First, the update on the story of “a senior aide” to Mehdi Karroubi giving a press conference in Washington and the subsequent focus on his comments about a split between the Supreme Leader and President Ahmadinejad, rather than the Green Movement’s strategy, objectives, and views of US policy on Iran.
Having been told that the aide was not Ataollah Mohajerani, the former Minister whose appearance in Washington last October brought tension rather than American support for the Greens, we put together the identity of the aide last night. Tehran Bureau, which to our knowledge has published the only significant report of the press conference, has now withdrawn the cloak of anonymity, so we can confirm that the speaker was Mojtaba Vahedi, “chief of staff” to Mehdi Karroubi since 1982 and editor-in-chief of reformist newspaper Aftab Yazd until January 2010.
1910 GMT: More on the Universities Purge (see 1145 GMT). The Revolutionary Guards get in on the act, with Yahya Rahim-Safavi, the former commander and current advisor to the Supreme Leader, declaring, “The universities aren’t in good shape today, missing from them are revolutionary forces and experts who are beholden to the Imam, the Supreme Leader, and the Constitution.”
Rahim-Safavi, speaking at a conference organized for the “cultural experts” of the IRGC, said, “The goal of soft war is to change the culture, values and beliefs of the youth….Our weakness is in this very issue of culture, which our enemies have identified before we did. Therefore we must battle against and overcome the attacking culture with our soft and cultural power.”
1830 GMT: Let’s Make Up a Cyber-War. More regime propaganda — the Revolutionary Guard has briefed the Parliament on the nefarious cyber-plot of the opposition around Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, bringing in names like the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf and human rights activist Ahmad Batebi. (There’s a video as well.)
After the briefing, the head of Parliament’s National Security Committee said Human Rights Activists in Iran had fabricated a list of killed protesters and passed it to Mir Hossein Mousavi.
The news stories in recent days might appear unrelated, but all of them point to behind-the-scenes manoeuvres and disagreements within the regime. It is too early, given the limited information, to understand exactly what is going on within the Islamic Republic, but it is well worth watching for emerging significance.
1. The Release of Mostafa Tajzadeh
During the week, Mostafa Tajzadeh, leading member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front and former Deputy Interior Minister, was released without bail for the Iranian New Year.
For almost two years, there has been talks about conspiracies and a possible military coup in Turkey, with the “ultra-nationalist” Ergenekon organization providing the base for the overthrow of the Government. Ergenekon was alleged to include plotting journalists, soldiers, and politicians, with the finds of caches of arms, even in Ankara.
On Thursday, there was the claim of the interception of a truckload of arms. Two soldiers, with formal service documents, explained that they are going to the Ankara district of Gölbaşı to the command headquarters, but police forces confiscated the truck and questioned the soldiers and driver for eight hours before releasing them.
Muğla Provincial Gendarmerie Commander Colonel Salih Karataş announced that the weapons and grenades in the truck belong to the Turkish Army. “All the munitions belong to the TSK. They have the required documents for the transfer. They also have serial numbers on them. All the munitions are registered to the TSK inventory,” he emphasized.
Some other military sources told, “This is a routine practice. We prefer such methods of transfer of explosives in order to avoid risks.” Others in the military, however, gave a different story, saying that the Army does not any connection to the discovered weapons and munition.
There is further confusion because, under the Regulation on Transfer of Explosives, the armed forces should request a police escort for transfer of large amounts of munitions from one city to another. However, no such request was received by the Ankara Police Department, police sources reported. The Muğla Police Department also announced that they had no prior information about the truck and the munitions and “no one requested an escort for the truck from us”.
Student activist and weblogger Foad Shams was recently released after three months of detention. Far from acknowledging his release by keeping silent, however, he has posted these thoughts on his weblog. Translated by Persian2English and posted by Street Journalist:
I am still dreaming.
Ninety seven days of being half awake on the hills of Evin brought nothing to me but dreams. The most beautiful children of the sun and the wind during the last cold days of autumn and winter have been on the hills of Evin; the same hills that have for decades been the meeting point of freedom lovers. The tall walls that are part of the large gate of civilization are reminders of what remains of a political greatness [referring to the time before the 1979 revolution, throughout Iran's history of 2,500 years]. Yes, for years a feast takes place on the hills, and the “Godfathers” are the hosts. I was fortunate enough to be with everyone in this feast during the second half of this year.
UPDATE 14 MARCH: A statement from the International Security Assistance Force has rejected Starkey’s latest report as “categorically false”. Later it attributes the claims of bound and killed civilians were due to “confusion” from “initial operational reports”.
UPDATE 13 MARCH: Jerome Starkey, the reporter who broke the story of the handcuffed and executed civilians, makes another claim today: “A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times.”
When Charlie Company’s Lt. William Calley ordered and encouraged his men to rape, maim and slaughter over 400 men, women and children in My Lai in Vietnam back in 1968, there were at least four Americans who tried to stop him or bring him and higher officers to justice. One was helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr., who evacuated some of the wounded victims, and who set his chopper down between a group of Vietnamese and Calley’s men, ordering his door gunner to open fire on the US soldiers if they shot any more people. One was Ron Ridenhour, a soldier who learned of the massacre, and began a private investigation, ultimately reporting the crime to the Pentagon and Congress. One was Michael Bernhardt, a soldier in Charlie Company who witnessed the whole thing, and reported it all to Ridenhour. And one was journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story in the US media.
2240 GMT: Human Rights — The Regime’s Breakdown Strategy. But if the Iranian Government on the one hand is offering release from prison if detainees (including a number of prominent journalists and political activists) are silenced, it is also moving aggressively to break apart the human rights movement.
The propaganda strategy of tarnishing human rights activists has been re-doubled tonight with Kayhan joining Fars in declaring that 25-30 activists have been arrested because they serve as “cover” for the Mujahedin-e-Khalq and US-sponsored cyber-warfare.
UPDATE 2255 GMT: A journalist at the press conference writes to assure us that the “former Karroubi aide” was NOT Ataollah Mohajerani. The journalist also says that the theme of the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad rift, which was the Tehran Bureau headline (but which we think is tangential in the political situation) was the big pitch of the aide both during the formal conference and afterwards in conversations.
All of this indicates that the attempted PR effort of the opposition has been rather botched, with almost no coverage and a failure to bring out the points that would resonate in the US such as the position on sanctions and the declared aims of the Green Movement.
UPDATE 0915 GMT: Barbara Slavin, one of Washington’s top journalists, adds, “A top aide to Mehdi Karroubi…said [President] Obama should send Nowruz [Iranian New Year] greetings this year. However, he argued that the message should focus on human rights and commemorate the scores of Iranians — such as Neda Agha Soltan — who have been killed since June by plainclothes thugs, prison torturers, and government executioners.”
More than four months after their last public-relations effort in the US, Iranian opposition leaders have made another move to influence American political circles. “A senior aide to opposition cleric Mehdi Karroubi” met journalists at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Friday. The senior aide “worked with [Karroubi] for more than 25 years” but is now based outside Iran (while he is anonymous in the TB story, skilled Iran-watchers will identify him easily).
The headline claim in Tehran Bureau is that the aide revealed that “Iran’s supreme leader has cooled his support for president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”. That, in fact, is not much of a story. The claim — at least as reported in the article — has no specific evidence but echoes a number of points (such as the incident over Ahmadinejad’s close ally Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai) that we have noted since last summer.
First, the update on the story of “a senior aide” to Mehdi Karroubi giving a press conference in Washington and the subsequent focus on his comments about a split between the Supreme Leader and President Ahmadinejad, rather than the Green Movement’s strategy, objectives, and views of US policy on Iran.
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