Iran Special: Political Prisoners, Election Fraud, & The Regime's Backfiring Propaganda

Two weeks ago we wrote about a curious episode inside Iran. Fars News posted a video which claimed to show prominent reformist and former Deputy Minister of Interior Mostafa Tajzadeh, who had just been returned to detention in Evin Prison, "confessing" to three other men that Mir Hossein Mousavi had lost the 2009 Presidential election.

The effort fell apart pretty quickly. The video was clearly not from Evin, and the audio showed signs of manipulation. Tajzadeh's camp said that the remarks from the reformist had been edited together and did not refer to the 2009 election --- EA correspondents have subsequently confirmed that the audio, if not the video, is probably concerned with the 2005 Presidential vote. (We have not been able to access the video since 20 August; Government supporters assert that it can still be seen inside Iran.)

NEW Iran Document: Karroubi on Election Fraud and Repression (29 August)
Iran Video Special: Have Fars (& Revolutionary Guard) Faked a Reformist “Confession” on Election?

We thought that was that, although the regime maintained its attempt to break Tajzadeh, blocking any contact between him and his family for 11 days after he was returned to prison.

We were wrong. Yesterday a Government supporter eagerly wrote me, "What excuse can you provide for us now?" He linked to an item from Iran Newspaper on Network (INN). A student activist, Said Rajavi Faqih, had supposedly said in an interview that Tajzadeh's "election confession" was true: the reformists knew they lost the 2009 elections.

The only problem with the INN piece? Almost none of it was true.

EA correspondents quickly found the Rajavi Faqih interview in Rooz Online and did some other checking of sources:

1. Razavi Faqih actually said that a) while Tajzadeh doubted fraud the day after the June 2009 election, he was immediately imprisoned and so had no additional information about the manipulation; b) when Tajzadeh received the information after he was temporarily released, he changed his mind; c) Tajzadeh is now convinced of a massive “mohandessi”, i.e. a complete plan for election-rigging, long before election day. (Indeed, we reported two weeks ago that Tajzadeh had said this, just before he was summoned back to Evin.)

Razavi Faqih, for his part, denounced the regime’s efforts to regain legitimacy one year after the elections — by distorting Tajzadeh’s earlier remarks — and concluded that after a creeping coup the Islamic Republic is neither Islamic nor a republic anymore.

2. While he is an activist, Razavi Faqih is not linked to Tajzadeh and is no position to know first-hand of Tajzadeh’s beliefs or to act as a spokesman for him. (It should also be noted that Razavi Faqih is currently under duress inside Iran, with his passport taken from him so he is unable to return to Paris, where he usually resides.)

3. The reliable, “official” spokesperson for Tajzadeh is his wife, Fakhrosaadat Mohtashamipour. In a post on her personal weblog on Saturday, she published a statement that Tajzadeh managed to relay to her during their first visit since he returned to prison. In that message, he refers without reservation to election “fraud” and a “coup”.

That message is now making its way around the Internet. Tajzadeh is challenging Government supporters to a public debate over the election's legitimacy --- Mehdi Karroubi made a similar statement yesterday --- and asked the regime, if it was so confident, had not dared to publish the "seven pages" he has written in prisons detailing his thoughts.

So it appears that this latest propaganda effort, like the Fars video, will soon fizzle out. (Government supporters are doggedly pursuing the line that Tajzadeh must have made his confession in private, as his father-in-law has denounced his wife for publishing Tajzadeh's claims of a "coup".)

The INN attempt, however, takes a small place in a wider, more important story. The regime has been trying to break Tajzadeh for some time by getting him to publicly make a confession or distance himself from the reformists. When he refused to do so, he was summoned back to Evin and the Fars video was posted. He was then cut off from all contact with his family for 11 days. Still he refused to bend — unlike other figures like former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi who, at least temporarily, did so — and so the campaign against him, which included the “confession” that he has refused to make, continues.

Tajzadeh is not the only target, of course. One could add the names of other reformist politicians, journalists, and activists who have not only been told that they should be quiet, if they are to be freed, but also that they should renounce the opposition movement and testify to the Government's legitimacy.

And here is the even wider story. Tajzadeh and colleagues are counter-attacking. Two weeks ago, just before he was returned to detention, Tajzadeh joined six other reformists in the complaint --- supported by the leaked audio of a Revolutionary Guard commander setting out measures for repression of the opposition before and after the election --- that fraud had been carried out. That complaint is now being prominently featured by other critics of the Government, with Mehdi Karroubi's statement the latest volley against the regime, the Guardian Council, and the security forces.

So the curious paradox of the Government propaganda effort. A few weeks ago, I would have said that the issue of the 2009 election --- while still contested by the opposition --- had been superseded by broader questions of justice and rights. After all, there is no possible way, given the Government's suppression of the evidence, to find out how many votes each candidate actually received on 12 June 2009.

But now, with its fumbling attempts to post "confessions" or to at least break its opponents, the regime has opened itself up to more, rather than less, attention to the claims of fraud.

Where those claims will head --- to public protest or merely to the simmering of the fire under the ashes of post-election Iran --- is unknown, of course. But they are out there: opposition has not been "broken".

UPDATED Iran Video Special: Have Fars (& Revolutionary Guard) Faked a Reformist "Confession" on Election?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efJPPsYhd-s[/youtube]

UPDATE 1645 GMT: James Miller, who is a professional audio engineer, has gone through a YouTube version of the Fars News video of the Tajzadeh "confession". (The original video is still down.)

Miller's preliminary finding indicates --- though it does not prove --- that the audio has been manipulated. The full text of his finding is at the bottom of this entry.

Miller will examine the video further in his studio tomorrow.

UPDATE 1510 GMT: The original video of the Tajzadeh "confession" no longer loads on the Fars News site. Technical error or has it been pulled?

UPDATE 18 August: The Facebook page supporting Mostafa Tajzadeh has released material to counter the Fars video. In a question-and-answer session with readers, Tajzadeh says his claimed "confession" that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the 2009 election is based on an "incomplete understanding" and thus a "false interview" distorting comments he made in 2008.

The page also has a video of Tajzadeh's most recent comments on the 2009 election, made just before he returned to prison from temporary leave: “Based on how they (government officials) have treated us, they are admitting that they carried out a coup in the election; because if they were clear of this [charge], they immediately would have welcomed this complaint [by seven prominent reformist detainees against the military for manipulation of the election]. They would have said, sure bring this on to investigate….The Supreme Leader had been saying that we should protest though legal means. Therefore we tried the legal means and we said that we want to make an official complaint [to the judiciary] that there was an election coup. Now the response of the judiciary officials is to call us back to the prison!”

This morning Fars News posted a 43-second video claiming to show former Minister of Interior Mostafa Tajzadeh, detained in Evin Prison, "confessing" to three fellow prisoners ---reformist politicians Mohsen Safai-Farahani and Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, and an unidentified man --- that Mir Hossein Mousavi had lost the 2009 Presidential election to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Tajzadeh supposedly says:

I have experience in handling elections, so I know what happened. It is possible than one or two million votes have been displaced; we would have gotten 14-15 million votes. Not 25. We have lost the elections.

EA correspondents consulted immediately for, as one of the staff commented, "Unless they all knew that they were being filmed and wanted to either tease or appease their captors, this is quite a development."

Doubts soon emerged, however. Sources in Iran said that the sound on the video appeared to have been manipulated, with subtitles added to cover up the "doctoring" of the audio; another theory was that Tajzadeh was referring to a previous Presidential election. The location of the meeting is clearly not Evin Prison; it appears to be a residence (possibly of the unidentified 4th person in the video?).

So did Fars News carry out this video effort on its own or was it assisted? We have no confirmation yet, but our suspicion is that this was a Revolutionary Guard initiative through the website.

Still, that leaves the question: why attempt such a blunt attempt at propaganda? (I asked an EA correspondent, "How many folks inside Iran will believe this is Evin?". Answer: "Very few.")

Another EA correspondent offers the motive, "Iranian authorities simply don't have anything better against Tajzadeh. He hasn't blinked an eye in court, unlike [former Vice President Mohammad Ali] Abtahi and [journalist Mohammad] Atrianfar, both of whom gave televised 'confessions'. They are the only two who have been milked. If anyone was really confessing [in Tajzadeh's case], then it would have been done last year, filmed on pristine camera and shown on national TV."

Postscript (18 August): James Miller's Preliminary Finding on the Audio

The video can clearly be split into 4 sentences, according to the translation:

(1-12 Seconds: Fars news introduction)

12-15 Seconds: "I have experience in handling elections, so I know what happened."

18-22 Seconds: "It is possible than one or two million votes have been displaced"

23-27 seconds: "We would have gotten 14-15 million votes. Not 25."

28-29 seconds: "We have lost the elections."

Looking at the continuity of the audio, we can tell with a degree of certainty that the middle two sentences flow uninterrupted and were recorded at the same time. In the slight pause between the two, there is movement, including the knocking (audible and visual) of the right hand of the man on the right side of the video.

However, listening to the white noise that is constant in the background, one can hear slight, very subtle popping sounds after the first sentence. The same noise repeats, much louder, immediately before the last sentence of the recording, and again before the video loop begins.

Slight popping noise can often be associated with the digital manipulation of audio files. This occurs when two audio sources are put together and they do not adequately blend.

If the pop is subtle, it is because of a small (think microscopic) gap between sources. If it is louder, it is because these audio sources combine at the seem, doubling the volume for that same microscopic moment of time. In the worst case scenario, transient noise combines while the gap can still be heard, giving a little snap.

Typically, in recorded music, these noises can be minimized by crossfading the two sections together. The gap is eliminated, and the new audio source covers the pop, which has been lowered in volume. However, with white noise this is difficult for two reasons. First of all, there is very little time to blend clips together, eliminating the possibility of longer fades. Secondly, the listener can clearly make out the changes in cadence and tone of the background noise.

The popping is not terribly loud in the video because the source (the background noise) is not loud, but these seem to be inconsistent with the rest of the video where the background noise is unbroken. It is also interesting that these audio inconsistencies only occur after the first sentence, and more loudly before the last, while the middle two (which are validated by the knocking sound) are free from any change in background noise.

There is no evidence of tampering between the second and third sentences, but there does seem to be some (inconclusive) evidence of potential tampering, especially between the third and fourth sentences.

Without the full context, it appears as though Fars is trying to hide something, and their obvious manipulation (looping of the last sentence) is another sign that they are generally untrustworthy. Why has the original been taken down, and why haven't the full tapes been released, if Fars has nothing to hide?

Context is everything within an audio bite. Tajzadeh could have preceded these sentences wtih a dicussion about what the official party line would be, meaning this entire excerpt is a hypothetical quote. Also, "we have lost the elections" is a fact, rather than a statement of one's belief about the official results. (Ahmadinejad is operationally the president of Iran. Mousavi, regardless of vote count, operationally lost. That does not mean that Tajzadeh endorses the legitimacy of the fact.)

The Latest from Iran (3 August): Explosive Words

2000 GMT: Defense Watch. The Ministers of Defense of Iran and Oman have agreed to "secure the Straits of Hormuz".

1950 GMT: Conspiracy Theory of the Day. Qassem Ravanbaksh, editor of Parto-ye Sokhan (linked to Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi), has declared that former President Mohammad Khatami visited Saudi Arabia before the June 2009 election to get money.

More tangibly, Khatami has been fined $300 over an unspecified speech because of a complaint by Ahmadinejad Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai.

1945 GMT: Basij Disruption. Basiji paramilitaries have disrupted a memorial service for former member of Parliament, Ismail Tatari, at a Kermanshah mosque because they thought Mehdi Karroubi might be present.

1905 GMT: Taking On the President. Leading MP Darius Ghanbari has joined the criticism of President Ahmadinejad, from across the political spectrum (see 1700), for the conference of the Iranian diaspora. Ghanbari also charged the Government with the wrong strategy as it "chased" elite Iranian and foreign investors.

1900 GMT: Meeting Mousavi. A group of Iranian journalists have posted a report on Rah-e-Sabz of a discussion with Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard.

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1853 GMT: No Debate. In the least surprising news of the day, the Obama Administration has rejected President Ahmadinejad's call for a public discussion with Barack Obama at the UN General Assembly in September. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "We have always said that we'd be willing to sit down and discuss Iran's illicit nuclear program, if Iran is serious about doing that. To date, that seriousness has not been there."

1845 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The trial of film director Jafar Panahi, arrested in March for criticism of the regime, has been postponed to late September because the judge and prosecutor did not appear in court yesterday.

1840 GMT: Sanctions Watch. As EA readers have already noted, the US has formally imposed sanctions on 21 firms it claims are front companies for the Iranian Government.

The claimed fronts included two Belarus-based banks, two Germany-based investment firms, and mining and engineering companies in Japan, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, and Iran.

The news has been noticed inside Iran, with Press TV headlining the development.

1700 GMT: The Battle Within. Alef has asked the President to "please observe national dignity", criticising Ahmadinejad's "strange" challenge to Barack Obama to a debate in the US.

1539 GMT: Viewing Iran. Our colleague Lara Setrakian of ABC News has launched a new site, The MidEast Memo. Included in its opening entries are a look at the case of the three Americans still detained a year after hiking into Iranian territory and a review of sanctions and Iran's attempts to get around them.

1535 GMT: Economy Watch. Fereydoun Khavand, an economist at the University of Paris, claims in an interview that Iran's unemployment rate is at its highest point in six years.

1530 GMT: So You Want a Debate, Mahmoud? An interesting twist in the story of President Ahmadinejad's call on President Obama to hold a public discussion with him in the US....

Five imprisoned journalists, including Isa Saharkhiz, Masoud Bastani, and Mahdi Mahmoudian, have challenged Ahmadinejad to debate them publicly about his Government's performance.

1315 GMT: Ahmadinejad Today. Another speech by the President, this one to Iran's conference on international media: no apparent talk of Zionist assassination plots but lots of condemnation of the United Nations' "anti-Iran" position. Ahmadinejad referring back to the 1980s, said that "certain people who forced Imam Khomeini to 'drink poison'" and accept the UN resolution ending Iran-Iraq war are still active.

The President also gave his audience an intense rhetorical assault upon the Western media.

1255 GMT: Political Prisioner Watch. The death sentence of Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaei, arrested in post-election protests, has been upheld. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the appellate court did not hold a hearing and confirmed the sentence verbatim.

0950 GMT: International Front. Looks like Iran is to going to skip diplomacy --- a move to talks on uranium enrichment with Washington, as well as other countries --- for grandstanding. The Foreign Ministry has followed President Ahmadinejad's call-out of his American colleague for a public discussion: "If US President Barack Obama expresses his readiness, the UN General Assembly [meeting in September] would be a good opportunity for face-to-face transparent talks.”

0920 GMT: We have posted an analysis by Josh Shahryar, "Saharkhiz & Abtahi Dent the Government’s 'Fear Factor'."

0825 GMT: The Supreme Leader's Next Fatwa. His "I am the Rule of the Prophet" declaration may still be disputed, but Ayatollah Khamenei has reportedly moved to his next topic: the danger of music.

On the same day that Iran's legendary singer Mohammad Nouri was buried, Khamenei supposedly replied to a follower: "Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic."

Fars said the fatwa was given to a 21-year-old follower who was thinking of starting music lessons. Khamenei answered, "It's better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music."

We are checking if the fatwa is on Khamenei's official website.

0815 GMT: Do You See a Theme Here? Four of Press TV's last eight stories: "Iran trivializes US war threat"; "Iran rejects reports of US war threat"; (my favourite) "Iran prepares 'enemy-crushing' plans"; "Iran warns Israel against new ME war".

0805 GMT: The Mousavi-Karroubi Statement (A Reaction). Despite the rather limited nature of the Mousavi-Karroubi declaration on the way forward, EA's Ms Zahra is hopeful: "I have the impression that Moussavi is slowly passing over his red lines, his latest statement reads rather democratic, although recurring to religious expressions like a 'Pharaonic' regime."

Ms Zahra also notes former President Mohammad Khatami's most recent speech with its emphasis on the experience of Iran's Constitutional Revolution as a "democratic revolution".

0800 GMT: The Mousavi-Karroubi Statement. Radio Zamaneh summarises yesterday's meeting between Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, headlining criticism of both the Iranian Government and the international pressure on Tehran.

Indeed, Mousavi and Karroubi linked the two, stating, "Uncalculated remarks and decisions of the government have humiliated Iran and led to multilateral sanctions and threats”. They added that the Government was lying about the economic situation, as the sanctions “burden workers, farmers and the impoverished strata of the society, and they could lead to inflation, economic decline and rise in unemployment.”

Mousavi also urged the judiciary to deal with "disturbing news" on political prisoners, and both men said government plans to establish 7000 Basij paramilitary bases across Iran show how the Basij hasbeen transformed into “a military-political party to oppress people, students, dervishes and their civic demands and also to engineer the elections".

Mousavi and Karroubi urged Iranians to “establish social networks to produce truthful content and statistics regarding the situation of the country.”

0740 GMT: Propaganda and "Sedition". Gozaar has a lengthy analysis, with background from the 1990s, of the campaign of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting against Iranian intellectuals and activists through the series Fitna.

0725 GMT: We open this morning with a separate feature on the reported statement of the President's Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicated last year that Iran is approaching capability for a nuclear weapon.

That is not the only explosive --- sorry for the pun --- declaration coming out of Iran, however. There was a flurry of non-military activity on Monday pointing to further conflict, from the opposition's challenge to the head of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Jannati, to the revelation of former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi of last summer's Tehran "show trial" to criticism of the President from his "conservative" adversaries in Parliament. There was a legal twist, with Ahmadinejad apparently filing a lawsuit against one of his Parliamentary nemeses, Ali Motahari.

Even the attempted deflections from these conflicts merely added a layer of political humour. The Government's attempt to showcase its support from Iranians abroad, through a gathering of 1300 of them in Tehran, was hindered by "hard-line" criticism that the exercise was a waste of money and even included a "CIA associate".

And Ahmadinejad's speech to the conference moved from the significant --- an indication that Iran was ready for direct talks with Washington --- to the diversionary, with his declaration of readiness to speak publicly ("debate") with President Obama in the US in September and his claim that Zionists were trying to assassinate him.

Iran Analysis: Saharkhiz & Abtahi Dent the Government's "Fear Factor" (Shahryar)

It started a few weeks ago with journalist Isa Saharkhiz, detained in Evin Prison and appearing in court, standing up to the Iranian regime and refusing to sign a confession. Now we have the admission of former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi admission, in the wake of other revelations from Iran’s prisons, that the trials of reformists being held in Tehran’s courts were "rehearsed" in advance.

Even before the Iranian Uprising of last year, human rights activists and freed prisoners had raised questions about the validity of trials of activists, reporters, lawyers, students, and political dissidents. So what distinguishes the Saharkhiz and Abtahi developments? The answer lies in a) the timing and b) the importance of individuals making these claims.

When student protests in Iran in the 1990s was put down, part of the regime's success was that the protesters were unable to attract support from elements within the government or the clergy. And even though some student leaders escaped, they were unable to speak openly about their experiences until they left the country and were safe.

This time, the opposition has not only been able to attract high-ranking members of the establishment but has been able to break through the government's "blackout" inside Iran

Isa Saharkhiz worked for the government and the Islamic Revolution from its very early days. However, he now harshly condemns the establishment, going as far as saying that "the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic has proven that he is willing to do anything just to continue a little longer his dictatorial rule over people".

Abtahi’s short statement claiming, "A year ago on such a day we had a trial, we had practiced the day before. What a day it was...." is another nail in the coffin of the Islamic Republic’s campaign to cultivate legitimacy.

Here are two individuals who supported the Islamic Revolution and served this regime for decades. If silenced this time, they would have still assisted the regime’s claims for legitimacy in a small but notable way. (Remember, the regime’s main concern is appearing legitimate to its own population, not to the West.) But both of them have visibly snubbed the regime. Exposing the government’s hypocrisy and criticizing its Supreme Leader are daring attempts at educating the public.

The regime will attempt to a) contain the outcry after both incidents and b) reprimand the two perpetrators, something both Abtahi and Saharkhiz know. So why would two well-established public figures who have worked for the regime and know that they are now risking their lives go ahead? Because the government has lost command of the single most important virtue that keeps every dictatorship in power: fear.

Fear is what kept the people from going into the streets in the wake of the student uprisings of the 1990s. Fear is what kept them from rebelling after the Revolution took away their liberties one by one. Fear is the single most important element in the equation that has worked in the Islamic Republic’s continued existence. Saharkhiz and Abtahi’s revelations further elucidate how much ground the regime has lost since last June.

In another country more than 70 years ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed, “The only thing we need to fear is fear itself.” It seems Iranians are beginning to learn that.