1910 GMT: More on the Universities Purge (see 1145 GMT). The Revolutionary Guards get in on the act, with Yahya Rahim-Safavi, the former commander and current advisor to the Supreme Leader, declaring, “The universities aren’t in good shape today, missing from them are revolutionary forces and experts who are beholden to the Imam, the Supreme Leader, and the Constitution.”
Rahim-Safavi, speaking at a conference organized for the “cultural experts” of the IRGC, said, “The goal of soft war is to change the culture, values and beliefs of the youth….Our weakness is in this very issue of culture, which our enemies have identified before we did. Therefore we must battle against and overcome the attacking culture with our soft and cultural power.”
1830 GMT: Let’s Make Up a Cyber-War. More regime propaganda — the Revolutionary Guard has briefed the Parliament on the nefarious cyber-plot of the opposition around Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, bringing in names like the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf and human rights activist Ahmad Batebi. (There’s a video as well.)
After the briefing, the head of Parliament’s National Security Committee said Human Rights Activists in Iran had fabricated a list of killed protesters and passed it to Mir Hossein Mousavi.
As you know, during the 10th presidential campaign, you made promises about the obvious rights of Iranian women, which, during the course of the past 30 years have been totally ignored. Although these promises comprise only a small part of Iranian women’s just demands, during the post-election events, even those little promises disappeared from your announcements and interviews regarding your intention to pursue peoples’ rightful demands. This has happened while women and girls of this land have had a distinguished role in the green movement in pursuing the plundered rights of the Iranian people, have been in the front line of the green movement equal to men, and even have paid and are paying a higher price.
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.
Imagine for a moment that the son or daughter of a Presidential or Prime Ministerial candidate in the US or Britain had been taken away by plainclothes security forces and kept in an unknown locations for days. Imagine that he or she had been beaten and threatened with rape. Think of the headlines and furour.
Consider that this is what allegedly occurred in Tehran last Thursday. According to the son of Mehdi Karoubi, Hossein, his younger brother Ali was detained when Karroubi’s entourage was confronted by security forces. Fatemeh Karroubi, Ali’s mother, has written an open letter to the Supreme Leader, detailing the claimed torture and rape threats, which allegedly took place in a mosque. Ali Karroubi’s wife, Nafiseh Panahi, has said that her husband suffered a broken arm and fractured skull.
The response of the regime? Tehran’s Prosecutor General, Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi stated that there was no warrant for the arrest of Ali Karrroubi and that he concluded, from his enquiries of the police, intelligence agencies and Revolutionary Guards, that such a person was never detained. He added that Ali Karroubi shoulld prove his allegation by stating why he was detained and where. (Fatemeh Karroubi had already stated in her letter that the location of the alleged detention and abuse was Amir-al-Momenin Mosque in Tehran. It should also be noted that it is normally the arresting party who puts forth a reason for detention, not the suspect.)
EA correspondent Mr Azadi, who was in close contact with sources in Tehran throughout Thursday, writes this summary:
At 10 p.m., Iranian television began its news with part of the Supreme Leader’s declaration, “Iran will be safe to the day that we follow Velayat-e-Faqih (ultimate clerical authority).”
This was followed by the images from the Azadi Square rally, as the narrator said that the day was mainly to show “our” support for the Supreme Leader and the defeat of foreign enemies and those who would deceive “us”.
It was a symbolic end to 22 Bahman, with all the noise coming from the regime: many Green Movement supporters believed that, even though they were “countless”, they still were not able to show their presence.
Enduring America has been working with the University of Birmingham to provide a Briefing Note for those who are beginning to notice the developments in Iran. I thought that, for some new readers, this might be of use on a most important day:
Thursday in Iran is 22 Bahman, the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The day is also likely to see the biggest demonstrations, both for and against the Government, since June’s disputed Presidential election. The size of the protests are a matter for expectation: hundreds of thousands will be on the streets in Tehran and in cites across Iran, but one estimate, based on a Government source, is that three million people will be marching in Tehran alone.
The core immediate issue is the “legitimacy” of the Government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Green Movement” protests last summer focused on the election, amidst claims of fraud and ballot-rigging that denied a runoff to challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi.
It’s one of those phrases that I have always wanted to use in a news story. Yogi Berra, a great American baseball player but a notorious mangler of language, once said of the feats of the teammates, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
A few months we wrote of an attempt by the Ahmadinejad Government, as it set out the priority of a deal with the “West” on Iran’s nuclear programme, that this was a blatant attempt to divert attention from internal political crisis. We added that, despite the headlines that the manoeuvre would get, the effort would soon be exposed.
In less than 24 hours, we were proved right as the “conservative opposition”, figures like Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, and the Green movement attacked the Government on a number of fronts.
1910 GMT: More on the Universities Purge (see 1145 GMT). The Revolutionary Guards get in on the act, with Yahya Rahim-Safavi, the former commander and current advisor to the Supreme Leader, declaring, “The universities aren’t in good shape today, missing from them are revolutionary forces and experts who are beholden to the Imam, the Supreme Leader, and the Constitution.”
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