The Latest from Iran (28 January): Trouble Brewing

2045 GMT: Taking the Green Out of Iran. I don't want to say the Government is in any way threatened by the Green movement, but somebody has apparently decided that, when President Ahmadinejad is speaking, the Iranian flag no longer has to be Red, White, and Green:



1630 GMT: Activist Ehsan Hushmand and 4 Kurdish students have been freed on bail.

1620 GMT: All is Well. Really. Ahmad Khatami may have tried to put out the message that Hashemi Rafsanjani and the pro-Ahmadinejad Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi have reconciled, but both Rah-e-Sabz and BBC Persian are claiming that Khatami has been pressing Rafsanjani not to publish his letter of grievance over Yazdi's allegations of Rafsanjani's irresponsibility and ambiguity.

1610 GMT: At Tehran Bureau, Setareh Sabety posts a poem reflecting on the executions of two "monarchists" (see 0940 GMT), "They Did Not Hang My Son Today".

1605 GMT: Where's Mahmoud? So how does President Ahmadinejad respond to the growing today? Well, with this declaration to officials in Tehran: “They (imperialist powers) seek to dominate energy resources of the Middle East....But the Iranian nation and other nations will not allow them to be successful."

1600 GMT: Let Mehdi Make This Perfectly Clear. We can no longer keep up with Mehdi Karroubi as he hammers home his attack against the Ahmadinejad Government. We have posted his latest interview, this one with Saham News.

1530 GMT: The Dead and Detained. The Guardian of London has updated its list of those killed and arrested in the post-election crisis. There are now 1259 people, arranged alphabetically by first name.

1525 GMT: All is Well Alert. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami wants everyone to know that Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, who only a few days ago slammed Rafsanjani's ambiguity, have made up and are now very good friends.

NEW Iran Document: Karroubi Maintains the Pressure (28 January)
NEW Iran Document: Resignation Letter of Diplomat in Japan “Join the People”
NEW Iran Document/Analysis: Karroubi’s Statement on the Political Situation (27 January)
NEW Iran Analysis: Leadership in the Green Movement
NEW Latest Iran Video: When Karroubi Met Fars (25 January)
NEW Iran & Karroubi: Why This is “Much Ado About Something”
The Latest from Iran (27 January): Battle Renewed

Beyond our smile, the possible significance: Government supporters are signalling to Rafsanjani that they will reduce the pressure on his family if he joins forces with them.

1520 GMT: We have posted the English translation of the resignation letter of an Iranian diplomat in Japan, asking his colleagues to "Join the People".

1000 GMT: Obama's State of the Union --- Nukes Trumps Rights. We'll have full analysis tomorrow of President Obama's speech (video and transcript in separate entry). Let's just say now that anyone expecting a boost or even a thumbs-up to the Iranian opposition will be disappointed.

Obama made only two references to Iran, and the primary one was to support his two-prong approach of engagement/sanctions on the nuclear issue:

These diplomatic efforts have...strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of these weapons....That is why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences.

Later in the speech was this fleeting reference:

We stand with the girl who yearns to go to school in Afghanistan, we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran, and we advocate for the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea. For America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity.

0940 GMT: The Executions. The Iranian Students News Agency identifies the two demonstrators killed this morning, for "mohareb" (war against God), as Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour. Both had been detained before the elections as members of an outlawed monarchist group, and both had been put on television in a special Press TV documentary in August to "confess" (see separate EA video).

However, what is unsubtle is the further twisting of the two cases to fit the more recent show of resistance to the regime. The Tehran Prosecutor's office declared:

Following the riots and anti-revolutionary measures in recent months, particularly on the day of Ashura, a Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Court branch considered the cases of a number of accused and handed down death sentences against 11 of those. The sentences against two of these people... were carried out today at dawn and the accused were hanged.

The sentences for the other nine of the accused in recent months' riots are at the appeal stage... upon confirmation, measures will be undertaken to implement the sentences.

0925 GMT: As I make my way back from Dublin, two important pieces on EA:

We've posted extracts from Mehdi Karroubi's lengthy interview with the Financial Times of London, adding a snap analysis. The discussion seems to clarify Karroubi's position after this week's drama: he wants Ahmadinejad out and, while adhering to the Islamic system, he wants the Supreme Leader to be the man to defend the Constitution by pushing the President off the political cliff.

Alongside this, and indeed offering a contrast, is a guest analysis from Elham Gheytanchi on "Leadership and the Green Movement": "The Green Movement...has avoided centralized leadership and instead has mobilized ordinary people beyond what was previously thought possible."

0740 GMT: Britain's Sky News is reporting, from Iranian state media, that two Ashura demonstrators have been executed.

0700 GMT: A gentler --- if that is a word which can ever be applied to Iran's post-election crisis --- news day on Wednesday. There were no high-profile statements, and none of the drama of the Karroubi declaration of Monday.

Still, there were rumblings, most of which brought further bad omens for President Ahmadinejad.

There are reports that the Number One Target of both the "conservative" and "reformist" opposition, former Tehran Prosecutor General Saeed
Mortazavi, will not take up his position as head of the President's unit to combat smuggling. That brings Mortazavi one step closer to taking the public responsibility for the detainee abuses, especially at Kahrizak Prison. And the other primary target of the anti-Ahmadinejad forces, advisor Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, was attacked in the newspaper Mardomsalari.

On the economic front, Ahmadinejad's subsidy reduction proposal is beginning to run into trouble with Parliament. Three days into the 10-day period to comment on the President's Development Plan, legislators forced the Government to withdraw "income bracketing" for the subsidy cuts.

And another foreign firm, a US chemical company, has declared that it is ending any involvement in Iran.

There was a piece of good news for the opposition, with journalist Mehdi Hosseinzadeh released after more than 7 months in detention. However, Persian2English posts on the "catastrophic situation" in Section 350 of Evin Prison.

Iran Analysis: Leadership in the Green Movement

New EA correspondent Elham Gheytanchi writes:

The civil unrest that swept Iranian cities in the aftermath of the contested June 12th 2009 election escalates despite the Government crackdown. Violence has been intensifying. On Ashura (27 December), armed plain-clothed forces associated with the Basij paramilitaries beat and killed demonstrators who were also mourning the 7th day of the passing of dissident cleric Ayatollah Montazeri. Hundreds of human rights activists, journalists, opposition clerics, and women’s rights activists were detained on Ashura and the following weeks.

The question is now whether the state can suppress a grass-roots movement, albeit one without a leader, that has blossomed into broad and heterogeneous movement well-known to Iranians and to the world?



Hardliners have until now successfully headed off any attempt at organizing and institutionalizing progressive movements, while the Basij and Revolutionary Guards have freedom to organize, recruit and prosper. In the past, hardline elements in the Iranian state succeeded in suppressing the students’ semi-organized movement as well as the reformists who came to power in the 1997 election that led to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami.

Khatami’s failure to deliver reform first became evident in 1999 when the student uprising in the University of Tehran was violently crushed and the perpetuators went unpunished. In an open letter in 2004, Ayatollah Montazeri wrote to Khatami that he had let the Iranian people down by giving into the pressures exerted by the hardliners in the government. When the Alumni Association of the Office for the Consolidation of Unity (Advar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat) tried to organize students, the Iranian authorities arrested their leaders and indefinitely detained many of their activists. Nonetheless, for many of those hopeful for change, it took the second term of Khatami's presidency to convince them that, given the unwavering support of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the hardliners would not relinquish their hold on power.

The most dynamic part of the women’s rights movement, the One Million Signatures Campaign to Change Laws Discriminating against Women, did not emerge under Khatami’s watch. This grass-roots movement has prospered during Ahmadinejad’s presidency (from 2006 onwards), despite his government proving itself to be harsh in its treatment of women. The Campaign works horizontally, without a leader and as a network of activists, and it has succeeded in becoming a widespread movement active in sixteen provinces in Iran.

Similarly, when Mousavi first started his presidential campaign about a month before the election --- the time allotted for presidential campaigns by the Iranian Constitution --- he asked his supporters to create “setads” or stations that could work independently. “Pouyesh” and “Setad 88” were examples of these independent campaign centers, part of a horizontal network of pro-Mousavi campaigners, comprised mostly of young and enthusiastic students. Later in June, when the demonstrators marched in the streets asking, “Where is my vote?”, Mousavi asked of his supporters that each one of them act as a news medium and spread information about protests, marches, demands and future actions among their family members, colleagues and in their communities. The horizontal structure served the Green Movement well, as the state-backed media refused to cover demonstrations and later denounced protesters as “agents of Western powers” or supporters of the “monafeghin” --- a derogatory term meaning "religious hypocrites", referring to the MKO (Mujahedin-e Khalq) stationed in Iraq.

As the Iranian state intensified its crackdown on protesters, Mousavi issued his 17th declaration on 1 January. This pointed to what has long been the case in Iran: civil rights movements forge ahead without much central planning or leadership. Mousavi stated that the Green Movement, like the One Million Signature Campaign, does not have a leader, and that the Ashura demonstrations took place without his leadership and without appeals from Mehdi Karoubi, other protesting presidential candidate, or Khatami.

As the use of naked violence by plainclothes forces on the streets reaches its peak, and state television and hardline newspapers show protesters’ faces in order to identify and arrest them, there is even more reason for the Green Movement to continue its existence without a leader or leaders. The stakes are high, and Mousavi has maneuvered cleverly by declaring himself not as a leader but as a strong supporter of mass protests. His proposals communicate a strong message to the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards: “You are directly responsible for the bloodshed.” The protestors showed their preference for non-violent methods on Ashura as they marched adjacent to the famous Pasteur Street where Ayatollah Khamenei lives and where Ahmadinejad’s office is located, without attacking his residence. They have done so without a leader.

The history of community organizing in post-revolutionary Iran shows that grass-roots movements flourish under harsh political conditions, relying on a horizontal structure and without much central leadership. Labor unions, city councils, students’ committees, teachers’ unions and women’s rights activism have been suppressed by the hardline-controlled Ministry of Information. There is a deep conviction in the ministry that any attempt to organize Iranian citizens for reform is led by foreign powers determined to destroy the entire Islamic Republic. Under these circumstances, the Green Movement has behaved much like women’s rights movement, which has avoided centralized leadership and instead has mobilized ordinary people beyond what was previously thought possible.

Israel's Peres: Iran as World's "Center of Terror"

During a visit to Berlin, Israeli President Shimon Peres stated Tuesday that Iran is the world's "center of terror" which seeks to impose its will on the Middle East. He said:

Ahmadinejad's regime is openly calling for Israel's destruction, denying the Holocaust, and preventing peace with the Palestinians. It is destabilizing Lebanon and Yemen and trying to take over Iraq.

Today's center of terror is in Iran. Terror is the military wing of Iran's political ambitions. The Iranians aspire to take control of the Middle East, and to destabilize existing regimes.

Latest Iran Video: When Karroubi Met Fars (25 January)

This video is racing around the Internet, with activists interpreting it as a patronising of Fars News' reporter, via the kiss on the forehead, and thus the subsequent mis-report that Mehdi Karroubi had recognised Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3GzhoItEfQ[/youtube]

doh

NEW Iran & Karroubi: Why This is “Much Ado About Something”
Iran Special Analysis: What Karroubi’s Statement on “Mr Khamenei”/”Head of Government” Means
The Latest from Iran (27 January): Battle Renewed

Iran & Karroubi: Why This is "Much Ado About Something"

Yesterday afternoon, the high-profile blog Babylon & Beyond declared that the attention given to Mehdi Karroubi's Monday statement about the legitimacy of the Ahmadinejad Government, as decreed by "Mr Khamenei", was "Much Ado About Nothing".

The blog was useful in correcting some key information, for example, quoting a Tehran analyst, "Karroubi [has] not budged at all. Karroubi said that the government is the government of the system. So it does not imply he has recognized it." However, because of its focus in taking apart the wayward media coverage of the statement --- a coverage corrected by the better analysts of the complexities of Iran's internal crisis --- it missed the more important point:

This is definitely Much Ado About Something.

Iran: Rafsanjani Chooses A Side?
Iran Special Analysis: What Karroubi’s Statement on “Mr Khamenei”/”Head of Government” Means
Latest Iran Audio: Hossein Karroubi on His Father’s Statement (25 January)
Iran Snap Analysis: The Karroubi and Khatami Manoeuvres

Karroubi may or may not have intended to stake out a direct challenge to the Government and regime when he met the large group of reporters and onlookers on Monday. But, once Fars News pushed him with the false claim that he had recognised "President" Ahmadinejad, he and his closest advisors chose to make a stand. Even the initial response given at the conference, with its "Mr Khamenei" and description of Ahmadinejad as the "head of the government of the regime", was a put-down, but throughout Monday and Tuesday, the clarifications got tougher and tougher in their tone and intentions.


The Facebook site supporting Mir Hossein Mousavi and The Flying Carpet Institute have tracked Karroubi's course, set out by his website Saham News, with a series of English translations. This was Karroubi's son Mohammad Taghi yesterday:

Mehdi Karroubi is an honest and brave man who won’t sell his eternal life and people’s love, for the sake of this short material life. If there was a case of compromise or ignoring the events, he would have not tolerated all the insults, inhuman attacks and assassination threats for seven months. Be sure that if there is any news that Mehdi Karoubi would know about, he will announce that truthfully and bluntly. There is no compromise and there is no fear.

Legitimacy and reality are two separate issues. In order to gain legitimacy in any case there is the need to satisfy certain conditions. Mehdi Karroubi have repeatedly said this since the first day [after the election] until today that he does not accept that the result of the election was based on the votes casted by the people. Even yesterday he emphasised that there are issues with the results. In his views the results of the election were fabricated. But following the confirmation by the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader according to the law, Ahmadinejad became the head of the administration, whether we like it or not.

The head of the administration gives the budget and makes decisions that influence our lives, we cannot deny this reality. But to gain recognition and legitimacy, it is needed to satisfy certain conditions and the protestors believe those conditions were not met.

Then there was Karroubi himself, in his latest statement:

With the passing of time, I become even more convinced of the extensive manipulations and fraud that took place in the recent elections, as every day we receive new information that demonstrates the regrettable nature in which the authorities handled the trust given to them by the people of Iran....

Ask yourself what were the desires and demands of the the people who spontaneously came to the streets in such large numbers after the election? What were the demands of the 3 million people who roared in the streets from Imam Hossein to Azadi Square, with their silent march, without any form of advertising or propaganda motivating them to attend? Should the response to a nation who took to the streets with such noble intentions have been batons, tear gas and gun shots? Should our dear youth who dared ask “Where is our Vote?” within the framework of the law have faced violence and death at Kahrizak and other prisons?”

We should tell those responsible for these atrocities “How do you expect the people of Iran to accept your one sided claims regarding the election when it is so evident that you lie? Did some of you not have the audacity to suggest that these young people had lost their lives to meningitis? Would you have ever admitted to the occurrence of these crimes had it not been for persistent and defiant cries & demands by myself, Mr. Mousavi and the brave nation of Iran?

Just as important, Karroubi is not alone. Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of Mir Hossein Mousavi and an important political figure in her own right, was forceful and eloquent when she declare, We neither recognise Ahmadinejad’s administration [as a legitimate government] nor compromise but we are honestly following people’s rights and demands….We have put our hearts as our shields and we are ready for any bullet, attack or assassination."

Consider both the scope and timing of this episode. With the passage of month, the regime had been successful in moving attention away from June's Presidential election, even as the general notion of opposition to the "system" was being debated amongst the opposition. Of course, no protester was recognising Ahmadinejad, but the specific issues in play were now injustices and the abuses of detainees.

The effect of the last 48 hours has been to resurrect the electoral, as well as the political and judicial, legitimacy of Ahmadinejad. And that in turn raises an interesting intersection: while the "conservative" opposition to the President does not want to revisit June, they do want to take down Ahmadinejad's allies and curb his authority. So now "the head of the government of the regime" faces a renewed challenge from multiple direcitons.

And all of this occurs in what was supposed to be the quieter water between Ashura and the commemoration of the Islamic Revolution's anniversary (1-11 February). Without taking to the streets, even as many of its leading activists have been swept up in arrests, the opposition has taken the initiative.

None of this should be read as a coordinated victory. Some in the Green movement, after the initial confusion over Monday's statement, are still distrustful and even disdainful of "Obi-Wan Karroubi", and there is still uncertainty over the relationship between Karroubi and Mohammad Khatami. I suspect, however, that both of these tensions will diminish in the next week.

It also remains to be seen whether this challenge, which Karroubi is again framing as one against the Government rather the system despite his "Mr Khamenei" jibe, will be expanded to take on the Supreme Leader. It is possible, however, that this question --- again because of the most recent developments --- can be put behind the immediate confrontation.

Legitimacy. That is what the fight was over in June. And 7 1/2 months, it is still the battleground. "President" Ahmadinejad can run, but this week will re-establish that he cannot hide.