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Jul
06
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Filed Under (2009 Election, Iran Foreign Relations, Israel, nuclear, U.S. Relations) by admin2 on 25-04-2007
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Iran’s top leader warns West over alleged meddling
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer, Jul 6, 12:37 PM EDT
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Western governments on Monday of a “negative impact” on relations over what he called their meddling in Iran’s post-election riots. Read the rest of this entry »
Clerical Leaders Defy Ayatollah on Iran Election
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Iranian hardliner calls opposition leader US agent
By Ali Akbar Dareini (Associated Press) – Sat Jul 4, 1:07 pm ET
TEHRAN, Iran – A top aide to Iran’s all-powerful leader has accused the country’s main opposition leader of being an American agent who should be tried for treason, increasing the pressure on reformists disputing the outcome of last month’s presidential election. Read the rest of this entry »
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Jul
03
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Iran Cleric Says British Embassy Staff to Stand Trial
A June 15, 2009, file photo shows Iranian riot policemen standing guard outside the British embassy in Tehran during a protest by supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against European interference in the Islamic Republic's election results. (Photo Atta Kenare AFP/Getty Images)
By ALAN COWELL and STEPHEN CASTLE
Published July 3, 2009 in the New York Times
PARIS — Brushing aside British and European efforts to seek the release of local British Embassy staff members held in Tehran, the Iranian authorities indicated Friday that they planned to put some of them on trial — a move that deepened a diplomatic crisis and could provoke the withdrawal of ambassadors.
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Jul
02
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IRAN: Women at Forefront of Popular Defiance
By Sara Farhang
Iran is home to one of the most vibrant women’s movements in the region. (Photo credit: faramarz/flickr/creative commons)
TEHRAN, Jun 25, 2009 (IPS) – When tens of thousands of protesters braved the ongoing government crackdown to gather in Tehran’s Baharestan Square in front of the Parliament building Wednesday in response to a call by supporters of Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, they were met with some of the harshest violence seen since Iran’s post-election turmoil erupted nearly two weeks ago. Read the rest of this entry »
Khatami denounces Iran election, arrests
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Jun
29
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Filed Under (2009 Election, diplomacy, Iran Foreign Relations, U.S. Relations, Videos) by admin2 on 25-04-2007
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Iran’s Clenched Fist Election: What’s next for US policy
The Carnegie Endowment For International Peace
Policy Discussion held on June 25, 2009 in Washington D.C.
With demonstrations across Iran subsiding under a brutal security crackdown, and opposition leaders hoping to turn protests into strikes and other acts of civil disobedience, Carnegie hosted leading Iran experts Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Abbas Milani, and Karim Sadjadpour to discuss the aftermath of the election and its implications for U.S. foreign policy in the region. David Ignatius moderated the discussion.
Iran ‘must free UK embassy staff’
Published by BBC News on June 28, 2009
The European Union has demanded the immediate release of Iranian staff at Britain’s embassy in Tehran detained on Saturday over post-election unrest.
EU ministers meeting in Greece warned that “harassment or intimidation” of embassy staff would be met with a “strong and collective” response.
Iranian media reported the detention of eight local staff at the UK mission over their alleged role in the unrest.
UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband dismissed the allegations as baseless.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Jun
28
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Iranians rally at Ghoba (Qoba) Mosque
Mousavi supporters join Beheshti commemorators
Published by Press TV – Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:36:24 GMT
Hundreds of Iranians have gathered in a mosque to commemorate the martyrdom of former chief justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti.
Supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi also marched down Tehran’s Shariati Street from north to south and silently gathered outside the Ghoba Mosque — where the event was being held.
Read the rest of this entry »
guardian.co.uk, Monday 22 June 2009
By reviving memories of an ousted leader, Iran’s protesters are signalling
they want to win reform without US intervention
Protesters displaying pictures of former prime minister Muhammad Mossadeq alongside presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during demonstrations in Iran last week.
With this covert operation, the world’s proudest democracy put an end to democratic rule in Iran. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi returned to the Peacock Throne and ruled with increasing repression for a quarter-century. His repression produced the explosion of 1979 that brought reactionary mullahs to power. Theirs is the regime that rules Iran today.
Carrying a picture of Mossadeq today means two things: “We want democracy” and “No foreign intervention”. These demands fit together in the minds of most Iranians. Desperate as they are for the political freedom their parents and grandparents enjoyed in the early 1950s, they have no illusion that foreigners can bring it to them. In fact, foreign intervention has brought them nothing but misery.
The US sowed the seeds of repression in Iran by deposing Mossadeq in 1953, and then helped bathe Iran in blood by giving Saddam Hussein generous military aid during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Militants in Washington who now want the US to intervene on behalf of Iranian protesters either are unaware of this history or delude themselves into thinking that Iranians have forgotten it. Some of them, in fact, are the same people who were demanding just last year that the US bomb Iran – an act which would have killed many of the brave young protesters they now hold up as heroes.
America’s moral authority in Iran is all but non-existent. To the idea that the US should jump into the Tehran fray and help bring democracy to Iran, many Iranians would roll their eyes and say: “We had a democracy here until you came in and crushed it!”
President Barack Obama seems to grasp this reality. During his recent speech in Cairo, without mentioning Mossadeq by name, he conceded that “in the middle of the cold war, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Then, after the current electoral protests broke out, he avoided the hypocrisy of righteous indignation and confined himself to saying that “ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide.“
