Who Is in Control of the Islamic Republic?

Iran’s disputed election marked the rise of a new power elite. Now, with more protests looming and a nuclear program facing international pressure, can the Revolutionary Guard and its allies sustain their tightening grip on the Islamic Republic?

(Jerry Guo | Foreign Policy | 30 September 2009) - The headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are in a European-style palace, replete with Greek columns and a grand staircase, in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. From here, the IRGC orchestrated the crackdown that followed Iran’s disputed presidential vote in June, beating protestors on the street and torturing those behind bars. More ominously, the IGRC and other extreme hard-liners have sidelined fellow conservatives in the Iranian government, carving out their own power base in a regime that is becoming increasingly insular, reactionary, and violent.So far, much of the analysis of the emerging Iranian power struggle has focused on the clash between the country’s conservatives and reformers, pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his patron, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two thwarted presidential candidates, and Mohammad Khatami, a former president. (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and seasoned kingmaker has eased toward the reformists in the election’s aftermath.)

The real struggle, however, is the conflict among the hard-liners themselves, many of whom operate behind the headlines in unseen corners of the state machinery. Although Iran’s opposition movement has witnessed an unprecedented surge in public support, the election and its aftermath mark a radicalization of the system not seen since the early days of the Islamic revolution.

In the reformist era of Khatami, and to some extent during Ahmadinejad’s first term, the country’s conservative theocrats and technocrats — such as Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, and Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, the ousted intelligence minister who criticized the state’s use of forced confessions — held much of the power over the executive and legislative branches. Although they were entrenched status quo forces, these pragmatists believed in the dual nature of the Islamic Republic’s statehood — a country with religious and political legitimacy.

But now such figures are losing their influence to a new breed of second-generation revolutionaries from Iran’s security apparatus known as “the New Right.” They are joined in the emerging power structure by ultraconservative clerics and organizations such as the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran. These neo-fundamentalists call for the “re-Islamization” of the theocracy, but their true agenda is to block further reform to the political system in terms of reconciling with both domestic opponents and the West.

This coalition includes Hassan Taeb, the commander of the Basij, the paramilitary branch of the IRGC; Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council and the country’s chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader’s second son, a man so feared that his name is not often uttered in public.

Hard-line figures such as the younger Khamenei and the IRGC leadership are granted religious legitimacy through the support of the most radical mullahs in the theocratic establishment: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, the committee that certified the election tallies, and Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, a former head of the judiciary and Ahmadinejad’s spiritual adviser. Yazdi is affiliated with an underground messianic sect called the Hojjatieh Society, which hopes to quicken the coming of the apocalypse. Democratic reforms, the Majlis (parliament), and elections are mere annoyances under this radical Islamic worldview.

It is not surprising, then, that Yazdi issued a fatwa shortly before June 12 that gave authorities tacit approval to fudge the vote. Indeed, the clerics seem to have gotten the intended result: after the election, a number of employees at Iran’s Interior Ministry released an open letter stating that “the election supervisors, who had become happy and energetic for having obtained the religious fatwa to use any trick for changing the votes, began immediately to develop plans for it.”

Yazdi’s influence on Ahmadinejad became pronounced in the early days of the president’s first term, when Ahmadinejad declared that the return of the apocalyptic 12th imam would come within two years. Now, his second term will likely be marked by even more radical behavior: in a meeting with Yazdi in June to discuss his domestic agenda, Ahmadinejad promised to Islamize the country’s educational and cultural systems, declaring that Iranians had not yet witnessed “true Islam.” Then, in August, amid calls to purge reformist professors, a presidential panel began investigating university humanities curricula deemed to be “un-Islamic.” Several progressive students told me that they have been barred from returning to campus this semester, including a top law student at Tehran University. “I was going to continue the protests with my law degree in a more effective manner,” he said. “But now I am just a simple pedestrian.”

But ideology remains secondary in the struggle to maintain and consolidate control within the fractured regime. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and his associated faction of neo-fundamentalists no longer aim to take on the mantle of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary ideals. As Khamenei’s representative to the IRGC put it, “Some people are sticking to Imam Khomeini’s ideas … [but] the situation has changed.” Accordingly, religion and revolutionary ideology have become convenient means to an end, but not the end themselves. Purges of un-Islamic faculty and students are meant to target the organizers of mass protests; the arrests and subsequent trials of political opponents, meanwhile, act to shield the financial interests of the IRGC and its hard-line partners.

The biggest prize is a number of state petrochemical contracts worth billions of dollars. During his presidency in the early 1990s, Rafsanjani steered oil development projects to family and friends. In 2005, Ahmadinejad defeated Rafsanjani and promised to take on the “oil mafia” — but then loaded two-thirds of his cabinet with IRGC veterans, signed off on hundreds of no-bid construction and petrochemical contracts for IGRC-backed companies, and condoned the IRGC’s proliferating smuggling networks, which net $12 billion a year, according to one Iranian lawmaker. A local market analyst told me that the IRGC functions like “a mafia.” It uses free and low-cost labor, as well as an extensive intelligence apparatus, to undercut competing bids.

The resulting opacity and confusion have left many business and financial leaders in Iran unclear of how to navigate the new environment. “We don’t know what they will do,” one financial analyst told me recently. “Maybe they will stage a military coup and then open our doors like China, or maybe Pakistan,” he speculated, referring to the Islamization of the Pakistani state under General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq’s military rule from 1978 to 1988.

To his second-term cabinet, Ahmadinejad has appointed IRGC hard-liners to some of the most influential posts in government, such as the ministers of defense, intelligence, interior, and oil, which together not only control the country’s energy industry but also domestic security.

Until recently, the IRGC was split between pragmatists and hard-liners. In 2001, three-quarters of the IRGC’s 130,000 foot soldiers voted to reelect Khatami. At least one internal government poll before this summer’s election showed that a “high percentage” of the IRGC’s rank and file planned to vote for Mousavi. Four days before the election, the organization’s weekly newspaper, the Sobhe Sadeq, warned of a “Velvet Green revolution” and promised that the IRGC would not allow the opposition to triumph. Then, immediately following the polls, IRGC commanders purged leaders who were sympathetic to the reformists, leaving a united bloc of hard-liners whose views lie at the extreme right.

These new players are wasting little time in attempting to consolidate power. In early August, Yadollah Javani, the head of the IGRC’s political bureau, called for the arrest of the opposition leaders. “What is the role of Khatami, Mousavi, and Karroubi in this coup?” he asked. “If they are the main agents, which is the case, judiciary and security officials should go after them, arrest them, try them, and punish them.” Such a move may not be far off: in early September, security forces raided offices connected to Mousavi and Karroubi and arrested three of their top aides. The same week, Khamenei warned during a Friday sermon that further attacks by the reformist leadership would be met with a “harsh response.” (According to Rafsanjani, Khamenei already issued an arrest warrant for Karroubi in late August.)

If the neo-fundamentalist bloc is able to further concentrate its power, it will not only bode ill for the beleaguered domestic opposition but also dash any hope of an international resolution to Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “The nuclear question is finished,” Ahmadinejad said earlier this month. “We will not negotiate over Iran’s undeniable rights.” Eroded legitimacy at home means the ruling hard-liners have little room to budge on a compromise over halting fuel production, for fear of alienating a power base that depends on continued pariah status to feed its clandestine business interests. As such, U.S. administration officials indicated that they have extremely low expectations going into the October 1 meeting with their Iranian counterparts.

For now, the neo-fundamentalists seem to have settled on the tactic of intimidate and escalate. Last month, the regime put French and British diplomatic staff on trial in Tehran, in addition to bringing charges against a Canadian-Iranian Newsweek journalist and an Iranian-American academic. Ahmadinejad has defiantly declared, “We welcome sanctions” — a signal to reconciliatory elements within the conservative camp that he and the hard-liners will not back down in the face of opposition. In any case, the neo-fundamentalists do not seem eager to jeopardize their near monopoly of the black market by reconciling with the West, particularly when China and Russia continue to extend an open hand in business.

Many of my colleagues in Tehran are preparing for a winter of confrontation. “Iranians have been living through these conditions since the Iran-Iraq war, when everything — food, oil, clothes — were rationed,” one coworker told me. But this time, the regime must contend with an embattled opposition that is backed by mass popular support. As the last few months have proven, it is a movement that cannot be easily bullied into submission.

JERRY GUO was an analyst in an Iranian investment bank in Tehran.

An Open Letter to a Senior Clerical Assembly Demands an Inquiry into Whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Is Fit to Rule

(Farnaz Fassihi | Wall Street Journal | 15 August 2009) – In a daring move, a group of former reformist lawmakers, now supporters of the opposition, have challenged whether the Islamic Republic’s top man in power is fit to rule.The unprecedented complaint against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came in a letter to one of Iran’s highest clerical bodies, the Assembly of Experts, which has the power to name people to the leadership post — and to remove them. The letter marks the first time a political group has questioned the authority of the supreme leader.

The letter was addressed to Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who now heads the assembly and is a critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr. Rafsanjani shunned the inauguration ceremony of the president on Aug. 5, as well as Mr. Khamenei’s endorsement ceremony.

The letter states that according to Iran’s constitution, the supreme leader isn’t above the law and that the assembly has the right to review his performance as a religious and political leader.

“We demand a legal probe on the basis of Article 111 of the Constitution, which is a responsibility of the Experts Assembly,” stated the letter, which was written by the head of the organization of former reformist lawmakers. Article 111 says if the supreme leader “becomes incapable of fulfilling his constitutional duties,” he will be dismissed.

The letter likely won’t result in any action from the Assembly because the hard-liners have marginalized the reformists. But it signals an important turning point for the reform movement. Analysts say the reform movement has become more radical and is placing itself squarely against the regime and its top authority.

Criticizing the supreme leader was once unthinkable, and had serious repercussions. Now, demonstrators regularly chant slurs against Mr. Khamenei and write insults about him in green spray paint on walls in the capital.

Letter writing also has surged. In Iran, political discourse, even the most serious, has long been in the form of an open letter. When behind-the-scenes negotiations hit a dead end, the issues are shared with the public in print.

These letters now are a crucial communication tool for opposition leaders banned from public speaking. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, along with former president Mohammad Khatami, all have written letters to the supreme leader and to various government bodies complaining about election turmoil.

The reform party, the brainchild of Mr. Khatami, who ruled Iran from 1997 to 2005, had always operated on the premise that it could change the system from within the existing framework. Members criticized the rank-and-file in government, even the president, but pledged loyalty to the system and to the supreme leader. That has now changed.

“When you have nothing more to lose, when even your most basic rights are not respected, then you question the foundations of the regime and that includes the supreme leader,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former reformist lawmaker, reached by phone, who is now a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

Ms. Haghighatjoo and former lawmaker Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoeini once faced legal charges for speaking out against Mr. Khamenei in the parliament.

That taboo has been challenged in particular after Mr. Khamenei openly sided with Mr. Ahmadinjead in a Friday-prayer address to the nation one week after the disputed June 12 election, and declared that his personal views were reflected closely in Mr. Ahmadinejad’s policies.

A number of high-profile open letters followed, including one Mr. Rafsanjani wrote to Mr. Khamenei asking him to order a recount of votes soon after. Mr. Rafsanjani’s daughter took photos of him drafting the letter on the balcony of his residence and posted them online, to counter rumors that the letter was a fraud.

Perhaps the most controversial letter was one Mr. Karroubi wrote this week claiming detained protesters were raped in prison. It prompted a furious reaction from hard-liners, who denied the allegations. “The letter played with the Islamic Republic’s dignity,” said cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami in his Friday prayer address this week.

With street protests quiet, factional disputes intensify. Hard-line clerics call for opposition leader Karroubi to stand trial, and reformist lawmakers want supreme leader Khamenei investigated.

(Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim | Los Angeles Times | 15 August 2009) - Rival camps within Iran’s corridors of power intensified their threats against each other Friday, signaling potentially dangerous clashes within elite circles and the security establishment after the disputed June 12 reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Hard-line clerics close to Ahmadinejad called for prominent reformist Mehdi Karroubi, a former speaker of parliament and a presidential candidate, to stand trial for making allegations of jailhouse rape and torture in the country’s detention centers.

On the opposing side, a group of former reformist lawmakers issued a letter late Thursday demanding that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, be investigated by the Assembly of Experts, clerics who have the power to replace the supreme leader, in relation to the election’s violent aftermath.

The factional disputes, which are expected to get worse before the naming of the next Cabinet, come as street protests have faded.

“The ball of crisis is still rolling, if not on the streets, within the ruling establishment,” said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a reformist journalist and human rights activist in Tehran.

Protesters, nursing bruises and stifled by late-summer temperatures, are sitting back for the moment, apparently hoping they can accomplish their minimal goal — removing from power Ahmadinejad and his circle of hard-liners in the security apparatus — without more bloodshed.

Analysts said that opposition figure Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s leading challenger in the election, has been reluctant to call for protests for fear he would be arrested. His news website, Ghalamnews.ir, has been shut down for days, and many of his deputies remain in prison.

“There is a plan for paralyzing the system and bringing down Ahmadinejad,” said Mohsen Sazegara, a Washington-based analyst and political activist who supports the opposition. “But Mousavi can’t announce it because he’ll be arrested. If he doesn’t say anything, it doesn’t mean that within the opposition there’s no plan.”

For now, neither hard-liners nor reformists appear to be backing down.

At Friday prayers, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a staunch supporter of Ahmadinejad, reiterated demands by his conservative allies that the judiciary put Karroubi on trial for making allegedly false accusations that prisoners swept up in a wave of protests were raped and tortured in prison.

According to a respected reformist news website, Ahmadinejad has submitted a proposal to the country’s Supreme National Security Council for the arrests of Mousavi and Karroubi, along with other prominent reformists. The plan was spurned by the “highest authorities” for fear that it would cause the “collapse” of the system, reported Norooznews.ir.

Reformists have not gone away despite such threats. The letter to Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani signed by hundreds of former lawmakers called for the Assembly of Experts, which he oversees, to examine whether Khamenei should be replaced under an article in the constitution.

Karroubi, meanwhile, has issued more details of prison abuse, stating on his website Thursday that he had evidence that prisoners were stripped naked and forced to walk and scream like animals.

The allegations of sexual abuse, which tarnish Ahmadinejad and his clique as corrupt, are particularly effective in wooing moderate clerics and those within the political establishment, analysts said.

With opposition figures constrained by the threat of prison, hard-liners are finding themselves unsure about the depth of discontent within the country. Their increasingly strident calls to lock up Mousavi and Karroubi prompted the son of former longtime Intelligence Minister Ali Younesi, popular among those in the security apparatus, to warn authorities about consequences that he did not specify.

“The knowledgeable ones among these authorities, if there are any of them, know well that such gestures are like playing with fire,” Hassan Younesi wrote on his blog Wednesday night.

Even conservatives complain that Ahmadinejad has not met the minimum requirements they spelled out to avoid a protracted fight over his next Cabinet team, which he must submit to parliament early next week.

In recent days he has bucked an Iranian law by taking de facto control of the Intelligence Ministry and promptly purging it of longtime ranking officials deemed insufficiently loyal. He also dismissed the head of the Islamic Republic News Agency on charges of being too balanced.

Ahmadinejad managed to elevate his brother in-law, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, to chief of staff despite the disapproval of Khamenei and moved to promote a close ally, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Reza Radan, to the helm of the national police.

In a meeting with a group of scholars associated with the hard-line Basiji militia days before his inauguration, Ahmadinejad made a reference to seizing opponents by their collars and sticking “their heads to the ceiling.”

“Let me take the oath of office,” he said, “and wait for the government to begin its work.”

He later explained that he meant Iran’s foreign rivals, not his domestic foes.

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, in a sermon at Tehran University on Friday, denounced claims that protesters had been raped. (Abedin Taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency)

(Robert F. Worth and Nazila Fathi | New York Times | 14 August 2009) — Iran’s clerical leadership on Friday stepped up a campaign to silence opposition claims that protesters had been raped in prison, with prayer leaders in at least three major cities denouncing the accusations and their chief sponsor. The accusations of rape — usually a taboo subject in Iran — have multiplied and provoked strong reactions in the days since a reformist cleric and presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, broached the subject last weekend. His allegations added fuel to an already volatile debate about prison abuse in the wake of Iran’s disputed June 12 election.

Also on Friday, a group of reformist former lawmakers issued an extraordinary statement on opposition Web sites in which they denounced the government’s harsh tactics and appealed to a powerful state body to investigate the qualifications of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Although it was not clear who had endorsed the statement, or even if all of the lawmakers were in the country, it appeared to be the most direct challenge to the supreme leader’s authority yet in the unrest following the election.

With a renewed volley of opposition accusations in the air, a fundamentalist cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, called Mr. Karroubi’s claims of prison rape a “total slander against the Islamic system” and demanded in a sermon at Tehran University on Friday that Mr. Karroubi be prosecuted. “We expect the Islamic system to show an appropriate response to this,” he said.

Prayer leaders in Qum and Mashad delivered similar diatribes. Friday Prayer sermons usually reflect talking points given out by the office of Ayatollah Khamenei.

The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, had already dismissed Mr. Karroubi’s claims as “sheer lies” this week, saying an inquiry ordered days earlier had found no evidence that protesters detained in the demonstrations that followed the election had been raped.

Even before the rape claims emerged, hard-line political figures and clerics had been calling for the arrest of Mr. Karroubi, along with the leader of the opposition, Mir Hussein Moussavi, and former President Mohammad Khatami. In the course of a mass trial of reformists that began earlier this month, prosecutors have accused all three men of being linked to a conspiracy to topple Iran’s government through a “velvet revolution.”

But Mr. Karroubi appeared to be undaunted, and he pressed ahead with more claims of jailhouse sexual abuse in a statement posted on his party’s Web site late Thursday. He said he had received testimony from former prisoners that they had seen other detainees “forced to go naked, crawling on their hands and knees like animals, with prison guards riding on their backs.” Others told of watching as fellow prisoners guilty only of marching and chanting slogans were beaten to death, Mr. Karroubi said.

“Insults and criticism won’t make me silent,” Mr. Karroubi said, after dismissing Mr. Larijani’s quick investigation of the abuse claims as meaningless. “I’ll defend the rights of the people as long as I live and you can’t stop my hand, tongue and pen.”

The statement by the reformist former lawmakers appeared to be the strongest public attack yet on Ayatollah Khamenei. Long unquestioned, Ayatollah Khamenei’s status as a neutral arbiter and Islamic symbol has suffered since he prematurely blessed the election that many Iranians believe was rigged. In recent weeks, some protesters have begun chanting “death to Khamenei” — a phrase that was almost unimaginable before — and the same words have appeared in graffiti on buildings in Tehran.

The authors of the statement made their appeal to the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that has the power to appoint the supreme leader and, in theory, to dismiss him. The statement is unlikely to have much impact beyond angering conservatives, who control many seats in the 86-member Assembly.

The former lawmakers praised Mr. Karroubi for publicizing the rape accusations and angrily dismissed the mass trial of reformists now under way as a Stalinesque show trial. They also echoed opposition complaints about the brutality of the crackdown that followed the protests.

A day before the statement appeared, one member of the Assembly of Experts, Ali Mohammad Dastgheib, wrote his own letter calling for the group to hold an emergency meeting, opposition Web sites reported.

“I am calling honestly and for the benefit of the country that the Assembly of Experts should convene an open meeting and look into people’s complaints, as well as those of Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi,” Mr. Dastgheib wrote.

National Public Radio – August 3, 2009

By Mike Schuster

Despite the harsh police crackdown in Tehran, Iran’s opposition movement continues to bring thousands of protesters into the streets to challenge the government.

Just last week, several thousand came out to commemorate those who have been killed since the protests erupted after Iran’s disputed presidential election in June.

On Monday, Iran’s Supreme leader formally endorsed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term.

More protests are expected this week when Ahmadinejad is inaugurated on Wednesday.

In a matter of weeks, the opposition movement has transformed itself from a campaign for a presidential candidate to a broader movement challenging the leaders and the foundation of the Islamic republic.

Protest Has ‘Life Of Its Own’

After a lull, the protest movement appears to be gaining strength again, says Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University.

“It is precisely because the ruling elite of the Islamic republic is conscious of the snowballing effect of these demonstrations that they are cracking down on them so severely and violently. And I’m absolutely convinced that it will continue. This is no longer just in reaction to the presidential election. This has assumed a life of its own,” Dabashi says.

What the opposition movement wants is not entirely clear. The chant, “Down with the dictator,” dominates the demonstrations. But there is a certain ambiguity to that, which seems to suit protesters of different political stripes.

The sentiment could be directed against Ahmadinejad, but also at Iran’s supreme leader himself, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which would be a more profound challenge to the foundation of the Islamic republic, says Farideh Farhi, an Iranian specialist at the University of Hawaii.

“I think it has ultimately been directed at the supreme leader precisely because he has chosen to take responsibility not only for the fraud that occurred during the election, but also by threatening violence after the election and actually implementing violence after the election,” she says.

No Clear Leader

It is also not clear who is leading the opposition movement, if anyone. Ostensibly, defeated presidential candidate Mir Houssein Mousavi is its leader, but his actions have been severely restricted. He rarely appears in public and is confined to posting his views on Web sites.

Some of Iran’s prominent political figures, such as former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former President Mohammad Khatami, have attempted to set specific goals for the movement, but with little real impact, says Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a professor of Middle East studies at Syracuse University.

“Politicians of the ilk of Rafsanjani and Khatami are trying to see if there is any middle-of-the-road type of a solution, either by calling for a referendum or by asking for the release of political prisoners. I don’t think that this is going to satisfy the citizenry any more, and it seems to me that that ship has already left the port,” he says.

It has been a season of political surprises in Iran, beginning in May, just a few weeks before Iran’s June 12 presidential election. Overnight it seemed, hundreds of thousands of people were turning out to support Mousavi, the reformist candidate. He chose green as the symbol of his campaign, and people all over Iran began wearing the color.

Violence Galvanizes Instead Of Deters

On June 13, officials announced that Ahmadinejad was re-elected president — by a seemingly improbable two-to-one margin, no less. And the green movement began its rapid transformation into an opposition, surprising everyone, Farhi says.

“Most people did not expect this kind of popular outrage. Furthermore, they did not expect this popular outrage to persist,” Farhi says.

The violent methods used to try to crush the movement further fueled the outrage. In one cell-phone video, posted on YouTube in late July, a helmeted policeman shoots at demonstrators with a rifle. A man in plainclothes also shoots at the demonstrators with a pistol. One protester falls and a half dozen come to his aid. The people making the video shout at the demonstrators, giving them directions on where to go to get away from the police.

Despite the violence, thousands are still turning out to challenge the government. They don’t number in the millions as they did back in June. But there are still many women, older people and some poorly dressed protesters to supplement the young men — largely from the educated middle class — who are taking the worst beatings.

The demands of the opposition remain vague, but that could change. Repression often breeds radicalization, which could lead to new surprises in the astounding political drama that still has Iran in its grip.

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.

Published on July 16, 2009 in the The Daily Beast by Reza Aslan

AP Photo

Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the second most powerful man in Iran, is delivering the Friday Sermon in Tehran. Will it be the end of the protests, or a new challenge to the regime?

Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the second most powerful man in Iran (after the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) and one of the principal figures behind the anti-Ahmadinejad movement that has rocked the country over the last month, will deliver the Friday Sermon in Tehran this week, the first time he has been offered the prestigious pulpit in years.
Even more surprising, sources in Iran have confirmed that both the main reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi and former president Mohammad Khatami will also attend the sermon. In fact, Mousavi’s Web site is encouraging all of his supporters—that is, the hundreds of thousands of protesters who flooded the streets of Iran in the wake of the disputed presidential elections—to come along, too. Both Reuters and the Los Angeles Times report the rumors of Mousavi and Khatami attending.

________________________________________________________

What makes Rafsanjani’s invitation to deliver the Friday Sermon so unusual is that it could only have come from one man—Khamenei.

___________________________________________

The presence in one place of the three main leaders of the protest movement (something that has not happened since the presidential elections) has fueled speculation about what exactly Rafsanjani plans to say. Could a compromise between the two camps be in the works? Or will this be the start of a new wave of challenges to the regime?

This will be Mousavi’s first public appearance in weeks; he has been under virtual house arrest since his refusal to accept the election results that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency. Why has the government suddenly allowed him to leave his home and attend the Friday Sermon? Could it be to force his capitulation to Ahmadinejad? Or is it the regime that’s capitulating?

The truth is no one knows what to expect from Rafsanjani on Friday. But the fact that the man known in Iran as “the Shark” has now become the reformist camp’s best hope for political change has left many in Iran scratching their heads. For years, no one was more emblematic of the hatred and anger that many Iranians, particularly the youth, feel toward the clerical establishment than Rafsanjani. Indeed, Rafsanjani is the clerical establishment. As one of the architects of the Islamic republic, he’s held almost every major post in the country. President from 1989-1997, he is now chairman of both the Expediency Council—meant to be a neutral body that arbitrates disputes between the parliament and the forces of the supreme leader—and the Assembly of Experts, which has the power to choose and to dismiss the supreme leader.

Rafsanjani is also staggeringly rich. A few years ago, when Forbes magazine published a special report on “Millionaire Mullahs,” it was Rafsanjani who made the cover. Since the revolution in 1979, Rafsanjani has managed to rise from his humble origins to build an empire worth more than $1 billion—this in a country in which the average adult income is less that $2,000 a month.

It is difficult to describe the fear and contempt with which a great many Iranians hold Rafsanjani. As the brainchild of the Iran-Contra scandal, Rafsanjani’s name is whispered at the head of every conspiracy. It is said he had a hand in the murder of Ayatollah Khomeini’s beloved son, Ahmad, so as to ensure his own promotion to the highest ranks of the revolutionary government. He has even been linked to a series of gruesome murders of dissident writers in 1998.

Of course, no one dares speak such things in public. When the intrepid Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji published an investigative piece about Rafsanjani’s role in the dissident murders, his newspaper was promptly shut down and its editors—Ganji included—were arrested. (Interestingly, Ganji never identified Rafsanjani by name, though everyone knew about whom he was writing—including, apparently, Rafsanjani.)

Although Rafsanjani has been associated with both the Combatant Clergy Association, a centrist clerical organization that has been outspoken in its condemnation of the elections, and the Kargozaran party, which last week called the Ahmadinejad government “illegitimate,” most Iranians balk at labeling Rafsanjani a “reformist.” In fact, Rafsanjani has flipped back and forth between reformist and conservative camps whenever it has suited him.

Still, Rafsanjani’s deep and unbridled loathing of Ahmadinejad, and Ahmadinejad’s ceaseless attacks on his character and his family’s questionable business ties, has made the two men bitter enemies. (In the election aftermath, five members of Rafsanjani’s family, including his outspoken daughter, Faezeh, were arrested and detained by the government.) By all accounts, Rafsanjani has been the main force behind the scenes trying to annul the elections. What’s more, he has spent the last few weeks in Qom, Iran’s religious capital, ostensibly trying to convince his fellow clerics on the Assembly of Experts to dismiss Khamenei and replace him either with another ayatollah or with a committee of three or five ayatollahs (as Iran’s constitution allows). That is what makes his invitation to deliver the Friday Sermon so unusual. After all, the invitation could only have come from one man—Khamenei.

In the end, the only thing that Rafsanjani truly cares about is Rafsanjani, which is why no one knows if he will use the Friday Sermon to call for an end to the protests or to renew his criticism of Ahmadinejad. It may all depend on what’s best for Rafsanjani.

Nevertheless, it is no exaggeration to say that whither Rafsanjani goes, so goes the future of Iran.

Stay tuned.

Reza Aslan, a contributor to the Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War.

Discussions in the media on Iranian politics has shifted to a different level after a group of clerics declared the June 12 poll results illegitimate. The unresolved political turmoil is leading to mounting tensions.

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Newsy.com is a multiperspective online video news site that monitors, synthesizes and presents the world’s news coverage.  News sources are abundant yet redundant.  Newsy.com takes a step back to show how the world’s news organizations are reporting a story – providing an unprecedented global and macro point of view.  You’ll find CNN right next to Al Jazeera, the BBC right next to ABC. Newsy.com  also covers major newspapers, news magazines as well as top blogs from around the world. By monitoring the world’s new coverage, we provide immediate analysis of news perspectives so you can form your own opinion.

It is reprehensible that those running the country tell the Iranian people, many of them living without the basic necessities of life, that they do not have enough money to support the country, yet hold offshore bank accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars. Such actions fundamentally violate the basic Islamic principles of social justice and charity to the poor, which leaders that derive their authority from Islam are duty-bound to observe.

Let us not forget that before Iranians took to the street demanding “where is my vote,” they rallied for candidates that promised social and economic justice. A way forward with dignity and promise for the Iranian people. In this spirit, we join the Iranian people in their fight for their economic and social rights by denouncing those that by their actions deny them realizing their full human potential, and hence freedom in all its possibility.

- Ed Hale, singer/songwriter and PeacewithIran.com co-founder

Foreign Bank Accounts of Prominent Iranian Leaders

Ali Khamenei

Sparkasse Bank (Frankfurt/Germany) Acct.# 234075617: DM 112.1 Million
Corner Bank (Geneve/CH) Acct. # 217824: US$ 97 Million
Banque Cantonale (Lausanne/CH) Acct. # 71713: US$ 73.2 Million

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rasfandjani

Union Bank Suisse (Geneve/CH) Acct.# 223870390: SF 532.5 Million
Societe Generale ( Zurich/CH) Acct.# 30064183: DM 477.2 Million
Sparkasse (Ciborg/Germany) Acct. # 2957132: DM 238.2 Million

Mohammad Ali Tasskhiri

Societe Generale (Geneve/Ch) Acct.# 500032654: DM 280.7 Million
Midland Bank (London/UK) Acct.# 832-150270: BP 12.2 Million
Dressdner bank (Dusserdolf/Germany) Acct.# 8354783: DM 48.3 Million

Mohammad Golpayegani

Credit Bank Suisse (Geneve/CH) Acct.# CEO7680: SF 85.7 Million

Bijan Namdar Zangene

Union Bank Suisse (Geneve/CH) Acct.# 314380320: US$ 141.7 Million

Habibollah Asgar Aladi

Corner Bank (Geneve/CH) Acct. # 3983BHK: US$ 180 Millions

Ahmad Jannati

Midland Bank (London/UK) Acct.# 92114016: BP 54.2 Million

Abdollah Nategh Nouri

Union Banque Suisse (Geneve/CH) Acct.# 2102120321ND: USD 123.9 Million
Deutsh bank (Hamburg/Germany) Acct.# 03223486: DM 64.1 Million

Mohsen Rafighdoost

Union Banque Suisse (Geneve/CH) Acct.# 2183130687: USD 122.7 Million

Mohsen Hashemi Bahremani

Deutsh bank (Munchen 3/Germany) Acct.# 1732736: DM 370.7 Million
Credit Bank (Geneve/CH) Acct.# 928530FC: USD 178.2 Million

Abbas Vaez-Tabassi

Corner Bank (Geneve/CH) Acct.# FAH7272: SF 97.2 Million
Sparkasse (Hamburg/Germany) Acct #. DFH72251660: USD 216.7 Million

Hossein Shariatmadari

Midland Bank (London/UK) Acct.# 34414011: BP 37.8 Million

Mohsen Rezai

Union Banque Suisse (Geneve/CH) Acct.# 442760430: USD 78.2 Million
Credit Bank (Geneve/CH) Acct.# FAH7967: SF 52.7 Million

Massood Movahedian

Commerz Bank (Koln/Germany) Acct.# 3528817: DM 287.8 Million

Kamal Kharrazi

Corner Bank (Geneve/CH) Acct.# AMF4567: USD 18.2 Million

Ali-Reza Mo-ayeri

Societe Generale (Geneve/CH) Acct.# 50024814: USD12.6 Million

Hossein Kordi

Corner Bank (Geneve/CH) Acct.#14710025: USD 14.7 Million

Abbas-Ali Forooghi

Corner Bank (Geneve/CH) Acct.# 12930034: USD 10.7 Million