Mr Verde follows up our analysis of the “mystery” of the Assembly of Experts statement/non-statement supporting the Supreme Leader and declaring that time has run out for a seditious opposition.
The Assembly of Experts has been holding twice a yearly for many years. Most of its meetings are behind closed doors. The official reports of the meetings usually included a few set-piece and rather predictable speeches. And they were ignored by most people.
The only notable “news” about the Assembly meetings in recent years was the 2007 election to replace the deceased Ali Meshkini as chair. Until then only one candidate stood in the election and was elected unanimously to show unity. This time, however, there were two candidates: Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati.
2110 GMT: Not-Over-The-Top Statement of Today. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying to a Congressional committee, reveals that the current manoeuvres over Iran’s uranium enrichment are just like the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis:
My reading of what happened with President Kennedy is that it’s exactly what he did. It was high-stakes diplomacy. It was pushing hard to get the world community to understand, going to the UN, making a presentation, getting international opinion against the placement of Russian weapons in Cuba, making a deal eventually with the Russians that led to the removal of the weapons.
That is the kind of high-stakes diplomacy that I’m engaged in, that other members of this administration are, because we take very seriously the potential threat from Iran.
2100 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. After all the political positions (take your pick) he adopted at the Assembly of Experts, Hashemi Rafsanjani used a ceremony at the tomb of the late Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a warning about “uninformed individuals” (who are they?): “These individuals shirk from their responsibilities and make irrelevant declarations, thus causing the leadership to bear the responsibility of all the actions that the people reject.”
1935 GMT: Diplomatic Poses (cont.). Well, I guess Washington had to strike its own posture given the statements of President Ahmadinejad and his Syrian counterpart Bashir al-Assad in Damascus today (1335 GMT). Here’s State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley:
As the secretary [Hillary Clinton] reiterated yesterday, we have expressed our concern directly to President (Bashar) Assad about Syria’s relationship with Iran. This is ultimately a decision that Syria has to make, but as President Assad assesses Syria’s long-term interests, he need only look around the region and recognize that Syria is increasingly an outlier.
We want to see Syria play a more constructive role in the region. One step would be to make clear what Iran’s need to do differently and unfortunately there was no evidence of that today.
The key here is that it is a spokesman making the statement, not the President, not the Secretary of State. Yes, of course, the US would prefer that Damascus put Iran into isolation. But they know that, given the regional dynamics, Syria will not publicly cut off Tehran. So the real diplomacy will take place away from these statements.
1925 GMT: Back from a lengthy academic break — the US Ambassador to Britain was in Birmingham today — to catch up on the full force of Iranian propaganda. Here is the “confession” of Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Rigi, tailor-made to put the US as the main sponsor of his terrorism:
After Obama was elected, the Americans contacted us and they met me in Pakistan.They met us after clashes with my group around March 17 in (the southeastern city of) Zahedan, and he (the US operative) said that Americans had requested a meeting.
I said we didn’t have any time for a meeting and if we do help them they should promise to give us aid. They said they would cooperate with us and will give me military equipment, arms and machine guns. They also promised to give us a base along the border with Afghanistan next to Iran.
They asked to meet me and we said where should we meet you and he said in Dubai. We sent someone to Dubai and we told a person to ask a place for myself in Afghanistan from the area near the operations and they complied that they would sort out the problem for us and they will find Mr. Rigi a base and guarantee his own security in Afghanistan or in any of the countries adjacent to Iran so that he can carry on his operations.
They told me that in Kyrgyzstan they have a base called Manas near Bishkek, and that a high-ranking person was coming to meet me and that if such high-ranking people come to the United Arab Emirates, they may be observed by intelligence people but in a place like Bishkek this high-ranking American person could come and we could reach an agreement on making personal contacts. But after the last major operation we took part in, they said that they wanted to meet with us.
The Americans said Iran was going its own way and they said our problem at the present is Iran…not al-Qaeda and not the Taliban, but the main problem is Iran. We don’t have a military plan against Iran. Attacking Iran is very difficult for us (the US). The CIA is very particular about you and is prepared to do anything for you because our government has reached the conclusion that there was nothing Americans could do about Iran and only I could take care of the operations for them.
One of the CIA officers said that it was too difficult for us to attack Iran militarily, but we plan to give aid and support to all anti-Iran groups that have the capability to wage war and create difficulty for the Iranian (Islamic) system. They reached the conclusion that your organization has the power to create difficulties for the Islamic Republic and they are prepared to give you training and/or any assistance that you would require, in terms of telecommunications security and procedures as well as other support, the Americans said they would be willing to provide it at an extensive level.
Ebrahim Yazdi, former Foreign Minister and head of the Freedom of Movement Iran, underwent open heart surgery soon after his 10-day release yesterday. His family said that the surgery was a success.
UPDATE 1550 GMT: And, as the supposed statement of the Assembly seems to have disappeared, here’s another puzzler. The following clerics were not present during the final meeting of the session: Amini, Mesbah Yazdi, Hassan Rohani, Moghtadaiee, Mahdavi-Kani and Mousavi-Jazayeri.
Amini. though conservative, has been reported to be very unhappy with the post-election events. Amini is reportedly in hospital. Hassan Rohani is close to Rafsanjani.Mahdavi-Kani is conservative cleric, with very strong links and possible influence within the regime; he was also reportedly a proponent of the National Unity Plan.
OK, so each may have had a reason to be absent. But was Mesbah Yazdi, perhaps Ahmadinejad’s most fervent backer, not present at a session that supposedly declared opposition “sedition”?
UPDATE 1430 GMT: Let’s add to the mystery. At the beginning of the Assembly of Experts session, Rafsanjani said that Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the Deputy Chair of the Assembly was not present; instead, his son was attending. (Yazdi Senior also missed the autumn session, saying he was ill, and he tried to resign from the secretariat of the Assembly, but Rafsanjani rejected the resignation.)
Legally Yazdi Junior cannot represent his father in Assembly meetings. So was Rafsanjani making the point that Mohammad Yazdi, a backer of President Ahmadinejad, is so used to illegal activity that he sends his son to represent him? And/or was Rafsanjani diminishing the legitimacy of a meeting “under special circumstances” where non-members could sit in?
When the news came through, it hit like a hammer blow. The Assembly of Experts, headed by Hashemi Rafsanjani, had issued their statement after a widely-anticipated two-day meeting. The 86-member body had declared its loyalty to the Supreme Leader:
The more we go ahead, the more our supreme leader proves his competence. Ayatollah Khamenei shed light on realities in dealing with the post-election sedition and undertook huge efforts in view of bringing unity to the nation.
So far, nothing surprising. Last summer’s possibility of an Assembly challenge to Khamenei is long gone; all “establishment” figures, including Rafsanjani, have circled political wagons around the concept of clerical supremacy (velayat-e-faqih). But then the unexpected:
The revolutionary patience of the Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic ended in December after sedition leaders missed numerous chances to repent and return into the gown of the revolution. Sedition leaders flunked the Dec 30 final exam and they were removed from Iran’s political spirit.
Bam. Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, Mohammad Khatami: your resistance is over. Not just over, forbidden. With that doubly-offered word “sedition”, the threat of arrest had been made, not by the Revolutionary Guard or the Iranian judiciary but by clerics, some of whom were supposedly sympathetic to the opposition demands.
No wonder a prominent (and shrewd) activist e-mailed me, “This statement has me worried. And it takes a lot to get me worried.”
But then the story moves from drama to mystery. Did the Assembly really put down this challenge to Mousavi-Karroubi-Khatami?
The original source for the statement appears to have been Fars News. The Iranian Students News Agency also featured the story but simply summarised the Fars account. However, as far as I can tell, the supposed statement has not been covered by the Islamic Republic News Agency, and it certainly has escaped any mention on Press TV’s website.
So this morning, we are left, not with the certain shock of a once-and-for-all challenge to opposition leaders but with the uncertainty of whether Fars — which has been known to create or distort stories — has been the source of either outright fabrication or the channel for someone (who? take your pick) to “leak” a statement which had not been agreed by the Assembly.
A bit of recent history may be in order. Last summer a statement appeared, in the name of the Assembly, criticising the leadership of Hashemi Rafsanjani and calling on him to step down as chair. The initial reading, given Rafsanjani’s high-profile Friday Prayer speech in mid-July standing up to the Government and the subsequent pressure and threats against him and his family, was that the regime had rallied against the former President.
Not so. Within days, it emerged that the statement had been drawn up by only a handful of clerics and signed by the fiercely pro-Ahmadinejad Ayatollah Mesbah Mohammad Yazdi. A number of Assembly members made it clear that they had no part of the effort, and Rafsanjani remained in his post.
So now, rather than the intended portrait of a regime now united against the opposition, we have the picture — should the speculation of a clumsy propaganda effort be borne out — of a system whose heart is still divided. There will be no resolution.
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:
Chris Emery and another top EA correspondent respond to yesterday’s “The Plot Against President Ahmadinejad” and readers’ question by considering the process for the President’s removal and the political questions that would follow:
EMERY: First of all, we should not overlook that there would have to be another election within 50 days in the case of impeachment. The massive question then would be whether (Mir Hossein) Mousavi would be barred from standing. If he was, then the exercise in restoring legitimacy is worthless. If he wasn’t, then the regime would be taking a monumental step. Can’t see it happening for those reasons alone.
2200 GMT: Your Late-Night Cyber-Treat. On Google, type “Ahmadinejad President of Iran”. Hit “I’m Feeling Lucky”.
2140 GMT: We started this morning (see 0715 GMT) by noting the possible significance of the “reformist” criticisms of Dr Javad Etaat making their way onto Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. We end today by posting the video of the first part of the interview and an English translation.
2030 GMT: Cyber-Warfare Strike. Hacking the website of Iran’s Hezbollah (Party of God) is one thing. Doing it with the slogan “The End is F***ing Near” is another. And accomplishing it with a diversion to the domain http://www.getasexpartner.com/hiz-bol.htm, well… Let’s just say that Iran’s police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam (see 1220 GMT) may want to get a bigger Internet manual if he is serious about taking on the opposition in a Web slugfest.
1935 GMT: Quality Analysis of Day. Well done, Asadollah Badamchian, member of Parliament: “The assassination [of Professor Ali-Mohammadi] and terrorist operation was a previously planned step in the Green Velvet Revolution.” The movement, Badamchian said, consists of five sub-groups, “each of which are gradually eroding”. Read the rest of this entry »
English translation follows video — many thanks to HomyLafayette:
In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful.
Three points must be stressed concerning the events that took place at the press fair last Friday: One has to do with the circumstances, another with the motives, and the last with myself. Read the rest of this entry »
Mr Verde follows up our analysis of the “mystery” of the Assembly of Experts statement/non-statement supporting the Supreme Leader and declaring that time has run out for a seditious opposition.
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