CODIR :. Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People's Rights

Saeed Montazeri, son of the leading Iranian dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, talks to SPIEGEL about who is responsible for his father's recent death, reformists' chances of success and why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not suited to be president.

SPIEGEL: Hojatoleslam Montazeri, we have reached you on your mobile phone. Where are you at the moment? Are you under house arrest?

Saeed Montazeri: I am in my house in Qom, which is next to my father's house. Officially, my movements are not restricted. But the windowpanes occasionally rattle. It is apparently regime thugs who want to provoke me. My father's office is being tightly controlled by security agents. His hosseiniyeh (religious institute) was closed 12 years ago and occupied by the thugs.

SPIEGEL: Were you at least able to give your father, who was seen as one of the most respected clerics in Iran and a mentor of the opposition movement, a dignified burial?

Montazeri: The security forces only showed restraint for the first 24 hours after his death. Immediately after the funeral, they began rioting in front of my father's house and insulting him with chants.

SPIEGEL: Who were these people? Were they soldiers in uniform or police officers?

Montazeri: No, the men in uniform just stood by and watched. It was the Basij militias, who had clearly been sent by the regime, who became violent. For the first time in Qom, however, we also heard counter-demonstrators chanting their determined slogans. "Down with the dictator!" they shouted. It can't go on like this for much longer.

SPIEGEL: The seventh day after the death of your father, a traditional day of mourning, coincided with the Ashura festival. In Tehran and other big cities, there was an escalation of violence and at least eight deaths

SPIEGEL: But there was also a new willingness among the protestors to use violence. They set police cars on fire and attacked Basij militias.

Montazeri: Ordinary people have no interest in setting property on fire. They wanted to demonstrate for their legitimate interests. They were provoked by the state.

SPIEGEL: Would your father, who advocated nonviolent resistance in his Islamic legal opinions, have seen it this way?

Montazeri: Without a doubt. My father consistently condemned state brutality and stressed that there is a religious right, even a religious obligation, to rise up against rulers who abuse their power. His commitment to this cause took years off his life. Even though the cause of his death was heart failure, the regime is partly responsible for his death, and not only because of their harassment of him. My father was very distressed about what this regime did to people in recent months.

SPIEGEL: Did your father, in his last days, feel that the Islamic Republic still stood a chance of surviving? Do you believe in the future of the theocracy?

Montazeri: Until the very end, my father hoped that those in power would come to their senses, so that our people could be spared serious harm. I believe that the form our future society takes is not that important. It can be an Islamic republic, a secular republic or, as far as I'm concerned, even a monarchy. The important thing is that people are able to live in freedom and prosperity, that they have freedom of movement and that their voices are heard.

SPIEGEL: Is such liberalization even possible under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

Montazeri: It's difficult to say. Those responsible must first apologize for the misdeeds and repressive measures they have imposed on the people in the past few months. That would be the precondition for the Islamic Republic continuing to exist. And the presidency, after the resignation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would have to be given to the candidate who captured the most votes in the last elections: Mir Hossein Mousavi.

SPIEGEL: Do you think Mousavi is the right man for the position? Isn't the former prime minister also a politician of the past?

Montazeri: Mousavi never claimed to be the leader of the movement. As far as the future of our country is concerned, a council would have to be convened that would include both Mousavi and the opposition politician and cleric Mahdi Karroubi, as well as the highly respected reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami. Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani should also be included. They are my friends, and I share their positions. Mousavi and Karroubi attended my father's funeral and paid a -- nonpolitical -- visit to my house to offer their condolences. I do not see myself playing an advisory role. I see my role as a human rights activist, not as someone who is active in politics.

Montazeri: You're right, that's difficult in Iran today. These days, every ordinary police officer, every bazaar merchant and every teacher is politically active. Those on the frontlines, when things start to escalate, are usually young people, students and workers. But the peaceful demonstrations now include people from all levels of society and from all age groups -- men, women, deeply religious women in full veils and those with more secular views, hardly veiled at all. Mousavi and Karroubi speak the language of one part of the opposition

SPIEGEL: and yet one sometimes has the impression that they are running after the movement. Haven't they in fact become merely the figureheads of the opposition, while those who are willing to do anything are the ones calling the shots?

Montazeri: Mousavi and Karroubi have consistently stressed that they do not represent all of the disappointed. And they don't want violence, either. My friends and I have repeatedly recommended that the people in the streets remain calm, and that they should practice patience. A problem like ours cannot be solved in a day. But if young people are forced to look on as their friends are beaten, arrested or even shot dead on the streets, any attempts to convince them to exercise moderation will soon fail. And, to be honest, I find it understandable, even if I don't approve of it.

SPIEGEL: Mousavi's nephew was shot and killed during the Ashura protests. Do you know any further details about the incident?

Montazeri: It wasn't as if he were simply shot by accident. It was undoubtedly a targeted effort. We have heard from several sources that it was planned well in advance by the authorities, who also carried it out. It may have been intended as a sort of final warning to Mousavi. I don't possess prophetic gifts, which is why I don't known whether he'll be shot and killed one day, or whether the regime will arrest him. The consequences would be catastrophic.

Montazeri: It has been shown, again and again, that suffering and casualties accompany historic processes, with many people arrested, tortured and executed. Many lose their families. The outcome can only be evaluated at the end of such bloody processes. Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini once said: "Our fathers are not our guardians, and what right did they have to determine this form of government for us?"

Montazeri: I hope that it doesn't happen that way. I still hope that those in power will come to their senses, that they will accept compromises and choose the path to national reconciliation. If they don't, my country will be in far worse shape in a year's time than it is today.

SPIEGEL: Will Ahmadinejad still be president in 12 months, and will Khamenei still be the supreme religious leader?

Montazeri: Perhaps for the office of mayor of a small town. I prefer not to comment on Khamenei. However, my late father was firmly convinced that he lacks the qualifications for his office.

SPIEGEL: By making such statements, you are running the risk of being arrested yourself. Aren't you afraid for yourself and for the safety of your family?

Montazeri: I have been in prison several times already. Most recently, I spent 325 days in solitary confinement. I'm not afraid. Let them arrest me. Let them come, if they want to.

IFJ Condemns New Wave of Journalists' Arrests in Iran

Media Release
05 January 2010

"We condemn the Iranian Government's kneejerk reaction of blaming the media over legitimate public protest," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. "There is systematic repression and brutal intimidation of media and journalists under the cloak of restoring public order."

According to media reports, authorities in Iran carried out a number of arrests of prominent independent journalists in the wake of last week's demonstrations which pitted protesters against security forces in Tehran and other cities in the country. Violence erupted when the authorities tried to ban a procession to mark the Muslim festival of Ashura which coincided with the death of Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri, a senior Iranian cleric who had criticized the government for its handling of the post June presidential election protests.

Reports say Shamsolvaezin, AoIJ Vice President was arrested at his home on 28 December by plain clothes officers while its General Secretary Bradralasad Mofidi was detained on 28 December along with her husband Kayvan Mehregan, editor of the political section of the reformist daily Etemad. Syrian reporter Reza al-Basha who works for state-owned Dubai TV was reportedly also arrested on Sunday 27 December and detained in Tehran.

The AoIJ says that at least eight more journalists were arrested last week, including Nasrin Vazere (Ilna news agency), Morteza Kazemeyan (freelance), Mostsfa Ezade (freelance), Emadoddin Baghe (freelance), Mohammad Nazere( freelance), Mohammadjavad Mozaffar(freelance), Ali Hegmat (freelance) and Mohammadreza Zohde (freelance).

The IFJ has also described as "absurd" the sentence of a seven year and four month jail term handed down to Iranian journalist Bahman Ahmadi Amoui. The journalist, a critic of President Ahmedinajad's rule, also faces 34 lashes, according to media reports.

"The international community of journalists will stand by their colleagues in Iran" added White. "The government will not restore order or end this crisis without respect for the rights of people to protest and of journalists to tell the story. There must be an end to the reign of terror that is being unleashed against free speech and journalism in Iran."

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Mood in Iran ominous after latest violence

The Irish Times - Thursday, December 31, 2009
MARY FITZGERALD

ANALYSIS: The fightback by the Iranian government and its supporters creates a deep sense of foreboding as to what might happen in the country

BLOODIED FACES on burning streets. Crowds fleeing tear gas and baton charges. Hands raised in defiant fists and V signs. Mass arrests, followed by thunderous denunciations of opposition leaders as mohareb, or enemies of God.

The reports from Tehran and other Iranian cities over the past week cannot but stir memories of the violent upheaval that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bitterly disputed re-election in June. They also raise questions about where this, the most serious bout of unrest since the summer, may ultimately lead.

The most recent clashes come after many observers had all but completed the obituary for what had become known as the Green Movement in reference to the campaign colours of Ahmadinejad’s main challenger, the greying former prime minister Mir Hussein Mousavi. The brutal response of the Iranian authorities to what were initially peaceful mass demonstrations against an election which Mousavi’s supporters believe was stolen appeared to snatch the wind from the opposition’s sails, and protests largely sputtered out as the summer drew to a close.

Those who sought to write off the movement argued that it was too disparate and confused in its goals to keep momentum. Some, like Mousavi, once a protege of Ayatollah Khomeini, clamoured for reform within the parameters of the Islamic Republic, while others would stop at nothing but its collapse. Many wondered whether this largely grassroots campaign, with Mousavi and fellow reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi only nominal leaders, had the will and vision to sustain itself. The fact that a large number of the demonstrations had taken place in affluent north Tehran was enough for some to dismiss the June disturbances as merely the pangs of a small westernised elite.

Nevertheless, the opposition found ways of circumventing the ban on protests to continue its challenge to a regime that has killed dozens, arrested hundreds, and jailed scores of dissidents in the six months since Ahmadinejad declared victory.

Because the authorities cannot prevent people gathering for official political and religious events, activists have hijacked such occasions with anti-regime slogans and displays. As a result, some of the most potently symbolic dates in Iran, including Qods Day – a government-backed day of protest supporting the Palestinians – and the November anniversary of the US embassy siege in 1979, have served as further evidence of how far Iran’s fissures widened this year.

Other Iranians have chosen more subtle means of defiance. Thousands of banknotes have been defaced with opposition insignia, walls have been daubed with anti-government graffiti, and the nightly rooftop chanting of Allahu Akbar [God is most great], a ritual that harkens back to the days leading up to the Shah’s ousting three decades ago, continues.

But the street protests and pockets of civil disobedience are not the only signs of Iran’s current turmoil. Talk of divided loyalties and deep unease abounds behind the scenes within the country’s opaque political, security, and clerical spheres.

One of the most chilling video clips to emerge from Iran in the last week shows masked vigilantes storming Jamaran, the Tehran mosque complex from which Ayatollah Khomeini ruled revolutionary Iran before his death in 1989, on Saturday, as Mohammad Khatami, the mild-mannered reformist former president, attempted to address a gathering. On June 12th I had stood inside this hall, watching Khatami and other Iranian luminaries cast votes in the ill-fated election. The fact that Jamaran, revered due to its place in the annals of the Islamic Republic and usually well guarded, could be breached by thugs is an ominous sign indeed.

The day after Khatami was forced to abandon his speech amid the sound of breaking glass and frenzied yelling, Iran witnessed the deadliest street violence since the summer. More than eight people were killed, including Mousavi’s nephew, and many others arrested. Serious disturbances had been expected that day. The death a week beforehand of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the dissident cleric who had become something of a spiritual guide for the opposition, meant the religiously significant seventh day of mourning for him took place on Ashura, the most emotionally charged occasion in the Shia calendar. Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, who was killed by the caliph Yazid.

The bloodshed on this year’s Ashura will only serve to reinforce the parallels which opposition supporters had already drawn between their narrative and Shia traditions which tell of how Imam Hussein, denied his rightful position as caliph, challenged the tyrannical rule of Yazid. Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, now based in Paris, argues that, with the Ashura deaths, the Iranian regime has crossed a perilous line. “No religious person would accept the killing of Muslims on this day,” he said this week. “Now with the killing of [Mousavi’s] nephew, [Mousavi] is Imam Hussein and [Iran’s Supreme Leader] Khamenei is Yazid in the minds of many people.”

It all adds up to a deep sense of foreboding as Khamenei plots his next move to further shore up the legitimacy of his own rule as Supreme Leader, and the regime itself. Contacts in Tehran and other Iranian cities – whether opposition supporters or critics of the movement’s aims and methods – tell me of their fear over what might unfold next.

One friend described her family’s desperation after a relative was swept up in last weekend’s arrests, despite having no connection with the protests. Nothing has been heard of him since. Another contact, related to a high-profile reformist figure detained earlier this week, told me his family has urged him to abandon plans to return to Iran for the time being.

Earlier this month, before the violence of Ashura, Mousavi issued a statement saying the regime was fighting “shadows in the streets” while “its strongholds are constantly falling” in people’s minds.

The events of the past week have poisoned the atmosphere to a far more dangerous degree. It may herald a more violent and unpredictable phase of the existential crisis that has convulsed the Islamic Republic during this, the 30th anniversary of the revolution that brought it into being.

Many expect the traditional cyclical mourning periods for those killed this week to result in fresh waves of protests and unrest far into 2010. The coming year may well prove to be the Islamic Republic’s greatest test yet.

Interviewing a former Iranian Basij militia member

Rory Carroll, Latin American correspondent
World News Blog
December 16, 2009

For months now, we’ve heard horrific stories of rape and abuse from Iran’s gaols.

Since the election last June, hundreds, maybe thousands, of opposition protestors have been beaten and gaoled. Human rights groups have documented persistent reports of rape within the police stations and gaols.

“I feel pain and the shame in front of people and before God. I’ve lost my world and my religion,” he wept, as he recounted his story.

Aged 27, he had been a member of the Basij for as long as he could remember, born into a deeply religious family, utterly loyal to the Islamic Revolution and above all to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamanei.

For “Sayyed”, as we’ll call him, Ayatollah Khamanei was the incarnation of the 12th Imam, the equivalent of the Messiah in Shi’a Islam. Not far short of God, in other words.

So he didn’t question it when commanders told his Basij unit, months before the election, that the Supreme Leader had decreed that Ahmadinejad should win. Nor even when they were told to ignore the desires of illiterate voters and vote for Ahmadinejad on their behalf.

He had a twinge when he realised they were simply “disappearing” the ballot boxes with the votes of young people, who mainly voted for the opposition.

As he described how they were armed with batons, cables and other weapons and told to attack protestors, he started to cry.

He says he stood by, but his colleagues killed people on the streets of his city. But the local Basij, it seems, were not performing well enough. So when about a hundred young people were arrested and put in shipping containers, Basij from the provinces were brought in.

At this point in the interview, Sayyed sobbed, tears dripping down his anguished face. He walked around, but he said he wanted to come back and finish telling his story.

From the containers, he said, they heard the desperate cries of men and women, boys and girls, being raped by the Basij from outside the town.

It was 20 June. He gave us the name of the police station where he says the assaults took place, and identified the mullah in charge of the basij in his city. We’re not revealing any of the details which could identify him, but which we needed to know to authenticate his story.

He spoke in the elaborate, religious Persian used by many Basij volunteers, and while he was willing to talk to us, he refused to shake the hand of a woman, another sign of his religious background.

Maybe the most convincing authentification we have is that his story confirms the reports we’ve had from victims and human rights groups, who say rape has been used all over Iran in the brutal months since the June election. That and his desperation. Rarely have I interviewed someone so distressed.

“I am ashamed in front of people, even to say that I was mistaken, and I am ashamed in front of my religion,” he said. “I committed crimes, knowingly and unknowingly. Now I’m left with my conscience punishing me for what I did.”

Iran's Supreme Leader ordered intensification of Suppressions

By: Sepeher Saadat
Translated to English by Reza Eshteraki for Persian2English
December 15, 2009

Jaras (Green Way Movement network): Right at six months after the presidential elections, Ayatollah Khamenei, with a nervous and worried tone, promised destruction to those who oppose the regime and he threatened them with more severe punishments.

His speech was accompanied with slogans from dozens of his supporters but concurrently many supporters of the green movement have deemed the threats of the Islamic Republic Supreme Leader ineffective in their media outlets. They have also stressed the continuation of protest actions and being smart in the face of government measures.

Ayatollah Khamenei, in one of his fiercest attacks on the leaders of the green movement, accused them of acting against the law and said: "These people talk about supporting Imam Khomeini but what they do results in a big sin like this to the Imam, and enemies happily analyze based on these acts and then make decisions against the national interests of Iran."

By uttering these statements, Khamenei effectively supported IRIB (National TV & Radio) for broadcasting images of a photo of the founder of the Islamic Republic (Khomeini) being torn down in protest gatherings on December 7th. He holds the leaders of the green movement responsible for the action. In one of the most provocative parts of his speech, the Supreme Leader implicitly claimed that some of Ayatollah Khomeini's companions have been separated from his causes. He then defended his political principle, saying: "I believe in attracting the majority and letting go of the minority, but it seems that some people are intent on going away from the regime."

He then criticized the leaders of the green movement for having the backing of France, England, US, corrupt individuals, Tudeh (Communist) Party supporters and Monarchists. He told them to open their eyes and issue disclaimers. Analysts say that this speech is preparing the ground for more severe oppressions of the green movement. Before Ayatollah Khamenei's speech, some had guessed irregular measures of the government against the green movement. Kalameh news agency, close to Mir-Hossein Mousavi, issued a warning, asking people to be smart if an irregular measure is taken. Kalameh warned people about the possibility of attacks on the Green movement news outlets and asked them to spread the news with alternative outlets. The prediction from Mousavi's website proved correct because the day after, the site was hacked by a group called Prophet Green Movement.

Some sources close to Mir-Hossein Mousavi told Sunday of the increase in the possibility of his arrest and told Jaras correspondent that security bodies are examining the situation for his arrest. A knowledgeable source told Jaras that based on the news received, security institutions are 100 percent intent on arresting Mousavi and the increase in oppressions in the last few days is for controlling the conditions after his arrest.

It is said that Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi will also publish separate publications soon, reacting to events in recent days. They had previously rejected IRIB's claim that a photo of the founder of the Islamic Republic (Khomeini) has been torn down by supporters of green movement. They called this a suspicious act and a tactic of the government for an increase in oppressions.

It seems that statements by Green movement leaders after Ayatollah Khamenei speech will lead to intensification of political polarization in Iran. This is while the Supreme Leader has openly called for new oppressions and has introduced the opponents of status quo as enemies of the regime saying: "Those who want to create insecurity and turmoil face the people" and "legal bodies have duties that they should act upon."

The Supreme Leader has also compared the opponents of the government to "froth on water," promising their destruction.

Analysts believe that the government's intention of intensifying oppressions is due to their failure to suppress the wave of protests after the election. Many security officials had promised, before Student Day, that there would be no gathering by the supporters of the Green movement, but protests including tens of thousands of students on December 7th put an end to all the analysis of security bodies.

Right now, executing the project of intensifying oppressions can be an attempt by the security bodies to counter the increasing wave of public protests. Published reports show that since Muharam (a month of Mourning in Islamic Shi'a culture-Translator's note) is near and the Green movement supporters have widespread plans to use this opportunity for protesting the government. Security intuitions want to dominate an atmosphere of public intimidation and terror. But supporters and leaders of the Green movement say that intensifying the oppressions will bear no fruit and will only lead to more reasons for the opponents of the status quo to stress their demands.

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Brazilian protests greet Ahmadinejad at start of South American tour

Rory Carroll, Latin American correspondent
guardian.co.uk
Monday 23 November 2009

Protests greeted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Brazil at the start of a South American tour intended to bolster the Iranian president's legitimacy and ease his country's international isolation.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro on the eve of Ahmadinejad's arrival to denounce his record on human rights, homosexuality and Israel.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was expected to welcome the visitor with red carpet pomp in the capital, Brasilia, before holding talks on economic and political co-operation. "It doesn't help isolating Iran," Lula said in his weekly radio address today.

Around 200 Iranian businessmen accompanied Ahmadinejad's delegation, in a sign of their eagerness to tap opportunities in a continent that does not consider Tehran a pariah. Iran's leader faces simmering discontent at home and hostility in the west, but in Latin America he has friends and allies among a leftist bloc led by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and including Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

"This is the first time in Latin American history that an Islamic government has been so present in the US backyard," Hamid Molana, an Ahmadinejad adviser, told the Irna state news agency.

Achieving a first head of state invitation to Brazil was a diplomatic coup for Tehran because the region's heavyweight had previously kept its distance. Hobnobbing with Lula, one of the world's most popular leaders, shows that Ahmadinejad has diplomatic cards to play even if Europe, the US and much of the Middle East are against him.

"New orders should be established in the world," Ahmadinejad said before leaving Tehran. "Iran, Brazil and Venezuela in particular can have determining roles in designing and establishing these new orders."

Israel made a pre-emptive diplomatic strike last week when the president, Shimon Peres, visited Argentina and Brazil to lobby for a tough line on Iran's suspected quest for a nuclear bomb.

On Rio's Ipanema beach, groups representing gay people, artists, Christians, Jews, and Holocaust survivors carried protest banners and a giant cage containing white balloons as a symbol of Iran's "repressed values".

Opposition politicians criticised the visit. "One thing is a diplomatic relationship with dictatorships, another is to welcome their leaders in your home," Jose Serra, the Sao Paulo state governor, wrote in a newspaper article.

Ahmadinejad and Lula are expected to sign accords on biotechnology, energy and farming which, Tehran hopes, could boost bilateral trade from $2bn to $15bn. They may discuss co-operation on building nuclear plants. The Iranian president is due to address Brazil's congress and speak to university students before heading on to Bolivia and Venezuela.

The visit will test Brazil's ambition to be a serious diplomatic player by courting friendship with everyone. It has urged dialogue with Iran instead of cornering the regime with sanctions.

"If Brazil is somehow able to moderate Iran's policies on the nuclear question, or its practice in support of terrorist groups, it would give the Lula government a tremendous boost and enhanced global stature," said Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank.

"But if Brazil doesn't succeed in influencing Iran's conduct, or is seen as indulging and legitimising such a questionable regime, then it risks alienating some in the US and Europe who expect Brazil to take a firm stand, and might even hurt its chances to get a seat on the UN security council."

Brazil has reportedly asked Ahmadinejad to steer clear of homophobic comments, Holocaust denial and threats against Israel. Another delicate point will be Tehran's crackdown on dissent after June's presidential election.

The US has welcomed Brazil's burgeoning diplomatic role but some members of Congress accused it of erring in "lending legitimacy" to Iran's leader.

The popular movement and various factions of the ruling regime

By Alireza Saghafi
Alireza Saghafi Khorassani, labour activist and a member of the Writers Association of Iran
November 26, 2009

The Iranian People's social movement which is at one of its critical junctures has faced many ups and downs in the past thirty years. This recent uprising cannot be considered separate from the struggles of the past thirty years, as it follows the same path and makes similar demands. These are the same demands that were never fulfilled, they have been brought up time after time by various sections of the society and they were met with severe repression by the authorities. In some articles and essays of leftists in the west – people who the Iranian left expected their support – refer to what occurred after the recent election as a "coloured revolution". Such analysts sometimes even wished for its failure and congratulated the winning side, perhaps because the anti-American rhetoric of the Iranian government were the only thing that got published in Western media. In some media outlets there were much noise made over the coverage of what happened after the election, and people who knew nothing of the demands of our people portrayed themselves as such staunch supporters that one begins to think they were the orchestrators of the movement. In this age of media manipulation, confusion and lack of reporting on events and positions, many opinions are changed and made appear as if the movement was pre-planned. It is interesting to note that there are two different groups that called this movement a velvet revolution. Both groups saw the appearances and both groups, from the left and the right, called this popular movement a velvet revolution, and neither have an understanding of the Iranian society and its recent movements. There are plenty of reasons and evidence that in the last thirty years, the ruling governments of Iran were supported by the USA, its allies, and generally the western world. There has been no open conflict between them and what we've witnessed in the past (slogans like "Down with the USA", "Death to Israel" and the like) was all a cat and mouse game to distract the popular views. The only true determinant in policies was the vast economic profits...

There is a lot of evidence to support that argument. There is a saying in Persian; "should we take the fox's word or the chicken feathers sticking out from under him?" In the past thirty years there has been so much evidence that it has become undeniable, except by regimes similar to the Iranian one and their western trading partners. This game has brought in immeasurable profits for the investing companies. Governments of the USA, Russia, and other European countries have been using issues such as Salman Rushdie, human rights, or the nuclear file to apply pressure on Iran and sign contracts, reap astronomical amount of profits, and receive concessions similar to those offered to Russia by the Qajar dynasty at *Turkmenchay– and they have done just that in the past years.

*- The Treaty of Turkmenchay was a treaty negotiated in Turkmenchay by which the Persian empire, more commonly known today as Iran, recognized Russian sovereignty over the northern provinces such as Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan establishing the Aras River as the common boundary between both empires, after its defeat in 1828 at the end of the Russo-Persian War, 1826-1828.

. In such an environment – especially with the imposition of sanctions – a large number of trade deals were done in black-markets, and continues to be made that way. These profits cannot be compared to that of the official deals. This is very lucrative for both sides of the deal – which happen to be the children of Mullahs and others in power. For example, Iran is the third largest importer of cigarettes from America – although not officially, or, on purchasing of weapons and armaments and many other items. To shed further light on the subject, we will start with current situation.

From the start, creation of the Islamic Republic was approved by four industrial powers – the USA, the UK, France, and Germany – in the Guadeloupe conference. From then on, the revolution of the people of Iran was directed in a specific way in accordance with the agreement between the fundamentalists and the west. The aim of the letters that went back and forth between the mullahs and the western leaders, the obvious support of the western circles of those religious leaders in Iran was clear for all to see. The policies of that period like the creation of a green belt around the former USSR, formation of religious poles in order to defeat the eastern bloc and ... were openly discussed in the literature of the politicians in those days. That is an undeniable fact, and anyone who can perform basic media research is able to find a vast amount of evidence to that effect.

• Following the revolution the American hostage crisis occurred. It has been discussed widely, and based on evidence its main goal was to derail the fight for independence from USA and the international capitalist system as a whole. As such, after suppressing internal independent groups, the hostages were returned the conservative government of Ronald Reagan. Reagan announced to the media that he received the best gift during his presidential period from Iranian leadership. As a result of that demeaning accord (the Algiers accord which was signed by Iran, involving the then Prime Minister and his deputy) they agreed to return the hostages, an act that was even denounced by the President of that period – Bani Sadr – as being the ** Vosough od-Dowleh -type accord".

** Vosough od-Dowleh was a Prime Minister in Iran during Qajarid era. During his reign, he signed a number of accords with foreign powers jeopardizing Iranian sovereignty.

After that, the Iran-Contra affair happened along with the travel of the U.S. Vice President McFarlane to Iran, the full report of which is available in Tower Report whose finding was the revelation of the secret deal to sell arms to Iran via non-governmental channels for 5 years. The income from those arms deal was spent on paramilitary forces in Latin America. Gradually it was revealed that at least 2008 TOW rockets and 235 Hawk missiles were sold to Iran. It was also revealed that the majority of the cargo was provided by Israel.

Next came the events of 1988, the massacre of political prisoners while the west and U.S. kept their mum. At the time no formal complaint was made for this crime genocide while at the same time the Libyan government was taken to court for the bombing of an airplane with 200 passengers on board. Are human lives valued differently from person to another? The only reason can be that those murdered in Iran in 1988 were politically against the west and U.S. and therefore not worthy of the efforts. After the mass murder of political prisoners in 1988, the regime collected its reward when number of loans flooded Iran. They came in from various western sources. Iran received close to $50 billion in span of 3 years. These loans allowed the Iranian government to assassinate its critics in various places in the world where glimpses of such examples were seen at Mykonos Trials and other examples. According to some sources there were about 200 assassination cases.

The murders of Dr. Ghassemloo, Bakhtiar, Kazem Rajavi and Fereidoon Farrokhzad abroad and hundreds of other murders inside the country like the Forouhars, Mokhtari, and Pouyandeh, were committed under the sleepy eyes of the west. It is interesting to note that in all of those times at least one of the forces involved in today's events in Iran was in power.

After such incidents were exposed, the west turned to support the political reforms and reformists in Iran and began to deal with the reform government. Large contracts by corporations like Total and Royal Dutch Shell were signed on the oil and gas fields, and large exclusive contracts such as Crescent, Iran Cell and others were given to big International corporations. Corporations like Halliburton (owned by Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice) became active in Iran. In this period of apparent reformism, repressive organs were rebuilt and which can be seen in action today. Silence of the West in the 09 June 1999 student uprising, their silence on the issue of prisoner tortures – at that time the US was busy behaving similarly in Guantanamo and other locations – and the dealings of the reform government with Iraq, Afghanistan, the middle east and even in the Balkans, all point to the compatibility of the methods of government in Iran and the west.

About this cooperation we can point to the following items: 1. Cooperation between the USA and Iran in the Balkans in dividing the former Yugoslavia is a shining example of the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and the western expansionist policies working together. In that period, the cooperation between the two sides in breaking up Yugoslavia and signing bilateral contracts coincided with the assassination of Iran's political enemies abroad.

With the start of war in Yugoslavia, Mohammad Reza Naghdi was sent to Bosnia-Herzegovina as the head of a battalion of Revolutionary Guards Corp. and was one of the three Revolutionary Guards commanders until the end of the conflict in that region. At that time, the U.S. and the NATO had created an air cover to neutralize the Yugoslav air force so that the Mujahidin forces and Iran's help would reinforce Bosnian defences.

In the Balkan war, Rasim Delic, a Muslim, also the commanded the volunteer Revolutionary Guards Corp. sent to Bosnia. While the military base was under the command of Revolutionary Guards Corp. officers, the entire volunteer force was operating as part of the Al-Mujahed brigades. That brigade contained over 2000 foreign fighters as of 1993 and according to Ali Ahmad, an Afghan Mujahedin who is currently imprisoned at the Zenitsa Prison, was responsible for the murder of 24 civilians in Delic's village. In 1993, the same brigade murdered tens of Serbian prisoners in Orasac and put the victims' severed heads on display in the village streets.

Rasim Delic, the 56 year old general of the Bosnia-Herzegovina army is currently accused of war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide. He was the commanding officer of this army in the early half of the 1990's – between 1992 and 1995. As part of the charges that General Delic must answer in Hague is the rape of tens of Croat and Serb women and children by the volunteer foreign forces that were operating under his command. In the past few years Rasim Delic was working with a few import and export companies that were founded by Kharis Zilasic, Head of Bosnian Security Forces, and mostly have business ties with the Islamic Republic.

2. Cooperation between Iran and the USA in bringing the Karzai government to power in Afghanistan. The German Conference for Afghanistan after Taliban was a start for coordination of efforts between Iran and the west in post-Taliban Afghanistan. That cooperation existed during the time of the USSR occupation of Afghanistan and Iran was in lock-step with the west in providing the Afghan Mujahedeen with the logistical and weapons to help they needed. Iran's assistance and the training of the Mujahedeen forces during their fight were so extensive that there is no need to be reiterated.

The cooperation between the both sides in Afghanistan continued with Iran's representative at the Afghanistan Conference in Hague. Reports of the possibility of cooperation between Iran and NATO, or recent published news that the Islamic regime has been negotiating with German corporations about using Iranian soil to send non-military equipment to the German forces stationed in Afghanistan, as well as recent message by Obama, all show signs of a of the USA's policy in dealing with Iran.

In March there was a rumour circulating that the USA and NATO signed a secret deal according to which all their military cargo was to be shipped to Afghanistan via Iran. That deal was signed without the knowledge of the members of parliament in Iran, and the only person aware of it was the Supreme's Leader's private secretary. From the parliamentarians, the only person aware of that deal with the head of the security and foreign policy committee of the parliament. London's Sunday Times Newspaper dated 29 March 1999 reported that Iran and the USA had begun their first round of talks regarding the end of war in Afghanistan.

The same paper wrote that Iranian and American diplomats – initiated by the Russians, participated by a British diplomat acting as liaison - met on 27 March. Patrick Moon, the head of the Central and South Asian division of the U.S. State Department and the Iranian deputy Foreign Minister were part of the talks. After objections by some members of parliament in Iran about the lack of information about that important meeting, the committee of foreign relations said that since Pakistan was in unstable political times the U.S. gave given Iran many concessions in order to send its military cargo to Afghanistan through Iran. However, no one mentioned what these concessions were and to whom and in what meeting they were granted.

3. Cooperation between the USA and Iran in bringing about an Islamic government in Iraq. According to polls after the occupation, the people of Iraq wanted a secular government. Those polls were verified by reputable centres such as Oxford University. However the negotiations and agreements between Iran and the USA resulted in Nouri Al-Malki's rise to power and secular forces were moved to the sidelines. Iran and the USA had three rounds of meetings about Iraq, and at each round, high ranking members of military and security officials participated from both sides. One of those negotiations happened on 29 May 2007 which was reported by Associated Press on 19 May, quoting the Iranian Foreign Minister in Pakistan.

Meanwhile in the media, both sides were accusing each other of not cooperating on the security issues in Iraq. However, the cooperation of both sides resulted in the current Iraqi government's rise to power as well as its stability. Everyone knows that the current Iraqi government is a close friend of the Iranian regime and the majority of its members are people who lived in Iran for many years and no country in the region has as much influence in Iraq as the Iranian government. 4. In the past three decades Iran and the USA have worked very closely along with the western capitalist world in bringing about religious governments like the aforesaid examples. In all three examples above, if the cooperation between the USA and Iran didn't exist, it would have been impossible for the said religious governments to come to power. And thus such countries could not have been kept and maintained for the benefit of expansion of international capitals and for the capitalist markets. However, at the same time, Iran itself was not immune in such dealings.

In addition to arms purchased from first and second hand sources, we can point to the examples below regarding the large economic deals in the past few years: • Fars News Agency quoting from Magic City: "The American Halliburton Oil Company has sold 40 million dollars worth of refinery equipments to Iran despite the U.S. economic sanctions against Iran. After the economic sanctions were passed against Iran, Halliburton started to create foreign subsidiaries in order to be able to circumvent the embargo rules. This was because the sanction rules only applied to American companies and did not bar foreign companies from dealing with the sanctioned countries. William Thompson, the New York inspector questioned Halliburton on its dealings with Iran. However, the heads of Halliburton believe their activities in Iran did not break any US laws." The vice-chair and the CEO of Oriental Kish Corporation and Dick Cheney, the former Vice President of United States were two key players in facilitating the Halliburton-Oriental deal in Iran. Dick Cheney's trip to Iran in 2000, which was made to pave way for the Gas and Petroleum contracts in Iran, was kept secret for many years. But the main story began when Halliburton won the bid to drill for the South Fars Oil Field back in 2002 – a lucrative deal according to which the company was contracted to dig 12 wells in phases 9 and 10 of the South Fars Fields, and it was expected to find Oil by 2007 in two land and sea sections and to extract 50 million cubic meters of natural gas and more than 400 tons of sulphur from those locations.

Of course Halliburton was not alone in this deal. The Halliburton and Oriental consortium was the joint winners of that contract. The story got even more interesting; Halliburton had suggested $23 million for the wells and was asking for $282 million in total, however, the government of Iran at the time – which as the client should have suggested less– gave the consortium $360 million dollars in the final version of the contract.

• The contract to assemble 55000 Chrysler automobiles while that company was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was reported that a number of high ranking deputies from the Revolutionary Guards Corp. had gone to Dubai to meet with the American company – with the help of a number of International brokers. For this reason, the Dubai Airport and the city were in a security lock-down. According to some report the Iranian military delegation came to a preliminary agreement with Chrysler which was the biggest help possible to Chrysler at the time of its bankruptcy.

In those negotiations the Revolutionary Guards Corp. commanders announced their approval – in the name of the SAIPA Company – for the purchase of 55000 Chrysler automobiles to be assembled in Iran. The foreign middlemen in that deal were a number of Kuwaiti and the U.A.E. citizens. The delegation travelled to Dubai under the guise of accompanying the Iranian National Football team. It was reported that the CEO of SAIPA who was appointed by the president was also accompanying the group to negotiate with Chrysler representatives.

The Iranian minister of industry was previously reported on mentioning the signing a contract about Mercedes-Benz automobiles production in Iran during the Sixth International Auto Industry Expo in Tehran. He said: "Mercedes 240 and 320 models will be available in the market starting next year, however the production will be limited." Of course as soon as reports started to come out, it was denied!

The talk about such deals were made at a time when on 12 December Mr. Bush accepted a loan in the amount of $13.4 billion to Chrysler and GM from the amount set aside to rescue the banking system. That loan allowed those companies to continue to operate. The negotiations and deals which essentially were a help to Chrysler to get out of the financial crisis, were in complete contrast with the slogans that commanders of the Revolutionary Guards Corp. and the Iranian president were chanting to the people; that the American empire was about to fall, and the joyous behaviour on the news of financial crises in the USA.

• According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, "since the beginning of June this year, Iran has purchased more than 1 million tons of wheat from the USA which is a large number in its kind. This is equivalent to 3 to 4 percent of USA's yearly wheat exports. In addition, numbers by the US department of Agriculture shows that the last wheat purchased by Iran from the USA goes back to 1981-1982, which was 728 thousand tons."

• The sale of electronic filtering and noise generation devices to Iran by countries who seem to talk of democracy and are very vocal about the plights of Iranians these days. The issue of website filtering and the equipment purchased from the UK and the USA with apparent involvement of Israel, was brought up in a media roundtable in Iran. At that roundtable, the CEO of the Data Communications, a branch of Iran's Telecommunication Company said "in the past years our company has spent over 7 billion tomans (7 million dollars) on filtering." The head of the union of internet service providers in Iran said "the US made filtering software and hardware, were selected in an internal bidding competition. In this competition, the Asr-e-Danesh Company was announced as the winner, which in turn went on to make its purchase from a UK based company.

• At the start of June of this year, a Wall Street funding company that worked for a retirement fund in the USA sent a letter to the Ministry of Economy asking the boundaries of private ownership and other foreign investment rules in the Tehran Exchange be declared.

• Two American banking giants, Citibank and Goldman-Sachs, have also requested to be present in Iran. Citibank is owned by Citigroup, the second largest bank in the USA who's 5 percent stake is owned by a Saudi prince. Apparently the same Saudi prince is also the facilitator in the negotiations between that bank and Iran's Central Bank. Goldman-Sachs is another one of the Wall Street giants whose former head, Robert Zulic, is currently the head of the World Bank.

• A while ago, Iran made contact with North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO – after thirty years and both sides' representatives met on the subject of Afghan refugees and the illegal drug smuggling issue. In his policy of bringing stability back to Afghanistan, Barak Obama suggested the creation of a regional contact group which would include Iran. According to Sunday Times, Obama's final aim is to use the same talks to convince Iran in having talks to stop its nuclear research program.

During the Iran-Contra affair we pointed to the purchase of arms from Israel. The economic ties between Iran and Israel do not end at such hidden deals. To shed further light on that issue we will have a look at some more examples:

• The Nestle Company is one that its ties to Zionist groups and the Israeli regime have been revealed by some parts of the ruling regime in Iran. Nestle has over 350 branches in 100 countries across the world, one of which is Iran. Because of the wide ranging economic ties between that company and Israel, it has been boycotted by various groups across the globe. The products of that company in Iran include: Cerelak baby food products, Anahita mineral water under license by the Anahita-Blour company. Other imported Nestle products in Iran include: Nescafe instant coffee, Coffee Mate dried milk product, Maggie meat powder, Naan dried milk, various types of chocolate include Kit Kat and Smartees, Frisky pet food products (imported by Pars-Pooran Company.

• That company also has well known ties with the Israeli regime, and its distributor in Iran is Khoshgovar Company of Mashhad and Astan-e Qods-e Razavi Company.

Based on reports from Mehr News Agency (quoting the London Times), "Dana Bolden" - one of Coca-Cola top managers–said the "company has acquired the license to sell concentrated coke syrup to Iran from the US foreign exchanges commission." Bolden also commented on wide-spread protests in Mashhad regarding the yearly transfer of $150 million through an Irish subsidiary to Coca-Cola in the USA and said "for certain reasons I cannot discuss our business transactions with countries to whom we export and with whom we have financial deals." Coca-Cola, which left the Iranian market after the revolution in 1979, returned to Iran in 1994 after signing a franchising contract with companies such as Khoshgovar. The Iranian companies were receiving the Coke syrup through an Irish company named Atlantic Coca-Cola and later Drogheda Concentrate Company. The products of the Khoshgovar Company in Iran included: Coca-Cola, Fanta, and Sprite. The products of the Sasan Company licensed from American Pepsi Co include: Pepsi-Cola, Miranda which has gained a massive market in Iran and the region.

Many examples of such deals can be found with other capitalist countries in the west including France, UK and Germany. This is simply because the Iranian regime did not have the same sensitivities against those countries that it has against the USA and Israel. Here are a few examples:

1. A large portion of gasoline imported by Iran is provided by Reliance, the French company Total, the Swiss companies Vitol, Clangour and the British company British Petroleum. The insurance company Lloyds of London is the insurer of most of the gasoline shipments. It is said in the past years, "the U.S. import and export bank" have provided Reliance with loans of up to $900 million. Similar loans will be given to Reliance for the 2010 fiscal year which will start in October of this. During a visit to India, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave assurances to that company that a fuel embargo on Iran was not in the works. (14) That was perhaps because at the height of protests in Iran, vehicles of the security forces had a constant demand for fuel! Of course, the people who go to those protests on foot did not need it!!

2. Iran Khodro along with SAIPA, have created a duopoly on the automobile market. SAIPA has 35% of the market share and Iran Khodro has 55% of it. After the import rules in the automotive sector were relaxed, Iran Khodro started to collaborate with foreign companies: 750 thousand cars were sold in 2004, 1.1 million were sold in 2006, and 1.2 million in 2008.

Iran Khodro started that collaboration with the aim of keeping its position in the market, and to achieve new technologies which are essential in improving the quality of its products and preparing it for the international market. The Peugeot-Citroen group which had been working with Iran Khodro since 1992 in producing the Peugeot 405 line (60 percent of which was produced inside the country), took a large step forward by signing a contract in 2001. That was an agreement to assemble Peugeot 206 and 307 with a very small local involvement in their production.

Renault Company has created a large company with the two automotive giants in Iran in order to assemble the Logan (locally named Tondar). 51 percent of the shares of this company – named Renault-Pars – belong to Renault, and Iran Khodro and SAIPA jointly own 49 percent of the shares. It is interesting that the Petroleum, gas, and auto industry – which contain the most amount of American and European investments, and produce large profits – are in short supply of labour and those same western proponents of human rights have not made slightest protest against the repressive and savage work conditions in the said industries, including the fact that any workers associations – even Islamic syndicates – are legally forbidden in these industries. Meanwhile, in other sectors Islamic syndicates are encouraged, but in the aforementioned industries the most pressure is applied to workers and the slightest protest brings the security forces out. In those units, national security forces have vast apparatuses under the guise of company security. We have to consider that the petroleum, gas, and auto industries that are under complete control of western capital makes up over 90 percent of Iran's economy. It is not clear if a pro-western government in Iran could do any more to prove its loyalty to the west. On that subject, both sides of the government have always been in agreement.

3. In January 2008, a member of Labour Party in the British Parliament during question period proposed that Lloyd's TSP Bank to be heavily fined for allegations of money laundering for the Iranian regime and questioned Gordon Brown on the subject. By announcing their acceptance to launder funds for the Iranian regime, Lloyd's TSP Bank broke the U.S. laws and overlooked international banking embargoes and voluntarily paid $350 million fine to the U.S. government. Based on that, documents and records of the said bank will be opened to inspections and if it was proven that a portion of the laundered funds were used to help terrorist organizations, directors of the bank would be put on trial! That meant to the Member of Parliament that the notion of money laundering for the Iranian government was not a problem and that Iranian politicians were allowed to move those plundered funds to a foreign country; just that they should not spend them on terrorist activities. Of course, that had its own interpretation, and then the murders of opposition members can be ignored. Lloyd TSP Bank which recently received a large financial support from the British government in order to avoid bankruptcy acknowledged its role in transferring $300 million in Iranian funds to the USA. Based on the available information, after conversion to US dollars, those funds were transferred to a front organization in New York and from there; they were sent to other destinations across the world. Reports also show that more than 10 reputable banks in the world were involved in laundering money for Iran and have been able to transfer billions of dollars of Iranian money to the U.S. funds and deposit them in various accounts.

4. The sale of stocks of Iranian factories and mines to foreign and multi-national companies. The sale of 61 percent of shares of Iran's copper mines to Swedish companies, and Gold mines to British companies...

5. And the recently cat and mouse game of Iran's nuclear portfolio and the murder of people who demanded their basic rights and social freedoms in peaceful protests. Despite posturing to condemn the actions of Iranian government, no real action has been taken against Iran. For example, only the time to issue visas to Iranian officials has been prolonged. Meanwhile in Honduras – where people were not gunned down – all European countries recalled their ambassadors. In Iran where more than 150 people were killed, not even one western country recalled their ambassador, and did not even make any restrictions on diplomatic trips. Furthermore, the various bank accounts of the heads of Iranian government in those countries were left untouched. Thus, it is obvious that to those countries the actions of the rulers against their people and respect for human rights was not an important issue and other factors guided their policies on countries like Iran. The main question is how much the Iranian government had cost the western capitalist countries?

Real cooperation with people is to refrain from selling products that are used in repressing and censoring the Iranian people, not products that put the lives of ordinary people under such pressure that along with unhinged inflation their lives are made miserable. As well, cutting off all economic ties with the Iranian government or the visits of the so called diplomatic officials, blocking the rulers million dollar bank accounts, etc. are the things that will actually help the people of Iran. But will astronomical profits allow capitalist governments to make such actions? In recent years the rulers of Iran – be it reformist or fundamentalist – have always implemented the policies of WTO, World Bank, and the IMF and thousands of Iranian have been hurt because of it. Many production units have been closed down or privatized and then shutdown to turn Iran into a suitable market for products of big capitalist countries. Hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs and millions of people are forced to leave their homes to offer their work at cheaper rates to international capitalists.

All those issues have been made possible in the last three decades with the help of both factions of the Islamic Republic, with the burden on the shoulders of our nation in such a way that is felt by all people.

The opposing actions of both factions in Iran who are fighting to get a bigger share of power are not too different from what had repeatedly happened in the history of our people. The main problem is breaking the apparatus of repression that has been created with the cooperation of western capitalism and regional fundamentalism in the last 30 years. Fundamentalism in the region has turned into a tool to repress popular movements, and could be dealt with easily – an issue that is not well understood by our people. People best use the opportunity created by the opposing forces within the government because that is the only hope to unhinge and concentrated power of the right wing, which is vast, ruthless and repressive machinery. They are using this crack to voice their demands. Despite some analyse that show one faction as representing workers and lower classes in society and another as the representative of middle classes or neoliberals, it must be said that neither of these factions represent those groups of people. We can only speak of such representations and popular support when an independent organization could freely research that topic or when a minimum of political freedoms existed in that society. People who suggest such analyses must demonstrate how they arrived at such conclusions or where those minimums existed? What is taking place is a fundamentalist current helped by global repression pitched against the people of Iran.

Many who have a hand in the recent events from far are not aware that our people were faced with a strong repression in the past thirty years. A strong and brutal repression came into being by mutual cooperation of the capitalist system and a medieval system. It is a medieval regime because the mass murders and methods of torture in Iran are not comparable with any other country in the world.

And now the people of Iran have found their only ray of hope in the rift created between the factions of the ruling party, and this is an issue which is unfortunately missed by some people. The ruling party in Iran is unique and cannot be compared to Latin American regimes, or those of the eastern bloc countries. A simple May Day rally was dealt with in the most brutal way; peaceful gatherings were met with bullets. At least 2 detainees from July 9th lost their lives due to the severity of their injuries from maltreatment at the hands of security forces. The violence used by the police is not comparable to any action in any country in the past thirty years. These were all lessons learned by our people in the past thirty years, and they are now wisely using that knowledge to voice their demands through the rift in the power structure. Slogans such as "Hashemi, if you don't speak up you're a traitor" is in fact a way of antagonizing a part of the regime against another part of the regime, and shows that our people know both factions well. That also shows the collective intelligence of our people. Anyone who thinks the people are following one specific faction within the regime in that fight should go to the streets and speak with people. Our people will get their rights using their own power. That is why many members of intelligentsia who have been victims of such mistreatment believe that one must join in these protests and participate. The main demand of the people is to remove the organs of repression. That machinery includes at least 9 different police forces: Basij militia, Revolutionary Guards, NOPO, Special Forces, Regular Police, Security Police, Ministry of Information, Revolutionary Guards Information, Judiciary Police...

The inconsistent way that media in the western world has treated the recent popular movement in our country show that they have no interest in the movement to be radicalized and to expand its list of demands, but instead wish to direct it in predetermined ways. The commonality amongst the reactionary forces, the reformists, and the world capitalist forces is that all three are afraid of the popular movement becoming radicalized. They are doing all within their powers to stop it from happening, through cooperation with each other. This is because all sides know that our people will reject them and none of them can possibly grant people's wishes. Each of the three aforesaid groups, the capitalist world and the two factions of the Iranian regime, are trying to curb radicalization of the people through different tactics. Since the capitalist forces are not homogeneous themselves, each part of it is trying to do achieve the same goal differently. The fundamentalist regime that mainly uses force and intimidation is getting its rewards from the pale protests of the west, and the secret deals. The reformists consider the free markets, and the loud western media with their promises of capitalist heavens as their support. That faction may in the end consent to the removal of mandatory Hijab rules, and legalizing a few singers and Hollywood actors, but will not do anything to change the nature of the regime. The capitalist world will not loose much if power was transferred from one faction to the other; neither will they be any happier if either case provided them with their needs. The powerful western media is at the service of that system and was there to show the popular movement in different lights and shades, and to confuse the issues and blur the lines between radical and reformist actions. They can paint the movement as a radical one and thus prevent any real damage to the profits of western powers from occurring and keep all the profitable deals previously penned with the Iranian regime.

Today, the true demands of the people are independence and freedom from those unholy alliances – which has turned into a monster that silences any voice of freedom in Iran and the region. The capitalist forces have discovered that their interests lie in forging alliances with fundamentalist regimes which provides them with what they want. The support for regimes such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, UAE, Pakistan, and even Turkey are keys to the continued existence of international capitalism in the region.

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The Green Movement and the Myth of Shame of the Middle Class

The Feminist School
Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani
Tuesday 10 November 2009

Because the civil demands of this movement revolve around the direct relationship between the citizens and the government, in the long run it has this weakness (or potential) to turn violent as a result of injecting or changing its body with revolutionary "objectives". Although the reality of its structure and nature of its demands, and in particular its anti violence stance taken by its activists, show that this movement, like women's movement, is a reform movement because it pursues the "civil demands" of broad sections of the population (different layers of the middle class) to have the right to participate in deciding on the ruling administration within the frame work of lawful and civil struggles. This movement took shape by publicizing these demands through the use of peaceful methods and imposing its demands on the government. Therefore, the foundation of this movement and its components make it one of the reform movements, just like the women's movement.

However, this movement is under threat from two sides; first, it is threatened by radical and extremist groups (right wing extremists) within the ruling circle that are trying to instigate more violence and shut down all breathing windows – by claiming the theory of velvet revolution – and push the Green Movement towards a "revolutionary/overthrowing attitude" which would provide the perfect ammunition for a "total and historical elimination" of the reform movement in the country. The second threat or danger is from another group who would like to impose revolutionary manners on the Green Movement. This group lies outside the ruling circle and incidentally is part of the opposition. The conscious part of this opposition group is a force that, despite the failure of radical revolutions and the costly and violent consequences of the governments that came to power through revolution, still believes that "radical revolution" holds the key to solving the problems in Iran and the entire world. Certainly my remarks are not aimed at this group who is conscious of its objectives.

But another section of this second group, who unknowingly wants to impose their revolutionary ways on the Green Movement and other civil and democratic movements, is the group who does not have a deep and clear understanding of the grave differences between "reformism" and "revolutionarism". They swing between extremist and revolutionary values (which they think they have parted themselves from) and reformism. Therefore, although they admit logically and in theory that non-violent social movements (such as women's movement, Green Movement, etc…) could help establish democracy and grow themselves and the society through grassroots movement and within the society with peaceful means, nevertheless they are still under the spell of the inherited revolutionary values. They are suspending in the air. On one hand they want the Green Movement to remain civil and "all-encompassing" and pluralistic and follow the modern methods of struggle, but on the other hand they wish for "a major and up-root change in the entire political system". If we are really aiming for a "major change in the political structure", then in practice we cannot strive to keep the modern social movements (such as the Green Movement, women's and students' movement, etc…) "all-encompassing" and pluralistic. This is because for a big change like this to happen, we need a unified slogan, one single unified party, one body, and a single and revolutionary ideology, and lastly we would need an obedient nation (along with a leader or leaders who will have to have charismatic authority or iconic character) so that the "political system" could be up-rooted through bloodshed. Meanwhile, to stay as a pluralistic movement and to publicize and fortify its democratic and pluralistic values, imposes certain limitations too, because the goal of these movements is to change constitutional and civic laws and to promote the rights of the citizens in order to achieve civil equality, and all these changes are pursued by way of non-violent actions, and in a gradual and peaceful process. As a result, there would be no need for an obedient nation and a charismatic father, and just like the Green Movement, its activists and supporters are independent individuals, with a variety of aspirations and political and ideological orientations. The presence of horizontal links amongst the activists and flexible networking structures (and countless voluntary and self-founded cells and groups) characterize these movements and keeps them moving forward. The meaning of "structural reforms" in a patriarchal and totalitarian system is nothing but this.

It has been more than a century that the middle class in most of the underdeveloped countries (such as Iran) has been belittled by the insulting propaganda of the "revolutionary left" as being "petit-bourgeois", "inconsistent" and "equivocal". Unfortunately such humiliation and propaganda has been stamped so profoundly in the collective memory and soul of this class that in their mind any move has to be blessed by the "callous hands of workers". We felt this sense of shame in the women's movement too; if a few female workers were participating in the campaign we felt better and relieved that now the demands of the One Million Signatures Campaign belonged to "all women", and we therefore could claim the Campaign belonged to "all" and that "we represent all the layers of the people"!?!

This extremely monopolistic and "altogether" view of "a demand has to belong to all" -which believes it must prove that it is legitimate - seems to be another stubborn myth deep down the past political culture of us Iranians, which inevitably has found its way in some layers of the young generation of the Green Movement. This is while the Green Movement (just like the women's movement), whether proud or shameful, is a movement that belongs to diverse layers of the middle class of the country.

In fact, the step-by-step struggle for the individual and social rights and freedoms and civil equality, has been carried out in most countries by the modern middle class. The demands of the Green Movement, too, are mainly the very immediate demands of the middle class. The active force of this movement - its driving force - is also the modern urban middle class. And finally we see that the heavy price of this civil struggle is being paid by the various layers of the middle class.

Of course this doesn't mean that other social layers or classes do not play any role in this civil struggle and do not benefit from the demands of this movement. All it means is that the demand for social and individual freedoms is not necessarily the urgent demand of other (oppressed) classes. And even this does not mean that other classes oppose the demands of the middle class, or for instance detest the demand for free elections and elimination of "approbation supervision"; undoubtedly, they benefit from free elections too. Similarly, changing the discriminatory laws which we pursued in the One Million Signature Campaign and in the Coalition of women movement might not be deemed as urgent by the female workers, but we all know that working women will also highly benefit from equality in rights and social status. The issue, in fact, is that not all the classes and groups of people have to gather necessarily, exclusively and definitely under the umbrella of "one demand" that has such a high "priority" for them that they would take part in the social defense front for it, participate in demonstrations and rallies along with millions of various layers of the middle class, and pay dearly for it.

This exclusive and necessitating view stems from the traditional political culture of previous generations, and is influenced by our religious myths (the Unified "Ummah" or nation), as if only those demands are "legitimate" that all classes and particularly "the working and oppressed classes" pursue, and view them as a unifying string, and by hanging on this string, avoid diversity and pluralism. Although this "mass participation" - if it does take place - is a good thing, but if all the people did not participate in it, then this should not discourage the activists in the social movement, and particularly the activists and leadership of the Green Movement and women's movement. They should not be ashamed of this reality, because the nature and the limits of the modern social movements does not cover the entire country, and does not need to do so.

The modern middle class can courageously distance itself from that historical shame imposed on it, and struggle for its demands, which generally the whole society benefits from, with pride and a real sense of fulfillment (and moral confidence). The modern middle class not only is vigilant and devoted, has weight, and enjoys modern knowledge and morale, but also has unique and advance means and mechanisms to its avail, which enables it to push forward its humanitarian demands peacefully and impose them on the rulers without the participation of other classes, as it has done so far.

In spite of the presence and stubbornness of monopolistic views in our political culture, which tries to bring all social classes under its own hegemony and demands, times have now changed and we Iranians have entered the digital era. In the era of tele-communications and when the world has become a village with billions of different motives, demands and tastes, the "specific demands" of one class or layer of society do not necessarily have to be the demands of "all the people" anymore. The workers or peasants do not necessarily have to repeat the exact same slogans of the urban middle class without thinking. The concept of justice does not have to be defined necessarily like hundred years ago, i.e. "comprehensive and all-embracing", and then based on such a definition, deem a modern and civil movement incompetent.

To conclude, any modern, demand-driven social movement that is determined to have its demands represent "all people", after some time and paying the cost of its activity will find out that its decision is practically impossible and not logical, because such a great expectation in such a large scale will force the movement to expand and add to its demands too much in order to attract everybody to the movement. That is, the movement will be forced to swiftly extend its attitude towards an "alternative political regime". It is clear in advance that this will cause the course of the social movement shift from "demand-driven" to another (previously tried and failed) path. The experience of the contemporary history of our country has time and again proved that in such circumstances "heavy and intolerable responsibilities" are inevitably imposed on the movement and on its leadership. So there will be only two avenues left to take: it is either forced to "destroy" the competition forcibly and remove it from the way, or it will gradually weaken under the heavy large-scale responsibility on its shoulder, will suffer crisis and internal divisions, and eventually will be "destroyed" easily by the on-guard and suppressive competition…So sad!

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'I Cannot Go Back to Iran'

Spiegel Online
Daughter Of Ahmadinejad Adviser Seeks Asylum In Germany
By Cathrin Schaer
10/14/2009

Young Iranian filmmaker Narges Kalhor is seeking political asylum in Germany after showing a film critical of the Tehran regime at a film festival. Kalhor, whose father is one of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's top advisers, says she will be seized by the secret police if she returns home.

The daughter of one of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's top advisers is seeking political asylum in Germany.

After attending the German film festival Perspective, which showcases documentaries and features with a human rights focus, 25-year-old Iranian filmmaker Narges Kalhor has applied for political asylum in Germany. Her father is Mahdi Kalhor, who is Ahmadinejad's adviser on cultural affairs and a media spokesperson for the Iranian regime.

Narges Kalhor studied film and graphics in Tehran and had been working for an advertising firm in the city. She has made seven short films, one of which was shown as part of a special section on Iran during the Perspective film festival which took place in Nuremberg last week. Her film "Darkhish," or "The Rake," is an adaptation of Franz Kafka's short story about torture in prison, "In The Penal Colony."

She told SPIEGEL ONLINE in a telephone interview Wednesday that she had received several phone calls from Iran two days after the festival. "I was told that people in Iran knew about the film and that reports about it had appeared on the Internet in Farsi," says Kalhor, who admitted she had not expected news of her appearance at the film festival to travel so far and so quickly.

"I was told that it would be better not to come home and that if I went back now I would be met at the airport by the secret police," she said. "There were a lot of people at the festival who are against the Iranian regime. I did not have permission to make my film in Iran either."

The film, which is critical of torture and was partially inspired by the protesters who were arrested after Iranian national elections in June, was filmed in a Turkish bathhouse that was made to look like a torture chamber. Kalhor, who also took to the streets in June to protest with friends, some of whom were arrested, has said she hopes that viewers see parallels between the film and the situation in Iran.

"If I went back it would be very dangerous for me. At least here I have security," says Kalhor, who is currently sharing a room with a Kurdish woman in a refugee center near Nuremberg.

Kalhor told SPIEGEL ONLINE that she had left Iran without declaring her intention to attend the film festival. Even her mother, with whom she lived, had not known. As for her father, Kalhor says she has not been in touch with him for years. Mahdi Kalhor divorced Narges' mother a year ago due to differences of opinion, some of which were political.

During her time in Germany, Kalhor was also interviewed by fellow Iranian film maker, Hana Makhmalbaf. The interview was conducted in Farsi and then posted on the Web site YouTube on Monday (see video above). According to a translation by writers at the Associated Press, Kalhor, wearing a green scarf -- green being the color of the Iranian protest movement -- says in the interview that she supports the opposition. She also says that she was certain her father had not seen her film nor knew where she was. "I came from my own desire, for cinema, and I have to continue," she added.

Kalhor senior, who has been a close ally of Ahmadinejad for almost a decade, told the official Iranian news agency IRNA that he had been completely unaware of his daughter's plans.

"This issue is one of the symbols of a media and soft war that the opposition has launched," Mahdi Kalhor told IRNA. His daughter was being used by enemies of the regime for propaganda purposes, he said. Mahdi Kalhor, himself a former filmmaker, has in the past criticized films such as the Oscar-nominated animated feature "Persepolis," which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2007, for being anti-Iranian.

Asked whether she is worried about becoming a political cause celebre because of her father's influential position in Iran, Narges Kalhor said: "I can't do anything about that. Maybe I will have particular problems because of my father and his work for the regime. But I myself work privately."

For the next three weeks, Kalhor will be staying in the refugee center. During that time, she will have three interviews with the German authorities to ascertain her status as an asylum seeker, the first of which is next week.

Should everything go well and she get permission to stay in Germany, Kalhor, who speaks German better than English, told SPIEGEL ONLINE that she would like to be able to tell her own story somehow, whether in film or words. "I would love to make more films and to be able to work in my chosen career. If I go back to Iran, I know I will never get to make any more films."

On the Eve of the Second Coup

IFJ Condemns Media Witch Hunt as Journalists Flee Iran

Media Release
16 October 2009

"There is no let-up on the harassment of media in Iran," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. "Independent journalists are in flight for their own safety and the independent media sector is under siege."

According to reliable reports, up to six newspapers have been closed since controversial presidential elections in June and at least 18 journalists remain in prison. Many more continue to flee the country and others, including the President of the AoIJ, Rajabali Mazrooei, are in hiding and fearing arrest.

The Association of Iranian Journalists (AoIJ), an IFJ affiliate, says it has applied to the authorities in Tehran to reopen their office, but their appeal has so far made no progress.

An IFJ regional meeting which brought together 15 union members in the Middle East and the Arab World held in Amman from 5-7 October adopted a strong resolution calling for end of media clampdown in Iran.

'We note with dismay the deterioration of conditions in Iran, where the journalists' association was closed and dozens of journalists detained while others were forced to flee the country.

"The meeting expresses full solidarity with Iranian colleagues and calls on the Iranian authorities to lift the siege on the offices of the Iranian Association of Journalists and to release all journalists and to end harassment."

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On Reports of Secret Burials

By Hanif Mazruie - editor-in-chief of Norooz

As a journalist and editor-in-chief of Norooz, I will attempt to explain how this news was uncovered, how it began and how it arrived at this point.

1 – On July 12, the mother of one of the victims of the post-election turmoil informed a Norooz reporter that a number of corpses had been stored at the Aminzadeh cold storage facility, one of the country's largest industrial cold storage centers located in Islamshahr, south of Tehran. She said that while looking for his son's corpse in this cold storage facility, she saw a large number of bodies that were piled on top of each other. The observations of this mother dated to two days earlier, ie July 9.

2 – On July 12 Norooz published the statements of this mother. However, since sufficient confirmation was not available to confirm the news, the report started with "It has been heard."

3 – After the publication of the report, Norooz website colleagues began searching for evidence and took steps to gather information pertaining to the issue. We learned from the testimony of Aminzadeh cold storage facility personnel that on the night of the publication of the news, a significant amount of unusual traffic took place at the facility, as vehicles moved certain things out of the compound.

4 – In the days following the publication of the report, we received news that several of the corpses delivered to the families were completely frozen. Photographs of the martyrs that were published on Norooz website as well, belonging to martyr Behzad Mohajer, clearly indicated that the corpse of this person was totally frozen. Bodies that are kept at the coroner's office, however, are never frozen to such degree, even after 40 days. This issue confirmed Norooz's report about the storage of corpses at an industrial cold storage facility.

5 – After continued investigation, we concluded that on July 11, a significant number of vehicles that did not belong to the Behesht Zahra cemetery transported corpses to the cemetery. At that time too, there were reports that some corpses had been transported to Isfahan and outskirts of Tehran. So far, we have not been able to confirm those reports. With respect to Behesht Zahra, however, reports that were confirmed by the cemetery's personnel indicate that on July 11 and July 14, a number of non-standard vehicles, which are not used to transport corpses, came to and left Behesht Zahra.

6 – Further investigation revealed that several corpses were taken to and buried anonymously at the newly-formed section 302 in Behesth Zahra, located outside of the cemetery's general area.

7 – Based on this information, a week before our final report we were able to gather all the necessary evidence and were even in the possession of the burial certificate numbers of the martyrs. Due to the sensitivity of the news, we first contacted the Behesht Zahra cemetery officials. They neither confirmed nor denied the news, and did not give us any convincing answers.

8 – In the end, the editorial board of the Norooz website reached the conclusion that the best way to commemorate the rights of the martyrs was to publish the details of this event, especially because a large number of families are still waiting since the early post-election days for the return of their loved ones and are unaware of their fates. We published the report on July 21 while accepting the costs of doing so.

9 – On that same day, July 2, Majid Nasirpour, member of the Majlis Social Committee reacted to Norooz's report by claiming that the Majlis will investigate the group burial of the martyrs. The fact that a lawmaker promised to investigate the matter caused us much hope. 10 – To out utter surprise, however, on that same day Farhad Tajari, member of the Majlis National Security Committee and the committee to investigate prison and detainee treatment announced that the news is one hundred percent false. Mr. Tajari's denial took place within hours of the publication of Norooz's original report. He could have at least visited the Behesht Zahra cemetery and the specific location revealed by Norooz to investigate. However, he said that the report was false without any serious inquiry.

11 – As a first step at Norooz we tried to report this issue in brief terms. After our reports were rejected, we decided to provide the burial certificate numbers as proof that what we published was supported with evidence.

12 – As is normal procedure at Behesht Zahra, when someone passes away and a burial certificate is issued, a little plaque is set aside for that person that contains the person's name, burial site and other related information. The video clip that our Norooz colleagues prepared of the martyrs' graves clearly show that, while other graves that belong to the public include such plaques, some graves do not have them.

13 – Mr. Hamid Reza Katouzian, who serves on the Majlis committee to investigate prison and detainee conditions, announced that he was willing to investigate this matter. We highly welcome this determination and are prepared to provide our published and unpublished evidence to that committee or any neutral committees.

14 – Finally, I would like to mention that our only mission in this matter is to serve our duties as journalists. A journalist has the duty to investigate important news that he receives, and to publish them after confirming their validity and truth. The next step falls on the shoulders of judicial officials to follow up on the matter and punish the violators.

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Federal Minister Steinmeier calls for the release of political prisoners in Iran

02.08.2009 - Press releases

"We are greatly concerned by the news that dissidents in Iran have now been put on trial. According to present reports, these trials do not conform to minimum rule of law standards of transparency and fairness. voluntarily given to protect the civil and political rights of its citizens.The Iranian Government must release the political prisoners and honour the international commitments it has"

Iran has signed and ratified the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.Entrepreneur Bijan Khajehpour Khoi, human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani and former Iranian Vice-President and Hojatoleslam Seyed Mohammad Ali Abtahi are among the most prominent detainees.As yet the Iranian authorities have given no official indication as to which political prisoners are to be put on trial.

Some 140 political prisoners were released mid-week, including women's rights activist Shadi Sadr, for whose release Minister Steinmeier had made a personal appeal. The exact number of political prisoners detained following the disputed presidential elections on 12 June 2009 and still in custody remains unknown but is estimated at several hundred,not including the already large number of political prisoners detained in recent years.

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Why Iran's conservatives are airing their dirty laundry

In a striking move Tuesday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei personally called for a detention center to be closed, citing mistreatment, while President Ahmadinejad sanctions repressive tactics.
By Iason Athanasiadis | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor from the July 28, 2009 edition

On Tuesday, amid growing public anger about reports of torture of political prisoners following the deaths of two young protestors in regime custody last week, Iran released 140 political prisoners. Khamenei made the striking decision to personally announce the closure of a detention center, criticizing the treatment of prisoners held there.

"At this stage, there's cleavage in every part of the government," says Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "It can be seen in the Intelligence Ministry between those who say that [presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi's] green movement was part of a velvet revolution and a plot to overthrow the regime, and those who argue that this is ridiculous."

Mr. Ahmadinejad has sought to deflect attention from accusations that his June 12 reelection was rigged by reviving an old theme: that Western agents, rather than loyal Iranians, have been working to prompt a bloodless coup. But the president's latest tactic for proving that thesis has caused even some of his allies to distance themselves from him.

In recent days, Ahmadinejad has been pressing for videotaped confessions from detainees saying the protests were secretly organized by the British or the Americans to be broadcast, despite the fact that many conservatives find this distasteful. The opposition say such confessions have been obtained through torture and other coercive methods. Showtrials are feared for Hossein Rassam, a political consultant for the British Embassy who was released on bail July 19, and Bijan Khajehpour, the director of the Atieh Bahar consultancy.

"There's an internal power struggle going on," says a Tehran-based political analyst with ties to Iran's intelligence ministry who requested his name not be used. "Ahmadinejad went to the intelligence ministry and pressed them to focus more on the angle of how this was a foreign-backed velvet revolution and to release some of the confessions they had secured in prison among the arrested."

On Sunday, Ahmadinejad fired his intelligence minister – the conservative Gholam Hossein Mohsen Ezheie – after a reportedly heated exchange during a Cabinet meeting. Analysts say that Ahmadinejad is seeking to put his own loyalists into such posts – as evidenced by his failed attempt to install his close friend Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei as vice president, resisting Khamenei's public opposition to the appointment before capitulating this weekend.

"It is important that the intelligence minister, the second most important person in the cabinet after the president, was sacked," says Ms. Esfandiari, an Iranian-American who herself was forced to make a confession after being imprisoned in 2007. "This means that the Revolutionary Guard is taking over many of the duties of the intelligence ministry."

The Revolutionary Guard showed where its loyalties lie with a Sunday statement supporting the broadcast of confessions by state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

"We're in favor of broadcasting the confessions in order to illuminate the public mind and clarify public opinion," said Mohammad Hejazi, the second-in-command of the ideological Revolutionary Guards – a parallel army that was established to safeguard the 1979 Islamic revolution. The Guards public asserted responsibility for controlling the unrest following last month's election, and its basij militia – an ideological force placed under the Guard's supervision in early 2009 – took a lead in suppressing dissent.

Thousands of protesters were arrested and at least 20 more killed, including Nega Agha-Soltan, whose death roused widespread sympathy and is likely to be publicly commemorated in protests Thursday – the end of a traditional 40-day mourning period.

In a sharp statement that highlighted splits between both reformists and conservatives as well as clerics and the military elite, reformist Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei stated that "those forcing confessions out of them [prisoners] are sinners."

Khamenei appeared to buckle under growing popular, clerical, and reformist pressure Tuesday to address the issue of detainee abuses as he announced the closure of Kahrizak detention center. The notorious prison is the first to be closed and came a few days after the son of a conservative politician after allegedly being exposed to torture.

Khamenei's statement said that Kahrizak failed to "preserve the rights of detainees."

The highly unusual closure comes after the arrests of thousands of protesters from the rolling waves of often violent demonstrations still afflicting the streets of Tehran and other large Iranian cities. Head of the Judiciary Ayatollah Mortazavi announced that officials are working to release innocent detainees from what he claimed were only 300 remaining prisoners. Clusters of relatives who gather every day outside the gates of Evin Prison, police stations, and revolutionary courts dispute this number, claiming that thousands still remain locked behind bars. Another 140 were released today, according to an Iranian lawmaker who participated in an inspection of the prison facilities Tuesday.

"In some of these prisons, the citizens' rights are not respected and the interrogators subject prisoners to blows and insults," Dariush Ghanbari, a representative in Iran's parliament from Elam Province, told the Farsi-language Parleman News. "Kahrizak is essentially a storeroom lacking in first aid or sanitary facilities."

In a sign of widening divisions within the clerical elites, Parleman News also reported that a group of senior Grand Ayatollahs critical of the regime's handling of the political crisis were planning to journey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf in Iraq – a move that would be taken as an insulting vote of no confidence in Khamenei's handling of the postelection situation. Just two of the nine Grand Ayatollahs resident in Iran have welcomed Ahmadinejad's election while the rest maintained a brooding silence.

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Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis

By Stephen R. Shalom, Thomas Harrison, Joanne Landy and Jesse Lemisch
Campaign for Peace and Democracy
July 7, 2009

Right after the June 12 elections in Iran, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy issued a statement expressing our strong support for the masses of Iranians protesting electoral fraud and our horror at the ferocious response of the government. Our statement concluded: "We express our deep concern for their well-being in the face of brutal repression and our fervent wishes for the strengthening and deepening of the movement for justice and democracy in Iran." Since the elections, some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need for solidarity with the anti-Ahmadinejad movement. The Campaign's position of solidarity with the Iranian protesters has not changed, but we think those questions need to be squarely addressed.

Below are the questions we take up. Questions three, four and five deal with the issue of electoral fraud; readers who are not interested in this rather technical discussion are invited to go on to question six. And we should say at the outset that our support for the protest movement is not determined by the technicalities of electoral manipulation, as important as they are. What is decisive is that huge masses of Iranians are convinced that the election was rigged and that they went into the streets, at great personal risk, to demand democracy and an end to theocratic repression.

Was the June 12, 2009 election fair?
Isn't it true that the Guardian Council is indirectly elected by the Iranian people?
Was there fraud, and was it on a scale to alter the outcome?
Didn't a poll conducted by U.S.-based organizations conclude that Ahmadinejad won the election?
Didn't Ahmadinejad get lots of votes from conservative religious Iranians among the rural population and the urban poor? Might not these votes have been enough to overwhelm his opponents?
Hasn't the U.S. (and Israel) been interfering in Iran and promoting regime change, including by means of supporting all sorts of "pro-democracy" groups?
Has the Western media been biased against the Iranian government?
Is Mousavi a leftist? A neoliberal? What is the relation between Mousavi and the demonstrators in the streets?
Is Ahmadinejad good for world anti-imperialism?
Is Ahmadinejad more progressive than his opponents in terms of social and economic policy? Is he a champion of the Iranian poor?
What do we want the U.S. government to do about the current situation in Iran?
What should we do about the current situation in Iran?
Is it right to advocate a different form of government in Iran?

Was the June 12, 2009 election fair?

Even if every vote was counted fairly, this was not a fair election. 475 people wished to run for president, but the un-elected Guardian Council, which vets all candidates for supposed conformity to Islamic principles, rejected all but 4.

Free elections also require free press, free expression, and freedom to organize, all of which have been severely curtailed." [1]
You call the Guardian Council un-elected, but isn't it true that it is indirectly elected by the Iranian people?

Every eight years the Assembly of Experts is popularly elected. Candidates must be clerics and must be approved by the Guardian Council. The Assembly of Experts then chooses a supreme leader, who rules for life (though he can be removed by the Assembly of Experts for un-Islamic behavior). The supreme leader appoints the head of the judiciary. The supreme leader chooses half of the 12 members of the Guardian Council and the judiciary nominates the other six, to be ratified by the Parliament. The Guardian Council then vets all future candidates for president, parliament, and the Assembly of Experts. [2]

Thus, once this system was in place the possibilities of fundamentally changing it have been essentially nil. If 98 percent of the Iranian people decided tomorrow that they opposed an Islamic state, the rules would still enable the theocracy to continue in power forever -- because the only people who could change things have themselves to be vetted by the theocratic rulers. Even amending the constitution requires the approval of the supreme leader.

Iran is not a dictatorship of the Saudi Arabian sort, where there are no elections and where people have zero input. But the basic prerequisite of a democratic system -- that the people can change their government -- is missing.
OK, but was there fraud? And was it on a scale to alter the outcome?

There was certainly fraud: The Iranian government acknowledges that in 50 cities there were more votes cast than registered voters. (In Iran, voters can cast their ballots in districts other than those in which they reside, but "many districts where the excess votes were recorded are small, remote places rarely visited by business travelers or tourists." [3] ) Moreover, the vote total also exceeded the number of registered voters in two provinces. [4] (Province-wide excess is more significant than city-wide, because people would be less likely to vote in another province than another city.) Perhaps the most damning indication of fraud was the fact that Mousavi's observers, as well as those of the other opposition candidates, were frequently not allowed to be present when ballots were counted and the ballot boxes sealed -- a flagrant violation of Iranian law. [5] Moreover, supporters of opposition candidates had planned to independently monitor the results by text messaging local vote tallies to a central location, but the government suddenly shut down text messaging, making this impossible.
The question, though, is whether the extent of fraud was sufficient to change the results of the election. We can't be fully sure. But there is very powerful evidence that either no one emerged with a majority, which would have required a run-off election, or that Mousavi won outright.

According to an analysis by researchers at Chatham House, a British think tank, and the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews:

"In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, and all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former Reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups."[6]

Since Ahmadinejad's victory in 2005, when many reformists boycotted the elections and questions of fraud were raised, the hardliners lost their control of local councils in 2007. So an Ahmadinejad sweep in 2009 -- when reformist leaders, responding to a growing wave of discontent with the regime, were newly energized to challenge the President -- is hard to credit.

Ahmadinejad allegedly won in areas where other candidates had strong ties and support, including their home provinces. Some have suggested that this was a result of people not wanting to "waste" their votes on candidates unlikely to win.[7] But in Iran, elections are in two stages: if no candidate gets a majority in round one, then there is a run-off. So there was no reason for anyone to refrain from voting for her preferred candidate in the first round.
Didn't a poll conducted by U.S.-based organizations conclude that Ahmadinejad won the election?

The poll, conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow and the New America Foundation, found that Ahmadinejad was favored over Mousavi by two to one. But the poll was conducted between May 11 and May 20, 2009, before the official beginning of the three-week election campaign, and before the (first-ever) televised presidential debates. These debates were a turning point: millions of Iranians saw displayed the deep divisions in the leadership of the Islamic Republic. They sensed that there was now an opportunity for real change.

More importantly, however, Ahmadinejad received the support of only a third of the poll respondents, with almost half either refusing to answer or saying they hadn't yet made up their minds:

"At the stage of the campaign for President when our poll was taken, 34 percent of Iranians surveyed said they will vote for incumbent President Ahmadinejad. Mr. Ahmadinejad's closest rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi, was the choice of 14 percent, with 27 percent stating that they still do not know who they will vote for. President Ahmadinejad's other rivals, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai, were the choice of 2 percent and 1 percent, respectively.

"A close examination of our survey results reveals that the race may actually be closer than a first look at the numbers would indicate. More than 60 percent of those who state they don't know who they will vote for in the Presidential elections reflect individuals who favor political reform and change in the current system."[8]

When a government acts in secret, conducts an election lacking in transparency, and bars and restricts foreign journalists and the free flow of information, it makes sense not to accept its claims.
But didn't Ahmadinejad get lots of votes from conservative religious Iranians among the rural population and the urban poor? Might not these votes have been enough to overwhelm his opponents?

Ahmadinejad's support from ultraconservative voters was certainly not insignificant. In addition, his social welfare programs, funded from oil revenues, have undoubtedly induced many among the poor to give him their allegiance (see below). And then there are the members of the security apparatus -- the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, the pro-government religious paramilitary force -- who, together with their families, number in the millions. But there is no evidence that these were enough to give him the huge majorities he claims. As for peasants and villagers, only 35 percent of Iranian voters live in rural areas. And in any event, there is good reason to believe that rural voters are not strongly pro-Ahmadinejad. [9] As Chatham House noted, "In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends." [10]
Hasn't the U.S. (and Israel) been interfering in Iran and promoting regime change, including by means of supporting all sorts of "pro-democracy" groups?

In the 1950s and 60s, rightwingers charged that the U.S. civil rights movement was actually controlled by the Soviet Union, through the U.S. Communist Party. Of course Communists were involved in the civil rights movement and no doubt Moscow approved. But that's a far cry from indicating that the Soviet Union was a decisive force in the civil rights movement, let alone that it controlled the movement.

There is no doubt that U.S. agents, as well as those of other countries, are hard at work in Iran, as elsewhere. It is well known that Washington has meddled in the politics of Venezuela and Bolivia, as well as Georgia, Ukraine and Lebanon, to take only the most recent examples. Congress has even set up a special fund for "democracy promotion" in Iran. But foreign meddling does not prove foreign control. And foreign meddling does not automatically discredit mass movements or their goals; it depends on who is calling the shots. In any event, there is no evidence that the CIA or any other arm of U.S. intelligence -- or Mossad -- had anything to do with initiating or leading the protests in Iran. And it is absurd to see a parallel between the rightwing elements in Venezuela and Bolivia -- who are not fighting for greater popular control over their governments -- and the millions of protesters who have demanded democracy in Iran.

In 1953 U.S. and British intelligence engineered a coup to oust the democratically-elected Mossadeq government in Iran. But that coup involved bribing street gangs and a treasonous military. There was nothing like the mass upsurge that we've recently seen in Iran, and there has been not a scrap of credible evidence that the millions of people in the streets these past few weeks were brought out by CIA money.

On the contrary, for years now leading Iranian human rights activists, feminists, trade unionists -- people like Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji -- have taken the position that Iranian dissidents should not accept U.S. financial support. [11] They have a consistent record of opposing U.S. bullying, sanctions and threats of war, [12] and they know that any hint of links to Washington would be the kiss of death in Iran.

Recently, Iranian state television has broadcast footage of alleged rioters stating "We were under the influence of Voice of America Persia and the BBC" and some detainees -- politicians, journalists, and others -- are said to have confessed to all sorts of Western plots. [13] Surely, though, no one should take such claims, elicited under torture or duress, seriously. [14]
Has the Western media been biased against the Iranian government?

Mainstream Western media have clearly been more interested in pointing out electoral fraud and repression in Iran than in states that are closely allied with Washington. But this doesn't mean that there has been no fraud or repression in Iran.

For example, a video of the killing of Neda Agha Soltan spread widely on the internet and the media was quick to turn her death into a icon of the brutality of the Iranian government. We never saw a similar response to the many victims of government atrocities in Haiti or Egypt or Colombia. Nevertheless, the claim by some Iranian officials that she was killed by the CIA or by other demonstrators just to make the regime look bad [15] is totally lacking in credibility.

Western media have always selectively publicized and often exaggerated the crimes of official enemies. But we shouldn't conclude from this that crimes have not been committed. And in the case of Iran, there is no good evidence so far that Western news reports on the government's electoral fraud and violent repression of dissent have been fundamentally inaccurate.
Is Mousavi a leftist? A neoliberal? What is the relation between Mousavi and the demonstrators in the streets?

Mousavi's politics and economic program are not very clear. He is in many ways a pillar of the Establishment -- approved as a candidate by the Guardian Council and a former prime minister who served under Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1980s. He had a reputation for being one of the leaders more sympathetic to welfare state programs. Under his prime ministership many such programs were enacted, but also leftists were brutally repressed. With Washington's assistance, using U.S. intelligence information, the Iranian government rounded up members of the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party and conducted mass executions, virtually eliminating the Tudeh in Iran and killing many other leftists as well. [16] It has been argued that the repression was carried out by the ministry of intelligence and the judiciary, and that these institutions were not in fact under his control even though he was prime minister. Whether or not this is the case, at a minimum Mousavi neither resigned nor publicly protested the violent repression that took place when he was prime minister, and thus he cannot be absolved of responsibility.

More recently, he has been an ally of the powerful billionaire cleric and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is close to major private business interests. Mousavi supports turning over many of the publicly-owned sectors of the Iranian economy to private hands, but so does Ahmadinejad, who boasts that he has privatized more public assets than his predecessors, [17] and in fact privatization has been going on for several years and is mandated by recently passed legislation. [18] In his campaign for the presidency, Mousavi called for loosening some of the Islamic Republic's restrictions on personal liberties, especially as concern women's rights. But Mousavi came to embody the aspirations of millions of Iranians for more than this -- for an end to the terrorism of the Basijis and the Revolutionary Guards and for an even broader democratization of the Islamic Republic. Undoubtedly, some of them hoped -- as do we -- that the protests would be a first step towards dismantling the fundamentally anti-democratic system of clerical rule itself.

During the weeks that followed the election, demonstrators protested voting fraud, but also called increasingly for equality and freedom -- "down with dictatorship!" The marches may have been started mainly by students and liberal-minded middle class people, but they were quickly joined by growing numbers of workers, elderly people and women in conservative chadors.

It seems that Mousavi's electoral organization did not anticipate the massive outpouring of protest after the election and was unable (and perhaps unwilling, given Mousavi's Establishment ties) to provide any organization or real leadership. The ferocious violence of the security forces has left the protesters, and the general public in Iran, stunned and understandably intimidated. However, their outrage is deep, and it will not go away. Protest may soon return to the streets and rooftops. And many are looking for other forms of protest. Mousavi, Khatami and Rafsanjani have not made their peace with Ahmadinejad, and the split in Iran's clerical establishment deepens.

The millions who have gone into the streets have already shown themselves capable of acting independently of Mousavi, and, as has often been the case in democratic struggles historically around the world, there is good reason to believe that the masses of protesters who have entered into the fight for limited demands can transcend the political, social and economic program of the movement's initial leaders. In Iran, this is especially the case if trade unions are able to use the opening created by today's challenges to Ahmadinejad to assert the interests of the poor and lend their organized strength to the movement.
Is Ahmadinejad good for world anti-imperialism?

There is a foolish argument in some sectors of the left that holds that any state that is opposed by the U.S. government is therefore automatically playing a progressive, anti-imperialist role and should be supported. On these grounds, many such "leftists" have acted as apologists for murderous dictators like Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. The Campaign for Peace and Democracy has always argued that we can oppose U.S. imperial policy without thereby having necessarily to back the states against which it is directed.

Ironically, despite their current rhetoric, some U.S. neoconservatives favored an Ahmadinejad victory. [19] They knew that on the main issues dividing the U.S. and Iran -- Tehran's pursuit of nuclear energy, its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and its insistence on forcing Israel to withdraw completely from the Occupied Territories -- Ahmadinejad's position was no different from that of Mousavi or that of Iranian public opinion. [20] But Ahmadinejad, with his confrontational style and his outrageous "questioning" of the Holocaust, is a much easier leader to hate and fear; his continuing grip on power therefore serves the goals of neoconservative hawks and Israeli hardliners. [21] And they know that Iranian public opinion solidly supports the cause of Palestinian rights; and that Ahmadinejad's anti-Jewish rhetoric has harmed, not helped, the Palestinians.

Some of these "leftists" say that whatever Ahmadinejad's faults, the mass upsurge in Iran plays into the hands of U.S. imperialism. On the contrary, a people's pro-democracy movement is the worst fear of the many authoritarian regimes on which Washington relies to maintain its hegemony; such as the rulers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan and elsewhere. And not just among U.S. clients. It is significant that news of the demonstrations was heavily censored in China and Myanmar, and that the Russian government was one of the first to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his "victory."

Hugo Chavez too congratulated Ahmadinejad. As Reese Erlich, author of The Iran Agenda who frequently appears on Democracy Now!, has commented,

"On a diplomatic level, Venezuela and Iran share some things in common. Both are under attack from the U.S., including past efforts at 'regime change.' Venezuela and other governments around the world will have to deal with Ahmadinejad as the de facto president, so questioning the election could cause diplomatic problems.
But that's no excuse." [22]
Is Ahmadinejad more progressive than his opponents in terms of social and economic policy? Is he a champion of the Iranian poor?

As leftists we are very familiar with rightwing politicians disingenuously claiming to care about the poor and the working class. The Islamic Republic has long included a social welfare component to help it maintain support. Ahmadinejad has undertaken some populist programs, utilizing some of the revenues generated by the sharply higher price of oil. But, even ignoring the fact that basic democratic rights and women's rights are hardly the exclusive concern of the well-to-do, the Islamic Republic, and especially Ahmadinejad's presidency, have not been good for the workers and the poor of Iran.

Anyone purporting to support the working class has to back independent unions so that workers can defend their own interests both in the work place and in the society at large. However, Iran has still not ratified international labor conventions guaranteeing freedom of association and collective bargaining and abolishing child labor, [23] and unions in Iran have been subjected to horrendous repression. As the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has reported [24]:

"Iranian workers are still unable to form independent trade unions, a right denied both within Iran's labor code and de facto repressed by the government in action. The government routinely arrests and prosecutes workers demanding their most basic rights, such as demands for wages unpaid, sometimes for periods as long as 36 months. Security forces often attack peaceful gatherings by workers, harass their families, and even kill them, as happened during a gathering by copper miners in Shahr Babak, near the city of Kerman, in 2004."

Under Ahmadinejad's presidency, the situation has been especially grim:

"Two leading trade unionists, Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi, are currently in prison. Another one, Majid Hamidi, recently the target of an assassination attempt, is hospitalized. In addition to being imprisoned and fined, eleven other workers were flogged in February 2008 for the crime of participating in a peaceful gathering to commemorate International Labor Day, May 1st."

"In January 2006, security forces arrested nearly a thousand members of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, attacked some of their homes, beat their families, and even detained the wives and children of the leading members, to prevent a planned strike. Since then, most members of the Syndicate's central council have been targets of prosecution and imprisonment. The Syndicate's leader, Mansour Osanloo, is currently serving a five- year sentence, while he suffers from eye injuries due to earlier beatings, and is in danger of going blind. Fifty-four members of the Syndicate have been fired from their jobs and are prosecuted in courts for their peaceful activities."

Teachers' attempts to organize and collectively bargain have also met violent repression.

Just this past May Day, the government beat participants in a peaceful labor event and arrested the leaders. [25] And in June, a committee of the International Labour Organization cited Iran for the "grave situation relating to freedom of association in the country. [26]

What makes the need for unions in Iran so important is that large numbers of workers are forced to work under temporary contracts that permit even more exploitation of labor than usual. One common practice is for workers to be fired and then rehired every three months as a way to deny them pensions and other benefits.
What do we want the U.S. government to do about the current situation in Iran?

There is a great deal that the Administration can do. Obama should promise that the U.S. will never launch a military attack on Iran or support an Israeli attack. He should commit the United States not to support terrorism or sabotage operations in Iran, and immediately order the cessation of any such activities that may still be occurring. He should lift sanctions against Iran -- certainly not as a reward to Ahmadinejad for stealing the election, but because the sanctions have a negative impact on the Iranian people and provide one of the main justifications for Ahmadinejad's iron rule. He should take major initiatives toward disarmament of U.S. nuclear and conventional weapons, and he should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan. And he should work to promote a nuclear-free Middle East, which includes Israel. By reducing these threats, Obama would thereby be removing one of the main rationalizations for Iranian repression (as well as for its nuclear program).
What should we do about the current situation in Iran?

We need to make it clear to the Iranian people that there is "another America," one that is independent of the government and opposed to its oppressive and anti-democratic foreign policy. Our support comes with no strings attached and no hidden agenda. Iranians should be made aware that it is American progressives -- not the U.S. government or the hypocrites of the right -- who offer genuine solidarity.
Is it right to advocate a different form of government in Iran?

As leftists, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy supports radical change everywhere that people do not have full control over their political and economic lives. We advocate such change in the United States, in France, in Russia, in China. And we support it in Iran too. But we do not support the United States government -- or Britain or Israel or any other country -- imposing "regime change" outside its borders by force. What was wrong with Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not that the regime of Saddam Hussein was overthrown -- his was a hideous regime and anyone concerned with human decency wanted it ended -- but that Bush asserted that the United States had the right to invade. Political change imposed by a foreign army, or brought about by the covert operations of foreign intelligence agencies, is unacceptable, and it is especially unacceptable when the foreign power concerned has a long history of interventions for its own sordid motives: to impose its domination, to control oil resources, to establish military bases.

But do we support the Iranian people if they act to end autocratic rule in Iran? Of course! This is a government that, in addition to its just-completed election fraud and vicious attacks on its own citizens, imprisons, tortures, publicly flogs and hangs political opponents, labor activists, gays, and "apostates," and still prescribes execution by stoning as the penalty for adultery. The Head of the Judiciary declared a moratorium on executions by stoning in 2002, but at least five people are known to have been stoned to death since then, two of them on December 26, 2008. [27] Workers have no right to strike. A woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's and women have limited rights to divorce and child custody. The regime imposes gender apartheid, segregating women in many public places. Veiling is compulsory and enforced by threats, fines and imprisonment. We should support Iranians' efforts to end these barbaric practices.

Notes

See, for example, Amnesty International, "Iran: Worsening repression of dissent as election approaches," 1 February 2009, MDE 13/012/2009; Amnesty International, "Iran's presidential election amid unrest and ongoing human rights violations," 5 June 2009; Amnesty International, "Iran: Election amid repression of dissent and unrest," 9 June 2009, MDE 13/053/2009.
See BBC, "Iran: Who Holds the Power".
Michael Slackman, "Amid Crackdown, Iran Admits Voting Errors," New York Times, June 23, 2009.
Ali Ansari, ed., Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran's 2009 Presidential Election, Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews, 21 June 2009.
Kaveh Ehsani, Arang Keshavarzian and Norma Claire Moruzzi, "Tehran, June 2009," Middle East Report Online, June 28, 2009.
Ansari , op. cit.
George Friedman, "The Iranian Election and the Revolution Test," Stratfor, June 22, 2009; Esam Al-Amin, "A Hard Look at the Numbers: What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election?" CounterPunch, June 22, 2009.
Terror-Free Tomorrow & New America Foundation, "Ahmadinejad Front Runner in Upcoming Presidential Elections; Iranians Continue to Back Compromise and Better Relations with US and West; Results of a New Nationwide Public Opinion Survey of Iran before the June 12, 2009 Presidential Elections ," June 2009.
Eric Hoogland, "Iran's Rural Vote and Election Fraud," June 17, 2009, Agence Global.
Ansari, op. cit.
Karl Vick and David Finkel, " U.S. Push for Democracy Could Backfire Inside Iran ," Washington Post, March 14, 2006; Akbar Ganji, " Why Iran's Democrats Shun Aid ," Washington Post, Oct. 26, 2007; Patrick Disney, " Iranian Civil Society Urges US to End 'Democracy Fund,' Ease Sanctions ," 16 July 2008.
See, for example, " Iran's Civil Society Movement Sets Up 'National Peace Council' ," CASMII Press Release, 10 July 2008.
AFP, " Iran shows footage of 'rioters influenced by Western media' ," 23 June 2009; Michael Slackman, " Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares ,"New York Times, July 4, 2009; CNN, " Newsweek reporter in Iran reportedly 'confesses' ," July 1, 2009.
Of course, when similar torture was carried out by the U.S. government, U.S. media only referred to "harsh interrogation techniques." See Glenn Greenwald, "The NYT calls Iranian interrogation tactics 'torture'," Salon, July 4, 2009.
Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin, "Iranian cleric says protesters wage war against God," Boston Globe, June 27, 2009.
The Tower Commission Report, President's Special Review Board, New York: Bantam Books/Times Books, 1987, pp. 103-04.
Ehsani, et al., op. cit.
Billy Wharton, "Selling Iran: Ahmadinejad, Privatization and a Bus Driver Who Said No," Dissident Voice, June 28th, 2009.
Stephen Zunes, "Why U.S. Neocons Want Ahmadinejad to Win," AlterNet, June 17, 2009.
See Obama's assessment of the lack of difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad; on public opinion, see Terror Free Tomorrow poll cited above.
Joshua Mitnick, "Why Iran's Ahmadinejad is preferred in Israel; The incumbent president will be easier to isolate than reformist leader Mr. Mousavi, say some leading Israeli policymakers," Christian Science Monitor, June 21, 2009.
Reese Erlich, "Iran and Leftist Confusion," ZNet, June 29, 2009.
See ILO, "Ratifications of the Fundamental human rights Conventions by country" (7/1/09).
International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, "Workers' Rights."
Amnesty International, "Iran: Prisoners of conscience / fear of torture or ill-treatment," 10 June 2009, MDE 13/054/2009.
International Labour Organization, " ILO Governing Body elects new Chairperson -- Committee on Freedom of Association cites Myanmar, Cambodia and Islamic Republic of Iran ," Press release, 19 June 2009, ILO/09/41.
Amnesty International, "Iran: New executions demonstrate need for unequivocal legal ban of stoning," 15 January 2009, MDE 13/004/2009.

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I am not a speck of dirt, I am a retired teacher'

by Ervand Abrahamian (source: London Review of Books)
Thursday, July 23, 2009
London Review of Books – Vol. 31, No. 14 (23 July 2009)

Iran has a healthy respect for crowds and for good reason. Crowds brought about the 1906 constitutional revolution. Crowds prevented the Iranian parliament from submitting to a tsarist ultimatum in 1911. Crowds scuttled the 1919 Anglo-Iranian Agreement, which would have in effect incorporated the country into the British Empire. Crowds prevented General Reza Khan from imitating Ataturk and establishing a republic in 1924 – as a compromise he kept the monarchy but named himself shah. Crowds gave the communist Tudeh Party political clout in the brief period of political pluralism between 1941 and 1953. Crowds in 1951-53 gave Mohammad Mossadegh, the country's national hero, the power both to take over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and to challenge the shah's unconstitutional control of the armed forces. Crowds – aided by clerics – provided a backdrop to the 1953 military coup organised by the CIA and MI5. Crowds in 1963 began what soon became known as Khomeini's Islamic Movement. And, of course, crowds played the central role in the drama of the 1979 Islamic Revolution – with the result that the new constitution enshrined the right of citizens to hold peaceful street demonstrations.

It was an awareness of the importance of crowds that prompted the regime to rig the presidential elections last month and thus inadvertently trigger the present crisis. In the months before the elections, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had seemed to be a shoe-in for a second four-year term. He enjoyed easy access to the mass media; his competitors were limited to websites and newspapers that were closed down at any provocation. He had won his first term after running a populist campaign against Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who for many epitomised the regime's worst features – nepotism, cronyism and financial corruption. He enjoyed the support of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who shared his deep distrust of the West and probably his ambition to pursue a nuclear programme at all costs.

Ahmadinejad also had the backing of much of the military-clerical- commercial complex running the country: the Revolutionary Guards and the affiliated Basij militia with more than three million members; the clerical 'foundations', quasi-state organisations that employ hundreds of thousands; and the bazaar merchants with their lucrative contracts with central government. He had placed so many former colleagues from the Guards in key positions that some claimed he had carried out a quiet coup d'état. He had consolidated his support among the evangelicals, known in Iran as the 'principalists', by courting Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, an influential right wing cleric in Qom who sits on Iran's Assembly of Experts; by often referring to the imminent return of the Mahdi (the Messiah); by generously patronising the Jam karan shrine where the Mahdi was supposedly last seen; and by claiming he had felt his divine presence when denouncing the US before the UN General Assembly. He had channelled the money from the recent oil bonanza into mosque construction, rural projects, government salaries and even cash handouts. He boasted that he was putting the oil money on people's dining tables. Some American presidents win elections by cutting taxes. Ahmadinejad tried to win by handing out potatoes.

What is more, the reform movement seemed divided and disillusioned. In the 2005 elections, faced with a choice between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani, many reformers had stayed at home. This time, Mohammad Khatami, the reform president between1997 and 2005, was poised to run, but then withdrew, leaving the reform field to Mir Hussein Mousavi and Ayatollah Mehdi Karroubi. The former, an architect turned academic, had not been seen in the political arena since 1989: between 1981 and 1989 he had served as Khomeini's prime minister. In 1997, reformers had privately asked him to run for the presidency but he had deferred to Khatami. Like many members of the intelligentsia in his generation, Mousavi had entered politics fired by a mix of Islamic fervour and Fanonist anti-imperialism. But once the revolution had achieved its main goals – the overthrow of the shah and the declaration of independence from the US – many of these militants gradually came round to the view that the Islamic Republic would wither unless it allowed greater democracy, pluralism and individual rights. The reactionary clergy, they realised, now posed the main obstacle to Iranian modernity. Karroubi, a close associate of Khomeini who had served as the speaker of Parliament, head of the Association of Militant Clergy, and director of the Martyrs Foundation, shared many of these sentiments and in one respect was even more liberal, advocating greater privatisation of the economy. He had run in the 2005 elections, gaining much support in his home region, and after the elect ions had lodged an official complaint that Revolutionary Guards had manipulated the vote in favour of Ahmadinejad. It was generally suspected that the Guardian Council, which has the authority to vet presidential candidates, permitted Karroubi and Mousavi, as well as Mohsen Rezai, the moderate-conservati ve former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, to run this time because it was confident that they had little chance.

This confidence was reinforced by a pre-election poll taken by a Washington-based organisation called Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion. The poll found that of 1001 Iranians interviewed by phone from outside Iran, 34 per cent favoured Ahmadinejad; 14 per cent Mousavi; 50 per cent had not yet made up their minds; 80 per cent wanted the constitution to be altered so that the Supreme Leader would be elected directly by the public; 70 per cent wanted to give the UN greater access to the country's nuclear facilities; and 77 per cent wanted better relations with the US. Apologists for the regime who continue to cite this survey ignore these findings, as well as the significance of the name and location of the polling organisation.

Once the actual electoral campaign – by law restricted to just ten days – got started, the race became much tighter. A similarly dramatic shift in public opinion also occurred in 1997. Then the general expectation had been that the well-known conservative candidate would win an easy victory over Khatami, the little known reformer. Yet the latter's campaign had suddenly caught fire: 80 per cent of the electorate came out to vote, and more than 70 per cent supported him. Such volatility is understandable in a country which doesn't have any deep-rooted political parties.

This time three major factors converged to produce a shift in public opinion. The first was the series of six prime-time televised debates, which were watched by almost every household in the country. These debates galvanised the whole electorate. Instead of attacking each other, the challengers focused their fire on Ahmadinejad, concentrating on his economic record. They took turns in showing that reliable statistics – in sharp contrast to those produced by the president – put inflation at 25 per cent, unemployment at 30 per cent, and the number of those living in poverty at a record high. Ahmadinejad tried to change the subject, harping on Rafsanjani's wealth and falsely accusing Mousavi's wife of pulling strings to obtain her doctorate. This angered women and reminded viewers that four of Ahmadinejad's own ministers had claimed phony foreign degrees.

Ahmadinejad was also sharply criticised for damaging national 'honour' – through, for example, his denial of the Holocaust – and for pursuing adventurist foreign policies that isolated Iran and jeopardised its security. His opponents all favoured better relations with the outside world. Ahmadinejad had won the 2005 election by running not only against Rafsanjani but against Bush. This time he had neither. Instead he had to contend with Obama, who had removed the main stumbling-block to negotiations – the prerequisite that Iran should stop all uranium enrichment. He had accepted the right of Iran to have a nuclear programme. He had stopped all talk of 'regime change'. He had apologised for the 1953 coup. He had ended the irritating practice of differentiating between the Iranian government and the Iranian people, and addressed himself to the 'Islamic Republic of Iran'. And he had offered to end economic sanctions if Iran would give verifiable guarantees that it would not build nuclear weapons. For many Iranians, foreign relations were tied to domestic bread-and-butter quest ions. It was clear that there would not be jobs for the ever increasing number of high school and college graduates unless the country's vast untapped gas and oil reserves were developed. It was equally clear that these reserves would not be developed unless relations with the West – and especially the US – improved. Karroubi made fun of Ahmadinejad for boasting that the Iranian educational system was so good that a high school pupil had achieved nuclear fusion in her basement. At one point Ahmadinejad lost his cool and called Karroubi a 'Hitler'.

The second factor was Mousavi's ability to challenge Ahmadinejad on his own turf. Once Mousavi had returned to the limelight, he was quick to remind the public that he had been Khomeini's prime minister in the 'heroic days' of war and revolution. Besides his reputation as a competent administrator, he had nationalised a host of industries, launched a rural construction programme, drafted a progressive labour law, advocated land reform, and introduced war - time price controls and rationing, thereby, for the first and probably only time in Iranian history, narrowing the income gap between rich and poor. He wasn't just a populist talking ecstatically about the good old days: he had been a key figure in those days. His Mir title also helped – 'Mir' is the Azeri version of 'Sayyed' and signifies descent from the Prophet and the 12 Imams. An impressive number of organisations and personalities prominent in the early days of the revolution threw their weight behind him. They included the labour unions; the Association of Qom Seminary Teachers; the Association of Mil it ant Clerics; the Mujahedin Organisation of the Islamic Revolution; Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, at one time the designated Supreme Leader; Ayatollah Taheri, the senior cleric in Isfahan; Hojjat al-Islam Khoeni, the mentor of the students who took over the US Embassy; Hojjat al-Islam Mohtashemi, Khomeini's main troubleshooter in Lebanon when the Revolutionary Guard presided over the creation of Lebanese Hizbullah; and relatives of Revolutionary Guards martyred in the Iraqi war. Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad's own populist credentials were tarnished when a member of his inner circle told the press that he had placed many family members and associates in high positions. To woo secular nationalists and the old left, Mousavi brandished on his campaign trail a large portrait of Mossadegh – anathema to the right wing clerics.

The third factor was the women's movement. Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a scholar and artist who is a prominent champion of womens' rights, entered the fray and campaigned alongside her husband – the first time this had happened in Iranian history. This galvanised the women's movement – especially the One Million Women Campaign, which takes in a wide spectrum from Islamic feminists to liberal nationalists to leftist and even Marxist activists. The women's movement had been crucial to Khatami's victories. It was poised to be just as important to Mousavi.

By the last days of the campaign, good-natured crowds were pouring into the cities, threatening to turn the world upside down, and most serious of all, mocking those on high – Ahmadinejad was pictured with Pinocchio's nose. The government appeared to be losing control of the streets. The Washington polling agency that had expected an easy Ahmadinejad victory admitted that its predictions were probably out of date. Eyewitnesses re ported that the election had turned into a 'real race', that the demonstrations were 'rattling' the government and that the Revolutionary Guards were fearful of a 'velvet revolution'. Some polls taken by the opposition predicted a victory for Mousavi. Even if these polls were too optimistic, they did indicate that Ahmadinejad's lead had been drastically cut – perhaps to the point where he would not win the required 50 per cent in the first round and would therefore have to compete against his main opponent in a second round, as required by the constitution.

A second round would have posed a serious threat: it would have led to more campaigning and more unruly street demonstrations. It would have accentuated the shift in public opinion. And it would have strengthened Mousavi – Karroubi had made it clear that he would endorse him in a second round. It was generally thought that Ahmadinejad wouldn't be able to improve on the number of votes he gained in the first round and so would enter any second round at a clear disadvantage. To preempt this, the Interior Ministry, which was running the election and was headed by a millionaire friend of Ahmadinejad, acted decisively, giving Ahmadinejad not just a majority but such a resounding one that dwarved the votes gained by his opponents. The minister purged unreliable civil servants from the electoral commission – some even claimed that Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi had issued a fatwa allowing the faithful to miscount votes. He restricted the number of permits issued to poll observers; prevented some of them entering the 45,000 polling stations; set up more than 14,000 mobile electoral trucks (making the vote easy to fiddle); printed far more ballot papers than there were eligible voters; cut off communications to Mousavi and Karroubi's headquarters on the day of the elections (Mousavi's offices in Qom were torched in a mysterious attack); and, as a clincher, at the end of election day, broke precedent by not having the ballots tabulated on the spot but instead rushed to the ministry where they were 'counted' by his aides. Within hours of the polls closing, the interior minister declared Ahmadinejad to be the winner with 66 per cent of the vote. Mousavi, he said, had won only 33 per cent. The minister also declared that a record number – 85 per cent of the electorate – had voted.

Congratulating the nation on the victory, Khamenei described the result as 'divinely inspired'. Three days later, the ministry issued more detailed statistics with provincial breakdowns: Ahmadinejad had won 24.5 million votes, Mousavi 13.2 million, Rezai 678,240 and Karroubi 333,635. According to Chatham House, there are serious problems with these statistics. In two provinces, more than 100 per cent of eligible voters voted. Karroubi, who received more than five million votes in 2005, got fewer than 340,000 this time, and lost even in his home province. For Ahmadinejad to have won more than 24 million votes, Chatham House found, he would have had to keep all the votes he got in 2005, win over those who had voted for Rafsanjani on that occasion, all of those who had stayed at home, and, on top of that, up to 44 per cent of the voters who backed reform candidates. This decisive 'victory' was intended to put an end to street demonstrations, but it had the opposite effect, outraging many who felt not only cheated but insulted – especially when Ahmadinejad described those who questioned the results as 'specks of dirt'. There were vociferous protests in many parts of the country and Mousavi and Karroubi called for a silent rally to be held at Azadi (Freedom) Square in Tehran on Monday, 15 June. The call was heeded by around a million people – the conservative mayor of the capital put the number at three million. The scene was reminiscent of the rallies held in the same square during the 1979 revolution. As in 1979, the security forces were kept away to prevent clashes. The rally drew all kinds of protester: old and young, professionals and workers, bazaaris and students, men and women with sunglasses and headscarves as well those with the full length chador. Lines of protesters nine kilometres long converged on the square from the northern, better-off districts as well as from the southern, working-class ones. Volunteers, many of them election workers, gave the procession a semblance of organisation. Students marched from Revolution Square, near the university campus, to Freedom Square under a banner reading 'From Revolution to Freedom'. Others – many wearing green, the colour of Shia Islam, dis played banners saying 'What Happened to My Vote?' or 'Ahmadinejad, you could not see our votes but you could see the divine light' – an allusion to the president's supposed experience at the UN. An old man carried a sign saying: 'I am not a speck of dirt, I am a retired teacher.' Eyewitness accounts agree that feeling was not so much against the Islamic Republic as against the stifling of the reform movement. It was a mass protest against vote- rigging. Exiled groups, not surprisingly, hail ed these scenes as amounting to a revolutionary challenge to the Islamic Republican interpretation peddled, for different reasons, by the regime. However one interprets it, it was the largest rally held in Tehran since the height of the Islamic Revolution. Similar rallies were also held in many provincial capitals, notably Isfahan and Shiraz.

Government spokesmen tried to control the damage by arguing that the opposition might have some support in the cities but that Ahmadinejad had carried the countryside. This argument was soon picked up by Western policymakers – especially State Department diplomats – who had argued in favour of striking a 'grand bargain' with Iran in the fashion of Nixon in China, and were worried that a potential rapprochement would be sabotaged by the unrest. But the few reliable accounts we have from the countryside dismiss the not ion that Ahmadinejad has a strong rural base. Although the Islamic Republic is strongly sup ported in the countryside, many people there – rural inhabitants constitute only 35 per cent of the country's population – dislike Ahmedinejad because of his broken promises, and because he funnelled benefits to Revolutionary Guards and Basijis, and those with connections to the clerical foundations. Eric Hoogland, who has studied rural Iran for many years and cannot be described as an opponent of the Islamic Republic, has claimed that in the region he knows well outside Shiraz – a region that should be Ahmadinejad's heartland since it is Shia and Persian-speaking – only between 20 and 25 per cent supported him. Out rage when the interior ministry took away the ballot boxes before the votes could be counted turned into open anger and protests when the election results were announced.

Shaken by the 15 June rallies, the regime launched a massive crackdown, the full extent of which remains unknown. It banned all demonstrations, threatened to execute anyone participating in or calling for such protests, and sent out tens of thousands of Revolutionary Guards and Basijis armed with assault weapons as well as motorbikes, knives and truncheons. It sent vigilantes into university dormitories. At least 20 people were killed in the clashes and more than 4000 associates of Mousavi and Karroubi were arrested – their main strategists and campaigners, as well as journalists sympathetic to the opposition. It jammed foreign broadcasts, shut down newspapers and websites, disrupted telecommunications and expelled many foreign journalists – others were confined to their offices, and some were jailed. It broke into private homes and arrested those suspected of shouting 'God is great' from their rooftops. It launched a media campaign claiming that the opposition was inspired, financed and organised by a sinister 'foreign hand': Britain, and the BBC, tended to be singled out here. (The regime put less blame on the US probably in order to dangle the possibility of future negotiations. ) It also tortured prisoners, including prominent figures, who were made to confess before TV cameras that they had participated in a Western plot to launch a velvet revolution. As a sop to public opinion, Khamenei asked the Guardian Council – 12 conservative judges – to investigate complaints of electoral irregularities. The Guardian Council found a discrepancy of three million votes, but concluded that this would not have made much of a dent in Ahmadinejad's 11 million lead. States that orchestrate 99.5 per cent support for their candidate in elections can always claim that 10 or 20 per cent here or there will not make much of a difference, but Iran has a tradition of relatively competitive, if controlled elections. Mousavi and Karroubi, endorsed by many prominent clerics, rejected this verdict, called for new elections, and even declared the presidency of Ahmadinejad to be illegitimate.

The regime appears to have weathered the storm, at least for the time being. The revolt has not turned into a revolution, even though these events have much in common with those of 1979 – similar rallies, similar slogans ('God is great'), similar tactics and similar griping about 'foreign interference'. But there are major differences: the monarchy had almost no support, but the republic has a solid base – the 25 per cent of the population who consider themselves true believers. The shah had lost the allegiance of the armed forces. The republic is fully equipped with three million Revolutionary Guards and Basijis, trained to deal with civil disturbances. The monarchy had been challenged by a mass revolutionary movement. The Islamic Republic faces a mass reform movement that wants to strengthen its democratic features at the expense of its theocratic ones.

The crisis has created two long-term dangers for the regime. First, the presidency continues to be held by a demagogic politician who does not shy away from confronting the US, and who seems to have little grasp of his limits. He claims Iran is a major power – maybe even a superpower – and dismisses the US as a spent force that 'can't do a damn thing'. It's not for nothing that the other candidates consider him a dangerous adventurist. Nuclear negotiations are unlikely to go anywhere. On the contrary, they are likely to degenerate into acrimony, leaving the US in a much stronger and Iran in a much weaker position than ever be fore. Not surprisingly, the Israeli government cheered Ahmadinejad's victory – a Mousavi victory would have been an obstacle to a possible Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Second, the crushing of the reform movement has closed off avenues for change, and dampened hopes for peaceful evolution. By denouncing children of the revolution as foreign-paid 'counter-revolutiona ries', Khamenei, Ahmedinejad and their allies have alienated a considerable proportion of the population – maybe even the majority – and could end up transforming reformists into revolutionaries. By moving away from democracy towards theocracy, the regime has removed an important component of its original legitimacy. Some would argue the country has ceased to be a republic and has become a military-backed theocracy a Shia imamate equivalent to the medieval Sunni caliphates. Ervand Abrahamian's History of Modern Iran came out in July.

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Ahmadinejad on the Wrong Side of History

By Navid Shomali
Any analysis of recent developments in Iran following the self-styled re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must take the bigger picture into consideration.

For some, otherwise objective/ anti-imperialist forces outside Iran, the national and historical context of the election campaign have become blurred by the internal and external response to it. The principal source of the distortion has been the response of the US government to the Ahmadinejad's "victory".

However, using the US response, as a starting point for an objective assessment of recent events is dubious practise, worse it risks falling into the intelligence communities 'wilderness of mirrors'. For neither the US nor the Tehran dictatorship speak with one voice or one intention.

One example illustrates this duplicity. Only a few months ago while the US government and mass media dissembled the possibility opening a third military front in Iran, the Iranian regime itself huffed and puffed anti-Zionist anti- USA rhetoric whilst simultaneously seeking economic and military co-operation with the US. For its part the US government was discretely offering non-interference in return for Iranian co-operation and non-intervention in the US campaign in Afghanistan.

In this context few suggested all out solidarity with the fundamentalist fascists in Afghanistan, who in turn are opposed by the fundamentalist nationalists in Iran on a religious not political basis.

This green light from Tehran for the US Afghan military and economic campaign also enabled the US to silence its sabre rattling, while maintaining its anti-Iranian rhetoric.

Thus the re-instatement of Ahmadinejad greeted by the US with muted expressions of concern for the democratic process and crocodile tears for the deaths of post election demonstrators, gunned down by Ahmadinejad's thugs for expressing their own democratic concerns in major cites throughout Iran.

Virtually from the outset the Iranian election was likely to be rigged. Such an outcome is always possible when a dictatorship faces widespread opposition. However, mass participation in the election also places the dictatorial regime on the back foot.

Since his last "election" Ahmadinejad has postured around the world as a great leader, boasted of his conversations with God, denied the Nazi holocaust, trampled on human rights in Iran, jailed his opponents. However above all, Ahmadinejad is a willing and enthusiastic representative of the Iranian theocratic and mercantile class. The same class which has squandered for almost thirty years the anti-imperialist ambition of the '79 revolution, repressed working class and student organisations, indulged in brutal and primitive torture and executions, imposed sever restrictions on the rights of women as well as those with other religious convictions, and now dresses in pseudo anti- imperialist clothes. The reality is the President has no clothes.

This must be the basis for any progressive assessment of political reality in Iran. Wide sections of the Iranian population have taken this as their starting point and have expressed their opposition on the streets. It is their experience, which informs and motivates the protest and like all dictatorships faced with democratic peoples opposition it has responded with violence and tragedy.

Now it is the Iranian masses and their autonomous organisations, which need support. The clerical regime is continuing with its posturing, hiding behind its trade links with other nations, claiming conspiracies, seeking scapegoats and responding with its customary iron fist.

There are many comparisons in the history of world politics, but whatever subtleties of difference there are, the theocratic regime in Iran has clearly demonstrated it is on the wrong side of history. Supporters of the movement for peace, independence, freedom and liberty in Iran should not be dragged alongside.

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Elections in Iran - Open letter of support to the demonstrators in Iran

This open letter (dated 24/06/09), signed by a number of international academics amongst whom Noam Chomsky and Juan Cole, is a letter in support of the demonstrations that are taking place in Iran following the controversial presidential elections.

Khamenei's argument sounds familiar to anyone interested in the politics of collective action, since it appears to draw on the logic used by state authorities to oppose most of the great popular mobilisations of modern times, from 1789 in France to 1979 in Iran itself. These mobilisations took shape through a struggle to assert the principle that sovereignty rests with the people themselves, rather than with the state or its representatives. 'No government can justly claim authority', as South Africa's ANC militants put it in their Freedom Charter of 1955, 'unless it is based on the will of all the people.'

Needless to say it is up to the people of Iran to determine their own political course. Foreign observers inspired by the courage of those demonstrating in Iran this past week are nevertheless entitled to point out that a government which claims to represent the will of its people can only do so if it respects the most basic preconditions for the determination of such a will: the freedom of the people to assemble, unhindered, as an inclusive collective force; the capacity of the people, without restrictions on debate or access to information, to deliberate, decide and implement a shared course of action.

Years of foreign-sponsored 'democracy promotion' in various parts of the world have helped to spread a well-founded scepticism about civic movements which claim some sort of direct democratic legitimacy. But the principle itself remains as clear as ever: only the people themselves can determine the value of such claims. We the undersigned call on the government of Iran to take no action that might discourage such determination.

AGAMBEN, Giorgio, Università IUAV di Venezia, Venice
ALAMDARI, Kazem, California State University, Los Angeles
ALLIEZ, Eric, Middlesex Universtiy, UK
AMSLER, Sarah S, Language and Social Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham
ANDERSON, Kevin B, Professor of Sociology and Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara
ASAD, Talal, Graduate Center, City University of New York
BADIOU, Alain, École Normale Supérieure, Paris
BALKAN, Nesecan, Hamilton College
BANUAZIZI, Ali, Professor of Political Science and Director, Program in Islamic Civilization and Societies, Boston College
BAYAT, Asef, Professor of Sociology and Middle East Studies, Leiden University
BEHROOZ, Maziar, Associate Professor of Middle East History, San Francisco State University
BENHABIB, Seyla, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven
BEYER, Vera, Kunsthistorisches Institut der Freien Universität Berlin
BIENIEK, Adam, Jagiellonian University, Chair of Arab Studies, Institute of Oriental Philology , Cracow, Poland
BLIBAR, Etienne, Paris X, Nanterre, and University of California, Irvine
BOCHENSKA, Joanna, Dept. of Kurdish Studies, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
BOGDAN, Jolan, Dept. of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths College, UK
BOSTEELS, Bruno Bosteels, Cornell University
BRAULT, Pascale-Anne, Professor of French, Dept. of Modern Languages, DePaul University
BRUNO, Michael, Dept. of Philosophy, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR
BRUSTAD, Kristen, Associate Chair, Dept.
Of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin
BURGE, Tyler, University of California, Los Angeles
BURGERS, Jan-Willem, Australian National University
BUTLER, Judith, University of California, Berkeley
BUTT, Gavin, Senior Lecturer & Programme Leader in MPhil / PhD,
CARDIN, Maryam, IUT of the University of Marne-la-vallée
CHOMSKY, Noam, MIT, Cambridge MA USA
COHEN, Joshua, Stanford University
COLE, Juan R. I., Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan
DABASHI, Hamid, Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, New York
DE CARO, Mario, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Rome
DI LUCIA COLLETI, Laura, Conseillor Province of Venice
DOGRAMACI, Sinan, University of Texas at Austin
DOLEZALEK, Isabelle, Freie Universität Berlin
DOMINIAK, Piotr, Chairman of ASK Association in Raciborz, Poland
DORFMAN, Vladimiro Ariel, Duke Universtiy, Durham, North Carolina
DÜTTMANN, Alexander Garcia, Goldsmiths College
EHSANI, Kaveh, Assistant Professor of International Studies, DePaul University
EISENSTEIN, Zillah, Professor of Politics, Ithaca College
ENGELMANN, Stephen, University of Illinois at Chicago
EPSTEIN, Barbara, History of Consciousness Dept., University of California, Santa Cruz
FALK, Richard, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University
FARHI, Farideh, Dept. of Political Science, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
FARNOODY-ZAHIRI, Nelly, UCLA
FASY, Thomas M., Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City
FATIMA KHAN, Mahruq, Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
FIELD, Hartry, Professor of Philosophy, New York University
FORAN, John, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
FRIEDLAND, Roger, Professor of Religiou Studies and Sociology, UCSB
GAJEWSKA, Katarzyna, University of Poland
GANDJBAKHSH, Amirhosseing, Research Director, National Health Institute, Washington DC
GANZ, David, Universität Konstanz, Germany
GARRETT, Don, Dept. of Philosophy, New York University
GASIOROWSKI, Mark, Political Science and International Studies, Louisiana State University
GLOGOWSKI, Aleksander, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
GODMILOW, Jill, University of Notre Dame
GOLE, Nilufer, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
HÁJEK, Alan, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University
HALLWARD, Peter, Middlesex University, UK
HASHEMI, Nader, Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics
HEGASY, Sonja, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin
HERRERA, Linda, Institute of Social Studies (The Hague)
HIBBARD, Scott, DePaul University, Chicago
HOEFERT, Almut, University of Basel
IVEKOVIC, Rada, Collège international de philosophie, Paris, Université Jean-Monnet, Saint-Etienne
JIMENEZ, Maria, Université Paris Sorbonne, Paris IV
KAPLINSKY, Raphael, Professor of International Development, The Open University, UK
KESHAVARZIAN, Arang, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University
KHOSROVANI, Sahar, University of Maastricht
KORBEL, Josef, School of International Studies, University of Denver
KOWALIK, Tadeusz, professor of economics and humanities, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw , University of Illinois, Chicago
MCINTYRE, Michael, International Studies, DePaul University, Chicago
MEHDIZADEH, Hamidreza, Illinois Institute of Technology
MEMMI, Paul, Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense
MORUZZI, Norma Claire, University of Illinois at Chicago, Political Science, History, Gender and Women's Studies
MOSES, Claire G., Dept. of Women's Studies, University of Maryland
MOSHTAGHI, Nazgol, University of South Florida
NAST, Heidi, DePaul University, Chicago
NATCHKEBIA, Irina, Tbilisi University
NOYAU, Colette, Dépt des Sciences du langage, CNRS, Université Paris-Ouest
OBDRZALEK, Suzanne, Dept of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College
PATTERSON, Ian, Director of Studies in English, Queens' College Cambridge
PETTIT, Philip, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University
PHELPS, Christopher, Dept. of History, The Ohio State University
PIRVELI, Marika, Szczecin University, Poland
POTTER, Robert, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
PRÉVOST, Sophie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris
PRINZ, Jesse, Professor of Philosophy, City University of New York
PROUST, Joëlle, Director of Research, Institut Jean-Nicod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole Normale Supérieure
PSTRUSIŃSKA, Jadwiga, Head of Dept. of Interdisciplinary Eurasiatic Research, Institute of Oriental Philology, Jagiellonian University, Cracow
RAKOWIECKI, Jacek, Collegium Civitas, Poland
RANCIÈRE, Jacques, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris (St. Denis)
REZAEI ,Ali, Dept. of Sociology, University of Calgary, Canada
RIGGLE, Nicholas Alden, Philosophy, New York University
ROMAN, Richard, University of Toronto
ROSENTHAL, David M., Professor of Philosophy, Cognitive Science Concentration Graduate Center, City University of New York
ROSS, Eric B., Visiting Professor of Anthropology and International Development Studies, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
SAHNI, Varun, Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Ganeshkhind, Pune
SANBONMATSU, John, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Dept. Of Humanities and Arts, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA
SCHAEFER, Karin, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
SCHELLENBERG, Susanna, Professor of Philosophy, Research School of the Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra
SCHIBECI, Lynn, (retired) Dept. of History, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico
SCHIELKE, Samuli, Centre of Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin
SCHRECKER, Ellen, Professor of American History at Yeshiva University, New York
SCHWABSKY, Barry, Senior Critic in Sculpture (retired), Yale University
SEDGWICK, Sally, University of Illinois, Chicago
SHAHSAVARI, Anousha, Persian Lecturer, University of Texas at Austin
SHEIKHZADEGAN, Amir, University of Freiburg
SIEGEL, Susanna C., Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University, Cambridge
SIMPSON, Dick, Head of the Political Science Dept.
KOWALSKA, Beata, Jagiellonian University, Poland
KOZLOWSKI, Pawel, Professor of economics, Polish Academy of Sciences
KUMAR, Victor, University of Arizona
LARRIVÉE, Pierre, Aston University, Birmingham
LEMISCH, Jesse, Professor Emeritus, History, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, USA
MARTINON, Jean-Paul, Dept. of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths College, UK
MASROUR, Farid, Dept. Of Philosophy, New York University
MCFARLAND, Andrew, Political Science Dept. , University of Illinois, Chicago
SINGPURWALLA, Rachel, University of Maryland, College Park
SOSA, Ernest, Rutgers University Philosophy Department
SPERBER, Dan, Institut Jean Nicod, CRNS, Paris
STEINSEIFER, Martin, Universität Giessen
STUART, Jack, Minneapolis, MN
Tabb, William K., City University of New York
TAVAKOLI-BORAZJANI, Farifteh, Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Iranistik
TAVAKOLI-TARGHI, Mohamad, Professor of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto
TISSBERGER, Martina, Freie Universität Berlin, Dept. of Educational Sciences and Psychology
TOHIDI, Nayereh, Professor and Chair, Gender and Women's Studies Dept., California State University, Northridge
TOSCANO, Alberto, Goldsmiths College, UK
UNGER, Peter, Professor of Philosophy, New York University
VAHDAT, Farzin, Vassar College, New York
VAN BLUEMEL, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, MA
VAN BRUINESSEN, Martin, Chair of Comparative Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies, Dept. of Theology and Religious Studies, Utrecht University
VICTORRI, Bernard, Directeur de recherché CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris
WATZL, Sebastian, Dept. of Philosophy, Columbia University
WHITE, Stephen, Dept. of Philosophy, Tufts University
WINANT, Howard, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
ZIAI, Hossein, Director of Iranian Studies, UCLA Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Los Angeles, CA
ŽIŽEK, Slavoj, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and the European Graduate School
ZUK, Agnieszka, University of Nancy
ZUPANCIC, Alenka, Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

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IFJ Leaders Call on Ahmadinejad to Free Journalists Held in Iran

Media Release
25 June 2009

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the world's largest organisation of journalists, has called on Iranian leaders to end the intimidation of local and international media which has seen leaders of Iran's journalists' union forced into hiding for their safety.

In a letter to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President re-elected in controversial elections which led to widespread protests over the past week, IFJ leaders have expressed particular concern over the fate of Karim Arghandepour, a well-known Iranian journalist and an elected member of the IFJ's global Executive Committee. He has not been heard of since his arrest in the official crackdown that has followed public protest over the presidential election.

Also in hiding is Ali Masrooie, the Chair of the Association of Iranian journalists. "Like other journalists' leaders he is fearful of being targeted by the authorities for his staunch defence of journalists and their right to work independently," said IFJ President Jim Boumelha and General Secretary Aidan White in their letter to the Iranian President.

On Monday, the Iranian authorities entered the offices of Kalemeh Sabz, pro-Mir Hossein Mousavi newspaper and arrested all the media staff present. According to the report, the Iranian security agents are now operating inside independent newsrooms, controlling and imposing censorship on what goes to printing. Iranian journalists are threatened of being arrested if they speak to foreign media. It has been also confirmed that Iason Athanasiadis, a Greek journalist who was reporting for the Washington Times had been arrested over the weekend.

The IFJ says targeting of media, arbitrary arrest of Iranian journalists, and unprecedented restrictions imposed on foreign media, including blocking of internet sites amount to a comprehensive violation of Iran?s commitments to respect human rights and free expression under the Iranian constitution. The IFJ warns that restrictions on foreign media threaten to obscure the reality of what is happening on the ground.

The IFJ says these violations must end immediately and all detained journalists set free. "We ask you to guarantee the safety of all Iranian journalists so that they can all return to work free of the threat of arrest and intimidation," said the IFJ.

The Federation has also called upon its member organisations in 123 countries to petition the Iranian authorities "to lift the cloud currently hanging over Iranian journalism."

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POST-ELECTION UNREST - Shades of grey in Iranian Politics

Progressives in Iran ought to be able to count on active and principled solidarity from the world trade unionists and the left rather than being demeaned as dancing to imperialism's tune.
Morning Star
By: John Haylett
Wednesday 24 June 2009

Iran's Guardian Council accepts that in 50 cities the number of votes cast in last week's electoral polls was in excess of those on the electoral register. However, for council spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, this did not mean that there had been "major fraud or breach in the election."

Kadkhodaei explained that 100 per cent-plus voter turnouts are not unusual since voters are not restricted to voting in the areas where they are registered. He suggested that the discrepancies amounted to no more than about 3 million votes out of 40 million, which would not have altered the result announced within two hours of the polls closing - namely that regime candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had romped home with 63 per cent. However, the three opposition candidates in the election believe that the level of what they do not hesitate to call fraud is bigger than that admitted by Kadkhodaei. Former revolutionary guards commander Mohsen Rezaei, who is noted for his brutal repression of democratic forces in the 1980s, previous prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and ex-speaker Mehdi Karoubi detailed no fewer than 646 election "irregularities." They demanded a rerun of the presidential election and, in Mousavi's case, continued to do so even after supreme leader Ali Khamenei imposed a ban on protests and urged obedient acceptance of the result.

"The country belongs to you. Protesting against lies and fraud is your right," Mousavi told demonstrators who risked arrest and assault by uniformed and plain-clothes agents of the state.

The theocratic regime slammed interference in the process by imperialist states, especially Britain, and expelled two British diplomats, occasioning the usual tit-for-tat response by London.

US President Barack Obama was "appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days." He joined "the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost" in a way that was beyond him during Israel's orgy of destruction and slaughter against Gaza six months ago.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hassan Ghashghavi also criticised United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki Moon for "meddling" when he voiced dismay over Tehran's use of threats and violence against demonstrators.

Ban was told that his stance had "damaged his credibility" in the eyes of "independent" countries by "ignorantly following some domineering powers which have a long record of uncalled-for interference in other countries' internal affairs and colonisation." Certainly, Britain and the US have vile records of occupying Iran, misappropriating its oil wealth and imposing a brutal autocracy on its people, twice. Iranians have little positive to learn of democracy from the land of hanging chads, where George W Bush's camp stole the 2000 presidential election, or from Britain, where democratic accountability is so stunted that, when John Bercow was elected speaker of the House of Commons, Gordon Brown announced that he would take the decision to the hereditary head of state and seek her acceptance of it.

"Iranians have little positive to learn of democracy from the land of hanging chads, where George W Bush's camp stole the 2000 presidential election" The alacrity with which the international community - the real international community not the one fraudulently substituted by Washington and its hangers-on - accepted Ahmadinejad's re-election has convinced many people that to support the protesters in Iran's cities is to do imperialism's work for it.

Cuban President Raul Castro congratulated the proclaimed victor and looked forward to deepening Iran-Cuba friendly ties and co-operation. His Venezuelan comrade Hugo Chavez called on the world "to respect Iran because there are attempts to undermine the strength of the Iranian revolution. "Ahmadinejad's triumph was a triumph all the way. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad's triumph and through that weaken the government and the Islamic revolution. I know they will not succeed," he said.

What is clear is that Iran is a close ally of both Cuba and, especially, Venezuela, lining up together in the international oil cartel OPEC and decisively rejecting US domination.

It makes sense from a state point of view to maintain and build these relations and, diplomacy being what it is, satisfaction with interstate relations will often translate into overblown expressions of affection.

Be that as it may, trade unions and the left in Britain, while expressing solidarity for progressive developments in countries where workers' representatives are in government and for other states that refuse to bow the knee to imperialist threats, should not commit philosophical suicide by knee-jerk responses of defence for the indefensible in the name of anti-imperialism.

Similar mistakes have been made by the left in the past and brought little benefit to those committing them or to the states accorded such excessive loyalty. We have to make our own analysis of states such as Iran, taking into account the views of comrades who struggle there for national independence, democracy, equality and workers' rights.

Some defenders of the Khamenei-Ahmedinejad regime insist that those protesting against election fraud emanate solely or mainly from Tehran's gilded northern suburbs, but this is clearly untrue.

Not only did protests break out in many other urban areas but also in the poorer south of the capital. And although students were prominent in the demonstrations, all sections of society, including working people and banned left-wing organisations, took part to demand their democratic rights.

The country's communists, the Tudeh Party of Iran, have been fully involved in the protests. Tudeh issued its most recent statement, communique No 6, on June 21 (www.tudehpartyiran.org).

The TPI has the distinction of having suffered the murderous onslaught of both the Pahlavi monarchy after the Western-masterminded overthrow of nationalist prime minister Mohammed Moussadegh in 1952 and, subsequent to active participation in the 1979 popular revolution, facing a similar fate at the hands of the theocracy. The party accuses the current regime of presiding over an economic approach that favours the rich over the poor.

It recalls that article 44 of Iran's constitution, which was passed in the early stages of the revolution, provides, in an economy consisting of three sectors - state, co-operative and private - for "all large-scale and mother industries, foreign trade, major minerals, banking, insurance, power generation, dams, and large-scale irrigation networks, radio and television, post, telegraph and telephone services, aviation, shipping, roads, railroads and the like" to be state-owned.

This was amended by the supreme leader's executive order in 2007 and warmly welcomed by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF commented: "Recently the government has been pursuing privatisation more seriously. According to the executive order issued by Ayatollah Khamenei regarding article 44 of the constitution, more than 80 per cent of state-owned enterprises must be privatised in the next 10 years. The executive order on article 44 revitalised privatisation plans. Privatisation of state-owned enterprises will be completed by the end of the five-year plan."

In line with IMF guidelines and in stark contrast to Venezuela's pro-people policies, internal markets have been opened up, with huge increases in consumer goods imports for the wealthy and consequent damage to domestic production, increased national debt and growing impoverishment.

Pressure on working-class living standards has sparked strikes and public protests, including action by Tehran bus workers, which have been met with repression. Tehran bus workers' union leader Mansour Osanloo still languishes in jail for the crime of being a trade unionist.

It is a false dichotomy to suggest a choice between supporting Iran's working people in their struggle for peace, democracy, human rights and social justice and the country's right to resist imperialist domination.

National independence is best served by a society united for progress rather than groaning under repression. The recent election has exposed fissures within the elite of the Velayat-e Faqih (Supreme Leader) regime, which may open possibilities for progressive forces. Those forces ought to be able to count on active and principled solidarity from trade unionists and the left in Britain rather than being demeaned as dancing to imperialism's tune.

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Iran between Militarism and Democracy

By: Faramarz Farbod
June 15, 2009

In the past, to better understand politics in Iran one needed to pay critical attention to its chosen name since the 1979 revolution: The Islamic Republic of Iran.

For decades since the 1979 revolution the primary tension defining politics in Iran had stemmed from the irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of its constitution between its "Islamist" (particularly the concept of velayat-e faqih or rule by the supreme jurisprudence) and its republican ideals; or, if you will, between the will of the ruling clerics and the will of the people. As many commentators have observed, the tension had existed from the outset of the revolution and has expressed itself in the establishment of a parallel or dual form of government that continues to privilege the appointed over the elected institutions and offices of the state.

Over the years, since the end of the Iran-Iraq war in the late 1980s, and especially since the mid-1990s, "reformist" movements and politicians have pressured the regime to strengthen its republican aspects and weaken the tight grip over power by the unrepresentative clerical institutions such as the Guardian Council. Of course, as we all know, the conservative establishment fought back and managed to limit the gains of the reformists, especially during the Khatami years (1997-2005).

This much is broadly acknowledged and is widely known by most Iran observers. But what are less discussed are the emergence and the evolution of a third element in Iranian politics since the end of the Iran-Iraq war. And that is, the increasing militarization of politics and economics in the Islamic Republic.

It was indeed the two-times ex-president Mr. Rafsanjani, the now powerful head of the Expediency Council, reportedly Iran's richest individual, and supporter of Mousavi candidacy against Ahmadinejad, who as president introduced the regime's paramilitary forces to the economy in order to reconstruct the latter in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war. This move gave them an ever-increasing stake in the economy. Exact figures are hard to come by, however, it is clear that by now the Revolutionary Guard controls several hundred factories and industrial complexes and were in the recent past awarded lucrative gas and oil pipeline construction and the contract for the expansion or completion of Tehran's underground metro project.

But it was not until the hyper-militarization of the post-9/11 US policies in the Middle East, the ultimate defeat of the first phase of official reformism under Khatami, and the election of Ahmadinejad to presidency in 2005 that the regime's para-military organizations made serious inroads into the realm of politics itself. Of note, the macabre George W. Bush-Ahmadinejad dialectic permitted Tehran to embed this particular form of virulent militarism inside the halls of power and justify this momentous shift in familiar terms of the managerial discourses and practices often associated with times of heightened national security concerns. Today there is even a widespread talk of a new game-changing alliance between the Supreme Leader Khamenei and the paramilitary elite whose defining characteristics were forged during the Iran-Iraq war years in the 1980s. An ominous sign of this development was the incorporation of the quintessential paramilitary force known as baseej into the Revolutionary Guard structure last year. The Guards are reportedly represented by upwards of 80 representatives in the parliament, have many of their members appointed to ministerial and provincial governorate positions, and are said to be accountable only to the Supreme Leader himself.

The question of whether the supreme leader needs the Guard more or the reverse is true has been raised in some quarters but was made less poignant so long as Washington and Tel Aviv had persisted in their open belligerency toward Iran, and there were genuine concerns about the possibility of military strikes against Iran. Under these circumstances one could view the ascendancy of a hyper national security state in Iran as a temporary phenomenon, a necessary though undesirable development, and as the preferred regime response to existential military threats to its and indeed the nation's soverignty.

With the advent of the Obama factor however the macabre dialectic of Washington-Tehran Axis of Military Neoconism was suspended and required further clarification of positions by key players.

Aside from "Islamism," republicanism, and militarism, there is a fourth element that has been under-discussed as well by most commentators on developments in Iran and one without which the unfolding of events do not make much sense. This is the presence and growth of a heterogeneous social movement for democratic change in Iran. It consists of movements by students, teachers, workers, urban youth, women, and, significantly, increasingly important segments of the elite. They are overwhelmingly in favor of non-violent means of bringing about democratic changes in both politics and culture indicating a degree of maturity largely missing in the movements for change in the 1970s against the late Pahlavi state. Examples include the One Million Signature Campaign by women seeking gender equality, the syndicalists associated with the Tehran bus transport workers, and the recently announced Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Human Rights in Iran.

Tehran fears this movement and found the Axis of Military Neoconism between Ahmadinejad and George W Bush rather convenient for employing its favored managerial discourses and practices to keep this movement at bay. However, the Obama factor, and the partial suspension of this symbiotic relationship combined with the unexpected enthusiasm of people of Iran to use the June 12 presidential election as a means to advance their interests led to a potentially explosive mix pending state decision as to how to proceed in this uncharted terrain.

Indeed June 13 (the day after the election) may turn out to be the most pivotal moment in the entire postrevolutionary period. This is a moment in which the clerical rulers could have chosen to embrace the path to peaceful democratization of politics and culture and away from the exclusionary politics of the past, including the prerevolutionary past of the Pahlavi era. Iran is socio-politically equipped to be a model for democratic development in the entire region of the Middle East. Something that (1) the Arab rulers in most of the region's countries, who are allied with the US, fear the most, as it empowers prodemocracy forces in their troubled domains, and (2) the hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv also fear as it deprives them of the imperial alibi for their Iran plan unless they are to ignore public opinion at home, an unlikely proposition short of another 9/11-like terrorist event.

The stakes are enormously high for the nature of politics to come in Iran and far beyond. Tehran's initial response to the election indicates that the regime favors the hyper national security state as status quo rather than as a short-term geopolitical imperative, and confrontation with the movement for democratic change instead of reconciliation. More important than whether there was election fraud is that Tehran seems to see it's own narrowly defined needs as more important than the needs and the forcefully-expressed interests of the majority of Iranians and that it is not ready as yet to treat the people as citizens with dignity and rights in the public arena of politics and culture.

It is important to note that the regime does not fear the Guardian Council-approved "reformist" or "moderate" Mousavi per se. Instead what it fears is (1) the non-violent heterogeneous movement working to bring about democratic changes in the realms of politics and culture, and (2) a "reformist" president unexpectedly turned into the candidate of this movement and backed enthusiastically by the will of the majority.

The latter fear seems to have a more specific context as well which involves inter-factional rivalries among the key ruling sectors of the regime. Inter-factional rivalries are nothing new in the Islamic Republic. However, their intensity today is remarkable indeed. The entire world was afforded a glimpse of this internal feud during a televised presidentail debate when president Ahmadinejad accused Mr. Rafsanjani, the powerful clerical head of the Expediency Council, of massive corruption. It is unlikely that such a frontal assault in such a public moment could have been undertaken without a green light from the Supreme Leader himself. The relevant facts here are that Rafsanjani openly and actively supported the candidacy of Mr. Mousavi while it was understood that Khamenei backed Ahmadinejad. However, a victory for Mousavi in the absence of the massive public support he in fact received would not have constituted an intolerable outcome for the Supreme Leader. The determining factor here was the presence of such a public backing. Under these circumstances a Mousavi victory assumed special significance and would have (1) exacerbated the system's Islamist/republican contradiction (between its arbitrary center of (real) power located in the office of the Supreme leader and the (unintended) power of an elected president with a broad public mandate for change), and (2) strengthened Rafsanjani. It seems Mr. Khamenei wished to avoid both outcomes.

At any rate, If the clerical leadership does not move away from its ruinous position it is likely that segments of the movement for change may radicalize and re-introduce some of the destructive and rigid mindset of those seeking revolutionary changes during the Pahlavi period in the late 1970s. The regime may be forcing the movements to choose between passivity before a hyper militarized state or open revolt.

Radicalization need not involve ruinous rigidities of discourse and practice. It could mean the expansion and further politicization of demands. It could involve greater contemplation and clarity about the nature and logic of the forces arrayed against democratic changes internally, in the region, and globally. It could include greater openness to engaging the state and the public through forms of civil disobedience. All of these would be welcome developments indeed.

What is certain however is that if the clerical regime does not reverse course there would be a lot of pain and suffering. The times call for boldness and wisdom. The state of in-between "Islamism," republicanism, hyper militarism, and intensified reformism, with imperialism in the background, is neither desirable nor stable. Too the path to further militarism at home is ruinous for the people and empowers imperialists to carry out their designs. The regime must choose reconciliation not with the "reformist" rivals of Ahmadinejad per se but with the movements for democratic change before it is too late.

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Statement of the Central Committee of The Tudeh Party of Iran on Upcoming Presidential Elections!

Joint struggle and cooperation of forces fighting for reform, freedom and social justice is needed to defeat the candidates of the Supreme Leader (Vali-e-Faqih) and the ruling reaction
4 Jun 2009

Dear compatriots,
The 10th presidential elections will be held in a few days, under very critical circumstances. Four years after coming to power of the anti-people and deeply reactionary administration of Ahmadi-Nejad - a president hand-picked and installed by the Supreme Leader and the sole and direct representative of military-security forces of the country - the people will be going to the polls at a time when an overwhelming majority of them are living under conditions much worse than before and faced with back-breaking economical pressures, deep suppression and severe poverty. Among the factors that have triggered the people's deep and extensive discontent against the regime of Velayat-e-Faqih (the rule of the Supreme Religious Leader) and its appointed administration are detrimental economical policies causing bankruptcy of the manufacturing sector; increasingly high unemployment rate and runaway inflation rate; unprecedented waste and misuse of astronomical oil incomes in the last 4 years by the parasitic organizations, by the regime leaders and their dependents, and by military-security system of the regime; heightened atmosphere of suppression and terror and ongoing attacks on the working class, women's, youth and students' movements; and intensified pressure on religious and national minorities. It wouldn't be such a baseless claim if we said that Ahmadi-Nejad's government has been one of the most reactionary governments in the thirty-year history of Islamic Republican regime.

The Differences between the 10th Presidential Elections (this summer) and the Elections of 2005

The 9th presidential election in 2005 was held under very different circumstances from today. The serious inadequacies during the eight years of Khatami administration, the inability of that administration to deliver the promises they made and to advance the reforms, and inaction regarding improving the conditions of deprived people, the working class and low-paid in particular, made a large portion of social forces, who were disheartened and disappointed with the reform process, refrain from participating in the elections. Harmful divisions among the reformists in government and the decision by a large portion of opposition forces to boycott the elections, allowed the reaction to extensively organize all of its resources and engage the military and security forces in order to pull from the ballot boxes the name of the most fitting agent to press forward its agenda.

Four years into Ahmadi-Nejad's government, now substantial sections of the population, social forces, and opposition and freedom-loving forces of the society - having experienced the devastating policies of this government and its direct and indirect impact on their daily lives - are now approaching the elections with a different point of view from June 2005. Existing signs indicate the general will of the people to participate in the elections and to free themselves from Ahmadi-Nejad's government. In the coming days, the will of the people must be converted to a broad social force going to polls.

With Mir-Hossein Mousavi's entry into the presidential race and with the sudden departure of Khatami, which undoubtedly was influenced by the direct or indirect assertions of the Supreme Leader, the process of the 10th presidential election has been facing with serious hurdles and complexities. In the past few weeks, we criticized the vagueness of policies of the reformist candidates and asked for the clarification of the candidates' positions.

Standing against the reformist candidates, are Mahmood Ahmadi-Nejad as the representative of military-security sectors and factions close to Khamenei (the Supreme Leader), and Mohsen Reza'i representing sections of fundamentalist forces opposing Ahmadi-Nejad, who believe that four years of Ahmadi-Nejad government and its deeply monopolist approaches has undermined their interests. These two are participating in the elections against a background of serious disagreements among the supporters of the Supreme Leader regime over the incompetence of Ahmadi-Nejad administration.

What is certain is the fact that if the election is held without extensive interference and fraud on the part of forces affiliated with the Revolutionary Corps, the Basij militia, and the thugs attached to the office of the Supreme Leader, then individuals like Ahmadi-Nejad and Reza'i will face a heavy defeat. Received reports and evidence indicate that the ruling reaction, aware of this fact, is planning to organize extensive vote rigging in order to ensure that the name of one of its candidates is pulled out of the ballot boxes. This plot can be defeated only and only through the powerful presence of millions of people at the polls, and imposing their supervision on the process, that this plot can be defeated.

Today, having experienced the last four years, and considering the objective and subjective reality of our society, knowing the level of organization of social forces, and the role and power of political forces, it is not right to stay neutral in the course of the developments based on unrealistic perceptions, and decide not to participate in the elections. In the current conditions, staying neutral and adopting the role of a mere observer of the events will only serve the crisis-ridden policies of Ahmadi-Nejad's government. The election campaign is an important arena for struggle against the regime of Velayat-e-Faquih, and an avenue to expose the anti-people track record of the regime and its appointed government in various arenas. Furthermore, the election is an opportunity for mobilizing the social forces across the country, for joint effort and cooperation of progressive and freedom-loving forces, and also for mobilizing and organizing various forces of the movement, and to extend its capacity and resources of the movement to counteract the plots of the reaction. Encouraging the people to stay at home and boycotting the elections under the pretext of "not legitimizing the regime", not only will not solve any problem, but also serves the policies of the reaction to control the outcome of the elections. Refraining from participating in the elections could only be justified if it could become an incisive tool in discarding the regime of Velayat-e-Faquih. Taking advantage of the limited possibilities available, in order to organize the social forces, and making an effort to impose the demands of people on the reformist candidates, is a step towards revitalizing the spirit of struggle and overcoming the setbacks due to the outcome of the previous presidential elections and the coming to power of Ahmadi-Nejad.

Immediately after the candidacy of the two state reformists was announced, we stressed on the need for the clarification of their policies and viewpoints. In recent weeks, both representatives of the reformist groups have stated their positions and declared their viewpoints about political, social and economic issues. Our party examined the plans announced by the reformist candidates, and also reviewed the past track record of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Karrubi, and hence believes that the capacity and capability of these candidates, even if they keep their promises and deliver the programmes they have proclaimed, could help the revitalization of the reform process only to a limited extent. Eight years of Khatami's government proved that preserving the existing power structure in Iran, compromise and submission to the regime of Velayat-e-Faqih, and lack of reliance on the masses is a serious hurdle against affecting positive developments in the society. The issue of observing the rights and freedom of people and moving on the path to fundamental and democratic developments is not possible in a country in which the law and executive power and military and security forces are exclusively in the hands of one person, i.e. the Supreme Leader. It is only with discarding this principle that the aforementioned changes could be made. The reform process is only about creating opportunities for organization and growth of the popular movement and mobilizing and equipping such a social force that could eventually impose the will of people on the ruling reaction. On this basis, our party views the process of election not within the sole framework of voting for Mousavi or Karrubi, but to mobilise forces to defeat Ahmadi-Nejad and Reza'i as the candidates of the Supreme Leader's (Velayat-e-Faqih) regime. Voting for reformist candidates under the current circumstances means voting No to the Supreme Leader regime and its candidates in the election. We believe that people will succeed in vigilantly doing so.

The central committee of the Tudeh Party of Iran calls upon the politically-conscious people of Iran and all the forces that support reform, freedom and justice to join forces in the struggle to defeat the candidates of reaction - Mahmood Ahmadi-Nejad and Mohsen Reza'i. Succeeding in this task is one step, even though small, towards alleviating the current pressures and moving toward revitalising the reform process and rebuilding the social forces for the future crucial struggle to discard the regime of Velayat-e-Faquih. In these circumstances, the ruling reaction will do all in its power to prevent the realization of the people's will. Having had the experience of the 9th presidential elections, the ruling reactionaries are well aware that if they succeed in mounting a calculated propaganda campaign together with extensive interference in the elections, by their security forces such as Basij militia, and preventing the participation of a vast portion of the electorate alongside political and social forces, through exerting pressure on them, once again they will be able to pull Ahmadi-Nejad or his equivalent from the ballot boxes. The only way to confront these manoeuvres of the regime is the strong presence of millions of people at the polls, and organizing protest campaigns against fraud and interference of the forces of the Supreme Leader in the election process. The united will and action of millions of voters in this most crucial election could play an instrumental role in favour of the national interests and in resolving the country's serious socio-economic and political problems. This is not the time to stay at home and leave the ballot boxes entirely to the supporters of the Supreme Leader. The void left by millions votes of the people will be filled with manufactured and rigged votes of the reactionaries monopolizing power. This must not be allowed to happen!

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Hardliners in a panic

Tehran Bureau
By MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles
This is the author's fifth article in a series on Iran's presidential election. Part I described the political and economical landscape in Iran. Part II provided a brief history of the important political groups in Iran after the revolution, their place on the political spectrum and their present position on the issues. Part III profiled the four candidates and Part IV described the latest developments.The present article continues describing the important developments of the past week, including several unexpected ones.
15 May 2009

Only two weeks remain to Iran's 10th presidential election and the campaigns of the four candidates are in high gear. To kick things off, we'll turn to who's supporting who.

As described in Parts III and IV, with few exceptions, Mr. Mousavi has secured the support of just about all the major reformist/democratic groups in Iran. But, as a further sign of the strength of his candidacy, the Society of Teachers and Researchers of Qom's Seminaries (STRQS), known in Iran as the Majma' Modarresin va Mohagheghin-e Hozeh Elmiyeh Qom, which consists of left-leaning clerics who teach in Qom's seminaries, declared its support for Mr. Mousavi. Note that STRQS did not support any candidate in the 2004 election.

In addition, 2500 university professors have also endorsed Mr. Mousavi. At the same time, some major figures in the conservative/principlist camp, led by Mr. Emad Afrough, the Tehran deputy to the 7th Majles (the parliament), announced the formation of a committee in support of Mr. Mousavi. The reformist minority caucus in the Majles, which refers to itself as the Imam's Line Faction, also threw its support behind Mr. Mousavi.

Sedaa-ye Edaalat (Voice of Justice), a reformist newspaper, also announced its support for Mr. Mousavi, as did Jomhouri-ye Eslami (Islamic Republic), a principlist daily (originally founded by Ayatollah Khamenei).

In a subtle but unmistakable sign that, if elected, he would work with Mr. Mousavi, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei paid a visit to Mr. Mousavi's ailing father on May 16.

Another sign of Mr. Mousavi's increasing strength were two huge rallies, one held in Tehran and another in Tabriz in the Azerbaijan province. May 23 was the 12th anniversary of the election of Mr. Mohammad Khatami to the presidency in 1997, which the reformists celebrate as the birthday of the reform movement in Iran. A huge rally marked this event in Tehran. Thousands of youth flocked to this event donning a piece of green cloth, which is the color of Mr. Mousavi's campaign logo. While Mr. Mousavi was not present at the rally, campaigning in another city, his wife Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, Mr. Khatami, and many other notable figures participated in the rally and harshly criticized Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Khatami declared that, "A magnificent country like Iran cannot be run only by the judiciary and security and military officials," a reference to the quasi-military government of Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose brutal crackdown of critics is supported by the judiciary. Another speaker, the movie director Kambouzia Partovi, declared, "Over the past four years a [political] dwarf [Mr. Ahmadinejad] has humiliated us."

The Ahmadinejad camp retaliated by accusing Mr. Mousavi's supporters of acting like supporters of Adolf Hitler (who used to wear brown outfits), propagating lies, and creating divisions among the people. Mr. Ahmadinejad himself went so far as saying that it was illegal for his competitors to criticize his government!

About 50,000 people gathered for Mr. Mousavi's rally in Tabriz, which is the provincial capital of East Azerbaijan, home to Iran's Turkish population. Mr. Mousavi, a Turk himself, spoke in part in Azeri, the language of the Turkish population there, which provoked huge roars of approval.

A major strength in Mr. Mousavi's campaign has been his wife, an artist and university professor, who has tirelessly campaigned for him. She has been present at all the major rallies, delivering tough speeches criticizing the government, and promising a much more open government if her husband is elected. This has generated considerable support for Mr. Mousavi among the women.

The Office for Consolidation of Unity (OCU), an umbrella group representing the vast majority of university student organizations, announced its support for Mr. Karroubi. It issued a long statement in which it analyzed Iran's present political situation, and referred to Mr. Karroubi as belonging to the "moderate wing of the political establishment," not as "a leader for fundamental changes." It stated that its representatives met with those of Mr. Karroubi and presented them with a list of questions and demands. After it received satisfactory responses to its demands, the OCU declared, it decided to support Mr. Karroubi, since Mr. Mousavi's campaign was unresponsive to their request for a meeting. The OCU also criticized those who have called for the boycott of the election on the ground that they are not democratic.

In addition, Mr. Karroubi has attracted the attention of many Iranians in the Diaspora, because he has spoken courageously and with much clarity about the problems that Iran is facing. He has attacked the military/security establishment, accusing them of interfering in the electoral process. He has also spoken clearly about the need for respecting human rights, particularly women's rights, and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities.

In a bid for attracting more support, Mr. Karroubi announced that, if elected, he will appoint Mr. Gholamhossein Karbaschi, his campaign manager and former popular mayor of Tehran, and who is a member of the Executives of Reconstruction Party (a reformist group; see Part II), as his First Vice President. (There are eight vice presidents in Iran.) The ERP is, however, supporting Mr. Mousavi.

Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, one of the most influential conservative clerics, and Secretary General of the Association of Militant Clergy (of Tehran Province), the most important conservative clerical group, announced his support for Mr. Ahmadinejad. This was much less than what Mr. Ahmadinejad's supporters had hoped for (they wanted the support of the AMC itself). As described in Part IV, the central committee of the AMC could not agree on supporting Mr. Ahmadinejad. There were widespread rumors that heated discussions took place among the members of the central committee of the AMC. According to these rumors, most senior members of the AMC were opposed to supporting Mr. Ahmadinejad.

The principlist faction in the Majles could not agree on supporting Mr. Ahmadinejad either. Only about 57 of the deputies supported Mr. Ahmadinejad. Most tellingly, the Speaker, Dr. Ali Larijani, and at least 50 other principlist deputies refused to support Mr. Ahmadinejad. Supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad tried to retaliate by preventing Dr. Larijani from getting elected as the Speaker for the 3rd year, but did not succeed.

As discussed in Parts III and IV, Mr. Rezaee does not have an independent social base of support. Thus, no major group has supported him. However, a surprise announcement was made by Dr. Larijani, the Majles Speaker, in which he declared his support for Mr. Rezaee. More than anything else, the announcement (which some websites close to Mr. Ahmadinejad denied) indicates the deep fissures within the ranks of the conservatives.

A major scandal broke out regarding the support of the high command of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) for Mr. Ahmadinejad. Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour, commander of IRGC ground forces, wrote a letter to Mr. Ali Saeedi (a mid-ranking cleric), the political representative of the Supreme Leader to the IRGC high command (whose job is to convey the Leader's views to the armed forces), saying,

As I told you in our [recent] meeting, the issue of the presidential election has created fissures among the commanders of the ground forces of the Sepaah [the IRG]. Please advice us on how to address the problem,

hence indirectly soliciting the Supreme Leader's view on the election. In response, Mr. Saeedi wrote,

Dear brother General Pakpour, commander of the ground forces of the Sepaah, the explicit view of the Supreme Leader is the re-election of Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is mandatory for the commanders of the Sepaah to follow the Leader's view and also convey it to their personnel.

The exchange was published in Yaa Lesaaraat-e Hossein, the mouthpiece of Iran's Hezbollah (which has not supported Mr. Ahmadinejad), and was apparently distributed widely within the IRGC and the Basij militia. The exchange created a huge uproar. It forced the public relations department of the IRGC to issue a denial, which no one believed since Yaa Lesaaraat had printed copies of the original letters. The exchange also took place right on the heels of an interview in which Mr. Saeedi, who is also a member of the AMC, said:

I am asked whether we should obey the explicit orders of the Supreme Leader [that he has only one vote to cast, and the rest is up to the people], or consider and interpret what he has said implicitly [that people should vote for someone who would stand up to the West, i.e., Mr. Ahmadinejad]. I say that we should follow the direction that the Leader has identified for us, which is as clear as the sun, although some people do not see it,

hence implying that Ayatollah Khamenei supports Mr. Ahmadinejad. The uproar over Mr. Saeedi's position was so strong that the websites and newspapers close to Mr. Ahmadinejad accused the reformists of being behind such a plot to discredit him.

Under huge public pressure and after scathing criticism from the reformist camp, the National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRTV) network allocated airtime to all the candidates on its major channels. The candidates used this platform to speak directly to the nation in a live broadcast.

Mr. Mousavi's speech was particularly impressive. In addition to harshly criticizing Mr. Ahmadinejad for his domestic and international misdeeds and the woeful state of the economy, Mr. Mousavi spoke like a true nationalist, bolstering his patriotic credentials and reinforcing what the late Mahdi Bazargan, the first Prime Minister after the 1979 Revolution and himself a major nationalist figure who had also served in the government of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, had once said about Mr. Mousavi, "He [Mr. Mousavi] is a devout Mosaddeghist," an ultimate compliment to a former revolutionary. The main criticism about Mr. Mousavi's nationally-broadcast speech was that he put too much emphasis on the significance of the first few years of the 1979 Revolution. But, then again, those were Mr. Mousavi's formative years as a national politician.

Likewise, Mr. Karroubi strongly criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad, declaring that, "no one — professors, students, workers, teachers, anybody — has been secure over the last four years." He criticized the claim by some of Mr. Ahmadinejad's supporters that they are in contact with Mahdi, the Shiites' 12th Imam who is supposedly hidden and will come back one day. Mr. Karroubi spoke in defense of the rights of citizens and minorities, and other aspects of civil society. He declared his willingness for improving relations with the United States.

Mr. Rezaee played up his military experience and declared that, "If the government falls into our [able] hands, Israel and the U.S. will not dare to attack Iran, because Israel knows that I can destroy it with a single counterattack." He also declared that Mr. Ahmadinejad had taken Iran to the edge of a terrifying abyss.

Mr. Ahmadinejad tried to counter the attacks and criticism by presenting a softer image of himself, talking about all the progress that Iran has made during his presidency (which is disputed by most experts), particularly in the area of uranium enrichment and the confrontation with the West over the issue.

Several Iranian websites reported that support for Mr. Mousavi has sharply increased after his nationally-broadcast speech. It remains to be seen whether this translates into a larger turn-out on voting day, the key to the outcome of the election.

Despite the obvious fissures, even among the IRGC commanders (see the above), the ideological propaganda division of the IRGC has tried to present a united front against the reformists, and has harshly criticized their two candidates. This has led to rumors and speculation about what the IRGC might do if a reformist is elected president.

In its May 25 issue, News and Analyses, an internal daily bulletin published by the ideological department of the IRGC and distributed among its commanders, strongly criticized Mr. Karroubi and accused him of presenting a bleak picture of Iran, and threatened to take him to court over his criticism of the Government during his nationally-broadcast TV speech.

In its latest issue, published on May 25, the weekly Sobh-e Saadegh (True Dawn), published by the political department of the IRGC and distributed among the armed forces and the Basij Militia, accused Mr. Mousavi and his supporters of "violating the Supreme Leader's order not to harshly criticize the Government," and, "presenting a bleak image of Iran, similar to that in the last years of the imperial rules [in the 1970s]." It then described some of Iran's progress under Mr. Ahmadinejad and concluded that, "These claims [the reformists'] are baseless."

In particular, in a strongly-worded article, Mr. Yadollah Javani, a hard-liner who writes regularly for Sobh-e Saadegh, criticized Mr. Mousavi, and claimed that Mr. Khatami has major differences with him, only two days after the huge rally in Tehran in which Mr. Khatami declared his full support for Mr. Mousavi. The website Basirat, which is run by the political department of the IRGC, called Mr. Mousavi "A man from the past that has been thrown into the present times."

Mr. Ahmadinejad and his supporters consider Iran's uranium enrichment program their own major achievement. Never mind that the program had actually started much earlier, in the late 1980s. But, boasting about the program is not the only thing that Mr. Ahmadinejad and his supporters do. They also attack the administrations of Messrs Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for incompetence on the issue and making too many concessions to the West, hence attempting to discredit the reformists.

Last week, in the latest round of accusations and counter-accusations and in a campaign speech in Semnan, Mr. Ahmadinejad declared that the Sa'dabad Agreement was "one-sided and was imposed on Iran by the Western powers." He came very close to declaring its signing by the Khatami administration treason. Recall that the Sa'dabad Agreement (named after Iran's presidential palace in Tehran) was signed by Iran, Britain, France, and Germany in October 2003, according to which Iran suspended voluntarily its uranium enrichment program, and began carrying out the provision of the Additional Protocol of its Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, even though the signing of the Additional Protocol had not yet been ratified by the Majles (it still has not been ratified). Mr. Hassan Abbasi, a leading supporter of Mr. Ahmadinejad and who is considered an ideologue of the conservatives, also accused the Khatami administration of "promising a ten-year suspension of the enrichment program."

In response, the Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) of the Expediency Council (a constitutional body headed by Mr. Rafsanjani that arbitrates the differences between the Majles and the Guardian Council), headed by Dr. Hassan Rouhani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator during the administration of Mr. Khatami, declared that, " We warn the government for the last time that if it does not stop such propaganda, and use this important issue that the nation is facing as a tool for its goals, we will have to publish a lot of documents that would demonstrate the heavy price that the nation has paid for the incompetence of the government."

The CSS also declared that, "Everyone knows that the European countries wanted to pressure Iran into a long-term suspension of its uranium enrichment program, but Dr. Hassan Rouhani, the then Secretary General of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, did not accept it. Indeed, the statement issued after the signing stated explicitly that the suspension was for a limited time and on a voluntary basis." It then called the claims by Messrs Ahmadinejad and Abbasi "a sheer big lie."

Given that Dr. Rouhani is a conservative who does not belong to the reformist camp, such accusations and counter-accusation only show the deep fissures in the ranks of the conservatives.

Mr. Ahmadinejad and his supporters have been trying to literally buy votes. The government has been distributing cash and gold coins among various social groups, including teachers, nurses, university students, retirees, social workers, and peasants. But, last week, the government took the buying spree a notch higher. Etemaad (Trust), a leading reformist daily, reported that the government has sent letters to the Majles deputies, giving them checks for 20 million toumans (about $2000) and telling them that they can spend it any way they deem necessary in their districts. The government has also promised to compensate businesses that have suffered as a result of the worldwide recession. It is rumored that the government has spent up to $5 billion so far in this vain.

This has provoked widespread condemnation and protest, even among the conservatives. Dr. Rouhani demanded that the judiciary investigate "such unlawful payments." The Hezbollah issued a strong statement accusing the government of breeding a "culture of money worshiping." The National Inspection Organization, an arm of the judiciary that investigates corruption, has threatened to investigate the issue.

Will such tactics and generosity be effective? No one knows. But, as Mr. Akbar Ne'mat Zadeh, a former deputy oil minister and an aid to Mr. Mousavi said, "The people are shrewd. They take the money, but will not vote for him [Mr. Ahmadinejad]." After all, it is clear that the Government has suddenly become so generous — so close to the election!

With only two weeks left, election fever has spread throughout the country. All indications, ranging from the scathing criticism of the reformists by the Revolutionary Guards, to fissures among the conservatives, and distribution of cash among people, are indicators that the conservatives are terrified by prospects of a reformist victory.

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Iran: Ensure free presidential election

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Public Statement
AI Index: MDE 13/046/2009
15 May 2009

Amnesty International has today called on the Iranian authorities to ensure that the forthcoming presidential election to be held on 12 June 2009 are free of discrimination - particularly against women - and that candidates and voters are guaranteed effective exercise of their rights to freedom of expression and assembly during the election campaign. The organization's appeal was made in a letter addressed to Ayatollah Jannati, the Chair of the Council of Guardians , following the recent closure of registration of candidates for the presidential election.

The Council of Guardians screens all candidates for election to "ensure their suitability for the Presidency". Article 115 of the Constitution stipulates that candidates must be from amongst "religious and political personalities" [Persian: rejal] and possess: "Iranian origin; Iranian nationality; administrative capacity and resourcefulness; a good past record; trustworthiness and piety; convinced belief in the fundamental principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the official religion of the country." In previous elections, the majority of candidates registered were disqualified under these criteria, including all women. The exclusion of women appears to have been on an interpretation of the word rejal as meaning "men".

Amnesty International expressed concern that such requirements appear to contradict other articles of the Constitution which provide for equality of all citizens before the law; require respect for the rights of women and prohibit the investigation of a person's beliefs. In addition, they contradict Articles 2, 3, 18, 19 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Iran is a state party and which prohibit discrimination on any grounds, and require the state to respect and protect freedoms of belief and opinion. The screening requirements also contravene Article 25 of the ICCPR, which states that all citizens have the right to vote and to be elected to public office, without discrimination.

Amnesty International urged the Council of Guardians to ensure that no one is excluded from standing as a candidate solely on the grounds of their race, colour, sex, language, religion, social origin or political or other opinion, and in particular to ensure that none of the 42 women who registered to stand are barred from standing solely on account of their gender. The organization said it was encouraged in this regard by a statement made on 11 April 2009 by Dr Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the Spokesman of the Council of Guardians, that there is "no legal restraint" to the candidacy of women.

Amnesty International is also concerned at ongoing repression of dissent in Iran, which has worsened in recent months, and fears that Iranians who wish to express their opinions or exercise their right to assembly during the election campaign may face restrictions including harassment, arbitrary arrest and unfair trial. Amnesty International has received reports suggesting increased waves of arbitrary arrests and harassment targeting in particular members of Iran's religious and ethnic minority communities, students, trade unionists and women's rights activists. Many, of those arrested are at risk of torture or other ill treatment. Other individuals arrested before this period have been sentenced to death. In addition, several newspapers have been closed down, and access to internet sites has been restricted, including some relating to human rights or which are operated by international broadcasters. In December 2008, the Office of the Tehran Public Prosecutor announced the formation of a "special office to review Internet- and SMS-related crimes and violations", stating that the office would review election campaign violations and "offensive remarks" made by SMS. These measures may in part be intended to stifle debate, prevent the organization of peaceful demonstrations, and to silence critics of the authorities in advance of the election.

All individuals and groups should be allowed to peacefully exercise their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, including in ways which dissent from state policies and practices, in the run-up to the presidential election. Any one currently detained for the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly should be released immediately and unconditionally. Other detainees should be released unless promptly brought to trial on recognizably criminal charges. All detainees should be protected from torture or other ill-treatment.

• The arrest on 19 April 2009 by officers of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran of Mehdi Mo'tamedi Mehr, a member of the Committee to Defend Free, Healthy and Fair Elections and a member of the Freedom Movement, a banned political party. Prior to his arrest he had been telephoned by a Ministry of Intelligence official and told that publication of a statement entitled "Civil Society Institution as Election Observers: An Assurance toward Free, Healthy and Fair Elections" by the Committee would be an act against national security. The statement was published anyway, and he was arrested. He has been accused of "acting against state security". On 29 April, security forces prevented other members of the committee from holding a meeting in the "Raad" Legal Institute which belongs to Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a prominent lawyer and member of the High Oversight Council of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders (CHRD). The CHRD was forcibly closed in December 2008 and has not been allowed to reopen.

• At least three Amir Kabir University students who remain detained without trial in Section 209 of Evin Prison in Tehran following their arrests in February 2009. Other students arrested with them who have since been released have said that they were tortured in detention. On 28 April 2009, a Revolutionary Court judge said that eight students, including the three still detained, had been accused of cooperating with the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, an opposition group based in exile. He said that they had intended to "carry out some activities in the university" during the forthcoming election..

• Ayatollah Sayed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi, who advocates the removal of religion from the political basis of the state, is serving an 11-year prison sentence imposed on 13 August 2007 after his initial death sentence for "enmity against God" was commuted. On 5 May 2009 he was allegedly beaten while held in solitary confinement in Yazd prison, where he is held in internal exile, after he sent an open letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, requesting that international observers be sent to Iran in order to assist the Iranian people in an open referendum on the system of government in Iran. Since then he has not been allowed to contact family members, who have said that prison officials told them he was being punished for his statement concerning the referendum.

• Over 100 people arrested in Tehran and Sanandaj in the run-up to, during, and after peaceful gatherings planned to celebrate May Day 2009. Although some have been released, dozens are believed to remain in detention, including Ja'far Azimzadeh, Shahpour Ehsani, and Bahram (Issa) Abedini, and six members of the One Million Signatures campaign Nikzad Zanganeh, Amir Yaghoubali, Kaveh Mozafari, his wife Jelveh Javaheri, Pouria Poushtareh and Taha Valizadeh.

• Sajad Khaksari, a reporter for the weekly Qalam-e Moalem (Teacher's Pen) and the son of Mohamad Khaksari and Soraya Darabi, both leaders of the Iran Teachers Trade Association (ITTA), was arrested on 26 April 2009 in front of the Ministry of Education. He was covering protests by teachers demanding that the government implement a pay-parity bill, passed in 2007, which would bring teachers' wages in line with other government workers.

• Two women's right defenders, who are both members of the One Million Signatures Campaign (also known as the Campaign for Equality) which is collecting signatures to a petition demanding equal rights for women, have been detained since 7 May 2009. The two, who have been active in defending women's rights in Qom for many years, had recently investigated an "honour killing" in Qom, which had attracted the attention of the authorities. Fatemeh Masjedi was arrested in Karaj, along with Gholam Reza Salami, a researcher into the women's movement, after her house in Qom was searched by Ministry of Intelligence officials, who confiscated some of her personal possessions. Maryam Bidgoli was arrested in Qom later the same day. Their lawyer, Shadi Sadr, believes their arrests were illegal as they were not shown any arrest warrant or told why they were arrested.

• Narges Mohammadi, Deputy Chair of the CHRD and Head of the Implementation Task Force of the National Peace Council (NPC), and Soraya Azizpanah, also a member of the NPC, the Executive Director of the Centre to Clean Mine Fields and the editor of Rasan magazine, were banned on 10 May 2009 from travelling to a conference in Guatemala organized by the Nobel Women's Initiative, entitled "Women Redefining Democracy for Peace, Justice and Equality".

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, responsible for overseeing the implementation of the ICCPR, specified in its General Comment No 25 of 12 July 1996 that ensuring respect of rights to vote and to stand for public office, as recognised in Article 25 of the ICCPR, requires that such rights should be guaranteed to all citizens without discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. States are required to adopt legislative and other measures necessary to ensure that citizens have an effective opportunity to enjoy these rights, without discrimination, and to remove any impediments or restrictions that limit the enjoyment of such rights. Any conditions which apply to the exercise of the rights protected by article 25 should be based on objective and reasonable criteria. Therefore, persons who are eligible to stand for election should not be excluded by unreasonable or discriminatory requirements. Requiring that citizens must belong to prescribed religious denominations officially recognized by the State, or political opinion or affiliation does not comply with the requirements of article 25 of the ICCPR

Amnesty International has been campaigning for many years for an end to a variety of human rights violations in Iran. Impunity, arbitrary arrest, torture and other ill-treatment, as well as the use of the death penalty remain prevalent. Some sectors of society - including ethnic minorities - continue to face widespread discrimination, while the situation for other groups - notably some religious minorities - has significantly worsened since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Those seen as dissenting from stated or unstated official policies face severe restrictions on their rights to freedom of belief, expression, association and assembly. Women continue to face discrimination - both in law and practice. Impunity for human rights abuses is widespread.

Iran: Human Rights in the spotlight on the 30th Anniversary of the Islamic Revolution (Index: MDE 13/010/2009)

Iran: Worsening Repression of Dissent as Election Approaches (Index: MDE 13/012/2009)

For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 or email: press@amnesty.org

International Secretariat, Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW, UK www.amnesty.org

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FT Interview: Mir-Hossein Moussavi

Mir-Hossein Moussavi, Iran's prime minister between 1981 and 1989, is a leading candidate to unseat president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad in the presidential election on June 12. The FT's Tehran correspondent Najmeh Bozorgmehr interviewed him on April 12 in his office at the Art Centre in central Tehran. The 18-minute interview was in Farsi. The edited transcript, translated by Monavar Khalaj, follows:

Financial Times: You recently said you would pursue detente with the west if you were elected. How are you going to have that approach with the US while not compromising on the nuclear programme?

Mir-Hossein Moussavi: I consider detente the principle to build confidence between Iran and other countries. I think the recent discourse, which differentiates between nuclear technology and nuclear weapons is a good one. The more this differentiation is emphasised, the greater the possibility of détente.

Moussavi: No. The problem is that we had a bad experience with suspension. It was first done [2003-2005] to discuss issues and remove suspicion but it turned into a tool to deprive Iran of having access to nuclear technology. There is a bad memory in this regard.

Moussavi: Progress in nuclear technology and its peaceful use is the right of all countries and nations. This is what we have painfully achieved with our own efforts. No one will retreat. But we have to see what solutions or in other words what guarantees can be found to verify the non-diversion of the programme into nuclear weapons.

FT: How influential can the president be in nuclear decisions while the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last say in this issue?

Moussavi: Decisions on nuclear technology definitely need to be based on a thorough consensus at the national level. Obviously, the role of the supreme leader is very determining.

FT: So far, however, no solution has been found. How would your presidency help?

Moussavi: The issue doesn't only depend on us. It will also depend on the discourse the Americans use and the issues they pursue. The more realistic they become and recognise Iran in this issue, naturally the better the ground will be prepared to find solutions.

FT: Your relations with Ayatollah Khamenei [Iran's supreme leader] were tense in the past. Do you think this will continue if you get elected? And could you also tell us about your meeting with him last week?

Moussavi: The tensions when I was in office as prime minister [1981-1989] were because of [power] structure problems which were removed in the revision of the constitution in 1989. Now, the management of the supreme leader as the valy-e-faqih [supreme jurisprudent] in our country and his relations with other organisations and institutions, including government-owned bodies, are totally clear. Naturally, the prospect for cooperation for the country's progress is very good.

Moussavi: He had no problems. He has an impartial position in the upcoming election. He mentioned this in his speech in Mashhad [late March] and repeated it to me. As we have had relatively extensive contacts discussing issues, the recent meeting was also very good and positive.

FT: Were your differences with him in the past the reason why you largely abandoned the political scene in the last 20 years?

Moussavi: No. I believed the Islamic republic was in a stable position and that different politicians can come and go. I had no concerns about who might take office. And I was interested in culture, which is why I shifted to cultural activities. Of course, during this period I was advisor to the top authorities. I have also been a member of the High Council for Cultural Revolution and the Expediency Council. The positions necessitated that I follow political and executive issues. But it had nothing to do with the problems [I faced] during the [Iran-Iraq] war [1980-1988]. [Former president Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani was a very strong and powerful candidate. Then came Mr [Mohammad] Khatami. But I thought I had better run this time.

FT: Do you consider Mr Ahmadi-Nejad a risk for Iran and the Islamic republic's political system?

Moussavi: Mr Ahmadi-Nejad is the president and for this reason I respect him. There are criticisms about his opinions and behaviour. This is natural in countries like ours in which there is freedom. I don't see Mr Ahmadi-Nejad himself as a danger.

Moussavi: I think the country can be run better and that more effective financial, economic, cultural and foreign policies can be adopted. In foreign policy, we can have better relations with the world which is surely very significant to help our country's development.

FT: Many critics of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad believe the country will face a crisis if the president is re-elected. Do you agree?

FT: Do you think you'll be also supported by Ayatollah Khamenei if you are elected?

Moussavi: It's absolutely natural for the supreme leader to support any government that sweeps to power with the backing of people's votes. This support can increase if the government policies are close to those of the supreme leader.

FT: Will you try to make your policies close to the views of the supreme leader?

Moussavi: Yes. The more the country moves toward consensus in fundamental policies, the better it will be run. But you should also note that one of the most important responsibilities of the leader is to approve and announce macro policies which are first discussed at the Expediency Council and then are sealed by him, then notified to other organisations. The government's commitment to these general policies can create the best relations between the government and the leader.

FT: Given that you have been out of the political scene for a while and that young people in Iran many not know you, why would they vote for you?

Moussavi: The youth are obviously free to vote for anyone they like. I will elaborate on my policies until election day [on June 12] on issues like culture and address their concerns including housing, employment and marriage. If young people think policies correspond to their needs, they will naturally vote and if not, they won't.

FT: But do you have any specific approach to convince Iran's youth that you are their candidate?

Moussavi: I think young people should be trusted. I don't have the pessimism of some [politicians] toward them. Some minor changes in the appearance of young people should not make us think they have taken anti-national identity. I don't believe that they have changed their appearance so much that we cannot recognise them any more. I think our young people are very good, creative and really decent human beings who are proud of their past and their rich culture.

Moussavi: I will try to discuss these issues in the remaining one month and think they will receive the signals I am sending them positively.

FT: The business community still remembers that you decided to bulldoze the chamber of commerce building to accommodate war refugees back in the 1980s. And this leaves people concerned about your economic policies.

Moussavi: I don't remember the building you are referring to. Of course, we didn't have good relations with the chamber of commerce which was related to the election process in the chamber and war-related policies, but we didn't destroy their building. Naturally, with the end of the [Iran-Iraq] war, the grounds for such confrontations were removed. I do believe in the strong presence of the private sector, in particular in the production field, and also making the best use of Iran's relative advantages in trade. I think all those who care about the country and the economy including the chamber of commerce will welcome this approach and establish good relations with the government.

Moussavi: No. We need the private sector to help resolve unemployment. There is no bright prospect to deal with such problems through government investments.

Moussavi: I believe there are various opportunities in the country. The government's role can be that of guidance to have a robust national economy. We have gone too far in opening up to imports. This has to be revised. We have to take bigger steps to support our national economy.

Moussavi: I don't think there can be a unified prescription. I have to see which sections should be restricted and over what period of time. We have to gradually make those sections in which we have relative advantages active.

There are many factories which are 50 to 60 years old which are very capable and have done well. But they are unable to compete with foreign goods because these goods get into the country in different ways. They are becoming importers themselves. We have to stop this. You can see this in different sectors.

Moussavi: Subsidies should be targeted. The principle of giving subsidies is acceptable to a certain extent. But they should be targeted and it should become clear why we are giving these subsidies. They should serve a strong national economy, help safeguard resources and support the lower classes. Targeting subsidies should be done gradually. Any abrupt halt can exert a shock because of the economic structure and the huge subsidies we give for various commodities.

FT: Over what period of time do you are you thinking of targeting subsidies when you say "gradually"? Ten years for instance?

Moussavi: Probably we can achieve this in two [five-year] plans to completely implement it. The most important one is the energy subsidy and we have to gradually work on it.

FT: How are you going to prioritise your economic policies? Give us your top three ones?

Moussavi: We have to constantly work on inflation, unemployment and the improvement of business.

Moussavi: By facilitating the issuing of permits for new businesses. Such procedures are currently very slow in our country. We have lots of problems in this sense compared to other countries.

Moussavi: Through monetary policies, imports, making the private sector active and increasing production. And more important than anything else is having stability in economic decisions.

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A Reformist Presidential Candidate?!

Former PM reveals his plans for challenging Ahmadinejad in June's Presidential elections
Mousavi's Press Conference ‎ - 2009.04.09

Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iran's last prime minister who is now running as a presidential ‎candidate, held his first official press conference after nearly two decades of ‎self imposed silence. Mousavi used the opportunity to harshly criticize the government's ‎economic, social and cultural policies. ‎ Mousavi's press conference, held in the presence of more than 90 reporters, was attended ‎by representatives from about ninety domestic and international news agencies. In ‎addition to Mahmoud Doayee, the editor-in-chief of E'telaat daily and a close figure to ‎the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, some of Mousavi's close advisors were ‎present as well. ‎

Implicitly referring to Ahmadinejad's prior remarks in which he had accused "financial ‎mafias," including the "oil mafia," for the country's economic problems, Mir Hossein ‎Mousavi presented a different picture at his press conference and said, "We cannot ‎prevent financial corruption by taking on an imaginary oil mafia. Financial corruption ‎can be prevented only through the free flow of information." This tenth presidential ‎election candidate also criticized the repeated dismissals of governors of the Central ‎Bank: "When, over the course of one year, the governor of the Central Bank is changed ‎three times, foreign and domestic investors will not come forward to invest." ‎ One highlight of Mousavi's press conference on 6th April was his opposition to the plan ‎to boost "moral security" - which includes monitoring the behavior and dress code of the ‎youth - which was launched since Ahmadinejad's presidency at their current levels and ‎intensity. Responding to a reporter who asked Mousavi about his thoughts on the plan to ‎boost moral security, the former prime minister said, "In my opinion, the plan to boost ‎moral security does not achieve the goals set by the state. I believe that social issues ‎must be resolved through respect for human dignity and not by force or violence." ‎Mousavi added, "If I am elected president, I will put an end to inspections by the morality ‎police." ‎

In another part of his press conference, Mousavi announced that he had not sought ‎anyone's permission to run in the upcoming election. When asked if he had consulted ‎with Iran's supreme leader about his candidacy, Mousavi said, "As I have said before, I ‎had no desire to run for presidency. I saw the problems and saw the ability in myself to ‎solve them. With respect to my candidacy, I did not consult with the Supreme Leader. ‎God willing, I will get to meet with him, as I believe he would welcome my or anyone ‎else's participation within the framework of the law."

‎ Extremism and Anti-Western Stances
Mousavi criticized extremism in foreign policy, particularly toward the West: ‎‎"Sometimes our anti-Western stance is so extreme that, in order to mitigate the damage, ‎we then have to send unanswered messages to those countries. This has cost our nation ‎unnecessary damage." Mousavi also emphasized, "Our foreign policy must not be ‎extremist. Extremism in foreign policy has hurt us." ‎

Commenting on U.S.-Iran relations and the recent remarks by Barack Obama, Mousavi ‎said, "The tone of the new president is different from the tone of the old president. ‎Everyone, including myself, has felt that difference." However, noted Mousavi, "We ‎await to see what actual policy changes will follow the different tone," adding, ‎‎"Resolving certain ambiguities with respect to the U.S.-Iran relations could serve as an ‎appropriate backdrop for relations. I support relations with all countries in the world ‎within the bounds of mutual respect for one another's rights." ‎

Mousavi also commented on the Holocaust: "Islam is against the killing of one person, ‎let alone the killing of many. With respect to the Holocaust, which is something that has ‎taken place, the issue that must be addressed is why is it that the Palestinians must pay ‎the price. We must act in accordance with values that we believe in."‎ Mousavi's position on the nuclear issue was as follows: "We must have this technology ‎and cannot retreat on this issue, because the repercussions of retreating would be heavy ‎for us. However, we must build trust in this area." He added, "My ‎position on this issue is to lower the cost for our country of achieving nuclear ‎technology." ‎ Responding to a question dealing with the freedom of private television networks, Mousavil said, "In 1989, I was present in discussions related to amending the ‎Constitution. One of the issues that were discussed was the issue of private television ‎networks. I still believe in the existence of private television networks. But any change ‎in this area must be carried out according to the Constitution, and whenever the ‎Constitution is amended [the present Constitution gives the government monopoly over ‎television], I will continue to defend my position on this issue."

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Khatami to mount reformist challenge

By Roula Khalaf and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran /FT
Published: February 2 2009 22:12 | Last updated: February 2 2009 22:12

Mohammad Khatami, Iran's former reformist president, is expected to announce that he will contest the presidential elections in June, as pressure intensifies on him to unseat the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad.

Leading reformist politicians told the Financial Times that Mr Khatami was likely to confirm his candidacy in the coming days, after apparently failing to persuade Mir-Hossein Moussavi, a former prime minister he holds in high regard, to represent the reformists.

"All evidence suggests that he is running," said Mostafa Tajzadeh, the policy strategist of the largest reformist party.

"He's closer to running than ever before," said Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, a senior aide to Mr Khatami during his two terms as president, from 1997 to 2005.

Mr Khatami, however, could still reconsider if Mr Moussavi, a politician who is seen as honest and a capable manager, has a last minute change of heart.

At a Saturday meeting with visitors from the holy city of Qom, Mr Khatami said he would prefer Mr Moussavi to be the main reformist candidate but that the former premier needed to make up his mind quickly.

A second reformist leader - cleric Mehdi Karroubi - has announced his candidacy but Khatami aides are hoping that he would withdraw should their man enter the contest.

Although the president has limited powers in Iran's Islamic republic - authority lies in the hands of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader - reformist politicians say a new, more moderate face could have a huge impact on domestic policy and would improve the chances of a dialogue with the US, now that the new administration of Barack Obama is looking for engagement.

"If it is Khatami versus Ahmadi-Nejad, this will be the most interesting election in the world and in the region, after the US election," said Mr Tajzadeh. Mr Khatami, a mid-ranking cleric who prefers dialogue to confrontation, has been reluctant to seek a return to the presidency.

His experience as president when hardliners in the regime systematically blocked his reforms, left him frustrated. Many of his followers were also left disillusioned.

But people close to Mr Khatami say he is the only candidate capable of defeating the populist Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, who although he has yet to declare his candidacy officially is expected to seek re-election and restart efforts to restore Iran's image in the world. Reformists believe Mr Ahmadi-Nejad has wrecked Iran's economy and destroyed its international image.

While they are equally attached to the country's nuclear programme, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes, they insist they could address western concerns over it more successfully.

Ayatollah Khamenei has strongly backed the sitting president, and largely supported his confrontational foreign policy, leading many analysts and diplomats to assume that Mr Ahmadi-Nejad is assured of re-election. But people close to Mr Khatami say the supreme leader has told him that he would not interfere in the election.

There are no public polls in Iran to gauge the mood. But analysts say that despite mounting economic problems, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad can still count on public support, particularly in rural areas that have benefited from generous financial hand-outs. They warn that it is far from clear the election will be free and fair.

Reformists, however, insist that confidential polls taken by bodies within the regime suggest Mr Khatami is far ahead of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad.

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Iran's 30-year-old republic Defiant, and doubtful

Feb 5th 2009 | CAIRO
From The Economist
Iran gives America the finger

FEBRUARY 1st marked the 30th anniversary of the return to Iran of the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini (see article), and his heirs have been celebrating the ensuing Islamic revolution. On February 2nd, to much fanfare, they launched an "indigenous" satellite, borne into space on a rocket of Iranian making, however much it may have owed to North Korean and other technology. Despite protestations that the achievement was entirely benign, with no menacing implications, it was greeted by the new administration in Washington with "great concern". No wonder: reversing his predecessors' stand-offishness, Barack Obama has indicated that he is ready for a direct dialogue with Iran. Launching a Safir-2 rocket looks very much like putting up a finger.

Iranians are no doubt proud of their scientific triumphs, despite the international sanctions that are unfairly, in their eyes, imposed on them, for their country's obdurate pursuit of nuclear technology. They largely agree about such things as the wickedness of American support for Israel and the justice of the Palestinian cause. But, if visitors to Iran are struck by anything, it is the dominant mood of weariness. Unlike the Soviet Union or China in the 1950s, Iran is not sealed off from the world. Via the internet, satellite dishes, travel and interaction with a 2m-strong diaspora, its people are painfully aware of the prosperous cosmopolitanism enjoyed elsewhere.

They cannot help wondering why, with its educated population and bountiful resources, including the world's second-largest reserves of both oil and natural gas, Iran struggles with high unemployment, low wages and surging inflation. Even if sanctions are partly to blame, rather than the all-too-evident managerial failings of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government, they cannot help asking why the world should be so hostile. Yes, they believe that Iran is a great country, and should be treated as such. But does this require constant friction with other countries, or postponing all fun to the afterlife?

The urgency of these questions will grow as the next presidential election, in June, approaches. Despite the official bluster, the idea of a thaw with the West has lately been provoked by such melting events as visits by American sports teams and academics, and a directive from NATO letting its members seek supply routes through Iran for their forces in Afghanistan. This warmth has been accompanied by a crash in oil prices that is likely to slash government revenues in half, brutally shrinking Iran's margin for manoeuvre.

But Mr Ahmadinejad is not rolling over. Iran has pointedly failed to issue visas to an American women's badminton team this month. The president still enjoys strong backing from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And his hardline allies, who have kept the reformist opposition in check since ousting it in 2005, may well now fix the June poll. In any event, they are hardly likely to allow the election of either a liberalising Gorbachev or a pragmatic Deng Xiaoping. But faced with the temptation of a more welcoming outside world, and the danger of economic paralysis at home, whoever it is that runs the Islamic republic may be obliged to opt for one of those models. After all, even the revolutionary imam himself, Ayatollah Khomeini, after eight years of war with Iraq, chose to "drink the cup of poison" and make peace with Iran's most loathed neighbour, Saddam Hussein.

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An old has-been to the rescue?

Might a reform-minded former president displace the current one?
From The Economist print edition, Dec 4th 2008

SEVEN months short of a presidential election, an immaculately robed Shia cleric living in comfortable semi-retirement is making Iranians hold their political breath. When Muhammad Khatami stepped down as Iran's president three years ago, his plans to reform Iran in tatters, he gave every impression that he had left politics for good. Now, his friends attest, he is pondering a comeback.

A rumble of entreaty among a few supporters has become a boisterous campaign to persuade him to run against the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in next June's poll. According to one ally, Mr Khatami is besieged by supplicants from the provinces. Last month Leyla Hatami, an admired film actress, reduced an audience to tears when she begged him to stand "for the sake of our children and of people who do not want to leave the country."

Why would Mr Khatami think of giving up his charitable foundations and leisurely hobnobs with the world's great for a job that earlier caused him nothing but grief? Elected in 1997 on a pledge to reconcile democracy and Islam, he instead became a byword for thwarted hopes, as the country's unelected conservative establishment, bitterly opposed to any dilution of the Islamic Republic's theocratic character, jailed his supporters and blocked reformist legislation. Many of those Iranians now buttering up Mr Khatami boycotted the presidential election of 2005, when Mr Ahmadinejad beat several reformists.

Mr Khatami's change of heart stems from his anger at what followed. Elected on a platform of social justice, Mr Ahmadinejad has squandered Iran's huge oil revenues on inflationary handouts, cares little for human rights and embarrassed many of his compatriots with his undiplomatic pronouncements, among them his suggestion that Israel should not exist. Many Iranians now remember Mr Khatami's tenure, when the authorities relaxed their grip, just a little, on the ordinary Iranian and the president won plaudits for his charm and moderation, as a golden age.

Mr Khatami may announce his intentions in the coming week or so. But his hesitation is understandable. Should he run and win, he will inherit an economic basket case. Inflation recently cleared 31% a year, 20 points higher than when he left office. Unemployment, informally estimated at 4m in a country of 70m-plus people, is set to rise as government revenues fall with diving oil prices. The conservatives are disenchanted with Mr Ahmadinejad but retain their vivid loathing for his predecessor. Mr Khatami's second presidency, if it comes, will be no easier than his first.

If he stands, the conservatives may unite reluctantly around Mr Ahmadinejad. Privileged with incumbency and a populism that still strikes a chord with poorer Iranians, he remains their best chance. But Mr Khatami's enduring popularity rattles his foes. The results of an internal government poll in big and medium-sized cities suggest that he could win twice as many votes in these places as Mr Ahmadinejad.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of Mr Khatami's dilemma is that he is being solicited not because he has new ideas or new methods of advancing old ones, but because he is an elder statesman whom the Council of Guardians, a vetting body, would not dare bar from running. As Iran edges towards achieving the nuclear fuel cycle that would let it become, after Israel, the Middle East's second atomic power, so the consequences of that ambition, in the form of UN sanctions and the growing isolation of Iranian banks and businesses, are being felt across the economy. Gone are the old slogans about a bright future for Iranians. If Mr Khatami joins the fray, it will not be to elevate Iran but to save it.

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Election doubts over Ahmadinejad's health

Robert Tait , The Guardian, Friday October 24 2008

He is renowned for his long hours and hectic schedule, but the stress of high office may be taking its toll on the health of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and jeopardising his political future.

Speculation about the hyperactive leader's physical condition was prompted this week after a speech to the state statistics and planning body on Wednesday was cancelled at the last minute and a cabinet meeting took place without him. A speech to a martyr's commemoration event was also called off. A senior aide, Amir Mansour Borghei, told journalists that the president was "indisposed".

That explanation has triggered rumours that Ahmadinejad, 52, is suffering from a long-term illness that may force him to abandon plans to stand for re-election next year.

Shahab, an Iranian news website, reported that the cancellations were the latest in a series and said the president had previously cancelled engagements because of listlessness caused by low blood pressure. Last May Ahmadinejad pulled out of events in three consecutive weeks - including a rally in Golestan province where he was due to meet voters face to face - because of what aides described as an overcrowded schedule.

Citing "sources close to the government", Shahab said doctors had advised him to cut his workload to reduce the possibility of illness. There is little sign that he has heeded such advice; Wednesday's cancellation came after Ahmadinejad had returned to Tehran from a visit to the Asalouyeh oil and gas project in southern Iran.

The reports of cancellations come at a time when Ahmadinejad is wrestling with acute political problems, including near 30% inflation, rising unemployment, plummeting oil prices, a market traders' strike over a plan to impose VAT, and demands for the resignation of his interior minister, Ali Kordan, for falsely telling MPs that he had an Oxford University degree.

But more worrying is that the rumours appear to have given his critics a new stick to beat him with. Fellow hardliners inside Iran's so-called principalist - or fundamentalist - camp are calling for the president to withdraw from the presidential election unless doubts about his health are cleared up.

Issa Saharkhiz, an Iranian political analyst, said the reports could have been fanned by Ahmadinejad's opponents, including the Tehran mayor, Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf, who are preparing to run against him. "I'm not sure if these health problems are permanent or just a result of tiredness," he said. "But some groups, mainly moderate conservatives, may be thinking that they have found a political solution for eliminating him from the nomination for the elections."

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Nobel laureates call for release of Iranian Baha'i prisoners

30 June 2008

NEW YORK — Six Nobel Peace Prize laureates have issued a statement calling on the Iranian government to free immediately seven prominent Iranian Baha'is imprisoned in Tehran.

The six Nobel winners, under the banner of the Nobel Women's Initiative, called on the Iranian government to guarantee the safety of the Baha'is -- being held in Evin Prison with no formal charges and no access to lawyers -- and to grant them an unconditional release.

"We are thankful to these internationally prominent activists for calling publicly for the release of our fellow Baha'is, who are detained for no reason other than their religion," said Bani Dugal, principal representative of the Baha'i International Community to the United Nations.

The Nobel laureates supporting the statement are:
-- Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire, founders of the Peace People in Northern Ireland and winners of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976;
-- Rigoberta Menchu Tum, a leading advocate of ethno-cultural reconciliation in her native Guatemala and Nobel winner in 1992;
-- Professor Jody Williams, international campaigner for the banning of land mines, winner in 1997;
-- Iranian human rights lawyer Dr. Shirin Ebadi, winner in 2003;
-- Kenyan environmental activist Professor Wangari Muta Maathai, Nobel winner in 2004.

Their statement, issued on the letterhead of the Nobel Women's Initiative, reads:

"We note with concern the news of the arrest of six prominent Baha'is in Iran on 14 May 2008. We note that Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm are members of the informal group known as the Friends in Iran that coordinates the activities of the Baha'i community in Iran; we further note that another member of the Friends in Iran, Mrs Mahvash Sabet, has been held in custody since 5 March 2008; we register our deepest concern at the mounting threats and persecution of the Iranian Baha'i community.

"We call on the Iranian Government to guarantee the safety of these individuals (and) grant their immediate unconditional release."

The Nobel Women's Initiative was established in 2006 by the six women laureates - representing North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa - to contribute to building peace by working together with women around the world. Only 12 women have ever won the Nobel Peace Prize.

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The systematic violations of human rights in Iran

Monday Morning

The Center for the Defenders of Human Rights, formed by five prominent lawyers and headed by the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, said in its annual report on May 18 that it “deplores and denounces the systematic violation of human rights in Iran”.
“The lack of a real and effective observance of human rights deepens the gap between the people and the government and breaks the pillars of peace, stability and development in the country”, it warned.
“In the year 1386 alternative thinkers and those who are not in line with the ruling policies, regardless of their leanings, faced great intimidation and sentences”, the group said, referring to the Iranian year to March 2008.
“Freedom of expression and freedom to circulated information have further declined” since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to office in August 2005, the report said.
“Censorship and indirect pressure has reached the highest level”, it said, adding that 32 media workers were sentenced to jail, lashes and fines, and that 17 publications as well as eight news websites were shut down.
“Despite vast criticism against issuing and carrying out executions, they increased in the past year”, it said, adding that at least nine minors were executed.
The human rights group Amnesty International reported that in 2007 Iran made more use of the death penalty than any other country apart from China, executing 317 people during the year.
Teheran insists the death penalty is an effective deterrent that is carried out only after an exhaustive judicial process.
The report came amid a regional tour of the US President George W. Bush, who criticized Middle East states over human rights, saying Washington was concerned about the repression of democratic activists and the plight of political prisoners.
Ebadi’s group also criticized Iran’s treatment of student activists, women’s rights campaigners, religious minorities, labor unionists and teachers demanding better wages.
“Many among the believers of the Bahai faith were deprived of the right to study in universities, work and social activities only because of their religious inclination”, it said.
Ebadi’s group said that over the past year 108 students had been arrested, 45 interrogated, five put on trial and 15 were handed sentences including jail, lashes and fines.
“It seems that the government and the system do not recognize any rights to protest, strikes and pursuing union rights for workers -- oppressing any move in the name of acting against national security”, the report said.
It added that 31 workers had been jailed, another 31 arrested, eight put on trial and at least 36 summoned to judicial or security bodies “only for pursuing their union rights”.
Ebadi’s group criticized mounting pressure on women’s rights advocates and slammed a nationwide crackdown on “bad veiling”, branding it as “one of the outstanding and evident examples of violating women’s rights”.
Several women have been arrested in recent months over their involvement in a signature campaign backed by Ebadi, which seeks to change Iran’s “discriminatory” laws for women in marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody.
Canada has expressed concern over the apparent arrest of six Iranian Bahais and called for their release, while deploring an “ongoing decline” in the country’s human rights situation.
“Canada is deeply concerned by the arbitrary arrest of six Iranian Bahais” on May 14, Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier said.
“These individuals were detained solely on the basis of their faith. This is unacceptable [and] we call on the Iranian authorities to ensure the immediate and safe release of these prisoners”.
The Bahai faith is banned in Islamic Iran, which Bernier said “has a history of abuse against religious minorities” and continues to show disregard for the rights of its people.
“Canada and the international community remain alarmed by the ongoing decline in the state of human rights in Iran”, he said, and urged Teheran to live up to its commitments to protect freedom of conscience and religion.
Bernier indicated that those arrested were members of the Friends of Iran, a group which coordinates activities of the Bahai community and which has been targeted by the authorities for years “despite its peaceful nature”.
The arrests follow the Iranian judiciary’s sentencing in January of 54 Bahai members for anti-regime propaganda.
The Bahai faith was originally developed in Iran in the nineteenth century and now has members worldwide, but it is not recognized by the Iranian government. Its followers are regarded as infidels and have been persecuted since the 1979 revolution.
Bahais consider Bahaullah, born in 1817, the last prophet sent to mankind by God, while Muslims believe the last messenger of God is the Prophet Mohammad.

Fresh crackdown on websites
An Iranian press report said last Tuesday that the authorities had blocked access to several websites and blogs of women’s rights advocates and journalists critical of the government,
The move followed a new directive sent out by a committee tasked with identifying illegal websites to Internet service providers, the reformist Etemad Melli newspaper said without giving a source.
“There seems to be a tougher approach this time as some sites and weblogs belonging to women’s rights and human rights campaigners, writers critical of the government and well-known journalists” have been singled out, it said.
Internet providers in Iran have in recent years been told to block access to hundreds of political, human rights and women’s sites and weblogs for expressing dissent or deemed to be pornographic and anti-Islamic.
The report said several feminist websites including Meydaan-e Zanan (Women’s Field), Kanoun Zanan Irani (Iranian Women’s Center), Shir Zanan, which covers women’s sporting events, and “Change for Equality” have been blocked.
The ban has targeted the “One Million Signatures” campaign websites launched in different Iranian cities as well as in Germany, Kuwait, Cyprus and California in the United States, the report said.
The campaign seeks to change the Islamic republic’s laws for women in marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody by collecting signatures online and in person.
The ban has also targeted popular social networking sites and news sites, while several cyber journalists and bloggers have been detained.
With more than half the 70-million-strong population aged under 30, Iran has one of the highest number of bloggers in the world. Persian-language blogs have multiplied since a crackdown on the reformist press by the judiciary.

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2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Slams Clinton's "Obliteration" Remark: She is Exception to the Norm

By Omid Memarian for Huffingtonpost (May 13, 2008)

"Occasionally we run across women who are worse warmongers than men," Ms. Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told me in an interview. I had asked her opinion about Sen. Clinton's latest remark on the "obliteration" of Iran if it were to launch a nuke attack against Israel. Ms. Ebadi, who is one of the most outspoken human rights activists in the world today, continued:

Women usually stand at the forefront of peace activism, because they suffer the most during a war. They lose husbands and sons and are sometimes raped during a war. That's why most women seek peace. Of course there are always exceptions to the norm. I hope Mrs. Clinton made those statements in search of the votes of extremists in her country, not as her personal belief. She has said that if Israel is threatened in any way, she will obliterate Iran. It saddens me to see a woman abandon her position of peace and construction and think about war and destruction. I would say it is not possible to obliterate a country with a 3,000-year old history. Perhaps, as Mrs. Clinton suggests, military bombers can "obliterate" a few places in Iran, but you cannot obliterate 3,000 years of history.

My reply to people such as Mrs. Clinton, who use their fear of Israel's destruction as an excuse to attack Iran, is to remind them that Iran has been a refuge for Jewish people since the era of Cyrus The Great. Jews have lived peacefully in Iran for centuries. One of their oldest and most famous settlements is in Iran. Iran must be judged by its 3,000-year history, not by its performance over the past 30 years after the Islamic Revolution, or the past two years, since Ahmadinejad [came into office in 2005].

The Iranian government has never declared any plans to attack Israel. Certain current rhetoric has created excuses for an attack on Iran, the likes of which Mrs. Clinton suggests.

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Ebadi says intervention cannot solve Iran's problems

By Edgar Zuniga Jr. for The Daily Utah Chronicle (Wednesday, April 23, 2008)

Despite blasting Iran's human rights record on several accounts, Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi said she believes the solutions to those human rights violations will come from the Iranian people and not foreign military intervention.

About 700 students, professors and community members filled the Union Ballroom Friday morning to welcome and listen to Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian crusader of women and children's rights who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. The talk, titled "Human Rights: The Struggle for Iran," comprised the second-annual World Leaders Lecture Forum, which last year welcomed former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

"Democracy and human rights can only grow and flourish in a sound and peaceful environment," Ebadi said through an interpreter.

Ebadi said a military attack or even a threat of a military attack would worsen the human rights situation in Iran tremendously.

She said there should be no militaries, but until that day, governments around the world should dedicate 10 percent of their current military spending to education. Ebadi said violence is propagated in children's lives through things such as toy guns and violent video games. To promote peace, Ebadi urged governments around the world to restrict such toys and replace them with books and pens.

"I especially liked what she said about how foreign interventions or military endeavors are not necessarily the best option," said Sawaiba Khan, a senior in history and English. "People within their own countries have the right to make changes and influence their own countries without needing a foreign military."

Human rights is an international standard on how to live, and it has nothing to do with the West or East, Muslims or Christians, Ebadi said. She said many Middle Eastern governments, including Iran, use Islam as a pretext to enforce their own interpretation of Islam on their people and limit their human rights. For example, Ebadi said in a country like Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive or enjoy other rights, but other Islamic countries such as Indonesia or Pakistan have women becoming political leaders decades ago.

"I admired what she said about the interpretation of Islam, because the problem (in Muslim countries) is not Islam," said Khadija Guet, a senior in French. "It's a stereoytype, but the real problem is how certain leaders interpret Islam."

Ebadi was especially critical of the Iranian government. She said Iran has joined the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, but said regretfully that laws within the country are incompatible with the International Convention.

Ebadi said children in Iran are equally liable as adults for crimes, so a 10-year-old girl would be tried the same way as a 40-year-old man before an Iranian court. Ebadi also mentioned significant problems related to the legal marriage of under-age girls. She said "legislations in Iran are basically 200 years behind in terms of what has been learned about children."

Iranian leaders have misinterpreted Islamic law to argue that the value of a woman's life is worth half that of a man, therefore two women need to testify before a judge to equate one male witness' testimony, Ebadi said. Ebadi said a country cannot be democratically minded and deny half of its citizens basic rights.

As Ebadi left the ballroom to standing ovations and roaring applause, Nayereh Fallahi, a Persian instructor, said, "I admire Shirin Ebadi highly because she has been fighting for the rights children and women (in Iran) not just today, not just yesterday, but for as long as I've known of her."

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Iran: Tied to its program

By Kamal Nazer Yasin for ISN Security Watch (06/03/08)

The latest UN sanctions against Iran are a setback for Tehran but their overall impact should be gauged in political rather than economic terms, Kamal Nazer Yasin writes for ISN Security Watch.

With 14 members in support and only Indonesia abstaining, the UN Security Council has approved a new round of sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

This was the third time the Security Council had imposed sanctions on Iran in less than two years.

The new measures, approved 3 March, include the freezing of assets and travel restrictions on a number of civilian and military individuals involved with Iran's nuclear program. Previous sanctions had targeted five individuals and 12 companies. The new resolution adds 13 more names to that list.

The resolution also bans trade in dual-use material and technologies. To that end, the Security Council has authorized the inspection of shipments suspected of containing banned items carried by two Iranian state-owned transportation companies. Finally, the Security Council has called for increased vigilance in monitoring the activities of certain Iranian financial institutions.

It is highly doubtful, however, that this new round of sanctions will cause Tehran to cease and desist any time soon. Iran will only accede to demands to halt its nuclear program, experts say, only when faced with the overwhelming threat of force or sanctions that are crippling and political incentives that are too enticing to ignore.

Jon Wolfsthal, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, believes that as far as incentives are concerned, the publication of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran in December 2007 has for all practical purposes removed the threat of force from the equation.

As for the sanctions, he told ISN Security Watch that their "cumulative force […] at this point [is] rather negligible."

Sharon Squassoni, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, likewise believes that the new sanctions are not drastic enough to deter Iran's nuclear program. In her view, the sanctions' true impact should be understood for their political rather than economic significance.

"The latest sanctions show Iran that it is the entire international community that wants Iran's program stopped and not just the US and western Europe," she told ISN Security Watch.

The same goes for the incentives. It is true, for example, that leading western European countries, with tacit US backing, have of late offered a series of economic and political incentives to Tehran - in fact they insist the offer is still on the table. But these offers invariably fall short of what Iranian leaders consider "the bare minimum" for a bargain. For instance, an incentives package that does not include a non-aggression pact of some sort with Washington has very little chance of endorsement by Iran.

Political divisions
Yet another factor that seems to be working in Iran's favor is the state of political divisions in today's world. A glance at the behind-the-scenes maneuverings before and at the time of the Security Council vote is highly indicative of the diplomatic situation.

The first draft of the current sanction - which was incidentally much more sweeping and punitive than in its present form - was first proposed by the UK nearly eight months ago. In late August 2007, Iran came to an agreement with Mohammad Elbaradei, the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), over the angry objections of the US, to answer most of the Agency's questions on its nuclear program in return for a delay in the IAEA report on Iran.

In December, the US' NIE report on Iran was published, asserting that Iran had stopped the military side of its program in 2003 - a development attributed to the fall-out from the Iraq war.

Even in its present form, according to diplomats, the latest sanctions resolution has been watered down several times to satisfy the wishes of Libya, South Africa and Vietnam, the three non-permanent members of the Security Council. (For example, these countries asked that the inspection of ships and planes carrying Iranian goods be carried out according to local and international laws.)

French President Nikolas Sarkozy had to lobby personally for the resolution during his travel in Africa last week.

Finally, according to diplomats, Russia had made its vote on the resolution contingent on the absence of another resolution against Iran at the IAEA Board of Governors in Geneva on 4 March.

As another instance of recent global developments, in its hunger for new markets, China has vastly increased its economic cooperation with Iran at the very moment when most western European countries are pulling out of the Iranian market. Chinese ambassador to Iran, Liu Zhentang, told a press conference last July that trade between the two countries was set to increase by 27 percent in 2008 to US$20 billion.

Resolution still a setback for Iran Notwithstanding the economic issues, the resolution is still a setback for Tehran. Iranian leaders were hoping that once they could come up with convincing answers to the IAEA's technical questions under an agreement called the "Work Plan," they could get a positive bill of health from the Agency, which in turn would pave the way for the withdrawal of Iran's file from the Security Council.

For a while it seemed that things were going reasonably well. Iran began to cooperate very closely with the Agency, answering most of its questions and allowing its inspectors unprecedented access to scientists and restricted sites.

However, immediately before or at the conclusion of the Work Plan in early February, the Bush administration turned over to the IAEA a huge file on Iran's alleged weaponization program, which a "walk-in" defector purportedly had made available to American intelligence back in 2004.

Some of the new information was then given to the Iranian side by the IAEA sometime in the first week of February. The documents, which allegedly originated from an Iranian scientist's stolen laptop computer, included diagrams and data on a variety of activities prohibited under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Among these were war-head designs for nuclear bombs, missile re-entry vehicles and above-ground explosive devices.

Iran immediately called the documents forgeries and flatly denied their authenticity. Tehran demanded that they not be included in the IAEA report to the board of governors.

When ElBaradei's report on Iran was finally published on 22 February, he took a middle position in the debate. While praising Iran's extraordinary cooperation with the agency, he expressed concern about the new information, asking Iran to clarify the "alleged weaponization studies."

According to the New York Times, the Agency's chief inspector made the new information available to IAEA diplomats three days after the report's publication. A week later, the Security Council passed a resolution against Iran for its refusal to stop uranium enrichment.

ElBaradei's report has completely changed the way the international community will look at Iran's nuclear program from now on, according to Squassoni. "Even if only one of the allegations made in the report is true," she told ISN Security Watch, "it means Iran has been lying all along."

In Iran, once ElBaradei's report was published and it became clear that a sanctions' resolution was imminent, the government made a hasty propaganda offensive to offset any adverse publicity that could result from the news.

Government officials from the president down to provincial authorities called the publication of the report "a historic victory" and a "vindication," while some mosques started handing out pastries to their worshipers in celebration.

Later, after the Security Council resolution was announced, Iran's Supreme National Security Council, the country's highest decision-making body, sent a secret directive to all newspaper editors, directing them in very explicit language as to what they should publish about the resolution - a phenomenon not seen in Iran for quite some time.

Snubbed in Iraq
This was not the only bad news for the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week. While paying a historic visit to Iraq as the first head of state of a Muslim country, he failed to meet with the country's top four Grand Ayatollahs.

According to Stratfor, a Texas-based strategic forecasting company, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani declined to meet Ahmadinejad though he had met with his chief presidential rival, Tehran Mayor Mohmmad Ali Ghalibaf, only days before.

There are no indications that Iran will stop its nuclear program. The Ahmadinejad government has tied its very reputation to the success of this program to a point where any retreat now would be considered tantamount to treason by its supporters.

The pro-government newspaper Kayhan wrote in a 5 March editorial that should the Security Council "insist on its illegal and politically motivated interferences" in Iran's internal affairs by inspecting Iranian-bound cargoes, Iran should retaliate by inspecting other country's cargoes in the Strait of Hormuz.

Kamal Nazer Yasin is the pseudonym of an Iranian journalist reporting for ISN Security Watch from Tehran.

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IRAN: Candidate Purge Smacks of a "Vendetta", Critics Say

By Omid Memarian
IPSNews.net

BERKELEY, California, Feb 12 (IPS) - The mass disqualification of reformist parliamentary candidates by Iran's Guardian Council, which oversees the electoral rolls, has diminished the possibility of fair elections on Mar. 14, observers say.

The Guardian Council is comprised of influential clerics and lawmakers. Half of its members are appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the other half by the Parliament, both of which are conservative.

Last week, authorities confirmed that more than 2,400 candidates would not be allowed to run for the Parliament's 290 seats. Three former ministers, a dozen provincial governors, prominent reformists, and MPs who worked under the reformist president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) are among the disqualified candidates. Surprisingly, 20 sitting MPs have been barred from running in the parliamentary elections.

Also, for the first time since the 1979 Revolution, a member of Ayatollah Khomeini's family is among the disqualified nominees. Ali Eshraghi, a grandson of Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, was rejected because of "lack of loyalty to Islam and the constitution".

"Among political activists and candidates, there are several types of opinions and approaches to [the upcoming] elections," said Zahra Eshraghi, Ali Eshraghi's sister and also a sister-in-law to Khatami. "Some of them say that they will not run any candidates -- though they are not condoning a boycott, because boycotting the elections may facilitate the election of individuals who might make things even worse."

"Another group states that they will participate, offering a list of candidates, however, advising people to choose whomever they wish," Eshraghi told IPS, "Yet another group says that they would settle for the bare minimum, meaning that even if one, two, or three of their candidates are elected to Parliament, it is better than sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing."

The unprecedented disqualifications, whose scale is greater than it was in elections four years ago, will almost certainly retain the conservatives' absolute majority in the next parliament.

Last week, Khatami called the mass disqualifications of reformist candidates a "disaster" and warned against "pre-determining people's votes".

"I believe that the government never intended to let us participate in the Parliamentary ‎elections," Seyyed Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as Khatami's vice president from 2001 to 2004, told IPS in a phone interview. "By laying off managers from all levels in the government during the past two years, it seemed like ‎the administration was attempting to institute a system in which no one would be left to criticise ‎it. It was natural for them to look at elections with the same mindset."

He said that while the sheer number of ‎disqualifications surprised even many in the conservative camp, ‎the general strategy of disqualifications had been "talked about openly and ‎repeatedly by officials in the administration ever since the new group took office."

On Sunday, Ahmad Tavakkoli, a conservative who represents the capital Tehran in Parliament, wrote a letter to the Guardian Council urging it to reexamine the petitions of the rejected candidates. He criticised some Council members for their lack of experience and cited difficulties related to registration of candidates on the Internet.

"Pre-determining people's votes" has apparently been orchestrated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hardliner government, which has been among the least tolerant toward its critics since the Islamic Revolution. "Military commanders and those ‎affiliated with the radical, hardliner movement now serve as our governors and supervisors," Abtahi said.

While many believe that the disqualifications could taint the legitimacy of the elections, Abtahi believes that Ahmadinejad and his advisors are not afraid to bear the cost. "There was a time when ‎the government shied away from doing things like that, but the current administration actually prefers to take responsibility for disqualifying reformist candidates," he said.

The reformist candidates who have been qualified by the Guardian Council are mostly relatively unknown, although they could form a considerable minority in Parliament.

While many experts, including a faction of conservative camp, believe that the disqualifications will damage the government's credibility, Eshraghi said that the government appears ready to accept the consequences. "In fact, this is a massive political elimination, a vendetta, done by the government," she added.

Ali Mazrooie, a former member of parliament who has been disqualified by the Ministry of Interior, told IPS that it was unprecedented for the Ministry of Interior's oversight committee to disqualify ‎candidates for "lack of belief and conviction in Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran" ‎and "lack of belief in Constitution and absolute supreme leadership," some of the reasons that have been given to exclude candidates.

"The government's view is that it is doing a very good job, and that this is precisely what it was elected to do," Zahra Eshraghi, the granddaughter of Ayatollah Khomeini, told IPS. "They didn't risk leaving the disqualifications [only] to the Guardian Council, where some candidates might dodge the disqualifications, making it to the parliament."

*Omid Memarian is a peace fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He has won several awards, including Human Rights Watch's highest honour in 2005, the Human Rights Defender Award. igning, which starts on March 6 and lasts a week.

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Iran reformists fear mass exclusion from key vote

Gulf in Media

Iranian reformists said on Tuesday they fear many of their candidates will be disqualified ahead of parliamentary elections in March, as a vetting body was set to reveal the results.

"We have received worrying information in the past week indicating that a surprising number of reformist candidates will be rejected," Reformists' Coalition spokesman Abdollah Nasseri said on the group's website.

Seven incumbent reformist MPs were expected to be disqualified by the interior ministry's Executive Committees, tasked with screening 7,168 hopefuls ahead of the March 14 polls, the group said.

"We have received some information about rejected candidates. It is still too early for conclusions but we fear there will be a number of major disqualifications," a reformist politician told AFP, asking not to be named.

The coalition groups 21 pro-reform groups, inspired by former president Mohammad Khatami.

Major reformist party National Confidence, which is headed by former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi, has had most of its candidates rejected, according to student news agency ISNA.

"According to the information received, 70 percent of our candidates have been disqualified, which is worrying," party spokesman Esmail Gerami Moqaddam told the agency.

The vetting body, which gathers information from the police, intelligence ministry, the judiciary and through local inquiries, was due to begin informing the potential candidates of the results on Tuesday.

The committees will also pass the results on to the Surveillance Commissions of the Guardians Council, a powerful electoral watchdog controlled by conservatives which has the final say on the fate of candidates.

Reformists fear a repeat of 2004 polls when the Guardians Council barred more than 2,000, mostly reformist, candidates out of 8,172. The conservatives won a landslide victory in the elections which were hit by a low turnout.

Nasseri said the reformists "will use all legal means to have candidates stand," but warned that "obviously we will only participate in a competitive election."

Rejected candidates have until January 26 to appeal to the Surveillance Commissions. If that fails, they can appeal directly to the Guardians Council, which has 20 days to give its opinion.

Nasseri said the conservatives who control the screening bodies could approve certain reformist candidates just days before the polls and so deny them enough time for campaigning, which starts on March 6 and lasts a week.

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Iran: Rights situation deteriorating, says European MP after Tehran mission

AKI

Brussels, 14 Dec. (AKI) - The human rights situation in Iran is worsening on all fronts, whether its the rights of women, labour unions or the right to freedom of expression in the country.

This is according to Vittorio Agnoletto, a member of the European parliament (MEP), who is also a member of the parliament's committee on foreign affairs. Agnoletto was recently part of a European parliamentary mission to Tehran.

The mission met a number of high level officials in Iran including foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and the president of the parliament, Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, as well as the leaders of various human rights organisations, student groups, unions and the family members of activists detained by the authorities.

In an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI), Agnoletto said that the Iranian authorities, did cooperate with the mission. When the authorities asked for the names of all the student leaders, union representatives and leaders of women's groups that they had met, the EU mission representatives refused to give the names and this was eventually accepted.

"We ascertained that there has been a decisive worsening of the human rights situation in Iran," Agnoletto told AKI.

He said that the Iranian authorities that they spoke to asked them not to consider the Canadian-sponsored proposal at the United Nations to condemn Iran's human rights record.

Agnoletto gave a variety of examples as to why the mission decided to take the strong stand on Iran's human rights record.

"A proposal for reform on the rights of the family was presented to parliament, encouraging polygamy and putting the jurisdiction and care of children to fathers. It's a return to archaic rights, pre-1968, when it required a dictatorial regime, that of the Shah, to modernise the system," he said.

Agnoletto also pointed out to another worrying issue that while 60 percent of the students at university are women and even a higher number are graduates, the authorities want to pass a law to fix this "imbalance".

"They continue to imprison many union leaders, even if the constitution does not recognise the right to go on strike. In fact when people are arrested in such cases, it's because it's a "breach of the peace."

On top of all of this, there is the issue of capital punishment in Iran. Agnoletto said that among those who have been sentenced to death there are also minors.

"According to the Iranians, there has been a moratorium on the death penalty for four years, but even recently youths have been condemned for crimes they committed when they were 13 years old," he said.

"On 7 december, Iran commemorates the three students who were killed in 1943 for having protested against the excessive foreign penetration of the country. However between 2 and 4 December, 42 students were arrested for promoting events that were not authorised, and 28 of them are still in jail, without even knowing what they have been accused of," he said.

"Another four people were arrested in the days following the earlier arrests," he said.

All these criticisms of Iran's human rights records have been denied by the Iranian authorities who instead cite the rights abuses at the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, abuses are Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and the excessive police violence at the 2001 G8 protests in Genoa in Italy.

The only criticism that the Iranian authorities agreed to was that with regards to press freedom.

"It's a shame however that there was no trace of this observation in the Iranian newspapers," he said.

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Mothers of Peace

NAZILA FATHI
New York Times

More than 500 Iranian women calling themselves "mothers of peace" have signed a letter to senior officials expressing their fear that there will be a war over Iran's nuclear program.

The letter refers to the economic sanctions already imposed by the United Nations Security Council and the increasing United States military presence in the Persian Gulf as evidence that Iran could be moving toward a military confrontation with the United States. The letter warns the Iranian authorities that the signatories are not willing to support the government in its insistence on continuing its nuclear program.

"We, mothers of peace, want to express our deepest concerns over the country's critical situation," said the letter signed by 521 women, which was posted on www.motherspeace.blogfa.com and other major political news Web sites.

"We are worried about the prices that we and our children will have to pay during a period of such insecurity," the letter added.

It is highly unusual for an Iranian citizens' group to question publicly the country's nuclear policy and acknowledge the effects of the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations on people's lives. The group announced its formation in November as a movement seeking peace and freedom.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly brushed off the sanctions as insignificant and has said that the Iranian people are willing to resist any type of international pressure related to the country's nuclear program. He has even called senior officials who have criticized his nuclear policies "traitors."

The government says its program is for peaceful energy purposes, while the United States has contended that its purpose is to develop nuclear weapons.

Among the signatories were political activists as well as homemakers and artists. According to the Web site, 300 more women have signed the letter, in addition to the original group, and even more are adding their names online.

"We have not forgotten the bitter days of war," the letter said, referring to the war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988. "We are still mourning the loss of our loved ones, and we watch the suffering of the disabled and see the names of our martyrs on the streets."

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Iran leader's blog attracts critics

Robert Tait in Tehran
The Guardian

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, wanted to create a forum to trumpet his populist political message without the interference of media and opposition catcalls he launched his own blog.

But he may have failed to reckon with the merciless mud-slinging and sarcasm that characterises communication in much of cyberspace. Far from being a repository of fawning admiration, Ahmadinejad's blog has attracted criticism as scathing as that voiced by his known adversaries.

Somewhat gleefully, the reformist newspaper Etemad reported yesterday that some respondents were venting their spleen with little regard for pleasantries.

One writer - calling himself Sadegh Al Ebrahim - sarcastically congratulated Ahmadinejad on his success in creating new jobs through last summer's decision to ration petrol. "In our city before rationing there were two petrol stations, of which one was always shut. But now, due to you, we have 3,000 petrol sellers," the message reads, hinting at the rampant black market.

Another, claiming to be "on behalf of the more than 50 million people who didn't vote for you", berates Ahmadinejad for high unemployment and high inflation. The writer says: "Instead of useless provincial trips, fake propaganda on state TV and unrealistic news fed to you by your aides, you should come to the heart of the society."

The critical messages are counter-balanced by many others that are positive, including several that praise Ahmadinejad for his performance in September at Columbia University in New York.

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The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States

democracynow

AMY GOODMAN: For more on Ahmadinejad's visit, we're joined by two guests. Ervand Abrahamian is an Iran expert and CUNY Distinguished Professor of History at Baruch College here at the City University of New York. He's the author of several books on Iran, co-author of a new book from City Lights called Targeting Iran. And joining me from Washington, D.C. is Trita Parsi. He's the president of the National Iranian American Council, the largest Iranian American organization in the United States, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States.

First, Ervand Abrahamian, can you talk about the president's visit? Did anything he said -- this is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- surprise you?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, I was surprised because he didn't really use the opportunity to try to lower the tempo, the serious problem we have now, which is we're at the abyss of war, basically. And there are people pushing for war in the next few months. And this would have been a very good opportunity to try to smooth things over, try to calm the tempo down.

And it's not just he who missed the opportunity. I think Bollinger missed the opportunity. In fact, Bollinger's speech was like a drumbeat for war. And most of the questions from the audience missed the opportunity. They dealt basically with important identity questions, but they didn't really deal with the issue that we are really on the abyss of war. And this is a far more serious issue than, you know, either ethnic or gender issues.

And he, actually, I think -- although he made some statements about Iran is not interested in nuclear weapons, he could have been more forthright and more categorical about the policies of Iran in terms of the nuclear project.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: It does. In fact, Ahmadinejad didn't say it last night -- yesterday, but his policy is that there is no likelihood of war, because no one in their right senses would think of invading or attacking Iran. And that's the premise he works on, which is, I think, a completely wrong premise, because he doesn't seem to understand American politics, the same people who gave us the war on Iraq, the same people who are running foreign policy now. But he begins from the premise that no one in their right senses would think of attacking Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, you have written a very interesting book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States. Can you take us back in time and talk about the relationship, the secret dealings, between these three countries?

TRITA PARSI: Israel has for a very long time been a critical factor in America's formulation of a policy vis-a-vis Iran. But what's really interesting is that the influence of Israel has gone in completely different directions, if we just go back fifteen years. During the 1980s, in spite of the Iranian Revolution, in spite of Ayatollah Khomeini's many, many harsh remarks about Israel, far, far worse than what anything Ahmadinejad has said so far, Israel at the time was the country that was lobbying the United States to open up talks with Iran to try to rebuild the US-Iran relations, because of strategic imperatives that Israel had. Israel needed Iran, because it was fearing the Arab world and a potential war with the Arabs.

After 1991, '92, that's when you see the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations, because that's when the entire geopolitical map of the Middle East is redrawn. The Soviet Union collapses. The last standing army of the Arabs, that of Saddam Hussein, is defeated in the Persian Gulf War. And you have an entirely new security environment in the Middle East, in which the two factors, the Soviets and the Arabs, that had pushed Iran and Israel closer together suddenly evaporate. But as their security environment improves, they also start to realize that they may be ending up in a situation in which they can become potential threats to each other. And that's when you see how the Israelis shift 180 degrees. Now the Israeli argument was that the United States should not talk to Iran, because there is no such thing as Iranian moderates.

And ever since, the Israelis and the pro-Israel interest in the United States have lobbied to make sure that there is no dialogue or there's no rapprochement between the United States and Iran. And the Iranians have done similar things. They have undermined every US foreign policy initiative in the Middle East that they feared would be beneficial to Israel. So the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations come after the Cold War, not with the revolution in 1979.

AMY GOODMAN: But I also do want you to go right back to 1948 and talk about that period up to 1991. What were the secret relationships?

TRITA PARSI: Well, immediately after Israel was founded, Iran was actually one of the states on the committee at the UN who was preparing a plan, and they were against the partition. They were against the idea of creating two states. And Iran, at the time, said that this would lead to several decades of crisis. But once Israel was a fact, the Iranian government felt that because it was facing a hostile Arab world, as well as a very hostile Arab ideology, Pan-Arabism, Israel was a potential ally for the Iranians, particularly as Israel started to shift closer and closer to the Western camp and the United States. So throughout the '50s, '60s and '70s, the Iranians and the Israelis were working very, very closely together, had a very robust alliance.

They tried to keep it secret. It wasn't necessarily very secret, but Iran never recognized Israel de jure. They recognized it de facto. They had an Israeli mission in Tehran, but they never permitted it to be called an embassy. They had an Israeli envoy to Tehran, but they never called him an ambassador. When the Israeli planes were landing at the Tehran airport, they created -- they built a specific tarmac off the airport for Israeli planes to land, so that no one would really see that there are so many El Al planes flying to Tehran. And the reason why the Iranians were doing this is because, on the one hand, they needed Israel as an ally because they were fearful of the Arab world, and, on the other hand, they felt that if they got too close to Israel, they would only fuel Arab anger towards Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, you have a number of revelations in your book. One of them is that the Iranian prime minister asked Israel permission to assassinate Khomeini. Describe the circumstance.

TRITA PARSI: Circumstances was right before the revolution, in which the Israelis were very, very concerned. They were fearful that the new regime would be very hostile to Israel, and they weren't certain that they would be able to build the same type of secret relations with Iran as they had during the time of the Shah. It later on turned out that they actually did have that ability, not to the same extent, but they still could do it.

But the Iranian prime minister was eager to be able to get rid of Khomeini, fearing -- thinking that by Khomeini being eliminated, the revolution would be able to move in a different direction. And he asked the Israelis if they could do it, because Khomeini at the time was in Paris; the Iranians did not have the ability to do anything, but they thought that perhaps the Israelis would. The Israeli answer was apparently that this is not Israel's job and that Israel is not the policemen of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: What about Israel reaching out to Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War?

TRITA PARSI: After the first Persian Gulf War, there was a thinking in Israel at the time that Saddam had now been weakened, he was no longer a real threat, and at the end of the day the real potential threat in the future, the rising power, was Iran. So the Israelis were trying to find different ways of being able to find some sort of a modus vivendi with Saddam Hussein.

This significantly angered the Clinton administration, that was pursuing a policy of isolating both Iran and Iraq at the same time, and they were very annoyed that the Israelis were trying to find some sort of a relationship with Saddam in the midst of all of that.

Now, the Israeli initiative didn't go anywhere, but it was guided by the thinking that Iran was going to be the major threat. And even though Iran at the time really was not a threat to Israel, Israel already at that time treated it as an actual threat.

AMY GOODMAN: The United States foiling Iran's plan to withdraw support from Hamas and Hezbollah.

TRITA PARSI: We talked about that before, that there was a 2003 proposal that the Iranians sent over to the United States trying to find a larger accommodation between the United States and Iran, in which they basically put all the different issues on the table, including an offer, within the framework of the negotiations, to disarm Hezbollah and turn it into a mere political organization -- had that happened, there would probably not have been a war last year between Israel and Lebanon -- secondly, to end all support for Islamic jihad and Hamas and encourage the Palestinians to go a political route, rather than military route, in their dealings with Israel.

But what's revealed in the book, as well, that has not been out in the media a lot is that prior to giving this proposal to the United States, the Iranians were fishing it around in Europe, trying to create some support for it. And, most importantly, they went to places that they knew Israelis were going to be. And they were presenting the framework, the concept of this grand bargain, and they wanted to make sure that the Israelis felt that this would not be something that would come at their expense, because they were concerned that the Israelis would try to undermine it. So they were basically sending a signal: Look, if we can have this accommodation with the United States, we will disentangle and basically not be so involved in the Israeli-Palestinian issue anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi is author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States. Our guest also, Ervand Abrahamian, Iran expert, Distinguished Professor at Baruch College. I wanted, Professor Abrahamian, to read from Juan Cole's piece, who says, talking about Ahmadinejad, "He has been depicted as a Hitler figure intent on killing Israeli Jews, even though he is not commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces, has never invaded any other country, denies he is an anti-Semite, has never called for any Israeli civilians to be killed, and allows Iran's 20,000 Jews to have representation in Parliament," that Khamenei is the one with the real power.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: He is right on target, yes. I think Juan Cole sums it up. And the question is, then, why is basically in American politics so much focused on Ahmadinejad? I think he serves the function that Saddam Hussein played. He's an easy person to demonize. And yesterday's Bollinger's introduction, when he described him as a dictator, I think, shows how little people like Bollinger really know about the Iranian political system. One can call Ahmadinejad many things, but a dictator he is by no means. He can't even -- he doesn't even have the power to appoint his own cabinet ministers. It's a presidency with very limited power. And to claim that he is in a position to threaten the United States or Israel is just bizarre, frankly. I think someone like Bollinger should know more about Iran before they sling around smears like terms such as "dictator."

AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about Khamenei, then, if he is the one with real power.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Here, again, he is, you can say, the Supreme Leader, but the Iranian system is actually very sort of a collective leadership. The foreign policy is made in a council, where the Supreme Leader appoints those members, but there are very different views there. And Ahmadinejad does not run that committee. Someone like Rafsanjani has a great deal of influence. The former President Khatami has a great deal of influence. And they are much more willing to negotiate.

In fact, they were, I think, the people who offered this grand bargain in 2003 to settle all the issues with the United States. And for reasons that are not clear, the White House just basically brushed it aside. They were not interested in pursuing this. And this is why it leads me to think that this administration is adamant in resolving the nuclear problem by military force, because if it was interested in resolving it through diplomacy, there were offers made to them to follow that route, and they have very consciously decided not follow the diplomatic routes. So if you don't follow the diplomatic route, the only other route there is is the military route. And, of course, it's only a question of time when they decide on air strikes.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Trita Parsi, about this Newsweek magazine report that says that Vice President Cheney considered provoking an exchange of military strikes between Iran and Israel in order to give the US a pretext to attack Iran. A few months before he quit, the Middle East Adviser to Cheney, David Wurmser, told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz and perhaps other sites, in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out. Citing two knowledgeable sources, Newsweek put out this report. Your response?

TRITA PARSI: I think it's definitely a plausible scenario, because one thing that we know for certain, with great certainty, is that the Israelis lack the military capability to take out Iran's nuclear program. They can attack it, but they cannot destroy it. And the only thing that it would result to is some sort of Iranian retaliation, which would then suck the United States right into the conflict, because the United States would not be able to stand without it -- outside of it, and obviously many elements in the White House would probably prefer to immediately get into it.

One of the things that I describe in the book that I think is extremely important is that when you take a look at how Iran has made its decisions vis-à-vis Israel, it's actually been geopolitical and strategic factors that have been driving their decisions. It's not been ideology. And I think this is a critical point, because right now you have a metaphor being presented by Bibi Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud Party, in which he's saying that it's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And then he goes on to imply that Ahmadinejad is Hitler. If we accept that premise, that it is 1938, that Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is Hitler, then who, which leader, in his or her right mind, would want to play the role of Neville Chamberlain? It's a metaphor whose premise basically puts us in a situation in which conflict is completely inevitable. And there's no other way, because negotiations and diplomacy simply cannot be pursued.

Fortunately, this is a false premise. Iran and Israel and the United States and Israel are not engaged in an ideological zero-sum game battle. This is a strategic rivalry. It is solvable, but it requires a tremendous amount of diplomacy to be able to find a way out of it. And unfortunately, right now, diplomacy is the last thing that one can describe the foreign policies of these countries, particularly the Bush administration.

AMY GOODMAN: I interviewed exiled Iranian activist Azar Derakhshan earlier this summer. She's the editor of the Women of March 8 magazine and helped organize the 2006 European march against anti-women laws in Iran. I just want to play an excerpt from my conversation with her. This is Azar Derakhshan.

AZAR DERAKHSHAN: I have seen a portrait in the media, Western media. In the media, there is two sides. There is the United States and government of Iran. There are clashes. And the people, the voice of people is absent completely. And the opinion of -- foreigner opinion, they think that this thing, the future of Iran is going to be decided by these two powers.

I try to tell to the people in foreigner countries, in European countries, it's not true, this portrait. There is another fact, very important. The people of Iran, the movement, they are going to take the future. They are not forced to choose between neither the United States, neither the government of Iran. There is another force in Iran. If really somebody wants to prevent the war, the clashes, should be support this movement, this movement for equality, for freedom.

We don't need United States to liberate us. First of all, we are here, and this is our legitimate to liberate ourselves. We want to decide about our future ourselves. We want to fight our native enemy by ourselves. We don't need -- that's first. Second one, we already have seen, because Afghanistan and Iraq, they are neighbor of Iran. And the women of Iran, they can see it. Maybe before, not, but right now it's really -- it's enough to know what kind of program they have for the people of Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: Iranian dissident, Azar Derakhshan. Professor Abrahamian, your response?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, I think she's right in that there are -- Iran is a very complicated society. There are very different political movements. And the idea that somehow it's a frozen system, that it's not going to change, already precludes any type of possibility of negotiations and changes. In fact, the Iranian system has an electoral system -- is and electoral system. We are going to come up with elections very soon. There is no guarantee that Ahmadinejad would be re-elected again. It's very possible that reformers, liberals, would get in into power again.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: In less than two years' time. And the base, in fact, of Ahmadinejad's -- I would say the core base -- is very similar to Bush's core base. It's about 25%. For him to get re-elected, he has to stretch out and find independents and others, and this is going to be very hard. If the reformers can actually rally around one candidate, as they did in the 1990s, they could have landslide victories, in which over 70% of the electorate was voting for liberals and reformers.

AMY GOODMAN: And what direction would a US attack on Iran push the election?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Oh, it would play right into the hands of Ahmadinejad, because you would have a national emergency. He would declare, basically, the country's in danger. Everyone would have to rally around the flag. People who disliked him would keep their mouth shut. At a time of when the existence of the state is in question, you don't mess around with the leaders. He would basically be able to act as a much more of a strongman national leader.

AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, you've had unusual access to US decision makers, Israeli decision makers, Iranian leaders. What is your sense of a strike, the US or Israel, on Iran? Is it imminent?

TRITA PARSI: Well, I don't think an Israeli strike is imminent, unless there is some sort of coordination with the United States with the aim of being able to draw the US into the conflict. I do believe that some sort of a conflict between the United States and Iran is quite probable right now, mindful of the lack of diplomacy that is taking place.

And I also do believe that this is not necessarily something that will go away automatically just because there's going to be a change of government in the United States within the next two years. Many of the decisions that are made right now have the impact of limiting the maneuverability of future administrations. We're making it more and more difficult, not only for this administration, but also for future administrations, to pursue diplomacy.

And what we're seeing in the Middle East right now is not necessarily just a conflict over what's going on in Iraq or about Iran's nuclear program. This is a conflict that, at the end of the day, is about two powerhouses in the region, and it's a conflict about hegemony, for lack of a better word.

And these type of shifts, with the United States currently declining and finding itself in a more and more difficult situation in Iraq and with Iran finding itself in a stronger position and acting very, very confidently, these type of shifts historically do not take place peacefully, unless there is a tremendous amount of diplomacy. And again, we're not seeing that right now.

And I'm very concerned that even if we manage to avoid war for the next two years, the next US administration may find itself in a position in which its maneuverability is so limited that the military option once again becomes a very viable one for them.

AMY GOODMAN: Could Ahmadinejad be playing a game like Saddam Hussein, where if it is clear he doesn't have nuclear weapons, he's weaker, the US would be more likely to attack? He looks at the example of North Korea, where they do have nuclear weapons, and now the US is just pursuing a diplomatic option?

TRITA PARSI: I think there's a combination of two. On the one hand, I think a lot of his statements and his behavior is aimed to be a deterrent against the United States. He's acting confident, and he's talking about the United States not being able to attack. This is a way of saying that the US can't do it, and if you do it, you will face a tremendously difficult situation. So he's doing this partly, too, as a deterrence. It has the negative impact of scaring the daylights out of a lot of people, including a lot of Iran's neighbors that are now gravitating towards the United States's position, because they are very fearful of what Ahmadinejad may be capable of doing.

At the same time, I do believe that, to a certain extent, but not fully, he has actually convinced himself that Iran is in such a strong position, the United States is in such a weak position, that it can't do it. But I think it's a combination of these two. And I think it's important to keep in mind that most of the belligerence that he's doing is probably for the purpose of deterrence, not necessarily as an offensive strategy.

TRITA PARSI: I think the Iranians have played a game in Iraq in which they basically have invested in every potential faction in Iraq, making sure that whoever comes up on top is going to be a player who has strong relations with Iran, because it's in Iran's hardcore national interest to make sure that Iraq never again becomes a hostile state, so they never have to experience the eight-year war that they had with Iraq in the 1980s. So, again, I think we're seeing a policy by the Iranian government there that is quite independent of whether Ahmadinejad is in power or not. It's probably something that another Iranian government would be pursuing, as well, at least under this regime that we're having in Iran right now.

And I think the only way for the United States to be able to find a way out of Iraq is not only to talk to the Iranians, but really include all of the other neighbors of Iraq into the process, giving these neighbors not only a stake in the outcome, but also a stake in the process itself. We have a tremendous amount of problems with what the Saudis are doing in Iraq and also what the Jordanians are doing. We're not talking about that at all. On the contrary, we're just focusing on Iran's role.

TRITA PARSI: Saudi's role -- well, a military report just came out about two months ago -- it was leaked in the LA Times -- that showed that about 45% of all the suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi nationals. We've known for quite some time that there's a lot of money flowing into Iraq from Saudi Arabia that is going to the Sunni insurgents, because their belief is that they're fighting a war against Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. We're not talking about that.

On the contrary, Saudi Arabia got praised by Ambassador Crocker during his testimony. And I think it's a very one-sided way of looking at the problems we're facing in Iraq. And as long as we pursue a very political perspective on the Iraqi situation, then I fear that we will continue to be in a rather difficult mess over there.

AMY GOODMAN: Your book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States. And a final question for Professor Abrahamian: Are you afraid for your people? Are you afraid for the people of Iran?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yes. I'm very much concerned that in the next few months there will be air strikes. I think what we saw before with Iraq, we are having a rerun of that, very much the same rhetoric. Tthe same type of people are pushing for war and using even the same sort of arguments that often -- unsubstantiated arguments blown out of proportion. For instance, the constant drumbeat that Iran is actually supplying weaponry to the insurgents that are killing Americans, this is basically saying that Iran has already declared war on the United States. When you try to actually pin down what is the evidence for that, it boils down to the yellowcake stories and the stuff about Saddam Hussein being behind al-Qaeda. Until the United States actually gets real evidence that Iran is providing lethal weapons to the insurgents, I would not accept any of those arguments at face value.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Abrahamian, thank you, as well, for being with us. Ervand Abrahamian is author of the book Targeting Iran.

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US trains Gulf air forces for war with Iran

Tim Shipman in Washington
Telegraph

The American air force is working with military leaders from the Gulf to train and prepare Arab air forces for a possible war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

An air warfare conference in Washington last week was told how American air chiefs have helped to co-ordinate intelligence-sharing with Gulf Arab nations and organise combined exercises designed to make it easier to fight together.

Gen Michael Mosley, the US Air Force chief of staff, used the conference to seek closer links with allies whose support America might need if President George W Bush chooses to bomb Iran.

Pentagon air chiefs have helped set up an air warfare centre in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where Gulf nations are training their fighter pilots and America has big bases. It is modelled on the US Air Force warfare centre at Nellis air force base in Nevada.

Jordan and the UAE have both taken part in combined exercises designed to make sure their air forces can fly, and fight, together and with American jets.

The conference was long-planned to discuss developments in air warfare technology, but the question of possible hostilities involving Iran was discussed.

Bruce Lemkin, the American air force deputy under-secretary for international affairs, said: "We need friends and partners with the capabilities to take care of their own security and stability in their regions and, through the relationship, the inter-operability and the will to join us in coalitions when appropriate...

"On its most basic level, it's about flying together, operating together and training together so, if we have to, we can fight together."

While it is unlikely that America's Gulf allies would join any US air strike against suspected nuclear targets in Iran, their co-operation might be required to allow passage of warplanes though their airspace. American defence officials are also keen that Iran's Arab neighbours prepare to deal with any Iranian attempt to target them in return.

Lt Gen Prince Faisal bin Al Hussein, who is special assistant to the chief of staff of the Jordanian armed forces, said "concern at Iran's attempt to establish itself as a regional superpower" had led to greater co-operation, "not just at the inter-service level but also at the political level".

He said the new air warfare centre had allowed them to "exchange information and exercise together".

But Air Chief Marshal Sir Glen Torpy, the head of the RAF, voiced the fear of many British officials that America is too devoted to military solutions. He said: "In an environment like this, we always focus on the part that the military can play in solving security and foreign policy problems, but the military will rarely, if ever, be the solution."

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Neocons seek to justify action against Teheran

Tim Shipman
Telegraph

American diplomats have been ordered to compile a dossier detailing Iran's violations of international law that some fear could be used to justify military strikes against the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

Members of the US secretariat in the United Nations were asked earlier this month to begin "searching for things that Iran has done wrong", The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Some US diplomats believe the exercise — reminiscent of attempts by vice-president Dick Cheney and the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to build the case against Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war — will boost calls for military action by neo-conservatives inside and outside the administration.

One diplomat revealed the plans for an Iran dossier to Steven Clemons, a fellow with the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, who has previously revealed attempts by Mr Cheney's allies to pressurise President George W Bush into war.

He said: "There are people more beholden to the Cheney side who have people searching for things that Iran has done wrong - making the case. They've been given instructions to build a dossier. They've been scouring around for stuff over the last couple of weeks." He recently exposed how a member of Mr Cheney's office used private meetings with neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise think- tank to reveal the vice-president's frustration that Mr Bush had authorised a diplomatic strategy against Iran by his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

Last week, Newsweek magazine went further, claiming that David Wurmser, until last month Mr Cheney's Middle East adviser, had told fellow neo-conservatives that Mr Cheney had considered asking Israel to launch limited missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. The intention, it was said, would be to provoke a reaction from Teheran that would help justify wider US air strikes.

Mr Wurmser, an analyst in the Pentagon unit that tried to link Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks, denied the claims, saying, "That conspiracy is unrecognisable to anything I have ever seen or heard or done." But he refused to discuss Mr Cheney's views.

Opponents of military action were further alarmed last week when it emerged that Norman Podhoretz, one of the godfathers of neo-conservatism, used a 45-minute meeting with Mr Bush at the White House to lobby for the bombing of Iran's nuclear plants.

Mr Podhoretz disclosed that, when he said Mr Bush was just "giving futility its chance" by pursuing diplomacy, the president and his former aide Karl Rove had burst out laughing. "It struck me," Mr Podhoretz added, "that if they really believed that there was a chance for these negotiations and sanctions to work, they would not have laughed. They would have got their backs up and said, 'No, no, it's not futile, there's a very good chance'." He said he believed "Bush is going to hit" Iran before his presidency ends.

Mr Podhoretz is highly influential. His son-in-law is Elliott Abrams, Mr Bush's deputy national security adviser, who is regarded by US officials as a key advocate of bombing Iran. He was found guilty of withholding evidence from Congress over the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.

Concern is also growing in the CIA and the Pentagon that the White House exaggerated intelligence used to justify an Israeli air raid on a suspected nuclear facility in Syria earlier this month, which some neo-conservatives hope is a precursor to war with Iran.

Bruce Reidel, a former CIA Middle East desk officer, said the neo-conservatives realised their influence would wane rapidly when Mr Bush left office in just over 15 months. "Whatever crazy idea they have to try to transform the Middle East, they have to push now. The real hardline neo-conservatives are getting desperate that the door of history is about to close on them with an epitaph of total failure."

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Kurds flee Iranian shelling of border

Washington Times

By Yahya Barzanji - MARDOW, Iraq (AP) — As explosions boomed in the distance, a Kurdish woman stood outside her house and pointed to where shells scorched parts of her father's grape and plum orchards.

"It was a bad day when some 20 shells hit our village in a single day last week. We were crying as we prayed to God to protect us from the bombs of the Islamic Republic of Iran," said Serwa Ibrahim, 33, one of the few remaining villagers in Mardow, about 25 miles from the Iranian border.

Iranian troops are accused of bombing border areas for weeks against suspected positions of the Free Life Party, or PJAK, a breakaway faction of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party. Iran says PJAK — which seeks autonomy for Kurds in Iran — launches attacks inside Iran from bases in Iraq.

Shelling of border areas resumed yesterday after a brief lull, with Iranian shells hitting the Iraqi side of the border and causing fires. AP Television News showed white smoke billowing from mountainous areas, and Kurdish shepherds carrying carcasses of sheep killed by the shelling.

The Iranian shelling was criticized by Iraqi officials and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, warned it could have negative effects on the crucial relations between Iran and Iraq's Shi'ite-led government.

Ari Yashir, a PJAK member, took a reporter on a tour around several deserted villages and said the Iranian attacks only serve to harm civilians.

"The bombing is only targeting villages where we have no bases," he said. "After three weeks of Iranian shelling none of our positions was hit and not a single member of our party was wounded."

Most of the people who fled their homes have gathered in an area known as Shewe Hasow, a valley with water springs in the Qandil Mountain area that borders Iran and Turkey. Many of them stay in tents or under covers mostly supplied by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Kurdish region's interior minister, Othman Haji Mahmoud, told the Kurdish regional parliament Tuesday that the Iranian shelling led to the displacement of about 450 families in 20 villages. He said the latest wave of shelling began Aug. 14.

In Baghdad, Mr. Zebari said Tuesday that the main areas struck are in the northern provinces of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah. He said the Iranian ambassador was recently summoned to the Foreign Ministry and handed a note of protest.

"PJAK sometimes moves in border areas, but this does not permit all this continuous, daily and intensive shelling," Mr. Zebari said.

To some Kurds in the region, they have been living the war for decades, including widespread atrocities blamed on Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s.

"We are the victims of a continuous struggle. My house was destroyed five times and I rebuilt it. Let this be the sixth time," said Abdullah Wasou Ibrahim, who fled to the refugee camp with 10 family members.

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Reformist paper closed by Iran for second time

By Robert Tait in Tehran
The Guardian

Authorities in Iran closed down the country's leading reformist newspaper yesterday in the latest stage of an offensive against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opponents in the media.

Shargh, which has been critical of Mr Ahmadinejad, was ordered to shut after running an interview with an anti-regime poet last Saturday. The poet, Saghi Qahraman, has been accused by the country's Islamic rulers of promoting homosexuality.

The newspaper unsuccessfully attempted to placate official anger by publishing a front-page apology today after withdrawing the article from its website.

It was the second time Shargh had been shut in less than a year. It only re-opened in May after being closed last autumn, ostensibly because of official disapproval over the make-up of its editorial team. However, insiders believed the real reason was a cartoon depicting a haloed donkey - assumed to symbolise Mr Ahmadinejad - addressing the UN general assembly.

Shargh's editor, Ahmad Gholami, suggested that Saturday's interview was merely an excuse for the latest closure. "Publication of an interview is not a plausible justification for banning a newspaper," he said.

Ham Mihan, a moderate newspaper, and ILNA, a trade union-linked news agency, were closed last month. Twenty-seven MPs recently wrote to Mr Ahmadinejad complaining about official filtering of news-based websites. They also urged him to ease the confrontational approach towards critical media.

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad silences his critics

By Colin Freeman in Teheran
Sunday Telegraph

Ali Nikoo Nesbati glances carefully at the couple who have just sat down at the table next to him. Aged in their 20s and dressed in fashionable Western clothes, they seem like the kind of people who'd be natural supporters of the pro-democracy movement that he leads. Yet their decision to sit right next to him, when the rest of the café in the secluded Teheran alley is empty, is enough to make him suspicious.

"They were probably just ordinary customers," he whispered, as he ushered The Sunday Telegraph back on to the streets to continue the interview elsewhere. "But you never know. We were sat in that café for 45 minutes, which is long enough for the intelligence services to find out where we are."

A paranoia about who might be listening is an occupational hazard for activists like Mr Nesbati, whose campaigns for reform of Iran's theocratic government have led to constant run-ins with the secret police since the late Nineties.

But that sense of paranoia is now greater than ever, as a long-feared crackdown by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the country's puritanical leader, finally appears to be coming into force.

In what activists claim is a "cultural revolution" reminiscent of the Islamic Republic's turbulent birth in 1979, the regime has turned on its critics in all walks of life, harassing pro-democracy activists, shutting down dissident publications and dismissing independent-minded government officials and academics.

The onslaught has confounded early impressions that Mr Ahmadinejad, despite his religious zealotry, threats against Israel and defiance over Iran's nuclear programme, was not proving as aggressive as feared when it came to dealing with his internal opposition.

When members of Mr Nesbati's pro-democracy group staged a demonstration at Teheran's Amir Kabir University last December, in which they held photos of the president upside-down and denounced him as a "fascist", Mr Ahmadinejad surprised the world by requesting that they should not be arrested. He later cited his move as proof of the "absolute, total freedom" Iranians enjoyed.

The presidential pardon appears to have been short-lived. Eight of those protesters have since been jailed, the victims of what Mr Nesbati claims was a state-sponsored plot.

"Ahmadinejad said nobody would touch them, but the intelligence agencies smeared them by printing a blasphemous publication which they blamed on the students," he said. "We believe that was Ahmadinejad's revenge. We don't know if he ordered it himself, but we are convinced it was his supporters."

The students, one of whom has now spent more than two months in jail, are among 70 to have been arrested since Mr Ahmadinejad came to power; nearly half of these were seized in the last four months. More than 500 others have been suspended or expelled from university because of political activities, while about 130 student publications and 40 student organisations have been closed.

The accusations levelled against them typically include "endangering national security", spreading "rumours and lies" and "having relations with foreign intelligence agencies", all charges that Mr Nesbati has faced in his years as an activist, during which he has been arrested three times.

"They're not really charges as such, they just assume you are guilty and then ask why you did it," he said. "It's stressful the first time you're arrested but after that it's not so bad, although it depends what they do to you.

"Sometimes people get put in a room where they're made to stand facing a wall for 48 hours at a time. If you fall asleep, they hit you."

Campaigners say the crackdown began in March, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Spiritual Leader and a man of similar hardline views to Mr Ahmadinejad, made a speech warning Iranians against the West's "psychological warfare". This was taken to be a reference to Washington's funding of opposition groups, pro-democracy movements and anti-regime satellite broadcasts.

The president, who is regarded by many as little more than a mouthpiece for Mr Khamenei, is thought to have taken this as a cue to move against any groups critical of the regime.

Women's rights groups and trade union leaders have reported being harassed, scholars have been put under pressure for refusing to sign anti-Israeli statements, and Iran's press has claimed to have received lists of banned topics, such as the effect of threatened United Nations sanctions. University professors have also been warned against attending conferences abroad, and several visiting Iranian-American academics remain in custody after being charged with espionage.

One Western diplomat in Iran said the situation was "uneasy". He said: "The crackdown has been more gradual than people expected, but over the last few months we have been getting a lot of stories of people being hassled."

Similar clampdowns took place under President Mohammad Khatami, Mr Ahmadinejad's reformist-minded predecessor, whose campaign to introduce a liberal regime was not always heeded by hardline elements in the security forces.

However, activists say that now there is no longer a voice in government to speak for them. "Back then people would get arrested, but then Khatami would use his influence to get them released," said Abdullah Momeni, the leader of Tahkim Vahdat, Iran's largest student organisation and a prominent critic of the regime. "Now those who are arrested are not even getting released."

The attacks on reformists come as they struggle to recover from the splits and apathy that led to them losing the 2005 elections to Mr Ahmadinejad. The movement is divided between more conservative elements, who prefer gradual change within the existing clerical system of government, and those who wish to replace the Islamic republic altogether with a Western-style, secular democracy.

Both sides have talked of forming an alliance to defeat Mr Ahmadinejad in the next presidential elections, but no mutually credible figure has emerged to head it.

The fact that many reformists were still at large to criticise the regime, meanwhile, was not grounds for optimism, said Mr Momeni. "Now the judiciary and parliament and president feel so powerful that they don't really see us as a threat any more. It shows that in a sense, we have lost our status and position in society."

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Iran urged to end petrol rations after violent unrest

By Robert Tait in Tehran
Guardian

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was under pressure to perform a U-turn on petrol rationing yesterday after the restriction prompted violent protests at filling stations across the country this week.

MPs said they would press the government to alter or even scrap the plan after angry citizens set fire to at least a dozen petrol stations in Tehran and chanted slogans against President Ahmadinejad following Tuesday night's sudden introduction of quotas.

Banks, supermarkets and fire engines were also attacked while further disturbances were reported in other big cities, including Isfahan and Shiraz.

There were unconfirmed reports that three people were killed in the violence, which led to 80 arrests.

In a sign of official concern that the disturbances might spread, the government temporarily closed the country's mobile phone text messaging network after widespread circulation of a text urging protestors to gather in Tehran's Valiasr Square.

The unrest was triggered by an announcement on state television on the rationing, prompting a rush by drivers to fill their tanks. Motorists are restricted to a monthly limit of 100 litres (22 gallons) for the next four months while cab drivers must not exceed 800 litres.

Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, imposed rationing to try to cut the estimated £5bn annual cost of providing massively subsidised petrol, which has to be imported because the country lacks refinery capacity. While parliament has already approved the plan, MPs had urged the government to delay the scheme amid fears over its social and economic impact. However, some analysts say it has become more urgent because of the prospect of further UN security council sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme.

Nevertheless, there was anger yesterday that the government had implemented the scheme without prior notice in an apparent attempt to prevent fuel hoarding. Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam, the chief of police, said its implementation had even been kept secret from his officers, so there had been no time to provide extra security for the filling stations.

MPs attacked the failure to allow motorists to buy fuel at higher free market prices and said that if disturbances continued parliament might be recalled from the three-week recess that began yesterday.

Kamal Daneshyar, chairman of the parliamentary energy committee, said: "We have told the government ... that rationing with this mechanism should not be implemented, but they paid no attention. Petrol rationing will not last long and will be only a short-term measure. Free-market prices should be offered sufficiently."

The decision has already had an impact on Tehran's congested roads, with traffic cut as cars are left at home to save fuel. Taxi drivers have responded by raising fares.

Issa Saharkhiz, a political analyst, suggested the impact on the fortunes of Mr Ahmadinejad's could be equally dramatic. "This will damage [him] and the people and groups around him, maybe even the supreme leader. He is not going to be a candidate for a second presidential term."

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MP threatened after comments on Khamenei

By Robert Tait in Tehran
Guardian

One of Iran's most outspoken MPs has received a death threat after suggesting that the country's supreme leader is a weaker figure than the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual head of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The threat appeared amid abusive text messages sent to Emad Afrough, a fundamentalist critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after he described Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as "more expediency-seeking than the late imam".

"The imam [Khomeini] was more truth-seeking and less inclined towards tarouf [traditional courtesy] and expediency. Perhaps the restrictions and pressures prevent him from expressing true stances. [But] we are living in a system where truth is supposed to rule, not factional, personal or group expediencies."

Mr Afrough's comments, to the Farsi news agency, are highly sensitive in Iran, where insulting the leader carries a potential jail sentence. Yesterday he was ousted as chairman of parliament's cultural committee. He insists his remarks were taken out of context and accuses "power-seekers" of orchestrating a smear campaign. "If even [assassination] happens, I would regard it as martyrdom and accept it with great pride," he told Aftab website.

The Kayhan newspaper, believed to have close ties to the leadership, defended Mr Afrough and said his comments were not an attack on Mr Khamenei.

Meanwhile, Iran said yesterday it was holding a fourth US-Iranian citizen on suspicion of spying. Ali Shakeri, an academic at the University of California's Centre for Citizen Peacebuilding, has failed to return from a trip to Iran. Three American-Iranians have already been detained for alleged spying and security offences.

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Ahmadinejad faces backlash over plans for petrol rationing

By Robert Tait in Tehran
Guardian

Iran is to introduce petrol rationing in two weeks in a move that belies its status as the world's fourth-largest oil exporter and threatens to trigger a popular backlash against its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The country's motorists - used to some of the cheapest fuel in the world - will be restricted to three litres a day under a scheme to cut fuel consumption and reduce the burden on Iran's struggling economy of providing subsidised petrol.

The population is already restive over rising prices amid an inflation rate estimated at 20% to 30%. It also contradicts Mr Ahmadinejad's pre-election promise to reduce poverty and bring Iran's oil wealth to "people's tables".

But the country has a large budget deficit caused by fuel subsidies and there are fears that rising demand could exhaust Iran's oil-exporting capacity within 15 years. The ration plan, earmarked for June 7, was to start this week but was delayed amid difficulties in smart card technology at filling stations. Worries over political consequences have prompted speculation that it may be postponed indefinitely.

However, the government had already upset motorists by announcing on Tuesday that a litre of petrol would go up by 1p to 5p. While tiny by western standards, the rise is controversial in a country where cheap fuel is taken for granted.

Under rationing, things will get tougher. Kamal Daneshyar, head of parliament's energy committee, said drivers would pay 20p a litre for petrol above their quota.

A Tehran-based analyst, who requested anonymity, predicted that rationing would trigger more inflation. But he added: "This country can't go on consuming and wasting the amount of fuel that it does. It is one of the top three per capita users of energy in the world. Keep going at that rate and we will end up consuming all the hydrocarbons we produce. It has great strategic implications for Iran as an energy exporter."

Mr Ahmadinejad's woes at home were compounded overseas yesterday when a spokesman at the White House called a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency into Iran's nuclear activities "a laundry list of Iran's continued defiance of the international community".

Iran had not only ignored a UN security council deadline to stop uranium enrichment activity but had expanded it, according to the IAEA report.

Relations with the US are likely to deteriorate further after reports that Iran has imprisoned another Iranian-American affiliated with George Soros's Open Society Institute - the fourth dual citizen to be detained in Iran in recent months.

Tehran-based social scientist and urban planner Kian Tajbakhsh was arrested on around May 11. Tehran has accused the Soros group of promoting "soft revolution" - a term used to refer to a perceived US plot to undermine the Islamic state.

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We cannot look from the sides as we are led towards crisis over Iran

By John Pilger
Guardian

Bush and Blair have spent four years preparing an onslaught that is about oil, rather than non-existent nuclear weapons

The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. "They were sick and some were dying," she said. "Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable 'looking from the side'."

It is time we in Britain stopped looking from the side. We are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush/Cheney/Blair "long war" edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation's independence from rapacious America. The safe delivery of the 15 British sailors into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his rivals (until their masters got the wind up) is both farce and distraction. The Bush administration, in secret connivance with Blair, has spent four years preparing for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Forty-five cruise missiles are primed to strike. According to General Leonid Ivashov, Russia's leading strategic thinker: "Nuclear facilities will be secondary targets, and there are 20 such facilities. Combat nuclear weapons may be used, and this will result in the radioactive contamination of all the Iranian territory, and beyond."

And yet there is a surreal silence in Britain, except for the noise of "news" in which powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious, but dare not make sense of it lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapses, and the truth is revealed.

"The days of Britain having to apologise for the British empire are over," declared Gordon Brown to the Daily Mail. "We should celebrate!" In Late Victorian Holocausts, the historian Mike Davis documents that as many as 21 million Indians died unnecessarily in famines criminally imposed by British policies. And since the formal demise of that glorious imperium, declassified official files make clear that British governments have borne "significant responsibility" for the direct or indirect deaths of between 8.6 million and 13.5 million people throughout the world - from imperial military interventions and at the hands of regimes strongly supported by Britain. The historian Mark Curtis calls these victims "unpeople". "Rejoice!" said Thatcher. "Celebrate!" says the paymaster of Blair's bloodbath. Spot the difference.

We need to look behind the one-way moral screen, urgently. Last October, the Lancet published research led by Johns Hopkins University in the US that calculated the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion. Downing Street acolytes derided the study as "flawed". They were lying. They knew that the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Roy Anderson, had backed the survey, describing its methods as "robust" and "close to best practice", and that other government officials had secretly approved the "tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones". The figure of Iraqi deaths is now estimated at close to a million.

"This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair," wrote Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet, "is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own indifference." Such is the scale of the crime and of our "looking from the side".

As hysteria is again fabricated, for Iraq, read Iran. According to the former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the Bush cabal decided to attack Iraq on "day one" of Bush's administration, long before 9/11 - and it beggars belief that Blair did not know that. The main reason was oil. O'Neill was shown a Pentagon document entitled Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts, which outlined the carve-up of Iraq's oilfields among the major Anglo-American companies. Under a law written by American and British officials, the Iraqi puppet regime is about to hand over the extraction of the largest concentration of oil on earth to Anglo-American companies.

Nothing like this piracy has happened before in the modern Middle East. Across the Shatt al-Arab waterway the other prize: Iran's vast oilfields. Just as non-existent weapons of mass destruction or facile concerns for democracy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, so non-existent nuclear weapons have nothing to do with an American onslaught on Iran. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has never cited Iran for diverting its civilian programme to military use. For the past three years IAEA inspectors have said that they have been allowed to "go anywhere". The recent security council sanctions against Iran are the result of Washington's bribery.

Until recently the British were unaware that their government was one of the world's most consistent abusers of human rights and backers of state terrorism. Few knew that British intelligence set out systematically to destroy secular Arab nationalism and in the 1980s recruited and trained young Muslims as part of a $4bn Anglo-American-backed jihad against the Soviet Union. The fuse of the bombs that killed 52 Londoners was lit by "us".

In my experience, most people do not contort their morality and intellect to comply with the double standards of rampant power and the media's notion of approved evil - of worthy and unworthy victims. They would, if they knew, grieve for all the lives, families, careers, hopes and dreams destroyed by Blair and Bush. The sure evidence is the British public's wholehearted response to the 2004 tsunami, shaming that of the government. Certainly, they would agree with Robert Jackson, the chief counsel of the United States at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. "Crimes are crimes," he said, "whether we do them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

Like Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld, who dare not travel to certain countries for fear of being prosecuted as war criminals, Blair as a private citizen may no longer be untouchable. On March 20 Baltasar Garzon, the tenacious Spanish judge who pursued General Pinochet, called for indictments against those responsible for "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history" - Iraq. Five days later, the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, to which Britain is a signatory, said that Blair could one day face war-crimes charges.

These are critical changes in the way the sane world thinks - again, thanks to the reich of Blair/Bush. However, we also live in the most dangerous of times. On April 6 Blair accused "elements of the Iranian regime" of "financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq". He offered no evidence, and the MoD has none. This is the same Goebbels-like refrain with which he and his coterie, Brown included, brought an epic bloodletting to Iraq. How long will the rest of us continue looking from the side?

* This is an edited version of an article in the current New Statesman; John Pilger's new film, The War on Democracy, will be previewed at the National Film Theatre in London on May 11
www.johnpilger.com

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Teheran keeps reformers out of elections

By Gethin Chamberlain, Philip Sherwell and Kay Biouki in Teheran
Sunday Telegraph

The Iranian government has launched a crackdown on its critics in an apparent attempt to prevent them from standing in forthcoming parliamentary elections.

While Iran's international opponents have been distracted by the row over the country's nuclear programme and the British naval hostages, Teheran has taken the opportunity to tackle reformers targeted by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since he came to power.

As part of a wider crackdown, Iran's parliament has also passed laws enabling security organisations - including the Revolutionary Guard, which was responsible for kidnapping the 15 Britons - to detain suspects for months for the purposes of interrogation.

Police are also reportedly planning to tackle more low-level dissent, including standards of public attire. Women who fail to cover their hair fully, or who wear skirts or coats considered immodestly short, are expected to be among the first targets in the next few days.

Some western diplomats are sceptical about the credentials of the reformists, regarding them as only slightly more moderate than Ahmadinejad's hardliners, though they enjoyed more freedom under the previous presidency of Mohammad Khatami, who held the post from 1997 to 2005.

Mr Khatami, whose foreign policy was more conciliatory than his successor's, was elected on the back of promises to liberalise some parts of Iranian life. But his policies brought him into conflict with supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and religious hardliners. Those who took advantage of the greater freedoms under Mr Khatami's regime are now suffering the backlash.

One of the reformers singled out for attention is Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister facing trial on charges of undermining state security.

Mr Tajzadeh, a Teheran city councillor, is a strong supporter of the 1979 Islamic revolution but has repeatedly insisted the regime should not silence its critics.

An even bigger name, Reza Khatami, the younger brother of the former president and editor of the banned reformist newspaper Mosharekat, has been charged with "activities that undermine the Islamic system".

Mr Khatami, who is married to the granddaughter of the Islamic republic's founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, also has impressive revolutionary credentials - as a student, he was involved in the US embassy siege and he is a former deputy parliamentary speaker.

Last night Mohsen Armin, a spokesman for the reformist Organisation of Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution party, said the aim of the charges was to prevent dissidents standing in the forthcoming elections.

"They want to have a sword above our head and the rest is excuses," he said. "The main issue here is that in the coming year we have the parliamentary elections. Because rejecting reformist candidates in the previous election created problems for the judiciary, they are taking a different route this time."

Rather than risk further international criticism for an overt clampdown on opponents, he said the government was using the courts to neuter them.

"What they want to do is to put the reformists in court now, and sentence them for any reason. If they have a court record, they will automatically be barred from standing for election," he said.

"The hardliners desperately want to see the back of the reformists and have proved that they are willing to use any kind of tactic to achieve their goal."

Mr Armin, who has previously been fined one million tomans (£600) for comments he made about the judiciary, said Mr Tajzadeh had been accused of cheating in an earlier election, resulting in the cancellation of 700,000 votes and the election of Gholan Ali Hadad Adel, the present parliamentary speaker.

He said the authorities were also targeting newspapers. Mosharekat is just one of more than 30 journals that operated under the Khatami administration but have since been closed down.

Amir Taheri, an exiled Iranian journalist based in Europe, said the regime was preparing show trials for scores of dissidents.

Despite pleas from Iraq and Iran, the US has decided to detain five Iranian intelligence agents captured in Iraq.

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Poverty and Human Rights in Iran

By Navid Ahmadi
ROOZ

"When a country has more soldiers than teachers, how can one hope for the elimination of poverty and injustice?"

These are the words of Nobel Peace Laureate and founder of the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, Shirin Ebadi. Ebadi was giving a speech at a seminar entitled "Human Rights and Essential Needs of Humans." "Eliminating poverty," declared Ebadi, "is one of the main responsibilities of every government. Otherwise, one cannot hope for the recognition of human rights. If, for example, administrative corruption in a government causes poverty, then that can be classified as a crime against humanity."

Shirin Ebadi added at the end, "One of the promises made by the current administration [in Iran] was to announce the names of those who have misused public funds. We are still waiting for the implementation of the president's promise."

Another participant in the seminar, Saeed Madani, spoke about the causes behind poverty. "Each year," said Madani, "the high cost of health care pushes many individuals below the poverty line. The per capita expenditure on health care is very low in Iran compared to other countries. It constitutes only 4.4 percent of the gross domestic product." Madani went on to talk about the regional distribution of health care expenditures: "The province of Ardebil has the poorest health indicators in the nation. In this province, for every ten thousand people there is only 1.5 general practitioner and 0.5 specialists. There are only 5 operating hospital beds per ten thousand individuals. In Tehran, by contrast, there are 7.1 general practitioners, 3 specialists and 17 operating hospital beds for every ten thousand people."

Economist and university professor Dr. Ali Rashidi was another participant at this seminar. Rashidi's speech revolved around the government's economic performance. "Currently," noted Rashidi, "there are about 1.5 million people in Iran at the lowest levels below poverty line, and about 10.5 to 12 million are at the higher levels below poverty line. All in all, about 15 percent of the population lives below the poverty line."

Dr. Rashidi blamed inflation as one of the main causes of poverty: "We witness a 37 to 40 percent increase in the money supply, which adds to the inflation and pushes more people into poverty."

Dr. Kamal Athari was another economist present at the seminar, who spoke about housing problems. "The government," said Athari, "is responsible for the provision of housing, which is a main component of human rights. But we are witnessing a rise in the number of unofficial housing units at the margins of urban cities such as Tehran. The rate of marginal urban dwellings has increased from 5 percent per year in 1977 to 20 percent."

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Iranian President's Setbacks Embolden His Domestic Critics

By BILL SPINDLE
Establishment Rivals
Fault Populism, Foreign Policy;
Nuclear Deadline Looms

TEHRAN, Iran -- With another confrontational moment in Iran's nuclear standoff approaching next month, criticism of the country's president at home is increasing. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose landslide victory in elections 18 months ago set the Iranian establishment reeling, suddenly faces a concerted effort by political foes to constrain both his populist economic policies and his public defiance of the West.

Many of Tehran's elite politicians and even clerics have long harbored concerns about Mr. Ahmadinejad, who ascended to the country's top political post from outside the traditional ruling circles. But the immense popularity he generated among Iran's poor and working-class voters kept many of his critics from speaking out or openly moving against his policies. He also appeared to have the backing of the most important figure in Iran's power structure, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But a round of elections late last year -- for local municipal and village leaders as well as an important national consultative body -- has undermined Mr. Ahmadinejad's political momentum and unleashed a flood of public criticism and moves to clip his wings. Candidates whom Mr. Ahmadinejad supported fared poorly in the elections, while key adversaries re-established themselves as fixtures of the political scene.

In Tehran's city council, from which Mr. Ahmadinejad launched his campaign for president two years ago, his supporters went from a majority to a handful of seats. Meanwhile, Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom Mr. Ahmadinejad defeated in the presidential election two years ago, dominated the voting for seats on the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with choosing a new Supreme Leader when the 67-year-old Mr. Khamenei steps down or dies.

Since those public votes, a drumbeat of criticism against Mr. Ahmadinejad's administration has emerged from within Iran's Parliament and among some senior regime officials. The president even found himself confronted by a crowd of jeering students during an appearance at a Tehran university campus, with a video of the incident distributed on the Internet. "The elections opened a space and legitimized criticism of him," said Nasser Hadian, a political-science professor at the University of Tehran. "There are going to be more attempts to contain him."

The poor showing by candidates associated with Mr. Ahmadinejad in local elections -- and the relatively better performance of reform candidates opposed to him -- resulted from the sort of strong turnout that generally favors reformers. The country's conservatives also failed to rally behind a single slate of candidates, as they did during the earlier presidential election. But high on many voters' minds is Iran's increasingly muddled economy.

The president won the election with vows to improve the living standards of Iranians. He has pursued a populist agenda, while traversing the nation to announce development initiatives. Rising spending, however, has sparked a bout of inflation, which officially is 15% but private economists say likely is far higher. After a speech introducing his annual budget -- which will push spending another 20% higher for the fiscal year beginning in March -- Mr. Ahmadinejad argued with several parliamentarians over the rising price of tomatoes.

While Mr. Ahmadinejad's appeal persists among his core supporters, they are among the hardest-hit by rising inflation, and some privately express doubts about his leadership.

"He looked like a decent person, one of us," says one 57-year-old man who works part time washing dishes in a restaurant in southern Tehran. "I voted for him, but I wouldn't again."

Meanwhile, Mr. Rafsanjani, a longtime regime power broker and president of the country during much of the early 1990s, is spearheading a tentative movement to rein in Mr. Ahmadinejad, particularly his proclamations about Iran's nuclear program and denunciations of Israel. A large group of parliamentarians, including many who once supported Mr. Ahmadinejad, recently met with Mr. Rafsanjani. The gathering was seen as an important indication that support for Mr. Ahmadinejad is eroding.

A key question is whether Mr. Khamenei will continue backing Mr. Ahmadinejad. While the Supreme Leader has vocally defended the president and largely embraced his confrontational approach toward the United Nations Security Council on the nuclear issue in, Mr. Khamenei has done little to stem criticism of Mr. Ahmadinejad. He also has held several meetings with Mr. Rafsanjani.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's standing with Mr. Khamenei, and the broader attempts to rein him in, could be important in the run-up to a Feb. 20 deadline for the Security Council resolution passed in December ordering Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment program. The U.S. and European countries say the program has violated international rules and is aimed at creating a nuclear weapon. Iran says the program is peaceful and hasn't violated international rules.

The resolution included a limited set of sanctions targeting officials and organizations accused of involvement in the nuclear program. European governments have joined with the U.S. to broaden and toughen those punishments. The U.S. is expected to push for harsher sanctions if Iran doesn't stop its enrichment program.

Mr. Khamenei reiterated publicly recently that Iran wouldn't halt enrichment, but Mr. Ahmadinejad has been relatively quiet on the issue in public. Some European diplomats and Iranian analysts say Iran might agree to a temporary pause in the program after the country completes a research-level enrichment project in coming weeks, in an effort to keep the crisis from escalating further.

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Whose Iran?

By LAURA SECOR
The New York Times Magazine

The Mahestan mall in South Tehran is sometimes called "the honeycomb" of the Basij, the Iranian youth militia, because it is here that Basijis, as the militia members are known, buy and sell banners for the Shiite festival of Ashura, as well as religious books and posters. Somber, bearded young men in collarless shirts linger over tea behind stands selling tapes of religious singers — cult celebrities who belt out tear-jerking laments for the martyrdom of Hussein and make a small fortune performing at memorial services. Omid Malekian, a 28-year-old employee of a Tehran petrochemical refinery and the son of a carpenter, was shopping at Mahestan on Dec. 16, the day after Iran's elections for city councils and for the Assembly of Experts, the 86-member clerical board that will select the next supreme leader should anything happen to the current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the 2005 presidential election, Malekian voted for the winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and when I asked if he was happy with the president, he answered frankly.

"Sometimes I am analyzing myself and thinking, Oh, we have done wrong," he mused. "He is very popular and friendly with the people, but sometimes when he is expressing his ideas, he doesn't think about the future or the consequences. He is a simple man."

In particular, Malekian suggested that Ahmadinejad had been incautious in his promises to improve the economy — promises he has yet to keep. There was another area, too, in which Ahmadinejad had faltered: "About the Holocaust," he said. "I don't know much about it, but from the reaction of the world, it seems he should have said something different." Still, Malekian said that he voted for the most severe fundamentalist among the candidates running for the clerical Assembly of Experts. The campaign turned on the competition between two incumbents, Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi — widely reputed to be Ahmadinejad's spiritual leader — and Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the pragmatic former president who lost the presidential race to Ahmadinejad in 2005. Each hoped to increase his share of the vote and thus his power on the assembly. South Tehran is Ahmadinejad's heartland. It is here, in the less affluent neighborhoods of the city of 14 million where he was once mayor, that he rose from the obscure end of the seven-candidate roster in 2005, only to become one of the most popular figures in the Muslim world. Because liberal-minded Iranians boycotted the 2005 presidential election, and because Ahmadinejad so adeptly played the populist card, the militants, the unemployed and the cultural conservatives of neighborhoods like this one were in the driver's seat, steering the politics of this crucial nation while their opponents warned of their presumed doctrinaire views and political naïveté.

Early on, Ahmadinejad's faction was expected to win last month's elections handily. But the results contradicted the conventional wisdom about the Iranian electorate. The president put forward his own slate of candidates for the city councils. It was trounced. By some reckonings, reformists won two-fifths of the council seats and even dominated in some cities, including Kerman and Arak. Some conservative city-council candidates did well, particularly in Tehran, but they were not the conservatives associated with Ahmadinejad: rather, they belonged to the rival conservative faction of the current Tehran mayor, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. And most significant, the vote for Rafsanjani for the Assembly of Experts dwarfed that of Mesbah-Yazdi by nearly two to one. By mid-January, Ahmadinejad's isolation even within his own faction was complete: 150 of 290 members of parliament, including many of Ahmadinejad's onetime allies, signed a letter criticizing the president's economic policies for failing to stanch unemployment and inflation. A smaller group also blamed Ahmadinejad's inflammatory foreign-policy rhetoric for the United Nations Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran. As if that were not enough, an editorial in Jomhouri Eslami, a newspaper that reflects the views of the supreme leader, accused the president of using the nuclear issue to distract the public from his failed policies. Ahmadinejad's behavior was diminishing popular support for the nuclear program, the editorial warned. The Iranian political system seems to be restoring its equilibrium by showing an extremist president the limits of his power. But is it an equilibrium that can hold?

In part, last month's election results reflected the complexity of Ahmadinejad's skeptical, conditional and diverse constituency. They also demonstrated his isolation within the powerful conservative establishment, whose politics, however opaque, are determinative. At its center, Khamenei commands a faction known as the traditional conservatives. No elected leader can serve, let alone execute a policy agenda, without the acquiescence of the supreme leader and his associates. But was Ahmadinejad one of the leader's associates? Or was he, like his predecessor, Khatami, something of a political rival? The answer to this question should determine the extent to which Ahmadinejad's foreign-policy extremism and authoritarian tendencies are taken seriously as a political program. But it is a puzzle that has vexed political analysts since the president took office in August 2005, bringing with him a faction that was largely new to the post-revolutionary political scene. Composed partly of military and paramilitary elements, partly of extremist clerics like Mesbah-Yazdi and partly of inexperienced new conservative politicians, those in Ahmadinejad's faction are often called "neoconservatives." But to the extent that they have an ideology, it is less new than old, harking back to the early days of the Islamic republic. Since that time, the same elite has largely run Iranian politics, though it has divided itself into competing factions, and the act of wielding power has mellowed many hard-liners into pragmatists. Ahmadinejad's faction, on the other hand, came into power speaking the language of the past but with the zeal of the untried.

In 2005, many analysts believed that Ahmadinejad's elevation to the presidency must have been sanctioned by the supreme leader — indeed, that it reflected a hardening agenda among the traditional conservatives. He would be the "secretary" of Khamenei, a number of reformists said to me that summer in Tehran. But the way Ahmadinejad governed was nothing if not divisive. He undertook the most far-reaching governmental housecleaning since the revolution itself, reportedly replacing as many as 20,000 bureaucrats. And when it came time for the elections last month, he offered his own slates of candidates, disdaining to ally himself with the traditional conservatives or with anyone else. For the Assembly of Experts, Ahmadinejad endorsed a ticket of scholars from what is known as the Haqqani circle, a group of clerics who cleave strongly to the notion of the divine state and disdain popular sovereignty and democracy.

The senior figure in this circle, Mesbah-Yazdi, already belonged to the assembly. But in the fall of 2006, buoyed by association with the populist president, his group put forward a wave of candidates in a bid to transform the assembly. Even after the Guardian Council — an appointed body that answers to the supreme leader and that vets candidates and legislation — had disqualified almost half the proposed candidates, including most of the reformists and a large number of Mesbah-Yazdi's students, clerics associated with Mesbah-Yazdi still stood a reasonable chance of winning dozens of the 86 seats. It was here that the ideological contest of the Ahmadinejad presidency was starkest. Were the public and the leadership ready to accept Mesbah-Yazdi's brand of extremism along with the populism Ahmadinejad had served up? And what did it mean if they were not? The 97-mile stretch of highway from Tehran southwest to Qom passes through a cratered landscape of magnificent desolation to the basin between a salt marsh and a desert at the foot of the Zagros Mountains. Middle-class, educated Tehranis often scorn and even fear Qom as the center of religious Puritanism and political repression. But for pious Shiites in Iran and elsewhere, the city is a pilgrimage destination, home to one of the holiest Shiite shrines, most of the living Shiite marjas (senior religious figures, literally "sources of imitation") and more than 50 seminaries, institutions that long pre-existed universities in Iran and where the works of the Greek philosophers have for centuries been studied alongside religious texts.

Students, who number some 40,000, enter Qom at an average age of 17. Some of them continue their studies for decades, as Shiite religious learning has no set end point. Since the Islamic revolution, the seminary city has thrived as the government has spent lavishly on mosques and dormitories, nearly all with the same pale brick and blue tile facades. In recent years, Qom has absorbed waves of Shiite immigrants from Afghanistan and Iraq. There is an Iraqi bazaar not far from the holy shrine, and the sight of men in Arab dishdashas is commonplace.

Mesbah-Yazdi has a major presence here in the form of the Imam Khomeini Institute, the enormous seminary of which Mesbah-Yazdi is the head scholar. It holds Iran's most extensive library of scholarly books in English, totaling 11,200 volumes. It is the envy of the universities in Tehran. Mesbah-Yazdi, a fellow cleric told me, believed that it was important to understand Western ideas to better resist and refute them.

Born in 1934, Mesbah-Yazdi is an éminence grise among the ayatollahs of Qom, but age has not mellowed him. In the last decade he has become famous less for his learned philosophical exegeses (he posts his entry in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy on his Web site) than for his jeremiads at Friday prayers against popular sovereignty, free speech, women's rights and Islamic reform. Public execution and flogging are "a basic principle of Islam," Mesbah-Yazdi has said, and the government should regulate the content of speech "just as it checks the distribution of adulterated or contaminated foodstuffs." Because "Mesbah" sounds like the Farsi word for crocodile, he is known by his critics as Ayatollah Crocodile. (A cartoonist was once imprisoned for depicting him as a reptile, shedding crocodile tears as he strangled a dissident writer with his tail.)

At Ahmadinejad's invitation, members of Mesbah-Yazdi's Haqqani circle occupy several key government posts. But before Ahmadinejad came to power, they had been pushed mostly to the margins of Iranian politics, where they complained bitterly about the efforts of the reformist Khatami and his colleagues to advance their agenda through the elected branches of government. To the Haqqani scholars, it seemed that the reformists were challenging the doctrine of velayat-i-faqih, which is based on the sovereign power of the chief jurist, the supreme leader. "We shall wait to see what place these foxes who claim to be the supporters of reform will occupy in hell," Mesbah-Yazdi proclaimed. If Iranians believed in their supreme leader as the agent of God, second-guessing his judgment through elections was tantamount to holding a referendum on whether or not Damavand was the highest peak in Iran. What if 51 percent of the public said that it was not? "It doesn't matter what the people think," Mesbah-Yazdi was quoted as saying. "The people are ignorant sheep." He has also said, "Islam was the government of God, not the government of the people."

Mesbah-Yazdi's most open and media-friendly acolyte, Ayatollah Mohsen Gharavian, did not put the matter quite so strongly when, draped in the encompassing Iranian chador, I met with him in an unadorned office at a small seminary on one of Qom's dusty side streets.

"In the name of God, the beneficent and merciful," Gharavian intoned, "before coming to the main question and answer, I want to know where you got this chador. Is it from the United States or Iran?" From Iran, I told him.

For a cleric who had been quoted as saying that despotism was not all bad and that public opinion was meaningless, Gharavian, who teaches philosophy at the Imam Khomeini Institute, did not have a severe presence. Rather, he was a big, courteous man of 54 with a reddish beard. The election to the Assembly of Experts was just a day away, and Gharavian was the hard-line candidate for the hard-line city of Qom. Still, he expected to lose, and he did lose. Amiably, he remarked that he had run and lost before, and that to win would have required a financial outlay of which he disapproved.

When it came to politics, he spoke mostly in evasions and platitudes. Democracy, he explained, was acceptable within the boundaries of Islam, and human rights were contained within Islam, but such rights should not include freedom of worship or freedom to believe things that are untrue or unwise. (His examples were the misguided beliefs of Nietzsche and Machiavelli.) The Islamic penal code required no modification in the modern era; its harshest punishments, he asserted, were no more violent than some American and European spectator sports. He appeared shocked by the suggestion that Iran held political prisoners and demanded an example. I offered the journalist Akbar Ganji, imprisoned for six years on account of his critical writings. Gharavian replied: "Did you read Mr. Ganji's manifesto? He questioned the whole establishment." Freedom of expression, he explained, did not include the freedom to "breach the peace of the society." He demanded, "Don't you have prisoners in your country?"

Mesbah-Yazdi's statements on most of these matters were a matter of public record, and they were even blunter. "If someone tells you he has a new interpretation of Islam, hit him in the mouth," he said in 2000. Two years later, he said, "The prophets of God did not believe in pluralism. They believed that only one idea was right." On Sept. 4, 1999, he said: "Killing hypocrites does not require a court order, as it is a duty imposed by the Shariah on all genuine Muslims. The order of Islam is to throw them down from a high mountain and kill them outright." He spoke the following month of the need to break the unnecessary taboo on violence.

If such a taboo existed in the Islamic republic, it had been broken. That year, a string of dissidents were murdered under suspicious circumstances. In the writings that led to his prison sentence, Ganji accused Mesbah-Yazdi of sanctifying such actions with whispered fatwas and members of the Haqqani circle of direct involvement in the murders. A member of the shadowy vigilante group Ansar-e Hezbollah, which had violently attacked student demonstrators in July 1999, lent credence to Ganji's claims with videotaped testimony in which he said that Mesbah-Yazdi had encouraged the group to assassinate a reformist politician. "Now, on the issue of whether I authorized the assassination of individuals," Mesbah-Yazdi declared unapologetically in March 2001, "I must say that Imam Khomeini, may God be satisfied with him, issued a decree saying that shedding Salman Rushdie's blood was a religious obligation and, therefore, he advocated resorting to violence as well." Why Ahmadinejad would ally himself with these clerics remains something of a mystery. Contrary to popular belief, says Nasser Hadian, a political scientist at Tehran University and a childhood friend of the president, Ahmadinejad never expounded a particularly conservative moral or social agenda. Rather, says Hadian, Ahmadinejad was and continues to be inspired above all by Ali Shariati, the mid-20th-century theorist of radical Islamic egalitarianism. The president's agenda is redistributionist and anti-imperialist, Hadian says. That doesn't make him a democrat. Nonetheless, "he is basically using Mesbah," Hadian says. It is an alliance of political convenience.

Alireza Haghighi, a political scientist who teaches at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, agrees that the association between Ahmadinejad and Mesbah-Yazdi has been overstated. But in an article he wrote with his colleague Victoria Tahmasebi in International Journal, Haghighi documented yet another Ahmadinejad genesis story. Young Ahmadinejad led a politically and religiously conservative Islamist student group during the Islamic Revolution, the writers claim. When the leftist Islamist students proposed seizing the American Embassy in 1979, Ahmadinejad opposed the action as imprudent, but he suggested that if they went ahead with it, they should seize the Soviet Embassy as well. His plan rejected, Ahmadinejad found himself excluded from historic events and spurned by the Islamic left, which was at that time a powerful faction within the regime. His opposition to that faction ossified into a vendetta.

Soon after Khomeini's death, the Islamic left lost the factional battle for dominance. Its members wandered eight years in the political wilderness before returning as the reform movement. That, too, Ahmadinejad was anxious to crush. In that aspiration he would have found ample common ground with the Haqqani circle.

As president, Ahmadinejad looked to the extreme right rather than seeking allies among the traditional conservatives, and in so doing, he exposed himself politically. "They were very arrogant," Hadian said of Ahmadinejad and his camp. "They didn't want to make any compromises. He has stood against the entire political structure in Iran, not inviting any of them, even the conservatives, to be partners. You don't see them in the cabinet; you don't see them in political positions."

And for that there was a price to be paid. This fall, Rafsanjani, who had suffered a humiliating defeat at Ahmadinejad's hands in the presidential election of 2005, was reportedly persuaded to run again for the Assembly of Experts by the supreme leader or people close to him. Rafsanjani is a divisive figure in Iranian politics. He is widely perceived as a kingmaker, the power behind the rise of Khamenei to the position of supreme leader and that of Khatami to the presidency. But though he remains highly respected among clerics, Rafsanjani is not a beloved figure in Iranian public life. During his presidency, he adopted an economic liberalization program that involved extremely unpopular austerity measures; meanwhile, through pistachio exports, he had himself become one of the richest men in Iran. Political and social repression did not ease until Khatami, his successor, came into office.

Nonetheless, in the Assembly of Experts elections in December, Rafsanjani emerged as the compromise candidate of the reformists and traditional conservatives. One reformist activist described him to me as the very last line of defense against the extreme right. And Rafsanjani delivered a staggering blow, winning nearly twice as many votes as Mesbah-Yazdi. The neoconservatives, it seemed, had been slapped down much the same way the reformists had: the traditional conservatives had decided that the threat they posed was intolerable, and the voters had decided that the president associated with them could not deliver on his promises.

On the morning of Election Day, Dec. 15, there were long lines outside the polling places in central and east Tehran. A crowd milled about the front courtyard of Masjed al Nabi, a large mosque in the east. There were children, a television camera and a seller of balloons in the shape of rabbit ears. A middle-aged couple stood by the sinks normally used for ablutions; the woman wore a long, tailored raincoat and a conservative black scarf. Her husband explained that the election was very important to them. "We are choosing our future," he said through an interpreter. He was too sick, really, to move, but he had told his doctor that he could not forgo his civic duty to participate in the election.

Then I asked him if he saw big differences among the candidates for Assembly of Experts. "No," he said, "they are all the same."

It is nearly impossible to have a political discussion with only one person on an Iranian street. Outside Masjed al Nabi, the first interloper was a clean-cut 35-year-old man in a plaid shirt who gave his name as Ali. "How can you say they are all the same?" he nearly shouted at the man who had been speaking. "We have candidates who are like the Taliban and others who are practically liberals. We have candidates who think women should be free and others who do not think so at all."

"I never heard of a thing like that," the first man said calmly. "The country has laws to decide these matters."

To my right, a woman in a chador heatedly exclaimed: "He's right! How can you say they are all the same? That's why we're here to vote, because they are all different. Our new president, Ahmadinejad, before the election he said women were free and equal. Now he says we should just make babies. Because he wanted our votes, he said good things."

The original couple took advantage of the hubbub to slip away. Mohammad, a 37-year-old in a running jacket, pushed his way into our circle. "I am not voting," he told me. "I want to choose my freedom. I don't want to vote for them. I'm sure that whether I vote or not, it makes no difference. I don't accept the Constitution of this country, and I hope I can change it without voting."

Ali was listening intently. "The people who are good in this thing accept the vote of the people not just for show and not just on Election Day," he told Mohammad. "Even in America it is the same; everywhere in the world it is. Everywhere in the world there are some people who are pro-democracy and others who are against it. Now people are more educated. One day, our democracy will be better than democracy in the United States, if we believe in it. We like our religion, our imams, God and Islam. We want democracy next to this. We don't believe in democracy and freedom the way it exists in other parts of the world. We want something of our own."

It was 5 o'clock when I left the crowded mosques of middle-class central and east Tehran for the deserted polling places of the affluent northern hills. In Tajrish, an election official told me that he had seen just 200 voters — far fewer than in the presidential election less than two years ago. "All the mullahs are the same," he confided. "Everything always gets worse. Ahmadinejad is like a catalyst, speeding it up. The philosophical foundation of the state is not good."

The debates among ordinary voters go to the heart of a structural weakness in the Iranian state. Founded on two conflicting ideas — the sovereignty of the people and divinely inspired clerical rule — the Islamic Republic of Iran has suffered from a decadelong crisis of legitimacy. Nothing forced that crisis quite the way the reform movement did, despite, or perhaps even because of, its cautious temperament and legalistic methods. Over the course of Khatami's presidency, Iranians were faced with an inevitable question: What use was a supreme leader in a democracy, and what use were elections in a theocracy? The rise of Ahmadinejad, then his comeuppance, have forced those questions from the other direction. How far could the conservatives go in the authoritarian direction, and if not all the way, why not?

"In a sense, many people, including myself, we believe that Mesbah is right," Sadegh Zibakalam, a reformist Tehran University professor, reflected when I visited him at his mother's home in north Tehran in December. "Trying to make an amalgam of Western, liberal, democratic ideas and Shiite theology is nonsense. It doesn't work."

Later, he added: "Either Khamenei is infallible, or he's not. If he's not, then he is an ordinary person like Bush or Blair, answerable to the Parliament and the people. If he is, then we should throw away all this nonsense about Western values and liberal democracy. Either we have Western liberal philosophy, republican government and checks and balances, or we should stick to Mesbah. But to combine them? Imam Khomeini was so popular and charismatic. People rallied behind him and believed he was infallible. We never thought, What if the supreme leader is not supported by the people? The answer to this was brilliantly made by Mesbah: to hell with them."

Zibakalam described Mesbah-Yazdi's reading of velayat-i-faqih as a radical version of the one first proposed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But when I looked back through the lectures in which Khomeini first delineated the theory in Najaf in 1970, I found a vision strikingly similar to Mesbah-Yazdi's. At that time, Khomeini had little truck with popular sovereignty. He quoted the Koran and sayings attributed to Muhammad: "The prophet has higher claims on the believers than their own selves" and "The scholars are the heirs of the prophet." The only legitimate legislation was that which had already been made by God, and this would be administered by the learned jurist, who would rule over the people like a guardian over a child.

Nine years later, from his Paris exile during the revolution, Khomeini would approve a constitution drafted by more liberal associates. It was the blueprint for a parliamentary democracy, in which a council of clergymen would play an advisory role. This draft became the basis for the debate that occupied the first Assembly of Experts, convened to revise and approve a final constitution. After much discussion of the contradictions it engendered, the experts, many of them clerics, nonetheless yoked velayat-i-faqih to the republican structure they had been handed.

To this day, the structure of the Iranian state remains too liberal for the authoritarians and too authoritarian for the liberals, but the traditional conservatives at the center of power cannot resolve this obvious paradox at the republic's heart without relinquishing their own position. The best they could do was to revise the Constitution after Khomeini's death, greatly expanding the powers of the clerical councils and of the supreme leader at the expense of the elected offices. Clerics I spoke to from the traditional conservative camp associated with Khamenei were paternalistic in their view of the state rather than outright authoritarian. They seemed to genuinely believe in a limited form of popular sovereignty — guided, of course, by Islamic scholars so that the people would not fall into error but nonetheless necessary for the legitimacy of the state.

It was this traditional conservative establishment that the reformists, many of them clerics, hoped to transform by introducing new policies through the legal channels of the state and by persuading jurists to assimilate new ideas about rights and freedoms into their interpretations of the sacred texts. One of the leading reformist theorists, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, explained to me: "Many nations have influenced our jurisprudence. We could set aside some of the decrees of Islam today and bring some Western laws to replace them. This doesn't make us infidels."

After eight years in power, the reform movement found itself blocked by the conservative establishment, hamstrung by its own mistakes and unwilling or unable to shore up the failing economy. Ahmadinejad rose in its wake, campaigning not on ideological extremism but on populist blandishments. He would ease the financial pain of his countrymen, he promised, by bringing Iran's oil wealth to the people's tables.

As Omid Malekian had intimated to me at the Mahestan shopping mall, however, this was not a promise to make lightly. The Iranian economy has been mismanaged at least since the revolution, and to fix it would require measures no populist would be willing to take. Under Ahmadinejad, inflation has risen; foreign investors have scorned Iranian markets, fearing political upheaval or foreign invasion; the Iranian stock market has plummeted; Iranian capital has fled to Dubai. Voters I talked to pointed to the prices of ordinary foodstuffs when they wanted to explain their negative feelings about the government. According to Iranian news sources, from January to late August 2006 the prices of fruits and vegetables in urban areas rose by 20 percent. A month later, during Ramadan, the price of fruit reportedly doubled while that of chicken rose 10 percent in mere days. Housing prices in Tehran have reached a record high. Unemployment is still widespread. And Ahmadinejad's approval rating, as calculated by the official state television station, had dipped to 35 percent in October.

Iran is not a poor country. It is highly urbanized and modern, with a sizable middle class. Oil revenues, which Iran has in abundance, should be channeling plenty of hard currency into the state's coffers, and in fact the economy's overall rate of growth is healthy and rising. But as Parvin Alizadeh, an economist at London Metropolitan University, explained to me, what ultimately matters is how the state spends its influx of wealth. The Iranian government has tried to create jobs swiftly and pacify the people by spending the oil money on new government-run projects. But these projects are not only overmanned and inefficient, like much of the country's bloated and technologically backward public sector; they also increase the demand for consumer goods and services, driving up inflation.

Ahmadinejad has continued this trend. He has generated considerable personal good will in poorer communities, but hardly anyone I asked could honestly say that their lives had gotten better during his presidency. He fought to lower interest rates, which drove up lending, leading to inflation and capital flight. The government cannot risk infuriating the public with the austerity measures that would be required in order to solve its deep-rooted economic problems. But as long as its short-term fixes continue to fail, the government will go on being unpopular. The last two presidents have lost their constituencies over this issue. And so officials seek to distract people from their economic woes with ideological posturing and anti-Western rhetoric. Not only has this lost its cachet with much of the Iranian public, it also serves to compound Iran's economic problems by blackening its image abroad. "Iran has not sorted out its basic problem, which is to be accepted in the international community as a respectable government," Alizadeh said. "Investors do not take it seriously. This is a political crisis, not an economic crisis."

For a Western traveler in Iran these days, it is hard to avoid a feeling of cognitive dissonance. From a distance, the Islamic republic appears to be at its zenith. But from the street level, Iran's grand revolutionary experiment is beset with fragility. The state is in a sense defined by its contradictions, both constitutional and economic. It cannot be truly stable until it resolves them, and yet if it tries to do so, it may not survive.

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Fragmentation in the Majlis

By Vahid Sabetian
ROOZ

Conservative deputies in the Majlis (Iran's Parliament) had their first experience with fragmentation, when a group of deputies broke off from the conservative bloc to form the new bloc called "innovative conservatives." The reason for this fragmentation is the escalation of the row surrounding a bill to summon President Ahmadinejad to appear in the Majlis.

Within the past few months, a group of conservative deputies, led by Mohammad Reza Bahonar, have tried to stifle voices opposing the performance of Ahmadinejad and his administration. Bahonar's efforts reached their climax when he tried to convince a number of deputies to retrieve their signatures from a bill asking President Ahmadinejad to appear in the Majlis and explain his government's dismal performance in managing the economy and minimizing the tensions over Iran's nuclear program.

Recent reports indicate that only 50 deputies had attended the latest meeting of the conservative bloc. In that meeting, Bahonar had implicitly threatened the deputies who had signed the bill. Bahonar later denied the reports, but Saeed Abutaleb, one of the members of the new "innovative conservatives" bloc, confirms this adding, "In the latest meeting of the majority bloc, which unfortunately is only majority in name, fewer than 60 or even 50 deputies were present."

"The new bloc," explains Abutaleb, "insists that pure conservatives part ways with Mr. Bahonar and the current leadership, so that they can preserve the integrity of the Majlis and fulfill their constitutional duty as members of a political bloc."

Dr. Sobjani, Dr. Afrough, Khoshchehreh, Madani and Abutaleb are some of the more prominent deputies in the new bloc. Emad Afrough, who presides over Majlis's cultural committee, told the Aftab News Agency, "I have said time and again that the Iranian society is evolving and shedding skin, but unfortunately some do not want to understand this political evolution and try to oppose it. Their understanding of politics is limited only to the left-right dichotomy."

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Hardliners On Both Ends of the Gulf

By Masoud Behnoud m.behnoud@roozonline.com
ROOZ

Nearly two years have passed since the election of Ahmadinejad to Iran's presidency. His administration, whose coming to power was a blessing for both domestic and foreign radicals, has served half of its time. And it is still busy handing out promises, and threats. In the midst of it all, except for a handful of radicals in Tel Aviv and Washington, people have had enough of this administration.

There is an assertion in the above statement that must be carefully examined. Following the death of a number of the Islamic Republic's founding fathers )people like Motahhari, Taleqani, ?Ahmad Montazeri, Beheshti, and Ahmad Khomeini( a radical group rose to prominence and worked to eliminate the remainder of the founding fathers. Mousavi Ardebili, Mir Hussein Mousavi, Mehdi Karoubi and Mousavi Tabrizi were the first targets. Then the movement went further and focused on Hashemi Rafsanjani, Gholamhussein Karbaschi, Abdullah Nouri, Saeed Hajjarian, Ataollah Mohajerani, Hassan Rowhani, Ali-akbar Velayati, Nateq-Nouri, Mahdavi Kanni, etc. This group had a plan and a goal.

If we shy away from using this group's tactic of labeling every other group or faction that opposes it as a 'mafia,' we still have to say that this group is itself a mafia. It has become clear over the years that this group uses the method of "label and eliminate" to get rid of its opponents: it first labels whatever that gets in its way, and then uses that label to eliminate it.

Let us for the moment leave aside how the ninth government came to power. Let us just try to understand why an administration that came to power on some popular support is now under such heavy criticism that it has to actually confront the very same "people" that voted it into office!

The group's political tactics have not been and are not complex. In fact, this group is essentially incapable of designing elaborate plans. In the field of foreign policy, it decided to create controversies whenever it could, so that the price of oil would go up and more money could be spent on the poor - to purchase popularity, so to speak. The tactic seems plausible on the surface. And it worked for a year. Mr. President talked of the need to remove Israel from the face of the planet, and there was a huge uproar. He denied the Holocaust, and more controversies emerged. Both times the price of oil went up and reached a peak. But this group did not know that the opposite side would use expertise and computer rooms to come up with a counterattack very soon. And the counterattack came all right: nowadays, no matter what Ahmadinejad says or does, there are no major controversies; the price of oil stays the same, and has even gone done.

The group's whole plan, which seems "complex" to itself, can be summarized in one line: provoking the international community into making threats and using those threats as an excuse to create an abnormal and emergency situation, in which publications, labor unions, the student movement and non-governmental organizations can be suppressed.

What was it that enabled the American neo-cons to implement their lifelong dream of bringing 200-300,000 troops to the oil wells of the Middle East? The answer is clear: Bin Laden. The presence of "Bin Ladens" is essential for quenching the thirst of neo-cons for energy resources. The radicals on both sides live parasitically off one another.

These are not the times of the Iran-Iraq war, when people were still hot about the revolution and poured onto the battlefield to defeat a devil like Saddam. Today, most, if not all, people want to coexist peacefully with the international community, and know about these tactics very well. They ask, very clearly, what have you done to bring us to this point?

Masoud Behnoud is a seasoned Iranian commentator and journalist living in exile.

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Ahmadinejad's "Nazis"

By Norman Markowitz
Politicalaffairs.net

If I were a conspiracy theorist, which I am not, I would say that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's far right president, was an agent provocateur of the Bush administration, working to isolate his country from the civilized world and set the stage for a military attack on it. Ahmadinejad seems to think that the best way to advance himself is to seek alliances with open fascists throughout the world while distracting his own people's attention from the high unemployment and inflation that they face, posing as the defender of the Palestinian people and the enemy of the U.S. and the Israeli governments.

Ahmadinejad's government held a "conference" this week on the Holocaust, as the fascist genocide perpetrated against the Jewish people of Europe during WWII is universally known. The "conference" was advertised as an event that would present "both sides" on the issues, which is like saying that one might have a conference on slavery in the U.S. giving both sides, the slaveholders praising slavery's "positive accomplishments" and denying the millions who perished under its brutal sway as against slavery's critics. Or perhaps a conference on the genocide in the Congo at the beginning of the 20th century, with Belgian colonialists contending that they were providing work for the Congolese and denying and/or explaining away the many millions who perished at the hands as against those who hold the now accepted view. Or even a "conference" on whether or not Islam is a religion of warfare and conquest whose theology threatens the peace of all non-Muslims (there is a "scholarship" that takes that position and quotes chapter and verse extensively to uphold it) against those who see all religions as open to many interpretations and uses

But the "conference" didn't even have any voices defending the accepted historical facts "Holocaust deniers" dismiss and/or denounce, that is, that the Hitler regime and its allies organized a war of extermination against all Jewish people whom they could hunt down in their occupied areas. That they further used a number of methods to accomplish these goals, from roaming murder detachments to mobile poison gas vans to what became the major and most efficient means of slaughter, poison gas chambers in concentration camps into which millions, transported by the German and European railway system in freight cars, were exterminated and cremated after gold teeth and anything else of possible value was taken from their corpses.

The number six million, which derives from analysis of the Nazis own records, may if anything have been an underestimation. But the numbers really aren't the central point. Neither are the pseudo-technical contentions once more on display at Ahmadinejad's "conference" that the gas chambers could not have been built, that many died "accidentally" as a result of disease, etc., "interpretations" that Hitler fascist supporters have subsidized for decades and which has come to be called Holocaust Denial.

The central point seems to be that Ahmadinejad believes that he can reach out to the American people by bringing to Teheran David Duke rather than the peace activists (a number of them of Jewish background) who have actively opposed Bush administration maneuvers to launch a war against his country. Or perhaps he believes that the Muslims of the world have something in common with former KKK leaders and open defenders of the Hitler regime. If he does, that is truly a great insult to all of the world's Muslims.

If he were interested in "helping" the Palestinian people, why did his government block a Palestinian lawyer (who also happens to be an Israeli citizen) who heads an Institute to study the Holocaust and its effects on Israeli-Palestinian relations and was prepared to challenge directly the motley crew of "Holocaust deniers" from Europe, Australia, and the U.S? Why did Ahmadinejad in effect greet and try to legitimize thinly disguised racists and fascists from many countries as if he were their patron and supporter, even though most of them espouse theories that would portray virtually all of the Muslims of the world, including his own people, as "racial inferiors"?

From everything that Iranian friends tell me, Ahmadinejad's government is very unpopular in Iran because of the deepening economic crisis and his repressive policies, including the arrest of labor leaders, suppression of student opposition, and general identification with the most reactionary sectors of the society. The people who voted for Ahmadinejad did so in the hope that he would alleviate the economic crisis that many identified with the previous government's improved economic relations with the great capitalist powers. From what I can gather, he has made the economic situation worse.

Although Ahmadinejad is the leader of a clerical regime, he is not himself a cleric and many see his religious politics as political opportunism. Some have contended that he identifies with pro Nazi ideologues in the Court of the Shah in the 1930s (the old Shah who tilted toward and perhaps sought to ally himself with Nazi Germany to break the hold of British oil interests on his nation before WWII). In 1941, Soviet and British forces ousted that Shah, whose actions were clearly aiding the fascist Axis, and replaced him with his son, as a constitutional monarch. Had this not happened, Hitler might have declared the Iranians "honorary Aryans" as he did his Japanese allies.

In holding his conference this week, Ahmadinejad was inviting fascist elements from many countries to become his allies. Perhaps he will follow in Hitler's footsteps and declare them "honorary defenders of the faith."

In 1953, the CIA with British support overthrew the elected prime minister, Mossadegh, and in effect made the Shah into an all powerful dictator, savagely suppressing the Tudeh Party (communist) and all secular center and left forces in the society. In the political vacuum created by the dictatorship, a section of the Islamic clergy became a center for opposition and when the Shah was overthrown in 1978, a clerical "Islamic Republic" was established.

What would Iran be like today if Mossadegh had not been overthrown and the oil wealth of the nation used for social development. What would Iran be like today if the Reagan administration had not supported Saddam Hussein's war of aggression against the clerical regime after the overthrow of the Shah? It is very doubtful that the Iranian people would be suffering today under the regime of Ahmadinejad, just as the Iraqi people would probably have been able to dispense with Hussein in the 1980s had it not been for the Reagan administration's support of his regime.

Anti-Jewish racism, which the world has called anti-Semitism since the late 19th century, has little resonance in the history of the Iranian people, or in the Muslim religion for that matter, although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has enabled rightwing elements to highlight anti-Jewish statements in Muslim religious texts and peddle anti-Jewish racist works, including The Elders of the Protocols of Zion, in Arabic speaking countries under the pretext of fighting Israel and Zionism.

Like David Duke, for whom anti Jewish racism, anti-Black racism, anti-whatever the market calls for racism, has been something like a racket for over thirty years, Ahmadenejad has "invested" his government in anti-Jewish racism or anti-Semitism, hoping perhaps to "corner the market" and become the leader in this niche of the racist business. In the process, he has hurt and insulted his own people and their progressive traditions. He has, along with and insulting all Jewish people regardless of their religious sentiments and views of Israel, insulted the Palestinian people who struggle against Israel's oppressive policies he has sullied by identifying that struggle with the crude lies perpetrated by supporters of Hitler fascism.

I started this article in a semi-serious way that if I were a conspiracy theorist, I would accuse Ahmadinejad of being a Bush agent. Actually Ahmadinejad has helped Bush more than if he were an agent. He has on his own given the Bush administration a propaganda victory against his country that millions of CIA dollars could not have accomplished. If he continues on this path he may even top Saddam Hussein as a paragon of political wisdom.

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net

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Holocaust deniers gather in Iran for 'scientific' conference

Robert Tait in Tehran
The Guardian

An international cast of established Holocaust deniers and implacable foes of Israel were given an open forum by Iran yesterday to support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's contention that the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis was a "myth".

The foreign ministry opened a two-day conference, Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision - which senior officials portrayed as scientific scholarship but which Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, denounced as a "sick phenomenon". Visiting Berlin, Mr Olmert urged Germany to sever diplomatic ties with Iran.

Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, insisted the event was necessary to counter an alleged lack of free speech in the west about the Holocaust, which Iranian officials argue is used to justify Israel's oppression of the Palestinians.

"Today people who claim to be against Nazism have a record of colonialism and racism," he said. "The objective for organising this conference is to create an atmosphere to raise various opinions about a historical issue. We are not seeking to deny or prove the Holocaust."

But pretensions to scholastic objectivity were undermined by the background of some among the 67 foreign visitors from 30 countries, including Britain. They included David Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan; Robert Faurisson, a French lecturer stripped of his academic tenure for his anti-Holocaust opinions; and Michele Renouf, a London-based associate of the British author David Irving. Irving is currently serving a jail sentence for Holocaust denial in Austria.

A group of radical anti-Zionist rabbis, Jews United Against Israel, who oppose a Jewish state on religious grounds, were given a prominent role. Among them was Rabbi Ahron Cohen, a retired former lecturer at the Jewish religious college in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Rabbi Cohen acknowledged that the Holocaust had happened but said he saw nothing anti-semitic in Mr Ahmadinejad's comments.

However, exhibitions on the conference's fringes conveyed a different message. A series of posters carried the words "myth" and "truth" juxtaposed. Under "myth" were widely accepted verities of the Holocaust while under the "truth" label were opposing contentions.

One poster, simply headlined "truth", carried photos of Irving and Ernst Zundel, a prominent German neo-Nazi also now in jail. Two of Irving books, Hitler's War and Nuremberg: The Last Battle, were displayed along with several other Holocaust revisionist works. There were no books by orthodox historians on the Nazi era.

A video referred to the "supposed gas chambers" and the "alleged final solution". A series of photos showed British soldiers "forcing" German prisoners to remove corpses from a mass grave. The caption suggested that the British were responsible for the deaths, saying: "The interesting point is that the grave was established in the last days of the war just as the camp was being opened by British soldiers." Another picture, purportedly of Dachau concentration camp, shows a smiling, well-fed group of inmates.

Few visitors were apologetic. Mr Duke praised the event as an exercise in free speech. "It's a shame that Iran, a country we often call oppressive, has to give this opportunity for free speech," he said. "I think Israel is a terrorist state. It is the number one terrorist state in the world."

Ms Renouf said "terrible things" had happened to the Jews during the second world war but claimed their own leaders had brought it upon them. "If people become anti-semitic, it's because they believe the leaders of the Jews and are reacting to the anti-gentile nature of Judaism," she said.

Moshe Ayre Friedman, an Austrian rabbi, argued that the figure of six million Jewish dead had come from a prophecy by Theodore Herzl, founder of modern Zionism, long before the second world war. He said recent research suggested the true figure was about one million. "Politically and historically, the land of Palestine doesn't belong to the Jews and should be returned to Palestinians," he said.

But Moris Motamed, Iran's sole Jewish MP, labelled the gathering a "huge insult".

In Britain, Stephen Smith, chairman of the Holocaust memorial day trust, said the conference contrasted with a high awareness of the Holocaust among young Britons. "Three-quarters of young people know when the Holocaust took place and 84% have heard of Auschwitz. Knowledge is the first step to prevention. Denial is the first step to repetition," he said.

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Pulitzer prize given 27 years on

Arash Bahmani
ROOZ

AN Iranian identified as the anonymous Pulitzer prize-winning photographer of a mass execution is to receive his $10,000 (£5,100) award more than a quarter of a century late.

Until last week Jahangir Razmi, 58, was too frightened to own up to the 1979 picture of 11 Kurds being shot by firing squad at an airstrip.

The photograph has been described as "the most famous and revealing picture of the Iranian revolution". Razmi reluctantly agreed to accept credit for it after an American journalist spent five years tracking him down.

Razmi, who works in a small photographic shop and is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's official photographer, said he was already regretting that he had agreed to be named. "I wish that reporter had never come. The picture isn't a happy image of my country and I'm worried it will upset people," he said.

Razmi was working for the Ettela'at newspaper when he witnessed the executions in Sanandaj, western Iran. The victims being executed had been tried that day for crimes such as arms trafficking, inciting riots and murder. Several have since been proved innocent.

One man was reportedly a Kurdish sandwich maker with no political leanings called Essa Pirvali who was arrested for possessing a handgun and then condemned to death for murder.

The paper's editor at the time, Mohammed Heydari, decided to print the picture without a credit for fear of reprisals. Two days later, on August 29, 1979, it was splashed over front pages of newspapers across the world.

The regime had executed 500 Kurds in seven months, but until Razmi's photograph was published there had been little international coverage of what was going on. Shortly after it printed the photo, Ettela'at was nationalised by the Iranian government.

Several photographers have claimed credit for taking the picture, and only last year an Iranian living in France stated it was he who had captured the image.

Photojournalists around the world have been commending Razmi's bravery for speaking out this week, despite being a reluctant hero. "This image ranks up there with the very great news pictures of all time," said Tom Stoddart, one of Britain's leading the photojournalists.

"The big issue here is the photographer's safety and it is extraordinarily commendable that after all these years Razmi can step forward and accept the acclaim that he deserves."

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Ramezanzadeh: Danger Facing the Country

Arash Bahmani
ROOZ

Abdullah Ramezanzadeh served as the spokesperson for president Khatami's government and is currently the vice-chairman of the Islamic Iran Participation Front [IIPF, the largest reform party in Iran]. He has interesting things to say about the reformers' coalition and the infighting within the hardliner camp. Here are the excerpts.

Q: Mr. Ramezanzadeh, how come the reformers, who were divided into various factions during last year's presidential election, have now agreed to form a coalition for the December 15th city council elections?

Ramezanzadeh (AR): Our friends and others at IIPF tried from the very beginning to prevent the formation of divisions inside the reformers camp. We wanted to prove to our opponents and to ourselves that the reform movement was a flexible movement and capable of change. So we spoke with our friends and did whatever we could to form a united coalition for the upcoming elections. The reality is that Iranian society is so heterogeneous that no group is able to claim that it can take power single-handedly. For this reason coalitions are part of the political reality in any heterogeneous society, and we have tried to actualize this option here as well.

Q: In that case why did the Etemad Melli Party and Mr. Karoubi refuse to be a part of the coalition?

AR: This has no particular meaning. The important point is that the two lists are the same, and the names on the two lists are identical. Now the format under which this is done does not matter.

Q: How about some of the more fringe reform parties, such as the Populist Reformer Front?

AR: We did our best to speak with all individuals and groups. We also provided certain principles when we formed the coalition council so that everyone could comply with those principles. A single political action is not important to us; what is important are the principles, which we will defend until the very last day. Unfortunately some of our friends did not agree with those principles. Any coalition requires a minimum shared foundation. We announced to friends who agreed with these minimum principles that we would work with them. And while we failed to include every group in this coalition, I believe that our future coalitions would be broader and stronger.

Q: It has been said that former president Khatami played an instrumental role in the formation of the coalition. What was his role?

AR: It is evident that all of the reformers who are part of this coalition have a particular and spiritual connection to Mr. Khatami. Mr. Khatami has always pushed the reformers towards the direction of unity.

Q: With respect to divisions within the hardliners camp, how do you view the split between Ahmadinejad and Ghalibaf [current mayor of Tehran]?

AR: I am not aware of the exact reasons but I know that these two do not get along with one another at all.

Q: In view of the last elections, do you think reformers have a chance to win the forthcoming elections?

AR: Our victory depends on our ability to get people to participate. If people come forward then we will win. This is true in every election: when people came to the voting booths, we won. On the other hand, when people's participation was low, hardliners won. For example, hardliners won when 42 percent of the people did not come out to vote in the most recent presidential election.

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Mohsen Armin: Garrison Party Will Again Intervene in Elections

Arash Bahmani
ROOZ

In an exclusive interview with Rooz Publication, Mohsen Armin, one of the founders and spokesman for the Sazman-e Mojahedin Engelab Eslami (Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization, MIRO) political group talked about the forthcoming Assembly of Experts (Khobregan Assembly) and local elections, the situation with the reformers, and the differences among ideologues. Mr. Armin is a former deputy speaker of the Majlis (Parliament). The following are the key excerpts from the interview.

Q:Ever since the current hardline administration won last year's presidential elections, reformers in Iran have complained about the legality of the elections that brought them to power. Is this going to be repeated after December 15th when the Assebly of Experts and local elections take place?

Mohsen Armin (MA): Reformers have two basic concerns during the upcoming elections. The first is the health of the elections, which they doubt we will have. Already there is evidence to support this concern and doubt. Events indicate that the ruling garrison party will widely intervene and exert its influence. Now that the Ministry of the Interior (which oversees the implementation of the elections) and the Guardian Council (which vets out the candidates) have coordinated their activities, we have more reason for concern. While it is possible that by placing some observers at polling stations, reformers may prevent some election fraud, this is not a fool-proof checkpoint. Our only hope is that people will participate in the elections on a wide scale, thus making any fraud irrelevant and ineffective. You know that during Mr. Khatami's presidential elections there were some 2 million fraudulent votes, but because of the size of his victory margin, this made no difference to the outcome of the race.

Q: How did reformers agree on a common list of candidate, which was a surprise?

MA: I was always optimistic about such a development. In fact, differences among reformers were pumped up by the opposing groups and their psychological war. This consensus is even stronger than the one that created a reformist majority in the sixth Parliament (2000-2004). The reason for this is the experience of prior elections, and especially the last presidential elections. But perhaps even more important are the events of the past year, i.e. since the coming into power of hardliners and the danger that people recognize they pose to the country. One should not forget that reformers have a hard battle and everything is against them. Political competition is absolutely unfair in this country, whether one looks at available publicity and propaganda tools or at the national media, or even at the agencies that supervise and implement the process of elections, which are under the control of the government.

Q: Some peripheral groups among reformers have a problem with the list. What is being done to guarantee this consensus?

MA: There are 18 groups in the current coalition, which comprises almost all the reform groups. Etemad Melli party of Mehdi Karubi is a member too and adjustments had to be made to accommodate it. A lot of effort went into creating this wide and precious coalition. Still, it is clear that it is almost impossible to satisfy each and every individual and group. One should also note that the new coalition does not comprise the oldest reform groupings. There may be some 40 reformist groups altogether, but it is impossible to come up with 40 nationally recognized candidates, let alone groups, for the national elections who will be acceptable to everyone and the public. This idea of 40 groups and the absence of some groups is a media stunt by those who appear only during election periods. Their aim is to destroy the reformist movement. We would have been happy if they too would have joined, but their absence is not going to harm the movement and the elections.

Q: What has Mr. Khatami's role been in the formation of this coalition? MA: He occupies a special place in the movement and is respected by all its factions and individuals. He is in fact the foci of the reformers coalition. The elections headquarters and the coalition itself were created on his ideas. Groups accept his view points and ideas.

After last year's presidential race, reformers spoke of their inability to win over the public and speak their language. Is that still true? MA: I do not think we will have that problem for the provincial elections because the presidential race and elections to the Majlis (Parliament) are different from provincial elections. This is true even if the problem of reaching the masses still continues today, because these are civic-social elections and not as political as the former ones. Reformers have a special position and place because people recognize that what is needed is a single faction to rule and tackle their problems. They can present better goals and slogans in this context and for the issues that related to the provinces.

Q: Ideologues seem to be as divided as they were during the presidential elections. What will be the outcome?

MA: Unlike the reformists, they have another element that is at play. Reformers have come up with a minimum common platform and views. Ideologues do not have this. In fact, what unites the ideologues is the force of power centers that drives and guides them. Certainly their competition with reformers also helps them unite. Their views and scope of party and political operations are not large enough to strike a significant coalition, because they have deep differences among themselves. I think without the imposing power of the power centers in the country, they will not be able to stand together. Their drive for power and goals spin them apart. This is especially true regarding the extremists who now hold political power. They lack the requirements to work with the other groups and form a coalition. This faction is extremely monopolistic in its drives and desires.

Q: So you think that the differences between president Ahmadinejad and mayor Ghalibaf are serious?

AR:Their differences are very deep. I think this has prevented them from uniting.

MA: I doubt this very seriously. While it is true that Ghalibaf opposes Ahmadinejad, he still has responsibilities and ties that do not allow him to step outside that group and present a list of candidates that is close to the reformers.

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Ayatollah who backs suicide bombs aims to be Iran's next spiritual leader

By Colin Freeman and Kay Biouki in Teheran
Sunday Telegraph

An ultra-conservative Iranian cleric who opposes all dialogue with the West is a frontrunner to become the country's next supreme spiritual leader.

In a move that would push Iran even further into the diplomatic wilderness, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, 71, who publicly backs the use of suicide bombers against Israel, is campaigning to succeed Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, 67, as the head of the Islamic state.

Considered an extremist even by fellow mullahs, he was a fringe figure in Iran's theocracy until last year's election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fellow fundamentalist who views him as his ideological mentor. He is known to many Iranians as "Professor Crocodile" because of a notorious cartoon that depicted him weeping false tears over the jailing of a reformist journalist.

Mr Mesbah-Yazdi and his supporters will attempt to tighten the fundamentalists' political stranglehold next month, by standing in elections for the Assembly of Experts, an 86-strong group of theologians that would be responsible for nominating a replacement for Ayatollah Khamenei, whose health is rumoured to be ailing.

Opposing them will be a coalition of moderate conservatives led by Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, and members of the increasingly marginalised reformist movement, who have formed an alliance to prevent what both groups fear is a drift towards political extremism.

Appointing Mr Mesbah-Yazdi as supreme leader would be a massive blow to Western efforts to get Iran to cease its nuclear programme and backing of militants in Lebanon, Iraq and among the Palestinians. Although he has never spoken publicly on the issue, Mr Mesbah-Yazdi is thought to support the idea of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Ali Ansari, an Iran specialist at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said: "Mesbah-Yazdi is on the hard Right and very authoritarian. He doesn't even believe in democracy. Having him in power would lead to a much more hard-line puritanical rule in Iran. It would not be good news for the West."

The assembly of experts is elected every eight years and has the power to appoint, supervise and impeach the supreme leader, who, in practice, wields ultimate power. Although Ayatollah Khameini, who has been in office since 1989, is expected to remain for the time being, the assembly elected next month is almost certain eventually to decide his successor.

The run-up to the vote has been marred by complaints of rigging in favour of hardliners. The guardian council, a hardline conservative body that vets candidates, is accused of vetoing reform-minded clerics from taking part. Around half of nearly 500 applicants have been banned from standing.

In a letter to the council last week, Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist cleric, accused the council of "injustice" and misjudgement, saying that it would lead to "people's distrust in the authorities and the clergy". The reformists' despair has been deepened by fears that few of their disillusioned supporters will vote, despite the possible consequences of a hardline victory. Constant political interference in the electoral process has persuaded many Iranians that it is not worth voting, an attitude that many reformists concede helped Mr Ahmadinejad's victory at the polls last year.

"Many reformists have lost faith, although the hardliners will hope to organise a mass turn-out among their own supporters," Mr Ansari said.

Mr Mesbah-Yazdi, who will be standing for election to the assembly of experts, regularly meets Mr Ahmadinejad, whose presidential bid he endorsed in a fatwa, or holy order.

The cartoonist whose drawing earned "Professor Crocodile" his nickname suffered the same fate as the journalists whose frequent imprisonment was depicted. He, too, was sent to jail.

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Simin Behbahani: "No Fear", An Interview with Iran's National Poet

Simin Behbahani: "No Fear"An Interview with Iran's National Poet In the eighth decade of her life, Simin Behbahani, contemporary Iran's first lady of lyric poetry, with her lined brow and white hair, speaks more of times long gone by than today. On a blazing hot summer day, Simin Behbahani, with her usual banter and mocking way?which has its roots in her days as a teacher?speaks of pain and the unending and inconclusive story of political prisoners in her homeland. Today, 100 years after the unfinished Constitutional Revolution, Iran is passing through yet another restless period. Some posters of her poems ("I Will Rebuild You, Homeland" and "Open a little Window of Freedom onto my Prison Cell") and photos from Simin's past and present decorate the walls of her home.

The aged poet, with tear-filled eyes that no longer see that well, emphasizes that she has no fear of the Islamic Republic as she goes over the memories of times gone by. She speaks of nights in Evin Prison in 1981 and the 1988 massacres; and how, from dusk until dawn, prisoners counted gun shots to keep a tally of the number of political prisoners who were executed by the Islamic Regime. She remembers the period after shah's coup d'etat of August 19, 1953, when political prisoners were shot in groups. She continues into the years after the "Revolution," and to the morning when Saeed Soltanpour, the revolutionary poet, director, and member of the Iranian Writers' Association, was taken from his wedding ceremony to Evin prison and never returned. She continues her travel through time to the night when, under the rule of the "velayat-e faqih", Iran's renowned journalist and researcher, Rahman Hatefi, scratched at and injured his face with his own nails until morning so that he could not be filmed for televised confessions like his comrades. The blood of thousands of other political prisoners had not yet dried in the cells of Evin Prison when the Forouhars were stabbed to death inside their own home in 1998. Thousands of other activists have also been murdered in the course of the years, such that the fate of alternative thinkers in Iran has become a matter of repetition. That fate continues today; both Akbar Mohammadi and Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi died in prison only a few weeks ago after a short hunger strike. The well-known and adored Iranian poet considers her painful memories to be reflective of a nation's history and the struggle for justice and freedom.

Soheila Assemi: Ms. Behbahani, in recent years, you have been an active participant wherever there has been an effort to demand the freedom of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the Islamic Republic of Iran. You have given speeches, written poetry, and participated in protests. Please tell us why you feel these activities are necessary during this specific period in our homeland?

Simin Behbahani: I have done this because speaking out, expressing one's views, and standing by one's opinion are among the pillars of democracy. If we seek to establish a democracy in our country, then every citizen should be able to express his/her opinions; every person must be able to say what is in his/her heart and put forth suggestions for reforming society. When no possibility exists for any of the above in a country, then freedom becomes meaningless. Of course, observing and upholding the rights of others has its own importance in freedom. Human rights must be observed completely. Individuals must not be doomed to being suppressed and executed by firing squads for expressing their opinions.

In 1979 we witnessed a mass movement that was referred to as a revolution or an uprising. The ideals and demands of that movement have continued, in one form or another, since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 but remain unfulfilled. The main slogans of both revolutions were "national sovereignty, freedom, and social justice." One hundred years of the people's struggle has passed - that is one hundred years of being suppressed, jailed and executed for being the people's advocates. In your opinion, how is the situation of the political prisoners under the ruling "velayat-e faqih" different from what their fate would have been under the shah's regime?

We have had political prisoners under both regimes. Under monarchy, suppression ruled our country. Of course, there were more individual freedoms then because that shah's regime was not a religious regime but a secular one.

Does this mean that the "religious" nature of this regime has created a more problematic situation?

That is right; because now religion intrudes on all aspects of people's lives in Iran. Therefore, in addition to the fact that freedom of expression does not exist in our country, individual freedoms have been curtailed due to the religious character of the regime as well. The range of the government's intervention has become quite broad. This means, based upon the suspicions of the beholder, any criticism or resistance may be construed as opposition to religion.

When the 1979 Revolution occurred, the doors to all prisons were supposed to be opened as a matter of principle. In fact, the people's pivotal slogan was "free all political prisoners." What, in your opinion, has happened to us in the course of the last 27 years?

We all took part in the revolution because we thought we would attain freedom. However, in the 27 years since the Islamic Republic was established, our prisons have been filled with political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. The only "crime" of the most of these prisoners has merely been the expression of their opinions. A large number of our political prisoners lost their lives inside the prisons of the Islamic regime; and a number of the survivors were then killed outside the prisons. There were many freedom lovers who were executed in prison, such as the famous poet and member of Iranian Writers' Association, Saeed Soltanpour, or Saeedi Sirjani, and many others. Among those who were murdered outside prison were Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar, Jafar Pouyandeh, Mohammad Mokhtari, Mir Alaie, Tafazzoli, Zalzadeh, and others. The latest victim is Akbar Mohammadi. Before him, Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist residing in Canada, was also tortured to death after being charged for photographing student protesters and the families of political prisoners. Well, obviously these acts violate the basic principles of human rights.

What do you remember from the decade between 1981 and 1991? What do you recall from the massacre of political prisoners that took place in the summer of 1988?

At that time, I regularly heard about the mass executions of a very large group of Iran's youth. Those who have been in the Islamic Republic's prisons recall that every night, until dawn, all they heard was the sound of shots being fired. They used to tally the number of the victims based on the number of shots they heard. Several mass graves exist in every city. It has been told by eye witnesses that the corpses of a great number of the executed political prisoners encased in burlap sacks were transported by trucks and buried in unmarked mass graves. The list, published abroad, of those executed is very long. Those executed were, mostly, members of political parties or organizations such as the Mojahedin-e Khalgh, "Fedayeen" (Majority and Minority), the Tudeh Party, or the Laborer's Path, or "Peykar." I have not been particularly close to, nor have I worked with, any of these organizations.

I have heard that in your youth, you were a sympathizer of the Youth Organization of the Tudeh Party of Iran. Is that right?

Yes it is. When I was young, I sympathized with the Tudeh Party. I used to work with its Youth Organization. However, when I realized that their characteristics did not suit my way of thinking, I pulled out. After August 19, 1953, I did not work with any political organizations.

We just passed the 53rd anniversary of the coup d'etat of August 19, 1953. What do you remember from the country's political and social atmosphere after the fall of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh's independent government, the shah's return, and the wave of executions and the compulsory migration of activists?

Following the coup d'etat, an absolute silence took hold and the press did not publish for awhile. We witnessed the execution of several groups of military and intellectual Tudeh Party supporters, among them, Morteza Keyvan, Iran's great poet and critic. Many others spent years in prison. A few years later, several magazines such as "Sepheed-o-Siah" (Black and White) and "Omid-e Iran" (Hope of Iran), were published. Little by little, things changed and everything grew anew until the revolution.

Our homeland has gone through many stages—both successes and disappointments—in the course of the 100 years following the Constitutional Revolution. Perhaps one of these turning points was the 2nd of Khordad, 1376 (May 23, 1997) when Mr. Khatami was elected as the Islamic Republic's president and assembled his reformist administration. At that time, at the peak of that movement, how far did you believe the changes could go?

After eight years of war with Iraq,the resultant destruction, and the deprivations that the people of this country suffered, I believed that the situation had no other chance to change and improve. Under those circumstances, Khatami's rise to power was a source of hope and optimism. In the 1997 elections, many people expressed their feelings quite freely on this subject. Unfortunately, in the very first year Khatami's term, the political chain murders took place. This issue brought back feelings of despair to society at large— especially when the investigation of those murders proved inconclusive and even more so when Nasser Zarafshan, the courageous prosecutor in this case, was thrown in prison over five years ago. The second time that Khatami was elected, people still retained a smidgeon of hope in their hearts. Unfortunately, that hope, too, turned quickly into despair and the country's socio-political atmosphere worsened.

During the last year, concurrent with the excitement of the ninth presidential elections, those who sought to transform Iran emphasized people's demands through gatherings and demonstrations. Among these activities were the seven-day gathering in front of Evin Prison, which demanded freedom for Nasser Zarafshan and other political prisoners, the gathering of women in front of Tehran University, and the gatherings calling for the release of Akbar Ganji, including one in front of Tehran's Milad Hospital during his hunger strike. You partook in all these gatherings. Please tell us about your experience participating in these events.

I did not think Ganji deserved all that suffering. We were close to losing him after he went on his long hunger strike. At the beginning of his hunger strike, I wrote a poem for him. Also, when it was time for him to break his strike, I wrote another poem. At the time of the gathering in front of Milad Hospital, we met with Ganji's attending physician, but they did not permit us to visit him. I sent Ganji the poem I had written for him—in which I had requested him to break his hunger strike—along with a single rose, through his physician. Akbar Ganji was at the verge of dying at the Milad Hospital.

Saeed Montazeri on Protests in Iran

'It Can't Go On Like This'Saeed Montazeri, son of the leading Iranian dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, talks to SPIEGEL about who is responsible for his father's recent death, reformists' chances of success and why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not suited to be president.01/05/2010

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IFJ Condemns New Wave of Journalists' Arrests in Iran

Media Release 05 January 2010

Mood in Iran ominous after latest violence

The Irish Times - Thursday, December 31, 2009MARY FITZGERALD

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Interviewing a former Iranian Basij militia member

Rory Carroll, Latin American correspondentWorld News BlogDecember 16, 2009

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Iran's Supreme Leader ordered intensification of Suppressions

By: Sepeher SaadatTranslated to English by Reza Eshteraki for Persian2EnglishDecember 15, 2009

Brazilian protests greet Ahmadinejad at start of South American tour

Rory Carroll, Latin American correspondentguardian.co.ukMonday 23 November 2009

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The popular movement and various factions of the ruling regime

By Alireza SaghafiAlireza Saghafi Khorassani, labour activist and a member of the Writers Association of IranNovember 26, 2009

The Green Movement and the Myth of Shame of the Middle Class

The Feminist SchoolNoushin Ahmadi KhorasaniTuesday 10 November 2009

'I Cannot Go Back to Iran'

Spiegel OnlineDaughter Of Ahmadinejad Adviser Seeks Asylum In GermanyBy Cathrin Schaer10/14/2009

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On the Eve of the Second Coup

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IFJ Condemns Media Witch Hunt as Journalists Flee Iran

Media Release 16 October 2009

On Reports of Secret Burials

By Hanif Mazruie - editor-in-chief of Norooz

Federal Minister Steinmeier calls for the release of political prisoners in Iran

02.08.2009 - Press releases

Why Iran's conservatives are airing their dirty laundry

In a striking move Tuesday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei personally called for a detention center to be closed, citing mistreatment, while President Ahmadinejad sanctions repressive tactics. By Iason Athanasiadis | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor from the July 28, 2009 edition

Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis

By Stephen R. Shalom, Thomas Harrison, Joanne Landy and Jesse Lemisch Campaign for Peace and Democracy July 7, 2009

I am not a speck of dirt, I am a retired teacher'

by Ervand Abrahamian (source: London Review of Books) Thursday, July 23, 2009 London Review of Books – Vol. 31, No. 14 (23 July 2009)

Ahmadinejad on the Wrong Side of History

By Navid ShomaliAny analysis of recent developments in Iran following the self-styled re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must take the bigger picture into consideration.

Elections in Iran - Open letter of support to the demonstrators in Iran

This open letter (dated 24/06/09), signed by a number of international academics amongst whom Noam Chomsky and Juan Cole, is a letter in support of the demonstrations that are taking place in Iran following the controversial presidential elections.

IFJ Leaders Call on Ahmadinejad to Free Journalists Held in Iran

Media Release 25 June 2009

POST-ELECTION UNREST - Shades of grey in Iranian Politics

Progressives in Iran ought to be able to count on active and principled solidarity from the world trade unionists and the left rather than being demeaned as dancing to imperialism's tune.Morning Star By: John Haylett Wednesday 24 June 2009

Iran between Militarism and Democracy

By: Faramarz Farbod June 15, 2009

Statement of the Central Committee of The Tudeh Party of Iran on Upcoming Presidential Elections!

Joint struggle and cooperation of forces fighting for reform, freedom and social justice is needed to defeat the candidates of the Supreme Leader (Vali-e-Faqih) and the ruling reaction 4 Jun 2009

Hardliners in a panic

Iran: Ensure free presidential election

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Public Statement AI Index: MDE 13/046/2009 15 May 2009

FT Interview: Mir-Hossein Moussavi

A Reformist Presidential Candidate?!

Former PM reveals his plans for challenging Ahmadinejad in June's Presidential elections Mousavi's Press Conference ‎ - 2009.04.09

Khatami to mount reformist challenge

By Roula Khalaf and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran /FT Published: February 2 2009 22:12 | Last updated: February 2 2009 22:12

Iran's 30-year-old republic Defiant, and doubtful

Feb 5th 2009 | CAIRO From The Economist Iran gives America the finger

An old has-been to the rescue?

Might a reform-minded former president displace the current one? From The Economist print edition, Dec 4th 2008

Election doubts over Ahmadinejad's health

Robert Tait , The Guardian, Friday October 24 2008

Nobel laureates call for release of Iranian Baha'i prisoners

30 June 2008

The systematic violations of human rights in Iran

Monday Morning

2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Slams Clinton's "Obliteration" Remark: She is Exception to the Norm

By Omid Memarian for Huffingtonpost (May 13, 2008)

Ebadi says intervention cannot solve Iran's problems

By Edgar Zuniga Jr. for The Daily Utah Chronicle (Wednesday, April 23, 2008)

Iran: Tied to its program

By Kamal Nazer Yasin for ISN Security Watch (06/03/08)

IRAN: Candidate Purge Smacks of a "Vendetta", Critics Say

By Omid Memarian IPSNews.net

Iran reformists fear mass exclusion from key vote

Gulf in Media

Iran: Rights situation deteriorating, says European MP after Tehran mission

AKI

Mothers of Peace

Media Release
05 January 2010

The Irish Times - Thursday, December 31, 2009
MARY FITZGERALD

Rory Carroll, Latin American correspondent
World News Blog
December 16, 2009

By: Sepeher Saadat
Translated to English by Reza Eshteraki for Persian2English
December 15, 2009

Rory Carroll, Latin American correspondent
guardian.co.uk
Monday 23 November 2009

By Alireza Saghafi
Alireza Saghafi Khorassani, labour activist and a member of the Writers Association of Iran
November 26, 2009

The Feminist School
Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani
Tuesday 10 November 2009

Spiegel Online
Daughter Of Ahmadinejad Adviser Seeks Asylum In Germany
By Cathrin Schaer
10/14/2009

Media Release
16 October 2009

In a striking move Tuesday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei personally called for a detention center to be closed, citing mistreatment, while President Ahmadinejad sanctions repressive tactics.
By Iason Athanasiadis | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor from the July 28, 2009 edition

By Stephen R. Shalom, Thomas Harrison, Joanne Landy and Jesse Lemisch
Campaign for Peace and Democracy
July 7, 2009

by Ervand Abrahamian (source: London Review of Books)
Thursday, July 23, 2009
London Review of Books – Vol. 31, No. 14 (23 July 2009)

By Navid Shomali
Any analysis of recent developments in Iran following the self-styled re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must take the bigger picture into consideration.

Media Release
25 June 2009

Progressives in Iran ought to be able to count on active and principled solidarity from the world trade unionists and the left rather than being demeaned as dancing to imperialism's tune.
Morning Star
By: John Haylett
Wednesday 24 June 2009

By: Faramarz Farbod
June 15, 2009

Joint struggle and cooperation of forces fighting for reform, freedom and social justice is needed to defeat the candidates of the Supreme Leader (Vali-e-Faqih) and the ruling reaction
4 Jun 2009

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Public Statement
AI Index: MDE 13/046/2009
15 May 2009

Former PM reveals his plans for challenging Ahmadinejad in June's Presidential elections
Mousavi's Press Conference ‎ - 2009.04.09

By Roula Khalaf and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran /FT
Published: February 2 2009 22:12 | Last updated: February 2 2009 22:12

Feb 5th 2009 | CAIRO
From The Economist
Iran gives America the finger

Might a reform-minded former president displace the current one?
From The Economist print edition, Dec 4th 2008

By Omid Memarian
IPSNews.net

NAZILA FATHI
New York Times

Robert Tait in Tehran
The Guardian

Tim Shipman in Washington
Telegraph

Tim Shipman
Telegraph

By Robert Tait in Tehran
The Guardian

By Colin Freeman in Teheran
Sunday Telegraph

By Robert Tait in Tehran
Guardian

By Robert Tait in Tehran
Guardian

By Robert Tait in Tehran
Guardian

By John Pilger
Guardian