Iran Election June 09

[Merlin]

This is a BBC report after Rafsanjani's Friday sermon.

Call for Iran protesters' release

17 July [BBC] Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani has called for the release of people jailed after protesting at the result of the recent election.

In his first Friday sermon since the vote, he also said large numbers of Iranians still doubted its result.

Iranian police fired tear gas to disperse opposition supporters gathered for prayers at Tehran University.

There were chants of support for defeated election candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who attended the prayers. Mr Mousavi has demanded a re-run of the vote and described the new government as illegitimate.

Thousands of his supporters gathered in the streets of Tehran after Friday prayers - the first large opposition rally for more than a week. This followed warnings from a minister against turning the occasion into a "stage for undesirable scenes".

Mr Rafsanjani is a key power-broker in Iranian politics and has been a backer of Mr Mousavi.

During his sermon, broadcast live on state radio, he said something had to be done to allay people's doubts about the recent election result. ....

Mr Rafsanjani also appealed for an open debate on radio and TV about the disputed 12 June election and called for media restrictions to be eased. ....

Mr Rafsanjani's comments came very close to a direct challenge to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's most senior political figure, says the BBC's Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne who was ordered out of Iran last month.

It was the first time in two months that Mr Rafsanjani had led weekly prayers at Tehran University. ....

It could be a key moment in the confrontation between Mr Ahmadinejad's government and members of the opposition, our correspondent says. ....

[Merlin]

This is another crucial Friday sermon for Iran.

In Iran, thousands gather for Rafsanjani sermon

17 July [LATimes] The address by the reformist cleric, who has backed contender Mir-Hossein Mousavi, could add fuel to the opposition protests, but some think he might seek to ease tensions

Reporting from Tehran and Beirut -- Thousands of supporters of opposition figurehead Mir-Hossein Mousavi began cramming into downtown Tehran early this afternoon, some with emblematic green ribbons wrapped around their fingers, to attend a potentially momentous sermon by Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani that could herald a new stage in the political drama that has followed the disputed June 12 reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Rafsanjani's long-awaited sermon could pour water on the ongoing fire of protests or add more fuel to the dispute within the ruling establishment and Iranian society over the election results, which the powerful Guardian Council confirmed again Thursday in a 39-page document posted to its website.

Ubiquitous police officers posted near the university, opposition supporters and hundreds of plainclothes pro-government Basiji militiamen are bracing for tensions during and after the prayers, when Mousavi supporters plan to chant slogans and march while security forces attempt to disperse them.

Many Mousavi supporters could be seen gathering along sidewalks near the venue to listen to the sermon and join the demonstration at the end of prayers. Among them were many women in tight overcoats grasping plastic bags with more conservative garb for the prayer sermon.

Reformist leaders, including presidential candidates Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and former President Mohammad Khatami, have vowed to attend. ....

[JAD_333]

By "tacit" I mean approval without disapproving.

As to the second article, I suspect the Christian Science Monitor is drumming up a show-down scenario. No doubt there will be words said on behalf of the regime's opponents, but street battles just seem inappropriate for this venue. There likely will be thousands of riot police around the university. The regime probably doesn't want any trouble; it has enough of black eye from its heavyhandedness in putting down previous demonstrations.

[Merlin]

I imagne they already have the tacit approval of the Supreme lesder ....

I don't think so, not for attending a Friday prayer. Anyway, we'll wait and see.

[JAD_333]

I imagne they already have the tacit approval of the Supreme lesder so they should be peaeful. What will matter is what is said.

[Merlin]

The C S Monitor thinks this is the next flash point in the face off.

Next flash point in Iran face-off: Friday prayers

13 July [CSMonitor] Athens - Though street demonstrations in Tehran have largely died out under the government's strict security measures, Iran's protest movement is gearing up for a big showing at Friday prayers this week – an action that would mark the hijacking of a conservative bastion by the media-savvy opposition.

Meanwhile, passive resistance includes trying to crash the electricity grid by turning on home appliances at appointed times and creating power surges, or stuffing newspapers into Islamic charity boxes reputed to contribute to the upkeep of ideological militias involved in suppressing the protests.

Following two weeks during which the government prevented the sending text messages, many Iranians are trying to affect text-messaging profits by boycotting the medium altogether. ....

Top military official vows to continue crackdown ....

The next flash point in the face-off is expected this Friday during prayers at Tehran University when Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential former president, will be leading them for the first time since the election a month ago.

A strong supporter of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mr. Rafsanjani – a pillar of the regime for 30 years – has emerged since the contested June 12 election as one of the key figures in a power struggle with Iran's supreme leader and his allies, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. .....

Call to reformists: Flood Friday prayers
Posters titled The Promised Day Has Arrived are already being circulated ahead of Friday prayers. They promise the presence of Mr. Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami, and urge reformists to flood the prayer hall.

Friday prayers at Tehran University have traditionally been a political agenda setter for the Islamic Republic and conservative rallying point. The open-air hall rings weekly with condemnations of the enemies of the Islamic Republic and cries of "Death to America." ....

[Merlin]

This public event at Friday prayer on July 17 looks like a face off by the opposition leaders.

Iran opposition leader to attend Friday prayers

14 July TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi will attend Friday prayers this week in his first official public appearance since last month's disputed presidential vote, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

The Etemad daily said the prayers at Tehran University will be led by former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a rival of re-elected hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and one of the four Tehran Friday prayer leaders.

Another former president and supporter of Mousavi, reformist Mohammad Khatami, will also attend, the newspaper said.

"Mousavi and Khatami will attend the prayers this week led by Rafsanjani. This will be their first public appearance in an official event after the (June 12) election," said the daily, citing Mousavi's Facebook page. It also said Mousavi had urged his supporters to attend the sermon. ....

Rafsanjani will lead the prayers after two months of absence. Some of his relatives, including his daughter Faezeh, were arrested briefly for taking part in pro-Mousavi rallies. ....

[Merlin]

Khamenei's son

This is an analysis and collection of reports about Khamenei's son leading the crackdowns.

Is Khamenei's son leading Iran crackdowns?

A report says senior conservative clerics are concerned over Ayatollah Khamenei's alleged attempt to groom his son for leadership.

10 July [CSMonitor] As protesters return to the streets in Iran to demonstrate against Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the results of the recent election, a new report says that Mr. Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is leading the government's anti-protest militias.

The Guardian reports that, according to "a politician with strong connections to the security apparatus" in Iran, Mr. Mojtaba's leading role in the crackdown has "dismayed many of the country's senior clerics, conservative politicians, and Revolutionary Guard generals."

"Mojtaba is the commander of this coup d'etat. The basiji are operating on Mojtaba's orders, but his name is always hidden in all of this. The government never mentions him," the Iranian politician said. "Everyone is angry about this. The maraji [Iran's most senior ayatollahs] and the clerics are angry, the conservatives are very angry and strongly critical of Mojtaba. This situation cannot continue with so many people on the top against it."

The Guardian's source adds, however, that the conservatives worry that overt opposition to the Ayatollah and his son risks undermining the Islamic Republic government and its power in the Middle East. Instead, he says, they will use their political power to hamper the ability of the Ayatollah and Mr. Ahmadinejad to govern.

Mojtaba's role in the crackdown is particularly noteworthy as the Ayatollah has been grooming Mojtaba as his successor. The Los Angeles Times reported that Mojtaba has become a key player in the bureaucracy that the Ayatollah created to consolidate his power, but an attempt to raise Mojtaba to the seat of supreme leader would face resistance from a large portion of Iran's clergy.

Mojtaba Khamenei is a secretive man who doesn't want to "be on people's tongues," said Mohsen Sazegara, an Iranian journalist and former government official whose reformist views led to his brief imprisonment in 2003. "Nobody knows much about him."

The younger Khamenei is the "most influential person in his father's court," said Ali Afshari, a dissident and reformist who spent three years in jail for running pro-democracy programs. "The question is, what happens when his father is gone? Mojtaba needs to hold on to the security apparatus." ...

Analysts say Mojtaba Khamenei lacks the religious and political stature to overcome the opposition he would face in the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with selecting the supreme leader.

His ... father is believed to have influence over about half of the assembly's 86 seats, but the board is headed by Rafsanjani and includes other reformists who probably would block a bid by the younger Khamenei to succeed his father.

The efforts of the Ayatollah and his son to consolidate power may be running afoul of the clergy in part because they appear to be contrary to Islamic law. Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University, writes for The New Republic that the Ayatollah has attempted to change Iranian government priorities from a religious focus to a nationalist focus. ....

Mojtaba may also be involved in the recent souring of diplomatic relations between Iran and Britain. The British government, as part of the international sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program, froze $1.64 billion in Iranian assets last month, reported Reuters.

Unsourced reports, referenced by The Guardian and Iran portal site Payvand.com, say that the money belongs to Mojtaba, and as a result may be a factor in Iran's detention of several British embassy employees in Tehran. Earlier this week, Iran released the eighth of the nine employees held, leaving only the embassy's chief political analyst, an Iranian, still in detention.

[Merlin]

There seems to be a delay in the swearing in or the equivalence of A-jad as the next term President. Things are happening behind the scene in Iran, among the senior clerics.

In Iran, a Struggle Beyond the Streets

7 July [NYTimes] CAIRO — The streets of Iran have been largely silenced, but a power struggle grinds on behind the scenes, this time over the very nature of the state itself. It is a battle that transcends the immediate conflict over the presidential election, one that began 30 years ago as the Islamic Revolution established a new form of government that sought to blend theocracy and a measure of democracy.

From the beginning, both have vied for an upper hand, and today both are tarnished. In postelection Iran, there is growing unease among many of the nation’s political and clerical elite that the very system of governance they rely on for power and privilege has been stripped of its religious and electoral legitimacy, creating a virtual dictatorship enforced by an emboldened security apparatus, analysts said.

Among the Iranian president’s allies are those who question whether the nation needs elected institutions at all.

Most telling, and arguably most damning, is that many influential religious leaders have not spoken out in support of the beleaguered president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, even among those who traditionally have supported the government, many have remained quiet or even offered faint but unmistakable criticisms.

According to Iranian news reports, only two of the most senior clerics have congratulated Mr. Ahmadinejad on his re-election, which amounts to a public rebuke in a state based on religion. A conservative prayer leader in the holy city of Qum, Ayatollah Ibrahim Amini, referred to demonstrators as “people” instead of rioters, and a hard-line cleric, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, called for national reconciliation.


Some of Iran’s most influential grand ayatollahs, clerics at the very top of the Shiite faith’s hierarchy who have become identified with the reformists, have condemned the results as a fraud and the government’s handling of the protests as brutal. On Saturday, an influential Qum-based clerical association called the new government illegitimate.

Yet Ayatollah Khamenei, Mr. Ahmadinejad and their allies still have a monopoly over the most powerful levers of state. They control the police, the courts and the prosecutor’s office. They control the military and the militia forces. And they retain the loyalty of a core group of powerful clerics and their conservative followers: for example, a hard-line cleric who heads the Qum Seminary, Ayatollah Morteza Moghtadai, said on Tuesday that “the case is closed.” No one, not even restive clerics, is in a position to strip this group of its power in the short term.

But the long term is what is in play as this conflict evolves. ...

[Bigfella]

Well no, I just had the impression you were quite skeptic about the Iraq invasion. But I'm not even sure about that.

Anyway, I agree with the idea that Iraq as it is today - with its newspapers, its parliament etc... is destabilizing for Iran, which runs contrary to the argument of the Iraq War empowering Iran (an argument often cited by the "realists")

But I have my doubts on whether the Iraqi experiment will survive without American military presence, or the whole thing will fall apart into civil war a few years from now.

Sorry to dissappoint Castellano, but I was a supporter of the removal of Saddam, if not wildly so. Like most, I believed the misleading claims about WMD, though they were not my reason for supporting the invasion. I thought the suggestion that Saddam was connected to 9-11 in any meaningful way was wrong. I was happy to see the US finally paying off some of the blood debt it racked up when it supported Saddam and I figured that the US would be smart enough to get the job done properly.

Unfortunately I didn't count on the monumental incompetence displayed by the Bush administration - few sane people could. I began having serious misgivings during 2004 & those grew. Had US strategy & tactics continued unchanged I would have been calling for an unconditional withdrawal. Fortunately Bush had a moment of clarity (brought on in no small part by a dramatic drop in support for the war & thus the fortunes of the GOP) & lucked upon the right people to do the job. Even a stopped clock tells time twice a day.

As for 'Iraq as example'....perhaps. It really is too soon to know what outsiders are really making of what is happening in Iraq. I have no doubt the removal of Saddam has had an impact on some members of the Shia clergy, but whether this is a sudden love affair with a more open society or simply greater ease in interacting with a very different & highly respected Shia tradition is up in the air for mine.

I don't know if Iraq will survive & thrive after the US leaves or whether it will eventually fall apart. I certainly believe that the failure to quash the insurgency before it got started did enormous damage to a very weak civil society & political culture. Perhaps a democratic post-Saddam Iraq was always doomed, perhaps it has lost its chance, perhaps it will find a way to survive. I think it is far too early to write it off, but the task will require considerable political skill.

[Castellano]

I have always been fascinated by the supernatural Castellano, or more precisely by those who claim such powers & the gullible types who believe them. As such I am always fascinated by people who claim to be able to read my own mind. I would love to discuss the Hitchens article, but before I do I would love to know just what you think would make me disagree with it & perhaps even why.

Well no, I just had the impression you were quite skeptic about the Iraq invasion. But I'm not even sure about that.

Anyway, I agree with the idea that Iraq as it is today - with its newspapers, its parliament etc... is destabilizing for Iran, which runs contrary to the argument of the Iraq War empowering Iran (an argument often cited by the "realists")

But I have my doubts on whether the Iraqi experiment will survive without American military presence, or the whole thing will fall apart into civil war a few years from now.

[Merlin]

This election was by now held sometime ago. Anybody have any idea why they're still not swearing in A-jad.

[captain]

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose re-election last month led to massive protests, on Tuesday called the balloting "the most free election anywhere in the world."

Dreadnought, I agree that A-Jad is full of it, the electoral process seems to have been corrupt and the heavy handedness toward the protesters was over the top.

Even allowing for voting irregularities, is it possible that A-Jad really did win the election?

I noticed something about the protestors and that was that they were/are predominately the young of university age from the major cities and like university students the world over, protest over any cause seems to be a right of passage thing.
Even though there seemed to be large crowds, they were nothing like a large propotion of the Iranian population so where were the protestors from the lessor towns and country side?

Is it possible that the rest of the world looking on and getting hot under the collar about it are doing so for reasons that may not be entirely the same reasons the protestors hit the street and is it possible that the rest of the world has to at least some extent been suckered into blinkered rage?

Self acknowledged skeptic that I am, my BS detector is still twiching with good reason I think but happy to be proved wrong.

Cheers.

[Dreadnought]

That would be a good trick. I suspect a typo.:))

:))

[Bigfella]

You are very much correct in that.

I've been doing pretty well so far on Iran Castellano (apart from predicting a few token sackings of election officials). Informed guesses of course.:)

From our old friend Hitchens.


Did the toppling of Saddam Hussein lead to recent events in Iran? - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

But I suspect you will disagree with his contention that the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, had some germinal influence on recent events in Iran

I have always been fascinated by the supernatural Castellano, or more precisely by those who claim such powers & the gullible types who believe them. As such I am always fascinated by people who claim to be able to read my own mind. I would love to discuss the Hitchens article, but before I do I would love to know just what you think would make me disagree with it & perhaps even why.