Middle East Inside Line: Jordan's Warning; Lieberman's Threat; Gaza's Unity; Turkey's Israel Tension

King Abdullah's Warning to Israel: In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned on Tuesday that “Israel’s long-term future is in jeopardy unless there is permanent solution to the Middle East conflict”. He continued:

Over the Israeli-Lebanese border, if you spoke [to some Lebanese] today they feel there is going to be a war any second. [It] looks like there is an attempt by certain groups to promote a third intifada, which would be disastrous. Jerusalem as you are well aware is a tinderbox that could go off at any time, and then there is the overriding concern about military action between Israel and Iran.

So with all these things in the background, the status quo is not acceptable; what will happen is that we will continue to go around in circles until the conflict erupts, and there will be suffering by peoples because there will be a war.



The job of Jordan and the other countries in the international community is to keep common sense and keep hope alive until America can bring its full weight on the Israelis and the Palestinians to get their act together and move the process forward.

Lieberman's Threat over Ramallah's Plan: With no concrete steps towards the confidence-building measures demanded by the Netanyahu government, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio on Tuesday that Washington has reached a dead end in its attempts to revive Middle East peace talks. Erekat pointed to Israel’s failure to give guarantees, demanded by the US, that it not issue any more tenders to build on land where the Palestinians aim to establish a state, including East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, referring to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s statement that there would be a Palestinian state by 2011, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned the PA against plans to declare independence unilaterally, saying such a move could prompt Israel to annex parts of the West Bank and annul past peace agreements.

The Gaza Factions Meet: The four Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip --- Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine --- met on Sunday, as a senior Egyptian official said that Cairo is concerned that the recent escalation of tensions on the Gaza border could lead to another Israeli invasion. On the same day, all factions said that they will cease firing Qassam rockets at Israel.

Israel-Turkey War of Words Continues: At a ceremony to mark the opening of an Arab-language television and radio company,  Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey will come to the defense of Muslims around the world:

We cannot be indifferent to the problems of the Islamic world of Jerusalem.

Our task is the integration with the Western world but we did not turn our back to the East. Arabs and Turks are brothers and we share the same values.

We cannot watch the murder of children in Gaza with indifference. We worry about the Gaza children but our hearts are also for the children of Haiti and Chile.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s response was immediate.  A statement issued in West Jerusalem said:

Israel is not interested in confrontation with any country, including Turkey. The impression that is being created is that the Turkish prime minister is seeking to integrate with the Muslim world at Israel's expense.

We suggest he find a more creative way, and to try to integrate with both the Muslim and Western worlds without turning into an extremist leader in the style of Hugo Chavez.

The Israelis also advised Erdogan to “be equally concerned for the killing of innocent civilians in Pakistan and Iraq at the hands of terrorist groups.”

Ankara's Search for "Balance of Power": In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Erdogan repeatedly called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad his “dear friend”, as he sent two messages to two different fronts. On the one hand, Erdogan reminded his “dear friend” that there should be no arms race in the region. On the other hand, he criticized countries pushing for another round of sanctions in the United Nations Security Council:

We consider that this question should be resolved diplomatically. Sure, sanctions are an issue at the moment, but I don't think that the ones being discussed can bring results.

The Latest from Iran (6 April): Challenge Resumes

1945 GMT: Parliament-President Compromise? Mehr News reports that the Majlis and Government have formed a joint committee to resolve the disagreement over revenues from subsidy cuts. The move was announced by Gholam-Reza Mesbahi-Moghaddam, head of the special Parliamentary committee studying the economic reform plan.

Still, the move may not be a smooth one. Mesbahi-Moghaddam told Khabar Online, "After many years of studying and teaching economics in universities, why can't I be taken as an economist, but President Ahmadinejad who hasn't studied economy falsely regards himself as an economist?"

NEW Iran Snap Analysis: Playtime’s Over
NEW Iran Document: Mousavi Meeting with Reformists (5 April)
NEW Iran Document: Rafsanjani Meets the Reformists (5 April)
Iran Document: Jafar Panahi’s Wife on His Detention & Health
The Latest from Iran (5 April): Repression

1940 GMT: Karroubi Advisor Tortured? Saham News, the website of reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi’s Etemade Melli party, claims that Mohammad Davari, the detained chief editor, has been subjected to torture intended to force him to cast public doubt on Karroubi’s claims about the rape of post-election prisoners.


Saham News says Davari is in very poor physical and psychological condition. The website reports that he’s been allowed to meet with his mother briefly in jail only three times since his arrest.

1930 GMT:Academic Purity (cont.). Adding to our report that Professor Morteza Mardiha has been expelled from Allameh Tabatabei University, Pedestrian adds two others who have been suspended from their teaching positions: Mir Hossein Mousavi's chief advisor, Alireza Beheshti, and another Mousavi advisor, Ghorban Behzadian-Nejad.

1635 GMT: Oh, This Is Certain to Be Helpful. As the Obama Administration unveils its Nuclear Posture Review --- “If a non-nuclear weapon state is in compliance with the nonproliferation treaty and its obligations, the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it" --- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates decides he needs to add a bit of Clint Eastwood-as-Dirty Harry to the public spin:

If you’re going to play by the rules ... then we will undertake certain obligations to you. But if you're not going to play by the rules, if you're going to be proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.

1625 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, spokesman for the Khatami Government and leading member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been given a five-year prison sentence.

Another member of the IIPF, Shahab Tabatabaei, has also been sentenced to five years in prison following appeal.

1620 GMT: Academic Purity. Morteza Mardiha, professor of political philosophy at Allameh Tabatabei University, has been expelled from the campus.

1540 GMT: Protest in The Netherlands. A group of Iranian protesters occupied Iran's embassy in The Hague today. There were a number of arrests as the demonstrators were removed.

1530 GMT: The Oil Front --- All is Well! Hamid Hoseini, the head of Petroleum Products Exports Syndicate, has confirmed that oil exports to India, China and Japan have been sharply reduced. In the case of Beijing, the fall is more than 50%. Hoseini warned that sanctions could be "effective" and Tehran cannot be choosy about its customers.

However, Iranian Oil Minister Masoud Mir-Kazemi preferred to talk about imports rather than exports, saying Iran has the potential to achieve self-sufficiency in gasoline production amid the threat of sanctions and disinvestment.

1440 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Journalist and student activist Omid Montazeri, arrested in December when he enquired about the detention of his mother, has been given a temporary release. He has been sentenced to six years in prison.

The detention of Kaveh Kermanshahi, human rights activist and member of the One Million Signatures Campaign, has been extended for another month. Kermanshahi was taken into custody at the start of February.

1430 GMT: Karroubi's Message. There is now a Persian summary of Mehdi Karroubi's meeting with the reformist coalition in Parliament (see separate entries for the Mousavi and Rafsanjani meetings) and a short English extract:

Mehdi Karroubi, strongly condemning the growth of lies, rumours, and deception in the name of Islam and religion by a small group, added, “Today I am not only mourning for Imam Khomeini [as the founder of the revolution] and what has happened to the revolution but more than anything I am mourning for Islam and Imam Ali (shia’s first Imam who is the symbol of justice).”

1310 GMT: Corruption and the Ahmadinejad Government. Elyas Naderan, a "conservative" MP and member of the Majlis' Economic Commission, has alleged that First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi is the head of a "corruption network".

0955 GMT: Iranian Spying Down Under? The Australian publishes an article claiming that the Iranian Embassy in Canberra is "spying on Iranian democracy activists in Australia, collecting intelligence on their activities, and reporting back to Tehran".

0945  GMT: The Post-Election Dead. Emrooz has posted a list of alleged names and burial places of 50 post-election protesters in Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery.

0830 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Human rights activist Mohammad Rhana Ghaznavids has been arrested.

0710 GMT: The Saberi protests. EA readers update us on the ongoing protests in front on the Japanese Embassy in Washington over the threatened deportation of activist Jamal Saberi.

Mission Free Iran reports on Sunday's demonstration, "Iranian Sweets and a Saberi Solidarity Cherry Tree", and announces another protest for next Sunday.

0700 GMT: We've now updated on the resumed political manoeuvres, posting a full translation of the meeting between Mir Hossein Mousavi and the reformist Parliamentary coalition.

0620 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The families of three of Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s advisors have visited Qom to appeal to senior clerics.

The families of Arab Maziar,  Alireza Beheshti Shirazi, and Ghorban Behzadian Nejad visited Grand Ayatollahs Vahid Khorasani, Mousavi Ardebili and Bayat Zanjani to express concerns about continuing detention and denial of legal rights.

All three men were detained on 28 December, one day after the Ashura demonstrations.

0610 GMT: Looks Like We Have a Theme. "There are a series of unresolved issues that the Parliament could take further" (0530 GMT) --- the Iranian Labor News Agency reports that 233 of the 290 members of the Majlis have written to Iran's head of judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, demanding a fight against "big" corruption.

0600 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Cleric Seyed Ahmadreza Ahmadpour, a senior member in Qom of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been given a one-year prison sentence by a clerical court.

The 1 1/2-year sentence of student activist Kaveh Rezaee has been upheld by an appeals court.

0530 GMT: We start this morning with the impression that, after the New Year holidays, the political battle has been resumed, big-time, in Iran.We put up a summary of Mousavi's statement to the reformist coalition at the end of our Monday updates, and we've now posted the exchange between the reformists and Rafsanjani.

We have a snap analysis, "Playtime's Over", of the developments.

UPDATED Iraq Latest: 8 Bombings Kill at Least 35

UPDATE 1500 GMT: Iraq's Interior Ministry says there were seven explosions, killing 35 and injuring at least 140. The attacks were a mix of car and suicide bombings. All but one were in resdential areas, most of them Shi'a, destroying three apartment buildings. The other explosion was near Haifa Street in central Baghdad.

0900 GMT: A police source has told Reuters that at least 28 people are dead. Associated Press is claiming, from sources, at least 34 dead and 100 wounded.

NEW Iraq: Reactions to the “Collateral Murder” Video
US Military & Iraq’s Civilians: The “Collateral Murder” Video

Four bombs this morning in Baghdad have killed at least 11 people. Iraqi security forces say two to four buildings have collapsed.


One of the attacks was a suicide bomber,who detonated explosives on Haifa Street near the National Museum in central Baghdad. Two explosions were in the Khadamiya district, killing at least five, and a car bomb in Shula in western Baghdad destroyed the buildings and left at least two dead.

The attacks follow Sunday's triple suicide bombing with a toll of 42 dead and hundreds wounded.

Afghanistan: The Humanity Missing From Our Debate

EA correspondent Josh Mull is also the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation and publishes at Rethink Afghanistan.

Former South Carolina senator Ernest Hollings has written an excellent editorial  calling the US war in Afghanistan "Not Necessary." It's always good to see fiscal conservatives sticking to their beliefs and opposing the incredible cost, but Hollings also stakes his reputation and personal experience in Vietnam against the current conflict:

I was "a hard charger" on the war in Vietnam. In fact, the motion for the last $500 million that went into the Vietnam War was made by me on the Senate Appropriations Committee. I thought the Vietnamese were willing to fight and die for democracy. Some were, but a lot more were willing to give up their lives over ten years for communism. Now I have learned that people want other types of government other than democracy. I've been to Hanoi; visited John McCain's prison, and the people of Vietnam are happy.

Clearly he's not some reckless hippy, he actually supported Vietnam. But he learned the harsh realities of war, the futility and madness of it all.



Unfortunately, there's a downside to Hollings' piece. He seems to justify part of his opposition with the orientalist smear of Afghans as xenophobic:

The one thing we learned in Charlie Wilson's War is that Afghans don't like or trust foreigners. President Karzai in the morning news is campaigning against the UN and all foreigners because he knows this makes him popular with the Afghans.

Yes, apparently the reason our efforts are failing is because the Afghans are just too racist to listen to our ideas. It couldn't possibly be something we're doing, right? It has to be those racist Afghans.

After all, Americans love foreigners! When Hispanic immigrants come to El Norte, our minuteman militias are there at the border to greet them with candy and job brochures. When our factories are shipped overseas, American workers are happy just to be giving those impoverished foreigners a job. And certainly none of us would think to insult the President by calling him a foreigner. Only Afghans hate foreigners, just like in Charlie Wilson's War.

So do I think Hollings is that delusional? No way. His remarks are just indicative of how comfortable we've become, on all sides of the conflict, with thinking of the Afghans as bizarre, alien creatures instead of the human beings they are. Hollings is taking a highly admirable, principled stand against the war, indeed against war itself, but he still manages to smear the Afghans for the failure of our invasion. Why? Because they "don't like or trust foreigner..

Let's go deeper into this alien Afghan fantasy with Michael Yon, who brings us this tale about his visit to an Afghan village:

With the Battle for Kandahar kicking off, and our troops surging in for the counteroffensive, villages previously beyond the periphery of our effective reach are becoming more accessible. Many of them have been Taliban-controlled. We don’t always know whether these isolated, dusty mud-walled places support, provide sanctuary, or are the native home of Taliban fighters. The Afghanistan government remains absent from most Afghan villages. The central government hidden away in Kabul still offers zero. Not juice, justice or security. The Taliban at least offers justice in some areas.

And so Charlie Company, some Afghan police, and Haji Oboyadulah Popal (the governor of Shah Wali Kot district), headed to the hills.

Just like Hollings' piece, we're off to a good start. Yon lays out the facts: The government in Kabul is "hidden away" and "offers zero" while the Taliban does a much better job of providing services to the locals. But that's not the point of Yon's post. He's taking us on a magical mystery tour to meet alien Afghan children.

For the first hour or so, no girls were to be seen, but the boys wanted their photos taken. Many villagers have never had their photos taken. The boys didn’t seem to know what the camera was until they saw their images. Soldiers and Marines sometimes carry Polaroid Cameras to villages. The villagers love to get the shots which often are the only photos they have ever owned.

Finally a lone girl came out. She wandered around for some time and a boy showed her to me, and when I lifted the camera he even shielded her eyes, but a moment too late. This was the first instance I saw anyone care if a young girl was photographed. Even the girl is covering her face. [emphasis added]

Weeeird. The zany Afghan culture seems to forbid strange foreign men taking pictures of little girls. But that's OK, Yon snapped a picture anyway, Americans know it's just nonsense. After all, Americans often approach little girls on the street and photograph them without permission. "Don't worry," they tell the parents, "it's just for my blog on the  Internet that anyone in the world can see." And Americans are super cool with that. But Yon has made another discovery --- fart jokes

There was a meeting going on with Captain Hanlin and the elders and the boys were well-behaved with them, but they were angling for attention.

The boys would have been fun if there were no meeting. We could have started a slingshot competition. But they were getting to be a pain. They magically disappeared and soon were crowded around the mortar team maybe 30 meters away. The crowd of boys began laughing so loudly that the meeting stopped a couple times to see what was up.

The British will designate a soldier to be the comedian during missions. When kids disrupt soldiers, the comedian can distract them away from business. Our folks were borrowing that good idea. I walked over and asked our guys how they had lured the kids away. Why were they laughing so loud? A soldier answered that they didn’t try to entertain the boys. He continued, “I just farted and they went crazy.” So he did it again and so on. The soldier boys with the mortars were getting along famously with the village boys.

Who knew that public corporeal depressurization is a great taboo in Afghanistan, but incredibly entertaining when done by Americans?

Yeah, crazy, not only is flatulence a "great taboo" to Afghans, but also their young males seem to find it humorous. That's nothing like American boys, who we know mostly prefer the early Woody Allen catalog and the letters of Oscar Wilde when it comes to comedy, never fart jokes. And a taboo? Americans are constantly farting on each other, to big applause and sincere appreciation. It's just good manners, like saying "please" and "thank you".

Of course, I don't think either Yon or Hollings intended to portray the Afghans in this light, as xenophobic murderers preventing our democracy or as fascinating creatures from an alien culture. We are simply too quick to gloss over the fact that we're dealing with people, human beings who deserve dignity, respect, and our consideration. When we dismiss their humanity, even unintentionally, it's actually us who suffers. We lose our humanity. Look at this post from Spencer Ackerman:

To get obscure for a second, there’s been a sense in this country for a decade about air strikes on terrorists and insurgent groups that equate them with weakness. Think about the number of times you’ve read permutations about “lobbing cruise missiles” at terrorist training camps or some such. There’s an understandable reason for that: air strikes are what you do when you can’t get close to a target on the ground. So imagine my surprise a couple years ago when I read al-Qaeda theoretician Abu Mus’ab al-Suri’s almost-mystical bewilderment with U.S. air power. (Seriously, read this book.) Having never been on the receiving end of a cruise missile or a predator missile or a JDAM, it can be easy to lose perspective about the destructive capability of those weapons, and the way they can focus the mind of an enemy. It’s fair to say al-Suri really was shocked and awed. He just wasn’t defeated by air strikes. Maybe that distinction is what’s led some of us perhaps to overcorrect our view of airpower in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency....

I do not know if any of that is happening. I just know that it makes some sense to believe that it could based on past observable behavior. The drone strikes themselves should probably not be viewed just as lethal occurrences, but as events that facilitate reactions in both an enemy cohort and a civilian population caught up in the mix. Any strike that occurs only occurs because an intelligence network allowed it to occur. And that’s the unheralded aspect — and the real determinant factor — of what the CIA’s drone program really is.

According to Ackerman, air strikes should be reconsidered because they scare the hell out of people, and we should try to judge the drone program in that light. Think about that for a moment. He says we should rethink our blasting away at "an enemy cohort and a civilian population" with "a cruise missile or a predator missile or a JDAM" because it effectively "shocked and awed" them, although admittedly it doesn't actually defeat them.

Good point! Now if only there was one simple term we could apply to this strategy of using violence to coerce and frighten a population into accepting your political agenda. Hmm.

Oh right. Terrorism.

Have I exposed Ackerman's secret desire to promote terrorism? Nope. Just like Hollings and Yon, Ackerman inadvertently forgot that he was talking about real Afghan human beings. Human beings who, just like us, enjoy fart jokes and hate corrupt government and don't like it when foreigners terrorize them with bombs. If you forget that, it's easy to think that the CIA using terrorism against xenophobes thousands of miles away is a good idea.

Now these are all pretty harmless examples of seemingly good-intentioned people de-humanizing the Afghans. But as over the top as I've been in my characterizations of them, these ideas that they unintentionally proliferate do have real, deadly consequences. My colleague at Rethink Afghanistan, Derrick Crowe, spent his Easter Sunday putting together this report:

Remember that survivors of the raid said that the special operations forces denied the wounded medical treatment and prevented survivors from going to get medical help for an extended period of time, during which one of the women and one of the men who were mortally wounded died.

That means special operations forces were busy digging bullets out of walls and/or people to cover their asses while the innocent people they shot were bleeding to death.

Those men and pregnant women our soldiers were carving bullets out of, those are the Afghans who "don't like or don't trust" foreigners, those are the Afghan boys who just like to have their picture taken, and they're the ones who are "shocked and awed" by our bloody bombing campaigns.

That's what we get when we deal with them on these orientalist terms. Our military carried out a nauseatingly gruesome massacre of Afghan civilians, covered it up, and then smeared the journalist who tried to report it. And why not? Afghans aren't people, they're an alien culture who hates foreigners, and we've got to use our awesome shock and awe strategy to defeat them, right? Nonsense.

Respect for Afghans is sorely lacking on all sides of the Afghanistan debate. It's 2010, nine years into the war, and we're still talking about Afghanistan in these orientalist terms. Yet it confuses and bewilders us when stories of war crimes and cover-ups like Derrick's seem to go unnoticed. We know why nobody wants to hear about the massacre. We don't want to think about them as human. This has to change now.

Iran Document: Mousavi Meeting with Reformists (5 April)

From Parleman News, translated by Khordaad 88:

Mir Hossein Mousavi, the Prime Minister during the holy defense [Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988], viewed the main cause behind the events following the election as the perspective that recognizes only one school of thought and one party and denies the collective wisdom. He further renounced depictions that the State Television broadcast about the departed Imam [Khomeini] and viewed them as ruining the fundamentals of the establishment: “State TV despoils the doctrine and behavior of the departed Imam Khomeini. This is exactly what foreign news agencies do.”

Iran Snap Analysis: Playtime’s Over
Iran Document: Rafsanjani Meets the Reformists
The Latest from Iran (6 April): Challenge Resumes

According to reports of Parleman News Agency, members of [the reformist Parliamentary coalition] Committee of Imam’s Path visited Mir Hossein Mousavi as part of New Year rituals.


At the introduction of this session, the most senior member of the committee, Mr. [Mohammad Reza] Tabesh, congratulated Mr. Prime Minister for the new year, and hoped that the new year would be a year of blessing for the great nation of Iran, families of martyrs, devotees of the Islamic Revolution and victims of the election aftermath.

Mr. Tabesh continued, “Last year, the nation of Iran defended the achievements of the revolution with their magnificent participation in the election, but unfortunately the government did not respond to them in the way they deserved. The government did not make a good deal with the nation.”

He then alluded to the name "Path of Imam" that minority opposition group of reformist delegates had adopted for their committee, and added: “As the members of Path of Imam committee in the parliament we should be informers, missionaries of Imam’s thoughts and views, and the path he had laid out.”

He further added: “Unfortunately, today the picture that Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Corp. depicts of Imam [Khomeini] is a great misdeed towards Imam. Biased broadcasting of selected parts of Imam’s statements taken out of their original time and context makes the younger generations ask whether this is really how the "great" Imam [Khomeini], whom they have heard so much about, is.

Tabesh acknowledged Mr. Mousavi’s lengthy time of public of service as the Prime Minister during the leadership of Imam Khomeini, and requested that as one of companions of Imam, he would talk about Imam’s way of life, and strategies that Imam employed to balance the power and manage governance of the country.

As the meeting continued, Mr. Mousavi too, gave New Year's congratulations to the members present and wished greatness for the great nation of Iran. He continued with some of his memories from his time as Prime Minister:

Imam [Khomeini], despite his firm support of me and my government, he never made the decisions that impacted all people alone. To make such decisions he would consult the opinions of everyone necessary, and basically viewed such consultations as his religious duty. I remember, for instance, during those times there were issues on removing restrictions to bring rice from the north of country to Tehran and other locations in the country, and some of our friends were insisting that such restrictions should be removed so that prices would decline. In a meeting with three heads of three branches of power conceded that they would remove the restrictions though I was still against it for my own reasons. Imam heard this issue of my disagreement and said that, although he does not believe prices would decline, he orders that whatever the majority has ruled should be executed.

Mousavi expressed the view:

Despite his unique popularity within the people and despite the capabilities and abilities that he possessed according to law and thanks to trust of people along with his own accurate and apt view of issues, the departed Imam still gave the highest priority to consultations with heads of the branches of power and experts of the time on matters that impacted the whole nation. He would never base his decisions on views of one group. The meetings of the three branches, prior to the existence of an ‘Expediency Council’ ,and later establishing the Expediency Council were all results of this doctrine of Imam [Khomeini] in his governance.

The Prime Minister of Imam [Khomeini] reminded:

One of the reasons behind that government’s aptitude to solve the problems and crises in that time was due this relation that people directly had with the establishment, government, and the leadership, plus the fact that all the decisions were made rationally through consultations with the collective.

He recalled another memory:

In the last days of Imam Khomeini’s life, I foresaw major changes in the government and predicted that I won’t be there any more. I was worried about the problems that these changes would bring about. One of these problems was supplying essential goods needed in the country and so in a meeting between the heads of the executive, judiciary, and the legislative body, I proposed to dedicate some of the government’s income to purchase and store wheat. We all agreed on this matter and wrote a letter to Imam Khomeini informing him about our conclusion and seeking his ruling. He responded that we should proceed if we all agreed on the matter.

Though Imam could simply agree with our proposal, he demonstrated his dependence on collective reason using his language and emphasized that the use of collective reasoning be a principle. He always lived by this principle and so most decisions in his time were made collectively by government official in the legal framework with minimum exceptions to the rule.

Mousavi further talked about the previous year's events and remarked: “If in dealing with these occurrences, we followed Imam’s path in using collective reasoning, looking at the bigger picture, and preventing one group to dominate the discourse and the decision making process, we would not have come across these bitter moments.”

Recalling another occurrence, Mousavi added:

I remember that in parliamentary elections, Esfahan was an important electoral district that attracted a lot of attention. As with every other human, Imam also had a preference for some of the candidates running in Esfahan. Once when I was reading to him the election results, he smiled: ‘It’s OK, let them take Esfahan.’ Those in attendance appreciated how well Imam handled the results.

Imam encouraged presence of all factions and streams and did not prevent specific groups [from participating in the political process]. It was people who, by means of their vote, decided which group or school of thought took power. The Imam’s proposals for constitutional reform showed that he continuously insisted on collective reasoning and the necessity to abide by the law. Discussing these issues is a proper way of introducing Imam Khomeini’s way of thinking, his manners and methods.

Unfortunately what we witness on the state media, which is to damage Imam Khomeini’s doctrine and conduct, destroys the pillars of the system. This is exactly what the foreign media does as well. Both state and foreign media show a part of his speech, without discussing the context in which the speech was given, to imply a specific misguided image of Imam Khomeini. This results in an incomplete and incorrect understanding of Imam Khomeini by the audience specifically the younger generation. I think in this regard, the foreign and state media are like two blades of scissor which damage Imam Khomeini’s bright image.

Introducing Imam Khomeini to the public as he really was would have increased the legitimacy of the system. It is unfortunate that some do not take advantage of this great opportunity and on the contrary attack and damage roots of this system with [misguided] propaganda [regarding Imam Khomeini].

Last year’s events reemphasized the reality that it is useful to look at the past and compensate for those events based on collective reasoning and Imam’s true image –-- not the one introduced in certain media –-- as a role model.