Iran Analysis: "The Supreme Leader Has Tied His Fate to That of Ahmadinejad" (Siavashi)

Ahmadinejad's domestic opponents, including the Supreme Leader would like to contain Ahmadinejad, and I am certain that if it was politically expedient or even possible, they would have already done so.

The problem for the Supreme Leader, is that he made some judgement calls which have reduced his options. He has essentlally cornered himself. He cannot get rid of Ahmadinejad without the potential of incurring potentially fatal damage to his own reputation.

Ayatollah Khamenei's fate is, in this way, tied to Ahmadinejad's.

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EA Twitter Special: Is the CIA Following Your Tweets? (Dozier)

A big Saturday morning hello to our readers at the CIA, who are not shy about following EA --- no "Anonymous Proxy" or "Unknown" in our StatCounter, just the straightforward "Central Intelligence Agency". 

As for all the other Twitter users they are watching.... Well, here's a message from Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press:

In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.

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WikiLeaks and Iran Document: Why US Diplomats Suspected Fraud in 2009 Election

Iran analysts, both Iranian and foreign, have reacted with incredulity to the results of the Iranian presidential election and accused the IRIG of grossly rigging the election and falsifying the resuls. The Iran Regional Presence Office's review of Iran's recent presidential elections and the current election indicate the accusations of fraud have merit.

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The Latest from Iran (16 August): An Election Revelation?

See Also, Turkey PKK Special: Invasion of Kurdistan? Don't Count on It

The Latest from Iran (15 August): The World According to the Regime

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1808 GMT: Foreign Affairs (Syrian Front) - Tucked away in a lengthy article on Iranian-Syria relations in Asia Times Online are these important paragraphs:

Talking to Iranian officials it appears that there is deep unease about the methods employed by the Syrian security forces which have allegedly killed up to 2,000 people since protests and violence erupted in March. In private, Iranian officials draw a comparison to how professionally Iranian security forces responded to widespread rioting and disorder in the wake of the disputed presidential elections of June 2009... Iranian intelligence sources deny that Iran has "exported" riot control or any other security-related expertise which could be used against the Syrian people. These sources refer to the profound differences in political culture and a lack of political will in Tehran to interfere directly in Syrian affairs. But Iranian intelligence sources admit that they have lent support to their Syrian counterparts in the field of psychological warfare and information management. Talking exclusively to Asia Times Online, Iranian intelligence sources claim that they have provided "material" and "decisive" support to their Syrian counterparts on ways to defeat the intelligence-gathering and propaganda operations of Western intelligence services. They claim that Western intelligence, in particular American, French, British and German services, are co-ordinating extensive intelligence-gathering and psychological warfare operations against Syria, from the Lebanese capital Beirut.

1738 GMT: Reformist Watch. Masoumeh Ebtekar, Vice President in the Khatami Administration, has said that reformists demand essential changes in political atmosphere of the country: "We are not ready to get to power at any price."

Ebtekar said that, while she wondered if a minority of a certain faction would rule Iran even after a majority had voted, she had no clear position on participation in elections. However, her comments pointed to a boycott; "Reformists are completely restricted and are insulted all the time. How could they run for elections under such conditions?"

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Iran Special: An Appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur (Alinejad)

Former Maldives foreign minister Ahmed Shaheed has been assigned UN Special Rapporteur to Iran in order to investigate the human rights abuses. Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad writes this open letter (reprinted with permission from the author) with a simple message:

"Number Of Iranians Killed Is A Tragedy, Not A Mere Statistic:"

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To Dr. Ahmed Shaheed United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran

Allow me to begin with my best wishes for a great success in your new mission.

Twenty six months have passed since the 2009 Presidential elections in Iran and the waves of mass protests that followed. Peaceful protests were met with the large-scale shutdown of free communication, censorship of independent press, dismantling of opposition parties and a bloody crackdown on protesting citizens, leading to the arrest and incarceration of tens of thousands of political activists, party leaders, members of unions-- particularly those of journalists, students, teachers--and workers across the country.

The government claimed that only three people were killed as a result of torture in prison, but based on credible local media outlets who had interviewed at least forty seven families with dead family members, the real number is in excess of official figures. Many Iranian reporters believe that the number of people killed in the aftermath of the elections was significantly higher-- this notwithstanding that the raping and murdering of prisoners and government critics began long before the 2009 elections.

Iran is a part of the global community, and hence it is obligated to respect and to uphold certain ethical and internationally recognized values. Based on Section 7 of the International Criminal Laws, organized military action against unarmed citizens of a country constitutes crimes against humanity.

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Iran Document: A Discussion with Mostafa Tajzadeh on the Green Movement and Free Elections

Earlier this week the opposition site Kalameh published an interview with former Deputy Minister of Interior Mostafa Tajzadeh while he was on furlough from a nine-year prison sentence. 

The headline from the discussion about the current political situation was Tajzadeh's position on the reformist debate over participation in the Parliamentary elections next March. He stood firm on no involvement without the release of political prisoners and a confirmed free and fair proces, "There is no middle ground. The reformists will take part only in democratic elections." He added that the situation had changed with the disputed Presidential ballot in 2009 and the post-election challenge to Mahmoud Ahmadminejad's legitimacy: "The narrative of the Green Movement has changed the entire affair....Either the elections will be free, with all the parties and free press, or we should not participate and leave them [supporters of conservatives and principlists] to play out the conflicts among themselves."

However, that important statement was made in equally important contexts about the aims of the Green Movement, the challenges facing the regime, and the prospects for "freedom" in Iran.

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Iran Essay Contest (1st Place): The Green Movement --- Why It Has Lost...And How It Can Win

On a breezy morning, we three headed down to a main square at Tehran to join the anti-regime protests on the occasion of the regime’s victory anniversary on February 11, 2010. Seems paradoxical?

There were millions of people gathering there: a bizarre, heterogeneous mixture of two large groups of people, supporters and protestors, walking next to each other, each one having a nervous look at the face of the other. A spark was needed to ignite the whole crowd. Some comrades, whom we saw by accident, had the same feeling: being lost and lonely. Like former protests, we hoped that somewhere, someplace, some people may have sorted out some sort of protests. We wandered for hours to find them. But nothing did really happen that day.

That day, the confused, wandering population of protesters was abused by the government as "their supporters". Was this the glorious achievement vowed by Iranian opposition activists, some even claiming the toppling of the ruling regime?

It was then that a series of vital questions needed to be answered.

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Iran Comment Reloaded: The Power of the Gradual (8 June 2010)

There are no proclamations of the final outcome in these contributions, no ringing of the bell to say that all is complete. Instead, the victory is in the process, the pursuit of the “gradual”. As long as the search for rights is persistent in these words of sorrow or hope, then rights cannot be denied. As long as the vision of fairness is offered in these reflections, then others have not succeeding in making us --- inside or outside Iran --- blind.

The power of the vote may have been taken away on 12 June 2009. Some may try to pronounce that Iranians --- repressed by their Government, bedazzled by false hopes of Twitter --- are reduced to the powerless. But Aa long as the power to express is put in the simple but effective phrases by these authors, then the power of expression remains.

A marathon, not a sprint.

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Iran Music Video: "Let the Earth Bear Witness"

The Irish band The Waterboys take the words from poetry by W.B. Yeats and set it to music with images from Iran since June 2009. 

The band's Mike Scott explains, "[We were] inspired by the amazing scenes of hundreds of thousands of Iranian people standing up for their rights and freedom. I took the words from two old Yeats poems, in which he was writing about Irish freedom fighters. But his words apply to any freedom fighters, anytime, anywhere in the world."

They shall be remembered for ever
They shall be alive for ever
They shall be speaking for ever
The people shall hear them for ever 

Let the sea bear witness
Let the wind bear witness
Let the earth bear witness
Let the stars bear witness!

(hat tip to Ms EA)

Egypt Special: A Lesson Learned About Twitter From Al Jazeera

Twitter is just another communication tool, there to be leveraged by anyone with the will and the ambition. Yet just as Al Jazeera’s coverage of Egypt would sound ridiculous if described as "Television Revolution", so do straw=man notions of a "Twitter Revolution" in Iran, or indeed anywhere else. The Twitter of 2011 looks like it will become a mature, integrated part of the media landscape: if protesters in Tahrir Square did not have access, it still had a role to play in bringing the story to the outside world.

The jury’s still out on what Al Jazeera’s rise in prominence meant for the people of Egypt. As with Iran in 2009, we may never know just how many people inside the country were getting their information from these sources. But the jury is definitely in on how the channel has benefited greatly from positioning itself as the source of information from Egypt among mainstream news outlets, and it can thank social media for a pivotal influence in this rise.

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