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?
2240 GMT: We close tonight by posting a video of the comments of Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, defending the regime’s approach in the Presidential election and against subsequent protests, on CNN.
2155 GMT: News from Evin Prison. Another demonstration tonight by families of detainees and their supporters — Peyke Iran reports hundreds present. The website claims 23 detainees have been released to the cheers of the crowd.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is looking at a bright future under the aegis of the visionary leadership of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and the support of a considerable number of devotees inside and outside the country…
“Ceremonies marking the 31st anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution will kick off this year at a time when Iran has made great progress in various fields of science and technology. The global powers, along with their supporters inside the country, desperately sought to undermine the principles of the Islamic Revolution.
So, Mr Firouzabadi, we pass over to you the EA All is Well Trophy Video:
2015 GMT: The speaker of the reformist minority group in Parliament, Mohammad Reza Tabesh, resigned to protest restricitons such as the filtering of the party’s website Parleman News and the banning of its reporter from the Parliament and preventing guests of MPs from entering the Parliament. (Those guests include family members of political prisoners. One delegation was turned away today.)
The Deputy Speaker and members of the party intervened and requested Tabesh to remain in his post.
Since the late 19th century, almost every generation of Iranians has seen at least one major upheaval or revolution. The first revolution for democracy in the Middle East took place in Iran in 1905, at a time when European countries (excepting the UK) were under various forms of dictatorship. No country has experienced so much constant turmoil and political unrest in the past century as Iran.
Besides the current demand for democracy in Iran, however, there has always been the demand for independence. Iranians have an ingrained sensitivity about the independence of their country, traceable far back even in the epic mythical tales of ancient Iran.
In Shahnameh (or Book of the Kings), for example, the legendary warrior hero Rustam is the defender of Iran’s independence. We should not presume that these are just stories created to pass spare time in tea houses. There is rather a principle which, a thousand years ago, transformed the unknown philosopher-poet Ferdusii into a national love affair and turned a warrior into a legendary hero. It still affects the Iranian psyche today.
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”.
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