2110 GMT: The White House has put out the following statement:
The United States is deeply concerned about reports of additional charges facing Kian Tajbakhsh (see 1200 GMT), an Iranian-American scholar who has been detained in Iran without access to an independent lawyer since July 9, 2009. The charges against Mr. Tajbakhsh are baseless, and his original sentence on October 20 was an outrage. The Iranian government cannot earn the respect of the international community when it violates universal rights, and continues to imprison innocent people. We call on the Islamic Republic of Iran to release Mr. Tajbakhsh, and to respect the human rights of those within its borders.
I first learned of this video days after the 12 June Presidential election, but after much deliberation, I decided not to post it. The source, the Middle East Media Research Institute, is fervently critical of the Islamic Republic, and it has sometimes posted video “evidence” out of context.
In light of the “revelations” in the Tehran trials, considered in our analysis today of the regime’s portrayal of academics and “velvet revolution”, I decided to have another look. And there are enough matches between the trial’s indictments and the allegations in this video to make the initally ludicrous — could any Ministry of Intelligence really air this as “proof” of the enemy’s devious plots, especially to turn its population into informers on their fellow citizens? — into the very believable.
So sit back and enjoy badly-animated John McCain (“senior White House official”, rather than Republican candidate for President), George Soros (“Jewish tycoon and the mastermind of ultra-modern colonialism”), Gene Sharp (Harvard professor turned “theoretician of civil disobedience and velvet revolutions” and “one of the CIA’s agents in charge of infiltration into other countries”), and Bill Smith (first I’ve heard of this “CIA senior expert on Iranian affairs”) plot the downfall of Iran….
To appreciate how dramatic the regime’s move was on Tuesday with the biggest of the four Tehran trials, in significance if not number of defendants, rewind 12 days to Saturday, 15 August. The regime had dodged a potential bullet the previous day when Hashemi Rafsanjani declined to lead Friday prayers in Tehran, but then it faced a torrent of disturbing news. The Supreme Leader, overruling opposition from the President’s camp, pushed through the appointment of Sadegh Larijani as head of Iran’s judiciary. The “Karroubi letter”, demanding action on the abuse of detainees, was now circulating publicly. Mir Hossein Mousavi announced the “Green Path of Hope”. Conservative members of Parliaments and newspapers were criticising key Ahmadinejad allies like Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, as doubts circulated over the President’s still-to-be-declared Cabinet. Even Ayatollah Khamenei was not above the battle, with a group of clerics and former MPs (who met former President Khatami) raising the invocation of Law 111 to question the Supreme Leader’s qualifications for his post.
This was more than a spectre. Only 10 days after the President had been inaugurated, the Ahmadinejad Government faced a challenge to its legitimacy as great as that of the immediate response to the 12 June elections. It might face not only the Green wave but also a renewed judiciary ready to challenge its (ab)use of the legal system for detentions, confessions, and trials, a Supreme Leader who was no longer ready to back Ahmadinejad to the full, and conservative and principlist MPs alienated by stories such as the death of Mohsen Roohulamini. And there was still the haunting question: what would Rafsanjani now do?
So, would the Ahmadinejad regime back down and accept compromise, to the point of crippling its authority? Or would it make an even more aggressive charge to knock back its opponents once and for all? Read the rest of this entry »
2110 GMT: The White House has put out the following statement: 
To appreciate how dramatic the regime’s move was on Tuesday with the biggest of the four Tehran trials, in significance if not number of defendants, 
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