Speaking to Rooz Online, Dr. Habibollah Peyman, leader of the banned party Jonbesh Mosalmanan Mobarez (Movement of Combatant Muslims), considers the future of the Green Movement in light of the events of 22 Bahman (11 February):
Rooz: Mr. Peyman, observers continue to analyze the events of February 11th. In your opinion, what was the impact of what took place that day on the green movement and the government?
Habibollah Peyman: On 11 February, after security and police forces filled the areas and rally location were filled with secure people, only two options remained: one was for some [Green Movement] forces to come forward and engage in clashes, which is essentially against its philosophy and strategy. The second option was pretty much what actually took place. People who participated were not able to express their presence with green symbols. Despite what is advertised however, February 11 was neither a defeat for the green movement nor a victory for the hardliners.
My initial reaction, on reading the full text of Mir Hossein Mousavi’s Saturday interview on the immediate past and immediate future of the Green Movement, was feeling let down. Mousavi had offered a lengthy dissection of the regime’s “success” on 22 Bahman (11 February), mobilising the rally in Azadi Square and blocking any mass Green display. He had stated his determination, shared by others, to “express our emotions, aspirations, and concern as a nation”.
Mousavi had declared, “The Green Movement has stood firm in its civil demands. The more people’s awareness of their rights increases, the bigger will be the force behind those demands.”
Yes, I thought, but what would those demands be beyond the general assertion of freedom, justice, and rights? What endpoint for this people’s force? In the end, was Mousavi’s “Being green is a matter of behavior and morals” an evasion rather than a confrontation of the next phase of the post-election crisis?
2135 GMT: Rumour of Day. Kalameh alleges that prisoners held in cellblock 209 of Evin Prison have been commanded to fill in forms about their views on election fraud and whether the protest leaders are connected to foreign countries.
2100 GMT: Dr Mohammad Maleki, the former head of Tehran University, has reportedly been released after 191 days in detention. Maleki, 76, suffers from prostate cancer.
2055 GMT: United4Iran has a profile of Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, former advisor to Iran’s Minister of Interior in the Khatami Presidency, who was released on 24 February after spending more than eight months in prison. According to another released prisoner, Khanjani was under pressure to confess and was constantly moved from general confinement to solidarity confinement.
Three weeks has passed since the 22nd of Bahman rally and there have been lots of discussions and comments regarding this rally, what is opinion your about this event?
It is not the first time that the ceremonies of 22nd of Bahman have been held in our country. These ceremonies are in remembrance of rallies in 1979 [and have taken place] in different occasions with more than a million people. Every year people who admire this revolution participate in these ceremonies where traditional institutions such as Mosques or religious assemblies play an important role in organizing the rally. Usually the ceremonies in each year are influenced by important events of the year and the political atmosphere [in the country]. The 10th presidential election and the events that followed it influenced this year’s rally. The government mobilized [large number of people] public employees, using trains and buses from all across the country by spending large sums of money. This was all to neutralize the impact of presence of green movement.
2230 GMT: Sneaking Out the News. It appears that the official statement of the Assembly of Experts meeting has been quietly placed on its website. We are reviewing and will have an analysis in the morning.
First impression is that while the statement is effusive about the “leadership and guidance” of the Supreme Leader to get Iran through the post-election crisis, it is not as severe in condemning the “sedition” of the opposition as the alleged statement released by Fars News in mid-week.
2115 GMT: Larijani Watch. Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, continuing his Japan tour with a visit to the Peace Memorial Museum in Nagasaki, declared both Tehran’s commitment to nuclear non-proliferation and the perfidy of the West:
Iran will host an international conference on nuclear disarmament within the next two months….After the bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US made no change in its policies. Two nuclear bombs of the United States have now increased to tens of thousands.
In his 17th statement, Mir-Hossein Mousavi made five specific points that he deemed necessary to start the political (and national) reconciliation process. The proposal lead to a noticeable uptick in the weeks leading up to 22 Bahman in talk of the need for national “unity” and also garnered much attention from Iranian intellectuals and dissidents. Ultimately, the regime’s more radical elements reemerged and silenced the chatter before the security apparatus prevented a strong opposition showing on the revolution’s 31st anniversary. But Mousavi’s “five points,” as they have come to be called, still carry much weight. Generally, they are:
Government accountability for post-election violations
Legislation of new election laws that would safeguard reform-minded candidates from regime’s current vetting process
Release of all political prisoners
Freedom of the press and political-neutrality on state-run IRIB television
Freedom to assemble, as guaranteed by the Islamic Republic’s constitution
Were these five conditions to be met, the Green movement would arguably have the breathing space it needs to mobilize and begin the long process of transforming Iranian society. For if anything became apparent in the weeks leading up to and after the June election, it was that Iran has undergone an awakening. It has simply been the repression that the above five grievances capture that has prevented the social movement’s aspirations from coming to fruition.
2100 GMT: Law and Order Story of the Week. After the court session for Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Kayhan, the newspaper’s journalist Payam Fazli-Nejad was reportedly “heavily beaten, barely escaping his death”, and Ahmadinejad right-hand man Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai has become “mamnou ol-tasvir” (his photos forbidden) on Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
2040 GMT: War on Terror, I Tell You. I’m sure it is entirely coincidental in light of current events — announcement of arrest of Jundullah leader a week after it occurred, Ahmadinejad declaring that it is Iran not “the West” that is fighting terrorism (1745 GMT), declaration of 100 arrested on 22 Bahman as “terrorists” (1435 GMT) — but this just in from the Ministry of Intelligence:
2145 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. An activist reports that Layla Tavasoli and Mohamad Naeimpour of the Freedom Movement of Iran have been released from Evin Prison.
2130 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Another sign of the “conservative” push for changes within the system. The brother of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani, has told Khabar Online that the Expediency Council will seek to remove “ambiguities” in Iran’s election law. At the same time, Mohammad Rafsanjani denied that the Expediency Council will seek to remove the Guardian Council’s monitoring of elections.
1840 GMT: WaPo’ed (definition: “declaring an opposition movement dead without evidence and with dubious motives). Just a quick note to folks at The Washington Post: in the past 72 hours, you have distorted a piece by your own Iran correspondent to portray the demise of the Green movement on 22 Bahman and you have run an Associated Press report which declares from thin air:
Speaking to Rooz Online, Dr. Habibollah Peyman, leader of the banned party Jonbesh Mosalmanan Mobarez (Movement of Combatant Muslims), considers the future of the Green Movement in light of the events of 22 Bahman (11 February):
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