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.

Afghanistan: Will US Back Taliban Talks?

Gareth Porter writes for Inter Press Service:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's very cautiously-worded support for a negotiated settlement with the Taliban leadership, in an interview published Monday, is only the first public signal of a policy decision by the Barack Obama administration to support a political settlement between the Hamid Karzai regime and the Taliban, an official of McChrystal's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) command has revealed in an interview with IPS.

Speaking to the Financial Times, McChrystal couched his position on negotiations in terms of an abstract support for negotiated settlements of wars, saying, "I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome." The ISAF commander avoided a direct answer to the question of whether the Taliban could play a role in a future Afghan government.

When pressed by the interviewer on the issue, McChrystal would only say that "any Afghan can play a role if they focus on the future and not the past".

Afghanistan-Pakistan Special: Mr Obama’s Revenge of the Drones

The ISAF official, who spoke with IPS on condition that he would not be named, was much more candid about the centrality of peace negotiations with the Taliban leadership in the Obama administration's strategy in Afghanistan and about the understanding of the ISAF command that the Taliban leadership is independent of al Qaeda and is already positioning itself for a political settlement.


The official said the objective of the troop surge and the ISAF strategy accompanying it is to support a negotiated political settlement. "The story of the next 18 months is the story of establishing the conditions under which reconciliation will take place," said the official.

"Reconciliation" is the term used within the U.S. military for an understanding between the Karzai regime and the leadership of the insurgency, whereas "reintegration" refers to a strategy for bringing mid-level Taliban commanders and their troops back into society.

The counterinsurgency strategy now being mounted in Afghanistan by ISAF "is aimed at providing time and space" for "reconciliation", according to the official, as well as governance reforms and increasing the capacity of the national army and police force during that 18-month period.

The ISAF official said there has been a debate among U.S. officials about "the terms on which the Taliban will become part of the political fabric". The debate is not on whether the Taliban movement will be participating in the Afghan political system, however, but on whether or not the administration could accept the participation of a specific individual -- Mullah Omar, the leader of the organisation and former chief of state of the Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001 -- in the political future of Afghanistan.

Some U.S. officials have argued that the Taliban leader should be barred from participation, because of his role in protecting Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 terror attacks and refusing to hand over the al Qaeda leader in the weeks that followed the attacks.

The official suggested that the Obama administration and its NATO allies need to reach a consensus about the issue, and that recent events make the present moment "seem like a good time to deal with that."

Despite their interest in that issue, the ISAF official said, the United States won't determine the outcome of the negotiations. "Reconciliation is considered to be in the purview of the Afghan government and international mediators," the official said.

Nevertheless, the official left no doubt that the United States will participate in the negotiations. "I don't think anybody is under the misconception we are not going to negotiate," he said.

Read rest of article....

Greece: The Farmers' Strike

EA's Fulya Inci reports:

A week-long blockade by Greek farmers, protesting the Government's austerity measures in agriculture and demanding greater support for agricultural products, ended early Sunday.

The farmers had blocked the border with Bulgaria with tractors and reapers, refusing passage of vehicles except those with only passengers. “Cars and trucks carrying goods to destinations ranging from Poland to Italy were stranded on both sides of the border.”

During the protests, diplomatic tension rose with Bulgarian officials accused Greek authorities of not doing enough to stop the blockade. Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov's visit to the border was criticised by Greek media of acting “undiplomatic”.

Borisov has been ordered the establishment of a special department to settle the claims of Bulgarian companies. Economy Minister Traicho Traikov told Parliament that Bulgaria had lost “three million euros per day", and the Agriculture Ministry and Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism received complaints from firms reporting a total loss of approximately 77.5 million leva ($55.6 million).  The companies’ demands for compensation will be presented on European Commission for Greece’s attention.

Getting Tough with Israel: US Congress to Put Pressure on Obama?

Fifty-four members of the US Congress have signed a letter, initiated by Jim McDermott from Washington and Keith Ellison from Minnesota, asking President Barack Obama to put pressure on Israel to ease the siege of the Gaza Strip. The authors have pointed to the necessity for ease of movement of people into and out of Gaza, especially students, the sick, aid workers, journalists, and those with family concerns. They have also asked for the import of building materials to rebuild houses. The letter summarises:

This concern [regarding ongoing Hamas missiles] must be addressed without resulting in the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.

We ask you to press for immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza as an urgent component of your broader Middle East peace efforts.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington has responded:

The Israeli position is that the Hamas government in Gaza does not meet the conditions set forth by the international community and the Quartet. And as long as Hamas continues to attack Israel with missiles and other means, Israel will not open the border crossings. With this, Israel is doing everything possible to ensure that humanitarian aid enters Gaza in a controlled manner so that it is ensured that the population receives what it needs, including medical care in Israel. But Israel will not allow a neighbor that calls for its destruction to enjoy the benefits of an open border.

Meanwhile, Ellison criticized the US House of Representatives' rejection of the Goldstone Report on the Gaza War, arguing that the report "only presents facts and raises recommendations for the future". He said that the rejection hurt the Obama government's role as an honest broker in the Middle East conflict.