Sometimes a celebration should be considered first as a celebration.
After months of reporting on tension and conflict, it was a pleasure to watch the joy of Iranians on Chahrshanbeh Suri, the eve of Iranian New Year celebration of the renewal of fire. Although there was a heavy security presence in main streets and squares, this did not — as The Washington Post reported — “block traditional celebrations”.
Instead, on side streets and outside residences across Iran, people gathered to set off firecrackers, sing, dance, and jump over the small fires which hark back to Zoroastrian tradition. An EA reader eagerly wrote us, “Our family live in a provincial town. It was rocking tonight with the sound of fireworks! Cud be heard in every part of the town :-)” Even in Press TV’s state-sanitised video of events, there is the pleasure of an elderly woman gingerly skipping in her long dress over a few inches of flame.
In the Mideast, only one thing is ever certain. Expect the unexpected. The smallest incident can flare up overnight and alter even God’s well-laid plans.
The latest conflagration erupted over something that Israel has been doing for 42 years. The announcement of plans for 1,600 new illegal settlement apartments in Occupied East Jerusalem — the slated capital of the future Palestinian state — would have been a mere irritant for the US in normal circumstances.
But US President Barack Obama still has egg on his face from his early failure to wrangle a settlement freeze from Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu only agreed to a meaningless 10-month halt, excluding “natural growth” and East Jerusalem builds. That is a loophole large enough to accommodate an elephant.
2100 GMT: Chahrshanbeh Suri. An activist reports a conversation with a relative in Gisha in Tehranm, who said basiji were roaming the streets on their bikes and tried to stop people celebrating. Told of a report that said nothing political had happened tonight, the relative answered, “In Iran everything is political.”
2010 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. More temporary releases — Behzad Nabavi, a leader of the Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution Party serving a five-year term for “crimes against national security”, and journalist and economist Saeed Laylaz have been freed until 4 April. Laylaz posted $500,000 bail.
2000 GMT: Chahrshanbeh Suri Reza Sayah of CNN reports, via a Tehran witness, that police are spray painting passing cars that toss firecrackers out of windows. Basiji used tasers and batons to chase away 300 partiers near Mehr Park in Farmanieh.
What is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trying to do? Is he pursuing clever tactics, trying to settle his coalition partners after question marks regarding the future of the government but then using that to reach agreement with Washington? Or is just stepping deeper into a political swamp?
We’re watching carefully the reported ban on the activities of Iran’s leading reformist political party, Islamic Iran Participation Party (Mosharekat).
Deputy Interior Ministry Solat Mortazavi told the Iranian Students News Agency that all activities of IIPF have been banned and its headquarters have been locked.
Mortazavi implied that the ban was in place before the IIPF announcement that its congress had been called off because of pressure from security forces. (IIPF’s position is that there is no ban, since this would have to come from a judicial decision, only the postponement of the congress.)
2133 GMT: More Death Penalties or Old News? There’s chatter tonight about a supposed announcement of “six death sentences” for protesters on Ashura (27 December), featured on The New York Times website.
We’re being careful about this. Our perception is that the announcement is merely the restatement of death sentences which have already been announced by the Tehran Prosecutor General’s office, rather than — as the NYT piece indicates — a new set of capital punishments.
2130 GMT: We’ve posted a separate entry on the developing story of the ban on the Islamic Iran Participation Front.
1945 GMT: Resisting the Empire of Lies. Responding to the Government’s assertion that it has been banned (see 1650 GMT), the reformist party Islamic Iran Participation Front calls on all political and social activists to continue their social struggles and not to “give in to the empire of lies”. The IIPF claimed that the attempted ban reveals the “weakness of the government” and that civil institutions and activists will “grow and expand” their activities.
1940 GMT: Power, Money, and Oil. The engineering firm owned by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps has been awarded an $850 million oil pipeline contract.
Sometimes a celebration should be considered first as a celebration.
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