Iran: More on Kian Tajbakhsh and Tehran's "Velvet Revolution"

Iran’s American Prisoner: The Case of Kian Tajbakhsh (Continued with 15 Years in Jail)
Iran: How the Regime Constructed the “Velvet Revolution”
The Latest from Iran (27 October): Domestic and Foreign Collide

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Despite (or possibly because of) the muted public response by the US Government to the 15-year sentence handed down to Iranian-American academic Kian Tajbakhsh, the campaign for his release has picked up steam in the last week. On Sunday we featured an article by Karim Sadjadpour, and fellow scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who was detained for months with Tajbakhsh in 2007, has blogged for The New York Review of Books.

Gary Sick, a former US Government official who has been named in the regime's indictments as a "foreign operative" working with Tajbakhsh, has also offered his thoughts. Without forgetting that hundreds of others remain in post-election detention, we post this to link Tajbakhsh's case to a wider analysis of the Iranian Government's accusations and tactics in its portrayal of "velvet revolution".

Last week, an Iranian-American colleague of mine, Kian Tajbaksh, was sentenced in Tehran to 15 years in prison. The indictment included the charges that (1) he was in contact with me; (2) that he was part of the Gulf/2000 network that I manage; and (3) that I am an agent of the CIA.

Normally, I simply ignore silly accusations such as this. They are nothing new. On one hand, it has been intimated that I must be under the influence of Iranian intelligence (by prominent neoconservatives who believe that my views on Iran’s political development and especially its nuclear program are not sufficiently alarmist). I have also been accused (by such worthies as Hossein Shariatmadari, the ultra-radical editor of Iran’s Kayhan newspaper, who is also a representative of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei) of being a CIA agent. I regard these insinuations as badges of honor, since they merely confirm that I do not subscribe to the ideological extremes of either of these groups. I have always felt that my reputation could speak for itself and required no public defense.

However, this time the accusations are really not about me but about a friend and colleague. Moreover, they are not just newspaper hyperbole by people who have an ax to grind and whose desire to make a political point exceeds their respect for the truth. These assertions are a matter of law—an official indictment by the judicial authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It is often said that it is impossible to prove a negative. How do I prove that I am NOT an agent of the CIA? How do I prove that the Gulf/2000 Internet project is NOT engaged in overthrowing governments? How do I prove that Kian—a friend and a colleague—was NOT trying to lead a “velvet revolution” against the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Let me simply reverse the questions. I spent 24 years in the U.S. Navy—my only connection with the U.S. government. The Navy sponsored my education at the University of Kansas. It took me to the Persian Gulf for my first exposure to the region that has become my professional specialization. It sponsored my graduate work for a Ph.D. degree at Columbia University. And it paid my salary while I was on the National Security Council staff at the time of the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis. I never received a paycheck from any other agency of the U.S. government. Do the prosecutors in Iran have evidence to the contrary? If so, please let me know.

There are a number of commentators on Iran, such as Reuel Gerecht, Graham Fuller, and Bruce Riedel, who indeed worked for the CIA. Although their political views disagree sharply, they always identify themselves as former CIA employees. I do not identify myself that way for the very simple reason that I never worked for the CIA.

The prosecutors charge that Kian was in touch with me. Right. We were both academics in New York, and we saw each other from time to time. However, I have gone back over the past 20 years with that in mind, and I am struck by something quite different. Over that period of time, I have known every Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and many members of the staff of the Iranian U.N. mission. I have spent much more time with them than with Kian.

More important, I have been in meetings with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on four different occasions over the past three years. I have spent at least nine hours with him, much more than I ever spent with Kian. In my last meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad, I told him that if he were simply a lowly academic, instead of the president of Iran, he would be subject to arrest upon his return to Iran for meeting with the roomful of U.S. academics and think tank representatives that he had assembled at his hotel. He scoffed at the idea. Now one of my colleagues, a lowly Iranian-American professor who was about to take up a position at my university, is being condemned to 15 years in prison because, among other things, he had contact with me.

Iranian security officials are notably lacking in any sense of irony or humor. But I do wonder whether President Ahmadinejad is being considered for indictment because of his extensive contacts with me over the past four years.

The Gulf/2000 network is an Internet project that began 16 years ago to facilitate communication and information sharing among individuals who have a professional association with issues involving the Persian Gulf. It includes individuals of widely differing backgrounds and opinions, including both private citizens and government officials from countries around the world, including Iran. If any Iranian government official wishes to know about G2K, as we call it, he need only consult his colleagues who are members.

G2K is routinely cited in international conferences in Tehran and elsewhere as a reliable source of informed commentary and factual information about issues involving the Persian Gulf. It is limited to specialists, but it is not a secret. It includes individuals of every possible political persuasion. And it is not engaged in overthrowing governments.

The indictment against Kian is in fact an indictment of the legal and security structure of the Iranian government. The charges are false, deliberately false. They consist of a series of political fabrications devoid of even the flimsiest effort to verify the truth.

These accusations cast shame on any institution that professes respect for justice and law. They substantiate the words of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, one the founders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, that this government is no longer either Islamic or a republic but merely the latest in the shabby succession of Middle Eastern military regimes. These charges remind us of the excesses of the Stalinist show trials and the abominations of the Chinese Red Guards—examples of revolutions that betrayed their own ideals.

This is not about Kian, and it is certainly not about me. It is about the abject failure of a ruling clique that has lost the confidence and support of its own people and must contrive scapegoats to excuse its own deficiencies.

Iran: English Text of Mousavi-Karroubi Meeting (10 October)

Iran: So Who Controls the Islamic Republic?
The Latest from Iran (11 October): “Media Operations”

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Translated on the Facebook page associated with Mir Hossein Mousavi:

Yesterday (Oct 10, 2009) Mir Hossein Mousavi visited Mehdi Karroubi in his home to talk about the post-election events. In this meeting both presidential candidates by pointing out the efforts of the IRIB (the state-run TV and radio channels) to diminish the reform movement, emphasised on their legal rights and demanded to appear on TV/radio to defend themselves and reply to the false accusations made against them on the “national” stage.

At the beginning of this meeting Mehdi Karroubi said that the recent presidential election was a great opportunity, and the establishment could have used this opportunity to strengthen its position in the international community. Noting that the behaviour of the government after the election was far from the status and ideas of the system that was founded by Imam Khomeini, Karroubi strongly criticised the illegal arrests of Alireza Beheshti, Morteza Alviri and Ebrahim Amini (senior advisors to Mousavi and Karroubi) as well as the other political prisoners who have sacrificed a lot for the revolution and the country.

Karroubi, the Secretary General of the Etemade Melli party, called the treatment of the students and revolutionary figures by the government as “odd and strange” and by reminding the events that happened during Shah’s time when the military forces attacked the university, called these kinds of behaviours obscene and that after all these years there was no one who could defend such acts and that he considered these as signs for all the officials to be careful with their actions so that so that future generations would have a good memory of them.

Mehdi Karroubi pointed out the recent letter by the Tehran Governor’s office that prohibits the members of Tehran’s City Council from comforting and meeting with the family members of the victims of the recent events, calling this behaviour “very uncivilised”. Karroubi also  pointed out the recent remarks made by Mohseni-Ejei (the new Prosecutor General) in which he had said that the country was in a combat situation, Karroubi stated that these words were to create fear from the revolutionary courts (show trials) and asked why these kinds of statements are made: why one should pretend that the country is in the military mode and everyone should keep quiet and be silent? Noting that some of the military leaders such as the General Commander of the Revolutionary Guards are accusing the reformists of providing topics for the foreign media, Karroubi asked them who is truly providing topics for the foreign media. “Is it us or you? Do we make harsh statement or you? Who is behaving roughly, you or us?”

Karroubi also pointed out the Qods Day rallies. He stated that the position regarding Israel has not changed and that the Qods Day is a day to support the people of Palestine and condemn the violation of their rights by Israel, but he added:

We should be thankful to the many people who attended these rallies. Most of those who participated in these rallies in response to our invitation were chanting slogans about Iran and their country and were concerned about their fate. We cannot ask people to be ignorant about their country, and although the main propose for this day was Palestinian people, I ask the authorities to explain what has happened in the country that suddenly on Qods Day people are split in two groups and some express their concerns in the slogans they were chanting.

At the end of his remarks, Karroubi stressed that some are talking about the presidential elections as if nothing has happened and are telling people that there has been no fraud in the election. He asked, "Why are the Government telling people these lies as if people don’t know what has happened to them? If that is true then what are all these protests?"

Karroubi added that the authorities are claiming that Ahmadinejad had 300,000 votes in 10,000 ballot boxes, while Karroubi did not even have a single vote in those boxes....

This is despite the fact that some of the observers at the polling stations say that in a ballot box I had 100 votes but they counted only one for me. At least say something that people won’t laugh at you over it. If you are telling the truth then in response to tens of hours of denying the fraud on the “national” media and putting pressure on the innocent detainees to obtain false confessions from them, give us some airtime too so that we also present our evidence and reasons.

Mehdi Karroubi believes that the public opinion and their trust is the greatest resource of the system. Karroubi said:

The greatest resource of Imam [Khomeini] was the public trust and had said so himself several times. Therefore the trust in the system should not be destroyed and no one should move in that direction. Some of these gentlemen knowingly or unknowingly are moving in that direction and are constantly preparing material for the foreigners. Let’s make a right move to come out of this situation. Let’s announce the real statistics. IRIB, which has become a biased and destructive media with every day destroying its credibility more, should follow the right course and should try to win the trust of the people again.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, pointing out the events after the election, strongly criticised the behaviour of the government. He said that it is a bitter irony that the revolutionary figures who were active from the very beginning of the revolution are today in prisons: “I don’t know why these events are happening and why they are doing this to the religious and revolutionary figures.”

Mousavi believes that these actions are causing wounds to the people’s souls and spirits that will not be easily treatable in future. He pointed out the show trials for the reformists, staged with a lot of propaganda, and asked: “What did you gain from this show? Are you seeking to hold inquisition courts? Do you understand the downfalls of such actions in the society?”

Mousavi referred to the great number of revolutionary figures who have been pushed aside and said:

In the past four years, many wrong actions have taken place that have made the revolutionary figures either go to the sidelines or lose their enthusiasm for working. Have a look and see how many ministers, members of the Parliament, and revolutionary figures were eliminated. The sidelines of our revolution have now become greater and more important than its core. How many Presidents we have, how many ministers we have [who have been marginalised]. We have members of the Parliament, managers, leading intellectuals who have all been pushed to the sidelines. Why are all these talents eliminated?

Pointing out his warnings over the past year, Mousvi expressed sorrow over the abuse of the county’s financial resources by some of the power centers, such asthe questionable transfer of telecommunications to the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps and the methods of financing the $8 billion cost.

Mousavi then referred to the accusations [by the Government] of "velvet revolution" and said: “Unfortunately these days from every podium, there is a remark being made to destroy the revolutionary figures. The holy podium of the Friday Prayer is now specific to a party and the hardliners are using any means to eliminate everyone who has a different opinion from them.”

Mousavi, pointing out the history of Russia and the Communist period, said that in an era some people took power that tried to eliminate those who were active in that revolution by removing the images of them from books and pictures and by forging the history to deceive their people and the people of the world, but [eventually] their government was overthrown and historians wrote the real history. He emphasised:

The few should not think that the events of the beginning of the Revolution and the years after that are gone from people’s minds. Recently, one of the gentlemen who had a position in my cabinet and then resigned over some differences has made comments that make you wonder. It is three or four months that he is spreading lies at IRIB and his media against me, Mr. Karroubi, and people who have supported us and tried to destroy our characters. Don’t we have the right to defend ourselves on “national” TV too?

Recalling the meeting with Ayatollah Hashemi-Shahroudi (the former Head of the Judiciary), Mousavi said:

Mr. Shahroudi called me and asked if I could go to his office. I went there. Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani (the Head of the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council) was there too, but I was not originally informed about his presence. We talked about the events that happened after the election and then Mr. Shahroudi asked me what I would do. I said that we were clear and that they should give us time so that we could also defend ourselves in live broadcast from the national media in that environment of destruction. Prior to that Mr. Larijani had also asked me if I would go to the television and I said yes. In the meeting with Mr. Shahroudi, he suggested a legal gathering and I accepted. Right then he called the High Commission of National Security, they spoke and they agreed too. Then they told us to write a request. We prepared a request [for a gathering] signed by me and sent it. A few days later we received a note from the High Commission of National Security that they had rejected our request according to some article and it was also signed by some managers.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, criticising the extent of lying among some officials, added:

They are constantly giving false information to the public and think that people will believe them. How many times have the number of people killed after the election changed? Then they claim that the fraud in election is a lie. There are people who are determined to pretend that there was no fraud in the election. This was repeatedly propagated from the television.

Well, if you are certain of your action, why are you worried of our presence on television or why are you preventing the presence of our experts there? If you are truthful, then establish a roundtable with the presence from our experts so that both sides could put their views.

Mousavi, pointing out the restricted vironment that has been created, said: “Today the environment is in such a way that no one can criticise the administration. Anyone who says something [against the administration], even if he is one of their own people, is linked to the enemy, is said to be against Imam [Khomeini], and will have false accusations made up against him.”

Mousavi reiterated: “I asked them why you, who voided 700 ballot boxes during the sixth parliamentary election so that you could get one specific figure elected to the parliament, don’t open a hundred ballot boxes in a live television broadcast so that people can see how many ballot papers without a serial number are in there?”

At the end Mousavi expressed hope that the devotees of the system think and resolve the problems that have been created. In his opinion it is impossible to ignore the public’s awareness and to ask the students to be quiet, as they are sons and daughters of this people and demand an answer.