But now the question is being raise: what branch of state security is behind the violence against protesters?
Both the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards Corps (or Sepah) were founded in the first year of the Islamic Republic in 1979, following a decree by Iran's first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. "From the start, the Sepah was about building a popular army, one that had the duty to protect the Islamic Republic from within," explains Moshen Sazegara, a former founder of the Revolutionary Guards, who later fell out with the regime and currently resides and works as a journalist in the United States.
Today the Sepah is estimated to have 125,000 forces, while the Basij which by Imam Khomeini's initial intentions was to comprise "twenty million" numbers up to an estimated six million and is active in most cities, towns and villages across Iran. The majority of Basiji are involved in volunteer services at mosques.
Over the years, however, certain units among the Basij were trained for state control purposes. In 1999, they appeared prominently as shock troops in quelling urban dissent following student demonstrations that initially sought greater freedom for the press. "Increasingly, Sepah used the Basij as a force for indoctrination and in the role of a watchdog group on campuses, factories and even tribal units," says Frederic Wehrey, adjunct senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, who has done several joint-studies on the Sepah. "The aim was to militarize civil society to prevent currents that the Islamic Republic is opposed to."
"These past weeks," Sazegara estimates, "the state has used about 12,000 such plainclothes forces in addition to another 28,000 official police and Sepah forces to control the dissent."
But Sazegara sees the possibility for division. "Many of the commanders in the Sepah have children who are in their twenties and who have joined the recent protests," he told TIME. Since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, the Supreme Leader swapped out most wartime commanders in the Sepah, replacing them, in Sazegara's words, "with a bunch of yes-men."
"There are many Basijis who were in support of Mousavi," says an Iran-based analyst who requested anonymity, himself previously an active member of the Basij. "Many Basijis are upset that the recent violence has been attributed to them."
Former Sepah founder Sazegara concurs, adding that many of the plainclothes controlling the streets and meting out excessive violence to protesters are "intelligence personnel of the Sepah, some of them even with military degrees, but showing up in plainclothes to take on the appearance of the Basij."
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Posted by: ed ||
06/28/2009 10:39 ||
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IRAN's opposition leaders have rejected a panel set up to hold a partial recount in the disputed presidential vote as political deadlock continued to grip the Islamic republic.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's strongest rival in the June 12 race, is insisting on a new vote while another defeated candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, is demanding an independent panel to probe irregularities. Their defiance flies in the face of the nation's top political arbitration body the Expediency Council, which has urged all candidates to cooperate with the panel set up by the electoral watchdog the Guardians Council.
But the streets of Tehran appeared quiet on Sunday, with the authorities warning they would suppress any further protests over the vote that triggered the worst unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The international community continues to voice alarm about the violent crackdown on the opposition in the election aftermath, but Iran has hit back, accusing Western nations, particularly the United States and Britain, of meddling.
Facing its biggest threat in 30 years, the Islamic regime has sought to quell the disquiet over the election results by ordering a partial recount. The Guardians Council, an unelected body of 12 jurists and clerics, said Friday it would create a special committee of political figures and candidate representatives to recount 10 per cent of the ballots and draw up a report on the vote.
But Mr Karroubi, a reformist former parliament speaker who came a distant fourth on June 12, said in a letter to the Guardians Council that a partial recount was "not enough''. He called for an independent panel to probe :all aspects of the election'', in the letter published in his newspaper Etemad Melli.
Mr Mousavi rejected the panel outright on Saturday, while the other defeated candidate, Mohsen Rezai, has agreed to be part of the panel if Mousavi and Karroubi also agree to nominate representatives to the body.
But Mr Mousavi, who has spearheaded the massive public opposition to the vote, has demanded a re-run, refusing to be cowed by a persistent crackdown by the authorities against his supporters and even an aide turning against him. "Limiting the probe into complaints about electoral irregularities to recounting 10 per cent of the ballot boxes cannot attract people's trust and convince public opinion about the results,'' he said on his campaign website. "I insist again on cancelling the election (results) as the most suitable way out of the problem,'' he said.
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If anyone can serve as the ultimate barometer of the political mood in Iran, and knows what to say without looking like someone who has stepped out of line, it is Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, says Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA intelligence analyst and Iran researcher at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute in his book "The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America" (Random House, 2004).
During the past month Rafsanjani has stepped strikingly "out of line." Three days before the elections he made public a letter he sent to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that included a sharp complaint against him. "The supreme leader has seen fit to remain silent in the face of [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's accusations against me," wrote Rafsanjani. He was referring to Ahmadinejad's remarks during a televised debate with rival presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, in which Ahmadinejad accused Rafsanjani of having made millionaires of members of his family since the Islamic revolution in 1979, and accused Mousavi of being supported by "corrupt politicians like Rafsanjani."
A week later, in his Friday sermon, Khamenei attacked Ahmadinejad for his remarks against Rafsanjani and, very angrily, "suggested" that anyone who has complaints about Rafsanjani should submit them to a court and not make false accusations in public. However, he immediately added that even though he has known Rafsanjani for over 50 years, Ahmadinejad is closer to his heart.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
06/28/2009 00:00 ||
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[Jerusalem Post Middle East] In an effort to prevent a flare-up along the northern border, UNIFIL has increased its operations in southern Lebanon and has begun entering villages in search of Hizbullah weapons caches, according to information obtained recently by Israel. In one recent successful operation in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon, UNIFIL peacekeepers uncovered close to 20 Katyusha rockets that were ready for launch.
UNIFIL operates under Security Council Resolution 1701, passed following the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Operations in villages have been a point of contention between UNIFIL and Israel, which said over the past three years that the peacekeeping force was failing to prevent Hizbullah's military buildup in southern Lebanon since it refrained from entering villages. Hizbullah, the IDF believes, has deployed most of its forces and weaponry - including Katyusha rockets - inside homes in the villages. Until now, UNIFIL and the Lebanese army have mostly operated in open areas.
According to information obtained by Israel, UNIFIL has also succeeded recently in thwarting attacks that were planned against its own personnel.
UNIFIL's increased activity comes amid concerns in Israel that Hizbullah will launch an attack along the northern border to avenge the assassination of the group's military commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus last year.
Hizbullah was behind a thwarted attempt earlier this year to attack the Israeli Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, according to foreign sources. The group has also tried using Palestinian proxies for attacks within Israel, without success. These frustrations, Israel fears, might lead the group to try a retaliatory attack against the northern border, which would be easier operationally.
While Hizbullah has amassed tens of thousands of Katyusha rockets since the 2006 war, it is having trouble recruiting new fighters and is short several hundred men. Before the Second Lebanon War, the assessment in Israel was that Hizbullah had some 6,000 fighters. The group's current recruitment difficulties are believed to stem from its failure to keep its promises to rebuild homes in Lebanese villages damaged during the war in 2006. This disappointment with Hizbullah is also understood in the IDF as being responsible for the group's defeat in parliamentary elections in Lebanon earlier this month.
Meanwhile, late Thursday night, Lebanese news agencies reported that the IDF was moving tanks and armored vehicles to the border area along the Mount Dov and Mount Hermon region. There was no Israeli comment on the reports.
Lebanese newspaper A-Safir reported that Israel had proposed direct political negotiations with the new Lebanese government, making the overture via an Israeli army delegation in contacts with its Lebanese counterpart under UNIFIL's auspices.
Earlier Thursday, Lebanese lawmakers overwhelmingly reelected a pro-Hizbullah parliament speaker, signaling that the political factions are moving toward a unity government. Reelecting Hizbullah ally Nabih Berri for a fifth consecutive term is expected to smooth the way for the formation of a new government in the coming weeks, which majority leader Saad Hariri is tipped to head.
Hariri said picking Berri for the job "consolidates national unity and preserves civil peace." The choice of Berri, a Shi'ite, is in accord with Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing structure, which calls for the speaker to be a Shi'ite, the prime minister a Sunni and the president a Maronite Catholic. Both parliament and cabinet are divided evenly between Muslims and Christians. Berri heads the Shi'ite Amal movement that together with Hizbullah controls most of the Shi'ites' 27 seats in the 128-member legislature. He was the sole candidate for the post, which he has held since 1992.
Berri addressed lawmakers after his appointment, urging rivals to assist in the formation of a national unity government. The Lebanese should "benefit from favorable regional and international developments... to consolidate peace and stability," he said. "This requires that we contribute toward the creation of a national government."
The June 7 vote brought victory for the Western-backed coalition, which fought off a strong challenge from Hizbullah and its allies. But it also underscored the deep divisions among the Lebanese.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
The Mullahs have such original ways to deal with internal unrest.
[Mail and Globe] Fired at, beaten with clubs, bloodied and screaming --the shocking footage of protesters in Iran is not remarkable just for its brutality and sheer scale, but also because so many of the frontline victims are women. And now a woman has become the symbol of the rebellion: one of the most disturbing images to emerge is that of Neda Soltan, a teenage student shot by a sniper, blood pouring from her mouth and her eyes rolling back into her head as she dies in the arms of her wailing father.
For those who have been following the complex and twisted world of Iranian politics, the massive presence of women comes as no surprise, as for several years women's groups have been the major voice of dissent and a thorn in the Islamic regime's side.
Their rise began in the reformist era, when former president Mohammad Khatami loosened social strictures and gave more leeway to charities and non-governmental organisations, which had been heavily restricted. At the same time the student movement began to crumble, its collapse triggered by the 1999 riots that ended in police and right-wing vigilantes storming Tehran University dormitories.
With labour unions impotent and no real opposition, the women's movement began to gain momentum -- especially after the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who sought to roll back rights won under Khatami. Universities capped the number of female students and Ahmadinejad proposed laws to ease restrictions on polygamy. He changed the name and function of the government's "Centre for Women's Participation", calling it the "Centre for Women and Family Affairs", shred all research literature published under its previous incarnation and halted funding to women's groups.
It was then that the One Million Signature Campaign was conceived. What began as a grassroots movement to mark the anniversary of a violent police raid snowballed into one of the most formidable civil society forces to hit the Islamic regime. The network of activists collecting signatures to petition for a revision of discriminatory laws has spread to more than half of Iran's provinces.
The government has made concessions in a bid to pacify it -- allowing women to register as presidential candidates for the first time (although the Guardian Council barred all those who put their names down). But peaceful sit-ins by women, old and young, holding placards demanding equal divorce rights, have ended in bloody beatings by the police and the Basij militia. Scores of members have spent the past few years in and out of prison. They have become accustomed to violent raids, sporadic arrests and detention, interrogation and intimidation.
The group formed a pre-election coalition with other women's organisations to back the reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi. He had promised to appoint women to high posts, break up the morality police and enact legal reform. But the coalition was forced to disband amid fears of a crackdown.
Although the unrest has been a spontaneous outpouring of rage and frustration, these established networks of women mean that people who would not usually play a role in politics have also taken to the streets. During the past week many members have been seen with their old placards in hand.
These bloody street scenes mirror the 1979 revolution when women played a crucial role in bringing down the monarchy. Paradoxically, it was one of the pillars of the revolution's socialist values -- education of the masses -- that created a wave of women more aware of their rights than ever. The revolution sowed the seed of its own problem: for many of these women, there is no turning back.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2009 00:00 ||
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[Beirut Daily Star: Region] Iran's Islamic regime may well ride out the post-election crisis, but not without collateral damage. The contours of what's likely ahead are already taking shape: more isolation from the West and a leadership turning on the pressure at home, with its military forces and street-level vigilantes swiping hard at anything or anyone perceived as a threat.
On state television, the messages are shrill and defensive in blaming foreign "enemies" for the mayhem after the disputed June 12 vote. On the streets, security forces swarm over any hint of a protest, hauling away journalists, political figures, university professors and activists.
The candidate-turned-opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is now telling his backers to hunker down for a long struggle.
It adds up to a regime turning to its survival instincts.
That likely means the same pathologies that accompany any state of siege - real or perceived: more isolation, more paranoia and no hesitation to use all the weapons at its disposal.
Iran's theocracy can call on a very serious protector: the Revolutionary Guard and its millions of civilian militiamen known as the Basij. Spread through nearly every neighborhood and village in Iran, their ability to snuff out public dissent was aptly illustrated Wednesday when a small band of demonstrators outside Parliament brought an onslaught of commandos and vigilantes swooping in on motorcycles. Protest over.
Hundreds of people have been detained in the past two weeks, including Iranian journalists, aides and advisers to Mousavi and reformist politicians. On Thursday, authorities arrested 70 university professors who met with the embattled Mousavi, who is under constant surveillance by security agents. All but four were later released, Mousavi's Web site reported.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said about 40 journalists and media workers have been jailed in the post-election crackdown following election results that showed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the landslide winner. Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, compared it to martial law.
Despite elections for president and Parliament, the real power in Iran rests with the clerics at the top. But their rule has always been backed up by the clout of the security forces.
The Revolutionary Guard and its network are just as vested in preserving the Islamic system as are some of the clerics. The 500,000-strong Guard is separate from the ordinary armed forces and serves as a private army for the Islamic establishment. But its influence stretches much deeper, including roles in Iran's ports, oil fields and missile and nuclear programs. It's a bit of the Pentagon, CIA, Homeland Security and FBI rolled into one.
There's little chance they would fold as easily as the forces of the Western-backed shah in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
"Their name is exactly what they do: protect the revolution," said Talal Atrissi, a Lebanese political analyst who follows Iranian affairs. "Their loyalty is extremely high." The latest waves of arrests may just be a taste of what's ahead. The clerics have shown their ability to relentlessly pound at liberal-leaning supporters and outlets - during much less critical times.
During the first years of Mohammad Khatami's reformist presidency in the late 1990s, intelligence minders and judiciary agents - both directly controlled by the theocracy - swept up hundreds of activists, writers and others. Pro-reform newspapers and publications were closed almost as fast as they could open. It came to a head in the summer of 1999 with clashes at Tehran University.
The Iranian government has permitted Iranians a limited buffet of freedoms. These include Western music, dating, Internet cafes and generally turning a blind eye to satellite dishes and women constantly testing the boundaries of Islamic dress codes with head scarves pushed far back and coats ever shorter and tighter. The unwritten deal, however, was that it was a reward for staying clear of politics that could rattle the system.
That has broken down. Some protesters have turned Mousavi's claims of rigged elections into a journey across Iran's red lines and taboos - direct criticism of Khamenei and the ruling order. The payback from authorities could be long and severe.
Khamenei has effectively sanctioned such payback. He has portrayed his opponents as guided by foreign "enemies," including the United States and Britain. It instantly evokes memories of the US influence under the shah and an American-aided uprising in 1953 that deposed an elected government that had nationalized the oil industry and broken Britain's long control.
State media has followed up with a barrage of programming linking the unrest to outside plots, including "confessions" from alleged protesters.
This has turned the crackdown - in the minds of the regime and its backers - from a civil dispute into a defense of Iran.
With Khamenei's authority weakened and questioned, speculation has risen about an inside challenge led by former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who heads a panel that has the power to remove the supreme leader. Such an extreme measure has never been used or even publicly discussed before, and would be akin to an in-house coup.
Chess has some of its early roots in ancient Persia, and the past weeks could just be the first moves in a long contest.
"In the past, successful opposition movements ... coalesced over a time frame of years, not weeks or months," said Ehsan Ahrari, an analyst on regional affairs. "So it would be a mistake to read too much into the current form."
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
their ability to snuff out public dissent was aptly illustrated Wednesday when a small band of demonstrators outside Parliament brought an onslaught of commandos and vigilantes swooping in on motorcycles. Protest over.
I continue to be puzzled.... NO PIANO WIRE!
No steel pipes in spokes....
I don't get it...
If it was me I would go on a personal campaign of taking out as many as I could one at a time very quietly. Piano wire would be the least of the worries the goons on motorbikes would face.
It is easy for me to hate all Theocrats. They all deserve the same fate in my book.
The revulsion of Iranians for the political system that has imprisoned them for three decades was triggered by the disputed results of the June 12 election.
Once, however, the opposition took to the streets and the regime spilled blood to intimidate the people, it became transparently clear the revulsion a majority of Iranians are displaying is not over details of the rigged election. It is directed at the bloody-minded theocracy oppressing them, and its overthrow most Iranians want.
Those with the misfortune of living inside totalitarian regimes know -- except for their apologists and the delusional lib-left crowd in the West -- elections held by tyrants are fraudulent exercises in coercing what amounts to accepting rape as love.
Tyrants by nature and logic of their position are intolerant of dissent, and crush dissenters as apostates against the official doctrine.
In the Islamic Republic of Iran its founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, set the example of how to treat dissenters. Some were lucky as was Abolhassan Banisadr, the Republic's first president, to escape alive to France; others met the fate of Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, appointed foreign minister and executed in 1982 on charges of treason.
In 1989 before his death Khomeini demoted and placed under house arrest his designated successor, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, for questioning the direction in which the regime was headed. Ali Khamenei, a nonentity in the traditional Shiite religious hierarchy, was then appointed by Khomeini to succeed him and protect his totalitarian legacy.
Broken
Khomeini's legacy, probably now irreparably broken, allowed constitutionally for the marginal role of electoral politics under supervision of the supreme religious leader. It can now only be held together for however long by brute force of the revolutionary guards loyal to the regime.
On the Friday after June 12 election, Ayatollah Khamenei came out in public to lead the main weekly prayer at the grounds of Tehran University. He gave notice to dissenters within the regime and the opposition on the street the election results stand, and questioning it any further could be tantamount to treason.
According to Amir Taheri -- probably the most astute observer of Iranian politics writing in London's Sunday Times -- Khamenei's June 19 speech meant the end of the marginal democratic charade as "Iran was transformed from an Islamic republic into an Islamic emirate."
I have attended Friday prayer on the grounds of Tehran University where Khamenei spoke, and where regime loyalists gather to ritually chant "Marg bar (death to) Amrika (America)." This chant barely resonates beyond loyalist gatherings.
It takes more than ordinary courage, however, for people in a totalitarian system to chant "Marg bar diktator (dictator)" which has been resonating in streets and from rooftops across Iran this past week.
Exposed
Khamenei put into play, perhaps unintentionally, the regime's endgame. Ahmadinejad is exposed for what he is, Khamenei's stick with which to discipline the internal quarrels of discontented elements within the regime.
But Khamenei without Khomeini's stature -- like Stalin after Lenin -- can survive politically only as long as he commands his thugs with guns, and the military watches from a neutral distance.
There will be many more twists before this brutal regime dies, but die it must when most Iranians turned dissidents overcome their fear and do their version of storming the Bastille.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Duh. The self delusion of others about who these 'leaders' truly are and the basis of their power is the only thing really being 'exposed'.
#2
Now , even The One can't pretend that he is dealing with anything other than thugs here. I like that. It would have been wiser for them to leave Barack some cover.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
06/28/2009 11:15 Comments ||
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#3
All these Iranian protests would be more successful if the protesters were ARMED.
And thus - we see the advantages of an armed populace in making sure that governments represent the will of the governed.
No wonder Obama wants to remove our 2nd Amendment rights.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has vowed to seek a unity government to handle all challenges facing the country. That always works well.
"A capable government should be able to face Israeli threats, and preserve unity among the Lebanese," Hariri said after being tasked with forming the country's next cabinet by President Michel Suleiman on Saturday.
We "will safeguard the constitution, institutions, sovereignty, independence and the project of the building of the Lebanese state," Al Manar TV quoted him as saying.
Hariri said that he will hold talks with parliamentary blocks, and will explain to them the depth of the challenges Lebanon is facing in order to reach unified stands for the interest of Lebanon.
His selection as prime minister was set after days of consultation between Lebanon's various political factions and a private meeting between Hariri and the Hezbollah leader Hasssan Nasrallah.
In total, Hariri was proposed by 86 of Lebanon's 128 deputies -- 71 lawmakers from his own majority alliance, in addition to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and his bloc of 12 parliamentarians along with two Armenian deputies were in favor of Hariri's premiership, according to various groups.
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[Iran Press TV Latest] Britain has announced it will attempt to engage Iran despite the Tehran government's reaction to the country's post-election violence.
"We continue to believe that the engagement we proposed with Iran is right, that we continue to say when we have concerns about treatment of the Iranians," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters at the Greek island of Corfu, Miliband said, "We should leave no room for excuse. The debate taking place in Iran is in reality a debate between Iran and the West."
The European Union and the United States have criticized the Iranian government's response to protests that sparked following the victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on June 12 with nearly two-thirds of the votes.
Defeated presidential hopefuls Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi rejecting the election result as fraudulent and demanded a re-run.
At least 20 people were killed and many others injured when some protests turned violent. Tehran blames 'saboteurs' for the deaths of the Iranian protesters.
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*Snicker* How many times have they tried thus far?
[Haaretz Defense] Syrian officials threatened on Saturday to take back the Golan Heights by force if a peace agreement involving the return of the strategic plateau is not reached with Israel, Army Radio reported.
A group calling itself the Syrian Committee for the Freedom of the Golan said it would take steps to regain control of the territory, adding that Israel has not shown willingness to achieve peace or to return what they called "Syrian land."
The comments were made at the inauguration ceremony, attended by Syrian President Bashar Assad, for a new communications center in Quneitra. "The communications center will report on the troubles of Syrian residents residing in the occupied Golan under barbaric and racist Israeli rule," Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal was quoted as saying at the ceremony, in a reference to Druze in the Golan who wish to live under Syrian sovereignty.
Last Sunday, Assad rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's offer to resume peace talks between the two countries from "point zero." Assad said the negotiations should resume from the point at which they stopped under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, when the two sides had planned to formulate mutual commitments that would enable the talks to move to a direct negotiations stage. The indirect negotiations stopped some six months ago, following Operation Cast Lead, and the announcement of early elections in Israel.
Israel gained control of the Golan Heights during the 1967 Six-Day War. Syria insists that the basis for peace talks with Israel is a full withdrawal from the territory.
Which will not happen until Israel trusts that Syria will not again use the Heights to rain down missiles on the communities below, which is how the Syrians had used them before.
These days the Golan, as a strategic high ground, is over-rated. Longer-range missiles and accurate fire-control means that Syria, if it wishes, can launch missiles at Israel from its own territory today.
What's humorous in all this is that the Syrians, as is so typical for them and the Arab mind-set, can't imagine actually making a 'deal' -- it's all about their demands and never about what they'll do in return. Even the ethereal 'peace' they'd offer isn't worth anything and everyone knows that. But their world-view is that the infidels eventually have to accept their something-for-nothing offer.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
These days the Golan, as a strategic high ground, is over-rated
Maybe so, but in addition to being a geographic barrier, it is still seems a good site for conventional artillery, spotting and radar. Modern missiles might change the calculations, but 'take the high ground' is still a valid military maxim.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi has proposed the establishment of an arbitration committee to probe into what he calls election 'irregularities'.
In a letter to the Guardian Council, Iran's election watchdog, on Saturday, Mousavi said an independent and legal committee, which would be accepted by all presidential contenders and supported by senior clerics, would pursue and settle the issues that sparked protests after the June 12 presidential election.
Reiterating his position on the final result of the election, he said the nullification of the disputed election would be the most "appropriate" solution to ongoing situation and a means to rebuild public confidence.
Following the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by a landslide, Iran became the scene of rallies with Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, another candidate, rejecting the result as fraudulent and demanding a re-run.
Mousavi, the last Iranian prime minister, said that certain members of the Guardian Council have violated regulations in the election and did not observe impartiality.
"So, the body or a team assigned by it cannot make a fair judgment on the post-election events."
The letter came after the Guardian Council on Thursday announced that it would form a special committee to probe the 10th presidential vote.
Despite a deadline set by the Guardian Council, neither Mousavi nor Karroubi appointed a representative to the body's special committee.
Meanwhile, Mohsen Rezaei, who has withdrawn his complaints, had said that he would only send an representative to the committee only if the other candidates did so as well.
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[Iran Press TV Latest] Iran's Foreign Ministry says the country "regrets" a "hasty" statement by the Group of Eight major powers about its June 12 presidential election.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran condemns the interfering and unacceptable remarks by the President of the European Parliament. Such hasty remarks are made under circumstances that the Guardian Council has not yet completed the process of probing into election complaints," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi said Saturday.
His remarks came after EU President Hans-Gert Pottering offered to lead a mission of EU lawmakers to Iran to help defuse the tense situation following the disputed June 12 presidential election.
Pointed to mass participation of Iranian voters, the spokesman said, "The election was held in a highly competitive and free atmosphere and in accordance with law."
"The world expects foreign ministers of the eight industrialized nations to focus on their predetermined agenda and raise serious problems that their countries and the international community are faced with," he said.
"If the president and other members of the European Parliament pay a visit to Iran within a framework of mutual respect and interests, it can be regarded as a positive step toward the expansion of parliamentary ties between Iran and Europe. Otherwise, it will not be fruitful at all," Qashqavi added.
On Friday, the G8 foreign ministers deplored post-election violence in Iran, which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians.
They also urged Iran "to respect fundamental human rights including freedom of expression" and said that the crisis should be settled through "democratic dialogue and peaceful means."
Following the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on June 12, Iran became the scene of rallies with defeated presidential hopefuls Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi rejecting the election result as fraudulent and demanding a re-run.
Tehran has summoned ambassadors from Britain, France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Canada to warn them against "interfering" in the internal affairs of the country.
The meeting of the G8 foreign ministers was held in Trieste in northeastern Italy to discuss the means to restore security to Afghanistan.
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[Mail and Globe] Jailed members of the former Iranian reformist government are believed to have been tortured in an attempt to force them into TV "confessions" of a foreign-led plot against the Islamic regime.
According to Iranian blogs and websites, the government wants to implicate in an alleged conspiracy the defeated reformist candidates in this month's presidential poll, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Mehdi Karroubi.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh and Mohsen Aminzadeh, all Mousavi supporters, are reported to have undergone "intensive interrogation" sessions in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since being arrested in a mass round-up of opposition figures following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.
The three, who all served under the former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, are among several hundred activists, academics, journalists and students detained in a crackdown coinciding with the brutal suppression of street protestors who believe the election was stolen.
Fellow prisoners are reported to have heard screams of pain from Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister, and Ramezanzadeh, who was Khatami's government spokesperson, during interrogations at Evin's section 209, which is reserved for political prisoners and run by the hardline intelligence ministry.
Aminzadeh, an ex-deputy foreign minister, was heard shouting "I am not going to give interviews."
A spokesperson for Amnesty International said the reports came from "very credible sources".
The Iranian authorities have used this technique before to humiliate and discredit opponents. In 2007, state television aired "confessions" by US-Iranian academics Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh and Ramin Jahanbegloo in which they said they had worked with pro-democracy groups that the regime claimed were plotting its downfall.
This week, state television broadcast interviews with several people admitting to being "terrorists" after purportedly taking part in street demonstrations.
Tajzadeh's wife, Fakhrosadat Mohtashamipour, told the pro-reform website Emruz that she and a lawyer had been denied access to him since his arrest the day after the 12 June election. "Any quote or remarks made by these people in the current situation has no credibility. My husband's only crime is his efforts to secure a high turnout," she said.
Tajzadeh (53) a member of the pro-reform Islamic Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organisation, has been a staunch critic of Ahmadinejad. After the president was first elected four years ago, Tajzadeh told the Guardian that Ahmadinejad's leading supporters wanted to create an atmosphere similar to that under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Renewed fears have been voiced over the health of another jailed reformist, Saeed Hajarian, a former Khatami adviser who is severely disabled from a failed assassination attempt nine years ago.
Reports of Hajarian's death on blogs and Twitter were dismissed by the reformist website Parlemannews, which quoted "informed sources" as saying he was in "relative health" and being given essential medication and care.
Meanwhile, state TV reported that the head of Mousavi's information committee, Abolfazl Fateh, had been prevented from leaving Iran for Britain, where he is a PhD student. Fars, a pro-Ahmadinejad news agency close to the country's Revolutionary Guard, said he had been banned from travelling to allow the authorities to investigate "recent gatherings", a reference to the pro-Mousavi demonstrations.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11135 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Obama's total silence for almost a week on the murderous Iranian dictatorship, was a green light for Tehran's tyrants to continue in power.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
06/28/2009 5:40 Comments ||
Top||
#2
I don't think the regime would have responded to any external stimuli short of bombing runs on Qom, Tehran, and key Republican Guards bases, once it became clear the peepul were serious, Mark. This is about the tyrants' survival. The only result of a strong and timely statement from President Obama would have been to hearten the protesters.
In the medium term serious sanctions, including blocking banking activity by those holding power, will have an effect on their decisions, but short term only direct violence from outside would impact the mullah's response to this popular uprising, not words that the mullahs have learnt have few teeth.
#3
Its a great time for President Obama to be pulling troops out of Iraq. I wonder what the Supreme Thug would think if we started increasing the number of troops in Iraq while maintaining Barry's highly nuanced silence on the carnage across the border.
Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices. This report is based on the accounts of witnesses reached in Iran and official statements carried on Iranian media.
The Iranian government has seized and detained several hundred activists, journalists and students across the nation, in one of the most extensive crackdowns on key dissidents since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Even as unprecedented protests broke out on the streets after the June 12 disputed presidential election, the most stinging backlash from authorities has come away from the crowds through roundups and targeted arrests, according to witnesses and human rights organizations. They say plainclothes security agents have also put dozens of the country's most experienced pro-reform leaders behind bars.
The Iranian government says only that unspecified figures responsible for fomenting unrest have been taken into custody.
The arrests have drained the pool of potential leaders of a protest movement that claims President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the election by fraud. They also point to the potential for high-profile trials -- and serious sentences -- before a special judicial forum created to handle cases from the unrest.
With the main reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi under constant police surveillance, protests demanding a new vote have withered. Many of those rounded up during demonstrations have been released within days.
But most of those detained in raids against potential opposition remain in custody. That has spread fear among Mousavi supporters and left the opposition movement reeling.
More than 200 arrests in crackdown
"We heard some news about people who are arrested at night and we are worried if it could happen to us," a Tehran resident active in the protests wrote in an e-mail Friday, asking for anonymity for fear of government retaliation.
The targeted arrests appear to have begun the day after the election. Several of Iran's best-known reformist politicians were taken into custody, including the brother and several close allies of former President Mohammad Khatami.
Since then, at least 230 more students, professors, journalists and reformists have been arrested, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. At least 29 are known to have been released, the New York-based organization said in a list released Wednesday, although it acknowledged that the numbers were constantly changing.
The crackdown appears to have grown bolder as the government escalated its use of force on the streets.
Security agents arrested nearly the entire staff of Mousavi's newspaper, The Green Word, Monday night, seizing 25 people in a raid on its offices, according to a statement on Mousavi's Web site. Four or five who were out of the office during the raid remain free, according to the paper.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11143 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Reading all the Iranian dispatches and various blogs both internal and external about the election and the protests has led me to declare the battle over and Dinnerjacket and his Supreme Leader the victors. Obama has seen to this earlier than expect victory by the forces of evil just with his vacillation and pissy poor words. You see, words do mean something especially when they are so vapid.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/28/2009 7:48 Comments ||
Top||
The influential member of the Lebanese Parliament, Saad Al-Hariri, was declared on Saturday as the prime minister of the planned government. The announcement was made by President Michel Suleiman after completing consultations with the various blocs of the parliament.
Up to 86 members of the 128-seat Lebanese Parliament have declared support for naming the powerful Al-Hariri as head of the prospected government, it was officially declared earlier on Saturday.
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman assigned Saturday MP Saad Al-Hariri to form a cabinet after 86 lawmakers nominated the son of the murdered Prime Minister for the post.
Al-Hariri, 39, is the second eldest son of Rafik Al-Hariri, Lebanon's prime minister who was assassinated on February 14 2005, and is married to Lara Bashir Al-Adham and has three sons.
He studied High-school in France and Saudi Arabia,
Hmmm...
and graduated from Georgetown University in 1992 with a degree of International Relations.
Also hmmm...
Al-Hariri junior became involved in politics following the murder of his father and has spearheaded the Future Current ever since.
He ran for parliamentary elections in 2005 representing Beirut constituency, and has formed a majority of 35 MPs. He was re-elected this year to head a parliamentary majority of 41 lawmakers out of the 128-seat house. Al-Hariri junior has a background career in communications and information technology, and was member of boards in many private firms.
Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Jerusalem Post Middle East] In an effort to prevent a flare-up along the northern border, UNIFIL has increased its operations in southern Lebanon and has begun entering villages in search of Hizbullah weapons caches, according to information obtained recently by Israel. In one recent successful operation in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon, UNIFIL peacekeepers uncovered close to 20 Katyusha rockets that were ready for launch.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Britain has announced it will attempt to engage Iran despite the Tehran government's reaction to the country's post-election violence. 
