UPDATED Iran: The Opposition’s New PR Campaign in the US
Posted by Scott Lucas in Middle East & Iran
UPDATE 14 March: We’ve put the pieces and think we have the story of what happened at the press conference. More to come….
Iran: The Opposition’s Campaign in the US — Sequel With Revelations and A Lesson
UPDATE 2255 GMT: A journalist at the press conference writes to assure us that the “former Karroubi aide” was NOT Ataollah Mohajerani. The journalist also says that the theme of the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad rift, which was the Tehran Bureau headline (but which we think is tangential in the political situation) was the big pitch of the aide both during the formal conference and afterwards in conversations.
All of this indicates that the attempted PR effort of the opposition has been rather botched, with almost no coverage and a failure to bring out the points that would resonate in the US such as the position on sanctions and the declared aims of the Green Movement.
UPDATE 0915 GMT: Barbara Slavin, one of Washington’s top journalists, adds, “A top aide to Mehdi Karroubi…said [President] Obama should send Nowruz [Iranian New Year] greetings this year. However, he argued that the message should focus on human rights and commemorate the scores of Iranians — such as Neda Agha Soltan — who have been killed since June by plainclothes thugs, prison torturers, and government executioners.”
More than four months after their last public-relations effort in the US, Iranian opposition leaders have made another move to influence American political circles. “A senior aide to opposition cleric Mehdi Karroubi” met journalists at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Friday. The senior aide “worked with [Karroubi] for more than 25 years” but is now based outside Iran (while he is anonymous in the TB story, skilled Iran-watchers will identify him easily).
The headline claim in Tehran Bureau is that the aide revealed that “Iran’s supreme leader has cooled his support for president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”. That, in fact, is not much of a story. The claim — at least as reported in the article — has no specific evidence but echoes a number of points (such as the incident over Ahmadinejad’s close ally Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai) that we have noted since last summer.
Tags: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Barbara Slavin, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Dubai, Iran, Iran Elections 2009, Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi, Neda Agha Soltan, Nowruz, sanctions, Tehran Bureau, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
UPDATED 1335 GMT: The Washington Times also has 
In our analysis today of a possible US “grand strategy” linking its approach on Israel and Palestine to a change in policy on Iran, we speculated, “One explanation for this shift is the long-awaited entry of Dennis Ross, who has long advocated “Diplomacy Then Pressure”, into the State Department.” 
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