing people will not help end the protests,” Khatami said.

Addressing the judiciary, he said: “If these people have committed crimes, why are their legal rights as citizens not preserved, why don’t they have access to a lawyer, why are they not tried in a court, why haven’t they been charged?”

Khatami added: “Obtaining confessions in front of cameras is a useless old method … confessions under pressure are not valid.”

Iran’s police chief, Ismail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, earlier on Wednesday put the total number of detainees in the post-election unrest at 1,032 and said most had been freed.

The rest had been “referred to the public and revolutionary courts in Tehran,” Fars agency quoted him as saying.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi; writing by Fredrik Dahl; editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Further reading:

Ahmadinejad’s rivals defiant on Iran vote – Reuters, July 1, 2009.
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Two losing contenders in Iran’s presidential election denounced the result on Wednesday in clear defiance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s next cabinet would be illegitimate.

Iran’s Mousavi says new government illegitimate- Reuters, July 1, 2009 (9:56am EDT).
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi said Wednesday the new government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was “illegitimate,” in a statement posted on his website

]]> http://www.peacewithiran.com/candidates-remain-defiant-and-khatami-denounces-iran-election-and-arrests/feed/ 0 http://www.peacewithiran.com/irans-gandhian-moment/ http://www.peacewithiran.com/irans-gandhian-moment/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:12:25 +0000 admin2 http://www.peacewithiran.com/?p=289 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.

Gandhi adopted his methodology of satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time in South Africa, calling on his fellow Indians to defy the new law and suffer the punishments for doing so, rather than resist it through violent means. As for Martin Luther King Jr., he started his nonviolent movement by calling on all black citizens to stop riding the buses in Montgomery until the laws were changed. The protest marked the beginning of the civil rights movement in the United States.

What is most important in Iran is that the massive outpouring of anti-Ahmadinejad sentiments in Iran is so far doubtlessly nonviolent and peaceful. Chief among the slogans of the demonstrators have been the re-run of the elections and the condemnation of violence. Iranian society is in the midst of an epoch-making renaissance in its political culture and discourse. This transformation in political values, norms, symbols, and everyday codes of behavior is most evident in the peaceful and nonviolent action of all those who have been protesting to pursue allegations of election fraud within the limits of the Iranian constitutional framework.

Many in the past week have walked silently and lit black candles. Others have worn green wristbands or ribbons and carried flowers. Gandhi chose a spinning wheel as a symbol of his idea of non-violence. A spinning wheel represented two different messages: It was the main instrument to protest against India’s growing industrialism and it was also a symbol of resistance to the British-made clothes that had replaced the Indian hand-made clothes. As for Martin Luther King, he turned to the symbol of the “American Dream” as a hope of equity and social justice for every member of the American society. Today, Mousavi has become the symbol of nonviolent protest in Iran, but the true hero of the Iranian civic movement is the emerging republican model of nonviolent resistance and non-ideological politics that provide the clearest guideline and vision for Iran’s gradual transition to an open society.

Post-revolutionary Iran has experienced the failure of two major political paradigms in the last thirty years: revolutionary leftism and ideological Islam. They each failed in practice as well as in theory, and the Iranian people no longer trust the groups associated with them. It is evident that nonviolent action is the new paradigm that is attempting to define itself distinctly and overcome the intellectual and political weaknesses of its predecessors. There is common agreement among the demonstrators and civil activists that the main contradiction in contemporary Iran is the one between authoritarian violence and democratic nonviolence.

Though this nonviolent paradigm is still in the making, it can nonetheless be characterized as both “post-ideological.” This is due to the fact that the protest movement in Iran is nonviolent and civil in its methods of creating social change while also seeking an ethical dimension to Iranian politics. This judgment implies that Iranian civil society is ready to make a distinction between two kinds of approach: searching for truth and solidarity versus lying and using violence. In the days and weeks ahead, we will have to wait and see how this dialectic between the powerless nonviolent truth-seekers and powerful lie-makers and users of violence will work itself out. As such, the fact that the elections have or have not been rigged is now a secondary issue. What is now at stake is to challenge the illegitimacy of violence in Iran. Gandhi once said: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” The change we are witnessing in Iran is the change in the younger generation of Iranians. Iranian youth have shown the world that they have enough maturity and tolerance to spark nonviolent change in Iran.

Ramin Jahanbegloo is a well-known Iranian-Canadian philosopher. Presently a Professor of Political Science and a Research Fellow in the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto, he is the author of twenty books in English, French, and Persian, including Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (Peter Halban, 1992), Gandhi: Aux Sources de la Nonviolence ( Felin, 1999), Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity (Lexington Books, 2004), and most recently The Spirit of India (Penguin 2008).